Guest hosting on June 8 for Scott James on Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Ride Home with The James Gang, KCOL's “Larry the Car Guy” -- aka Loveland business owner Larry Swyers -- interviewed former American Legion national commander Tom Bock about Bock's 2006 visit to the United States detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Based on his observations, Bock asserted that the “interrogation room” holds “a small refrigerator, a microwave, a round coffee table, and two chairs,” one of which is “a La-Z-Boy recliner” for the detainee. Bock added, “It makes you kinda chuckle, say, 'Wow, they sit around eatin' pizza or popcorn and drinkin' sodas and ... talking.' And that's ... how they interrogate to get the information from those guys.” Although he then acknowledged “terrible stories from Abu Ghraib and ... different facilities like that,” Bock did not mention firsthand accounts of prisoner abuse from FBI agents and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that paint a much grimmer picture of detainee treatment at Guantánamo.

From the June 8 broadcast of Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Ride Home with The James Gang:

BOCK: And it's a small room. It's got a, a, a small refrigerator, a microwave, a round coffee table, and two chairs. The one chair looks much like an office chair with a little padding on the back and two arms on it. And the other chair is a La-Z-Boy recliner. Use your imagination which one, who sits where. You know, the --

SWYERS: I'm, I'm pretty sure the interrogator does not get the La-Z- Boy.

BOCK: Exactly right. I have pictures of that. It's kinda, it's kinda interesting. It makes you kinda chuckle, say, “Wow, they sit around eatin' pizza or popcorn and drinkin' sodas and, and talking.” And that's, that's how they interrogate to get the information from those guys. And I'm not saying that, that things haven't happened. There's, there's terrible stories from Abu Ghraib and, and, and different facilities like that, that some unfortunate things happen. But when you think of torture and you're accused of torture, your mind goes back to some of the, some of the reports that we had from troops that were prisoners in the Vietnam war and the stories that they brought back, and the total mistreatment, the inhumane treatment, the beatings, the floggings, and, and just the, the, the terrible things that happened to those guys. That's not happening. I mean, today, torture -- we're accused of leaving the lights on overnight.

Bock's remarks echoed conservatives' attempts to downplay reports of the torture of detainees at Guantánamo, as Media Matters for America has documented (here, here, here, and here). For example, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested in 2005 that the detention facility be touted as “Club G'itmo, the Muslim resort,” a “tropical paradise down there where Muslim extremists and terrorist wannabes can get together for rest and relaxation.”

As Media Matters also noted, in December 2002, former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld approved the use of “counter-resistance techniques” by Guantánamo Bay interrogators, including “use of stress positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours,” use of “detainees' individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress,” and use of an “isolation facility for up to 30 days.” The United Nations and several human-rights groups have stated that such techniques violated Geneva Convention protections against torture; Human Rights Watch stated that the United States previously had “denounced as torture these same methods when practiced by other countries.”

Further, as The Boston Globe reported on April 15, 2006, Guantánamo detainee Mohamed al-Qahtani, whose interrogation was monitored closely by Rumsfeld, “was subjected to sleep deprivation, stripped naked, forced to wear women's underwear on his head, denied bathroom access until he urinated on himself, threatened with snarling dogs, and forced to perform tricks on a dog leash, among other things.”

Media Matters also noted that numerous Federal Bureau of Investigation documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union graphically detail many cases of abuse. For example, a letter from deputy assistant FBI director for counterterrorism T.J. Harrington reported several agents' accounts of abusive treatment, including one in which a female sergeant “grabbed the detainee's thumbs and bent them backwards and indicated that she also grabbed his genitals.” According to Harrington's letter, a Marine told the agent who witnessed the incident that past interrogations by the female sergeant had left other “detainees curling into a fetal position on the floor and crying in pain.”

An FBI email described abuse in graphic terms:

On a couple of occassions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they had urinated or defacated on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occassion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the [military police guards] what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occassion, the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night.

The ICRC also has described prisoner abuse at Guantánamo. The New York Times, which first obtained a memo summarizing the agency's report, noted that the ICRC delegation cited the use of “temperature extremes,” “loud and persistent noise,” and “some beatings.”

From the June 8 broadcast of Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Ride Home with The James Gang:

SWYERS: Tom, before we went to the news, we were dicussing your trip to, to Gitmo, Guantánamo Bay, and your experiences there and what you, what you were able to see. Quite contrary to what gets reported to us in mainstream media on a regular basis. Now, you, you told us about a incident that happened. And I'm going to let you go back -- in case anybody just, just tuned in -- let you go back and, and tell us about the incident that happened, the subsequent cleanup and so on. And then I have a, I have an observation to make about that.

BOCK: OK. I was at the maximum security. We were going to tour it, and one of the prisoners had just doused one of our soldiers with a “Gitmo cocktail,” one of those disgusting concoctions that they make of various bodily fluids. And the young man basically went on about his business. He cleaned himself up, come back to work, and told me that, you know, in, in his opinion this was -- his orders were this is a detention facility, not a rehabilitation facility. And that's what I saw there. I mean, it was amazing. I even went into their, their -- what they call “interrogation room,” which was a small room.

SWYERS: So this is where all the beatings happen?

BOCK: This is where the bea -- yeah, this is --

SWYERS: OK.

BOCK: -- where the room --

SWYERS: Now we got it.

BOCK: And it's a small room. It's got a, a, a small refrigerator, a microwave, a round coffee table, and two chairs. The one chair looks much like an office chair with a little padding on the back and two arms on it. And the other chair is a La-Z-Boy recliner. Use your imagination which one, who sits where. You know, the --

SWYERS: I'm, I'm pretty sure the interrogator does not get the La-Z- Boy.

BOCK: Exactly right. I have pictures of that. It's kinda, it's kinda interesting. It makes you kinda chuckle, say, “Wow, they sit around eatin' pizza or popcorn and drinkin' sodas and, and talking.” And that's, that's how they interrogate to get the information from those guys. And I'm not saying that, that things haven't happened. There's, there's terrible stories from Abu Ghraib and, and, and different facilities like that, that some unfortunate things happen. But when you think of torture and you're accused of torture, your mind goes back to some of the, some of the reports that we had from troops that were prisoners in the Vietnam War and the stories that they brought back, and the total mistreatment, the inhumane treatment, the beatings, the floggings, and, and just the, the, the terrible things that happened to those guys. That's not happening. I mean, today, torture -- we're accused of leaving the lights on overnight.