release the Darby torture photos

* juancole on aljazz bombing: "Plotting to assassinate civilian journalists in a friendly country is certainly against the law, and if Bush is ever impeached, this charge will certainly figure in the trial." (link)

* i was watching a simpsons episode and principal skinner steals some stuff for the school. lisa witnesses it and admonishes him for stealing. skinner says: "welcome to dick cheney's america"

* digby:

"If we allow (torture) to become normalized, I don't think it will stop at suspected terrorists --- eventually people will ask why we should have all these laws and prohibitions in the case of non-terrorist, but equally heinous, crimes. How do you tell the family of a victim of a suspected gang killing that the suspected perpetrators have a right to lawyers and a right not to incriminate themselves? Is their pain less than the pain of terrorism victims? Why shouldn't these "worst of the worst" be tortured by the police or the FBI to find out what they know? After all, more people could die if they aren't forced to give up their home boys.

The reason that people do not demand this now is because we have long required a public adherence to the rule of law --- and we have instinctively understood that authorities sometimes make mistakes, are corrupt or inept. Due process is required to mitigate those human failings. Yet, innocent people are still caught up in the system even with all these processes. Imagine what would happen if we didn't have them?

Once you introduce torture into the equation, justified by the fact that these are people alleged to be "the worst of the worst" you are letting go of the idea that innocent people are sometimes incarcerated, and that it matters that we don't treat innocent people barbarously, even if we are inclined by primitive notions of revenge to treat guilty people that way. We know that non-terrorists have been caught up in the net and have been tortured and abused.

There are important moral and human rights arguments to be made against torture of anyone, guilty or innocent. I believe that it makes an entire society, an entire culture, immoral. But the most immoral act of all immoral acts is to torture an innocent person. And since nobody is omniscient, to torture a person with no due process, no right to confront accusers, no way of proving their innocence, it is guaranteed that we are doing this under our torture regime."

he has more. digby rocks. we really need to get the Darby pictures released. now.

and if we cant get them released, we need to kick up a stink about them not being released - with 'graphic' accounts of the contents. and we need an account of the not/guilty status of each of the victims, and of their 'crimes', and the details of 'evidence' 'extracted' during aforementioned torture, and how many ticking time bombs have been disabled.

by xmas time, i dont want anyone in america to be able to talk about 'frathouse' pranks - although we can probably revive limbaugh's 'they were just letting off steam', once every quater-wit red-voting Fox junkie has seen a soldier fucking a 15 year old boy in the ass and heard the shrieks.