Friday, May 07, 2004

 

Spare Us The Feigned Outrage, Please

Rumsfeld, Myers, Karpinski, et al., are all trying to spin this story as the isolated, unauthorized acts of a few sick individuals. However, it's pretty clear that, as one early example, the FBI and (other) Justice officials were just itching to use torture on captives since shortly after 9-11 -- whether here in this country, or abroad. And their "Amen corner" of wingnut pundits were backing them up all the way.

You see, the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Kafka Kamps were (and still are) all about "intelligence gathering" -- never mind that most civilized countries abandoned Torquemada's tactics years ago, not on "humanitarian" grounds, but for the hardheaded, unsentimental reason that torture-elicited confessions are simply unreliable. (Did he "name names" because it was true? Or because he wanted you to stop electrocuting his testicles, and this seemed to be what you wanted to hear?)

My guess is that Bush won't fire Rumsfeld because Rummy's got something on Bush -- probably incontestable proof that Bush knew of the torture early last year, or perhaps that he expressly approved it even before the invasion. But Sy Hersh says there's worse to come -- videotaped rapes of women and boys, among other, "new" atrocities.

Make no mistake -- by their tacit approval of such behavior, these sociopaths in and near the White House have put our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in FAR more danger than ANY antiwar sentiments expressed by citizens here at home. (Not that you'll get any of their more delusional supporters to admit that -- hell, they're still buying the Al-Qaeda/Saddam linkage fairytale.)

posted by Michael 5:29 PM