Torture: Another Monstrous, Insane Thing You Have to Accept to be a Republican
Last week’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture brought out yet another unsavory attribute of today’s GOP. Their voices rushed to defend torture and those who promoted it, casting doubt on the notion that we won’t see its return in the next GOP administration.
So now to call yourself a Republican you have to support torture, hate the idea of Americans having secure access to health care, deny the reality of climate change, want to deport millions of undocumented folks regardless of what it does to their children, and … The list of offenses against decency goes on and on.
To me, it’s been too horrifying to contemplate for a long time, but where is that threshold for the people who continue to choose the GOP? How monstrous and insane does the party have to get before everyone has had enough?
Here’s some of the week’s reading on torture:
- Jonathan Chait – The Torture Party: Why Republicans Defend the Most Sadistic Government Program in Recent History If George W. Bush’s fervent insistence that his government did not engage in torture does not define and haunt him forever—like Richard Nixon insisting he was not a crook, or Bill Clinton denying he had sexual relations with that woman—it will only be for the paradoxical reason that he insisted…
- James Fallows – The More Americans Who Read the Torture Report, the Better Thick, footnote-laden reports from official government bodies have played a surprisingly important role in shaping American policy and public opinion. To give a few examples from my conscious lifetime: The Warren Commission report in 1964, on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, argued strongly that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and without any outside guidance or collaboration. Agree, disagree…
- Paul Krugman (blog) – American Evil Never forget.
- E.J. Dionne – Reactions to the CIA report suggest that many involved would do it all over again Can we now say with…
Oh, and by way of relief from the seriousness of the above, here’s Jon Stewart on the same subject:
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