THE UNITED STATES NOW TORTURES PEOPLE
Actually, the US has always tortured people, but America has never seemed so proud and or blasé about it until now. Have you been reading the endless stream of headlines about this? Have you had any conversations with White House fans who either unashamedly explain that things are "different" after 9/11, or who try to rationalize what's going on as simply a collection of "isolated incidents?" Well, I have, and it's making me constantly pinch myself in order to understand that this isn't some sort of bad dream: in the reality in which I thought I was living, torture is considered to be barbaric, straight-up evil. What the hell is going on? I just don't understand why this doesn't seem to be freaking out significant portions of the population. Everybody seems to be so ho-hum about it all. I just don't get it.
The leading international human rights advocacy organization doesn't seem to get it either. From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:
Amnesty International assails Guantanamo as 'gulag'
Amnesty International branded the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a human rights failure today, releasing a 308-page report that offers stinging criticism of the United States and its detention centers around the world.
"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said as the London-based group launched its annual report. Amnesty International called for the camp to be closed.
The annual report accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has instead created a new lexicon for abuse and torture.
"Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak, such as 'environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults on global values."
Click here for the rest.
In the meantime, while the pundits and talking heads argue about whether Newsweek is responsible for rioting in Afghanistan, which conveniently takes the heat off the Pentagon and White House about their torture policies, still more evidence comes to light about the Koran being dumped in the toilet. From Reuters via Yahoo courtesy of the Daily Kos:
FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran
An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.
The release of the declassified document came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk.
The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.
The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.
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Look, this toilet flushing thing definitely happened, but for some odd reason Newsweek felt it had to retract the story. Public discourse is at the point such that it is virtually impossible to tell the truth without being dog-piled by the criminals who run this country. And the torture continues.
Talking about this isn't some intellectual exercise, isn't some pussified plea for compassion: the POWs our military is abusing are victims, of course, but this slide into national evil will take its toll on us, too.
From CounterPunch:
Tattoo Nation
As the revelations of brutal torture by the victors were first spilling from conquered Iraq, Hersh was contacted by a family member of a young American woman who had served in a unit policing Abu Ghraib, the Guardian reports. The young soldier had "come back a different person," the relative said: distraught and angry, turning her back on her family.
The relative retrieved a computer she'd lent the soldier to use in Iraq and found there a file crammed with torture porn: photo after photo of a naked Iraqi prisoner writhing before the onslaught of fierce police dogs. One of the pictures was later published worldwide and became an emblem of the dehumanizing brutality of the American occupation.
The young soldier thought she'd been sent to fight for democracy and freedom, the relative told Hersh, but it was a lie. Instead she found herself in Hell, committing crimes, violating her own nature, her sense of duty perverted by leaders who twisted it into a weapon to serve aggressive war. Since her return, said the relative, the young soldier keeps getting black tattoos, more and more of them, slowly covering her entire body trying literally to change her skin.
The fate of this soul-broken, tormented daughter of America embodies the nation itself under the malevolent reign of George W. Bush. The whole country is changing its skin, trying to cloak its shame and complicity by a wilful disfigurement.
Click here for the rest.
I have to ask myself, at what point do I decide that the country I love is no longer the country I love? I keep telling myself that these are the actions of the government and the corporations who run it, not of the American people. But why isn't there a searing wail of anguish and anger coming up from the people?
Why doesn't anybody seem to care?
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