Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, December 7, 2009

Cover Up: Death At Gitmo's Camp Delta

By Steve Hynd


On June 10, 2006 three detainees at Gitmo's Camp Delta were found hanged in their cells. The government's own autopies showed they'd been hanging there for at least two hours, in cells under suposedly constant surveilance by video cameras and guards.


Now, Seton Hall Law has a new report on the deaths at Camp Delta.



Professor Denbeaux commented, �An investigation was promised. The promised investigation was a cover up. Worse still, given the gross inadequacy of the investigation the more compelling questions are: Who knew of the cover up? Who approved of the cover up, and why? The government�s investigation is slipshod, and its conclusion leaves the most important questions about this tragedy unanswered.�


Taking the military investigation�s findings as truthful and complete, in order to have committed suicide by hanging, the detainees had to:



  1. Braid a noose by tearing up their sheets and/or clothing
  2. Make mannequins of themselves so it would appear to the guards they were asleep in their cells
  3. Hang sheets to block the view into the cells, in violation of SOPs
  4. Stuff rags down their own throats
  5. Tie their own feet together
  6. Tie their own hands together
  7. Hang the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling
  8. Climb up on to the sink, put the noose around their necks and release their weight, resulting in death by strangulation
  9. Hang dead for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards


Seton Hall Law student, co-author of Death in Camp Delta, and former Sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, Paul W. Taylor added: �We have three dead bodies and no explanation. How is it possible that all three detainees had shoved rags so far down their own throats that medical personnel could not remove them? One of the dead detainees was scheduled for release from Guantanamo Bay in 19 days. Instead he died in custody.�


The American public and the families of the dead deserve to know the truth.�


Closing Gitmo won't make stuff like this go away, no matter how much we wish it might. The families of detainees and the entire world will remember and Gitmo will stain America's reputation until all the ghosts are put to rest. Transparency, accountability and justice must accompany the (now belated) closing of the camp.



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