The Guantanamo "Suicides"

Harper's newly-released article on the abuse, torture, and possible murders of detainies at Guantanamo is deeply disturbing, shocking to any lover of American democracy and the rule of law, and somehow all to predictable.  You can feel it in the pit of your stomach.  We have yet to uncover the totality of Cheney's torture regime.  And there will be more revelations, each more damning than the last, we can be assured of that.

Read the Harpers article here.  Bookmark it, pass it along, head to the bookstore and buy the magazine.

Sullivan, true to his concience, has pursued this monstrous scandal at every turn.  He remains a lone voice in the wildnerness as what passes for American news media remains obsessed on the trivial.  Who crashed our last party?  How many women has Tiger Woods slept with?  Who the bloody hell cares?  It's days like this when I feel a deep fatalism for the future of this nation.

Thank God Sullivan is willing to stand up and speak the obvious:

This deserves to be the biggest story on the torture issue since Abu Ghraib - because it threatens to tear down the wall of lies and denial that have protected Americans from facing what the last administration actually did. Notice that these torture sessions - so severe they killed three prisoners - were conducted in June 2006. Long after the original crisis was over. Long after we have been told real torture sessions occurred. They were part of an ongoing torture program whose methods were so extreme that the Pentagon has already conceded that over a dozen prisoners had been tortured to death and up to a hundred US authorized deaths-by-torture are alleged by many human rights groups.


This case deserves a thorough and complete and exhaustive inquiry and investigation. I no longer believe that any entity in the US government can be trusted with such a task. The investigation must be able to go right to the very top of the torture program and do so with no political influence whatsoever. The investigation must be conducted by an independent prosecutor - Patrick Fitzgerald comes to mind - or by the Red Cross or an international body. It must go up the chain of command to the very top to find the real people who are responsible for this war crime and three homicides.

Among those who need to be subpoenaed are the former president and vice-president of the United States.