And, on this somber day, the New York Times informs the world of yet another gruesome reality - the presence of a classified interrogation camp in Iraq where hundreds of detainees were abused and tortured by US military personnel.
As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
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According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.
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The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.
This extensive article is painful to read as we are again reminded of the realities of war and the results of a culture of aggressiveness many still refuse to admit even exists in the US military. The Bush administration likes to call the enemy "barbarians" who have "no regard for human life" yet, when it comes to the atrocities committed by its own military, the minimal sentences these American torturers receive are evidence of a government that tacitly accepts such behaviour within its own ranks.
The fact that it takes groups like the ACLU, which consistently pushes for documents to be released through the Freedom of Information Act, and the work of a handful of reporters who bring these stories forward, to inform the public of what's really going on in this war is proof that the Bush administration prefers its well known secrecy to running a just war - if there can ever be such a thing. If Bush truly believed that he was not responsible for war crimes, he himself would bring these abuses forward and would demand complete public investigations with the harshest penalties for those who perpetuate this kind of barbarity. Instead, he and Rumsfeld do everything they possibly can to hide the realities - proof that they know they are complicit.
When wars drag on without an end in site, it's easy to become immune and desensitized to the horrors. If Americans truly cared about what was happening in Iraq, they'd do more than just expressing their opposition to pollsters. Every single one of them would shout from the rooftops that they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. They would stand up for what's left of their country's extremely tarnished global image and would demand that Bush be impeached. They would not have re-elected Bush in the first place. Party loyalty would be pushed aside as they stood with citizens worldwide who insist that this war end and that all war criminals be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court.
Instead, we witness a predictable apathy that the administration relies on in order to continue its destruction of America as we know it.
What will it take, Americans? What will it take?
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