Torturegate: Truth and No Consequences in America

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account…The commander-in-chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture." -- Major General Antonio Taguba

This shocking, perhaps unprecedented declaration by a senior military officer was just one of many instances during the week when Establishment figures – not just retired officials like Wilkerson and Taguba, but serving officers as well – confirmed and condemned the injustice and criminality of the Bush gulag system. Even corporate media types began openly using the "T" word, after years of ridiculing or marginalizing those who dare call the Administration's "harsh interrogation techniques" what they plainly are.

By week's end, the evidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other top government officials had deliberately created a system of torture which they knew was illegal – indeed, a capital crime – under U.S. law was so plain, so overwhelming, and so handily concentrated that it broke through the levees of institutional cover-up and media complicity that had held this clear truth at bay for so long. The grim facts had finally worked their way into "conventional wisdom." It was now permissible for good "centrist" folk to speak of such things, even condemn them, without being automatically relegated to ranks of "the haters," the "unserious," the "shrill partisans," etc.

And yet, even as this new consensus was forming, you could see the sandbags piling up in the background to make sure that the water didn't reach too far. A line of defense was being laid that would allow the purveyors of conventional wisdom to vent a bit of righteous outrage at official wrongdoing without actually having to do anything about it or admitting of any flaws in their fundamentalist doctrine of American exceptionalism. No one need take any risks, make any effort, or discomfort themselves in any way to rectify the injustice; indeed, even the perpetrators should be left undisturbed.

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P.S. If you're an American and you have a functioning conscience, how can you be proud to be an American today? To help many of you understand what's become of us: we are doing what the bad guys in our movies do.