The John McCain of Bagram Prison - LA Times

[liberal N proud]

Torture is torture, in Vietnam or Afghanistan.


On Memorial Day, I watched the A&E movie about former Navy Lt. Cmdr. John McCain's 5½ years in a Vietnam prison. McCain's face was beaten to a bloody pulp, his bones shattered, his teeth knocked out. Guards hung him from the ceiling by his arms, one of which was broken. It was so painful I had to return repeatedly to my crossword puzzle.

The next morning, I watched President Bush at his news conference respond to a question about an Amnesty International report condemning U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere. Bush called charges of abuse "absurd" allegations by detainees "who hate America."

But how does he explain the Army? The New York Times recently obtained the Army's 2,000-page file on deaths at its Bagram, Afghanistan, detention center. It's as chilling to read as it is to watch McCain's crippled leg being crushed.

The John McCain of this report is an uneducated Afghan villager known as Dilawar, who was sent by his mother to pick up his sisters for a Muslim holiday on Dec. 5, 2002. Before he got there, Dilawar was rounded up as a suspect in a rocket attack.
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-carlson2jun02,0,3291992.column

[gaspee]

1. I've come to realize

That the people who support this administration aren't in the dark about this and other abuses.

They aren't uninformed about the torture, the murdered civilians, the threat to our human rights.

They don't care, or worse yet, they support it.

They don't have a problem committing the same or worse abuses McCain was subject to. Because he is a white American and 'the others' aren't. Period. Full stop.

I think the people who aren't outraged by what is being done in our names want more. And that's the thing that scares me the most.

I'm trying to form a big-picture view of what's been going on in our culture for the past 25 years or so. It's not pretty.

I have a theory that a lot of this can be traced back to the so-called war on drugs and the implementation of the prison state we live in.

Bear with me here.

We, as Americans, are completely desensitized to what goes on in our own backyards-- American prisons. We *know* that neatings, rapes, even torture are rampant in the American prison system. Hell, it's almost a cultural joke. Make that it is a joke in our culture. I don't find it funny.

So, what's the justification in our own backyards. Ask a 'round up all the criminals and throw away the key,' law and order, zero tolerance zealot and you'll probably get the same answer each time. Well, silly, don't you see, they *deserve it.* It's their fault they're in prison, so anything that happens to them there is acceptable.

Now apply that to what's being done in our names around the world. They're terrorists, living in terrorist countries, out to kill god-fearing, do no wrong, 'murkans! They DESERVE whatever happens to them.

The absolute disconnect between what our relatively few POWS in Vietnam suffered and what our government is doing is absolutely astonishing.

So, 30 years from now, are Americans going to be the featured bad guys in an Afghani movie? If there's an Afghanistan left, maybe.

Why is it so hard for people to stand up and say -- This is wrong!

Why are we sentencing people to years in prison for non-violent crimes like smoking pot.

The gulag is nothing new in the US. Take a close look at the US prison system and you won't be surprised one bit what we do when we export it to palces where we think less of their people than we do of our pets.

[cap]

2. John McCain has been very quiet about G'tmo

and the other gulags.

[newyawker99]

3. Hi gaspee!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: