What is torture?
Is it the treatment provided to our soldiers or nationals in Iraq or Afghanistan, the recorded pictures and videos of gory murders and mutilated bodies so gruesome that our media decided not to report…for our own good? (thanks to the Internet and peer to peer they are available anyways!)
Is it only the bad treatment of a few prisoners by a few psychos in uniform placarded all over by the same media….for our own good?
I want it all! I want to see side by side what was done to our Iraqi prisoners and what they did to their American captives! I want the media to report the cruelty of war…from both sides! Let us decide on what torture is, what abuse is and what is standard conditioning of prisoners.
And as a reminder, the Geneva Convention only protects combatants when they have a known and identified leader, when they carry their weapons openly and when they all wear the same distinctive sign…By choosing to hide in schools, hospitals and holy shrines, by choosing to fight among and behind the civilian population, by choosing the strategy of terror, by not wearing any distinctive signs and by executing prisoners and mutilating bodies, our enemies have chosen not to be protected by that convention.
America would have fought WW2 like we are fighting modern conflicts, we would be goose stepping around by now…and speaking a foreign language: German!
Do any of you dare to remember how we bombed Germans and Japanese into submission, leveled their cities and landmarks with incendiary bombs, summarily tried, jailed or executed many of them? It never occurred to our elders to let Goebbels broadcast Nazi news in America, to interview Hitler in his bunker, tolerate dissent or let anything or anybody undermine the war and the moral of our troops!
In Vietnam, the war was winnable and by 1975, the communist’s forces were scattered, weakened and inefficient…US forces won all the battles but lost the war… at home! In Iraq, our forces won the land battle against the standing enemy armies of Saddam and won all the battles fought against the various local militias afterwards but like in the seventies, we are losing that war at home. Ask Mister Kerry….he knows it all: the war, the crimes and the anti-war on the home front.But today, in our twisted world of twisted values, Arab media can freely glorify the "freedom fighters" and display the pictures of dead Americans, each one a small step toward victory against the "great Satan" (
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/us-military.htm ) while at home, American death and suffering are absent from the news except for the body count...How can we win a war without involving the people, without fueling anger against the enemy and cultivating patriotism?
Did anybody ever teach us never to pick a fight one is not willing to finish?
In Iraq, our troops are fighting, with their hands tied by the media, the polls, the public opinion, the international community, our democratic and Christian values, international laws, treaties and conventions we signed. Our troops are targets to the most coward form of terrorism, slaughtered and maimed one at a time by car bombs, roadside bombs, so called “freedom killers” sniping them in the back. Powerless, they do keep track of the body count and resent the indecision of our leaders stuck in an election year. They see first hand the gruesome reality of the war fought by ruthless enemies, thousand of miles away from our politically correct dreamland. We are expecting so much from them and so little from the opposing forces that the whole thing is turning into a sad joke, another drama. Did we send them to verify again theories on human attrition in war and its domestic effects or to wipe out the enemies of democracy?
Each time a GI is blown to pieces on “Roadside bomb alley” or killed by a sniper hiding in a school in Iraq, domestic support to the war, the administration and the president slides down a couple of points.
Each time civilian hostages are taken and gorily executed, or when car bombs destroy the headquarters of some local agency trying to rebuild Iraq, domestic and international support inches down.
Each time a powerless coalition soldier is murdered and or mutilated, anger and revolt grows among his peers in uniform, stuck there far too long, at the mercy of wavering poll driven politicians elected by media controlled suburbanites.
Each time a powerless coalition soldier is murdered and or mutilated without any decisive action taken from the leadership to put an end to the current politically correct status quo, anger and revolt grows among other soldiers that feel abandoned.
Each time a powerless coalition soldier is murdered and or mutilated there, anger and revolt spreads and revenge is sought.
Each time anger, revolt and revenge fill the hearts of soldiers, “collateral damages” follow.
Do you want to know what torture is? Torture is to get up every day to drive a truck of supply along “Roadside bomb alley” after having seen first end what nails, rocks and metallic shrapnels do to an unprotected human body.
Torture is to get up every day to go on foot patrol and expect any civilian to pull out a gun from under its robe and shoot you in the face.
Torture is to see the daily enemy’s lack of respect for human life, lack of respect for his own people that he uses as a shield or kill for propaganda.
Torture and pain is to restore power and water, resume oil production, open a school or build a bridge and see it blown to pieces by the obscurantist the next day.
Torture is to get up every day and be shot at from a hospital, a school or a Mosque and not be able to return fire while your comrades are spilling their blood in the gutters.
Torture is to get up every day knowing that if captured you will be denied any kind of mercy and that even your dead body will be used for psychological effect, returned as pulp or hung from a bridge for the blood thirsty media.
Torture is to remember the faces of the 750 dead and the blood of the 4100 wounded or maimed comrades in arms you accompanied for their last trip home, most of them hit “ when military vehicle hit an improvised explosive device…”, as the Pentagon officially reports it.
Torture is to realize that most of the wounded average 25 years old and many among them are left brain-damaged or blind, or both, from shrapnel and dirt blown to the face by roadside bombs, the “improvised explosive devices” that hit the only vital area not protected by body armor.
Torture is to come back home on short leave and watch biased home media echoing enemy propaganda, or listen to well fed, safe and comfy fellow Americans and elected official question the war the elected government sent you to wage.
Torture is to see heroes like Pat Tillman depicted as morons on MSNBC.
Torture is to be called a “baby killer” , to see Al-Jazeera news and biased hatred broadcasted home, to see the same people that accompanied our soldiers to the carriers, waving flags, cheering and all, now turning their back with disgust, burning the flag or marching for peace. Torture is what all theses contradictory feelings, all that fear, pain, sorrow and anger do to our soldiers back there; it is what keeps them awake and accompany them daily for 365 days. A female US doctor in Iraq was quoted saying: "I go to sleep and dream about them (-the young American casualties-) all night long, awaking in a sweat because something is wrong," Welcome back to Vietnam and remember the German saying: “ Children, enjoy war because peace will be terrifying!”
Do you have any idea of what goes in the mind of our average GI Joe, our good US kid that went on a mission, to protect us?
I know that it is not a place I would like to visit right now!
