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• Sunday, November 4, 2007 07:04 PM

  "Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted"

  This quote from Hassan i Sabbah (1090 AD), leader of the Persian cult of the Hashishim (assassins) applies to the finer points of this well-meant article. For instance:

  "It is not true, as the movie depicts, that CIA officers stand by in some Egyptian or Syrian torture room while a prisoner is electrocuted. Most CIA officers would find that abhorrent, and it would breach the CIA's own rules and be a clear violation of U.S. law."

  This statement from Grey would once have reverberated with the ring of truth. No longer, not today, not under the rule of the thugs who run our nation and plague the world. Agents are unlikely so empathetic as to refuse to permit an occasional electrocution or other, even more unspeakable atrocity. It's the job, first, perhaps even the Bushit second. There are too many factors at play in these totally illegal and amoral events. We know nothing and can assume nothing, but especially we cannot assume the innate altruism of CIA agents who are kidnapping foreign nationals abroad, disappearing them, holding them in secret sites and torturing them up to the brink of death. Why would someone who could be implicit in any such activity flinch from actually killing some of their "suspects"? How do you prove a negative? Especially how do you do it in a moral low-pressure zone?

  I appreciate the article, but it falls short of believability in this respect.

  —AJCalhoun Read AJCalhoun's other letters
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