Clearly –American politicians have espoused and exploited this myth just as George W. Bush has capitalized on the idea that individual Americans are targeted by international terrorists who “…jest hate freedom”, terrorists willing to blow themselves up because we are more free and possess more material goods. I’m sorry –but having a three car garage and lots of cheap gasoline are not among my values. If that's what it means to be American, then I've been living in the wrong country since birth! I have nothing but contempt for anyone who's willing to turn a blind eye to torture in return for cheap gas which has, obviously, not been forthcoming despite Bush's many outrages to human decency.
And if George Bush were correct in believing that being free in America means having enough material wealth to waste resources in a Hummer, then I say we deserve our fate, a fate which has always been in our own hands –not the so-called “terrorists”. As Sartre said: "Man is nothing but what he makes of himself". That means that when you screw up, you've got no one to blame but yourself. Clearly, then, Bush is no existentialist! He continues to blame everyone but himself for the consequences of his evil intentions.
I submit to you that Bush’s war on terrorism is not merely a failure; it's as fraudulent as his wars against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of Bush’s war on terrorism, America, a net debtor nation thanks to Ronald Reagan and the GOP, has –at last –found some exports: brutality, perversity and torture.
If there is any good news to be found in the slimy residue of Bush’s sorry mal-administration it is this: a revolt against Bush seems to be brewing at the CIA where many are said to live in fear of indictments and subpoenas that may be coming down any day now. What’s called “Wehrmacht group” inside the CIA are leaking the sordid details about how the Bush administration conducted a program of torture and perversion at Abu Ghraib and how the Bush administration is deliberately trying to skirt U.S. and international laws with a program of ongoing “rendition”, that is, flying victims to other countries for the purpose of torture and other crimes.
Racking someone is bad enough but torture American-style seems especially abhorrent and always colored by more than a soupcon of sexual perversity, Satanism, and psycho-sexual morbidness that defies description in any language. Semour Hersh says that the U.S. has video tapes of children being raped, sodomized, tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."Reprehensible images to be found among unreleased photographs include images of rape, torture, mutilated animals, circles of candles, swastikas, and sexual activity among the torturers themselves, often in front of the detainees. [See: Sex Rituals of Abu Ghraib]
There’s much, much more. From Salon's exclusive:
"A review of all the computer media submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."It’s hard to believe that the entire torture program is anything other than an excuse by perverts to indulge in psycho-sexual and/or satanic rituals that might be more at home inside the walls of the Skull and Bones or the Nazi SS than in a legitimate program to elicit useful information in a “war on terrorism”. In fact, the “war on terrorism” itself, premised as it is upon lies and propaganda, seems to be but an excuse to indulge satanic perversity not seen since the Holocaust. As one blogger put it: “…it's right out of a dark occultist's playbook.” Indeed, it is. And who but a Bonesman could be its chief architect? Who but the man who set records for executions in Texas could create its policies? Who but the man who ridiculed death row inmates would defend the perverted rationale of torture? Who but someone who got his jollies blowing up horned toads in West Texas could defend it, encourage it, and, at the same time, deny it and cover it up?
This program of torture seems sure to create terrorists where none had been before. Yet, the Bush administration’s defense and active cover up of these atrocities bespeaks its complicity in heinous crimes against humanity. The only rational explanation is this: Bush needs new enemies to justify a permanent occupation.
Meanwhile, a report on U.S. interrogation tactics entitled “Human Rights Standards Applicable to the United States' Interrogation of Detainees,” challenges the various rationalizations cited inexplicably in defense of an act that had been denied by Bushies. Why defend an act that had not occurred? Scott Horton, a human rights activist has since cited various “torture memoranda” to disprove Rumsfeld's position that Abu Ghraib was but the work of a few “bad apples”. The reports by Seymour Hersh are consistent with Horton’s work; they tend to support the conclusion that Abu Ghraib is but one “island” in the American gulag archipelago. Torture is Bush’s policy and it will be his sorry legacy, a cancer on the American body politic, an indictment of the national morality, a final chapter in what Theodore Dreiser called "Tragic America".
There is cause for concern throughout the CIA. Despite fawning rationalizations by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, at least one FBI attorney had written that “rendition” is illegal. Indeed, international law speaks to the commission of the acts themselves, not the location. The Bush administration’s defense of a program that it contradictorily denies is irrelevant, a shallow, transparent dodge. Clearly — “rendition” is designed to circumvent American laws. It's consistent with Bush’s delusional mindset: he is above the laws and the rule of law does not apply to him. This is clearly psychotic and the doctrine of the "unitary executive" is just symptom of a very, very sick mind.
For more on the subject, see the Sex, Drugs, Mind Control and Torture index.U.N. Exec Decries Illegal Iraq Detainees
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS,
Associated Press Writer
GENEVA (AP) - Some 15,000 detainees are being held in Iraq by government ministries in violation of Iraqi law, and nearly as many are being held by U.S.-led multinational forces, a senior U.N. official said Friday.
Only the country's justice ministry is permitted to hold detainees for longer than 72 hours, but Gianni Magazzeni, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in Baghdad, said most Iraqi-held detainees are under the control of other government officials, naming Iraq's interior and defense ministries in particular.
``Those are still in the thousands and would be not in a situation which is in line with Iraqi law,'' he said at the U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva. Magazzeni, who took over the post in mid-February, was visiting Geneva and said he was on his way back to Baghdad. It was unclear where Magazzeni obtained his figures for detainees held by the Iraqi government. ...
More about how Bush's Iraq debacle is laced with stories of sadism and sexual perversion:
The Missing Girls of Iraq
Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam Hussein, has resurfaced in Iraq. TIME reports on a seldom-discussed epidemic: girls being kidnapped and sold to brothels....
Safah is part of a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. ...
Why we're publishing the new Abu Ghraib photos
America -- and the world -- has the right to know what was done in our name.
By Walter Shapiro ...
More than a "few rotten apples"A U.S. soldier who tortured an Iraqi general to death got his wrist slapped. Yet his appalling sentence made a certain sense.
America can't take it anymore
By Brig. Gen. David Irvine and David DanzigThe Bush administration has embraced torture as a key part of the "war on terror." Finally, members of Congress, the military and the CIA are speaking out against the abuse.
Contract to torture
By Mark FollmanA rare look at the entire Abu Ghraib report reveals that inexperienced, under-supervised private-sector employees actively took part in horrifying prisoner abuse.
By Osha Gray Davidson
'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission