dictation's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coming to you live from the Whitehouse. It's the \"All Pinochio All the Time\" show. Followed by Dr. Phil Remember the hullabaloo the Christian-right Republicans made of Clinton and Lewinsky? Funny what they will claim has a greater moral implication. "Illicit sex in the Whitehouse? We go for the jugular, pal. Nothing less than IMPEACHMENT! Pass the cigar. The current Whitehouse administration funds campaigns against same-sex marriage and birth control, and in secret permits - possibly encourages - the sexual humiliation and torture (using instruments like broom handles) of male prisoners by male American guards. What gives here? The current culture/climate of the military is directly traceable to the Bush administration. Even senior members of the US military are beginning to talk openly of divisions and criticisms that until this week have been completely hidden. Seymour Hersch delivers a second damning report. I've been checking blogs of Americans I read regularly and have found very few responses about what's going on. (Hell, even this week's cover of The Econonomist has two words: "Resign, Rumsfeld." That much directness from a conservative rag such as this is striking.) In blogs and journals, there's commentary on the latest Survivor episode and the end of Friends... the usual meaningless and irrelevant shite. I'm not sure what the lack of reaction signifies. I can only hope it's shock and not apathy or concurrence; or the dreadful response I've been hearing on some American talk shows that goes something along the lines of "them damn images shoulda never gotten out", as if the visual evidence, and not the behaviour, is the problem. In any case, it's becoming clear that photographing the sexual torture was not an afterthought but a deliberate part of the interrogations to further humiliate prisoners. Not to sound alarmist and to confuse madmen with the killers we've legitimatized through the armed forces but some serial killers, rapists and pedophiles use the same techniques on their victims. Such evidence usually finds its way into the courtrooms where convictions inevitably await the accused. Remember Charles Ng? He was a Vietnam vet who videotaped the torture of women and children in underground cells he constructed in California after he returned, quite mad, from the war (where he wasn't required to be underground, because in war atrocities are commonplace, if not openly sanctioned). Lynndie England, the girl who held the leash and jacked her thumbs, wasn't even a guard. She was a prison file clerk responsible for paperwork. The only reason she's in the photos is because she visited her boyfriend (a guard) after hours. Evidently she didn't have a second thought about her role in the shaming of the naked, shackled men made to wear KKK-shaped hoods. When a benign file clerk can walk into a cell block and react to what's going on much like she would a Friday night at the local Kentucky drive in, you gotta wonder just how pervasive the sickness has become. And this girl is now five months pregnant. How, I wonder, does she reconcile the critter she became in Iraq with her back-on-American-soil[ed] and pregnant self? No doubt she'll sign a book deal and paint herself as a backer of the Republican party who believes in Dr. Laura and home-schooling. P.S. She's incapable of meaningful - in life and death situations, no less - discernment. One for the Oprah show? Or Doctor Phil? The crimes go beyond constructing pyramids of naked Iraqis. Twenty-two deaths by torture - that would be second degree murder - and rapes of female prisoners by groups of soldiers have been documented. (Military reports refer to these incidents as "[American soldiers] having sex with female prisoners." Language crafted to imply the acts might have been consensual, when such could NEVER be the case. Oh gawd. You know? And this is the investigative report!) According to the International Red Cross, which has been investigating and reporting the abuses, in confidence, for a year, the photos we're seeing represent the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There isn't a single country in the world that can claim moral superiority. No Canadian could call himself honest and deny that Canadian history is rife with human rights abuses. We who live north of the 49th rant freely and openly against our perpetually two-faced, deceitful politicians and government. I haven't met a single Canadian who trusts his government. Democracy is an ongoing struggle within so-called democratic nations, never mind the kind that lack our ability to have two-party elections. There are plenty of people in power in this country, as well as the US and other countries, who would prefer citizens not to know or to see or to hear the truth. If democracy is to continue, people must insist on full disclosure and transparency from government. Even at the best of times it's a crapshoot. But ever since 9/11 we've seen an erosion of civil rights, and our governments have become increasingly secretive. When any government - particularly one as powerful as the US - lies to the entire world about WMDs and then comes up with a new purpose for an illegal invasion - the liberation of citizens from tyranny and torture - it can expect to be held to its propagandized moral standard. If the US is gonna claim to be THE EXAMPLE for the rest of the world, it had better damn well live up to the example. Or face the consequences. Marn wrote a great piece yesterday on "The Democracy Show." 1:50 a.m. - 11 May 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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