I learned from reading The New York Times this week (via The New Yorker's Amy Davidson) that Iraq is suffering a very serious problem. Tragically, that country is struggling with what the Times calls a "culture of impunity." What this means is that politically connected Iraqis who clearly broke the law are nonetheless not being prosecuted because of their political influence! Even worse, protests the NYT, there have been "cases dismissed in the past few years as a result of a government amnesty and a law dating to 1971 that allows ministers to grant immunity to subordinates accused of corruption." And the best part? This: "The United States is pressing the Iraqi government to repeal that law."Thankfully, we're teaching the Iraqis what it means to be a "nation of laws."
Both Greenwald and Sullivan take the NY Times to task today for their willingness to call torture torture when it's applied to Americans but not to terrorists suspects. They cite an obituary today of an Air Force pilot who was shot down over China and tortured into making false confessions.[...]
In any case, they both do an excellent job of exposing the hypocrisy of the Times, which still refuses to call the Bush torture regime by its rightful name, and point out the all the by now familiar similarities between what was done to our servicemen in the past and what we did to terrorists suspects in the last few years.
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Apparently we are just supposed to accept that McCain was horribly tortured by evil "gooks" but Abu Zubaydah was given "enhanced interrogation" by the forces of good. Yet what was done was exactly the same.
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A good first step would be putting and end to this nonsensical fiction that "America Doesn't Torture." We do.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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