Torture. Known the world around as something civilized people would not be a party to, considered to be something only evil and desperate people would employ and an elephant in the room so large that there is no longer room for anything else to fit within.
Because of the Bush administration and the Captain of Torture, Dick Cheney, torture is now the excuse MOST EVERY suspect of said terrorism will likely be using if they spend even one minute detained by authorities.
Gee. Thanks BushCo.
The sick and deplorable murder of Pvt. William Long and the subsuquent wounding of Pvt. Quinton I. Ezeagwula in Little Rock by the alleged shooter, Abdulhakim Muhammad is real, dammit! William Long is dead. Let that sink in.
The alleged shooter in this crime has told the authorities that now hold him a story of being
Tortured
while in Yemen after being arrested for over staying his visa, Carlos Bledsoe aka Abdulhakim Muhammad says he was tortured and converted to Islam or something.
From MSNBC:
Yemen denies accused shooter was tortured
The man accused of killing an Army private outside an Arkansas recruiting center never suffered torture or beatings while jailed on an immigration violation in Yemen, an official with the country's embassy said Friday.
Embassy spokesman Mohammed Albasha denied claims by Abdulhakim Muhammad's lawyer that the abuse radicalized the man into becoming a terrorist. Instead, Albasha said, the once-idealistic college student from Tennessee found his own way to religious anger after converting to Islam in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Muhammad's claims "are not credible because he is attempting to find any pretext to justify his violent actions, even those that are completely false," Albasha said in a statement to The Associated Press. "He was not subjected to torture that has driven him to become a terrorist against his own fellow American citizens. These allegations are absurd."
The allegations may very well be absurd. Personally, I have no idea. My position here is not to judge the claims of the accused or the veracity of the Yemeni authorities. To that end, this is not the point.
America Tortures.
How does that sound now? Previously, it sounded like something horrible, something UN-American, something that was profoundly shameful. It was.
Now it is an excuse alleged terrorists are using as a defense of their actions. Because? Yeah. You know. They can.
Many things have conseqences. Elections. Torture.
The Bush administration is going to continue to spur new consequences beyond our wildest dreams for decades if not forever in world opinion.
They have introduced the TORTURE defense.
Think on that and be dismayed for the entire population of the world.