The Torture Ten

The countdown trudges on now through a bunch of stuff I wish I never had to write - even when compiling a list of the underachievements of this President.

#50. Abu Ghraib. Do I need to explain?

#49. Donald Rumsfeld: Of all the #$%^ this #@$^#&* son-of-a-#$%^@ ever pulled, the all-time low was his outing of the army specialist who found and turned in the photos which documented the despicable acts at Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld deserves to be tried for war crimes or, at the very least, forced to make out with Lynndie England.

#48. Hey, what happened to those CIA Tapes? When the tapes, showing harsh tortuous techniques being used on alQaeda suspects were reported destroyed by the CIA…well, that was a small problem since the Administration said there were no tapes to begin with – especially when asked for material to be provided to its own 9/11 commission.

#47. Stupid Comments on the 7’s: “No President has ever done more for human rights than I have.” The New Yorker, January 19, 2004. Sorry Lincoln. And Truman. And FDR. And the other 40.

#46. Private Practice: As if contracting out the war to fill Cheney’s 401k wasn’t bad enough, the Bush Administration never took responsibility for the atrocities committed in the name of the U.S. by private “military” personnel who tortured at abuGhraib and elsewhere. What disturbs me most here is that for all of the posturing of Bush’s right-wing following over “Supporting the Troops” the underbidding of this war was so completely anti-troop. Private torturers made more money and faced far less threat of punishment (no court-martial in the private sector) for carrying out US business.

#45. Dana Perino: The last WH Press Secretary will probably end up the most successful post-Bush. Could be ‘cause she’s easy on the eyes. Could be she only had to maintain the lowest approval ratings possible; she was not there to watch them plummet. However, she will be remembered for some doozies. None sum up her ability to flat out lie or represent the arrogance of her boss like this gem, a solid defense of her boss’ defense of torture.

#44. Guantanamo Bay: Not the tropical destination the name implies.

#43. The Worst Thing About Torture Is Not That It Hurts: No, it probably is that it hurts. But for those of us currently free from having to be chained naked to a cold floor overnight in a brick factory, the problem with torture is that it made us Americans less than who we believed we had become. We have grown up believing we were better than slavery, better than depopulation of the American Indian, better than racism, better than Japanese internment camps, etc. But when we hold suspects without due process, when we smear them in fecal matter and take their picture, when we capture and detain citizens who merely share the names of foreign adversaries, we make ourselves the very tyrants we fooled ourselves into believing we had risen above.

#42. Extraordinary Rendition: How do you get away with torture? Well, if you are the Bush Administration, you simply take prisoners out of your military camps and prisons – where torture is frowned upon now that those abuGhraib photos got posted – and airlift them somewhere, like Afghanistan, where it won’t be so…um…looked down upon.

#41. Waterboarding.