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A letter recently appeared in the Washington Post that got me thinking about John Walker Lindh again. You remember him… The so-called “American Taliban” sentenced to 20 years in prison for “aiding the Taliban”. In reality, Lindh was more likely likely an unwitting victim of an emotionally fragile post-9/11 United States as well as a guinea pig for U.S. torture policy elsewhere.

As it turns out, the FBI allowed Lindh to be abused in various ways, perhaps insignificant compared to incidents in Iraq and Guantánamo, but abuses nonetheless. In retrospect, the revelation that Lindh was subject to abuse should not be a surprise. In the foamy-mouthed ideological environment of Bush’s “War on Terror”, Lindh was just another tool to forward the administration’s propaganda machine.

In the run-up to his trial, it was clear from documents submitted by the defense that Lindh had been viciously treated in captivity. Shot in the leg prior to his capture, and already starving and badly dehydrated, Lindh unconscionably was left with his wound untreated and festering for days despite doctors being readily available. Denied access to a lawyer, and threatened repeatedly with death, he was duct-taped to a stretcher and left for long periods of time in an enclosed, unheated and unlit metal shipping container, removed only during interrogations, at which time he was still left taped to his stretcher.

During Lindh’s trial, the presiding judge slapped Lindh with a gag order, forbidding him to discuss his experience in military custody. And a recent report by the FBI claims that “We found no instances in which an FBI agent participated in clear detainee abuse of the kind that some military interrogators used at Abu Ghraib prison.”

The White House “decided not to turn over any documents to Lindh’s defense lawyers. The Defense Department, apoplectic that its new policy on the torture of captives in the war on terrorism was going to be exposed, leaned on the Justice Department to offer Lindh a deal. On the eve of the suppression hearing that was going to expose his mistreatment, Lindh pleaded guilty to two relatively minor charges that landed him in prison for 20 years. As part of the plea bargain, he had to sign a statement swearing that he had ‘not been intentionally mistreated’ by his U.S. captors, and waiving any future claim of torture.”

Ironically, the one charge the U.S. managed to pin on him is for making the same mistake that the past five Presidents made (aiding the Taliban) and this charge is spurious at best. Even when Lindh arrived in Afghanistan one month prior to 9/11, the United States itself was providing millions of dollars in aid to the Taliban regime. And let’s face it, the allegations that Lindh planned to attack Americans were clearly trumped up charges straight from the court of public opinion and with one intention: to bring retribution upon someone for the events of 9/11.

More than anything, however, the John Walker Lindh scapegoating and coverup of abuse signals the beginning of a new cultural morality in the United States as it prosecutes its “War on Terror”—as Dave Lindorff has called it, “a first glimpse at Bush’s tortureshow”. We should be mindful of the atrocities this morality has since cultivated in Iraq and elsewhere because ultimately these methods trump all prior values—even international humanitarian law becomes dispensable.