"Butterfield of the New York Times doesn't get it. He needs to read the Taguba report. (List lawyers, help me out.) On reflection, I think even Seymour Hersh did quite see the forest for the trees. It seems the news and most of the country has morphed this into a regrettable apparition. I'll say it again. This isn't an incident. It's the plan."
Right, no disagreement here. But I don't think this is a bad time to raise the issue of torture in U.S. prisons. Leaving aside the death penality, even when convicted of a crime, the punishment is confinement: it is not torture, rape, humiliation, insanity, or death. The conditions prevailing in U.S. prisons today translate confinement into the list above. Not for Martha Stewart of course, just for the hoi polloi. Since we were speaking of "progress" -- I think it would be incalculable progress if we realized that the suffering we impose on the "least among us" is a form of scapegoating and acting out, not a form of justice. It would be incalculable progress to realize that civilization is measured not in how we treat our friends, but in how we treat our enemies, in how we treat the "other."
Joanna