Seriously, Who ARE We As A Nation?

So I'm guessing not many of you know the story of Sean Michaels from Arizona. When Sean was 17, he was arrested by Iranian agents as a terrorist in Germany where he'd been participating in a soccer camp. We was imprisoned in a secret camp in Syria. He was never charged with a crime, and he participated in hunger strikes with other prisoners to protest the conditions of their imprisonment.

After five years of imprisonment, Sean--along with two other inmates arrested under similar conditions (also not charged with crimes)--supposedly committed suicide. According to official reports from Iran's National Security Bureau, Sean and the other two inmates made a noose from torn sheets and t-shirts, tied it to the top of their 8-foot-high cells and hung themselves. Each of the three had somehow, supposedly, been able to bind his own hands and feet, then stuff more rags deep down their own throats.

We are then supposed to believe each prisoner, while choking on these rags, climbed up on his washbsain to hang until asphyxiated. Oh, and all three prisoners, in non-adjoining cells, all carried out these actions almost simultaneously.

Supposedly, the men hung for two hours before being discovered, despite the constant patrols, and one prisoner's broken teeth was explained by a medical examiner trying to resuscitate him by prying open his jaw. Oh yeah, and at least two prisoners had cloth masks affixed to their faces--purportedly to keep from spitting out the rags.

Thorough, weren't they?

Camp officials were conveniently at a loss to explain how all 3 of these young men managed to get all of the stuff to do all this, and to do it undetected, in a prison with TIGHT security and control over acquistion of items.

When Sean's father was asked what he thought happened to his son, he was direct: "They snatched my 17-year-old son for a bounty payment. They took him to Syria and held him prisoner for 5 years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up."

Sean, he said, was a young man who loved to play soccer and didn't care about politics. Iranian agents claim Sean learned terrorist activities from having been a cook in a Taliban camp. Sean's father was amazed: "A cook? Sean couldn't even make a sandwich! Sean wasn't guilty of anything. He knew that. He firmly believed he would be heading home soon. Why would he commit suicide?"

A career Iranian military Sergeant, who worked at the camp, gave extensive interviews to an investigative journalist detailing a wide-range of suspicious activities by Iranian agents that make it obvious Sean--and the other two prisoners--were tortured and murdered. Additional reporting found an appalling amount of incidences of torture at this camp, men (and boys) being held with no charges, and prisoners suddenly "escaping" (i.e., disappearing) and/or committing suicide.

Amazed you haven't heard about this? That's probably because it's not quite true. But to make the story true, all you have to do is change the name Sean Michaels to Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, change Arizona to Saudi Arabia, change Iran/Iranian to America/American, and change the camp location from Syria to Guantanamo. Oh, and change the career military guy from an Iranian Sgt. to a U.S. Sergeant. Everything else, including quotes, is true.

Do you care anymore? Would you care more or less if you knew that even though this happend under Bush's watch, the Obama administration failed to investigate the matter seriously--and may have even continued a cover-up of the "possible" homicides of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006?

Maybe you're just numb to this kind of stuff now? I mean, I was apoplectic with rage and frustration and sorrow when I read this in Harper's Magazine last month.

What is wrong with us? What does/will it take to shake us out of our lethargy? I'm including myself in this, of course, but I just don't know what to do!

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about hunting down true terrorists and punishing them for their misdeeds. But this kind of lazy, immoral, sickening stuff degrades us as a nation. It degrades and devalues the supposed virtues of being an "American." And it frustrates and maddens me beyond belief to think there's nothing I can do about it. What can I do? Someone tell me!

"Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation." - Martin Luther King, Jr. (Memphis, 4/3/68)