The Cruelty of G. W. Bush

There’s much information in this lead sentence:

It took US Army interrogators at Guantánamo Bay five years to reach the conclusion that Adel Hassan Hamad was exactly who he claimed to be: a hospital administrator in Pakistan.

What happened next?

On Dec. 11, 2007, they put him back on a military cargo plane, hooded and handcuffed, and sent him back….

What is the released prisoner saying now?

“We don’t want animosity, we just want to respect America again.

“The American conscience and the American people need to return to the great concepts established by the Founding Fathers, of freedom, democracy, equality, and justice.

“All these values and even the justice system are being shaken, played with.”

Are we teaching cruelty?

Scott Baldauf writing for the Christian Science Monitor points to many former inmates of Guantánamo telling stories of torture and abuse that have become so common as to lose their shock value.

[His] treatment was “inhumane”.

Every unimaginable transgression was committed, including beatings and torture.

“We used to look to America as a model for human rights.”

“But now, after 11th September, US policy has given dictatorships in the third world the right to do what they want. Now they use America as a model, and what happens at Guantánamo is the same as what happens in third world prisons.”