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Tuesday, June 30, 2009 12:00 AM

The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture

The unstated premise of every torture debate -- that it was safely applied to a handful of detainees -- is false

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  • Tuesday, June 30, 2009 10:06 AM

    Are "Insurgents" Real People?

    You wouldn't know it, would you, from the AP reports we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan?

    Every wedding party that gets a hellfire missile thrown at them, every massacre of entire villages, families, etc, gets reported as "terrorists" or "Taleban" or "al qaeda" or "insurgents" (or sometimes "Taleban insurgents" or "al qaeda insurgents").

    It is only afterwards that the facts begin to dribble out through the slower but generally more reliable means available: the people left alive on the ground.

    Are "suspects" real people?

    You wouldn't know that, either.

    The awful truth is that people in the west have lost any sense of common cause we might once have had for the victims of our latest political idiocy du jour, and we no longer recognise that suffering an imperial power that treats people this way is as dangerous to our interests as it is to anyone elses.

    And with each death of another innocent abroad it gets harder to escape the equally awful conclusion that when the day comes that this concentrated and lethally violent power is bought to bear against us, we will so thoroughly deserve it that there will be little room left for credible protest.

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