Mandatory

Slap this in as the final chapter of 9th grade civics textbooks. (Glenn Greenwald makes clear otherwise at the end, but I say yes, literally.)

Greenwald on yesterday's CIA Inspector General Report.

To those blithely dismissing all of this as things that don't seem particularly bothersome, I'd say two things:

(1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle -- all things that we have always condemend as "torture" and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies ("torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .") -- reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.

(2) As I wrote rather clearly, numerous detainees died in U.S. custody, often as a direct result of our "interrogation methods." Those who doubt that can read the details here and here. Those claiming there was no physical harm are simply lying -- death qualifies as "physical harm" -- and those who oppose prosecutions are advocating that the people responsible literally be allowed to get away with murder.

Disgusting. And done in our name. Take all the bullshit and spin and party politics and tragedy and let's think of what this is. Savage behavior from one human to another. And the likelihood that the detainee was guilty of any real conspiracy against the U.S. was/is quite low. Some of these guys have died in our custody. Their lives will be ruined, regardless if they're cleared. Yes, if they are guilty (after a relatively swift trial), they should do time. But I'd say a lot of these guys are chumps, and we take the advice to abduct them from the same low-level thugs we're taking in. We've pushed for extreme punishment against countries that have done less. How is this going on without country-wide, bipartisan, patriotic outrage? Because our system of crooks and thieves is too strong and vicious for us to break. The political has consumed the rational. We have stop this and correct the ship.