That’s really the best word to describe Bush’s idea of taking prisoners and hiding them away without any contact to the real world besides their masked guards. Heck, at least the Soviet guards weren’t masked!

David Hicks, the “Australian Taliban” as he is nicknamed is so traumatized that he cannot take a call from his family. He’s so dehumanized that such human contact is too hard for him.

Major Mori, who declined to comment on the phone call, said Hicks continued to be held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day and suffered underlying depression that was worsened by the conditions in which he was being held.

Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay detainees have been submitted to “stress and duress” techniques as part of their interrogation, including exposure to constant bright lighting and loud music.

Terry Hicks, who spoke to his son during a 90-minute family call in July, said Hicks had trouble managing the emotional aftermath of a phone call.

See here’s the problem. Intelligence experts believe operative intelligence gathered from the enemy captured has a shelf life of about 24 to 48 hours. After that, whatever an individual might know will basically be outdated. So…why are these people held in Gitmo when what they know is most certainly outdated, seeing that most of them have been there now for at minimum 3 years! What could they possibly know that the use of stress positions could possibly provide? All they are doing is breaking human beings, dehumanizing them, turning them into traumatized freaks. Is this really America?

How can we not be but emotional about something like this? This is not what America stands for! This is what we fought against all throughout the Cold War. Why are we doing this? What are we getting out of these individuals that is so valuable that we risk utterly destroying their souls? It would certainly have been better for them if they were just killed on the battlefield. How utterly disgraceful America!