Seriously. Dutch soldiers are supposedly bringing democracy and freedom to Afghanistan, but the US military still operates black prisons:
An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time, without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.
The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,†said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.â€
For all of Obama’s rhetoric, his actions so far have been bitterly disappointing. The closure of Guantanamo stranded on America’s refusal to take up responsibility for the prisoners and no other country (save Palau) was willing to help them out. He has made noises about ending the occupation of Iraq but these have not been matched by deeds so far, while the War on Afghanistan has actually be scaled up.
So why are we still enabling this? What is in it for us to have our troops in Afghanistan reaping the fallout of American warcrimes?
We Are The 801
December 2, 2009 at 7:37 pm30,000 soldiers and a Nobel Peace Prize.