WHY FEINSTEIN COMMITTEE MAKES ME FEEL; DIRTY

The news media and internet is lighting up with comments about the Feinstein Committee report. Their conclusion is not that torture was bad but is that we did it. Yes, our “holier than thou” country admitted that we did wrong.  Reading thorough the repetitive paragraphs and listening to the seemingly endless talking heads either praise or condemn the report; it became obvious to me that something was missing from the discussions.

Some time ago I wrote and posted a blog about a comment made by a then recently elected official (House of Representative); HE IS NO LONGER IN CONGRESS. He presented himself as a tough person; we all know the type; the politician that takes and distributes pictures of him or her self with a gun or other weapon or whatever they perceive as a fearsome weapon. As an aside, in the case of Joni Ernst of Iowa, her weapon was a hoe knife of the type used to castrate pigs and “make them squeal”.  The politician I am referring to was involved in battlefield interrogations in Iraq as a military officer. At the time, the CIA was first becoming involved in interrogations that had been the sole province of the military alone. In keeping with his projected persona, he implied he beat them until they told the truth in spite of the gun barrel in had stuck in their mouths. If guilty, he killed them or sent them to a “dark sight, such as Guantanamo Bay prison. I believe he did because the Army discharged him because of his conduct with prisoners.

In addition to his inhumane treatment of prisoners of war, his telling remark that disturbed me—the point missing in the current debate—was that, even if they were not guilty (of what ever he wanted them to be guilty of), “they were Muslims and deserved to be beaten”. This ignorant man didn’t seem to realize the simple truth, he was inflicting his savagery based on religion, on his hate for Muslims. Perhaps, he wasn’t so ignorant. Even to this day, some people across the country hold him up as a hero, and the immediate impact was that people of Florida, some of whom call them selves loving Christians, rewarded ‘toughness” by electing him, which unfortunately reflects on “those” people.  

I sense this sentiment in the rebuttals to the Feinstein Commission Report just as I sense this in the Republican led refusal to close down that atrocious prison in Guantanamo Cuba and put the final touched to our Cheney Bush led shame. Even if they are not guilty of a crime; we, meaning you and I along with them, should leave them to die in prison because they are bad people; they are Muslims. Although, I am glad the committee did and released its work, what they revealed makes me, as an American, feel dirty on multiple accounts.     

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