Torture, for fun

by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Bush regime sinks lower by the day

That US soldiers serving the Bush regime considered that the systematic torture of prisoners of war was fun, no big deal, to vent their frustration, not serious and just joking around, does not surprise anyone any longer.

The face of the great American heroine, Private Lynndie England, cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, giving the thumbs-up sign while standing over or beside a pile of abused, terrified people made this...woman?...perhaps one of the most hated people on Earth, outside the United States of America, of course.

If forcing prisoners to suck each others penisis, to commit acts of sodomy, to strip naked and lie in a pile of bodies, to be deprived of sleep, to suffer changes to diet (Forced to eat pork? Forced to drink urine?) is being good Christians, then the Bush regime has a lot of explaining to do.

If such behaviour is considered as good fun in the United States, which apparently it does, since this is the excuse being given by Lynndie England s lawyers, it is certainly not considered as normal anywhere else on the planet, where for good fun families go out into the countryside for a picnic, or go to the woods to collect mushrooms, or play a game of soccer,
or have a swim on the beach, or just sit and chat together.

Holding people who have been beaten, terrorised and humiliated on a leash, pointing at people s genitals is joking around , as Lynddie England’s lawyers claim? Paul Arthur, who investigated the cases of torture perpetrated by England and seven other US soldiers and security personnel, claimed that the defendants were joking around , they didn t think it was
serious , they didn t think it was that big a deal . Sure, just a normal afternoon s fun. At Dachau perhaps.

One questions whether family gatherings at the homes of these soldiers turn into a mass orgy, with uncles raping grandmothers, fathers forced to sodomise nephews, mothers forced to suck the genitals of sons. It s all just good fun, goes the defence. Maybe in Belsen.

Another line pursued by the defence team is that the soldiers were not responsible for these acts of torture because they were acting on orders from above. Above? Surely not from the source which gives messages to George W. Bush? Or would it be his friend Rumsfeld? Or Bush himself? Didn t we hear this line of defence at Nuremberg?

Whoever it was, these are not just a handful of cases where soldiers got out of line, possibly while drunk and without supervision. This is not one case or two, nor three or four, nor ten, nor twenty, nor thirty, nor forty, nor fifty. There are no less than 94 (ninety-four) separate incidents being investigated, those that were not covered up.

And the Bush regime is supposed to be an example of good Christians? Forcing human beings to commit acts of depravity on a scale unseen outside Auschwitz or Treblinka or Medieval torture chambers? A deep and sinister evil lurks within the members of this regime and the clique of super-rich neo-conservatives which supports it. Time for regime change. This man stiffed the world.

http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/397/13620_torture.html