If you want to understand how torture is regarded by this administration in our current war, you need to read this story. A detainee was abused and murdered by CIA operatives in Afghanistan. No one outside knew for two years. The officer who presided over the murder was subsequently promoted. (Only now will there be an investigation – by the CIA. Reassured?) Tragically, this president has signed off on the capture of “ghost detainees” with no accounting, outside of any scrutiny, held in prisons that are nameless, to be tortured or killed by U.S. soldiers or CIA agents, who are in turn protected from prosecution by Bush administration legal memos and the support of their superiors. We simply have no idea how many people have beensubjected to this (although we have around 30 corpses that have been accounted for). The White House recently confirmed that well over a hundred detainees have been sent to Arab autocracies where torture is practised. Even as this president publicly calls on these regimes to democratize, he privately asks them to “take care of” prisoners of war. We also know that attorney-general Alberto Gonzales skirted the truth, to put it mildly, in his Senate confirmation hearing. Here’s what he said:
“[T]he policy of the United States is not to transfer individuals to countries where we believe they likely will be tortured, whether those individuals are being transferred from inside or outside the United States.”
So why send detainees to Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan? Yes: Syria! The State Department has officially designated all those regimes as those that routinely practise torture. Even when cases emerge from the otherwise impenetrable darkness, 70 percent of the investigations of abuse, mistreatment or torture have been dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence. And if you are a decent soldier and object to such tactics? They strap you to a stretcher in restraints and order you into psychiatric treatment. Then they remove you from the arena in order to protect your physical “safety.” Yes, this country treats military dissidents as psychiatric patients. Can we go any lower? Wait! We can. Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general who helped craft the legal memos making torture permissible, said of such incidents: “I’m not sure that they should be viewed as surprising.” Let me put it this way: I’m quite sure that Alberto Gonzales is not surprised.
A GREAT PICK: Sending John Bolton to the U.N. strikes me as an inspired choice. The best diplomats in that position – Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan come to mind – have always been strong U.N. critics and have used their position to challenge the U.N. rather than flatter it. I’m also bemused by the critics. They don’t want Bolton in a powerful position in Washington, but equally they don’t want him in New York. Well, sorry, guys. It seems to me that this pick sends an intelligently mixed signal. Bolton will no longer be a central player in foreign policy in the White House and State Department. That signals more diplomacy, less confrontation. At the same time, the principles Bolton has stood for – democratization as a response to terror, the use of military force when necessary, and a refusal to coddle dictators – will be expressed where they are most needed. What’s not to like?
OH, RICKY: The funniest recent television series I’ve seen is “The Office,” the inspired Brit-com starring Ricky Gervais as a hapless, excruciating car-wreck of an office manager. But Ricky has a past. Here he is at the height of 1980s Brit synth-pop, eye-liner and hair and all of that. More here. Of course this means nothing to people not famliar with the show. But I assume that many as.com readers are. If you aren’t, do yourself a favor and get the DVD.
The Dish 