Some US Exports Are Booming

While US manufacturing exports are not much to speak of, there is one product (or "service" if your prefer) that the US government continues to export in large amounts: torture.

According to an article by Stephen Lendman that recently appeared on DissidentVoice.com, former detainees at some of the many US secret prison sites around the world report the following forms of abuse:

• being hooded or blindfolded;
• painfully shackled for extended periods;
• exposed to extreme heat and cold;
• kept naked;
• waterboarded numerous times;
• held in isolation or tiny cells with other prisoners where sleeping must occur in shifts;
• severe physical and psychological treatment creating permanent trauma for many;
• beatings;
• continuous blaring noises or music;
• 24-hour bright light or total darkness;
• sleep deprivation for days;painful stress positions for extended periods;
• being sodomized;
• denied food, too little, or inedible kinds;
• painful force-feeding for hunger strikers;
• denied medical care;
• coerced to confess to offenses they never committed;
• hung from steel bars in their cells or from metal hooks in interrogation rooms for extended periods;
• kept in tubs of ice water creating hypothermia;
• threatened with or attacked by dogs;
• given electric-shocks;
• and other cruel, abusive and degrading treatment.

The US and its allies in the war on terror (read "war of terror") routinely round up hundreds of people, mostly civilians, and subject them to this barbaric treatment. Each one of these abuses is an act of terror. While the headlines of traditional media routinely showcase suicide bombings and other low-tech tactics of fighters engaged in resisting US imperialism, the systematic and pervasive acts of terror perpetrated with the consent of the US government go largely unreported.

At a time when we are running a huge trade deficit, it is a shame that the traditional media is failing to report the continued strength of our reliable exports of weapons and terror. After all, we must give credit where credit is due.