Mass hunger strikes and force-feeding have already brought uncomfortable attention to the Obama Administration’s continued operation of Guantanamo Bay, but it got even uglier over the weekend, when troops in riot gear attacked a detention facility, clashing with the hunger strikers.
The Pentagon is defending the attack on the prisoners as “critical,” however, and insists that the damage from firing riot shotguns at the detainees at short range were “minor” and appropriate to the situation.
The military decided to raid the prison camp, claiming the prisoners had put garbage over a lot of the surveillance cameras and made it hard to see. They also claimed to have spent three weeks preparing for the raid.
Officials claimed that the detainees taped a bunch of plastic water bottles together into makeshift polearms, though they have yet to provide any evidence to support this and it seems absurd on its face. They added today that two soldiers were “injured” by getting bopped on the head by water bottles during the raid, but have since returned to active duty.
Another lie to cover the first lie, the lie that told us that Guantanamo will be closed.