Wilting Dreams At Gitmo

[Chomp]

This WaPo piece ruined my evening.

Absolutely fucking shocking and heartbreaking. Fuck you George W. Bush - you are a complete and utter fucking IDIOT.

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Wilting Dreams At Gitmo: A Detainee Is Denied A Garden, and Hope
By P. Sabin Willett

I brought flowers to the isolation cell when I visited Saddiq this month. He likes to draw roses and often asks for gardening magazines.

Saddiq is one of the many mistakes at Guantanamo Bay. In 2005 our military admitted that he was not an enemy combatant, but the government hasn't been able to repatriate him. (By a curious irony, Saddiq's opposition to Osama bin Laden makes him too hot to handle in his native Saudi Arabia.) So he lives behind razor wire in Camp Iguana, with eight other men whom the military cleared long ago but who are nevertheless forbidden newspapers, visits from loved ones, English-language dictionaries -- and flowers.

One day the sordid history of Guantanamo will be written. There will be chapters on torture, chapters on the how the courts turned a blind eye, chapters on cruelties large and petty, on the massive stupidity and uselessness of the place. Many pages will illustrate the great lie of Guantanamo -- that it is a "terrorist detention facility" -- with accounts of goatherds and chicken farmers and stray foreigners sold by Pakistani grifters to the United States for bounties. Saddiq may have one of the oddest chapters of all: jailed first by the Taliban as an enemy of its regime, then by us.

...more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042602390.html

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If it ruins your evening too, do what I did and tell George how you feel: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ .I sent an email simply saying he's a prick. I couldn't be arsed expending any more energy than that insulting that unspeakable disgrace.

[OneBlueSky]

1. a good project for a progressive church in the US would be . . .

to offer to adopt this guy . . . and to seek the appropriate support from their elected representatives . . .

BushCo has already admitted that he's not guilty of anything, so allowing him into the country -- especially under the auspices of a church -- shouldn't be a problem, logically (I know, I know) . . .

any Unitarian Universalist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Catholic or other church out there willing to help right a terrible wrong? . . . and save a life? . . . this is the kind of thing churches used to do . . .