signalmankenneth
Verified User
We're All Torturers Now
Will torture ever scandalize us again?
http://www.slate.com/id/2216792/
Excerpt:
Conservative pundits casually likened water-boarding to prep school initiation and claimed that anyone who
opposes prisoner abuse must simply hate America. The many ordinary Americans who want to see torture
allegations investigated -- evidently a majority of them, in fact -- have been dismissed by these same pundits
as members of a bloodthirsty 'hard left.' The president himself asks us all to move on. And if we're moving on,
it can't have been all that bad...
There's one other fact that accounts for the horror differential between the torture memos and Abu Ghraib,
and that's the fact of Abu Ghraib. Because, as I have suggested before, after Abu Ghraib, America seems to
have lost its capacity to be truly shocked by anything America might do. As chilling and brutal as the images were
at the time, they have, in the years between, lost much of their power to repel us. They have become -- abetted by
endless viewings of Jack Bauer on 24 and an interminable national debate about torture -- emblems of what America
is at least willing to consider doing. They are no longer postcards from the unthinkable. They are what we have become.
They are what Bush made America into.
Bush and the Fascist dogs say torture is good for America.
Will torture ever scandalize us again?
http://www.slate.com/id/2216792/
Excerpt:
Conservative pundits casually likened water-boarding to prep school initiation and claimed that anyone who
opposes prisoner abuse must simply hate America. The many ordinary Americans who want to see torture
allegations investigated -- evidently a majority of them, in fact -- have been dismissed by these same pundits
as members of a bloodthirsty 'hard left.' The president himself asks us all to move on. And if we're moving on,
it can't have been all that bad...
There's one other fact that accounts for the horror differential between the torture memos and Abu Ghraib,
and that's the fact of Abu Ghraib. Because, as I have suggested before, after Abu Ghraib, America seems to
have lost its capacity to be truly shocked by anything America might do. As chilling and brutal as the images were
at the time, they have, in the years between, lost much of their power to repel us. They have become -- abetted by
endless viewings of Jack Bauer on 24 and an interminable national debate about torture -- emblems of what America
is at least willing to consider doing. They are no longer postcards from the unthinkable. They are what we have become.
They are what Bush made America into.
Bush and the Fascist dogs say torture is good for America.