Torture, Plain and Simple

It's been mentioned a good deal and I kept meaning to link to it here...
If you haven't read this piece by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books, please be sure to do so. Yes, it's long, but very well worth your time.

Also, worth your time, in regards to the torture - yes, t-o-r-t-u-r-e - policies of this country is Scott Horton's breakdown at Harper's site of former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleeza Rice's comments to a student at Stanford this week.

To those of you who say all this was worth it for the intel, what kind of intel do you think somebody gives you after being forced to stand shackled for a month at a time or having their head repeatedly smashed against the wall? What would you be willing to admit to in order to end such treatment?

This isn't about revenge against the former administration. If the other party did this - if my mother did this - I would want at the very least an investigation. This is not about politics. We are better than this.

And, where is the organized, official outcry from the social work profession, with human rights supposedly at the core, since all of this starting coming to light years ago? I suppose this will go the way of the profession's response to the international sanctions against Iraq and slip quietly past. You should read an excellent article on that issue from Dr. Scott Harding of the University of Connecticut.
Salaam.