So Whad'ya Do on Your Vacation?

Some people hit the beach. Others head for the slopes. For whatever
reason, we often find ourselves touring places like...Cambodia's
Killing Fields.

Located about 15 km south of town, the memorial that now sits atop the
Khmer Rouge's most infamous liquidation facility is impressive--and
haunting. If you've watched the movies and documentaries, or seen the
pictures, you'll recall the thousands of skulls piled on wooden bunks--
the remains of more than 8,000 victims of Pol Pot's regime at this
site alone. Today, they are encased in a 62 meter glass memorial
jutting skyward, a reminder of the evil that is genocide.

But there's more. This isn't Hitler's genocide, an efficient death
factory of gas chambers and ovens, nor even the modern Balkan
equivalent of mass shootings and mass graves. The Khmer Rouge abhorred
technology and thus dispatched their victims via severe trauma: flat-
headed hoes and cane knives were their preferred method, ensuring the
soon-to-be-deceased got that way as inefficiently and painfully as
possible.

Back in central Phnom Penh, S21, the primary detention facility for
victims on their way to a mass grave, relates the broader story of
this atrocity: prior to 1975 it was the largest school in the city,
but it's classrooms were quickly converted to row upon row of cells,
most not bigger than 1 x 2 meters. Here, the usual suspects--members
of the prior government, intellectuals, liberals, ethnic minorities,
homosexuals, women, children, the list goes on--were tortured into
confessing their "crimes" against the regime. In a bizarre
manifestation of ideology, prejudice, litigation and political
perversion, the Pol Pot regime seemed unwilling to brutally murder
people unless they'd first tortured them into false confessions.

And they kept meticulous records: the former cells are now lined with
mugshots of the murdered, thousands of them. Perhaps most chilling,
very few of these photographs depict the disappeared in a state of
panic or terror--they appear strangely resigned to their destiny. It's
both captivating and alien, a terrifying admission of the fate they
know is coming, a hope that the ordeal will soon be over, a self-
reflection on their own powerlessness, and an accusation against their
tormentors.

Accompanying the photos are the devices of torture, as well as
depictions of their use: fingernail extraction, nipple amputation via
forcep, simulated drowning, electical shocks and waterboarding.

If those last three sound familiar, it's because they were part of the
Bush Regime's standard operating procedure, and in clear violation of
the Geneva Conventions. Yes, the US tortured, it resorted to the same
tactics as Pol Pot and other dictators and regimes it constantly rails
against, and it relied on the same ethnic, religious and geopolitical
profiling as the bastards in the dark corners of the world.

More to the point, if you identify yourself as a Republican, or a
neocon, or a member of the Christian Right, you are party to these
ongoing atrocities. S21 and the Killing Fields occurred more than 30
years ago; today, the same manufactured horror is only now being shut
down at Gitmo.

Do me a favor: if you associate with any of the above American
political affiliations, please let me know so I can disassociate
myself from you now (permanently) and piss on your grave later. If
you're not convinced, waterboarding or electric shock might convince
you to recant--they're not really torture according to your view. Then
again, those are probably the tactics to which you'd resort (and have
recently) and I want no part of it.