Something I Need to Say

The Senate's report on torture committed by the CIA during the aftermath of 9/11 is out, and we can read the executive summary. I haven't brought myself to read it yet, because even reading people's tweets about it makes me sick to my stomach. I will eventually read at least some of the more thorough summaries, though, because I think we need to face up to what was done in our name.

And it was done in our name. I didn't vote for George Bush, but he was still my president and that was still my government, torturing prisoners when it is against all we claim to stand for. When we already knew that torture does not work. When the CIA itself knew that torture was not working.

Already the apologists are out, asking us to remember 9/11, and blah blah blah. I do remember 9/11. I remember the horrible fear I felt that day, both in general and about specific loved ones in lower Manhattan. I remember the grief and anger in the aftermath.

But we let that horror lead us to inflict another horror. There is no excuse for that. There would be no excuse for that even if torture worked.

What we did was not protection, it was retribution, and it was retribution meted out without care.

I would like to see the architects of this terrible, misguided program brought to justice. Perhaps, eventually we will see that. Until then, I will just privately condemn them and wish I believed in a Hell in which they could rot.