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Leaving aside other countries, America, to some degree, has practiced torture for many decades, and especially since the CIA's establishment in 1947. During the Vietnam War, Paul Blackstock wrote an essay titled the "Moral Implications of Torture and Exemplary Assassination" for the Carnegie Council On Ethics and International Affairs. He described widespread CIA and special forces torture saying this policy created a situation wherein "for the majority of private individuals (the) intolerable (became) tolerable." That's the situation today in the Middle East, Central Asia, Guantanamo, on prison ships, and at all secret US black sites worldwide.Unless exposed, denounced and stopped, it's heading to mainland America and maybe a neighborhood near you. It's no idle threat given that, on July 14, the ACLU revealed that the nation's terrorist watch list hit one million names - based on the government's own reported numbers. It's also symbolic of what's wrong with "this administration's approach to security - unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, (treating) the rights of the innocent as an afterthought," and recklessly endangering what little freedom remains. Even worse, by Bush administration standards, there is none.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of The Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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