There’s been a lot of chuckling recently about Dubya’s most recent trip of the tongue. Reports such as this Chicago Tribune story highlight his pathetic attempt to show off a new word when dismissing Amnesty International reports of our abuse of prisoners. Bush described the prisoners who complained about being tortured as “people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble–that means not tell the truth.” Lots of people are chuckling at his seeming so proud of his new vocabulary as he mangles it, but I think people are missing the irony in his choice of words.
While the Bush gang is busy accusing Amnesty International and the prisoners of dissass dissem lying, they must be hoping people aren’t reading the US military’s own report of prisoners tortured to death in Afghanistan, recently described in painful detail by The New York Times.
Particulary disturbing is the story of a taxi driver named Dilawar. He and his passengers were arrested, and in spite of the fact that the interrogators believed that he was an innocent man who had just happened to drive his taxi past an American base at the wrong time, his passengers spent over a year at Guantanamo before being sent home without charges. Dilawar wasn’t so lucky. He was brutally tortured until he died.
In a report, not from some bleeding heart human rights organization, not from a disgruntled prisoner, but from a US Army coroner, Dilawar’s legs were described as “pulpified”. Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse said, “I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.” I’d say it sounds like that was one innocent prisoner that was pretty well “disassembled” by our guards.