Will anything about the U.S. torture scandal ever scandalize us again? - By Dahlia Lithwick »

Posted By berkeley 6 months, 2 weeks ago in Political News
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In April of 2004, the world first learned that American soldiers in Iraq had abused detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. Images first revealed on CBS and in The New Yorker showed prisoners standing hooded on a box with wires attached to their hands and genitals; piles of naked prisoners stacked into a pyramid; and detainees forced to simulate sexual acts upon one another, often with grinning GIs on hand to point and offer a jaunty thumbs up.

The reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal was swift and bipartisan. Within days, President George W. Bush had offered a public apology for "the terrible and horrible acts," and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, took "full responsibility" for the scandal, promising that the offenders would be brought to justice, because the victims "are human beings. They were in U.S. custody. Our country had an obligation to treat them right. We didn't do that." With the exception of a handful of outliers—Rush Limbaugh said the abuse was "no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation," and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., claimed to be "more outraged by the outrage than … by the treatment"—Americans reacted with almost universal surprise and revulsion.

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berkeley

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public ...

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    berkeley6 months, 2 weeks ago

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    fta: We have become so casual about torture that we now openly debate its efficacy—something nobody would have dared do in the first days after Abu Ghraib. The fight playing out between the left and the right now isn't "Did we water-board?" We already knew we did. It is barely even "Was it legal?" Virtually nobody seriously argues that it was. The fight we are having in America now is "Did it work?"

    this is the true horrow we are surrounded with: our flexible definition of normal.

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      calitennflo6 months, 2 weeks ago

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      The "separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", is the same as the the individual station we occupy on the time-line.

      (ref:IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
      The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America)

      They, the ones before us knew, as Nature dictated, we were required to form a governing body called a government, and also communicate effectively the orders that would keep us in order. Truth is..."We The People" ordained the Constitution...the word ordained is the same as proving also "We The People" as a whole are vested with the powers of government, shared with all of us. This was and is final...
      We are not the guilty ones, we citizens, but those who govern us are far from proving the correct assent of law.

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      nostalgia6 months, 2 weeks ago

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      When you learn that we are pulling out fingernails, attaching electricity to people's genitals, chopping off fingers, burning people with hot metal or cutting off heads, let me know.
      Then I'll be outraged

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      Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago

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      Is citing worse examples a good excuse for torture?

      http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/25/in-2002-...

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