The blowback from torture

This grim New Yorker article provides plenty more evidence that the U.S. is both directly and indirectly responsible for the torture of many suspects -- suspects, mind you -- in the Bush regime's effort to combat Islamism. These strike me as unambiguously impeachment-worthy crimes.

Who can not feel sympathy for the wife of one man who was kidnapped by (disguised) U.S. agents after the Bosnian Supreme Court ordered him released, and sent packing to Guantanamo, where he has for more than three years been held without charges or right to communicate with his family, despite his declarations of opposition to any terrorism. She writes:

Dear Friends, I am so shocked by this information that it seems as if my blood froze in my veins, I can’t breathe and I wish I was dead. I can’t believe these things can happen, that they can come and take your husband away, overnight and without reason, destroy your family, ruin your dreams after three years of fight. . . . Please, tell me, what can I still do for him? . . . Is this decision final, what are the legal remedies? Help me to understand because, as far as I know the law, this is insane, contrary to all possible laws and human rights. Please help me, I don’t want to lose him.

Imagine it was your husband, or son, or father. What does this woman tell her five children?

Even more chillingly, the article makes clear that one result of torturing suspects is that it renders them essentially impossible to try in ordinary courts. By constructing a new category of human being--the "illegal enemy combattant"--with the express intent that the Geneva Convention would not apply to them (since Geneva refers only to soldiers and civilians), the Bush regime's lawyers has cast these people into a literal no man's land. There is virtually no choice for the regime but to hold these people forever without charges.

To call this a disgrace to our country is laughably inadquate: it is a sin without precedent in the history of our country. Unless the Bush regime or its successors pursue the Caesarist option, Bush seems certain to go down as the most morally bankrupt President in our history. Right now, only Andrew Johnson has Bush worsted.