Yahoo! News - Ex-Soldier Recalls Beating He Received in Guantanamo Drill: "Baker says he volunteered to put on an orange prison jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee in a training drill. But the five-man MP 'immediate response force' sent in to extract him was not told of the exercise. According to Baker's lawyer, the soldiers were told that Baker was an unruly detainee who had been doused with pepper spray after assaulting a sergeant.
Four MPs slammed Baker to the floor, he says, then choked him and pounded his head at least three times against the floor. Gasping for breath, he managed to spit out a code word ? 'red' ? and to croak: 'I'm a U.S. soldier! I'm a U.S. soldier!'
But the beating continued, according to Baker, until the jumpsuit was yanked down in the struggle, revealing his military uniform. Only then did the MPs realize that they had been beating an American soldier ? causing a traumatic brain injury, Baker alleges.
'What happened to me is something that should never have happened to any American soldier,' Baker wrote in an e-mail response to questions from the Los Angeles Times. 'I pray it will never happen again.'
Honorably discharged with a medical retirement in April, Baker spends dreary days inside a nondescript duplex in central Kentucky, unable to work because of what he says are seizures caused by the beating. He is taking nine prescription medications for seizures and headaches, his lawyer said. He has yet to receive disability payments promised by the military.
'The way the military treated Sean is unconscionable ? and the way they continue to treat him is even worse,' said attorney Bruce Simpson."