The Buck Stops Over There

No, no, not there, down to the left of that, and yeah, see that tree? Now look slightly to the right of that and past that strange looking man. Come here, stand next to me, get up on your tiptoes and kind of squint. You see it? The buck stops there.

It's been a year, my good friends, since we discovered the Abu Ghraib photos. During that year, we've found out about how the now Attorney General wrote memos to find a way to make torture technically legal; that men were specifically assigned the task of taking the torture techniques from Cuba to Iraq; that Bush has a policy of handing prisoners, some who are never put into the books, over to countries that we know will torture them; and most underreported of all, that over 100 Iraqi prisoners have died at the hands of their American interrogators. The only thing we haven't had in the last year are more pictures. That's their only policy change - pictures - but don't fool yourself into thinking that the torture has ceased. Even last night, at Bush's big party in the East Room, did you hear how he answered the question about torture?

QUESTION: Mr. President, under the law, how would you justify the practice of renditioning, where U.S. agents who bust terror suspects abroad, taking them to a third country for interrogation? And would you stand for it if foreign agents did that to an American here?

BUSH: That's a hypothetical.

We operate within the law, and we send people to countries where they say they're not going to torture the people.

You see what he does there? We operate within the law - that's not a No! Torture is a complete outrage! It's - we finagled the laws such that we've made torture legal. Like Clinton and whatever the definition of is is. Secondly, he says, we send people to countries where they SAY they're not going to torture people. You can almost hear a wink in that sentence. "So, uh... you're like not going to torture them, right?" "Uh... No! No, really! We 'promise.'" And he continues:

But let me say something. The United States government has an obligation to protect the American people. It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way.

So first he says, we won’t torture people, but then he follows it up with – but hey! we gotta win this war and war is ugly. In the context of this question, that’s a non sequitur unless he’s defending the practice of torture, isn’t it? And he goes on,

You know, I've said this before to you, I'm going to say it again: One of my concerns after September the 11th is the farther away we got from September the 11th, the more relaxed we would all become and assume that there wasn't an enemy out there ready to hit us.

And I just can't let the American people -- I'm not going to let them down by assuming that the enemy is not going to hit us again. We're going to do everything we can to protect us.

So, what do you want people? Do you want to die, or do you want me torturing some Arabs? It’s your call. There’s just no reason to mention 9/11 in the context of a torture question unless you’re trying to convince someone that torture is ok.

Anyway, that was just last night. Whether or not Bush and his sadistic cronies intend to continue torturing people is somewhat beside my point this morning. Joe Conason writes today about how there is no accountability at the top. They are scapegoating individual soldiers who did some of the torture as they were asked to do, and trying to sweep it under the rug. Whatever happened to the age-old military principle of being responsible for those in your command? Even when a football team loses, the coach doesn’t go to the press conference and say, well if my running back could have gotten any yards on the ground… or if my wide receivers could have actually caught a ball, we would have won. No. He says, we blew it, it’s my fault. No accountability in this administration. And hey, even though I am of the opinion that it goes straight up to Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Gonzales, I don’t expect them to admit that. They’re politicians. But at the very least don’t punish these lowly soldiers for what they were ordered to do!

Honoring the troops, indeed.