Wednesday, January 19, 2005

We Hold This Torture To Be Self-Evident

Ms. Rice could not bring herself to answer direct questions from Senator Chris Dodd at her confirmation hearing yesterday, about whether she personally thought "water-boarding" and other forms of prisoner torture was right or wrong.

Today, the news on the front page of the NYTimes, is Alberto Gonzales's additional 200 pages of "clarification" about the administration's position on torture (remember his repeated, "Senator, I'll have to get back to you on that." This document is his "getting back to you on that"). So here's the Gonzales "signal" to all the world:

Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and other nonmilitary personnel fall outside the bounds of a 2002 directive issued by President Bush that pledged the humane treatment of prisoners in American custody. Also, a separate Congressional ban on cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment had "a limited reach" and did not apply in all cases to "aliens overseas."

And because they are not us, evidently, their torture does not rise to the level of "morality" so hypocritically promoted by all us American "Christians" as our overriding "value."

I have lived to see my great nation publicly admit, via leaked official documents and non-denial denials of public officials, that it is following the course of the Roman Empire in the exercise of inhumanity for the sake of "protecting" its own power.

I am ashamed. And can take no action against my own government, and the interests that run it, beyond the puny protest of not spending one damn dime tomorrow. It might be more in keeping with the "Christian spirit" we will be re-inaugurating about noon if I celebrated by pulling the live legs off a fly.

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