Just putting that title on this post makes me angry, sad, and embarrassed to be an American. It isn't bad enough that Bush has pretty much left the Constitution in tatters here at home. What little was left of our international reputation, all that goodwill that came pouring in to us as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks is gone. In fact, it is noteworthy and newsworthy that of all the places Bush went in Europe during his G-summit round-robin, the only place he got anything like a warm reception was . . . Albania. Not to knock the Albanians, but the simple fact that our old allies - Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium - want nothing to do with us, are in fact enraged at the current administration for its serial failures should lead us all to ponder where we are as a nation.
In the run-up to the summit, there were some revelations concerning the presence of CIA-run prisons in Poland and Romania, prisons where the United States engaged in torture. Now, we can bicker over details - the right-wing loves to bicker over details, and get all lawyerly over questions of definitions and questionable cases, especially when its pet projects are in question. In order to clarify things a bit, I shall repeat - along with Abu Ghraib, where the United States engaged in torturing Iraqi prisoners; along with Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where prisoners are housed so they are deliberately outside the jurisdiction of the courts; now, there are revelations that even here in the US, at some military installations, prisoners are being held in conditions that are, well, um, OK, fine, I'll say it - it's just torture all around! - but the fact is the United States has engaged, since the beginning of this nonsensical, completely messed-up "War on Terror" to seek not only to replicate the "Bad Guy", but to be worse than they are.
I will site just one example here. Everyone with a shred of decency understands that the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 was a horrible incident. Broadcasting a video of it over the internet added emotional insult to injury. Prior to his death, in other video captures, it was quite clear that Pearl had suffered a great deal of physical trauma. All of this is indisputable, and horrific.
Consider, as a counter-claim, Jose Padilla. Held since late-2001, early-2002 on a rotating series of charges that never quite stick, Padilla's mental and physical condition have so deteriorated due to the treatment he has received in US custody - indeed, it is believed he has suffered permanent mental and intellectual incapacitation due to the treatment he has received - that he can no longer seriously participate in his own defense. Think about that for just one moment. Padilla, a US citizen, was pulled out of an airport on hearsay evidence, declared an "enemy combatant" by the President of the United States, had moved from prison to prison even as the charges against him were dropped, changed, refiled, forced to change again and again - even the story about what he was doing has changed with the circumstances - and he is now a mental cripple because of the way we treated him. I say "we" because he was in US custody, his tormentors bought and paid for by our tax dollars. Unless you refused to pay your taxes this past year, a penny or two of your money went to those who "stood guard" over Padilla.
Now, as horrific as Pearl's experience was, it is over. Padilla's experience continues even now, with no let up in sight, even in the midst of a trial, a trial five years in the making (a trial, by the way, the Administration seriously hoped to avoid). He continues to suffer, and will suffer the ill-effects of incarceration for the rest of his life. Remember this, as well - Padilla was not even charged with a crime until the Supreme Court forced the Administration to, in a word, fish or cut bait, charge him or let him go. He was simply an individual, in prison, being tortured to the point his mind broke. And he has done nothing wrong. Think about that.
Tomorrow, with a bit more time available, I shall go in to some detail all the evidence of a variety of ways we have engaged in torture. For now, all I wish to say is, I hope God's grace is with us, because the world's justice can be harsh. Were this a sane world, we would have been long past the question of impeachment; prosecutors at the World Court in The Hague would be filing briefs on war crimes and crimes against humanity against all the major figures in the Bush Administration, and Cheney, Bush, Gonzalez, Yoo, Rumsfeld, and the rest of them would be looking forward to a long spell in orange jumpsuits in The Netherlands.
Silence in these matters is complicity, and I for one no longer wish to be complicit in these horrid crimes. Starting tomorrow, I want to put all the scattered pieces of evidence together. God please have mercy on us all.
