Mixed Feeling on Rapper Yasin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) Demonstrating Forced Feeding...

I must confess I'm mostly ambivalent about the United States Military Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. One on hand, somebody who has way more information than I do made a judgement call that the guys who have been brought to this facility posed a real and present danger to the United States in some form or fashion. On the other hand, it seems like they've been kept a helluva long time without charges being formally brought in too many of these cases. I know that there are also detainees down there who have been cleared to be released, yet they remain locked up. The whole thing, from our actions in Iraq and to the very mis-managed Afghanistan, has been a bit of a cluster fuck.

I can only imagine what would happen if it was a group of American servicemen plucked out of wherever they were fighting and taken to a detention facility in some other part of the world. Held indefinitely, and for most of them, had no official charges filed against them. We would be up in arms, we'd be marching in the streets, we'd want a rescue mission to be mounted ASAP and somebody would pay  dearly for messing with us.

Don't get me wrong, the guys locked up in Cuba aren't exactly choir boys who were snatched out of a college library. Many of these guys are professional mercenaries in the Middle East and they like to be where the action is. My sympathy for these folks has its limits.

President Obama had promised and in fact announced early on his intention to close the facility, as his predecessor George W. Bush had. It didn't happen. Mostly because it takes money...a big chunk of it...to actually shutter a facility like that. Congress controls the money, they didn't feel like cooperating with this idea, and it went nowhere. And so, here we are.

A few dozen detainees, 29 to be exact, have decided they no longer wish to eat or partake of any nourishment. I imagine they understand the consequences of these actions. The United States military isn't going to stand for these folks refusing to eat and then dying. It wouldn't look good. So, they utilize a procedure called Enteral Feeding. These people will eat, one way or the other...

Basically, a fairly small diameter plastic tube is lubricated with a k-y jelly type substance and then inserted into the inmate's nostril. Its fed deeper and deeper down the throat and ultimately into the patient's stomach. It doesn't sound pleasant to me. The procedure has been banned by the United Nations as a form of torture and a breech of international law. (Didn't President Obama say several times the United States does not torture?, Why, yes he did..."I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.")

Rapper Yasin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), working with a Human Rights organisation called "Reprieve," volunteered to undergo the procedure himself. He's a popular artist and his involvement may lead to a greater awareness and greater pressure on elected officials to intervene to stop it. I understand that. Christopher Hitchens did the same type thing with water boarding several years ago. I applaud social awareness and involvement. Good for Mr. Bey to take some time and try and make a difference.

Watch the video yourself:



I've watched the video several times. Its professionally done and tells the story quite well on what its like to undergo forced tube feeding. I also had my wife, a trained Advanced Practice Nurse (think Nurse practitioner) who has administered this procedure, view it and share her comments. Her experiences were in a traditional nursing home setting. She commented that usually the patients head is tilted in such a way to facilitate the tube progressing down the nasal passage and throat as comfortably as possible. Bey's head was thrashing all about which likely only made things worse for him. Secondly, she says that usually someone has a cup of water with a straw for the patient to sip out of, as that also helps move the tube more comfortably into proper position. There was no sign of that in the video.

Another issue I had was with Bey's reaction near the end of the film. I understand this wasn't fun. But the pleading to stop and then the outright sobbing struck me as something other than genuine. I'm not saying he faked it or even forced it but he wasn't in enemy hands. They weren't going to do anything to him he hadn't expressly approved of earlier. It struck me as a it of over-acting. My wife, the 14 year nursing veteran, said she knew a lot of old women who put this guy to shame. She too thought Bey's actions were over-dramatic.

Forced feeding is nasty enough. The over-emoting took away from the experience for both of us. I fear the resulting conversation going forward may be too much about whether Bey was faking it than the actual issue.

What's my bottom line? Very mixed.

Let's charge these guys with a crime and move forward that way or send them back to wherever we got them from. I say keep Guantanamo Bay open in a different role. A US military base in Cuba probably has have real strategic value that we shouldn't just abandon.

I applaud Mr. Bey's efforts but wish the last section of the video was different. I also wonder if whether the specific procedure the US Military uses is different in terms of head position and the use of a glass of water to help the patient essentially swallow the feeding tube? Maybe the makers of the movie followed it to a T, maybe they played up a certain aspect of it for effect. I'm not entirely sure.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1872158,00.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/08/mos-def-force-fed-guantanamo-bay-video

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2008/11/16/32392/obama-moral-stature/

http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/05/201358152317954140.html

"McCain doesn't understand torture...."

From the Hugh Hewitt Show...

"HH: Now your former colleague, John McCain, said look, there’s no record, there’s no evidence here that these methods actually led to the capture or the killing of bin Laden. Do you disagree with that? Or do you think he’s got an argument?

RS: I don’t, everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation. And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that’s how we ended up with bin Laden. That seems to be clear from all the information I read. Maybe McCain has better information than I do, but from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty clear that but for these cooperative witnesses who were cooperative as a result of enhanced interrogations, we would not have gotten bin Laden." (Interview with yet un-named Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum May 17th, 2011)

  In recent days, several official and expected Republican candidates for the right to face off against Barack Obama in our next Presidential election in the Fall of 2012, have made some remarkable statements. While I scratch my head and try to figure out Newt Gingrich's strategy, I wanted to take a moment and comment on Rick Santorum's remarks about John McCain and how Mr. McCain "...doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works."

  Really?

  I'm no big fan of Mr. McCain. I admire his military service and considered voting for him in the '08 election. I wound up voting for Barack Obama and feeling sorry for McCain. The campaign got away from him, adding Sarah Palin to the ticket was a panic move which wound up hurting more than helping. I think he is a patriotic American and his years in the "Hanoi Hilton" are a reality I can read about all I want but never fully appreciate. Spending/surviving six years of imprisonment, torture and isolation and emerging from it alive is impressive to me. 

  After "recovering" from his crash related injuries and extended periods of solitary confinement, a series of beatings and "rope bindings" pushed McCain to what he describes as his breaking point. "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."  Feeling his anti-American statement was dis-honorable, McCain refused to ever cooperate again with his captors. McCain was finally released on March 19, 1973. 

  How can Mr. Santorum suggest that McCain doesn't understand torture? Well, for starters, Santorum has never served in the Military. What he knows about torture comes to him from third parties, like it does for most of us. McCain's POW record isn't in dispute, on what basis does he question his comprehension of torture? 

  As a likely candidate for the GOP nomination, I think Santorum, like others this week, provided self-serving comments to advance his own cause. He can disagree with McCain's opinions on the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques (ETT), but in my opinion, its patently stupid to suggest John McCain doesn't understand how it torture works. 

  One can only imagine how the Senator from Arizona felt upon hearing of Santorum's comments. The body of evidence that questions the value of ETT is growing. It is, under this President not something we do. I understand there's a fine line that's very gray when it comes to obtaining information from prisoners and enemy combatants. In this case, the military man says its not what we should be doing, while the civilian who never served and is looking to market his brand as a serious contender for POTUS in 2012, says its proper. 

 He ought to, at the very least, clarify his comments toward Mr. McCain.

Sources: 

http://www.hughhewitt.com/transcripts.aspx?id=d18eabab-3f0c-4611-8dcc-c277fa7f0deb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum