American Torture

The recent revelations of the existence and extent of the use of torture in interrogations by the CIA in the New York Times this week has confirmed what we secretly expected from the Bush administration. The main exposé article lists some of the atrocities the CIA has visited upon its detainees:

“They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.”

Any one of us could have written today’s editorial in the New York Times:

“Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. American leaders denounced secret prisons where people were held without charges, tortured and killed. And the people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values.
The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect. As an article on this newspaper’s front page last week laid out in disturbing detail, President Bush and his aides have not only condoned torture and abuse at secret prisons, but they have conducted a systematic campaign to mislead Congress, the American people and the world about those policies.”

It is a shame that the American media did not expose this program until now, as it was initiated in Bush’s first term. Nevertheless, this, with Iraq, confirms the Bush administration as probably the worst America has ever had. If Bush had any credibility or morals, he would apologise to the American people for so comprehensively discarding the values of his country in office. He will try to recycle the old excuses – 9/11 gave us a new war with new rules – with no grasp of the magnitude of his errors.