Sunday, November 21, 2004

 

A Little History Lesson For The Extrahistoric Administration

Michael W. Kauffman, in his new biography of John Wilkes Booth, "American Brutus," explains how his sympathies extend to Booth's co-conspirators, who were brutally treated after their arrest, held in hoods and quasi-medieval manacles in the suffocating confines of Navy ironboats, and then tried by a military tribune intent on dispensing swift justice:

"It is not easy to put aside the barbarous image of people in hoods and chains," observes Kauffman. "Prisoners had not been treated that way since 1696, and would not be again until 2001."

When future histories of torture are written, alongside the names of Torquemada, Mengele and Vlad the Impaler will go the names Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft. Quite a legacy there, eh?

posted by Michael 4:48 PM