Guantanamo

 The former US vice-president Dick Cheney has defended the CIA torture programme as ‘absolutely, totally justified’ —The Guardian

We all remember the towers collapsing

over and over again on our TV screens,

crumbling downwards in clouds of smoke,

and the tiny figures falling, falling.

We all recall the following reports

of all those cell phone messages.

'I love you,' they all said, the most important 

last-chance truth to tell before they died.

Now you claim it was in their name

you committed.... Torture; who does that? 

How do you choose, how do you train

those who will coldly perform cruel harm?

What startles me is the fuss of surprise

now that the facts are out. Surely,

didn't everyone know? I did! I only

had to look at the Aussie they returned.

He came back broken. And the other,

the one they kept so much longer,

his health will never recover from years,

yes, years of — say it — torture.

News flash, CIA: you can't get

useful information from innocent men.

This country is their home and it's mine:
so they are family. My anger is not done.

And I understand America's anger

at the burning towers and the bodies

forever falling. But now your Government 

is just the same. So is ours. They knew.

And if they didn't, they should have known,

not turning the blind eye, swallowing lies.

There is no justification. There never was.

We are all terrorists until we reject revenge.

Submitted for Poets United's Midweek Motif: Human Rights