The Torture Regime

Now that the Bush administration is no longer in office, is there a stronger will to make officials own up to the consequences of their acts? It seems like there's a little bit more willingness to look at the situation, but we'll have to hold our breath to see how it develops.

For the time being, though, we had a front-page story in Sunday's Washington Post about the waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" of Abu Zubaida, the Bushies' highest-profile detainee. Bush himself argued that information gleaned from "tough questioning" of Zubaida was integral to the success of the War on Terror, yet somehow the headline read, "Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots." How could that have possibly happened?

We all know the answer to that question, of course. In Monday's Post, Dan Froomkin takes a look at the Sunday piece and points out that, although it's good to get the attention now, this information isn't exactly new. Ron Suskind discussed this in his 2006 book, The One Percent Doctrine. Froomkin talked about it then (and, now that you mention it, so did I), but with more than two years left until Bush left office, nobody seemed to want to pay attention. Today do we live in a whole new world? I don't know, maybe. Will people pay attention to it now? I suspect they will a little bit more now than they did then. It's a slow build, but at least it's building. Maybe one day it will lead to actual justice.