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I think about this torture all the time now. It's really haunting me. I have a lot of thoughts about it, and I guess I'm trying to make sense out of it.
1. This is just horrible behavior, period. 2. Do you notice that the Bush supporters are attempting to trivialize this? I keep hearing the term "Butt Pyramid" as a summation of these horrible pictures. Does anyone know what conservative blowhard coined that phrase? It almost surely came from one of the hate-media crowd. If you know, let me know.
3. I keep hearing people say, "It's not like anyone was killed". Well, sure someone was killed! One of the pictures shows a man who was beaten to death. The Pentagon acknowledges that 2 people were murdered in prison, one by military personnel and one by a private contractor. (Of course they don't know how many soldiers are dead, so how can we tell if their prison murder count is accurate). There are many people who will claim that no innocent Iraqi citizens died in the war. In the sheep view, all bombs are "smart". They only kill the bad guys. This drives me nuts.
4. OK. I think I knew all along that people were going to be tortured. Here we are in an election year. Bush blindly charged into war with Iraq with WMD as his reason. Now he is panicking because there are no WMD. All of the secrecy of his detentions, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, have had the same characteristics, secrecy, isolation, no contact with the outside world, no press allowed, no lawyers, no judicial review, no hearings, no charges, no nothing. This is for a reason. The reason is that Bush intended to torture his captives. This was the tacit agreement he made with the American people. When Bush mugs to the camera and says he's taking off the gloves and fighting tough, this is what he means. When the American public cheers, they are cheering this type of behavior. Bush has just as much respect for the Geneva Conventions as he has for Kyoto Protocols, SALT treaties, World Court, or any other generally accepted measure. Most of the public sneer at these rules as technicalities and hinderances. They would prefer, however, not to see the pictures of what's going on.
5. And what's with the pictures? A federally operated prison should be a very secure facility. How in the world were people allowed to carry out pictures of this type? I can think of no industry with such lax security. Is anybody in charge over there?
6. What's with the homosexual theme of the pictures. We know that Cheney and Bush are obsessed with the idea of homosexuality to the extent that they want to alter our constitution to discriminate against them. We know that Ashcroft is a classic Freudian case study of twisted sexuality. The prison guards say they were taking their orders from their superiors. It's odd to see such a fascination of homosexuality.
7. What's with the conservative crowd who are still backing Bush. A couple of months ago, they were complaining about the damage to their fragile psyches caused by Janet Jackson's partially obscured nipple. They have been clammoring for a Constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages. Now they see nothing wrong with these bizarre pictures of hooded naked men who have been forced at gunpoint to act out the guards' sexual fantasies. Not only do these people not see anything wrong with the behavior, but the encourage it and say it's justified.
8. Finally, all reports I have seen state that the pictures depict "simulated" homosexual activity. How do they know it's "simulated"? Think about it. How do they know it's not real sex? If these guards get their jollies at forcing prisoners to strip naked, pile on each other, and "simulate" sex, what's to stop them from forcing people at gunpoint to perform oral sex? If there were no restrictions on them, wouldn't that go further to satisfying their sexual perversions? If the point was to humiliate the prisoners, wouldn't it be more humiliating if they had had actual sex with another man? Who is pushing this story as "simulated" sex?
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