What you are saying that “we are a nation of monsters” in relation to torture is correct. I hope this might just be a temporary anomaly.

I am attempting to take the long view that all of the great documents and real thinkers like our founding fathers and the writers of the Geneva Convention took…no cruel and unusual punishments etc. Those folks who wrote those documents and policies had just experienced terrible warfare and massive death in the millions that reached into every family and took a father, son, daughter wife or cousin. Contrast that with we overfed, puffed up, exceptionalist Americans who were being pushed into war by silly, priggish “can do” CEO types who intentionally paid their propaganda Wurlitzer to stir up massive anger over a the loss of a couple of buildings and a couple of thousand citizens. Now, I’m not minimizing this loss in any way, but our loss is tiny in comparison to millions lost in WWI, or the desperate times of the American Revolution when our founding fathers had their very own lives on the line and faced hanging for treason if they failed.

Yet,as you note Pvequalkt, many people desire a strong leader, a furor, especially in a crisis, and when filled with fear,and the entire Bush co. agenda was pre-designed to fill the populace with terrible fear. Remember, “be afraid, be very afraid” mantra that they pushed in their propaganda Wurlitzer. This was brainwashing on a massive scale.

Since I was the only war veteran teacher in our school where I taught, I remember being interviewed by a kid for the school announcements about my opinion as to what we should do after 9/11. I was against unilateral military action, but it was really hard to go against the the calls for revenge. I said that “I have seen war and I am saddened by all of the loss of life that has occurred and will occur because of this event.” That was all I said. However, it was really difficult not to jump on the popular bandwagon and say what another teacher said, “that we need to go over there and clean out that nest of killers.” And I later caught hell for waffling in the revenge department and being too “soft” and too “liberal.”

So, public opinion is due to many things, especially how efficiently a government propaganda machine operates. Our Whurlitzer is magnificent and super efficient. It keeps the US masses in a mindless stupor most of the time.

The common US citizen is like an old work horse with those huge leather blinders sewn on the sides of its bridle that keep it looking straight ahead, with reins hooked to either side of the bridle so our leaders can pull their heads in the direction they want them to look while ignoring everything else around them.

Nazi Germany was a little different however. Hitler had the charisma to charm and lead while the German people were beset by defeat and massive inflation and poverty. The German people had some legitimate reasons to be very angry at something or someone. Hitler simply turned their heads toward his chosen scapegoats; Jews, Gypsies and other minority groups, and seemingly decent people readily followed, just as normally peaceful Americans swallowed the Bush co. war propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Now, as torture is instituted in the depths of the US government and our military, we can speculate that it will be used at some point, probably against everyday citizens. These things just grow bigger once they are allowed. When this happens, torture might be used on Americans to create justifications for expanding ant-terror policies and operations that make huge profits for contractors and anti-terror police state functionaries. This is what happened in Tsarist Russia and in the Soviet Union and in many other places where the torture genie was let out of the bottle. When torture becomes a commonplace thing everytime a citizen is arrested for ordinary violations, then, citizen opinion might move against it, but that will be too late. In fact, it is probably already too late.

This might be beginning to happen right now when our police can easily pull the trigger on their tasers and shoot electric wires and 60,000 volts into an citizen offender. They are already using these devices to “punish” citizens right there on the spot even for honestly questioning their arrest. So, now torture and selling torture devices has been accepted in America. It has become profitable and expedient to employ those devices against the US citizenry. So we are far down the road toward a culture like existed in Tsarist Russia or Nazi Germany.

Will the American people wake up and realize that the pure meanness of Dick Cheney and his sick crowd has lead the entire nation down a torture path where torture could easily become common down at your local police station.

As this occurs, I wonder what percentage of people will continue to support US torture policies.

When revenge is sought, humans can become truly evil. History is full of such examples.

I do not know what portion of germans actually supported the pogrom against jews (and others). But I do know that polling in the us has shown support for torture, be it so labelled or disguised as “enhanced interrogation”, to vacillate between 40 and 55%. If you poll congress, the support would seem to be 99%ish. If you poll Rs, it’s 120%. If you poll only elected Ds, it’s about 95%, including nobody in the white house nor in the DOJ. I’m basing this on how each has voted and/or advocated.

So, though those who CREATED the policy, for no real reason discernable except just plain meanness and revenge, should be mankind’s pariahs. But so, too, should be everyone who is or was ever in a position to advocate against it and hold those who did it accountable and did nothing. And, then, of course, you must also include the 150 million or so of american nazi party members who lust for blood at least as much as cheney and the bushbaby.

This problem goes all the way to the tips of the americans’ roots. There was a panelist on the Maher show who labelled the designers of the policy “monsters”. We are a nation of monsters. It’s really pretty simple.

These poor excuses for human beings should be put in the same historical category as the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials. They might escape punishment during their lifetimes, but they will be reviled by world historians as the creators of crimes against humanity. They are cut from the same evil cloth as the Nazi torturers.

These evil subhumans have created a deep and dark malaise in the hearts of all Americans. Forget liberal bleeding hearts in all of this. Even rigid, uptight conservatives instinctively know that causing unnecessary suffering in other human beings is morally wrong. It is mentally sick, evil, subhuman behavior. I think this instinctive knowledge is inherited as part of our group animal mentality and we don’t necessarily learn it from our parents or teachers. It’s instinctive and hard-wired into us to set some acceptable standard of treatment for fellow human beings.

We human animals will compete for food and land and money and gold and silver. We humans will often kill each other over these things. However, to go out of our way to cause great pain and terrible suffering in other humans, even enemies, is simply against our humanity or, if you will, our nature as a species of animal.

Torture of helpless people, even enemy prisoners, is sick behavior. It is like a festering sore in the hearts of Americans everywhere.

The only way this sickening sore can be healed is to punish those involved in it and expose it and announce to the entire world that it is a terrible crime, and that we were wrong for having engaged in it.

Only then, can some sort of national healing begin that will bring us back to some sort of human normalcy to the US.

Of course, like the above posters, I don’t expect this to happen anytime soon.

These guys, along with the justice department lawyers, are good examples of what happens when academics, who have never done anything of real consequence in the world, have to prove their Manhood. Likewise for bush junior and cheney.

The fix was in before Obama was even elected President…Those who make the rules control the game…!
The US has been losing its soul for some 30 years now and there is no one on the horizon to put it back….anytime soon….

pvequalkt wrote:

*IF* there is to be any accountability, here is what needs to happen:
obama needs to be replaced with a human being;
all congressional democrats need to be replaced with human beings;
all republicans need to die;
all american voters need to understand the difference between video game and teevee torture and the real thing.

So, there will never be any accountability in this country.

It is far more likely that yoo or bybee will be elected president some day.

I’ve long wondered, along with the other commenters, why so many prominent people working for or on behalf of the U.S. government haven’t been held responsible for torture of detainees, either past or on-going. The best insight into this can be gained by considering the beliefs of those who have the power and opportunity to effectuate criminal prosecutions and disciplinary actions such as removal of law or medical licenses. I’ll refer to them generically as law enforcers. There are thousands of them in the U.S., but to my knowledge none have used their power to enforce the laws against torture of detainees, except for a few low-level prosecutions.

It might be useful to consider torture imposed by perpetrators of rape, murder, and serious assault. Law enforcers have no reluctance to pursue such cases because they believe they will be rewarded for doing so — financially, by the esteem of their peers, and in terms of moral and ethical “law and order” motivations. What negates the prospect of these rewards with regard to public officials and other higher-level officials responsible for torture of detainees? I propose the following (not necessarily in order of importance).

First, law enforcers don’t understand that there has actually been violation of law by the prominent operatives.

Second, law enforcers lack sensitivity to the harm suffered by detainees who are tortured.

Third, law enforcers fear that other law enforcers, their employers, and the general public will remove or seek to remove them from their jobs and otherwise retaliate against them if they attempt to hold higher-level persons responsible for torturing detainees.

Fourth, law enforcers believe that the use of torture has been empirically shown to allow discovery of information that leads to prevention of terrorism.

Fifth, law enforcers believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the “freedoms” enjoyed by the U.S.

Sixth, law enforcers believe that accused terrorists do not enjoy the same status as human beings as people in the U.S. who are not accused of being terrorists.

There may be more.

Once we fully understand what negates, with respect to acts by prominent officials leading to torture of detainees, the rewards that law enforcers earn by prosecution of ordinary serious crimes, we can begin organizing systematic attacks to remove these roadblocks.