So I had this dream last night.
I was at some big out-of-town public event - maybe a concert, maybe an evening art fair; something pretty crowded, with lots of inadvertent jostling, bumping up against people, etc.
The next day as I'm leaving my hotel room I'm approached by a group of 10-12 guys in full military dress (vaguely Latin American, maybe some Central or South American country) with lots of medals hanging from their chests. One guy says, "Were you at this event last night?"
"Yes," I reply.
"Did you know that there was an attack on our soldiers?" he asks. I tell him no, I didn't, and he continues, "Well we think you do."
"No, I really don't," I reassure him, but he doesn't believe me, repeatedly demanding, "What do you know? What do you know?"
"I promise you, I don't know anything," I say more urgently, trying to convey that I truly do not know anything.
"Well we're just going to ask you some questions," he says as his colleagues close around me and start tying me to a chair. I think to myself, "Well I'll be okay - after all I'm an American, and since we treat people with basic decency they have to treat me okay as well."
But as the ropes tighten I remember torture memos, waterboarding, and those awful stories of people (sometimes completely innocent - guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time) kept for years and yes, tortured, by anyone else’s definition, in Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA interrogation camps, and I think to myself, "Oh s**t, my life is over….”
And then I wake up.
If only this were just a dream.
