Friday, April 17, 2009

The Torture State

Andrew Sullivan's essay today brilliantly constructs the states of mind of the American people and its leaders to draw us a line between the civil and just society we all believed we had and what the fuck was really going on. In regards to President George W. Bush:
... when [he] acted "shocked" at what we all saw, and said it was not America, he was also authorizing far worse in secret - and systematizing it long after Abu Ghraib was over. He was either therefore a fantastic liar on one of the gravest matters imaginable or so psychologically compartmentalized and prone to rigid denial of reality and so unversed in history, law and morality that he had no reason being president.
Either way, we Americans made a collective huge mistake in re-electing this boob, this marionette, this pseudo-compassionate pseudo-conservative neo-fascist.

I am no so naive to think that presidents past and present don't engage in covert operations as far from public view as possible. However, the fact that this particular covert operation has now so completely come to light shows how saner and more moral minds within the government were so disgusted by Bush's and Cheney's actions that they felt the truth must come out.

In any event, the United States of America is not now, and will not be for some time, a country occupying anything resembling a moral high ground.

President Obama has absolutely done the right thing in releasing the OLC memos about Bush's involvement in and authorization of torture. In the weeks to come, more will be discussed about this than the economic recovery plans and the budget deficits. It's time for us to take stock in just who we are as people.

I am ashamed of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and all those horrible people who thought they were patriots but were in fact on a level with Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin.

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