I love how this country devises new ways to always avoid taking responsibility for its past mistakes. Did we torture people to death for no good reason? Oh well, we can’t admit it or our soldiers deployed overseas will be put at risk. This is why we never saw many of the more appalling photos from Abu Ghraib. It would have inflamed international opinion and made people want to kill our troops.
It’s also why it’s taking so long for us to see the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the treatment of detainees. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is threatening to declassify the report unilaterally, and the National Security Council counters that they need advance warning so they can move pieces around to protect our people serving abroad.
Let’s start with the fact that we shouldn’t have tortured anyone to death or tortured them at all. Then let’s stipulate that things might have looked a little better if the torturers hadn’t been given a Get Out of Jail Free pass. Finally, let’s stop being idiots and admit that people already are killing our people because of what we did and that the best way to assure that our people don’t do it again is to just be fucking honest, for once, about what was done in our name.
