There has always been the threat that the military empire would be brought
home.  The torture of the Afghans is but one example of such an
attempt. However there
remain vital democratic forces in this country which we all hope can stop
such a political abortion.

 >
> Bound and Gagged
> by Charles Glass
>
>
> Jerusalem
>
>
>  The first thing they do is cover your eyes. They make
> you strip to make sure you're not carrying anything.
> They replace your clothes with uniforms that are not
> clothes at all. They chain you by hand and foot. They
> drag you away and leave you on your own. They
> interrogate you. They say you are going to die if you
> won't talk. They feed you, of course. You're not much
> good to them if you starve to death.
>
> It sounds like Camp X-Ray in Guant·namo Bay, Cuba, to
> which the US military is deporting men it captured in
> Afghanistan. It is also Lebanon in the 1980s. The
> Hezbollah, Lebanon's Shiite Muslim Party of God,
> kidnapped foreigners between 1982 and 1989 at the
> behest of their Iranian benefactors. I remember the
> drill--the blindfold, chains, solitude and loneliness.
> I was there for two months in 1987. It was a bad time,
> and it seemed unlikely to me then that I would one day
> see photographs of my countrymen treating Muslim
> prisoners much as I was treated.
>
> I thought the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution
> prohibited "cruel and unusual punishments." I'm
> looking at the Bill of Rights, the first ten
> amendments that Americans regard as sacred, and read
> the words, "nor cruel and unusual punishments
> inflicted." Full stop. It does not say that only
> American passport holders, legal residents of the
> United States and members of the Senate who take
> contributions from corporations that violate the law
> are exempt from government torments. It makes clear
> that no category of human being is excluded from
> America's obligation to refrain from cruel and unusual
> punishments. The Eighth Amendment means suspects, it
> means enemies, it means criminals, it means prisoners
> of war, it means--and the term is as new to me and you
> as it undoubtedly is to Defense Secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld--"illegal" combatants. Who is illegal and who
> is legal, by the way, has always been a determination
> for the courts of the United States and not for the
> Defense Department. As for international law, the
> Geneva Convention say "captured combatants or
> civilians" have certain rights--including to
> correspond with their families--without any
> distinction between "legal" and "illegal" combatants.
>
> I wonder now whether some mullah in Teheran said, when
> a score of Americans and Europeans were illegally held
> against their will in Lebanon, "Obviously, anyone
> would be concerned if people were suggesting that
> treatment was not proper." That is what Rumsfeld said
> on television the other day. Rumsfeld's concern for
> the Muslims chained like Caliban on America's
> Caribbean base seems to match what Teheran's mullahs
> felt for us.
>
> The mullahs, at least, knew that holding American,
> French, British and German captives in Lebanon during
> the 1980s was so shameful that they never admitted it.
> Rumsfeld seems proud. His is not some secret
> operation, like the CIA's Phoenix Program of
> assassinations and torture in Vietnam. It's out in the
> open. If Rumsfeld has not read the Constitution to
> which he has taken an oath, if he does not see the
> cruelty in the treatment of those men in Cuba, he
> could at least admit that tying men up, blocking their
> sight, cutting them off from their families and flying
> them around the world is unusual.
>
> "The fact is that treatment is proper," Rumsfeld
> insisted. "There is no doubt in my mind that it is
> humane and appropriate and consistent with the Geneva
> Conventions for the most part." For the most part?
> Which part? The shackles? The blindfold goggles? The
> six-by-eight-foot cages? At least the Hezbollah put me
> in a normal-sized room. It wasn't much of a room, bare
> but for a paper-thin mattress on the floor, with a
> sheet of steel to seal the window. I never saw
> daylight, but they did turn the electric lights off at
> night so I could sleep. The men in Guant·namo enjoy no
> such luxury. Arc lights are left on all night so the
> Marine guards can keep an eye on them. I'm not sure
> why. Where are they going to go? We are told they
> don't even know where they are. If they manage to
> clear the fences and minefields, the Cubans on the
> other side have said they'll hand them back to the
> United States. So much for Third World solidarity.
>
> During the sixty-two days I spent alone in that Beirut
> room, all I could do was sit for hours and hours,
> thinking, praying, hoping. Some friends of mine did
> that for five years. It was mistreatment, cruel and
> unusual. The Hezbollah interrogators attempted to
> justify it. The Israeli army, they said, kept Lebanese
> prisoners in south Lebanon's Khiam prison under worse
> conditions. (When international observers at last went
> into Khiam after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in
> 2000, they confirmed that the interrogation rooms and
> cells were much, much worse than anything I had
> experienced as a hostage. Two Lebanese Shiite leaders,
> Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, are still
> held at Israel's Atlit prison, where they were
> deposited after Israeli forces kidnapped them in
> Lebanon years ago. Their abductions contravened
> international law, and the Israeli Knesset is
> discussing a bill to make their detention conform to
> Israeli law--albeit retroactively.) Israeli brutality
> to its prisoners no more justified what the Hezbollah
> did to its hostages in Lebanon than Hezbollah's
> actions excuse what the United States is doing in
> Cuba.
>
> An American may someday be arrested or kidnapped by
> those whose sympathies lie with the Camp X-Ray
> detainees. What will his captors say when he pleads
> that his conditions violate international law? Will he
> dare to complain that their treatment of him is cruel,
> inhumane and unknown to the civilized world? Will
> their answer be to play for him videotapes of the
> X-Ray detainees and of Rumsfeld's press conferences?
>
>
>
> Britain, as it has done with every American action in
> every battle or bombardment for the past twenty years,
> justified Camp X-Ray. A government spokesman was
> quoted as saying, after a British delegation toured
> the camp last Friday, "There were no gags, no goggles,
> no ear-muffs and no shackles while the detainees were
> in their cells." Why would anyone need to shackle and
> blind them in their cells? The Hezbollah let its
> hostages remove their blindfolds when they were alone
> in their locked rooms. When a guard or interrogator
> entered, however, the blindfold had to come on
> quickly. The Hezbollah, realizing that they might be
> held accountable in court for their crimes, did not
> want us to identify them. It was a sensible
> precaution. Perhaps Rumsfeld should wear a hood over
> his head so no one will recognize him.
>
> Copyright Charles Glass 2002.
>