U.S. marines uncover torture cell in Iraq...

... while Dick Durbin yawns:

American marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.

The U.S. military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the assault against insurgents last autumn uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.

One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said that he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.

In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never even seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.

"They kill somebody every day," said Fathil, whose hands were so swollen that he could not open a can of Coca-Cola offered to him by a marine. "They've killed a lot of people." Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.

The routine in the house was regular. Because of the windows, it was always dark inside. Fathil said he was fed once a day, and allowed to use a bathroom as necessary in the back of the house.

When the marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead. The others were emaciated and battered. Fathil had fared the best.

The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.

But Fathil had been hurt badly. Marks from beatings crisscrossed his back, and deep pocks, apparently from electric shock burns, were gouged in his skin.

The shocks, he said, felt "like my soul is being ripped out of my body." But when he would start to scream, and his body would pull up from the shock, they would begin to beat him, he said.

Fathil has been at a marine base since his release on Saturday around noon. His mother still does not know he is alive.

Meanwhile, the Dick Durbin-ites are frothing at the mouth at how horribly Gitmo prisoners are being treated.

I can't help but wonder if they might sing a different tune had they (or one of their loved ones) been treated like Ahmed Isa Fathil was treated.

Idiots.

Comments

[Connie Knighton]

I only know God's heart bleeds for all who suffer, whether in mind or body. He weeps with us when we grieve, and he weeps for us when we hurt others. Who is the victim and who the victimizer? We do not see their faces or know their names. Sometimes they are us. We sometimes take those roles by turns. And if we think we have not sinned (victimized others) then the truth is not in us. Please God, heal my anger.