A reader writes:
This response is a little late for the post on the Kristol editorial lionizing Bush administration torturers, but where are the medals for the low-level patsies who took the fall for those brave CIA agents in the Abu Ghraib scandal? Shouldn’t he throw some kind of bone to the Lindie Englands of that sorry episode? I don’t recall any attempt by Kristol to forgive their actions at the time or now. I’d really like to know what makes them different in his eyes?
What's so interesting is how most of the photographs from Abu Ghraib that stunned and shocked the world were simply the same torture techniques that Bush insisted the CIA retain in the 2006 Military Commissions Act. Hauling around a Muslim on the end of a leash is and was Bush policy. It is a tactic favored by Bill Kristol. In fact, much of the current campaign to exonerate and immunify Bush administration officials is over techniques exactly like Abu Ghraib: stress positions, hoods, hypothermia, mock executions.
Remember this: Bill Kristol wants the techniques of Abu Ghraib to be legal, standard operating procedure. He just wants to imprison reservists for it - the show trial - while giving the men who designed and authorized such methods medals of freedom. In that double-standard, you learn so much about just how self-serving much of Washington is. And how morally bankrupt.