Torture and the Moral GOP's Reaction

Hi Everyone,

Two documents were released yesterday. In the one the US press covered most,the Pentagon released a report clearing itself of any wrong doing in the Abu Gharib abuse scandal. The report also clears senior political appointees in the Pentagon and the White House of any wrong doing. But since the officers who put the report together were ordered not to investigate "up the chain of command" just "down the chain of command" its not surprising this investigation let Rummy and Gonzalez et al off the hook. To their credit, Democrats weren't buying it.

Unfortunately, since the Democrats are not in the majority in either house of Congress, no serious investigation will take place. Sen. Jim Talent (R-Missouri) said, "If our guys want to poke somebody in the chest to get the name of a bomb maker so they can save the lives of Americans, I'm for it...I don't need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn't do it." So which it GOP? Did it never happen or do you not care!? The level of moral depravity among the Republican establishment is just outrageous!

Of course most of the US press has not yet picked up on the other document that was released yesterday. These are internal reports about prisoner abuse throughout the world that the ACLU got released through the Freedom of Information Act (the ACLU got this instead of the so called "4th Estate" because we have witnessed the death of investigative journalism in America and abroad). These reports detail patterns of abuse in numerous prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the latest outrage is the revelation that children as young as 8 to 12 years old were held at Abu Gharib. But the Pentagon promises that none of the children were abused...begging the question of whether it is a form of abuse to detain children as "enemy combatants" and house them in the same facility with adults who are being abused. In the reports, Brig. Gen. Karpinski, the commandant of Abu Gharib (who, by the way, was not interviewed for the above mentioned Pentagon report), is quoted as saying, "I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians,...We're winning the war."

Comments? Outrage?