I wouldn't trust us if I wasn't one of us.

Sweeney

Glad you're here! It's so discouraging and deeply horrifying. Just makes me sick at heart. All over again. Makes me feel the same sense of utter revulsion I felt when the Abu Ghraib photos were released. Sick at heart.

This is one of those absolutes, at least for me. There aren't many, but I just don't see any way we compromise on this. Or sand it down, or dress it up, or call it something else, or cherry pick and tweezer it to death. I feel the same way about a woman's right to choose. It's a non-negotiable. PERIOD. Here, too, without question: torture is a crime, a sin, and against the Geneva Conventions. PERIOD. There IS no justification. I don't CARE what the rationale is, or how badass it looks on "24."

It's - when we say we're Americans, and we stand for American values and all that assorted blah-blah-blah, well, torture does NOT fit in there. Doesn't qualify. Has no rule and no place in there. That's not an American value. So since bush/cheney has deliberately and even proudly flouted that and made it so anyway, then we can't really expect to be taken seriously, tromping all over the world with our guns and ammo, trying to tell other nations how to do or be whatever. We have squandered the moral high ground. At least this report makes it official - as far as it goes, bless its little redacted heart. Just the same as - if you're all for helping the rich and screwing the poor, hungry, and homeless, and you aggressively cut funding to programs for people in serious and genuine need, or turn a deaf ear to their appeals, and snub them as little more than lazy moochers, then you better damn well not prance around congratulating yourself for what a Christian you supposedly are. Cuz you're NOT. You're anything BUT.

but it is an essential step. Talk about it, shout about it, do not accept it, do not pretend to accept it, object to it. You are there. If enough people get the chicken bone outa where their back bone should be, then things will change. There is no point becoming a victim to save a victim. Just resist injustice, and always push justice. Things will change, and peacefully.
Look at our Civil War. The reaction started before the revolution. That can be the bloodiest part of revolution. And that is the way it usually starts, backward. Don't let that get you.
You cannot make a moral argument against your own people simply because there is no human morality. Morality ties you to community and what the community does in the interest of the people is always right even when wrong. Here is the fault. As we watch humanity treated in this fashion, we must fear for all humanity, even our own. What criminals can do the the shivering flesh of another human they can do to you. You are correct to be horrified. No torturer should ply his trade, and then walk the street with free people. Such monsters cannot but be a threat to all people. They belong in a cage.
Thanks... Sweeney

My amen was to Calimary's post, but fell somehow.

All I know is we've all been fighting this cancer for far too long.

Also thank the heaven's above for DU and all the heart that is here.