Torturous Hearings

Showing our utter indifference to human suffering, the Senate Armed Services Committee only managed to scrape up 10 members, not even half of the total, to attend a hearing yesterday about prisoner abuse in Iraq and elsewhere. Those that could be bothered to address the biggest hindrance to the Global War on Terror to date (that we have, in effect, become our enemies) did muster up the supreme effort to criticize the most recent investigative review on detainee conduct, created by Vice Adm. Albert Church.

WASHINGTON - Senators expressed dismay Thursday that no senior military or civilian Pentagon officials have been held accountable for the policy and command failures that led to abuses of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Vice Adm. Albert Church, who wrote the most recent review of U.S. detention policies, did not place specific blame for the confusing interrogation policies that migrated from Washington to the battlefield. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing that no high-level policy decisions directly led to abuse.

But Church said he did not interview top officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, nor did he make conclusions about individual responsibility, saying it was not part of his mission.

Shorter Vice Admiral Church: "Definitely, no higher-ups were involved, even though I didn't ask them and it wasn't my job to find out."

The notion that Abu Ghraib was the work of a "few bad apples" is laughable, especially when similar (or in some cases, the exact same) techniques have popped up in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo Bay, and in other parts of Iraq (including Ramadi, where a DVD called "Ramadi Madness" chronicling the abuses was made BY THE SOLDIERS). You don't just have electrodes and leashes and waterboarding equipment just lying around. There was no need to improvise. This was policy, and anyone who thinks otherwise has there head in the sand.

One such ostrich is Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), who had this bit of brilliance to say on the subject:

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., praised the report, saying he did not "need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn't do it."

Shorter Jim Talent: (fingers in ears) "La la la la, I can't hear you!!!" Jimmy, have you SEEN the pictures?



Yeah, those guys and gals WOULD do it. They DID do it. And you don't give a shit. That's the shame with which we present ourselves to the world.