In Guantanamo, Men Shadow-Box For Their Lives.

[Matilda]

"Imagine that this is your world: a 6 ft by 8 ft cell where everything is steel - the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the toilet, the sink, the bed. Walk two steps in any direction and you hit a wall. There are no windows. The lights are on 24 hours a day. You are allowed out of your cell two hours a day, sometimes at 6am, sometimes at midnight. For those two hours, you are placed in a 6.5ft by 16.5ft outdoor cage with a deflated football. You can go weeks without seeing the sun.

Imagine five and a half years away from your family, your wife, your children. You can’t call them. They can’t visit. Mail takes months to get through. When it does, it is heavily censored. Imagine being beaten, stripped naked, humiliated, again and again and again. This is the life of my clients in Guantanamo Bay."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/07/1716/

Reading this moving article, and trying to imagine the scene - almost beyond my comprehension - I am
at a loss to understand how and why Congress has failed to call Bush to account on this and other
crimes against humanity. It's the kind of situation we used to hear about in the old Soviet Union,
and if it happened under a dictatorship in Africa or in Pinochet's Chile, we wouldn't be surprised.
But the United States? That the prison is not on American soil is hair-splitting - it's run by the
U.S. for the U.S. Administration, and the President is ultimately responsible for what happens there.

In Australia, we've never held politicians in high regard (quite rightly, I think), so my first
political hero was American - President John F. Kennedy. Whatever the shortcomings of his private
life, in public life he espoused ideas and principles that made politics a respectable profession.
I can't imagine that, in the circumstances we face today, he would have resorted to the same kind
of practices that we condemn in the worst of dictatorships.

It took the majority of Australians five years to hold John Howard to account for the incarceratiion
in Guantanamo Bay of David Hicks, but we finally did it. I feel very sad that the Congress has so
far failed to heed the wishes of a majority of Americans to similarly call Bush and Cheney to
account for their crimes against humanity, and I weep for the lost America of Jack Kennedy.

Those idealistic days have never seemed so far away.

[knitter4democracy]

1. Absolutely awful.

I don't know how they've lasted this long. No wonder they try suicide, even though it's against all they believe in.

[libodem]

2. This story makes me feel despondent, too

The mistreatment of the detainees at Guantanamo is a living, ongoing, nightmare for all Americans with a conscience. I suffer vicariously because I can't stand to see any living thing mistreated. And for George Bush to defend and promote this scourge against human rights, drives me wild. I think all of America is just a little more mentally ill each day. And I think the people like Dr. Laura and Rush limbaugh that have radio air time each day and promote and defend the torture and detainment of innocent human beings are the MOST mentally ill. I know my level of depression and despondency are part of the helplessness I feel when this stuff can't be stopped. And the blatant unfairness of the Bush crimes going unpunished makes me freak out. How can they get away with the lies, murder, theft of the Iraq oil, illegal rendition and detainment, torture, and all Bill got was a blowjob. I can't take it. I can't stand to know people are being hurt and abused and scared. All because someone sold them for a bounty. This awful thought popped into my head the other day when I thought how I would withstand torture, knowing I was innocent, being asked the same things over and over, being beaten, for my answers, just wanting to be left alone. I thought that if I was handed a gun, with the option of killing myself, or enduring unending questioning, humiliation, anal rape and abuse, I'd like the option to kill myself. I think that when George Bush writes his own American Geneva Convention rules, being the old ones are so quaint and out of date there should be an option of killing yourself if you can't face 5 years of torture. That's what I would want. Send the suicide note home to your family: Sorry I'm a coward, I couldn't take it, I love you, see you on the other side. There should be an option.