Shock Video: U.S. Contractor Allegedly Shown Teaching Mexican Police How to Torture Suspects

Mexican citizens are in an uproar over newly released videos which appear to show a U.S. contractor teaching Mexican policy how to torture suspects, including a crude variation of water boarding. The Mexican police have been repeatedly accused of torture and this video show them practicing such techniques as dragging people through their own vomit under the directions of a U.S. adviser. It appears that we are succeeding in exporting something to Mexico, but (to paraphrase Ross Perot) that “great sucking sound” is not the loss of jobs.

The videos show a variety of torture techniques, including good old-fashioned brutality like jumping on a suspect’s ribs and dunking a suspect’s head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats..

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The videos involve an “elite unit” in the city of Leon and Guanajuato state.

The videos poses a problem for both the Bush Administration and Congress. While both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have blocked any serious effort to investigate the Bush Administration’s torture program, it remains a crime. Attorney General Mukasey has refused to take action or even answer the question of whether waterboarding is torture. Now, however, we appear to be exporting our new found expertise to our neighbors.

Yet, how could the Justice Department investigate the allegations when it is refusing to investigate the Administration’s own torture program? Likewise, how are Democrats going to call for hearings on torture when they have refused to take meaningful action against a torture program created and directed only a few miles from the Capitol building? We have finally reached a point of complete moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy on the issue. There was a time when we were the leading voice against torture in the world. We are now viewed as an exporter and practicioner of torture.

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