Quote of the Day

Andrew Sullivan takes on the rank hypocrisy of those who rightfully dismissed the 'confessions' of the British sailors because they were coerced, while still remaining defenders of our broad and legal program of torture and abuse. Says Sullivan-

"It's especially telling since we dismiss the statements of the captive British soldiers as the fruit of coercion even though their treatment was like a bed and breakfast compared to what has taken place at Abu Graib, Camp Cropper, Bagram or Gitmo. Why are we unable to make the same assumptions about other coerced testimony?

One possible answer is simply that as long as the victims of torture are not white or Western, they are not seen as fully human victims of torture - and therefore none of the rules we apply to full human beings count...

...The scenario changes instantly when the victim of coercion is white or an allied soldier. It's striking, isn't it, that the only cases of torture in Gitmo and elsewhere that have had any traction in the wider culture have been people who do not fit the ethnic profile of Arabs. Jose Padilla is Latino; David Hicks is Australian. When they're tortured, we worry about the reliability of the evidence. But when we torture 'information' out of men called al-Qhatani or Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the information we get is allegedly saving 'thousands of lives.' How do we know this? Because the torturers, i.e. the Bush administration, tell us so. And so the circle of cognitive dissonance tightens until it becomes airtight."

But remember, Andrew... it's not evil when we do it.