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We all know the scenes. We even know the lines by heart. They are embedded in our collective consciousness.
Captain Renault in Casablanca telling Victor Lazlo in the presence of Nazi Major Strasser about the "death" of Señor Ugarte - "I'm making out the report right now. We haven't decided whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape."
Darth Vader in Star Wars telling Princess Leia "The time has come, Princess, for us to discuss the location of your rebel base" as an ominous torture droid with syringes and other menacing attachments hovers in her detention cell on the Death Star.
Nazi Major Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark saying "Fraulein Ravenwood. Let me show you what I am used to." as he threatens her with a red hot poker to learn of the location of the headpiece to the staff of Ra.
Torture is what we expect from Nazis, imperial storm troopers, and other villains in black hats.
We certainly didn't expect it from our own American democracy.
Yet President Bush is now promising to veto any legislation containing Senator John McCain's recent anti-torture legislation which was passed 90-9 by the United States Senate. Vice President Cheney is also actively campaigning against this anti-torture legislation by pressuring Congressmen to vote against it.
Senator McCain as a downed U.S. Naval aviator and prisoner of war in Vietnam was repeatedly tortured by the North Vietnamese and has clear moral convictions on this subject borne of his own personal pain and that of his fellow prisoners. Lieutenant Bush and Mr. Cheney meanwhile avoided both Commander McCain's war and his pain through the National Guard and multiple college deferrments.
We have already seen the atrocities at Abu Ghaarab on the evening news and heard of others at Guantanamo Bay. We have seen the publishing by Cambridge University Press of "The Torture Papers" by Greenberg and Dratel, a 1248 page collection of actual source documents from the U.S. government detailing the systemic government plan to torture prisoners for information.
We have even seen the 60 Minutes report on "renditioning" which is apparently a fancy word for kidnapping and disappearing someone without anyone's knowledge, much less a trial, a judge, a jury, or even an International Red Cross inspector so that he can be tortured by the security services of other governments where they aren't so picky about little legal "problems" like the Geneva Conventions, the Bill of Rights or the Magna Carta.
Now we are hearing reports in the news of secret prisons in Eastern Europe where the Administration is holding alleged terrorists in unknown conditions. No doubt they've "rounded up the usual suspects" once again - and, apparently just like Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men, they don't think that "we can handle the truth", so they have chosen to hide it from us.
How is this any different from the behavior of South American banana republic dictators, military juntas, and death squads such as we have seen in the past in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America with their thousands of "desaparecidos" anyways?
Torture of prisoners is neither American nor Christian. (To paraphrase a popular bumper sticker - "Who would Jesus torture?")
This must end now.
The government must apologize and rectify the situation. We the People must know the truth, sooner - not later - and those in this Administration who are responsible must be impeached and brought to justice for their crimes.
ddeclue2@earthlink.net
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