Torture Nation

Doesn't this make me proud to be a veteran? Anyway, so much for the "few bad apples" excuse. This may be the smoking gun that links the acts of torture to the orders for torture.

The inquiry largely concerns a small group of mostly female interrogators who say they were urged by superiors to be "creative" in late 2002 when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressed frustration about the lack of actionable intelligence being gleaned from prisoners at the base. That may have led some interrogators to take liberties, officials said.

That last sentence is a classic. I don't know how they train people now, but when I was in the service, we were made acutely aware of the Geneva Convention and it was essential to understand that there was such a thing as an illegal order. That is not to say that some people would balk at carrying out such commands, but I simply don't buy the argument that all of these guards and interrogators, ranging from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, simultaneously and on their own initiative cooked up these abuses that are so particular to the culture. Do you really think that your average G.I. knows enough about Muslim culture to have concocted these specific techniques?

Let's hope this is the first domino falling for Rumsfeld, Bush, et. al., to pay for this shameful episode. The toleration and/or promulgation of torture is a black mark on the hide of everyone who has ever served the nation. Torture is never justified by a civilized people.