Saturday, April 25, 2009
A not so merry minuet
Joe Galloway examines the issue of torture and politicians and from the start gets to the heart of the matter.
There they go again, those folks in Washington, D.C. Everyone wants the power; nobody wants the responsibility.But it is the answer to that question and the consequences that derive from it that this country, and the world, needs to know.
We're back to the question of which Bush administration officials ordered Justice Department lawyers to concoct some legal way to use illegal torture methods on the prisoners we were taking in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
It appears that no one in power or recently out of power wants to know the answer to that question.
The plain fact is that waterboarding is illegal under U.S. law. It's illegal under international laws and treaties that we helped negotiate, we approved and we adhered to until President Bush and his men and women decided that we wouldn't.Torture is not just the elephant in the room, it is also the 100 pound pile of shit he left on the carpet.
What's truly disheartening is to watch all the ducking, bobbing and weaving in the nation's capital - like so many powder-haired dandies prancing a minuet.
Yes, it's an ugly chapter in the life of a nation that prides itself on its freedoms and its rule of law. But it's more than that: It's a splendid opportunity for a bunch of politicians from both parties to find their spines, or borrow some, and get to work cleaning out the dark corners in the White House and emptying the closets of skeletons.
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