Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

HBO has an important documentary debuting tonight at 9.30 pm on the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy of torturing terror suspects. It's directed by Rory Kennedy. Here's a brief interview with her. She began the documentary interested in the psychology of people who torture others. But when torturer after torturer told her that they were following instructions, she pursued an investigation. Some don't want us to go there. Some want to euphemize it. Some want to describe it as self-actuated. The evidence won't allow us such easy outs. This happened. It was policy. Under mercifully more constrained conditions, it still is. And something deep in America has died. We can, I think, discuss whether such a shift away from America's historic abhorrence of torture is somehow necessary. But before we can debate that, we have to face the truth. America is now a torturing nation.