It seems like the old movie was prophetic. It seems like with just a match, America will light up in a great ball of rage. So many people I know are just boiling over with it. So when are we all going to stick our heads out our windows, or run out into the street and say what is on all our minds? “I’m mad as Hell!!! And I’m not going to take it anymore!!!”
What’s stopping us? I think one of the problems is that there are so many things to be so mad as Hell about. The administration of Bush, Jr. has conducted an all-out onslaught against every virtue we Americans hold dear.
We all believe we are charged to be stewards of this earth. But this administration has laid bare our forests, our public lands, our rivers and the very air we breathe to rapine by the worst polluters. We hold human liberty to be self-evident. But this administration has deprived not just foreign people but American citizens nabbed on American soil of the most basic human rights. We believe that all Americans should have a decent chance in life, starting with education. But this administration has raided the entitlements that we all pay for to give obscene benefits to the wealthiest American citizens, both individual and corporate.
Even our language is under assault - the Clear Skies Act, the Healthy Forests Act... my God, the PATRIOT ACT... Truth, it seems, is not to be found anywhere. So where do we start? How do we get over the despair we all feel? After all - it appears that we voted for this administration at least once... And that after we had every opportunity to understand just how bad these people really are.
We need to start somewhere. So, start here. Pick a card - any card. Or actually, let’s make a pack. There must be at least 52 great egregious lies the Bush, Jr. administration has told. Let’s make a card game out of it and sell it. I’m sure we can find a printer - and I have no doubt we could find financial backing.
It would be a kinetic way to express our anger and the profit generated could help do something to bring the liars to justice. Just add a comment and list as many horrible lies of this administration that you can think of. Put some sort of order to it so we can sort them deuce to ace, and by house: Diamonds, Shovels, Clubs, and Crosses. It’s important that the pack reflect the Bush, Jr. administration - it should be utterly heartless.
I’m sure lots of people will buy the Bush Jr. Pack of Lies.
After all, lots of people already have.
rbs
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Politics of Jesus
It’s been a busy week with a new job, several gigs, and work on a lot of new material so I can start gigging on week nights playing solo classical guitar and Celtic harp. I also wanted to leave the last two articles hanging. It looks like no one bit at either. I’m going to have to back up and re-examine my methods. I want to get other people as upset and riled about our prison at Guantanamo Bay as I am. I don’t see any evidence of that yet.
My book for April is “The Politics of Jesus” by Dr. Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. I am about halfway through it. I will post a book report when I finish it. I can say that it is a revolutionary work particularly suited to my sensibilities. I have never been impressed by the Christian mysteries any more than those of any other religion. I have always taken a very empirical approach to metaphysics.
Obery bypasses the mysteries to focus on the political strategies and tactics of Jesus. He maintains that Christianity took a wrong turn at Constantine and as a result, many Christians do not see Jesus for the political activist he was executed for being. Obery analyses the Regan and Bush, Jr. presidencies by these values with particular attention to the impact of their policies on the poor. I’m in the midst of the chapter on the current President. More soon.
rbs
My book for April is “The Politics of Jesus” by Dr. Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. I am about halfway through it. I will post a book report when I finish it. I can say that it is a revolutionary work particularly suited to my sensibilities. I have never been impressed by the Christian mysteries any more than those of any other religion. I have always taken a very empirical approach to metaphysics.
Obery bypasses the mysteries to focus on the political strategies and tactics of Jesus. He maintains that Christianity took a wrong turn at Constantine and as a result, many Christians do not see Jesus for the political activist he was executed for being. Obery analyses the Regan and Bush, Jr. presidencies by these values with particular attention to the impact of their policies on the poor. I’m in the midst of the chapter on the current President. More soon.
rbs
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Uses of Torture
I should contain my anger and try to provide more information and analysis and a little less spleen. So I did a little research. My site references are at the end of this article.
The rationale behind President Bush’s authorization of “moderate pressure interrogation techniques” such as “water-boarding” is that we have to get as much information as possible from these people about threats to the security of the US and US assets worldwide.
Torture is torture - no matter the technique. Whether you chain a prisoner in a fetal position for days until his muscles cramp painfully or you use a whip to tear his flesh, the psychology of dehumanization, physical pain, and long-term damage inflicted by the State is pretty much unchanged. The results for the State are pretty much the same, as are the psychological effects on the prisoner. The only real difference is how long it takes to torture the prisoner to death.
But centuries of human experience and direct research has proven that torture is pretty much useless for the purposes of interrogation. Nazi doctors carefully documented the results of torture on controlled subjects and found exactly what the Holy Inquisition had revealed a few hundred years earlier. Under torture, a person will say anything he thinks his torturer wants to hear - anything to get the torture to stop.
Torture is, however, extremely effective for obtaining false confessions and for terrorizing populations into submission. For this to be most effective, torture victims should be psychologically reduced to supporting their torturer before they are returned to their communities. People who knew them should see a dramatic difference. There needs to be a random element to torture - people who are not obviously subversive should be tormented while some actual subversives (the loud and ineffective kind) go unscathed. It has to be a long term project to have real effect and it must be undergirded by a real threat of pervasive and almost omniscient surveillance of every moment of the life of every citizen.
George Orwell’s 1984 is a superb fictional exploration of this kind of society - so much so that the author’s name has become synonymous with the tactics and strategies of maintaining such a society and particularly with the use of language to conceal or whitewash the State’s actions and intentions. The Bush administration has been accused of “Orwellian” language. “Detainees” is one of dozens of examples. It evokes the image of passengers at an airport who have to wait for a few hours for their flight to arrive.
The Guantanamo Bay “detainees” have been waiting for years in isolated cells, sleep-deprived, removed from all human contact even with the people who feed them, chained, tortured by water and by temperature and subjected to sensory deprivation. Under this duress, even the strongest and most devout will eventually crack up. Whenever they are returned to their homes, they will be broken people - a compelling example of what happens to poor people when they even think about defying or just grumbling about the US. Isn’t that the point?
If not, then just what are we doing with the “detainees” in Guantanamo Bay? It cannot be justice. If it were justice, we would put them on trial. It cannot be information. If it were information, we would be using proven interrogation techniques of befriending these prisoners, making them believe we are sympathetic to their concerns and gaining their trust. They might not live in comfort, but we would not be seeing FBI reports detailing, and indeed Presidential memorandums authorizing torture (whatever Orwellian linguistic guise it is couched in).
Logically, therefore, we must be in the business of terrorizing large populations of poor people in the developing world into subjugation to American rule (or rule by American proxies). If so, perhaps the War on Terror should be renamed the War OF Terror. Below are websites with more information about the history of torture. Don’t take my word about the Nazi experiments and the Inquisition - or about the current status of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. I will gladly provide documents about their treatment - indeed I have posted some of these in the comments on my previous two posts. Look it up. Here are some websites you can start with:
http://lawofwar.org/Torture_Memos_analysis.htm
Memoranda regarding treatment of Afghan prisoners of war
This article contains links to complete texts of the memoranda analyzed within. It’s a good starting point because it summarizes the history of the legal briefs that undergird the Bush administration’s use of torture on prisoners both at Guantanamo Bay and by extension in the various secret American prisons world-wide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
A good starting place for information about the history of the US Guantanamo Bay facility. Everything I have been saying about the FBI documents is actually in this article. Wikipedia has identified this site as needing additional references and that there may be both unsupported assertions and possibly emotionally loaded language in this entry. But the entry does contain a lot of references and the details appear to coincide with the information I received from Brent Mickum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Torture
International definitions and prohibitions against State sponsored torture
This article is a great starting point. It contains articles about ethical arguments for torture, historical uses, the Nazi experimentation and a lot of links to related articles. While Wikipedia is never a definitive source for anything, since it is user-driven and user-created, it is a great resource for finding more definitive sources.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/
Amnesty International USA. At the top right of this page, select Torture from the drop-down menu under “What’s Going On Where”. As of this posting, that will take you directly to a menu that starts with Guantanamo Bay - a pressing issue for Amnesty International. There are ways to get involved. I am investigating them and I am determined to go further in my political advocacy.
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr276/stone.htm
Analysis of George Orwell’s increasingly prophetic book 1984. I recommend you scroll down and read the segment on Newspeak.
And of course, there are the documents that were provided to me from the law firm of Spriggs and Hollingsworth in Washington DC. I will send these to anyone who asks for them. Please take just one small step and get involved. E-mail this blog to someone. Write a letter to your Congressional delegation. Give some money to Amnesty International. Start a blog. Comment on this one to let other readers know they are not the only readers. Send Brent Mickum a supportive e-mail for his work defending the prisoners (bmickum@spriggs.com). No hero is going to stop this. It will take several voices to make a change. Even the smallest action you take will help.
rbs
The rationale behind President Bush’s authorization of “moderate pressure interrogation techniques” such as “water-boarding” is that we have to get as much information as possible from these people about threats to the security of the US and US assets worldwide.
Torture is torture - no matter the technique. Whether you chain a prisoner in a fetal position for days until his muscles cramp painfully or you use a whip to tear his flesh, the psychology of dehumanization, physical pain, and long-term damage inflicted by the State is pretty much unchanged. The results for the State are pretty much the same, as are the psychological effects on the prisoner. The only real difference is how long it takes to torture the prisoner to death.
But centuries of human experience and direct research has proven that torture is pretty much useless for the purposes of interrogation. Nazi doctors carefully documented the results of torture on controlled subjects and found exactly what the Holy Inquisition had revealed a few hundred years earlier. Under torture, a person will say anything he thinks his torturer wants to hear - anything to get the torture to stop.
Torture is, however, extremely effective for obtaining false confessions and for terrorizing populations into submission. For this to be most effective, torture victims should be psychologically reduced to supporting their torturer before they are returned to their communities. People who knew them should see a dramatic difference. There needs to be a random element to torture - people who are not obviously subversive should be tormented while some actual subversives (the loud and ineffective kind) go unscathed. It has to be a long term project to have real effect and it must be undergirded by a real threat of pervasive and almost omniscient surveillance of every moment of the life of every citizen.
George Orwell’s 1984 is a superb fictional exploration of this kind of society - so much so that the author’s name has become synonymous with the tactics and strategies of maintaining such a society and particularly with the use of language to conceal or whitewash the State’s actions and intentions. The Bush administration has been accused of “Orwellian” language. “Detainees” is one of dozens of examples. It evokes the image of passengers at an airport who have to wait for a few hours for their flight to arrive.
The Guantanamo Bay “detainees” have been waiting for years in isolated cells, sleep-deprived, removed from all human contact even with the people who feed them, chained, tortured by water and by temperature and subjected to sensory deprivation. Under this duress, even the strongest and most devout will eventually crack up. Whenever they are returned to their homes, they will be broken people - a compelling example of what happens to poor people when they even think about defying or just grumbling about the US. Isn’t that the point?
If not, then just what are we doing with the “detainees” in Guantanamo Bay? It cannot be justice. If it were justice, we would put them on trial. It cannot be information. If it were information, we would be using proven interrogation techniques of befriending these prisoners, making them believe we are sympathetic to their concerns and gaining their trust. They might not live in comfort, but we would not be seeing FBI reports detailing, and indeed Presidential memorandums authorizing torture (whatever Orwellian linguistic guise it is couched in).
Logically, therefore, we must be in the business of terrorizing large populations of poor people in the developing world into subjugation to American rule (or rule by American proxies). If so, perhaps the War on Terror should be renamed the War OF Terror. Below are websites with more information about the history of torture. Don’t take my word about the Nazi experiments and the Inquisition - or about the current status of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. I will gladly provide documents about their treatment - indeed I have posted some of these in the comments on my previous two posts. Look it up. Here are some websites you can start with:
http://lawofwar.org/Torture_Memos_analysis.htm
Memoranda regarding treatment of Afghan prisoners of war
This article contains links to complete texts of the memoranda analyzed within. It’s a good starting point because it summarizes the history of the legal briefs that undergird the Bush administration’s use of torture on prisoners both at Guantanamo Bay and by extension in the various secret American prisons world-wide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
A good starting place for information about the history of the US Guantanamo Bay facility. Everything I have been saying about the FBI documents is actually in this article. Wikipedia has identified this site as needing additional references and that there may be both unsupported assertions and possibly emotionally loaded language in this entry. But the entry does contain a lot of references and the details appear to coincide with the information I received from Brent Mickum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Torture
International definitions and prohibitions against State sponsored torture
This article is a great starting point. It contains articles about ethical arguments for torture, historical uses, the Nazi experimentation and a lot of links to related articles. While Wikipedia is never a definitive source for anything, since it is user-driven and user-created, it is a great resource for finding more definitive sources.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/
Amnesty International USA. At the top right of this page, select Torture from the drop-down menu under “What’s Going On Where”. As of this posting, that will take you directly to a menu that starts with Guantanamo Bay - a pressing issue for Amnesty International. There are ways to get involved. I am investigating them and I am determined to go further in my political advocacy.
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr276/stone.htm
Analysis of George Orwell’s increasingly prophetic book 1984. I recommend you scroll down and read the segment on Newspeak.
And of course, there are the documents that were provided to me from the law firm of Spriggs and Hollingsworth in Washington DC. I will send these to anyone who asks for them. Please take just one small step and get involved. E-mail this blog to someone. Write a letter to your Congressional delegation. Give some money to Amnesty International. Start a blog. Comment on this one to let other readers know they are not the only readers. Send Brent Mickum a supportive e-mail for his work defending the prisoners (bmickum@spriggs.com). No hero is going to stop this. It will take several voices to make a change. Even the smallest action you take will help.
rbs
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Storm the Gates
I have sent letters to my Senators and Representative. I am still working to develop contacts within the Richardson campaign. I think we would be well served if he and the other so-called “second tier” Democratic Presidential hopefuls were to storm the gates of Guantanamo Bay. Because they are in Congress, Congressman Kucinich and Senator Biden have standing to inspect the prison and interview the prisoners.
Where today is our General Eisenhower? When Ike saw the horror of the Nazi death camps, he ordered that every American soldier and every German citizen be marched through them so that any denial of the Holocaust would have to contradict the actual experience of a million eyewitnesses. Many of our soldiers and many of the German citizens suffered nightmares for the rest of their lives about what they saw. It was an enormous human cost - so very small in comparison to the inhuman suffering caused by the Nazi horror.
The American horror is now spread around the world and we are, each and every one of us, entirely responsible for it. The Bush administration and those directly involved with the operation of Guantanamo Bay - the shining flagship of American torture camps worldwide - have not only the blood of their victims on their hands, but the sludge and tar with which they have defiled all of us, our flag, our Constitution, our immortal souls. They have made us all torturers - each and every one of us. Because we are the government, we are guilty by our acquiescence. When the gates of Guantanamo are finally thrown down, it is we who should be compelled to march through and look in horror upon what we have condoned.
And for speaking out against this horror, I harbor at least in the back of my mind, the fear of the knock on the door at night. It isn’t paranoia. It’s the Patriot Act. An American government that captures foreign citizens and tortures them for years on end without ever charging them or giving them a fair and public hearing, can just as easily do that to American citizens. Indeed, each of us may, under the Military Commissions Act, be declared an unlawful enemy combatant and be shipped off to a torture camp.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself... if Blackwater mercenaries took you off the street tomorrow and declared you an “unlawful enemy combatant”, who would come to your rescue? We are no longer innocent until proven guilty. By these unconstitutional acts of the last Congress, signed into unconstitutional law by President Bush and unchallenged (indeed because of deft bureaucratic tactics, nearly unchallengeable) in court, we are now only innocent until we are accused. In such times, how would a Patriot act?
We Americans have been dilatory. We have be craven. We have been cowards to allow our government to do this. But I cannot go and storm the gates. I must ask those who hope to lead us to do so on my behalf. Alone, my voice will probably not convince them to do so. So I ask you to write your Congressional delegation and I ask you to write to hopefuls Richardson, Kucinich, Biden, and Gravel to storm the gates of America’s torture camps. Free the innocent. If there is any way left now to prosecute any prisoners who can reasonably be indicted - then by all means, let us fairly indict and fairly prosecute them.
But I fear we have gone to far and the torture we have visited upon those we hold who truly are guilty and dangerous to us, puts them beyond the reach of American Justice. They have already been subjected to too much American Injustice and for that cruel and unusual punishment, we probably have no choice but to set them free and only hope to watch them carefully enough to prevent any mischief they may try to start against us.
I asked how would a Patriot act. I am appending more transcription of the documents I received from Brent Mickum to show you exactly how a Military Commission acts. You can read it in the comments appended to this post.
Do I sound angry? If so, it is because I am angry at myself for not doing more and for not speaking out sooner. My true emotion is horror. This American nightmare has to end. We have become that which our greatest generation fought and died to defeat. Raise the alarm! America needs to wake up!
rbs
Where today is our General Eisenhower? When Ike saw the horror of the Nazi death camps, he ordered that every American soldier and every German citizen be marched through them so that any denial of the Holocaust would have to contradict the actual experience of a million eyewitnesses. Many of our soldiers and many of the German citizens suffered nightmares for the rest of their lives about what they saw. It was an enormous human cost - so very small in comparison to the inhuman suffering caused by the Nazi horror.
The American horror is now spread around the world and we are, each and every one of us, entirely responsible for it. The Bush administration and those directly involved with the operation of Guantanamo Bay - the shining flagship of American torture camps worldwide - have not only the blood of their victims on their hands, but the sludge and tar with which they have defiled all of us, our flag, our Constitution, our immortal souls. They have made us all torturers - each and every one of us. Because we are the government, we are guilty by our acquiescence. When the gates of Guantanamo are finally thrown down, it is we who should be compelled to march through and look in horror upon what we have condoned.
And for speaking out against this horror, I harbor at least in the back of my mind, the fear of the knock on the door at night. It isn’t paranoia. It’s the Patriot Act. An American government that captures foreign citizens and tortures them for years on end without ever charging them or giving them a fair and public hearing, can just as easily do that to American citizens. Indeed, each of us may, under the Military Commissions Act, be declared an unlawful enemy combatant and be shipped off to a torture camp.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself... if Blackwater mercenaries took you off the street tomorrow and declared you an “unlawful enemy combatant”, who would come to your rescue? We are no longer innocent until proven guilty. By these unconstitutional acts of the last Congress, signed into unconstitutional law by President Bush and unchallenged (indeed because of deft bureaucratic tactics, nearly unchallengeable) in court, we are now only innocent until we are accused. In such times, how would a Patriot act?
We Americans have been dilatory. We have be craven. We have been cowards to allow our government to do this. But I cannot go and storm the gates. I must ask those who hope to lead us to do so on my behalf. Alone, my voice will probably not convince them to do so. So I ask you to write your Congressional delegation and I ask you to write to hopefuls Richardson, Kucinich, Biden, and Gravel to storm the gates of America’s torture camps. Free the innocent. If there is any way left now to prosecute any prisoners who can reasonably be indicted - then by all means, let us fairly indict and fairly prosecute them.
But I fear we have gone to far and the torture we have visited upon those we hold who truly are guilty and dangerous to us, puts them beyond the reach of American Justice. They have already been subjected to too much American Injustice and for that cruel and unusual punishment, we probably have no choice but to set them free and only hope to watch them carefully enough to prevent any mischief they may try to start against us.
I asked how would a Patriot act. I am appending more transcription of the documents I received from Brent Mickum to show you exactly how a Military Commission acts. You can read it in the comments appended to this post.
Do I sound angry? If so, it is because I am angry at myself for not doing more and for not speaking out sooner. My true emotion is horror. This American nightmare has to end. We have become that which our greatest generation fought and died to defeat. Raise the alarm! America needs to wake up!
rbs
Monday, April 9, 2007
Letter to Congress
I am sending the following letter to my Representative in Congress. I will send similar letters to my Senators Lugar and Bayh. I am still working to develop contacts close enough to Governor Bill Richardson that I can send this information to him with some realistic hope that he will bring it into the political conversation. I don't know if it will be politically useful for him in his bid for the Democratic nomination - but I hope he can put it to good use.
I will append in the comments some of the text from the FBI reports and later from the Seton Hall documents. Simply put, this is an unbelievable outrage and if we are to maintain even the slightest pretense of civilization, not to mention virtue or moral courage, we must put a stop to this. My letter to Representative Carson follows. I will drop it in the mail tomorrow morning.
Honorable Julia Carson, Member of Congress
Julia M. Carson Government Center
300 East Fall Creek Pkwy N Dr, #300
Indianapolis IN 46205
Dear Representative Carson:
I am deeply concerned about the treatment of foreign prisoners in our custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other places around the world. While watching CSPAN, I saw a lawyer who represented some of these prisoners reading from a released FBI document that described the torture of these prisoners witnessed by an FBI field agent.
If our government can treat any humans in this way, it is only a heartbeat away from using torture on our own citizens. When I heard of people from foreign countries chained in a fetal position, soaked in their own urine and subjected to loud rap music and extreme temperatures for hours, I was deeply sickened to think that my government could do this. There is simply no justification or excuse for this kind of barbarity.
I am sending you a few of these documents. Your staff can obtain these and more from the defense team at Spriggs and Hollingsworth, law partners in Washington DC, and thereby feel more comfortable about their authenticity. The lawyer I received these from is George Brent Mickum, IV, Partner (bmickum@spriggs.com).
Everyone else in the world knows we are doing this. There is no denying it. Our own FBI agents are writing about it in official documents. This is an outrage that no Christian people can tolerate. Please do something.
Thank you for your long and outstanding service to the people of Indiana and the United States.
rbs
I will append in the comments some of the text from the FBI reports and later from the Seton Hall documents. Simply put, this is an unbelievable outrage and if we are to maintain even the slightest pretense of civilization, not to mention virtue or moral courage, we must put a stop to this. My letter to Representative Carson follows. I will drop it in the mail tomorrow morning.
Honorable Julia Carson, Member of Congress
Julia M. Carson Government Center
300 East Fall Creek Pkwy N Dr, #300
Indianapolis IN 46205
Dear Representative Carson:
I am deeply concerned about the treatment of foreign prisoners in our custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other places around the world. While watching CSPAN, I saw a lawyer who represented some of these prisoners reading from a released FBI document that described the torture of these prisoners witnessed by an FBI field agent.
If our government can treat any humans in this way, it is only a heartbeat away from using torture on our own citizens. When I heard of people from foreign countries chained in a fetal position, soaked in their own urine and subjected to loud rap music and extreme temperatures for hours, I was deeply sickened to think that my government could do this. There is simply no justification or excuse for this kind of barbarity.
I am sending you a few of these documents. Your staff can obtain these and more from the defense team at Spriggs and Hollingsworth, law partners in Washington DC, and thereby feel more comfortable about their authenticity. The lawyer I received these from is George Brent Mickum, IV, Partner (bmickum@spriggs.com).
Everyone else in the world knows we are doing this. There is no denying it. Our own FBI agents are writing about it in official documents. This is an outrage that no Christian people can tolerate. Please do something.
Thank you for your long and outstanding service to the people of Indiana and the United States.
rbs
Friday, April 6, 2007
GTMO
I am presenting the following correspondence verbatim for several reasons. First, I have long been concerned about the treatment of our prisoners at Guantanamo. While watching CSPAN, I heard a lawyer explain the conditions our government is subjecting these people to. I was horrified - far more so because it wasn’t just his word. He was reading from an official report by an FBI field agent. This released government document described in dry detail conditions that can only be described as torture.
So I looked up that lawyer on the CSPAN website and sent him an e-mail requesting .pdf copies of these government documents. Within hours, I received a large number of documents. It will take me a few days to read them and I am not yet certain how I will display them. But I want you to see this. Nothing makes the horror of our failure as citizens so chilling as government documents dryly detailing torture of prisoners, several of whom are guilty only by association.
(If you want a copy of the documents Brent Mickum sent me, please contact me by e-mail and I will gladly forward them to you.)
I can only express my admiration for Mr. Mickum and his law firm, Spriggs & Hollingsworth (Washington DC), for discharging their responsibility as citizens to address this wrong. In a future blog entry, I will discuss the awful implications of our treatment of these prisoners. These are not the actions of a free nation. These are not the actions of a true democracy. These are by no means the actions of any nation that aspires to Christian virtues.
Here is the conversation between myself and Brent Mickum. It is instructive both for the story that he tells and for how easy it is to reach out to people like him and spread the word. It is the very least we can do as citizens.
RBS wrote> Dear Mr. Mickum:
Thank you for your work with the Guantanamo prisoners and for your appearance on CSPAN explaining your experiences.
In your appearance, you referred to a number of government documents that have been released - in particular, an FBI report detailing what a field agent saw of the treatment of the prisoners.
Can you make .pdf of these documents available? I would like to link to them or post them on my blog. I think it's critical for the American people to understand what is being done in our name. I don't have a big readership yet, but I'm working on it.
Thanks again and keep up the good work!
Robert Bruce Scott
Brent Mickum wrote> Thanks for your kind note. I must say, in the early days, I used to receive a great deal of hate mail. Not so much these days. Nevertheless, I'm always shocked that there are people who are totally unwilling even to consider that any of the 800 prisoners might be innocent. Is the Bush Administration's record on credibility so great that we should take their word for it? My opinion is that the record is pretty poor. That leads me to a sad conclusion that some of these folks are directing their hate at the prisoners, in a fashion similar to what we saw in the South in the 1900s.
Anyway, thank you again. Folks like you make me feel that I'm doing the right thing after all. Please write to your congress men and women and senators if you feel strongly.
Attached are the documents you requested. In another message, I'll post you some reports. Please forward them along as I believe that the more people know, the more they will make their voices heard.
Regards,
Brent
RBS wrote> Thank you very much for these documents. It will probably take me a few days to make my way through them and longer to figure out how to post them in such a way that they are easily accessible. Until then, I will let people know that I have them and will e-mail them on request.
I was very encouraged by your work and your law firm's willingness to spend the money and take the business risk to do this work. Your partners should be congratulated as well for supporting your work. Rest assured that I will write my Congressman, Julia Carson, my Senators Richard Lugar and Evan Bayh and encourage my readers to write their representatives as well to highlight and support your work.
I am volunteering for the Bill Richardson campaign and I will forward these materials to his campaign as well. I have a lot of faith in his commitment to human rights and I hope he will bring the issue into general discussion.
Thanks again - and please keep me on your mailing list. I will do what I can to spread the word.
rbs
Brent Mickum wrote> Send your congress persons a few pages from the FBI documents and perhaps copies of the executive summaries from the Seton Hall reports.
I have no objection to you giving out my name if folks want copies of documents. Frankly, the internet is one of the best ways of getting the word out. We on the Defense Team are shocked that more of the country is not aware of what is going on. The rest of the world is.
Thanks again,
Brent
So I looked up that lawyer on the CSPAN website and sent him an e-mail requesting .pdf copies of these government documents. Within hours, I received a large number of documents. It will take me a few days to read them and I am not yet certain how I will display them. But I want you to see this. Nothing makes the horror of our failure as citizens so chilling as government documents dryly detailing torture of prisoners, several of whom are guilty only by association.
(If you want a copy of the documents Brent Mickum sent me, please contact me by e-mail and I will gladly forward them to you.)
I can only express my admiration for Mr. Mickum and his law firm, Spriggs & Hollingsworth (Washington DC), for discharging their responsibility as citizens to address this wrong. In a future blog entry, I will discuss the awful implications of our treatment of these prisoners. These are not the actions of a free nation. These are not the actions of a true democracy. These are by no means the actions of any nation that aspires to Christian virtues.
Here is the conversation between myself and Brent Mickum. It is instructive both for the story that he tells and for how easy it is to reach out to people like him and spread the word. It is the very least we can do as citizens.
RBS wrote> Dear Mr. Mickum:
Thank you for your work with the Guantanamo prisoners and for your appearance on CSPAN explaining your experiences.
In your appearance, you referred to a number of government documents that have been released - in particular, an FBI report detailing what a field agent saw of the treatment of the prisoners.
Can you make .pdf of these documents available? I would like to link to them or post them on my blog. I think it's critical for the American people to understand what is being done in our name. I don't have a big readership yet, but I'm working on it.
Thanks again and keep up the good work!
Robert Bruce Scott
Brent Mickum wrote> Thanks for your kind note. I must say, in the early days, I used to receive a great deal of hate mail. Not so much these days. Nevertheless, I'm always shocked that there are people who are totally unwilling even to consider that any of the 800 prisoners might be innocent. Is the Bush Administration's record on credibility so great that we should take their word for it? My opinion is that the record is pretty poor. That leads me to a sad conclusion that some of these folks are directing their hate at the prisoners, in a fashion similar to what we saw in the South in the 1900s.
Anyway, thank you again. Folks like you make me feel that I'm doing the right thing after all. Please write to your congress men and women and senators if you feel strongly.
Attached are the documents you requested. In another message, I'll post you some reports. Please forward them along as I believe that the more people know, the more they will make their voices heard.
Regards,
Brent
RBS wrote> Thank you very much for these documents. It will probably take me a few days to make my way through them and longer to figure out how to post them in such a way that they are easily accessible. Until then, I will let people know that I have them and will e-mail them on request.
I was very encouraged by your work and your law firm's willingness to spend the money and take the business risk to do this work. Your partners should be congratulated as well for supporting your work. Rest assured that I will write my Congressman, Julia Carson, my Senators Richard Lugar and Evan Bayh and encourage my readers to write their representatives as well to highlight and support your work.
I am volunteering for the Bill Richardson campaign and I will forward these materials to his campaign as well. I have a lot of faith in his commitment to human rights and I hope he will bring the issue into general discussion.
Thanks again - and please keep me on your mailing list. I will do what I can to spread the word.
rbs
Brent Mickum wrote> Send your congress persons a few pages from the FBI documents and perhaps copies of the executive summaries from the Seton Hall reports.
I have no objection to you giving out my name if folks want copies of documents. Frankly, the internet is one of the best ways of getting the word out. We on the Defense Team are shocked that more of the country is not aware of what is going on. The rest of the world is.
Thanks again,
Brent
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