I am constantly amazed at the ignorance of Americans. Being one of the few Americans who doesn’t trust AT ALL the propaganda being forced down America’s throats on corporate media, I get my information from such publications as Harpers and The Nation as well as good internet sites like GNN.TV Democracynow.org and Truthout.org, WhatReallyHappened.com (and Black, yes? -ed)

I would suggest people refer to these web sites and publications if they want to get some semblance of the true picture of what is going on in the world.

The main reason I am writing is I was just wondering why it comes as such a shock to most Americans to think that this government participates and encourages torture? Of course they do, and have been doing so for decades.

Activist for many years have known that the U.S. military was training Latin American soldiers torture techniques out of the School of the Americas, out of Fort Benning, GA. Some of the people that graduated out of that school were later accused of some of the worst crimes against humanity.

Also, during the 60′s and 70′s the CIA worked closely with the Indonesian and Vietnamse governments, training their militaries on the latest torture techniques and helping those governments to “dissappear” countless citizens in those countries.

What we are seeing today in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are just the tip of the electrode. This is how empire is run – through degradation, torture and death, and has been for some time.