Say Anything Blog

Just not the sort of violence the media usually reports on.

The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say.

Incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press indicate Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by “cocktails” of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.

They’ve been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small “bean holes” used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.

The detainee “reached under the face mask of an IRF (Initial Reaction Force) team member’s helmet and scratched his face, attempting to gouge his eyes,” states a May 27, 2005, report on an effort to remove a recalcitrant prisoner from his cell.

“The IRF team member received scratches to his face and eye socket area,” the report said.

Here's a handy graph outlining the number and types of attacks on our troops:



What's amazing is that these attacks on our troops go largely uncovered by the media while any hint of a rumor about our troops mistreating detainees circulated by one of the detainee's lawyers causes a media blitz.

It's pathetic. I know that this sort of behavior is expected from terror detainees, while abuse from our troops is not, but if the media is going to print rumors of detainee mistreatment then shouldn't they put those rumors in perspective with actual facts about how the detainees treat our troops?