by James Glaser
December 27, 2004

"On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," an unidentified FBI agent wrote on Aug.24, 2004. "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left 18 to 24 hours or more."

The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups had to go to court to get the proof, but they did and now we have a better idea of what we are doing to prisoners in George Bush's War on Terrorism.

The Washington Post reports about systematic abuses by military interrogators at our base in Cuba, "including beatings, chokings, prolonged sleep deprivation and humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag."

All we have to do is think back to Bush's War in Afghanistan. You know the War where we told the world and Osama bin Laden that we were coming for weeks before we actually attacked and then we were dumbfounded that bin Laden had gotten away along with his whole family and most of his top aids. Well back then, we were sending suspected terrorists to the jailed cages we built for them in Cuba. Many of these "terrorists" were in their 70s and some were children. We put them in straight jackets, blindfolded them, chained them to the floor of cold cargo planes, and flew them nonstop back to Cuba. Of course with a long flight like that, many of them must have urinated on themselves and the fear factor had to have been intense as most of these people had never been in a plane before.

Most people who really thought about it, knew that we were torturing our prisoners back then. Remember, Donald Rumsfeld told these prisoners that even if they were found "Not Guilty" of crime, we still would not release them and hundreds are still in their cages in Cuba today.

The ACLU got thousands of pages of government documents that have confirmed, "some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the US Military and the CIA." Some of the documents detail abuses by Marines in Iraq, "including mock executions and the torture of detainees by burning and electric shock."

The Post reports that "several dozen detainees have died in US custody."

Some were beaten to death in torture chambers that Saddam Hussein used. These detainees were not convicted criminals, but suspects, many of who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and unlucky enough to be in the right age group to fill a certain profile.

So there we are, the United States of America, torturing and killing prisoners in our custody. The rest of the world knows we are doing this and at the same time they watch in disbelief as we try and tell the Iraqi people and those in Afghanistan that we are there to help them and that our form of government and law is different than that of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban.

"One FBI agent reported on May 19 about a conversation he had with Guantanamo's commander Maj.Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who defended the use of interrogation techniques the FBI regarded as illegal on the grounds that the military 'has their marching orders from the Sec. Def.' General Miller has testified under oath that dogs were never used to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, as authorized by Mr, Rumsfeld in December 2002, the FBI papers show otherwise."

The Washington Post says, "The Bush administration refused to release these records to human rights groups under the Freedom of Information Act until it was ordered to do so by a judge."

Now our government in Washington is torturing people to death and the FBI has investigated and reported on it. We know it is true and we have done it many times, but we are no longer pretending that we are the "Good Guys." Under George Bush, we can do anything we want, we can even do everything we accused Saddam of doing.

I don't know about you, But I think what we are doing is out and out sick and I feel ashamed the we are now a criminal nation. I am not a fool and I know that many other countries do these same things, to not only their enemies, but to their own people. I have to wonder how long it will be before George Bush tells his people that they can do the same to American citizens. Who knows, maybe we are doing it already.