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New York Times: Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba (2/9/06) by Tim Golden
Apparently it takes being kept in "restraint chairs"—rather than being "shackled to their beds"—to get the Guantánamo Bay prison's hunger strikers onto the front page of the Times. Independent outlets have been reporting on the stikers' conditions since last fall, but today the Times describes government officials as "sensitive to the ethical issues raised by feeding the detainees involuntarily" while waiting until the very last paragraphs to relate prisoner lawyers' descriptions of "feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted" and "force feedings [of] too much food...given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves."
Golden goes on to quote the consistent military claim that "hunger striking is an Al Qaeda tactic used to elicit media attention." Aside from the obvious lack of success the strike has had in generating U.S. media attention, just six paragraphs earlier the reporter cites a study of the Pentagon's own documents admitting that "only 8 percent were fighters for Al Qaeda." Of course, even this 8 percent figure is doubtful, considering that the overwhelming majority of prisoners have not been charged with terrorism-related crimes (nor any crimes at all) during their four years of incarceration—but that inconvenient fact goes unmentioned as well.
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