"We Do Not Torture"

The latest reality check on the gravest lie this president has ever told:

Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group based in Cambridge, Mass., that investigates abuse around the world and advocates for global health and human rights, did not identify the 11 former prisoners to protect their privacy. Seven were held in Abu Ghraib between late 2003 and summer of 2004, a period that coincides with the known abuse of prisoners at the hands of some of their American jailers. Four of the prisoners were held at Guantanamo beginning in 2002 for one to almost five years. All 11 were released without criminal charges.

Those examined alleged that they were tortured or abused, including sexually, and described being shocked with electrodes, beaten, shackled, stripped of their clothes, deprived of food and sleep, and spit and urinated on.

Or are you going to believe Dick Cheney? What's staggering to me is the moral relativism of these men who report to a fundamentalist Christian. You cannot compromise on the meaning of the word "marriage". But "torture"? No problem. The only outer limit is murder. John Yoo led the way:

Torture "is basically subject to perception," CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting...

The newly released documents show that in the summer of 2002, Pentagon officials compiled lists of aggressive techniques, soliciting opinions from the CIA and others, and ultimately implementing the practices over opposition from military lawyers who argued that the proposed tactics were probably illegal and could harm U.S. troops.

Lindsey Graham describes these actions as "irresponsible." I guess he can't yet quite believe that his president meant them. When Bush says that Abu Ghraib was the work of a few, he forgot to mention that he was one of them.

(Photo: War criminal John Yoo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)