Stories From the Inside -- Bob Herbert on Crimes against Humans in Guantanamo

"The horror stories from the scandalous interrogation camp that the United States is operating at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are coming to light with increased frequency. At some point the whole shameful tale of this exercise in extreme human degradation will be told. For the time being we have to piece together what we can from a variety of accounts that have escaped the government's obsessively reinforced barriers of secrecy.

We know that people were kept in cells that in some cases were the equivalent of animal cages, and that some detainees, disoriented and despairing, have been shackled like slaves and left to soil themselves with their own urine and feces. Detainees are frequently kicked, punched, beaten and sexually humiliated. Extremely long periods of psychologically damaging isolation are routine."

Or as Jack Nicholson said in his role of a dead-ended Marine officer stuck in a nothing command at an insignificant post:

"You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

Well, since it's about Americans acting like War Criminals, no, we really don't exactly WANT it, but we can handle it.

At the time I saw "A Few Good Men," I thought, "No, it's that officer who can't handle the truth -- that his career is over, that The Corps found him not too swift, and put him in a place where he couldn't fuck up too badly because the threat of attack there is nonexistent."

Someday an enterprising journalist ought to ask a real combat Marine or two what they think about the guys who wear the Globe and Fouled Anchor but are full-time Brig Guards.

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