Do you hear it? No, not the cries of the children or their mothers, both imprisoned for being in the "wrong place, [at the] wrong time." Neither are they the screams of the men, hooded and naked within the irrepressible hell of their sweat-soaked cells, succumbing to a featureless landscape devoid of time and space. And neither is it the din of their families' cries, the gnawing at the souls of those left behind waiting in anxious expectation; a perpetual burning sensation whose silent terror is only surpassed by its unrequited, unsentimental dissolution.
No, the sound is that of the silence that reigns supreme, penetrating our ears and impaling our hearts like a fist-sized chunk of shrapnel.
In case you have not heard, a private contractor whose employees tortured Iraqis held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison has wheedled its way out of that inconvenient detail -- a glitch really -- in which powerful corporations occasionally find themselves publicly entangled: the law.
Engility Holdings Inc. has settled "allegations" of torture and abuse by employees at the most notorious prison for, well, torture and abuse by chucking some its pocket change at its ungrateful victims. (You miserable "hajjis" and "sand niggers," don't you know how valuable our time is and how expensive our services?) To cover up the cries of 71 former Iraqi inmates Engility has tossed a payment of $5.28 million to the victims, a pittance sum that might be considered sufficient if the victim was a single white person in the United States. The unavoidable implication is that Iraqi life is cheap -- expendable really. After all, we did destroy their entire country in order to make sure that our own security is assured; what's 71 more lives?
The cold hard truth is that talk of "allegations" and "settlements" has covered up the complete lack of justice and accountability when it comes to the legacy of U.S. torture during the Iraq War. Evidence is not an issue. The Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. military, and God knows who else has documented ad nauseum these terrible crimes. (These reports are in the public record so feel free to look them up. If you can't find them then contact me and I'll send them to you.)
Not a single one of these private interrogators has been prosecuted. In fact, the courts are still trying to figure out if the private torturers, oops, ahem, I mean interrogators are immune to such proceedings. This shameless barrier to achieving even a modicum of public dialogue and judicial rectification of these crimes is no doubt one of the main reasons that 71 Iraqis are forced to divy amongst themselves the misery sum of $5.28 million.
Aren't you just proud to be an American? I guess this is one of the benefits of using the private sector and relying on those elusive free markets Bush kept telling us about.
"Not a single one of these private interrogators has been prosecuted."
ReplyDelete- That's terrible!