As a boomer, I grew up knowing Americans were supposed to be the good guys. Oh, yeah, and that we cherished our liberties, models for the world. So, how is it that got to the point that we actively torture people and take the most basic freedoms from our citizens?
At the seminar/panel on torture last weekend, several speakers dealt with just those questions. The answers were not satisfying, but not hopeless either.
An overview of the session is here. A post on the central role of psychologists working with interrogators is here. A long post with coverage of remarks by former interrogator Eric Fair is here.
I won't fill up many pages of BMG with this. Head to those posts.
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I was browsing through a Vanity Fair article by Philippe Sands that implicated administration lawyers in the disgraceful policies, which annoyed me a little because it didn’t talk enough about Bush and Cheney, who ought to bear ultimate responsibility for the atrocities. As I’ve said before, these two men should not be allowed to leave Washington, D.C. next January unless it is under guard on their way to Federal Prison. They should have been impeached, but if Congress doesn’t have the guts to carry out their constitutional responsibilities, the next President should appoint a Prosecutor who will have these two monstrosities jailed immediately. They’re an absolute and total disgrace to the United States and to mankind in general.