the other war

"Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him."

When I first read this story, I assumed you all saw it, too, and didn't need my take. And it was so sickening, I caught myself looking the other way. But after taking a few deep breaths, I feel an obligation to post it, just in case someone stumbles on it for the first time on this blog.

The story I'm referring to is the details of the deaths of the Afghan prisoners, by torture at the hands of the US military, in the Bagram prison. And how the military tried to cover up those deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

The army even admits that "most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar [one of the men tortured to death] was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time." New York Times story here.

How do the neocons and fascists - the O'Reillys and Coulters of the world - defend this? Maybe it's the one bad apple defense. Maybe it's breaking eggs to make omelets. Or perhaps it's the media's fault, for reporting it.

The tortured prisoners lost their dignity, then their lives. Their tormentors lost their dignity, and their souls.

I would never compare what a murderer and his victim suffer. No matter how much the perpetrator one day regrets his actions, the hammer hurts less than the nail. I'll only conjecture that the American torturers may run from their demons for the rest of lives, and no amount of alcohol or drugs will let them run fast enough.

And what of the people who put them there, who created a climate that allowed such horror? What of those defenders of freedom? What will happen to them?