Detainees learned to hate the U.S.

[highnooner]

Source: News and Observer

GARDEZ, Afghanistan - Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however -- after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers -- he'd made connections to high-level militants.

In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- with Osama bin Laden at the top -- Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.

A McClatchy investigation found that instead of reducing the threat from terrorists, the Guantanamo system often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam -- thus inspiring in them a deep hatred of the United States -- and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/nation_world/story/1110753.html

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In some ways, this article reminds me of The Man in the Iron Mask. He was wrongfully imprisoned for an extended period of time. As a result, his hatred for his captors grew until he was able to finally reek vengeance on his captors once he got out. The primary difference is that the Gitmo guys had access to other prisoners who were able to inflame their hatred even further.

Thanks, George.

[and-justice-for-all]

1. If someone imprisoned and tortured me...

I would surely hate my captors.

So instead of 'fighting terrorism', they have in fact inflamed it...How nice.

[LynnTheDem]

9. That's the common sense that rightwingnuts don't possess.

Making the vast majority of the world despise us doesn't, in fact, make us safer. But the rightwingnuttery can't understand that simple fact.

[meowomon]

2. We are not any safer

and the rest of the world despises us more than they did. Thanks a lot for destroying our country, crazy
Christo-fascists! They're the same kind that burned witches and tortured heretics.

[leftchick]

3. I believe this is intentional

The neocons are always in need of bad guys to scare us with. The 'War on Terra' is big business for them.

[pegleg]

5. You definitely have the system figured out. nt

[and-justice-for-all]

10. I agree..

"Its the rich mans war but its the poor that die." Otep "Confrontation."

[The Stranger]

4. The Neocons need terrorism to justify their hijacking of the U.S. government.

When will people realize that this was intentional?

The Power of Nightmares

[formercia]

6. Now that communism is dead, they need a bogey man

to justify feeding the Military-Industrial complex.

They let these people go back to their home countries in order to keep the party going.

[Posteritatis]

7. Cause, meet Effect. (nt)

[gratuitous]

8. Could anyone have predicted . . .

Ah, fuck it. Anyone with three working brain cells knew this would happen, and we told this corrupt adminstration, its media enablers, and its dumbass sycophants. Not that any of them listened, or had three working brain cells among the lot of them. (And, by the way, four of them sit on the Supreme Court.)