Taking a Troubling Measure of Torture = Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

[L. Coyote]

The documentary TORTURING DEMOCRACY tells the story of how the United States
government circumvented tradition and law to adopt torture as official policy.
FILM online: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/program/

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Taking a Troubling Measure of Torture
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
May 30, 2009 - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/052909b.html

Editor’s Note: The Washington Establishment, which did little to challenge the excesses of George W. Bush's presidency, remains very uncomfortable with the issue of torture, unwilling to look at the dark reality head on.
In this guest essay, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship urge those who care about the truth to watch a documentary on this troubling topic, "Torturing Democracy":
In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.

During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week - immediately on the heels of President Obama's address at the National Archives - former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" a full dozen times.

Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism of course has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a "wedge issue," as noted on the front page of Sunday's New York Times.

According to the Times, "Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles. "

No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does.

“Torturing Democracy” was written and produced by one of America's outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones ................

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Torturing Democracy - http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05292009/profile.html

Due to rights restrictions we will not be able to stream TORTURING DEMOCRACY online.
You can watch the entire film at the TORTURING DEMOCRACY Web site. -

Also on the TORTURING DEMOCRACY Web site, explore a timeline of events, read related articles, and delve into the archive of official documents.

Sherry Jones

Sherry Jones is an award-winning producer with dozens of television documentaries to her credit. Based in Washington, D.C. she heads Washington Media Associates, an independent production company.

Jones' films have won eight Emmy Awards