Digby, dday, and tristero over at Hullabaloo have been doing yeoman work flogging (er...) the torture issue with some of the most compelling and definitive posts anywhere.
Chris Floyd over at his Empire Burlesque likewise.
Scott Horton all but burned himself out on it over at Harpers.
And still most of our leading media outlets cannot bring themselves to call what our government does to its captives "torture," except by indirection or reference to what "some people say."
Most Americans, apparently, don't much care what happens to the captives in any case, any more than most good upstanding Americans cared what happened to captive Native Peoples or slaves when time was.
Captives, almost by definition, aren't really human, are they? So what happens to them, whether it works to stop the ticking time bomb or not, is of no particular consequence. As long as we don't see it or hear it, let our government or its contractors torture away.
Because our Congress won't hold the Bushevik regime to account through Constitutional means, those who are working against torture have to employ other mechanisms such as defunding the mercenaries and contractors, some of whom have been implementing the torture regime so as to provide some means of plausible deniability to the government. But even that is a long shot.
Until and unless the torture regime is stopped, however, and those responsible held to the strictest account, our nation's moral standing will be no higher than the dirt on which we walk.
Was there ever an empire so determined to self-immolate?
No comments:
Post a Comment