Isn’t it good to know that the Karzai government’s torturer in chief has managed to get asylum in the United States? Doesn’t it comfort you to know that he’s living in a “pink two-story house in Southern California, on a street of stucco homes on the outskirts of Los Angeles”?
You can read the whole thing if you want to be really depressed. The legacy of the Bush years just keeps getting worse. We don’t really have a leg to stand on. The CIA basically hired this guy, gave him all the resources he needed, handed over prisoners to him for years, and then (probably) arranged for him to come here when he became too much of an embarrassment abroad.
Did I expect that the US could have convinced the Afghans to be gentle to their prisoners after decades of civil and ethnic war? No. But I did expect that we would at least set a guiding example. And we didn’t. Our own torturer in chief walks free and pens columns defending torture in the Washington Post. So, what happened to that shining city on a hill?
I just want someone held accountable, even if they shop at Richard Cohen’s Safeway.
