As I’ve read the accounts of the prisoner mistreatment at Camp-X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, I’ve had an odd feeling in the back of my mind. Somehow, it all seemed hauntingly familiar, as if I, too, had suffered much as they had. And last night, as I slept, my subconscious finally made the connection.
It was dark and the air was foul as the two led me to a small room. I was placed in a chair, while the first — a woman — explained exactly what was going to happen to me. She leaned in very close to me, almost shouting in my ear to be heard over the painfully loud music. She also told me that I was not allowed to move from the uncomfortable position she put me in, with the second — a very large man — stood by, a silent threat of force that would be used if I violated the rules.
Then my suffering began in earnest.
She teased me. She tormented me. She taunted me. She repeatedly violated my personal space. I could see the contempt in her eyes as she progressed, flaunting her tawdry ways and mocking my own personal convictions. And all the time the big man loomed mutely behind her, never letting me forget the penalty for not cooperating.
It went on forever, it seemed. Finally, she stopped. She leaned in to me, her lips nearly brushing my skin, and whispered THE QUESTION in my ear, the one question this whole torment had been leading up to. I marshalled all my remaining strength, all my remaining will, all my remaining dignity, to resist.
“Would you like another dance, sweetie?”
It was no use. I broke. I nodded and reached for my wallet.
I saw that on an old episode of Hawaii Five-0, featuring crime lord Fat Lap and his femme fatale KomonIwanalaiya.
When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]–I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
SOUNDS LIKE A TORTURE ROOM TO ME
I’ve got to question these reports of torture. Teach middle school in an unairconditioned computer lab (temps sometimes as high as 100 degrees) for 10 years. Deal with whiny 6th graders (they’ll make you pull your hair out, too), relentless administrators that insist teaching continue through the end of the year (although the grades have to be in a week before–and the kids know it), faculty meetings that drone on and on with no apparent purpose. Eat in a middle school cafeteria with 150 kids. Chaperone an after school dance with 120 decibel “music”. That’s torture!
First off to Neil: boo-hiss – while that does not sound like the lap of luxury, maybe he should have thought about that before waging “holy” jihad on the U.S. in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Secondly: OH MY! I too have a similar experience. I think that the government must have a chain of these palaces of torture. They usually put them in the bad parts of town. In areas frequented by greasy truckers…. I still feel unclean…..
We need to form a task force to go into EACH and EVERY palace of torture in order to ensure proper compliance…Any volunteers?
I have to ask why the supposed FBI agent witnessed this he chose to expose it in an E-Mail rather than doing his duty and filing an official report. If he witnessed any laws being broken he is bound by law to report them to the proper law enforcement authorities, not some idiot leftist lawmaker.
Do you get the feeling that most of the whiners about “torture” are merely reliving their middle school experiences?
You people have all become spoiled assholes. The fact of the matter is, regardless of the usefulness of information gained from torture, turture in Iraq is being doled out indiscriminately. Blanket torturing only breeds dissent, and you wonder why once these people get let go, or if they get let go, they are ready to join the other side and kill some Americans. Iraqis have to “blow off some steam” too. Trust me, with your peoples’ lack of character, if you got pulled over for a traffic ticket or any other minor offense and received a fourth of the mistreatment that these people are going through, you’d be sucking the ACLU’s pipe for some justice.