‘Eternal’ Guantanamo prisoner tells of decades of US torture (opens in new tab)

It is you, if you're an American citizen. Same way current Russian invasion isn't "Putin's war", every Russian is partially responsible.

I applaud your will to separateness, and agree, but IMO it is difficult to escape the "we". When do we chose to be part of "we"? Only when "we" are good? or when we're just talking about you and I, plus maybe our own small band of signatories? or never?

I really should have refrained from commenting, because I don't have an answer. All I know is that, when people talk about say "when we migrated out of Africa", or "when we, the vikings populated Iceland", or "when we arrived on the Mayflower", then something doesn't quite connect. A sentiment something like your own maybe.

I opposed it at the time too. As did many.

The public was also not well informed of what was going on. Officials just said there are some bad people, that they're related to 9/11, and we locked them up.

Many people bought this, and i think part of the problem is that the general public doesn't really believe in due process, innocent until proven guilty, or the rights of the accused, even the rights of the convicted. I see lots of echoes of this in all the "tough on crime" rhetoric that is popular now. People just want to label people as "bad" and make them go away forever.

Agreed. The first 6 months to a year you might do it to get information, after that you keep it up so they can’t tell everyone what you did when they get released.

You also have to think the people employed at these prisons enjoy torturing (why else would they do it for 20 years - how do they find these people in the first place?) so maybe they keep them around just to have people to torture.