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• Friday, May 1, 2009 08:36 AM

  Reagan and Torture

  I understand Glenn's desire to use Reagan and the Anti-Torture Convention as a reproof to the neocon war crimes caucus, but I'm afraid it really only proves the opposite: That America has long been capable of immense, even monstrous, hypocrisy when it comes to human rights.

  We know now, thanks to a number of amazingly casual disclosures to the corporate media, that the Reagan Administration supported, armed and advised the various Central American death squad operations -- who routinely used torture as one of their lesser sanctions against the poor peasants and workers who constituted the vast majority of their victims.

  We also know, thanks to years of patient investigation, about the use of the School of the Americas as a facility for training Latin American military officers in -- to use the Cheney Administration's wonderfully Orwellian phrase -- "enhanced interrogation techniques," techniques that were either developed or refined at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca.

  So when Reagan signed the Anti-Torture Convention and issued his little statement, he was simply doing what the neocons believe all US presidents should do: Lie to the world with the impunity, while doing whatever is necessary -- up to and including emulating the Stasi and the Gestapo -- in the pursuit of US national security goals.

  In that sense, as in so many others, the neocons are Reagan's true heirs.

  —Billmon Read Billmon's other letters
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