Call Me Ishmael

With no apologies to Richard Cohen.

Call me Ishmael.  
Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery parts of the world.
I left my mud-walled desert hut on my journey to the sea and instead found a great army of foreigners upon my land, laying waste all around for reasons I knew not.  
On the road I was captured by armed men taken to a place that brings shudders to the bottom of my soul; Abu Ghraib.
I was tortured there, with many others. Men were beaten and set upon by wild dogs. Men were killed while our captors laughed.
Women were stripped, as were men, and several took their lives in shame. Even children were raped.
I myself was sodomized with a flashlight.
Every day, every hour, questions were put to me. At first I answered truthfully, for I knew nothing, but after a while I said whatever they wanted me to say.  I listened to the screams of my countrymen long into the night, and the laughter of their inhuman tormenters.
In that long darkness of hell, I resolved that I would never rest until I had visited upon these monsters a taste of the hell they brought to my country. I plan and organize night and day to bring them the death they deserve. They will never be safe while I live, even in their own country.
Yes, torture is ugly, but so is the the empty hole inside the souls of those who excuse it.