Asking the Right Questions
http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/3146.pdf

Attached is a link to an autopsy, apparently obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act. It describes a 47-year-old man who died while hanging from his wrists, a gag stuffed in his mouth. He was beaten to death in Afghanistan while in American custody.

His death is listed as a homicide. That's what the American examiner put on the form, at any rate.

I can anticipate some of the rationales I'd hear if I were debating a Bush apologist. First would come the denials. It's a fake, a forgery. The ACLU is lying.

Then, if it were established that the autopsy were authentic, the justifications. He was a dirty nasty terrorist and he deserved to die horribly, smeared with feces and struggling to breathe through a gag.

Then, if it turns out he was picked up merely on suspicion, that there was no hard evidence he'd been a terrorist at all, would come the rationalizations. He was stupid to have gotten picked up in the first place. Or he probably was doing something they just didn't know about. All those people -- all those Muslims -- are terrorists at heart.

So really, we need to BEGIN with the question -- if, in fact, this autopsy were authentic -- if in fact, the man died precisely as described here, hung up like a piece of meat and beaten to death by American interrogators. If, in fact, the man turned out to be, not a terrorist, but some unfortunate who was simply picked up because somebody didn't like the way he looked --

Would it matter to you?

It's pity, but given what we've become as a country, that's where we have to start.