FLOWERS, BUNNIES, AND SUNSHINE!

Since September of 2001, there have been disturbing events occurring around the world. The most disturbing events in my opinion are the events that are happening to the rights of individuals in this country.

I am personally not paying enough attention to understand all the legal labyrinths that are being navigated In regards to the prisoners that have been being held at the Guantanamo Bay military detention center in Cuba, with terms like “enemy combatants,” and “extraordinary rendition,” but I do understand what it means when the US government announces that evidence will be allowed at tribunals that was obtained by torture.

The President of the United States has repeated a number of times that “we do not torture,” and in his new book, former CIA director George Tenet insists that “ we don’t torture,” while at the same time he has confirmed that in the period following September 11th, 2001, that he oversaw the use of morally questionable techniques of interrogation on terrorism suspects.

And as “Our Great Leader” George W. Bush is spreading freedom around the world, he seems to be spreading something else, and I don’t mean bushwa, (that is not a typo, look it up). As the US military was freeing the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, they were also rescuing them from the threat of torture at the hands of his regime, Shortly, and I mean very shortly, after we freed the Iraqi people and save them from torture at the hands of Saddam’s regime, the American people were shown the picture of American troops “abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, and the world is told that this was just the work of a few out of hand soldiers.

In a recent survey of US troops that served in the war zone of Iraq, 40% believed that torture is okay if it will same the life of a comrade. Shortly after these numbers were made public, General Petraeus wrote an open letter to his soldiers warning against the use of torture. I’m sure this made some people sleep easier at night, but probably not Iraqis.

At the time that the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib became public, I was attending college an innocently taking a course in Latin American history, while at the same time I was enrolled in a film history class. The Latin American history class was taught by a nice Argentinean man who regularly told jokes in Spanish, as a way of sort of bonding with the predominantly Spanish-speaking students. Toward the end of the semester we were studying Latin American history when the US was a major player in the politics of that region. Part of that history involves US backed military coups in Guatemala, Chile, and El Salvador, and one thing all these US backed military governments all had in common was the use of torture against their own populations. In the class we were reading about torture in Guatemala, disappeared citizens in Chile, and “death squads” in El Salvador. At the same time, our professor in the film history class had us watch “The Battle of Algiers,” which is a recreation of the fight in Algiers between the French Army, and Algerians who wanted to end the French occupation. This film has some really disturbing reenactments of the way that the French tortured the Algerians, to destroy their “terrorist network.” By the way, the French were eventually forced to leave.

So where am I going with all this?

I suppose I can say in summation that since September of 2001 I have watched as torture, which was before relegated to those regimes that the US has supported, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Iraq, has made its way into mainstream American culture. My reaction to this is the same as my reaction was a couple of years ago when I was reading seemingly endless accounts of torture in Latin America, and the final for my film class was to watch and the write about a torture scene from “The Battle of Algiers,” I am in shock.

I want to end on a happy note, so…

FLOWERS, BUNNIES, AND SUNSHINE!





Evidence obtained using torture is admissible

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/mariner/20070515.html

General Petraeus warns against torture

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/05/military_health_study_070504w/

Soldiers OK torture

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/05/military_health_study_070504w/

Tenet says, “We do not use torture”

http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00277&stoplayout=true&print=true