May 20, 2008, The Beat[ings] Go On
The Grey Lady tells us of yet another report from the Justice Dept. Inspector General, concerning extensive "disagreements" between the FBI and the CIA concerning the latter's blatantly illegal, unAmerican, morally reprehensible, so-bad-they-helped-al-Qaeda-recruit terrorists, counterproductive and absolutely evil troublesome practices with respect to "harsh" interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
Among the revelations include assisting Chinese interrogators in tormenting Uighur prisoners (prisoners later found to constitute absolutely no threat to this country, and indeed, some of which prisoners we found new homes for in Albania) and a female detainee bending back a detainee's thumb and grabbing his testicles.
This is coupled with reports showing extensive cooperation with some of the other most reprehensible countries in terms of human rights abuses on the planet (including China, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Russia) [via Candace], and of course, the delay in kangaroo court military commission trials pending yet another imminent Supreme Court decision, even as the GTMO census declines to around 270, 280 or so.
It seems that the war on terror did indeed require a vast "coalition of the willing": nations willing, that is, to abuse if not outright torture their own citizens to the same extent or worse than this country abused if not outright tortured them, only in an American controlled detention facility with American officials watching, if not outright facilitating.
None of this will get much prettier. The next President will need a whole lot of whitewash to cover the stains that the current one has allowed to accumulate on what's left of our nation's moral fiber. I have full confidence that best efforts will be applied to that effort nonetheless. (Alas, Sen. Obama, who has passed the majority of pledged delegates tonight and moved to well under 100 delegates needed to clinch with his split decision of winning Oregon's Dem primary while Sen. Clinton won the Dem primary in Kentucky, may not be up to imposing the kind of pay-back accountability required by, say, Charlie Pierce, or m'self, but he is at least our best shot for it).
All things told... deep sigh.