It's called 'Learning From Your Mistakes', not 'We Hate America'

[thewayne]

"The United States of America is awesome. We are awesome. We've closed the book on [torture], and we've stopped doing it...This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we're not awesome. They apologized for this country, they don't like this country. They want us to look bad."
—Fox News co-host Andrea Tantaros on Senate torture report

I wonder if the Senate hadn't made the disclosure and talked about it, and then have it happen again, that we'd still be awesome.

Personally, I think it'd be awesome to not torture and to actively discourage its use throughout the world. But I'm just a silly little voter, so what do I know.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

The underlying hideousness, of course, is that it would seem (I must establish actual URLs, ideally) that at present, the US public narrowly supports torture, per polls. I still can't quite fathom it, let alone the acceptance, but then, the propaganda wing's had decades to hone the theme. (Remember that photo of Rumsfeld and co from the 1970s? This was a long game)

The US officially supports crimes they once prosecuted at Nuremberg. And they're joined by other "good guys", not least the UK and Poland.

Fuck you, Fox News.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've seen those reports and I flat-out don't understand it. One of the ways the previous administration weasled around the definition of torture was they found some definition that included 'danger of organ failure', so they decided that if you're just AFRAID that you're going to die, then that's OK. The worst part is that a lot of the actual torturing was not conducted by military servicepeople or government intelligence agents, it was done by contractors.

I think the worst part since 9/11 is the USA lost any verneer of civility and moral high ground, though it's questionable as to how much we had in the first place. How can we legitimately sanction Putin when we invade and kill with impunity?

[silveradept]

If they want something to be pissed about, why not take the current administration to task for not prosecuting the last one? Since, y'know, there's a convention against torture that the States is a signatory to...

...oh, right, that's that "international law" that they believe American Exceptionalism means they don't have to follow.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I was reading an article on the POTUS and executive privelege over the years, it basically stated that Obama has nothing on Dubya. Dubya apparently single-handedly suspended and nullified TREATIES. You'd think the Senate and the House might be slightly miffed by that.

[silveradept]

That assumes they knew about it happening, which isn't any sort of guarantee. Bush loved to hide all sorts of things in his signing statements - odds are good that he wouldn't have said a damn thing if he didn't have to.