Abuse

So our figure-skating diva of a Secretary of State says. now, that the US does not torture anybody anywhere. Right. That's why Dick Cheney is burning up so much shoe leather around Capital Hill meeting with Congress-people to get them to block the McCain amendment that makes torture, you know illegal. Explicitly.

But for a moment let's accept that sexual humiliation and "waterboarding" (simulated drowning) and isolation and good old fashioned beatings are not "torture." No, scratch that. I won't be counted with Cheney and Rice and the rest of them, even rhetorically, even to make a point. It's torture, and it's shameful. And far more damaging to the United States than anything we got from a torture victim would help.

Bad, wrong, shameful.

But let's focus a moment on the other aspect of the secret CIA prison system, and the whole Gitmo situation. We are holding human beings against their will at places unknown and without any record of our own or report to the Red Cross/Crescent. They are people with no recourse to a lawyer or a court of law. They are 'disappeared' in the sence that half of Chile once 'disappeared.'

Are we not, still, the United States of America? How is it possible that an American could even contemplate 'disappearing' anyone? Didn't we used to be a nations of rights and laws? Of freedom?

When Georgie talks about 'freedom' it's a punch line to the joke he's been telling for five years now. We don't get why it's funny because we're not in on it. You have to be a power-mad torturing despot - or just a person of great personal wealth - to get it.

So we'll just play along now. The Euros got all bent out of shape about torture, but apparently we won't. We're used to having our most cherished beliefs thrown in the dumper by these guys.

It's just another day at the office for the Junta's America.