by James Glaser
June 7, 2005

Believe me, I couldn't make this up even if I tried. In a report released by the Pentagon Friday night, it was admitted that a guard at Guantanamo Bay Prison urinated "through an air vent on a detainee and his Quran." No, the report never explained how this happened, nor if it was common practice for guards to urinate on Prisoners.

Now if you asked a hundred Americans what a Quran was, probably only one or two would know that it is the Muslim Holy book that we have always referred to at the Koran. Like handing this damning report out late on a Friday, changing the name of the Koran to the Quran is a good way for Washington to confuse this report in people's minds.

The Pentagon put out this report, written by Brigadier General Jay Hood, like it was proof positive that we never desecrated the Koran by flushing it down a toilet. Somehow they must have thought that urinating on a detainee and his Koran was somehow less offensive.

The Associated Press reports that the unidentified guard, who admitted that "he was at fault," was reprimanded and assigned to gate guard duty.

Last week General Hood said that a prisoner complained to the FBI back in 2002 about a guard throwing a Koran in the toilet, but now he is saying that he never witnessed any form of desecration to the Koran. So this prisoner, who has been living in a wire cage for all of 2002, all of 2003, all of 2004, and up until now in 2005 is supposed to have volunteered that he was mistaken and we are supposed to believe that his incarceration has had no effect on his new statement.

The sad thing about this whole story is that desecrating the Koran or the Quran if you please, is nothing compared to what we have done to the thousands of suspects we hold in our military prisons all over the world. You know if Washington can blow off urinating on prisoners, the bad things we do to them must be very horrible.

I can remember back a few years ago, when Donald Rumsfeld said that even if the terror suspects we held were proven innocent, we were going to keep them anyway.

I remember the photos of these suspects, in straight jackets, chained to the floor of a cargo plane, with hoods over their heads, being flown from Afghanistan to Cuba. To me that is torture right there. In America you are innocent until proven guilty, but that "Rule of Law" only applies inside our country. Outside of our borders we can make any rules we want and torture is OK too. You have to ask yourself, how much longer our border will mean anything. How long before American citizens are treated like those we hold in Cuba?

We now have prisons all over the globe, where the military and the CIA can do whatever they want to those they hold and if any questions are asked, Washington can blame everything on over zealous young troops. If we really want to get nasty with someone, we fly them to a country where torture is acceptable. Do you think we do that with American Citizens now?

You have to know that things are really out of hand when the Pentagon will admit that our guards are pissing on prisoners. You have to know that things are really out of hand, when Washington classifies photos of prisoner abuse as "Secret." You have to know that things are bad when Washington admits that prisoners are kicked to death by American guards. You also have to know that things are bad when FBI reports explain how prisoners are shackled to the floor with no food or water, where these same prisoners urinate and defecate on themselves and some of them go nuts and pull their own hair out.

These are the horrors that Washington, the Pentagon, and the FBI admit to. We have no idea of what they are keeping secret, but those "Secret Photos" would give us some idea.

Meanwhile George Bush and Dick Cheney report to the American people from Never Never Land, that things are just Hunky-Dory at our prisons and that we would never do anything wrong, because we only want to bring freedom and liberty to the world.

The sad thing is, they are not fooling anyone and the rest of the world knows what we are doing... because their own governments have been doing the same for years. At one time America was the "beacon of light" that the world looked toward with hope for the future. Today, that light is out!