JAG Heroes

It's very clear from testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services subcommittee that the good guys in the U.S. military -- and thank God there are MANY -- actively fought "the suits" who were instituting a torture regime for captured Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. The judge advocate generals (JAGs) for the Army, Air Force and Marines said they expressed their objections to the torture policy as it was being hashed out at the Pentagon in March and April 2003.

Hashed out, that is, at the highest levels. The document being circulated by the Pentagon early in 2003, which appears to be the well-spring for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and for all the shit we DON'T know about yet, cited the presidential seal of approval for torture: "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."

Once that policy came to light, of course, the Pentagon and the White House immediately started disavowing it. Too late. Torture had already done its worst to help recruit thousands of new suicide bombers against us and did not, we'd wager, advance El Presidente's "war on terror" nearly as much as it hurt it.

Plus it's plain sickening. We thought we were the greatest democracy on earth, while, in fact, we were turning into the Roman empire.