The just-released footage of an interrogation at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is quite compelling. It remains to be seen whether the video will have the same impact as the photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but its content certainly does nothing to heal the United States' wounded reputation around human rights.

Captured on cameras hidden in a vent, the footage shows Canadian Omar Khadr, then 16, weeping and in serious distress. The interrogation methods used on him included prolonged, multi-week sleep deprivation.

Ongoing hearings in the US have revealed much about the interrogation techniques employed at various US-administered prisons in the world (the main focus of the Why Democracy film Taxi To The Dark Side). The latest information, which might have seemed shocking just five years ago, is that classes on Guantanamo interrogation methods were informed by Chinese Communist methods in the Korean War.

From the New York Times:

The secret US policies that endorsed the shocking treatment of prisoners of the war on terror (as documented in the Why Democracy documentary Taxi To The Dark Side) have their domestic-policy equivalents in security legislation in various countries around the world. In the US it is the Patriot Act, and in the UK it is the Counter Terrorism Bill. The latter bill is drawing much attention as it comes up for renewal with the government attempting to raise the pre-charge detention limit to 42 days from 28.