The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us (Rich | NYT)

By FRANK RICH
Published: October 14, 2007

... By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.” ...

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin ...

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?hp

Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora, which suited the Bush regime fine because they didn't want the war to end in Afghanistan with Osama's head on a spike. They wanted to take the war to Iraq, for the oil and for Israel.

As with all aggressor states, the US is as stuck in Iraq as the Germans were outside of Moscow. Defeat is inevitable! The only reason the war still rages is because Bush doesn't want to lose face.

Torture.

hell yeah.

Frank Rich, YOU had the chance to tell the truth to the American People in 2000. But YOU were too busy lying any lie about Al Gore. Don't run away from your deceitfulness, Frank! Bob Somerby has documented every detail of the lies you happily spread about Gore in The Daily Howler.

Frank, until YOU apologize to Al Gore in public, I don't give a rats ass about anything you write.

Be a man, Frank and admit you lied. Apologize to Al Gore in your next column. We're waiting to see if you are really a reporter, or a distorter.

We're waiting, Frank!

"Good Germans." If (the first) Hitler had had an outlet with the clout of the New York Whore Times, we'd all be working for Telefunken now.

Those favoring torture came out slightly more than those opposed. Overall, I consider our moral standards to be so thoroughly compromised and destroyed by George Bush and his policies that I have pretty much lost hope that we will continue to survive.