Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The 'T' Word Americans Don't Want to Use


Torture.  That's the word, TORTURE.  It seems that many Americans want to forget about that ugly period in America's recent history. We TORTURED several prisoners in our obsession-driven fear in the post 9-11 era. Waterboarding. Waterbording as in that Geneva Convention ruling. The Japanese waterboarded American prisoners. Agents of the Spanish Inquisition waterboarded suspected agnostics. Waterboarding was used in New York's Sing Sing prison in the 1800's. Waterboarding was used by American soldiers after the Spanish-American War in the late 1800's. During WWII officers of the Gestapo, the German secret police, used waterboarding as a method of torture. It was used by American soldiers on the VietCong in the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge at the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, used waterboarding.

And now, we citizens of the United States, have to deal with the fact that just a few years ago, our government ordered the waterboarding of prisoners in American detention centers.

We Americans are in the category of the Nazi Gestapo, the Khner Rouge, and the Spanish Inquisitors. What terribly sordid company to keep.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney permitted that awful and ancient torture method to be used in American prisons. That black page will forever be written in U.S. and World History books.

"Early in the 21st century, during the administration of President George W. Bush, agents of the government of the United States, on the direction of members of the White House, used waterboarding as a method of torture in its prisons."

Forever written in history books.

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