Heading toward the 'dark side'

By Elisa Massimino
Los Angeles Times
Monday, Nov. 21, 2005


Horrified U.S. allies are investigating secret CIA prisons that have been operating on European Union territory. Dick Cheney is being called "vice president for torture," and cartoons depict him wielding thumbscrews and the rack. In political commentaries, the Bush administration is skewered for hypocrisy as it insists that "we don't torture" while fighting to preserve its right to do so.

Still, the administration will not yield on its demand that U.S. intelligence officials must be given the right to use cruel, inhumane and degrading methods on terrorism suspects.

The administration must believe something vital is at stake to withstand the public reprobation — and political damage — its position is creating. At bottom, this is about executive power: The administration insists that in fighting the "global war on terror," it can accept no limits on the powers of the commander in chief.

In staking out such a position on torture, President Bush has moved far from the mainstream of his own party. On one side are Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and 89 other senators, a majority of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, former Joint Chiefs chairmen Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili and more than two dozen other retired senior military leaders. All insist that the moral standing of the United States and the safety of its troops demand an unequivocal rejection of torture and other abuse of prisoners in our custody. On the other side is the White House.


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-massimino21nov21,0,4641939.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

incredible. That this country would stoop to such depths. There's an article on Counter Punch which calls Dick Cheney "America's Marquis de Sade".

Such sick stuff, I wonder if we will ever recover from this man.