In October 2002, a Marine captain allegedly squatted over a copy of the Koran during intensive questioning of a Muslim prisoner, who was "incensed" by the tactic
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interrogators wrapped a bearded prisoner's head in duct tape "because he would not stop quoting the Koran," according to an FBI agent, the documents show. The agent, whose account was corroborated by a colleague, said that a civilian contractor laughed about the treatment and was eager to show it off.
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one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to "Satanic black metal music for hours," then dressed as a Catholic priest before "baptizing" him.
What the Bush administration has made us is the antithesis of what we were conceived to be. At some point in time, those responsable for these acts, and those who allowed them to occur must be held accountable.
Tags
Torture
3 comments:
The fact of the matter remains that under the new Prisoner Detainee act the actions of the Abu Grab prison guards should not have been criminal and to my extreme chagrin really should leave them open for medals of accomidation instead of the brig. I have written this before, perhaps not here, but Bush said to the Iraqi people after we took control that the poison factories and torture chambers were closed, yet to the utter dismay of many observers they have not been closed. Instead they have been opened under new management, ours. I really hate to think about the fact that the administrations current course is to legitimize the tatics of Saddam and other brutal dictators by incorporating the worst of what he stood for into our own foreign policy actions.
Have you read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn? It is full or our obscene behavior.
Lynne, while I haven't read that particular book all the way through, as a veteran of many, many U.S. history books. There is much to be embarrassed or ashamed of in U.S. history - I think the difference between then and now (and what I find to be the most disconcerting in this context) is that we have usually gotten 'better' as a nation, seen the error of certain ways and moved forward. It has been a painfully slow process at times, but usually America has learned from one or several mistakes and after a time become better on those issues as a nation. This is an example in my opinion (and there are much fewer of these in our nation's history) where we have unfortunately moved backwards.
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