Torture

-CTF Editorial: August 7, 2005

FACT: Torture took place at multiple facilities BESIDES Abu Ghraib, including Guantanamo. (Someone asked what torture was - torture is sleep deprivation, water-boarding, sexual humiliation, attacking people with dogs, hanging them by shackles from the prison cell ceiling for four days until they expire, attaching electrodes to their testicles, rape, repeated beatings --- all of which have happened at detention facilities throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Gitmo.)

FACT: Many of the individuals in these prisons have not one damn thing to do with terrorism. Especially in Iraq, investigators have revealed that as many as 40% were scooped up off the streets at random, or are in for minor crimes like traffic incidents (and I don't mean roadside bombs, I mean not using their damn turn indicator).

FACT: This is the new slavery. Many people who are now in detention were bought. In other words, our government is paying warlords, tribal leaders, and bounty hunters as much as $25,000 a pop for people who are SUPPOSED to be Al Qaeda. Problem is, now these shady characters we're paying money to are just swooping up random people off the street, and saying, "This is Ali Muhammad. He is Al Qaeda." And since many Muslims share the same name, he may actually BE Ali Muhammad, but not THAT Ali Muhammad. Idiots in this country just put a school principal on the terrorist watch list because she accidentally left a butter knife in her luggage. How much more accurate do you think we're gonna be on the chaos of the battlefield, when desperately poor people or scum drug dealers find a new market in selling humans to the Americans? These people don't have two sticks to rub together. How can you verify their identity with any certainty?

FACT: There are now 27 murder cases (many of the cases involving multiple soldiers and several murders EACH) under investigation by the military, where soldiers took torture so far that prisoners died.

FACT: The rules regarding the prevention of torture are in Colin Powell's words, "there to protect AMERICANS" from mistreatment when the situation is reversed and they are held captive. (We can never expect respect, if we do not give it.)

FACT: You can change the definition of these prisoners from "prisoners of war", to "enemy combatants" or whatever other euphemism you want to create to obfuscate your guilt -- one definition of these prisoners will NEVER change. They are all HUMAN BEINGS. Guilty or not. Deeply misguided or not. Psychotic or not. If you engage in torture, you become just as bad as the guilty ones, and the guilty ones are not redeemed by your actions. All you've done is lower yourself. (And if you are Christian, and perpetrating this, it is in diametric opposition to the tenets of your faith.)

FACT: The climate that created this nightmare starts at the TOP with authorization memos by Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales, and signed by Vietnam War deserter (AWOL is 30 days, George left his post for nearly two years), the President-Select, George Shrub.

FACT: While soldiers of HONOR should refuse to carry out orders of torture as a matter of CONSCIENCE, those who do carry out torture should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The men at the top bear MORE blame for creating this idiot environment, but YOU HAVE A CHOICE, whether to act like a Nazi or not. "I was only following orders," is NOT a justifiable excuse.

FACT: Simply because the enemy acts like a shit blowing up buildings like the WTC, doesn't mean we have to lower ourselves to their level just to win. Rather, that's the precise way to lose. If you engage in revenge, not merely justice, be warned, you might become the thing you hate, in order to destroy it.

FACT: Torture is a crap way of obtaining information. The quality of the intel gained is unreliable at best. Therefore, the entire exercise is a waste of time, that deadens the soul of the victim AND the perpetrator. (I don't want our soldiers committing torture not just because of what it will do to the prisoner, but also because of what it will do to the soldier to turn him/her into a sick, degenerate masochist.)

FACT: Now that our behavior is out in the open, we're using "extraordinary rendition" and just swooping up people and sending them to other countries who'll practice torture without all that burdensome guilt. Places like Syria and Uzbekistan. We sent a Canadian citizen there to be tortured for three months, and he was guilty of NOTHING.

FACT: This is Osama's victory. By engaging in torture (and by working with other dictatorships who do), we are HANDING it to him by acting worse than his own propaganda about us.

On top of this, the Defense Department has contradicted itself by saying there is "no evidence" of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, despite the,

FACT: There are five cases of intentional abuse of the Loran designed to produce prisoner distress verified by the U.S. military's own investigation.

Additionally,

FACT:: A 2002 FBI report detailed at least thirteen different prisoners testifying that the Koran was deliberately mistreated.

THIS MUST STOP. This only plays into the enemy's hands.

I think Saddam is a prick. And a small, flaccid one at that. But so is George. Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. I sure as hell didn't want rape rooms in Iraq, but now AMERICANS are running rape rooms (the Lynndie England pictures are NOTHING compared to some of the crap that's gone down. Young boys have been raped in our custody). This has debased us far more than Osama ever could have.

Though I am a civilian, I spent 20 years around the military. I lived through my first terrorist attack at age 13. I can still remember the sickening rolling thud passing under my feet from the car bomb. I grew up regularly evacuating from bomb threats several times a week during the 80's. And I respect our soldiers more than I can express. I have witnessed their sacrifices on a daily basis. I know what serving costs them.

But THIS is not American. This is fascist. I don't want the price of our soldier's service, to be their souls. And for us to behave in this manner disgraces the sacrifices our forefathers made when they fought and died saving this country from fascism in the 1940's.

IT. IS. INEXCUSABLE.

America should not be attacking countries without provocation (or on intentionally trumped up "evidence", as the Downing Street Memos reveal conclusively). Nor should it be running concentration camps (and that is the right term -- that is what you call a place where people are held without charges, based on association, for periods that defy our guarantees of a speedy trial, and are subjected to inhumane treatment).

We've had these people incarcerated for three years -- charge them, try them, and sentence them. If you have no evidence, sorry, but you're going to have to release them. You're free to watch them afterwards if it satisfies either your paranoia, or you big brother impulses, but RESOLVE IT. It is antithetical to American jurisprudence, American honor, and the American spirit to continue this.

A lawsuit has been filed by a US soldier beaten savagely at Guantanamo after he volunteered to portray a detainee for a training exercise.

Specialist Sean Baker said he put on the jumpsuit and squeezed under a prison bunk after being told by a lieutenant that he would be portraying an unruly detainee. He said he was assured that MPs conducting the "extraction drill" knew it was a training exercise and that Baker was an American soldier.

As he was being choked and beaten, Baker said, he screamed a code word, "red," and shouted: "I'm a U.S. soldier! I'm a U.S. soldier!" He said the beating continued until the jumpsuit was yanked down during the struggle, revealing his military uniform.

Baker suffers from seizures, blackouts, headaches, insomnia and psychological problems after having his head slammed into a concrete floor repeatedly and being choked and sprayed with pepper gas.

No one has been disciplined or punished for the assault, said Baker's lawyer, T. Bruce Simpson Jr. Last June, a military spokesman said an internal investigation in February 2003 had concluded that no one was liable for Baker's injuries.

So if soldiers aren't liable for even beating one of THEIR OWN, how much chance do you think a REAL prisoner has???