| The Americans under George Bush attacked and invaded Afghanistan. We rounded up thousands of people ourselves and we paid a bounty of five thousand dollars to have others turned in or rounded up. Some of them, around 900 of our fellow human beings, we put in cargo containers, sealed them in and left them in the heat to die. Others we killed, we beat them to death while 'interrogating' them. So that we could round up the ones they incriminated, while being tortured. We called them unlawful enemy combatants, because that was the lowest status we could give them. The lowest there is in all the world.
When we named them unlawful enemy combatants we took away all of their rights. When a man has no rights, none at all, is he even still a man? We can kill him then, torture or beat him to death, and no one will ever know. Maybe. Especially if we give him no record, if we hide him from the world. So that is what we did. Snatched them off the streets or from their homes, away from their wives and children. We took them. We killed some, we tortured others. Even those we knew to be innocent. But then time passed and we needed to do something more permanent, once our bloodlust had boiled down a bit.
Then we very cleverly, we thought, invented a new kind of prison for the ones who survived being tortured. It wasn't in the United States, so these faceless, nameless, captured men, many of whom we knew to be innocent, could not be granted rights, had no access to the courts, no access to any law at first. ANY law.
Brandon Neely, a prison guard at Guantanamo tells the story of what we did then. Read it. We tortured them. We beat and shackled and froze and shocked and anally raped them with night sticks.
But Cheney and Rumsfeld were not satisfied, they wanted, they said....more ...information. So they put Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Millerin charge of developing a torture program, an 'interrogation' program. To get more information from these men, even when WE knew some of them to be innocent.
People, Americans, we, sat in rooms and decided how best to torture people. What methods of torture to use, how much pain to inflict.
Other of us, attorneys like John Yoo, sat in rooms and made up lies as to why it was ok for US to torture people....in ways that we had hung others for after WW2....when we had always condemned others for torturing. When we had accused whole nations of being torturers. Just as we are condemned as torturers ourselves, now.
In the White House, The Principals met to decide....we met to decide how to torture people. One of us The Attorney General of America John Ashcroft said "We should not be talking about this in the White House, history will not judge us kindly." Yet they did, we did. When we had the Torture Program we wanted, though not the Army that we wanted, we exported it in the person of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. Exported it to Abu Ghraib.
Where as it turned out, it was not a few bad apples who were blowing off steam like frat boys. But instead part of OUR organized torture program. One of us blew the whistle and sent in the now famous pictures. We have been allowed to see the mildest of the pictures of what we did in Abu Ghraib. But until just a few days ago, the really really bad ones had been concealed from us. Now they are to be released. We are about to see what WE really did at Abu Ghraib.
And it was not just Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. WE had a whole network of Black Sites. Secret Torture Prisons. OUR CIA had what amounted to a private Torture Airline to fly those who had been renditioned to be tortured all around the world, to conceal what we were doing.
We waterboarded people, we slapped them and punched them and beat them to death, We sexually harassed and tortured deeply religious men. We cut off their beards, we flushed their holy books down the toilet, we wired electrodes to their genitals and shocked them. We sliced their penises with razor blades.
We did this, Americans did this, to the rest of the world.... YOU did this.
Rape. Torture. Murder. It is what Americans do.
Unless YOU now make sure that WE investigate charge and try the people who authorized, ordered and carried out these acts... as YOUR government, in YOUR name, with YOUR money, by YOUR soldiers and intelligence agencies....YOU did this.
Because you are an American, and Americans did this.
And unless we do something about it, that IS the historical record. America did this. Not Bush or Cheney, America.
Right up to the day that we charge the individuals who did this...as individuals.
Right up to the day we try the President and Vice-President who did this....NOT as Americans. Not as representatives of America. But as men. Men who have broken the law NOT in the name of every American. But in their own name.
Until these MEN are brought to justice and tried as War Criminals, these are not just their crimes as individuals who broke the law. These are ALL of OUR Crimes, as Americans.
The only way to clear YOUR name, to clear America's name....is to charge, try, and convict George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld as men, as private individuals, who committed War Crimes NOT in our name, NOT with our consent, but in their own name, on their own abused authority..
Until the responsibility lies directly on the individuals who ordered these inhuman atrocities, then as the People in whose name this was done. Until WE find THEM guilty, we are guilty. As Americans in an America that does torture...
Until Justice is done. Or at least attempted, those who are not attempting it, US....
....Each Of Us Shares This Sin.
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