Outrageous treatment
Emotional reactions to this New York Times story by Deborah Sontag, which ran Sunday: Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation. The photo, from a prison video, is haunting: 'Enemy Combatant' Jose Padilla, shackeled and fitted with sensory-depriving goggles and headphones. FOR A TRIP TO THE DENTIST.
Some bloggers are posting their outrage, including Michael Froomkin at Discourse.net. (In this posting, and others.) Digby, at Hullaballo, has a long posting: This is going to keep me up at night.
This isn't the country I grew up in.
The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times, offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s electronic court file late Friday.
Some bloggers are posting their outrage, including Michael Froomkin at Discourse.net. (In this posting, and others.) Digby, at Hullaballo, has a long posting: This is going to keep me up at night.
When I was a kid I read "The Count Of Monte Cristo" and it had a profound affect on me. It is a book about horrible injustice, terrible solitary confinement and the natural human response to suffering it. Every time I read about these prisoners being thrown into these high tech dungeons, isolated and dehumanized I think of that book...The belief that it will never end, that you've lost all normal sense of personhood and control --- that your mind is being stripped away and there's nothing you can do about it --- must be terrifying.
This isn't the country I grew up in.
posted by liz at
4:11 PM
4 Comments:
SNIFF!!! I mourn for the soul of our country when we stoop so low as to (GASP!) incarcerate terrorists.
By
PJ-Comix, at 7:01 PM
Normally I don't make comments but, to balance "pj-comix" ...
The world has had terrorists in the past, has them now and will in future. The world also has ways of dealing with fellow human beings. Torture may be the way some find appropriate. Thankfully, only a minority choose this. If you can't grasp that doing horrifying things to people to carry out "justice" is truly putting you in the category with those you seek to punish, perhaps you need to do some deep searching within, and understand that life doesn't support a torture retribution anymore than it does terrorist acts. We all need to be working on being more peaceful, no matter what's going on around us. That doesn't mean we ignore wrong, but that we find ways to deal with it without adding to the negativity and cruelty we (rightly) condemn.
By
Anonymous, at 5:46 PM
Torture? Yeah, that 68 degree A/C is certainly horrible only exceeded by the orange glaze chicken and rice pilaf dinners force fed to the Gitmo prisoners. A resident of the old Soviet Gulags would have thought himself in heaven if he spent even a day at Gitmo.
The Left would have a bit more credibility on the subject of mistreatment of terrorists if they spent even a TENTH of their compassion on the victims of terrorism as they do on the terrorists who committed those acts.
By
PJ-Comix, at 12:22 AM
Your response is precisely why I rarely leave comments. No matter what I say, you'll have an answer that suits you. So be it. Go well, stay well. May only good things happen to you in your life.
By
Anonymous, at 3:21 AM
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