by James Glaser
May 3, 2004

With out a doubt we now know that we have the American military personal who have the temperament to run a torture chamber, so if we thought we could hide it, I have no doubt a gas chamber would be considered. All we would have to do is make sure none of the troops would have a camera.

Our government, yours and mine has done something in the prisons we have created in Iraq, that is just out and out foul and we all bear some responsibility for these acts. We should have known that our Military couldn't be trusted to treat people with the dignity all men deserve. We claim high principals, but we fall to the bottom of the heap when we physically torture and sexually humiliate Iraqi prisoners. We claim we are bringing Iraq freedom and a new sense of the rule of law. We claim we are bringing democracy to these poor people and look what we are doing.

Last year in one of the prisons we set up in Afghanistan at Bagram Airbase, two prisoners were tortured to death. A spokesman for the air base confirmed that the official cause of death of the two men was "homicide." One captive known only as Dilawar, age 22, died from "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease" while another captive, Mullah Habibullah age 30, suffered from a blood clot in the lung that was exacerbated by a "blunt force injury."

These two Afghanis were beaten to death in one of our prisons and it was reported at the time. Since then there has only been silence on the subject, like it was swept under the rug and nobody was responsible. If I remember correctly, these two guy's bodies were thrown outside the prison and it was first reported that they both had heart attacks. Somebody forced an investigation and that is how we found out about the beatings. These two guys died, but we have no idea of how many were beat close to death.

I have written about it before. I have from personal observation seen our country torture and kill a women and her child in Vietnam. I have no doubt that the same thing is going on in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

George Bush will claim we are bringing freedom to the Iraqi people, but the man has no clue at all of what really happens when the United States goes to war. Our military is just as vicious and cruel as Saddam's or Hitler's. No we don't have gas chambers, but if it was found out that we did, I wouldn't be surprised.

The only reason the American people found out about what we are doing to Iraqi prisoners, is that CBS News got hold of some pictures of what we were doing. The investigations started months ago, but the military kept everything hush hush. No matter what was found out, you and I would never have heard a word about it if it wasn't for CBS.

Brig. General Janis Karpinski, the officer in charge of the prison has already started pointing her finger at other people. It always works that way, spread the blame out so wide that no one person is charged with anything. No charges were made for those murders of prisoners in Afghanistan, so I doubt if there will be any here.

The real bad thing about the tortures that went on in Iraq is that the people doing the torture are saying that they never had any training on the Geneva Convention Rules on Prisoners of War. They want us to believe that they thought all the abuse they were inflicting was ok, because nobody had told them it wasn't. Now is that sick or what?

These are the type of people that could run a gas chamber or be part of a firing squad shooting women and children. George Bush says he feels "Disgust" at the abuse we inflicted on these Iraqis, but I have never heard any Disgust from the President when it comes to the thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians we have killed. Maybe George could handle running that gas chamber too.

It is horrible and terrible that we torture Prisoners of War, but I feel it is at least equally as terrible and horrible that we have killed and maimed thousands and thousands of children in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Muslim world has named our government the "Great Satan" and now they have proof. You have to know that the Photos shown on CBS News are on every Middle Eastern news program and now there is more.

Our coalition partner, Great Britain, was doing almost the same thing and photographs of their atrocities are out for all to see. Can you even imagine how stupid and foul the people that did this torture are? They had their own pictures taken while they were doing this. For sure they thought they were doing nothing wrong or they wouldn't have made a record of it. Does anyone doubt now that we have troops out in the Iraqi cities that will just out and out shoot innocent women and children, for the thrill? I don't!

To read more on what we are doing to the Iraqi people now, read, TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB by Seymour M. Hersh, in the New Yorker.

I am still proud to be an American and do feel so lucky to have been born in the good old USA, but I am deeply ashamed of what my country is doing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The people in both of these countries have suffered so much for so long and we come along talking about all the good things we are going to do for them and we end up doing the same thing to these people, as the terrible dictators we claim to be freeing them from.

All I can think of his how far into despair we are driving these people. They will never trust us and I don't blame them one bit