(2004-11-30) — Just a day after The New York Times leaked excerpts from a confidential Red Cross report claiming that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have undergone psychological and physical coercion “tantamount to torture,” the Times has printed a second story alleging that Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Iraq conduct interrogations “tantamount to beheading.”

Al Qaeda terror cells, like the Pentagon, gave the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross complete access to facilities, staff and medical records of detainees for an entire month.

“We’ve found numerous incidents of Al Qaeda captives who were released,” said an unnamed Red Cross source in the Times report. “And for that we applaud Al Qaeda. However, in a footnote to the report, we mention that a disturbing number of these detainees are released without their heads, which we believe may be a violation of the Geneva conventions.”

The source emphasized that “both sides in the war on terror have transgressed.”

“Whether it’s the apparent videotaped beheading of an innocent civilian contractor, or psychological manipulation of an enemy combattant who may have knowledge of planned attacks on the U.S. citizens-it’s all reprehensible,” she said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “Sure, we play head games with terrorists to get them to divulge information that will save lives. We can do that at Guantanamo because our detainees have heads. A recent internal study shows that the ratio of detainees to detainee-heads at Gitmo is one-to-one.”

President Bush, upon learning of yesterday’s leaked confidential Guantanamo report, said, “I’m always deeply concerned about allegations that our government has acted improperly. And of course this story has the added credibility of coming from anonymous sources leaking selected excerpts of confidential documents to the The New York Times. And that’s tantamount to journalism.”

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