Your tax dollars at work
Torturing Iraqi prisoners. On orders from higher-ups.
Oh,
excuse me, the official line is the dogs were used to “scare”
prisoners. Yeah, if you were naked in a prison and ripped bloody by an
attack dog, you’d be “scared” too.
U.S. intelligence personnel ordered military dog handlers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to use unmuzzled dogs
to frighten and intimidate detainees during interrogations late last
year, a plan approved by the highest-ranking military intelligence
officer at the facility, according to sworn statements the handlers
provided to military investigators.
Here’s more double-speak, General Sanchez “granted latitude”
at prison. No he didn’t. He ordered torture. That’s what he did. And he
should be in prison because of it. As should everyone else involved.
However, the noose is definitely tightening around Sanchez’s deserving throat, this story is front page Washington Post.
But wait, there’s more:
The
top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, issued a
classified order last November directing military guards to hide a
prisoner, later dubbed “Triple X” by soldiers, from Red Cross
inspectors and keep his name off official rosters. The disclosure, by
military sources, is the first indication that Sanchez was directly
involved in efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross.
Gen.
Sanchez, Bush, and all like them need to be removed from power. Because
if these tortures, and the spitting on law and the Constitution that
goes along it continues, well, in ten years, it’ll be you and I, the
tortures will be happening here, and it will be too late to resist. And
that’s not hyperbole and that’s not paranoia.
The harm the U.S. does in rationalizing torture
These
justifications represent a break from the post-Second-World-War
consensus of the civilized world. This is a watershed moment, not only
for the United States but for the rule of law worldwide.
If
U.S. law now justifies torture, Abu Ghraib is America. And there is no
reason to believe this version of America ends at Abu Ghraib.
This
genie cannot easily be put back into the bottle. Abu Ghraib damaged the
United States’ image in the Middle East, but the insistence on a “right
to torture” does far greater harm. If the United States can claim that
right, so too can any number of tyrannies, and other democracies under
threat of terror.
