Torture? I’m shocked, shocked I say (Isenberg | Partnership for a Secure America)

[struggle4progress]

by David Isenberg | May 26th, 2009

... I hate to say it but too many Americans resemble the “Good Germans” who at the end of WWII claimed they hadn’t a clue that a Holocaust had been taking place. We have consciously and for many, willingly, turned a blind eye and ear to what has been done in our names. Some people are so morally and ethically debased that they trivialized torture as just high spirited roughhousing. Just remember when in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib revelations maniacs like Rush Limbaugh or even as recently as last year a Congressman like Dana Rohrbacher dismissed torture as fraternity pranks.

It also bears note that in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib we have yet to do anything to the military and civilian officials at the highest levels of the national security bureaucracy who authorized this. Instead, we prosecuted a few lowly enlisted men for doing what they were told. There was a time when America did not accept “just following orders” as an excuse, either for those who followed them or for those who issued them.

One hardly needed to read the memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that the Obama Administration released to know that torture was going on. It has been the subject of analysis and debate in law journals for years. All anyone had to do was type “torture” into the Lexis-Nexis legal database and you would get thousands of results. Note that these aren’t the result of searching for “abuse” or “enhanced interrogation techniques” but just plain “torture” ...

http://blog.psaonline.org/2009/05/26/torture-im-shocked-shocked-i-say/

[democrank]

1. K & R

Too many "Good Germans" indeed.