"I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"
He said one soldier struck his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam.
"Because they started to hit my broken leg, I curse my religion," the paper quoted him as saying. "They ordered me to thank Jesus I'm alive."
i'm so angry. i know, everyone's heard this story. i know, the bbc world report kept me awake until 3AM, smoking and shuddering and wishing i could enjoy my tom robbins properly, e.g. sans stolid british descriptions of excriment-covered iraqis crawling along prison floors.
i think we should all write opec and encourage them not only to not cut oil prices, but to levy trade sanctions against the united states for violating the geneva convention.
5 comments:
Dear OPEC:
I've recently heard news reports that the U.S. and U.K. are requesting a cut in oil prices per barrel. I am a citizen of the United States who is outraged at my countries conduct in the Middle East. Our support for Israeli brutatlity, our use of torture tactics in Iraq, our initiation of a war without precident or support from the international community. We have starkly and redundantly violated the Geneva Convention, and as a result, should face retribution at the hands of the international community. So I write you today, as a citizen practically powerless to influence his warped, power-hungry government, to encourage you to NOT cut oil prices, NOT to increase output. In fact, I would even encourage your group to go as far as levying trade sanctions against the United States. I know Asia is in desperate need of oil relief, and I have no qualms with the distribution of oil to Asia. But it is time my country learned that it can't dictate to the world without paying the price.
This whole prisoner... debacle? atrocity? I don't even know what to call it... has sickened me ever since the beginning. I can't think about it other than "everyone involved with it should burn." I know this is the kind of thought that leads to mob justice, but honestly I cannot see what else can be done. Make well-prepared speeches about it in a committee? Is that how things really get changed?
There's a really frightening map of US detention centers worldwide. I can't find it now but we've got maybe ten of them, some of which the govt doesn't acknowledge publicly. Bad things seem to happen to them there, too.I always thought that if you look at things in a certain way, we were the bad guys. Now it's hard not to think we are the bad guys.
The question that lingers in my mind is: if Kerry wins the election, will things be different? Sometimes he seems to want to change the way we do things, other times he seems to toe the line, trying to steal Bush's votes.
I love Tom Robbins, by the way.
Hey, way to go, troops. Glad we can't criticize the war so we can't demoralize them from their torturing. I still think a much bigger deal needs to be made out of the White House memo declaring that they needed to abandon the Geneva Convention so they couldn't be held responsible for their new "interrogation methods." This is definately something that goes much bigger than 7 soldiers. And whoop-dee-do, the first guy got a 1 year sentence and was dishonerably discharged. You know some fucking subdivision of Haliburton will give him a job in no time flat.
In other news, did you know that we were paying Chalabi #360,000 a month? What the fuck?
i dunno, there is something that folk across the middle east can relate to in a prisoner getting a bananna shoved up his ass. but not since the crusades have armed soldiers instructed them to accept jesus or die. don't get me wrong, i'm about as big a fan of islam as i am of christianity (fuck 'em both), and crusaders are fucking awesome (they defend like a pikeman and can build forts), but that simple utterance ('...thank jesus i'm alive') forbodes catastrophe of untold proportions. i think kerry is boring and stupid, a jackanapes with no exit strategy and no desire to communicate with the democratic party's huge new moon (pissed off dean-cinich supporters). klemis is right: his intense line-toeing may or may not get him elected, but his election will only lead to a clintonian circle jerk (phew, we got a 'liberal' in office, let's kick back and relax while he gently rolls back civil rights and sets the stage for the most draconian legislation in u.s. history).
Fuck This
Post a Comment