History Will Not Absolve Us
Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial
by Nat Hentoff
While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in.
But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do—on the orders of the president—to "protect American values."
She quotes a former CIA officer: "When you cross over that line of darkness, it's hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but . . . you can't go back to that dark a place without it changing you."
Read more about the leaked Red Cross report here ...
Those on the Right expressed great moral indignation when Bubbah took a BJ. They condemned the human rights violations of the Soviet Union and Castro. They were enraged by Cambodian "re-education camps" and Stasi interrogation techniques. Why is it a deep moral offense when the Chinese do it, or when the North Koreans do it or when Castro does it. Why is it a war crime when its done in South Africa or in Rhodesia or when the Nazis did it in Germany and Poland and France but its not a crime now?
Those on the Right proclaim themselves the keepers of American values. Since when has torture been an American value?
Where is their moral outrage now? Why are they so silent now when they had so much to say on the subject at other times?
It would appear their outrage has limits but their hypocracy knows no bounds.
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