For the Record: Torture

The New York Times published an article today about the findings of the independent, non-partisan 11-member panel appointed by the Constitution Project to review "interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks." Those who are horrified by our country's use of torture after the 9/11 terrorist attack will feel vindicated by the review. Those who have convinced themselves that torture is justified--despite our country's repudiating torture in the past, seeking convictions of those charged with perpetrating torture, and being a signatory of the International Convention Against Torture--will probably continue to support the Bush Administration's decision to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" on prisoners. The power of propaganda lives on in the Orwellian language of the Bush Administration's torture memos.

But for the record, one more non-partisan review panel has concluded that our country did, indeed, torture people and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The Republican leader of the panel, Asa Hutchinson, who served in the Bush Administration, said that "after the panel’s nearly two years of research . . . he had no doubts about what the United States did":

The panel found that the United States violated its international legal obligations by engineering “enforced disappearances” and secret detentions. It questions recidivism figures published by the Defense Intelligence Agency for Guantánamo detainees who have been released, saying they conflict with independent reviews. 

It describes in detail the ethical compromise of government lawyers who offered “acrobatic” advice to justify brutal interrogations and medical professionals who helped direct and monitor them. And it reveals an internal debate at the International Committee of the Red Cross over whether the organization should speak publicly about American abuses; advocates of going public lost the fight, delaying public exposure for months, the report finds. . .  

. . . .The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.

This report may be lost in the heavy media coverage of the most recent terror attack, that of the explosions at the Boston Marathon and the horrific--and fatal--injuries resulting from that attack. As of now, no one knows who is responsible for the attack--home-grown terrorists, an individual malcontent, or international terrorists. In the midst of such horror, some people are too ready to surrender freedom to fear, just as our country surrendered its ethics to fear in adopting torture after 9/11. But as these recent attacks indicate, we can never be completely protected from harm. Losing our "moral compass" is not worth such an impossible goal.

For further information:
The Constitution Project's Report on Detainee Treatment, at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/16/world/16torture-report.html

Another Death in the "War on Terror"

I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president in November, and I have good reasons to do so. The Democratic ticket more closely represents my ideals, though it isn't perfect. I believe in gay rights; I believe in a woman's right to choose her own birth control and to have low-cost, easy access to methods that prevent pregnancy in the first place. I believe that the wealth gap is widening in our country, that corporations and the rich have too much power. I really think we should have universal healthcare and that the government should be able to negotiate lower drug prices. I believe in a public education that helps its citizens to become critical thinkers. I believe in the separation of church and state. The Republican Party, as it exists today, supports policies that are inimical to  these ideas, and it's largely responsible, through following the rhetorical instructions of people such as Newt Gingrich, in creating the toxic public rhetoric that drives our politics today. In addition, under the presidency of Barack Obama, Republicans have been pig-headedly obstructive in these times of economic crises, putting politics before the good of the country.

That being said, one of my really big disappointments in the Obama administration is its inability to shut down Guantanamo Bay and its continuing many of the war policies of the Bush administration. And I despise the fact that the DOJ hadn't the balls to go after those who approved administration-sanctioned torture in its "war on terror." (How's that working? Has terror disappeared from the face of the earth?) Unfortunately, voting Republican would not create a change here, either. Mitt Romney is being advised by some of the same neo-cons who got us in the war in Iraq with their lies and unbelievable naiveté about how long the war would last, how much the war would cost, and how little the war would impact the very people we were supposed to be liberating. 

My disappointment is magnified by stories such as that of Adnan Latif, who was finally successful this past week in his many attempts to commit suicide in that national disgrace of a prison, Guantanamo Bay. 

Congress, of course, is greatly at fault, too, in abdicating its responsibility to declare war and in allowing the executive branch to accrue more power. And so are we responsible, too, in our silence, in our eager readiness to follow that presidential advice years ago to "go shopping" rather than to deal with the harsh realities of our nation's actions.

Adnan Latif is finally returning home after ten years. . . . in a coffin. I doubt his death has aided the "war on terror." Do you?

"Contrived Indignation"

Watching back-to-back segments from Dick Cheney's speech and President Obama's speech on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, I was struck by the different tones of the speeches. Cheney speaks with his characteristic sneer, like a grumpy and angry uncle, condescending to anyone who disagrees with him. Obama speaks as if we're all grown-ups; maybe we don't all agree, but we can treat one another with respect. Cheney seems to be addressing his words to the already-persuaded or those who don't keep up with the news and thus won't recognize statements that have been thoroughly discounted. Obama is still trying to speak to those who might not agree with him and to those who need to be more educated on whatever subject he is addressing. Cheney has to label all those who disagree with him as "other," as "enemies." Obama does not. I don't agree with all of Obama's decisions, but I'm willing to listen even to those views of his with which I disagree.

I was particularly annoyed with Cheney's claim that those who are against "enhanced interrogation" or "harsh questioning" (i. e., torture--"harsh questioning" is as sleazy a euphemism as I can think of) are guilty of "contrived indignation and faulty moralizing." Here is an example of that over-weaning condescension in the man. My indignation, I assure bilious Uncle Dick, is not "contrived"--it is strong and true indignation, based on deeply-held morals. Nor am I, and others like me, "blam[ing] America for the evil others do." I am thoroughly capable of recognizing the evil that others do. I want evil-doers held accountable. But I am blaming the American government for the evil it has done in my name: torturing prisoners of war. I want those held accountable who smeared my good name as an American citizen and who trampled on the values of my country. If you're gonna call fighting terror a "war," well, then, the prisoners you capture from that war are "prisoners of war." The United States has traditionally and lawfully denounced the use of torture against prisoners of war. Hence, the use of torture is un-American. Oh, and immoral.

I have loved and cherished the values this country stands for; any person who challenges those values challenges me, as an American citizen. Someone, please send Uncle Dick back to his bunker. Maybe there's room for some of those terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in there, too. Dick Cheney needs to look his real enemy--not the American people who disagree with him--in the eye and argue his values then.

Think Progress on Torture

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, conservatives continue to praise torture as effective. Think Progress has a long summary of experts demonstrating otherwise: "Why Bush's 'Enhanced Interrogation' Program Failed". Evidence does not convince a surprising number of people in this country, but at least the evidence is there for those who care.

Again, Torture Cannot be Contained

Spencer Ackerman has an article out this evening in The Washington Independent discussing the just-released unclassified version of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the Pentagon’s treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism. The report demonstrates how the torture began and how its authorization from senior officials led to abuse, including the abuse of prisoners by military personnel at Abu Ghraib:

As has been documented in numerous Pentagon inquiries stretching back to 2004, Rumsfeld ultimately recommended in April 2003 the use of several extreme interrogation techniques, including stress positions, dietary manipulation, “long time standing” and other techniques that are now revealed to have originated from SERE. Similarly, while Rumsfeld declared that those techniques were applicable only to “military and civilian interrogators assigned to Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” the extreme pressure for intelligence in Iraq later that year sent Guantanamo Bay’s commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, to Iraq, where he delivered a list of Guantanamo-approved techniques to the Iraq war commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, with the explicit instruction to “Gitmo-ize” intelligence operations. A 2004 report by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger found that instruction to be a central cause of the torture at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in late 2003.

Ackerman ends his short article with a quote from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses. As the Committee report concluded, authorizations of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials resulted in abuse and conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody.

You can read Spencer Ackerman's article, from which these quotes were taken, here: "Report Details Origins of Bush-Era Interrogation Policies," The Washington Independent, posted 4/21/2009, 10:00 p.m.

Spencer Ackerman has also written a short post on his article here: "How the Torture Started."

Earlier this evening, I watched Jon Stewart's clip of people justifying torture (Yes, I usually watch Jon Stewart a day late). Like Ta-Nehisi Coates, I, too, found it difficult to laugh even though I appreciate Stewart's satire. But, as Coates noted, Peggy Noonan's comments on the release of the torture memos were so absurd as to be almost impossible to satirize. Listening to Noonan's so soft, so reasonable voice and watching her sad, sympathetic smile as she said the following words just about made me gag (beginning at 6:09 into Stewart's "We Don't Torture" clip):

It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents [the Obama administration's releasing the torture memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel] and sending them out to the world and thinking, 'Oh, much good will come of that.' Sometimes in life you want to keep walking... just keep walking. Some of life has to be mysterious.

(hmmmmm... What was that parable told by Jesus about the folks who just kept walking? Yeah, the priest who kept walking....the Levite who kept walking....the Samaritan who stopped...) So, according to Noonan, torture should be mysterious? Something from which we avert our eyes, whistling in the dark?

The critics who justify our "great nation's" use of torture evidently think it's more egregious to send truth out into the world than to send torture out into the world.

For a discussion of a timeline on torture, read "Torture Planning Began in 2001, Senate Report Reveals," by Mark Benjamin, Salon.

Torture in the 21st Century

For the past few days, I've been reading the "torture memos" and thinking about them. In previous posts, I've discussed Voltaire, who spoke out against torture in 18th-century France when European countries were still torturing citizens in the name of the state and of religion. Voltaire's imagined scenario where the wife of a torturer is first horrified and then interested and then inured to the horror seems so in keeping with the matter-of-fact tone of these 21st-century torture memos. Torture had become banal. The writers of the torture memos would have their readers believe that--totally ignoring moral considerations--torture was necessary, that torture could be targeted, that torture could be quantified, and that torture could be contained. Yet evidence proves otherwise.

Abu Zubaydah's capture in 2002 gave the administration what it needed, someone on whom to practice its newly-minted attitude toward torture. In a speech in April of that year, President Bush's characterization of Zubaydah as "one of [al-Qaeda's] top operatives" was proven incorrect. Dan Coleman, an FBI agent working with the CIA's bin Laden unit, read Zubaydah's secret diary and, along with many others, concluded that the guy was "insane, certifiable, split personality....He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights...He knew very little about real operations, or strategy." (Ron Suskind. The One Percent Doctrine. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006: p. 100). Yet the President and Vice-president continued to claim publicly that Zubaydah was a top operative:

"Around the room a lot of people just rolled their eyes when we heard comments from the White House. I mean, Bush and Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah. The guy had psychological issues. He was, in a way, expendable. It was like calling someone who runs a company's in-house travel department the COO [chief operating officer]," said one top CIA official, who attended the 5 p.m. meeting where the issue of Zubaydah came up. (Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, p. 101)

When Zubaydah was captured, he had suffered serious injuries, but the United States gave him the "'finest medical attention on the planet,' said one CIA official. 'We got him in very good health, so we could start to torture him'" (Suskind, p. 100). Zubaydah was

"stabilized in mid-May [2002], and, thus, ready. An extraordinary moment in the "war on terror" was about to unfold. After months of interdepartmental exchanges over the detainment, interrogation, and prosecution of captives in the "war on terror"--as well as debates over which "debriefing" techniques would work most effectively on al Qaeda--the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered. (Suskind, p. 111).

And the torture memos just released reveal that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, in August 2002. That's just the waterboarding, not to mention other methods of coercion used against him ("confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall"--Scott Shane, "Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure, The New York Times, April 18, 2009). The harsh coercive measures "were ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew... Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence officer with direct knowledge of the case" (Shane, "Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure"). Even the most important information he had to provide--"naming Khalid Shaikh Mohammed...as the main organizer of the 9/11 plot" (Shane, "Divisions Arose...")--was given up before these harsher interrogation methods were begun. The United States was to later capture KSM and to waterboard him 183 times in one month, in March 2003. And have we forgotten what happened the following fall at Abu Ghraib? The greenlight for torture trickled down to the military rank and file.

So much for "targeting" and "containing" torture.

The language of the torture memos is extremely dry, matter-of-fact, while describing the most grotesque methods of coercion. The memo of May 30, 2005, claims that "the interrogations at issue here are employed by the CIA only as reasonably deemed necessary to protect against grave threats to the United States interests, a determination that is made at CIA Headquarters, with input from the on-scene interrogation team, pursuant to careful screening procedures that ensure that the techniques will be used as little as possible on as few detainees as possible." Yet the history of the torture used on Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed clearly suggests the real problems with "careful screening procedures" and with using torture "as little as possible." Waterboarding someone 183 times in one month does not meet the standards of "as little as possible." Nor does applying the same method 83 times in one month to a mentally-unbalanced person who had already provided under less coercive means the useful information he had. The fact that these claims can be made so dryly, so surely, so deceptively should make a person with any remaining morality recoil in disgust.

The torture memo of May, 2005, authorizes up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, in which the detainee is kept standing and shackled, usually with hands tied in front of his body, under his chin. Or the hands can be raised above the head "for no more than two hours." The sleep-deprived detainee is given perhaps a two-to-three-foot diameter space in which to move. The detainee may also be kept nude. The memo confidently claims that keeping the detainee nude "does not involve any sexual abuse or threats of sexual abuse." Again, what's so coldly claimed on the page may not necessarily translate so coolly in the field. One has only to take another look at those pictures taken at Abu Ghraib to see the hollowness of such a claim.

Because the detainee is forced to stand, sleep-deprived and shackled, there is the problem of bodily functions. The lawyerly tone of the memo-writer assures readers that

a detainee undergoing sleep deprivation frequently wears an adult diaper. . . Diapers are checked and changed as needed so that no detainee should be allowed to remain in a soiled diaper, and the detainee's skin condition is monitored. You have informed us that diapers are used solely for sanitary and health reasons and not in order to humiliate the detainee. (p. 13 of Memorandum to John A. Riggs, Senior Deputy General Counsel, CIA; May 30, 2005)

Oh, of course, nudity, dietary manipulation, and sleep deprivation are not meant to humiliate prisoners. No, they are "conditioning techniques...used to put the detainee in a 'baseline' state, and to 'demonstrate to the [detainee] that he has no control over basic human needs" (p. 12, memo of May 30,2005). In other words, they are techniques used to dehumanize prisoners, to turn them into that "haggard, pale, defeated" man, no longer human to his keepers, described by Voltaire over two hundred years ago. The "conditioning" process prepares the way for "coercive" techniques of slamming the prisoner's head into a wall, dousing the prisoner with cold water, forcing the prisoner in stress positions and cramped confinement, and, the pièce de résistance, waterboarding the prisoner.

The memo of May 30, 2005, written by Steven Bradbury, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, is but one of the torture memos. The one that has been targeted as the most egregious is that one dated August 1, 2002, and written by Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General and now Federal Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can read that memo here: at the Washington Post.

The argument of those who claim that torturing "enemy combatants" or possible Qaeda operatives keeps Americans safe is countered by men in the field, people who are charged with getting information from the enemy. Matthew Alexander [a pseudonym] who "led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006," writes that:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans. (Matthew Alexander, "I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq," The Washington Post, November 30, 2008.)

Many are calling for the impeachment of Jay Bybee, who flourishes in his after-torture role as the Federal Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I concur, even though, as Marty Kaplan suggests, impeaching Bybee may "leave unplumbed the mystery of his moral blindness, and maybe, awfully, ours." Not to impeach him seems even more complicit to me. To put all this behind us when we haven't even fully confronted it doesn't seem right, either. I'm not necessarily advocating prosecution of George Bush and Dick Cheney, but I do wish our collective disgust with their leadership would make Cheney particularly STFU. Cheney continues to slam President Obama publicly. "'I don't think we have much to apologize for,'" he recently told Sean Hannity in an interview. "[Waterboarding] worked,'" he added.[Ummmmm......266 times on two people?!] "'It's been enormously valuable in terms of saving lives and preventing another mass casualty attack on the US.'" The rule of law doesn't count much with these people. Neither does morality.

And now, to a blog roll of other voices on the topic of torture and consequences:

• Scott Horton, "The Torture Tango", posted April 20, 2009; "Impeach Jay Bybee," posted April 20, 2009.
• James Fallows, "Torture from Afar," posted April 20, 2009.
• Hilzoy, "Looking Forward," posted at Washington Monthly, April 20, 2009.
• Elizabeth de la Vega, "Of Black Holes and Radio Silence,", posted April 20, 2009.
• Andrew Sullivan, "They Waterboarded Him 183 Times in One Month," posted April 19, 2009.
• Glenn Greenwald, "Meet the Press and the media's distortions of the prosecutions debate,", posted April 20, 2009.
• And much less prosy than us all is David Crisp, "Tombstone Blues," posted April 20, 2009.

Interview with Interrogator

Of all the mistakes, missteps, and outright wrong decisions the Bush administration has made, the one thing that has made me angriest--and most worried for our nation--is the decision to torture enemies (well, in addition to suspending individual rights of privacy and of habeas corpus). That decision not only goes against the Geneva Conventions; it also goes against everything I was taught as a young Christian growing up in the Southern Baptist church, against the advice of military leaders who worry what might happen to our soldiers when captured, and against the advice of many experienced interrogators. I've posted on this topic a number of times because I think it's very important. (Hearing friends, family, and right-wing pundits who are fundamentalist Christians justify torture has just about turned me agnostic.)

On his blog, Scott Horton has an interview with one of those experienced interrogators, Matthew Alexander, about whom I've posted before. Check out the interview:“The American Public has a Right to Know That They Do Not Have to Choose Between Torture and Terror”: Six questions for Matthew Alexander, author of How to Break a Terrorist," posted December 18, 2008.

Other voices:
William Pfaff, "Torture Opponents Have No Serious Argument,"posted at Truthdig, December 18, 2008.

Promote Torture? Don't Travel!

Scott Horton has two pieces online this morning ["Travel Advisory" and "Torture from the Top Down"] that address the subject of war crimes, of whether or not our leaders will be held accountable for condoning and even actively promoting torture of prisoners in pursuit of information after the attacks of 9/11. Not only did our leaders discuss and direct particular torture techniques, but they also attempted to ensure that those directives would not be traced to them but would seem to appear to be instituted because of requests from Guantanamo.

In his article for The New Republic, Horton refers to a recently-released report by Physicians for Human Rights which details the abuse. That report is led by a quote from Major General Antonio M. Taguba, who was assigned to investigate the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and who authored the consequent report on that investigation, known as the Taguba Report: "

After years of disclosures by government investigators, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held into account.

Horton writes that only in very unusual circumstances will a country prosecute its own leaders for war crimes; to do so requires a political will that Americans just don't have. [We're distracted now by high gas prices, the increasing costs of food, flooding in the Midwest, and drought in the Southeast. Will the presidential campaign just add to the distraction or focus our attention on the previous administration's disastrous leadership?] But foreign countries have no such restrictions. Investigating magistrates for at least two European countries ("pro-Iraq war NATO allies," according to Horton) are assembling a case for war crimes, focusing on American policymakers. Horton suggests that certain of these policymakers should be mighty careful about traveling outside the United States.

Americans Against Torture

This month's Washington Monthly is devoted to the subject of torture, with a series of essays and short statements by United States citizens--most of them prominent citizens. The list includes people who identify themselves as members of the Republican or Democratic party, former military leaders, former military interrogators, one former president, Senators (both Republican and Democratic), religious leaders. You can read the essays here: No Torture, No Exceptions.

Torture: "It Depends on Who Does It"

I've been following the debate on torture since those first pictures of Iraqi prisoners emerged from Abu Ghraib. That debate has revealed the moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration and most of the Republican party. Rudy Giuliani, the front runner (God help us!) for the Republican nomination for president, recently said in a town meeting that the definition of torture depended on "how it's done. . . the circumstances. . . . [and] "who does it."

Well, people who represent us are doing it, and with our votes and our silence, we're complicit. Giuliani recites the old, tired, Republican mantra that the "liberal media" is distorting the facts. It's not "liberal media" that calls waterboarding torture; this method has been considered torture--by people of all political persuasions-- since its first use. Joan Walsh, at Salon, directs readers to a recent editorial in The Washington Post by Evan Wallach, a former JAG in the Nevada National Guard. Wallach gives us a brief history of water torture, including details on how the United States prosecuted for war crimes people who performed waterboarding on prisoners.

In his article, Wallach writes that waterboarding does not "simulate drowning," as so many who try to downplay the details claim: "To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death." Wallach supplies testimony of people who have experienced this form of torture.

So waterboarding is torture when used by the Japanese in World War II against Allied soldiers--but it's NOT when used by operatives of the United States government against suspected terrorists? Would it be torture if Rudy Giuliani were waterboarded? I think Giuliani--and all those other Republican faces who downplay torture--would sing a different tune if he were strapped to a table with his head down and experienced water being poured on a cloth over his mouth and nose until he lost consciousness.

Torture is torture, no matter who does it or who the victim is.

UPDATE: This evening (8 Nov. 2007) on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, "a former Navy instructor and an intelligence expert" were questioned about the legality and effectiveness of waterboarding as a coercive technique to extract information from suspected terrorists and "enemy combatants." The transcript of that discussion can be found here, on the PBS website. More about Former Senior Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Nance, who, in my opinion, spoke so eloquently against the use of torture, can be found here. A short essay written by Malcolm Nance can be found here--and another here.

Good God, "This isn't Us"

This week we finally made it to a local theater to see The Bourne Ultimatum, and the action did not disappoint. Interestingly, there was scattered applause throughout the theater several times during the movie. People were obviously cheering Matt Damon's Jason Bourne character in his fight with ultra-secret elements in the CIA and the unethical, murderous intent of David Straithairn's character, Deputy Director of the CIA, Noah Vosen. There were definite parallels to political events today. When Joan Allen's character, Pamela Landy, rejects Vosen's disregard of the "red tape" that is really oversight established to prevent unethical behavior of our governing and intelligence-gathering agencies, she tells Bourne, "This isn't us."

I wanted to clap, too.

When I viewed those first images coming out of Abu Ghraib, I, too, thought, "My God, this can't be us."

When I read of how prisoners were being tortured at Guantanamo and refused legal aid, I couldn't believe this was us; we were doing the torturing, and American psychologists were aiding in that torture. I was outraged and could hardly believe that we were denying Jose Padilla, an American citizen, access to a lawyer. "This can't be us," I wanted to insist. "This isn't us."

Well, here isn't us again: at Afghanistan's Policharki prison, a prison that was "a notorious torture center during. . . Soviet domination" of that country. Good God, what is wrong with our elected officials and military leaders? Why do they keep stashing people in prisons notorious for horrible torture perpetrated by previous oppressive regimes? And how do we justify torturing prisoners to death, such as what happened at Bagram, the U.S. Air Force base in Afghanistan?

Why aren't more Americans screaming, "This isn't us!?"