American Values..
Do you have a good idea as to what they are? I thought I did, before people in this administration started re-defining them.
I had planned a long and thorough posting on the newest revelations regarding torture and detainee abuse, as well as uploading some pictures, just released, of what's being done in our name; but between work, school and moving this week...it just hasn't been possible.
I'll just leave you with this...READ THE WHOLE THING and educate yourselves. Its long, but history will most certainly judge that it's worth the read.
“These were enormously hardworking, patriotic individuals,” he said. “When you put together the pieces, it’s all so sad. To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values.”
posted by Katinula | 2:01 PM
3 Comments:
I do think that the Bush Administration has made serious errors with the whole torture issue, not out of malice but out of ignorance, not realizing that replacing clear cut lines with, quite possibly reasonable, vague guidlines would lead far beyond what they expected.
It was a big mistake, and one that they have largely corrected, but I do think they should probably have taken responsibility for it.
That being said, I sincerely hope you are right about this being a big deal in the history books. If it is, it means that a lot of other possible big deals didn't happen. Like nuclear terror or a biological attack. If either of those occur, the history books will not ask why we tortured, but why didn't we do more.
Dave, did you read the article? Personnel all over the administration DELIBERATELY lied to Mora so that he wouldn't put his concerns in writing, officially. They kept things from him to keep him quiet. They did these things to so that they could keep control of the power and silence those critics. These were deliberate actions. And please, don't try and conflate torture with saving us from a nuclear or biological attack. The 'ticking time bomb' scenario, if applicable at all, could be easily be justified with a presidential pardon for those illegal activities....it does not justify in any way the administrations policy on torture and abuse of detainees. As more information comes out, its quite clear that the adminstration wanted what it wanted, without dissent and with shaky (at best; illegal at worst) legal wrangling. Its a disgrace and it isn't helping, not one bit, not one iota, in the war on terror.
I did read the article. That beaurocratic infighting took place and Mora feels ill used is unsurprising to me.
The article of course only shows one side of the story. I certainly am not claiming that Mora is lying.
From what I have seen, interogation of prisoners in Guantanamo is sometimes harsh, but does not rise to the level of torture. One can make claims that this is a good or bad policy, and there are various legal arguements to be made, but it isn't, in my opinion anyway, a clear case of wrong doing.
On the other hand, some of the treatment of prisoners in other venues, holding camps in Afghanistan and Iraq have crossed the line. I am convinced that this is an indirect result of the blurring of the line at Guantanamo and confusion about what is, and what is not ok. This outcome was not anticipated I think, arguably it should have been.
My comments about nuclear and biological weapons were not directly related to the ticking time bomb scenario. It is entirely possible for such an attack to succeed even if we torture everyone we can get our hands on. My point there was, that such an event would so overshadow anything else that would be in the history of this period to reduce worry about torture to less than a footnote. I hope the torture debate is a big deal in the future.
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