Friday, February 15, 2008

In Your Name, and Mine


Sami al-Hajj was working as a photographer for the al-Jazeera news service in Afghanistan when the CIA picked him up in December of 2001. Since then he's been stuck in Gitmo, where he's been beaten, starved, frozen, and humiliated by having interrogators search his rectum in front of others.

Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times yesterday is about Sami, and the fact that although he appears to be completely innocent of any crime against the United States, he continues to be tortured by people who are being paid by you and me.

However, I'm not going to link directly with Kristof's column, and will insist instead that you access it through this link and comment by Bernard Chazelle, at Jonathan Schwarz's blog, A Tiny Revolution.

The abominations that have been committed in our names over the past seven years must not go unpunished, and must never be repeated. My biggest regret in connection with these matters, besides the fact that they happened at all, is that Dick Cheney will probably not live long enough after leaving office to ever see the inside of a prison.

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