A reader writes:
Thanks to you, I've been reading up on Bagram all day long. And I've gotten more and more depressed. The torture and abuse that went on there is chilling. But one thing really stands out:
"The torture and homicides took place at the military detention center known as the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, which had been built by the Soviets as an aircraft machine shop during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1980-1989). A concrete-and-sheet metal facility that was retrofitted with wire pens and wooden isolation cells, the center is part of Bagram Air Base in the ancient city of Bagram near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan."
We took a facility built by the Soviets, and we turned it into a Gulag. Despite Obama's promise and pledges of reform, this is a stain that will not wash away. Ever.
Bush and Cheney took Saddam's Abu Ghraib and made it a torture zone under American control. They took Soviet sites in Eastern Europe and revived their record of torture, under the American flag. Bagram was part of a pattern. And people wonder why a person untainted by the past should be CIA director.