These allegations bring up memories for me and I'm getting very cynical:

The RAF (Red Army Faction) prisoners in Germany in the 1970s went on hungerstrike too against the conditions in the prison. They (or rather: their lawyers) did compare the conditions with torture. The prisoners were force fed and their lawyers told the press that the force feeding was just another way of torture (not to use artificial feeding for hunger strikers is considered homicide in Germany, BTW). Our present minister of internal affairs, Otto Schily, then declared as a lawyer for the prisoners that the treatment of them by the authorities was 'execution by way of instalment". A half blind (in both senses of the word) Sartre told the public that the cells were completely bare for he had mistaken the visitor' room for a cell. The liberal public, including me of course, was outraged.

Now, thirty years later, some former RAF prisoners are writing their memoirs and autobiographies and tour the talkshows. We now hear that the allegations of torture then were seen as a mean in the political fight in order to win over parts of the public and to turn supporters into fighters. The occasional mistreatment did happen, but most of the torture argument was part of a propaganda war for the hearts of the sympathetic liberals. Some of the lawyers were lied to and some others knew that they were willing pawns.

The pinnacle was the suicide of three of their leaders with the help of pistols smuggled into the prison by lawyers. We now know from former members that the inner circle of the RAF (the supporting fringe was not informed BTW) debated whether it would be better to claim the suicides as a lst defiant act of self-determination about life and death or to accuse the authorities of a murder plot. The murder plot plan won in the discussion and so we were fed propaganda by willing lawyers that Germany had reinstated the death penalty without due trial. Some of the fringe supporters were won to become activists because they believed the lies.

That's what these allegations remind me. It's not that I just couldn't believe that the US authorities might ever use torture or mistreatment in that fight. I wouldn't be too surprised if they would. But I have learned not to trust terrorists and their lawyers when they accuse the authorities of evil acts. For them this is just the propaganda part of a war, a bit with an eye to the liberal Westerners, but more with an eye to sympathetic supporters who might be turned into fighters. The former allegations of abuses of the Koran were also a good propaganda weapon.

Would the terrorists lie if they thought it helpful? Of course they would. Would (a part of) the authorities lie if they thought it better this way? Of course they would (though it's a tiny bit easier to find out if they do). From an outside view, it is impossible to tell for sure who is lying to us. I'm a bit surprised that some here who would easily recognise propaganda by a government as such give no indication at all that they consider terrorists capable of a similar use of propaganda.

Wolfgang