Guantanamo detainees describe despair

AP
Monday, June 12, 2006

LONDON, England (AP) - Dispirited and desperate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay seek to kill themselves as a way out of what they see as a hopeless situation, and not because they are seeking martyrdom, three British former detainees said.

"There is no hope in Guantanamo. The only thing that goes through your mind day after day is how to get justice or how to kill yourself," Shafiq Rasul, 29, a former detainee who waged a hunger strike at the camp to protest alleged beatings, said late Saturday. "It is the despair - not the thought of martyrdom - that consumes you there." ...

"A Saudi detainee in the cell in front of us had had enough," said Ahmed. "We could hear him rip up his sheets and tie it to the wire mesh roof of the cell. He jumped off his sink and tried to hang himself. We shouted to the military police and they came and saved him."

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20060611T220000-0500_106739_OBS_GUANTANAMO_DETAINEES_DESCRIBE_DESPAIR_.asp

Not one inch of that prison should be touched. It should remain as a stark reminder for all of the atrocities governments can commit in the name of a "just cause." I want people to look upon the empty cells and barb wire fances and guard towers with a sense of dread and horror at what happened there. If it's dubbed "America's concentration camp" by journalists and visitors, then so be it.

But it is not exactly over.<sigh>

The concentration camp that is memorialized might very well be the ones where you and I, my brothers and sisters, are given permanent residence.

Google "William Arkin" and the "War Games" to read about the street games that were started in America in April of 2006.

The thugs who run the US government and military are happy for attention to be focused on Guantanamo. In their crude and cruel way of thinking, this is a good strategy. Their supporters, still lusting for revenge after 9/11, get their trophy captives and moreover in the teeth of the despised UN, liberal organisations like Amnesty, anti American international groups like the Red Cross and the unexceptional rest of the world. America kicks butt! Meanwhile, thousands more prisoners are covertly held, tortured and murdered in black sites all over the globe.

A long way since 1930's Germany. As long as there are no gas chambers it's ok. Right?