This is about the most awful thing I've ever heard.

[funflower]

I was listening to NPR tonight and I heard the story of the murder of an Iraqi detainee by the CIA and military personnel. We are not bringing up children right when young Americans commit such acts. The look on the dead man's young son's face says it all.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4977986

27, 2005 · Photographs of grinning GIs crouched over the iced-down, battered corpse of Manadel al-Jamadi were among the most horrific images of the 2003 Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The photos became one of the most powerful symbols for those who opposed to the American invasion of Iraq.

The Iraqi insurgent died within hours of his capture, while being interrogated by the CIA. A military autopsy ruled Jamadi's death a homicide, but no one has been held accountable for his death.

(more)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4977986

[opihimoimoi]

1. They hate us for what we do to them, how we treat them, not our freedom

We would Hate no less.

[cynatnite]

2. Everytime I read things like this...

I remember this letter by Stan Goff to the GIs in Iraq:

It was all an act for me, a cover-up for deeper fears I couldn't name, and the reason I know that is that we had to dehumanize our victims before we did the things we did. We knew deep down that what we were doing was wrong. So they became dinks or gooks, just like Iraqis are now being transformed into ragheads or hajjis. People had to be reduced to "niggers" here before they could be lynched. No difference. We convinced ourselves we had to kill them to survive, even when that wasn't true, but something inside us told us that so long as they were human beings, with the same intrinsic value we had as human beings, we were not allowed to burn their homes and barns, kill their animals, and sometimes even kill them. So we used these words, these new names, to reduce them, to strip them of their essential humanity, and then we could do things like adjust artillery fire onto the cries of a baby.

http://www.counterpunch.org/goff11142003.html

[funflower]

3. Wow. It's so vital to teach children respect for all and nonviolence.

And there's so much out there that teaches them the opposite.

[cynatnite]

4. The entire letter is so moving...

The first time I read it, I was crying by the time I finished. My heart hurts every single time and I grow so angry afterwards.

[funflower]

5. S/b in every high school social studies textbook.