Letters to the Editor
bloomsbury
Published Letters: 406 Editor's Choice: 5
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Coincidence
[Read the article: Everyone we fight in Iraq is now "al-Qaida"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I read somewhere that Al Qaeda was a name given by the CIA to spies it sent into either Russia or Afghanistan in the 1980's. If it's true it seems like a strange coincidence. I also saw a man who had been released from Guantanamo Bay saying that when he was tortured they only wanted him to confess to one thing - that he was a member of Al Qaeda -which he was not and never had been. Other inmates told him the same thing. It seems obvious why the US doesn't want to release the people still held in Guantanamo Bay: it's well known that they are mostly'low value' people who have, nevertheless, been tortured to make them confess to things that aren't true and who all have damming tales to tell. Strangely it seems that the top Taliban were released from Guantanamo long ago. Something about all of this just doesn't smell right and Glenn Greenwald is the only one to pick up on it. The mainstream media just plays along and never asks the questions most people want them to ask. It all just seems to be some geo-political game. I've believed for some time that the official line on all of this is a sham and that the truth is being buried deeper and deeper by the very people who should be trying to get at the truth.
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The real endgame
[Read the article: "Endgame": A gloomy forecast for the so-called surge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's simple. The Iraq war, the problems in Afghanistan, the fiasco in Gaza, the simmering violence in Lebanon can all be solved tomorrow. All America has to do is drop nuclear bombs on all of them. The radioactive fallout will drift over the entire Middle East including Israel and then on into Europe and then around the world. The geo-political fallout would be incalculable but at least the problem would be solved. I'm joking, of course, but it's absolutely true that short of some medieval genocide there is no military solution to any of it. These are human problems and human grievances and they have to be solved on a human level. I don't think Dick Cheney understands any of this and Bush is as clued up on all of it as a sock puppet. Between them they are destroying any hope of peace and stability in the Middle East for generations to come in a surreal Dr Strangelove scenario. Even more frightening are the people behind them: the ones who don't even show their faces,don't stand for election, have no accountability for any of it. Bush and Cheney richly deserve to be impeached but that won't solve the problem because the star chamber behind them will go unpunished and live to fight another day. On the other hand if they aren't impeached they will do unbelievable damage in the 18 months they still have in power. A nuclear attack on Iran, however mad and unthinkable it might seem is completely possible under their leadership. Defeat hasn't made them careful, it's made them totally reckless, as the 'surge' proves.
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Frankly my dear I don't give a damn
[Read the article: Standards of American justice under George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear anonymous
I'm an Australian and I am furiously angry at your denials of what was done to David Hicks. He was tortured, anally penetrated with objects and subjected to 10 hour beatings. You may live in a state of denial but I don't have that luxury. Your present government is a disgrace and a danger to all of us wherever we live. The whole truth about your government would blow your narrow mind. These people are a bunch of treasonous criminals which is why they have no respect for the Geneva Conventions, constitutional law or any other law and routinely break the law -with impunity, thanks to your useless, on-message media. There are three basic reasons for the moral mess America is now in, Cheney, Cheney and Cheney. He's a one-man Guantanamo.
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Get it right
[Read the article: Standards of American justice under George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear anonymous
My outrage is not fake. I have a masters degree in German and an undergraduate degree with a double major in English literature. I think I know what 'gullible' means in both languages and I am not it. I know exactly what went on in Guantanamo Bay and it's got nothing to do with soap! Unless the torturers may have used it to facilitate rape of the inmates. Furthermore, there is another Australian who was sent to Egypt,by the CIA, with his head in a bag and wearing a diaper. Don't ask. He was subjected to the most horrific tortures but was, like Hicks, fortunate enough to have his story in the Australian media and was eventually released. Your media lies to you all the time. That's what you're used to but just because they don't tell you what's being done to others in your name doesn't mean it's not happening. And by the way, I'm a woman. A very angry woman.