All About Trey

Torture: For or Against? Discuss . . .

Try disgust. I can't even believe that we are even having this dicussion at all. Or that we keep having it. And the mere thought of it gets me so mad, then frustrated, then depressed, and then tired. So I just try not to think about it too much. Ignorance is bliss. But I'm not.

"Asymetrical warfare." That's what the military called the three suicides at GITMO earlier this week. How exactly is this asymetrical warfare? Exactly how many US soldiers died as the result of these suicides? Or how many were injured? None. This is not asymetrical warfare. Asymetrical warfare is when a suicide bomber walks into a cafe and kills 20 innocent civilians. Of course the media didn't challenge this at all, so it's out there. Put out by our military!!! How sad.

What happened in GITMO is despair. These men have been there for YEARS. With not even the basic human rights that we would give to rapists and criminals in the US. These men may be horrible, evil, killers, but they are still humans and we need to figure out a way to deal with them. Where we respect not only their human rights, but we preserve our moral footing in this war. A footing we continue to lose through gross stupidity and cavelier abandonment of the basic principles upon which our nation was founded. These men have been held in captivity, tortured, force fed, and more with no hope for release. Day in and day out. For years. Think of it as a sadistic version of "Waiting for Godot." It's not hard to see where any human could get to the point where they feel that the only thing they can do to end their suffering, is to kill themselves.

Well, the end may be near for some of them. The military tribunals were supposed to start this week, but they've been pushed back due to the suicides. Then the US military, apparently under the orders to Don Dumbself, has ordered the media on GITMO there to observe the tribunals off the island. Because we wouldn't want to have the public actually know what's going on down there, now would we? There are some arguements that the tribunals are not legal anyways, or that they are stacked against the detainees. I'm not an expert on these things, but what I've read only continues to be a stain on our country.

To end on an upnote, it does look like some in the military are pushing back on the new interrogration techinques that do not follow the Geneva Conventions that were going into a SECRET version of the Army Field Manual. So that's the good news. For now.

posted by Trey @ 7:37 PM