I know that the issue has already been raised on the main page, but I still don't think it has gotten the attention it deserves.
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/
We are still torturing innocent people in Iraq
"After Abu Ghraib things toned down. We still did it but we were careful. It is still going on now the same way, I am sure. Maybe not as blatant but it is how we do things."
This is an issue that demands action.
I don't care if people accuse us of opposing the troops. We know that we love America.
I don't care whether it scores points in the 2006 election or the 2005 Gallup polls.
I don't care if there are other important things going on in the world--good and bad.
Our Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches have known about this for a year and have not stopped it. They have not even slowed it. The Pentagon has been complicit.
We citizens have not done enough to stop torture by Americans. Contact your members of Congress every day until it stops. Contact the media every day until it stops.
"If a PUC cooperated Intel would tell us that he was allowed to sleep or got extra food. If he felt the PUC was lying he told us he doesn't get any fucking sleep and gets no food except maybe crackers. And he tells us to smoke him. [Intel] would tell the Lieutenant that he had to smoke the prisoners and that is what we were told to do. No sleep, water, and just crackers. That's it. The point of doing all this was to get them ready for interrogation. [The intelligence officer] said he wanted the PUCs so fatigued, so smoked, so demoralized that they want to cooperate. But half of these guys got released because they didn't do nothing. We sent them back to Fallujah. But if he's a good guy, you know, now he's a bad guy because of the way we treated him."
We Americans are torturing innocent people. We are creating terrorists.
You think Rita is bad? It is, but this is worse. At least The United States did not create Rita. God can stop a hurricane, but The United States seems unable to stop torturing people.
You think ending the war is an important goal? It is, but if we can't even stop the torture, then we are worthless. I don't mean worthless as a political movement--I mean worthless as human beings.
Let's get to work now. Contact Congress. Contact the press. Contact them again tomorrow. Do it again the next day. Do not fade away.
"People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could fuck them up. Broken bones didn't happen too often, maybe every other week. The PA would overlook it. I am sure they knew."