The System Endures (editorial about torture)

[poppet]

The System Endures
Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page B06


SEVEN MONTHS AGO the leak of shocking photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison alerted the country to the fact that U.S. soldiers and interrogators were criminally abusing Iraqi detainees. In the weeks that followed, a still more disturbing story emerged: The torture portrayed in the photographs, while extreme and mostly unauthorized, grew out of a system of abusive treatment of prisoners established by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001. Official investigations have documented the mistreatment of more than 100 detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere and the deaths of more than 20. In many cases these acts were committed by CIA or Army personnel who were following procedures authorized by such senior officials as Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. This news prompted some noisy congressional hearings; some angry lawmakers, including a few Republicans, called for reforms.

Yet the worst aspect of the Abu Ghraib scandal is this: The system survived its public exposure. The Bush administration is vigorously prosecuting the lowly reservists depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos, while brazenly defending the larger process it established for extracting intelligence from prisoners.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36061-2004Dec4.html

[Eric J in MN]

1. Ideally, revulsions at Bush for torture would have

created a landslide for Kerry too great for Bush to steal the election.

[Briar]

2. Evidently

the fifty nine million who voted for Bush see nothing wrong with torture, not if a righteous nation with a Divine Mission is doing it.