Thursday, November 3, 2005

I'm already ashamed

Nevada Thunder brings us Bob Herbert's op-ed about our concentration camps secret jails in Romania, Poland, and elsewhere (Financial Times):

Ultimately the whole truth will come out and historians will have their say, and Americans will look in the mirror and be ashamed.

Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "better angels" of our nature. George W. Bush will have none of that. He's set his sights much, much lower.

The latest story from the Dante-esque depths of this administration was front-page news in The Washington Post yesterday. The reporter, Dana Priest, gave us the best glimpse yet of the extent of the secret network of prisons in which the C.I.A. has been hiding and interrogating terror suspects. The network includes a facility at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.
This is the border along which democracy bleeds into tyranny.
Terrible instances of torture and other forms of abuse of detainees have come to light. The Pentagon has listed the deaths of at least 27 prisoners in American custody as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides.

None of this has given the administration pause. It continues to go out of its way to block a legislative effort by Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, to ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Jimmy Carter was on Hardball yesterday. He said he never thought he'd see the day when Congress would argue whether torture is an acceptable policy or not.

Worse stories are still to come - stories of murder, torture and abuse. We'll watch them unfold the way people watch the aftermath of terrible accidents. And then we'll ask, "How could this have happened?"

I'll tell you exactly how it happened: we have criminals in charge of the United States of America. Let's ask how the fuck that happened.

I am not only ashamed of my government for this despicable shit, but as half of me is of Polish descent, I am ashamed of Poland for allowing this to happen. They, perhaps more than any country on the planet, should know the evil of concentration camps.

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