"We Are All Torturers Now"

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/opinion/06danner.html

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

By MARK DANNER

Published: January 6, 2005


AT least since Watergate, Americans have come to take for granted a certain story line of scandal, in which revelation is followed by investigation, adjudication and expiation. Together, Congress and the courts investigate high-level wrongdoing and place it in a carefully constructed narrative, in which crimes are charted, malfeasance is explicated and punishment is apportioned as the final step in the journey back to order, justice and propriety.

When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land....

[Solly Mack]

1. He's right, of course.

I'm in tears.

on edit:

I keep rereading this article. I can't seem to get away from it.
What have we become as a nation? Gonzales will be confirmed. Under some idiotic notion that a President deserves the cabinet he wants...nevermind how bad said cabinet is for the country.

Does anyone in Congress even believe in "what's best for the country?"

I know they spout it a lot. Maybe they have a diffferent idea of what those words mean.

I'm so disgusted.

[BurtWorm]

2. I'm too pissed off to be in tears.

I want to ask jerks like Gonzales and even dear old Chuck Schumer, what makes today's world so much less civilized that torture becomes a legitimate tool of state power than it was when the US actually led the world in human rights? The legitimization of torture is a product of anti-Arab racism. That's all it is. Are today's "Islamo-fascists" less worthy of human rights than the Nazis were? Apparently! :grr:

[Solly Mack]

3. I need anger right now. I swear I think part of me still holds out hope

they'll do the decent thing.

I know better but still...

I want to believe so desperately in the possibility of good government.

You're right. It's racism. It's hate. I'm so ashamed of my country.

[Disturbed]

4. A. Gonzales green lights sadism and torture.

Any Dem or Repub that votes for this man does not deserve to be a member of Congress.

[Solly Mack]

5. I agree. A vote to confirm is a vote for torture

[arwalden]

6. A vote to confirm is a vote for torture,

Well said.

[Deja Q]

9. Agreed. Utterly. BTW:

Nice avatar pic. :7

[Solly Mack]

11. It makes me sick to know that man will be confirmed.

[G_j]

14. agreed, & there is NO excuse

absolutely none.

[CWebster]

7. Watch the vote

Remember in '08

[Q]

8. The awful thing is that...

...Democrats in DC know that they will suffer no consequences from the electorate if they allow the installation of this enabler of torture.

Merely criticizing him while saying that they'll support the nomination is nothing but theater for the masses.

[Solly Mack]

10. True

"but we criticized him" is no excuse for supporting torture.

[jbnow]

12. I keep feeling, writing, saying

I am angry about this. It is disgusting that he was even nominated, beyond all decency if he is confirmed. Whatever virtues he might have don't matter, he should not be in the running, not considered, not approved.

It reminds me of the mockery of the medals bush gave the three war idiots...except that was bush being a stupid hypocrite. This...is worse. We can't give the nod of approval to choices that show us in the worst light...

[kodi]

13. how far we have come since nixon said "we are all kensyians now" in 1971

.

[BurtWorm]

15. kick