This article by Stuart Taylor has made me reconsider. We know that Abu Graib style abuses have happened. Were these rogue operations, or were they authorized, tacitly or otherwise, by government officials? Did torture happen? To what extent? What did we do wrong? What did we do right? As a society that upholds high democratic ideals, we have a responsibility to ourselves and the world to get to the bottom of whatever happened, document it, and report the results for all the world to see.
We need to get the facts out in the open, if for no other reason than to knock down the nuttiest speculations and to exonerate anyone who may have been unfairly smeared.
...the U.S. needs to take serious steps to show reasonable critics at home and abroad that we are not going to sweep the evidence of Bush administration torture under the rug. This is not necessarily to suggest that Bush, his appointees, or other U.S. officials should be prosecuted. Most or all would have a valid defense of good-faith reliance on then-authoritative -- although erroneous and now-repudiated -- legal advice from the Justice Department.Who could conduct such an investigation and prevent it from becoming a political circus? Only a respected Republican of "unquestioned stature" who is...
"known for courage and for independence from both Bush and Obama -- and for personal knowledge of the horrors of torture. His name John McCain."I still hate the idea of all this, but the Bush administration's failure to construct a coherent legal framework to deal with jihadis scooped up from GWOT battlefields has led us here. Iron clad proof would not pacify the Bush haters, but a thorough review would at least establish a record of findings that reasonable people could analyze, debate, and learn from.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090404_6094.php
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.