The United States of Torture

From today’s Jon Carroll column:

I have heard the arguments in favor of increased prisoner abuse. This is a new kind of war with an enemy that kills civilians without mercy. This enemy has bombed the World Trade Center; it bombed nightclubs in Indonesia when the discos were crowded; it bombed subways in London at rush hour. It has bombed busy intersections and markets and even mosques all over Iraq. Its own record of prisoner abuse is horrible; it even kills its own people if they fail some ethnic or religious litmus test.

This week’s suicide at Guantanamo has given the Bush barbarians another opportunity to display their pathological personalities, calling it “a good PR move” and an act of “asymmetrical warfare.” The collective narcissism, the sociopathic self-interest, and sheer inhumanity of these bastards becomes more manifest every day. Not only are they incapable of admitting error, they are incapable of recognizing the ugliness and immorality of their souls.
A** C****** and Michael Savage are not as extreme as we’d like to believe; I fear they are expressing the true souls of the administration. I feel increasingly desperate for a way to make the sleeping middle of America awaken to the viciousness of the leaders they elected. If we don’t turn this around soon, it will be too late.
More from Jon Carroll:

I do not think we should be fighting the war in Iraq; I’m not sure there would even be a war if we had not declared it; still, I loathe the tactics of the militant extremists. I loathe the tactics of the militant extremists so much I want to make sure my side, the one supported by my money and representing my country, does not fall into the same pit of barbarism.

Torture — and let’s call it by its right name, because that’s what the Defense Department wants: the freedom to torture — does not just harm the tortured; it injures the torturer as well. If you listen to interviews with the men and women who were at Abu Ghraib, they were stunned by what they had done. They felt at though they had been reduced to beasts.

Debra J. Saunders, in today’s Chronicle, parses carefully the words of Al Gore and attacks his character in an attempt to sidestep the overwhelmingly persuasive facts adduced in An Inconvenient Truth:

Gore was wrong in 1992 when he wrote that 98 percent of scientists agreed with him on global warming….

Now he is wrong when he argues in his movie that there is a complete consensus on global warming today. As proof Gore cites a 2004 study that looked at 928 climate abstracts and found none that refuted global-warming dogma. That says more about the researcher than the scientific community.

There are a number of well-known scientists who don’t believe that global warming is human-induced, or who believe that if it is, it is not catastrophic.

How has the compassionate, liberal America I grew up in become such a vile, destructive (and ultimately self-immolating) hell? How is it possible for so many to remain willfully ignorant of reality and actively hostile to humanity?
Is there a way out of this lethal spiral?
Back to Jon Carroll:

Restraint and generosity do not seem to be hallmarks of this administration. Already, after unrestrained bombing in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, we were pulling troops out and reneging on our promises to rebuild Afghanistan so it no longer has to rely on the opium trade. We’ve decided, heck, let ’em grow it; we’ll handle the problem later when the refined product gets to our borders. Yeah, that’s worked.

Oh, wait, there’s another difference between then and now. During World War II, war profiteers were frowned on. It was not considered cool to make billions off misery and death. Today, war profiteers run the country. One might make the case that this administration is so busy figuring out how to reward its friends and campaign contributors with pieces of the war pie, it hasn’t spent all that much time coming up with innovative plans for fighting a war of attrition in a desert half a world away.

It seems pretty obvious to me that war profiteering is the number one motivation here. It is not a coincidence that the oil industry and Halliburton are the principal beneficiaries of this administration’s policies.
From the LA Times:

A rule designed by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep groundwater clean near oil drilling sites and other construction zones was loosened after White House officials rejected it amid complaints by energy companies that it was too restrictive and after a well-connected Texas oil executive appealed to White House senior advisor Karl Rove….

In 2002, a Texas oilman and longtime Republican activist, Ernest Angelo, wrote a letter to Rove complaining that an early version of the rule was causing many in the oil industry to “openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity.”

“Supidity” = “affecting my profits.” Fuck everyone else. Fuck the planet. GIMME!!!!!!