Torture is an All-American Value

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/ted-rall/55463/torture-is-an-all-american-value

Torture is an All-American Value
Human Rights
by Ted Rall | April 19, 2014 - 9:28am

Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and long-time-until-recently NSA apologist, claims to be shocked by an internal CIA report that documents the agency’s grisly record of torture after 9/11. “The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation,” Feinstein said April 3rd. “It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen.”

Among the “stunning revelations” that have leaked out of the still-classified 6,600-page CIA torture report are stories that long-time followers of my writing have long been aware of, having read about them in my column during the Bush years. Guantánamo isn’t just a concentration camp; it’s also a CIA “black site”/torture dungeon, as was a joint US-UK “extraordinary rendition” depot on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. The CIA outsourced torture to Third World shitholes/U.S. allies, knowing/expecting/hoping that they would be murdered.

Disgusting stuff. For sure. Yet there’s something even more nauseating — and infinitely more dangerous — than a country that tortures:

A nation in denial about its true values.

[bemildred]

1. You can find all of it, the waterboarding, etc. 100+ years ago in the Philipines,

and before that too, it's not new, or inventive; it's left over from cruder times, and only crude people are attracted to it.

[libodem]

2. Torture Culture

Part of the overall Violence Culture. We are a lovely people.