What is security, Mr.Coughlin?
Is it the security of a healthy, free society or is it the security of a system of Stalags?
The choice truly is that stark.
Words like yours flirt with fascism. Indeed, "flirt" might be a generous word to use.
The only defense for these obnoxious CIA torturers is that they were just following orders.
Haven't we come then nearly full circle since the Nuremberg trials?
Although I must say that punishing the CIA in a serious fashion is impossible.
The CIA is a law unto itself with the president often not even aware of some of the things they are doing towards longer-term goals.
Please remember that the only president who actually threatened the CIA - out of anger over the Bay of Pigs - was assassinated.
Legality is not even an issue here.
The invasion of Iraq broke every international law on the books.
Abu Ghraib, the same.
Guantanamo, the same.
The assassinations in Pakistan, the same.
The mass killing of Taleban captives in the early days of the Afghan invasion - 3000 disappeared and their bodies are buried in the desert - the same.
The shooting, imprisonment, and torture of a boy - Omar Khadr - the same.
Israel's savage, cowardly attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, using American weapons and having tacit American permission, the same.
The U.S. is now so beyond such niceties as law and international conventions that Obama's election cannot possibly turn it around greatly.
It is a brutal imperial power with no consideration for anyone standing in what it considers its way.
