The Torture Question
PBS, October 18
Now available to be viewed online.
You can participate in an online discussion.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/
Commentary and Thoughts
by Your Enchanted Gardener,
Leslie
Last Winter, I spent a lot of time in bed.
I had unbelievable and unceasing pain in my gut.
I could not digest anything hardly. I was losing weight.
I was feeling old. i was feeling isolated and unloved.
I was holding on to feelings that were not healthy
and closing off my heart.
i watched Frontline a lot on PBS and the final season of
Now with Bill Moyers. They do some very radical shows
that are very disturbing. It is a crying shame that they do these
shows in some sense, because I do not think there are that
many people who watch these shows in percentage to all the
people who watch TV.
What is the point of being privy to such truth,
such kind of disturbing and upsetting truth?
When the next election comes, it feels like it is not
going to make a damn bit of difference.
The couch potatoes, including the bed
potatoes like myself, like to turn on a football game now and then
to imagine that somehow we live in a sane world
where violence has some redeeming qualities.
Last night, I made the mistake of turning on Front line. By 10:30 PM,
when the show ended, I was so disturbed I had to call Ariella Shira,
and see if I could talk to somebody about what i had seen.
I felt I needed some very heavy prayers. Ariella Shira is
the place I go when I need that kind of safe prayer ally
She is consistently into ways to project the subtle energies.
I have been feeling a lot of pain and self inflicted torture the
last ten days. Maybe it has something to do with
the Jewish High Holidays when it is natural to look
at our Stuff. I have been holding on to images of wants.
i am taking a fast and letting go of these uncomfortable wants
and desires that were only making me crazy and not helping anyone.
After watching this PBS Frontline show, It became clear why
so many of us sensitive people are feeling bad about nothing
we can really put our finger on. I think our own Tortured mental
feelings, self inflicted, are intensified by our dipping into
a great energy of pain that is now
released on the planet.
We have released as a nation, some very diabolical shadow energies,
the worst that can exist in human nature.
We are, as a nation, inflicting the most
unbelievable pain on others.
I am so sorry for what we are doing and are still doing now.
The PBS show was about Torture and Torture Crimes we have been
committing against the Iraq people, and likely other innocent people.
I heard it said, that if you take an eye for an eye, you end up with
both people being blind.
I am not saying that a lot of innocent lives were not lost in 911.
I am not even saying that I do not believe George Bush has a good side
and good intentions in many ways. I know he is doing his best in
many regards.
However, I also believe there is a dark side to this man.
There is a side to this man who was a Yale student, and a High School student who put firecrackers up frogs butts and blew the hell out of these
amphibians. There is a disregard and disrespect for the Life of other living
things that exists in this man and those who surround him.
I sense that the dark side of this man, and the dark side of our
national psyche got together, the violent, ignorant, and very sad
dark side.
I believe that the torturous activities we have inflicted on many innocent
people in Iraq have unleashed a force of pain and crime in the world
that is equal to what caused the Fall of Rome, or the Crimes the Nazi's
committed against innocent Jewish lives. I know these crimes
are committed everywhere, in many cultures.
We have stooped so low. In our pursuit of seeking information--called intelligence. In our attempts to stop the killing against our own innocent soldiers- we unleashed the most hideous of human activities as we attempted to force many people who hadn't a clue about what we wanted to know, to tell us things we wanted.
This is a time of year when we ask for Forgiveness against
our crimes against others and for our insensitivity.
I am not sure how we can be forgiven for what we have done and
the techniques we have used to degrade other human beings in Iraq.
There are names of prisons that exist in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay
that I have heard, but the crimes committed there have been below
my radar screen until last night.
There are things called the Geneva Rules. These are Rules applied
to Prisoners of War. These are common decencies. We disregarded
common decency in regard to the Iraq people.
The Secretary of Defense--this good friend of George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, took personal interest in taking to the limit the tools that could be used to extract information from human beings, many times information these people did not have to tell.
There have been many, many people gathered up on raids and put in these
prisons in our own frustration. We had no way to stop insurgents from
hurting our innocent soldiers, so we would gather up anyone who
was in the neighborhood over there and put them in our prison, the same
prison where Hussein would collect and torture innocents.
We have equaled and perhaps gone event beyond the torture techniques
of Hussein.
We have allowed MP--Military Police, Interrogators and psychologists
to work together to break down people's ability to withhold information.
We have blindfolded people and then used muzzled German Shepherds, lewd and abusive sexua| activities, horrific crimes of violence, and total disregard for human life to hurt and cause pain to others. We have violated and sought to break down the mind of these people in pursuit of information using
every tool of humiliation we could imagine.
How will they ever forgive us? How will we ever deal with the guilt
and shame that is now a part of the lives of our own youth in the military
who were the instruments of these futile attempts to create a safe
world for democracy? How will any survivors of such treatment
on either side, every go on to live normal lives?
I cannot fathom the cost and the price.
I am so sad for our young kids of in the military. In the age
of digital and video cameras, many of these youth sent materials home
to their loved ones that came into the hands of the PBS documentarians.
These home videos show our own military men doing the equivalent
of Satanic rites, whooping it up. so they could somehow make sense of the horrific conditions of death that we helped co-create. Our own Military youth,
were put in harm's way. They were put in zones of combat where
they have not a clue who the enemy is. They have watched their
brothers and sisters blown to bits and sniper attacked. Then-
exposed to this madness--our own have reciprocated.
Our Leaders such as Rumsfield, our Chief
of Defense, had supported these techniques.
They have unleashed and invented these techniques
of torture that have broken every rule of human decency.
All these are now in the headlines. All this is being looked at now
in Washington and can be see by anyone who happens to make the mistake
of tuning into Frontline in route to the football game.
If you dare, go to PBS.org
you can see the full documentary that was on TV
10/18/05.
So sorry to tell you about this.
We need to personally ask forgiveness
for what our brother and sisters have done.
your eg
Comments:
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:24:18 -0700
To: Jesse Schwartz
Subject: Re: [GrapevineSanDiego] Crimes of Torture: Can we be forgiven? Commentary by Leslie Goldman, Your Enchanted Gardener
From:
Thank you for standing up for what is right
Good to hear from you Jesse.
Thanks for reading my thoughts. it feels a bit better
when we all connect.
Your friend,
Leslie
on 10/19/05 11:14 PM, Jesse Schwartz at jesse@livingtreecommunity.com wrote:
Leslie
Thank you for speaking out.How demeaned
and degraded we have become.And for what?
Jesse
Thank you for standing up for what is right