We recently heard of Seven hundreds and Fifty names of Guatanamo Bay fantom residents. But the initial numbers released, at the start of the "enemy combatant" special prison, was Six hundred and fifty height something, or 660 plus a few more...!
Keeping in mind the Axis of Evil rhetoric, and the demonization of muslim faith (made easy by a few terrorists claim to follow a purely islamic jihad), it becomes obvious that the initially released number of Gitmo prisoners turn around and come very close to the Apocalyptic number of the beast : 66...six !
Given the Decider's frame of mind concerning religious evangelism, the millennium propaganda of the religious right, the cheap 'christian' novels advising safe driving restrictions for "the day to come", the president stances on abortion including the taboo regarding any contraceptive solutions, plus his young aids reliance on "intelligent design" to foster resistance towards any global warming acknowledgment, against any critic of the state of things... a simplistic religious reading is not so far fetched as a backdrop to interpret the Gitmo institution.
Was the intention really to capture the Devil himself, the Antichrist, or a whole brand of evil and devious thinking ? And to ex-filtrate them of the world in a country ruled by another backward devil named Fidel Castro. You bet.
And that's for P.R. concerns. Technically, the elected group of unnamed enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and God knows what place else, were probably used as a Test Group to fine tune Torture technics, and allow new "interrogation" Trend Setters to emerge in the process, with plastic gloves. The general in charge of Guatanamo famous facility was soon send to head Abu what ? -- the now famous Abu Ghraib, the prison from sinister Saddam memories reborn as an up-to-date, "scientifically" tested interrogation center. Follow the trend...
Anyway, what troubles me also was the non-commentary way press releases went about explaining the use of terrorizing dogs, absurd woman underwear's and homosexual forced intercourse's. Those were said to be especially chosen to affect muslims mindsets and taboos. Does that mean if you are not Muslim, you don't fear those niceties... (true enough, you tend to pay for them on TV !). Does it imply those abuses were not flatly dead wrong but on the contrary well suited for their (rightful?) purpose ! Here again some press outlets have missed their duty of channeling common sense judgment about the unacceptable.
Because what is obvious is that even if those treatments were uniquely designed to degrade a Muslim self-esteem, they far more degrade the moral standards of their perpetuators.
It frightening to imagine how american soldiers, even bad apples, could do that spontaneously. It's degrading for the whole human race. So it seem necessary for redemption to out the formation of those soldiers, the exact training that allowed them to become so narrow minded useless torturers. What is the actual training all about ?