What: President Obama releases CIA “torture memos.” Outrage on both sides of the aisle.
What People Are Saying:
“Putting Torture Memos to Music” Via Mother Jones
David Limbaugh, Via Townhall.com
The ultimate outrage is the administration’s green light to Congress to prosecute Bush administration officials for these policies, which manifestly prevented terrorist attacks and saved American lives.
Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
The way we respond — or fail to respond — to the revelations about the Bush administration’s use of torture will delineate — for ourselves and for the world — the kind of country we are.
It is a test of our courage and our convictions. A test of whether we are indeed a nation of laws — or a nation that pays lip service to the notion of being a nation of laws.
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.
And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.
“Loosening of Associations” by Flickr User Night Heron
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
The memos dispassionately describe the use of tactics such as waterboarding, holding prisoners in small dark boxes, exploiting prisoners’ fears of insects, forced nudity, and shackling and depriving them of sleep for as many as eleven days. They also include extensive legal arguments as to why these tactics do not amount to torture under US and international law.