Compassionate Force Feeding
There are hunger strikers at Guantanamo. As noted in a front page story in the New York Times 9 February 2006, the Chief Military spokesman at Guantanamo advised that "a restraint system to aid detainee feeding" is in use. Riot control police are used to hold prisoners motionless while long plastic tubes are threaded down their nasal passages into their stomachs. Some detainees advise they have had their feeding tubes inserted or removed violently and bled or fainted as a result. One of their lawyers said "that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves." Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder, said "The objective in any circumstance is to protect and sustain a person's life." Shadow N.S.A. Director Rear Admiral Chilito Numnutz adds, "we here love life more than they do. Perhaps they'll learn a valuable lesson from us. If we have to show them how much we love life while they are strapped into the chair and fed with a tube, then so be it. Doesn't that show just how much we love life?
The Winkenwerder/Numnutz definition of "life" and mine are pretty different.
Life at Guantanamo is nasty and brutish. It involves torture, uncertainty, separation from family, indefinite detention, lack of due process. It involves the annihilation of the detainee's life. Oh but they deserve it, some say. Actually many of them probably deserve it no more than a randomly selected person on an American street deserves to be locked up without charges in brutal conditions on an Island thousands of miles from family on "suspicion" of waging war against the country. Don't get me wrong. Some of the people there are the "right people," but plenty are the wrong ones. Hell, even with due process, the system errs an astounding number of times. In this sub-kangaroo court system, the error rate is phenomenal.
Pentagon documents show that the military has determined that only 45% of the detainees had committed some hostile act against the United States and only 8% were fighters for Al Qaeda.
How about the guy who was deported to Afghanistan by Saudi Arabia, accused of plotting to kill Osama bin Laden, held prisoner by the Taliban, freed by U.S. Soldiers, taken into Custody by the U.S. after exercising our beloved right of free speech at a press conference, imprisoned in Guantanamo, and ultimately determined to not be an enemy combatant. In the meantime, years go by. Real case. Here's what he has to say:
"I am dying here every day, mentally and physically. This is happening to all of us. We have been ignored, locked up in the middle of the ocean for four years. Rather than humiliate myself…I would rather hurry up a process that is going to happen anyway…I would just like to die quietly by myself…I want to make it easy on everyone. I want no feeding, no forced tubes, no ‘help’, no ‘intensive assisted feeding’. This is my legal right."
How about the guy whose crime was being a reporter for al Jazeera. He's had his knee broken, the soles of his feet beaten, been sexually abused, kept in stress positons, terrorized with military dogs, that sort of thing. Interrogators tried to get him to admit that al Jazeera is part of al Qaeda. His humble wishes are to return home to "resume his normal life with his precious family." Sounds like a human being to me. He's been a hunger striker.
Need pictures to convince you these sorts of things really happen? see
Something is wrong if conditions are making human beings such as these wish to end what's left of their lives through starvation. They seek to pull the plug on their tortured bodies and their writhing spirits. The humane response would be to let them die, let them go if there is no proof of crime, or incarcerate them humanely if there is. Why strap them into a chair, shove a tube down their nose, and feed 'em til they shit on themselves to preserve them in a brutal limbo? Ah freedom. Ah democracy. But, why worry about the Gitmo detainees? "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." -- W. Bush. How the hell can somebody hate these freedoms of ours when it must be impossible for them to visualize them existing?
posted by Rory Shock at 12:32 PM
4 Comments:
thanks for writing this mr shock. most people do NOT know or ignore what goes on at gitmo (AND other places). those that DO know say 'they deserve it'. you're also right in that most of those at gitmo ARE NO threat to our country.
how can we as human beings condone this? when our citizens are taken as prisoners and treated like this there is an outcry of 'those savages'! well are WE not savages as well?
thanks rose ... there's a quote out there somewhere about the greatness of a nation being measure by how it treats those who are powerless ... gotta try to find it ... it was said by a "great American" as I recall ... I'll look when I get a chance unless you know off the top of your head .... anyhow ... thanks for the thanks on this tough subject ... part of the problem is this burnout on tough subjects phenomenon that is talked about lately ... I know ... I've burned out on some tough subjects, but we need to learn how to hang in there ... you obviously know how to hang in there and integrate being able to see the fun, beautiful things and not ignore the hideous shit ... when we (as a people) turn away from subjects like Gitmo because they are too unpleasant, we also allow things to get really unpleasant because we can't even think about speaking out if we don't allow ourselves awareness ... anyhoo ... I'm gonna go look for bald eagles later today ... not as a national symbol, just as huge, beautiful birds, who unlike a lot of naked apes pretty much know what to do and when to do it ... who ride the wind, have no prisons, pretty much only kill to eat, and live simply without taking more than they need from nature ... and, Fly tells me, could not give two shits, or even one, that their likeness appears on the almighty dollar, the presidential seal, and a plethora of security guard patches across this continent ...
And I now see that the above post relates to this one ... and the one above that one realates to that one ... with love and peace to all creatures ... Rory
Frightening post here, dude.
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