GITMO Is The United States' Hanoi Hilton

During the Vietnam Conflict, it was never officially called a war, the President, members of Congress, and military leaders called the torture being done to American POWs in North Vietnam horrid violations of the Geneva Convention. The arm bending, rib breaking, and bamboo shoots under the finger nails of American soldiers and sailors. Would those same leaders come to the defense of the men being held at GITMO? The men who are being isolated, nearly drown, and put through hell for what they might know. And, the fact that all of this torture takes place on the island of Cuba makes the hair on the back of neck stand on end. This government hates Castro, yet we commit crimes against the Geneva convention in his back yard. 

Anyway, back to my point.... this book, Eight O'Clock Ferry To The Windward Side, written by Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of a British human rights watch, tells the story of what happens at GITMO through the eyes of an outsider. Well, not really an outsider as Smith represents 40 of the 300 men being held there. According to the Times, the book fills in the blind spots that US journalists miss when telling the stories of the abuse, torture, and "scripted tribunals" that take place behind the razor wire. The stories we don't see on the evening news, or on the pages of the paper that published the review of the book.

I can't, for the life of me, understand or condone the methods used by the United States government to obtain information from the detainees. I can't understand what happened at Abu Grab. I wonder why there isn't more written by US journalists about our own violations of Geneva Convention rules. I wonder why we violate the rules at all. I probably won't buy the book, but I am glad that it was written, I am glad that people in other nations don't turn a blind eye to what this government does in the name of democracy and freedom. Without them, the truth would be whitewashed. I like what England's Vanessa Redgrave had to say about the place, " it is a concentration camp and it should be demolished".

I fear what will happen in the future if the people in this "great" country don't demand that their leaders act according to the principles of a document this country agreed to. I fear for the future because I don't believe any democrat or republican will change the status quo enough to change the way humans are treated on the island of Cuba. They are men after all, not robots or mindless soldiers. They fight because they believe, just as bush believes, they are doing the right thing.   

I am embarrassed to be a citizen of a country that talks big shit about being on the side of right. The President, as leader, talks out of one side of his mouth and acts out of the other.  We, the people, sit in our warm living rooms and watch our big TVs, and eat a diet rich in everything and let the men who run this country take us down a dark road. In the end, there will be more attacks on this country, and we won't be able to stop them all. Civilians will die, we will express outrage, and then sit back on our overstuffed couches and let the men do the deeds that put civilians in harms way. 

Go figure.... you reap what you sow.... so don't be surprised when the acts of the few effect the many.