WERE YOU SURPRISED?
The recently exposed actions of torture and barbaric cruelty are no surprise to those who have been paying attention for the past 50 years to the activities of our military and CIA establishment. This large history book authored by the Pentagon in alliance with the U.S. military has often demonstrated ruthless and criminal behavior under the disguise of democracy and freedom.
The Central American and South American chapters of this U.S. taxpayer-funded wrongfulness are enough to make one cry for the rest of their lifetime. Torture, rape, murder, and unfathomable cruelness have been well documented concerning the actions of Latin American soldiers trained by the U.S. military. Thousands in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia (for starters) cannot tell their stories from the grave. Many of the involved soldiers were taught their ways of torture (among other things) here in Georgia, at the School of the Americas (SOA).
In November every year for the past 13 years, thousands of demonstrators protest the SOA at Fort Benning in Columbus, GA. The protest groups are filled with clergy, nuns, students and peace activists. These protesters are treated like second-hand citizens, cordoned off, and patrolled by police in riot gear. Their ranks are infiltrated as if these citizens were terrorists. (see www.soaw.org)
A classmate of mine from St. Pius X High School in Atlanta (class of '68) spent a year in prison for her protest of the murder and the torture propagated and institutionalized by the SOA.
The story is larger than our hemisphere. Chapters are currently being written in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and Venezuela (to name a few). Our government has recently ousted a democratically elected administration in Haiti and replaced the government with criminals. In Venezuela, our government is trying to oust another democratically elected leader. The reasons (in Haiti and Venezuela) are for corporate and business interests, not democracy and freedom.
Corporate interests are more important than democracy to those currently in power.
Remember, the media conglomerates are often consolidated with large military corporations. These corporations are accountable first to their shareholders and marginally, if at all, to U.S. citizens. It is no wonder that our news is incomplete. Additionally, U.S. Congresspersons have become more accountable to large corporate donors and to their political parties than to the citizens. Corporations should not be allowed to give any political contributions.
The military/ Pentagon are the equivalent of a second government. They are marginally accountable to Congress, our legal and justice systems do not apply to their actions, and the citizens who foot their bill are arrested when they protest the wrongs done.
As an accountant, I ask for accountability for the money given down the dark deep hole called the military budget. I want the money back. I want my democracy back.
S. Campbell
Atlanta

YARD SIGN PROJECT
I am asking for your help. This sign is to be placed in front yards and other public locations. Designed to look similar to the ubiquitous biblical "Ten Commandments" yard sign, it includes text from the Geneva Convention as it relates specifically to treatment of prisoners. (The sign may be seen at http://billfisher.dreamhost.com under Bio/ Performances/ Yard Sign Project and Bio/ Imagery, top two thumbnails)
Please contact me at wwfisher@alltel.net or william.fisher@gcsu.edu if you are interested in displaying this sign in your yard or elsewhere, even if only temporarily for purposes of documentation. I will supply stakes, and install/ remove the piece for those of you nearby. You may keep the sign if you desire. Please feel free to encourage others to participate.
As our political leaders and media now focus on the outrage felt over the recent release of images of torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners of war, it appears the "illegal" release of such images may be as repugnant as the actual abuses or their underlying causes.
This may be inferred from the following excerpted testimony by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, Friday, May 7, 2004:
"It's my failure for not understanding and knowing that there were hundreds or however many there are of these [pictures] that could eventually end up in the public and do the damage they've done.
"The photographic depictions of U.S. military personnel that the public has seen have unquestionably offended and outraged everyone in the Department of Defense. If you could have seen the anguished expressions on the faces of those of us in the Department upon seeing the photos, you would know how we feel today.
"We're functioning in a - with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a war-time situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.
"If these [pictures] are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse. That's just a fact. I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe. And if they're sent to some news organization, and taken out of the criminal prosecution channels that they're in, that's where we'll be. And it's not a pretty picture.
"It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don't do it. The words that there were abuses, that it was cruel, that it was inhumane - all of which is true - that it was blatant, you read that and it's one thing. You see the photographs and you get a sense of it and you cannot help but be outraged."
Secretary Rumsfeld was one of the first to object when pictures of American hostages taken by the former Saddam regime were aired on television. He said this was harmful to their dignity and contravened Geneva conventions.
However, according to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it is the U.S. government's position that even if it was torturing and executing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, no court could intercede. The WP editorial page charged Secretary Rumsfeld was to blame for the lack of accountability in prisons: "[Rumsfeld's] Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions [in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay]; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review."
According to Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, there are as yet unaddressed allegations of a separate unit at Abu Ghraib prison reserved for women and children.
As our cause in Iraq is seen by many as morally superior to the cause of those Iraqis opposed to our presence there, the Judeo-Christian influence on our leadership and wartime policies cannot be overlooked.
The purpose of referencing the Ten Commandments in the Yard Sign Project is not to denigrate this ethical document which includes admonitions against killing, but rather to comment on the hypocrisy of displaying such a document or publicly espousing its content while supporting behavior which it specifically prohibits. The substituted text from the Geneva Convention is used to remind ourselves of both our claim to be civilized even in the event of war and our responsibility to the world community and to humanity, and to educate those unfamiliar with these universally accepted proscriptions on the maltreatment of prisoners.
Bill Fisher
Milledgeville