Spinning on the abuse of prisoners

Listening to the radio last night and today. Last night it was taking on the media for releasing the photos of American guards abusing prisoners, and how THAT endangered American troops and set the US back in Iraq. Today it was more of the same, along with comments to punish those involved. Some of the callers to the program were very RW and thought the Guards were doing the right thing, yada-yada-yada…. You know, the usual line from the law-and-order types. In case you come across people like this, keep this little information bullet in your gun:

This ain’t the first time this has happened!

I’m not referring to Vietnam. Nah. That’s too easy. More recently – it was John Ashcroft!

“...The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.... One focus of the report was an American flag T-shirt that hung from a wall at the MDC with the slogan, "These colors don't run." Four corrections employees told investigators that the shirt, which hung in a prisoner receiving area for months, was covered with bloodstains, including some that appeared to have come from detainees being slammed into the wall....”
(Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A01)

“Yet some of them were held incommunicado for months. Either they were refused lawyers or so many obstacles were put in their way that it amounted to the same thing. They were denied visitors. Some were held in . To all of this, Ashcroft responded with a shrug. "We make no apologies," he said - and, of course, he asked for additional death penalties in terrorism cases…. innocent people were held behind bars, sometimes cruelly, for months at a time. They were sometimes called names and told they would never be set free. The report highlights the experience of one woman who for two months was repeatedly told her husband was not being detained (he was) and who, even after she found him, was permitted to visit him only three times in five months. Isn't she deserving of an apology? Not from Ashcroft.”
(Richard Cohen, Washington Post, Tuesday, June 10, 2003; Page A21)

"People have to watch what they say, and watch what they do." - Ari Fleisher
<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0928-04.htm>

Indeed.

keep using the word abused as if that some how makes what happen torture and torture is what it was.

Propoganda machine is in full swing. Hope it doesn't help.

in the format of old Politically Incorrect, where people were just joking, laughing about the Iraqis being tortured. Guy, kept saying, they can't take a joke...come on guys, you know you like homo sex...come on...we were just playing with you...on and on..sound a lot like bush.

I was horrified at that stupid show, but needed to watch some of it so that I could really see the mind-set of certain people - traitors of American democracy.

It is no big secret that Americans incarcerated in our own detention facilities are subjected to all kinds of horrible, de-humanizing, shit, including gang-rape, which is apparently considered humorous by a lot of otherwise seemingly reasonable people.

Not too much of a stretch to believe it is much worse when the captors have had it drilled into their heads that their captives are terrorists and are responsible for 9/11.

The *pResident's unrelenting propaganda campaign is the reason the troops are brainwashed and are out for revenge. He owns this war. He is responsible.

Is this asshole toast yet, or what?