Today in Torture

Nothing New Under the Sun says

The ACLU's continuing release of documents relating to the FBI's battle with the administration over interrogation methods at Gitmo has culminated in the bombshell that FBI emails indicate this was signed off on by no lower an authority than President Bush himself. Despite his "shocked, shocked!" performance after the photos came out in spring. [Request for guidance regarding the OGC's EC regarding detainee abuse, referring to “interrogation techniques made lawful” by the “President's Executive Order.”]

There is not much joy in Mudville, however, because those on the Left who had such former faith in the goodness of the American people have been forced to realize that the American People doesn't give a damn about what happens to non-Americans, particularly brown ones, on the other side of the world, and especially those who have been designated The Enemy for so long, and if they can justify it by any rationalization whatsoever as being tolerable, they will, and have done.

This should be bigger than Watergate - torture is, as a dKos commenter put it, a lot worse than burglary - but most of us are pretty sure that it won't be.

After all, this is the godless, religion-hating ACLU that is bringing all this to the fore - jeopardizing our security - by insisting on rights guaranteed by the Freedom of Information Act! And besides, they were terrorists, and not Christians, and deserved it, and it will keep our children safe, and...

Resources

For the memory-challenged among us, I refer you to the original Abu Ghraib reportage and photographs.

ACLU resources on Torture

NYT has a complete guide with links to all the extant publicly available torture memos.