guilty till proven innocent........or the American non-justice system

One day, you son doesn`t come home from school.
One day, the kid who sits a couple of rows behind you, his chair......its empty. He never shows up again.

Nobody knows why.

Imagine your best friend, he lives right next door. One day you go over to his house, to find his mom in tears.

Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what happened, how it happened, why it happened.

You go to school. You do your homework, you go to basketball practice. You take your tests. Summer holidays. You visit relatives. You spend alot of your days in front of the tv, playing playstation. You get presents for your birthday. School starts again. The chair still remains empty. His bed at home remains untouched by a warm breathing body......peaceful in sleep. Mulitply that by a thousand years.

Lock yourself in a room. It doesn´t even have to be a windowless concrete-floored-walled place. . Just lock yourself in your own room. For a day. No cheating though. No radio, no tv, no phone, no playstation, no ipod. Try that for just one single day.

imagine you find out, you the mother, the friend, the teacher - after months and months that that boy - that 14-year old boy - has been languishing in a prison, far far away. Like thousands of miles away far. And you don´t even know why. You don´t know what he has done, nobody tells you anything. You suffer every single minute of every single day - imagining the worst. And you find out it worse than worse - your son, your friend, the kid from down the street -
That boy has been there - wherever that place is - for 7 years. He is now a grown man. He doesn´t know why he has been there all this time.
He has been tortured. And that when not being tortured, he was and to this day still remains in solitary confinement. Alone. And he is most likely an innocent victim. In fact, most of the "evidence" proves more toward innocence than any kind of guilt even remotely linked to any sort of "terrorist activity". He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and was caught in a big-holed net someone had cast, you know, because, uh, err.....he might possibly maybe be a terrorist. Hell, he looks like one. That means, he probably IS one.

Its a true story.
The boy - grown up into a man - amidst the most atrocious condidtions - is still there.

Whats that place called?
Quantanamo Bay
Who´s idea was it to open up this place?


Now, tell me - Mr. President - how are we supposed to look forward again? I mean, is everyone supposed to forget what most can´t even fathom? And that those that are responsible will not be held accountable? How does this fit into the lofty message the United States of America sends every single day to all the world? freedom and justice for all?


Please listen to the interview with former prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay Army Lt. Colonel Darrell Vandeveld. He chose to resign and speak out. The interview can be heard on the Rachel Maddow show from January 30th, 2009. Available on itunes.