A Defining Moment for America – The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.
Posted by Nicholas Gruen on Saturday, September 16, 2006
That’s the headline of the Washington Post’s editorial on the subject. (Courtesy of Brad DeLong’s Blog.)
Of course, Mr. Bush didn’t come out and say he’s lobbying for torture. Instead he refers to “an alternative set of procedures” for interrogation. But the administration no longer conceals what it wants. It wants authorization for the CIA to hide detainees in overseas prisons where even the International Committee of the Red Cross won’t have access. It wants permission to interrogate those detainees with abusive practices that in the past have included induced hypothermia and “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning. And it wants the right to try such detainees, and perhaps sentence them to death, on the basis of evidence that the defendants cannot see and that may have been extracted during those abusive interrogation sessions.
Where are all those ‘classical liberals’?
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 11:44 PM and filed under Politics - international, Uncategorised.
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I think that Steven poole has said it all HERE.
Posted on 18-Sep-06 at 7:10 pm | PermalinkOpposition to torture is one of those ‘ahistorical’ principles Paul Kelly has disposed of.
Posted on 19-Sep-06 at 7:23 pm | Permalink