When you think about who talks about torture and defends it who comes to mind? Jack Bauer. Rush Limbaugh. Alan Dershowitz. John Yoo. Who has the bigger popular impact? The writers/producers on 24 and Rush. They are the drivers of the popular lines about torture. For the intellectuals it's Dershowitz and for the legals it Yoo. But Rush's ideas and Jack Bauer's arguments drive attitudes for millions.

Right here in San Francisco the radio hosts Brian Sussman and Lee Rodgers on KSFO are pro-torture. San Francisco, ground zero for pro-torture? You bet. For many of you outside the SF area the people driving the pro-torture debate are Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.

This week they will ignore, downplay and redefine what this ACLU report is about. And no body will challenge the.

Rush is having this conversation with millions of Americans and no one from the Red Cross is on to say. "No. You are wrong. People were tortured, they died. They weren't terrorists. There were more than 7. They are not frat party guys blowing off steam." Rush will never have that conversation. And Rush is the head of the Republican Party. Why can't he come out and talk to Philippe Sands? Mark Danner?

The supporters, deniers and appeasers are on talk radio and cable. But the ACLU can't get on the shows. People were TORTURED TO DEATH and they interview former Gitmo interrogators who can't reveal what they really did.

They will not let anyone in with the facts. If they do, they argue, browbeat and "win" the conversation after the caller hangs up(Hannity). Rush will talk to his imaginary producer to create his strawman and explain why it's not really torture.

I've know since at least 2005 that people were tortured to death based on the army's own reports (Taguba and Schlesinger). I've know that 100's were involved because of Mark Danner's book "Torture and Truth." and the photos.

We don't really have a conversation about this topic in the country because we don't involve the people who are the most supportive of it who control their own shows with an iron grip.

Mark Danner, the ACLU or the Red Cross aren't challenging their incorrect information.

I think the hosts' views on this topic are not only incorrect, but morally repugnant. But nobody is going to get on their shows who will tell them that. It's their show after all.

No one will do to them what John Stewart did to Tucker Carlson and call them on their disgusting views. So we will never have a conversation on this topic with the leaders on the right.

I think, Amity, it's that we are capable of change

while the rest of the world is either tradition bound or busy copying us.

It's called hope.

Thank you Grasshopper. Such counter-intuitive wisdom in one so intuitively unencumbered. Hell, I never thought you could top:

Leave it be. Let it heal. We did worse in Vietnam - through torture deaths and plain old ordinary burning - over two million innocent deaths. They forgive us. why? We let them. Let's let the Iraqis forgive us. We didn't exterminate them or even try. Let it go.

...but hey, you just managed it.

Hope.

Yikes.

I guess congratulations are in order for your new Hallmark gig, but I am curious: is this feelgood "we-have-met-the-jingoistic-but-wisely-self-forgiving-narcississy-fascists-and-they-are-us" theme geared specifically for the 4th of July?

Or is it meant to trigger a more general nostalgia for those bygone days when our country actually stood for something? You know, the kind of thing the whole family can enjoy all year round...

I respect what you write and enjoy reading your thoughtful evaluations, some perhaps penned with tongue-in-cheek. Maybe this evening I am missing the sarcasm or irony.

My experience however doesn't jibe wih your writing. I lived for quite a while internationally mostly in the Middle East. In fact I even worked in Tehran in the late 1970's. I think the CIA's involvement in setting up the puppet government there was the watershed moment in the world's view of America.

The term "Ugly American," didn't occur through happenstance.

Korea and Vietnam didn't add to the allure of this country.

Your post sounded a little like something David Brooks would write. I know that I am unaware of the "endless good deeds." Iraq didn't appear to me to have any "semblance of restraint." I believe the State Department's human rights report is a "laughingstock." Possibly the last thing I would call the USA is a "bemused, uninvolved forgetful giant." Just the opposite as the CIA has imposed itself upon other countries throughout the world. And they didn't even know that Iraq didn't have any WMD because they didn't have anyone who could speak Arab.

The friends from foreign countries I've made over the years never shared with me an admiration of the USA but rather looked upon America as self-serving and Americans as egotistical, wealthy, loud, drunk and not very intelligent.

Again, the CIA has committed well-documented subterfuge in screwing up countries all over the world. People in those countries don't generally react well to such actions. I was always awed by Cheney's claim that the USA would be met as liberators in Iraq as our troops were greeted in Paris after World War II.

The last eight years, IMHO, has played havoc upon a sorely blemished international reputation. Most of that time i spent in Latin America and traveled to locations where the CIA did their work. It's not pretty! I recall a small village on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala where government troops under the control of the CIA slaughtered uneducated peasant indians in an attempt to get information on a non-existent enemy.

while the rest of the world is either tradition bound or busy copying us.
It's called hope.

The conspiracy of lawlessness and arrogant secrecy must be dismantled with the full ardor of prosecutorial expertise.

The damage and enablement continue to threaten the foundations of our legal protections and undercut all pretense that our nation is as just and noble as we would like the world community to believe.

It is well long past time to put an end to these double dangers, and the dreadful motives which contrived them.