True

The Washington Post continues to deny that the US's treatment of detainees at Gitmo, Bagram, and elsewhere is not torture. Otherwise how could it advocate the discussion of prisoner torture as an agenda item in talks with Iran?

The cases of torture and rape of prisoners courageously documented by opposition presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi should be as worthy of discussion as the non-nuclear subjects that Iran wants to bring up.

Sullivan has a great point here:

America is exceptional not because it banished evil, not because Americans are somehow more moral than anyone else, not because its founding somehow changed human nature—but because it recognized the indelibility of human nature and our permanent capacity for evil. It set up a rule of law to guard against such evil. It pitted branches of government against each other and enshrined a free press so that evil could be flushed out and countered even when perpetrated by good men.

The belief that when America tortures, the act is somehow not torture, or that when Americans torture, they are somehow immune from its moral and spiritual cancer, is not an American belief. It is as great a distortion of American exceptionalism as jihadism is of Islam.

My emphasis. The Christianists and the political hawks (such as WaPo's Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer) who continue to assert America's moral high-ground when it comes to the treatment of prisoners are worthy of the same question Barney Frank asked of that woman at his town hall: "On what planet do you spend the majority of your time?"

Until George W Bush himself breaks his silence and admits that the US did, in fact torture prisoners, we will always be in collective denial about this, and we will never be able to complain about the treatment American prisoners (particularly those in the military or government) receive. Ever.