Shock and Awe...

I'm watching video of last nights CBC News (Canadian Broadcasting Company), and they have a story on Guantanamo Bay. The scary thing was a report by a former soldier named Sean Baker (this was video, the spelling may be incorrect).

According to the story and the interview with him, in 2003, he was assigned to an army unit deployed to be guards at Guantanamo Bay.

He was asked to pose in a cell as a prisoner for a training drill for the "Initial Response Force", a five man team whose job was to forcibly extract prisoners from their cells. He was dragged across the floor, pinned and choked. He reports that when he began to black out from lack of oxygen, he said "Red", which he'd been told was the safe word that would stop the exercise... it didn't.

His head was slammed into the floor, several times. He said "I'm a U.S. soldier", and then had his head slammed into the floor more times. All the while, he was not resisting in the slightest.

This treatment has left him with brain damage and seizures, which resulted in a medical discharge from the army.

But of course, Republicans like Representative Ted Poe insist that there's no torture nor anything untoward going on at Guantanamo Bay, and our Vice President tells us the prisoners are being better treated and are more comfortable than they've ever been in their lives.

Astounding.

Liam.