I just watched the entire documentary Torturing Democracy. It is chilling, horrifying, and makes me, as an American trapped in the ugly web of this government's administration for the past 8 years, want to crawl into a hole and hide my face in shame.

      Starting with how planes were sent to fly over Afghanistan, with Psy-Ops personnel dropping leaflets all over the country promising riches to warlords and peasants alike for every Arab turned over to the US government, right through to the hellhole that is Guantanamo and missing no horror along the way, this documentary outlines the deliberate, knowing, coercive steps taken by members of the US government to ensure that the CIA and the military were covered by a "golden blanket" protecting them from national and/or international prosecution with memos and legal opinions cooked up by Cheney's Gang of Five, endorsing illegal and immoral treatment of prisoners in CIA black sites, in Iraqi prisons such as Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo.

      You will see how Cheney's bootlicking toadies used every trick they could conjure to get around the prohibitions against torture contained in the language of both the US military code and the Geneva Convention treaty.

      You will see George Bush stand before the country, blatantly lying, denying the use of torture, pretending to be appalled by what was revealed about Abu Ghraib, all the while knowing that his Defense Secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, had visited Abu Ghraib and approved everything he saw and heard.

      You will see some of the prisoners who suffered the physical torture and psychological indignities telling of their ordeals. You will see an attorney who represents prisoners and also an attorney appointed to prosecute a prisoner, who, after hearing of and witnessing the brutality of Guantanamo, refused to prosecute because he could not in good conscience perpetrate such misery for fraudulent purposes.

      In the end, you will realize the lengths that soulless, conscienceless individuals will go to, see the evil and cruelty they will embrace and perpetrate, to cover their tracks while pursuing an agenda of domination by terror.

      If you believe, as I and many millions of others do, that 9/11 was an inside job, a false-flag series of acts of death & destruction perpetrated by elements in our government, this documentary is especially disturbing when you realize that these criminals were/are psychologically and physically torturing innocent victims to avoid their own guilt.

      When you see the dark machinations concocted by Cheney's Gang of Five, by Rumsfeld, by Alberto Gonzalez, by George W. Bush - who, while not bright enough to plan any of this, gladly went along with the scenario presented to him - then how can you doubt that our government would destroy its own people to serve their dark and secret purposes?

      hope that people from other countries who see the undeniable proof of this administration's deliberate contraventions of the Geneva pact and its own military code will realize that until very recently, the American people had no idea or proof of how far the criminals, sadists and psychopaths in charge of our government would go or had gone in their desperation to "prove" who was responsible for 9/11.

      I hope the world realizes that any American who openly dissents by participating in demonstrations or other legal methods of criticizing this government for its crimes is subject to arrest, to being sequestered without charges just as the victims at Guantanamo and all the unknown CIA black site facilities are held.

      I hope that everyone realizes that Cheney inserted a proviso into a piece of legislation that preemptively forbids any member of this administration being retroactively held responsible for war crimes.

      I hope everyone realizes that no matter what is said publicly, there is no doubt that PBS was threatened with funding cut-offs or perhaps worse if they slotted Torturing Democracy for nationwide broadcast before Bush and Cheney are out of office.

      Most of all, I hope for forgiveness from the people my country my country shamed, my country harmed - some irredeemably - in the name of protecting America from "terrorists," all the while knowing that the true terrorists were in the White House wearing three-piece suits, eating lavish lunches and laughing and joking as they crafted a regime of unspeakable inhumanity.

© 2008 RC deWinter