Torture is Stupid

With respect to those who fight for us, but with heavy argument against torture, I’m sad to see our nation blemished not by wit but mere zeal:

The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Pentagon in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks pursued abusive interrogation techniques once used by North Korea and Vietnam on American POWs despite stern warnings by several military lawyers that the methods were cruel….

The ‘origin of harsh methods’ mustn’t be the USA, but that’s not the way it seems:

Update of Senate Hearings at IHT: Mark Fallon, the deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantánamo, wrote “Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this.”

McClatchy newspapers prepared a series called ‘Beyond The Law’ that looks deeply into how torture became accepted practice.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

McClatchy investigations are thorough:
WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.” [empahasis added]