IN OUR NAME

A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant,
showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell.
NYTIMES

WE ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN IN OUR NAME
Much is made this week of Newsweek and its weak reporting.  Stronger stuff should be far more disturbing.  Will this story be buried with dishonor as well? Will we continue to dishonor the dead by doing nothing when we see evil?   

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Diliwar died.

Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time. 

Diliwar's suspected innocence did not keep him from being tortured. Diliwar was a taxi driver, not a terrorist.  A man in the wrong place in a most wrong time.  This time of endless war, against an enemy without a human face.  We will hear that some things have to be done.  Mistakes, while regrettable, will be made and we mustn’t look too closely at what must be done.  We are at war.  We are in an endless war. That war is a battle within between our worst and our best selves

 

Comments

[Chuck Ismyname]

OUTRAGEOUS!

I have no doubt that there are hundreds, if not thousands of stories just like that out there. I hope the "Lord Of The Flies" boys pay for their actions FOREVER in their minds.

[Agitprop]

It has been a most disquieting week for sure. We allow the brutal torture and murder of the innocent. Yet our government complains when a British tabloid shows pictures of Saddam in his underwear because it might violate the Geneva Convention? Has everyone gone insane?