Letters to the Editor
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The whole project is at best obscene and immoral, and should be illegal
I'm glad that Salon continues to focus on the abhorrent and immoral interrogation and imprisonment practices in use by our country with the approval (indeed, the insistence) of the president and his henchmen. It's disgraceful that the reporting by Salon and other sources has not brought these practices to an abrupt end, and that these abuses have not brought down the Bush government and put senior members in prison.
I think a line in this article hints at the underlying reasons that American outrage over these matters hasn't been greater. The author notes that, shortly after 9/11, Bush signed an order "authorizing broad covert action by the CIA to capture, detain or kill members of al-Qaida anywhere in the world". This order in itself is an outrage against the rule of law. By what right does our government "authorize" the killing of anyone, anywhere, without due process, trial, and all of the protections of an impartial judicial proceeding?
So long as we accept the idea that such an order falls within the powers of the president, arguments about the treatment of people "detained" (disgusting euphemism) as a result of the order will remain largely academic, exercises in hair-splitting. The only way to challenge the torture and secret prison policies effectively is to attack the root assumptions they depend on. We must condemn any extra-legal actions by any part of our government. Cut off funding for "black" operations. Demand that our government act always and only through legal means, both within our borders and beyond. Until we do that, the torturers and assassins will continue their work, while we distract ourselves with disputes over which agencies are covered by which laws, which practices constitute torture rather than "mere" abuse, and so forth.