Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger caught my eye this week with a couple of examples of what Bush and his henchmen have done to this country. From a Stranger feature called Last Days, written by David Schmader, was this:
TUESDAY, MAY 20 In bigger news: Today the U.S. Justice Department released its 370-page report detailing abuses witnessed by FBI agents at U.S.-run detention facilities overseas. To celebrate, members of Congress were treated to the testimony of Murat Kurnaz, a 26-year-old Turkish man arrested while traveling with a religious tourism group in Pakistan in late 2001 and held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay for nearly five years. Details come from ABC News: Speaking via video link from Germany, Kurnaz told the House Foreign Affairs Committee of his astoundingly awful treatment at the hands of the U.S., allegedly including electric shocks, being chained by his arms to the ceiling with his feet dangling, and, uh, "water treatment." "They stuck my head into a bucket of water and punched me in the stomach," said Kurnaz of his captors at the U.S. base in Kandahar. "I inhaled the water... It was a strong punch." Kurnaz also alleged that U.S. interrogators tried to force him to sign papers admitting his guilt, and testified that although he had no links to al Qaeda—and German intelligence services told U.S. officials that he was not a terrorist in 2002—he remained at Guantánamo (where the abuses allegedly continued) until August 2006. "I didn't think this could happen in the 21st century," said Kurnaz. "I could never have imagined that this place was created by the United States."What makes this so distressing is that it isn't surprising anymore. We, the United States of America, are torturers. We chain people to ceilings by their arms, torture them with electric shocks, and stick their heads in buckets of water while we punch them in the stomach. After other governments have told us that the person is not a terrorist. What, exactly, are the remaining values that distinguish us from the "evildoers" we are told we must fight?
From the same issue of the Stranger is an outstanding piece entitled A Shooting Crime by Sandy Cioffi, a documentary filmmaker. Cioffi was filming a documentary entitled Sweet Crude, recording the consequences of oil production in the Niger Delta, when she was detained for a week by the Nigerian State Security Services and held, with her crew, in a military detention facility. Cioffi writes:
We would spend the next week detained by the SSS in Abuja, Nigeria, never charged or officially arrested. We weren't physically harmed, just uncomfortable and very scared. . . I had sporadic access to food and water. The lack of water was the hardest part. I am struck by and a little embarrassed at how quickly I felt weak and a bit broken in there. . . At one point, after sleeping for two hours, I was woken for interrogation. I was questioned four times total—once for six hours. A constant feature of interrogation is the fear of what might come if I failed to give them what they wanted, though I never knew what that actually was. . . What I can tell you is that intimidation yields bad information. I could not remember basic details that I had no reason to hide.Compare what she went through, the effect it had on her, and her realization that "intimidation yields bad information". Yet what the U.S. did to Murat Kurnaz, in our names, was much worse, and we expected it to accomplish what exactly?
Cioffi further observes:
I used to make that point about torture in political arguments with friends. Many things that were once philosophical are now physical. A member of my family said, "What kind of a country detains someone without charges, who cannot see a lawyer, whom they know is not a real security threat—just to send a message, just to intimidate them, what kind of country?" Well, the United States for one, in addition to Nigeria and countless others. Illegal detention is a blight on our collective soul and has to end. And if anyone being detained is a real criminal, let's hear the evidence and bring him or her to justice.I could not have said it any better. Yet American citizens who challenge the administration on this and other issues are labeled as unpatriotic and accused of not supporting our troops. Sickening. I try to remind myself that this is the same crowd that measures religious devotion by how hard they squint when they pray on television. Yes, a great bunch of Christians, those Bushies.
