It's been a while since I used my Iraq and Torture category tags.
For the latter, I've not written about torture since the Inauguration of President Obama. Now not a day goes by without a new revelation about the depths of the previous administration's depravity, or a call for investigation, prosecution, accountability, or just plain truth.
On Iraq, well, that's been overshadowed by concerns over systemic survival and other cosmic economic matters. But Iraq, as Secretary of State Clinton would tell us after her lightning visit this weekend, will not be forgotten: "As we draw down militarily, we will deepen our civilian cooperation," she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Nor will future generations be likely to forget Iraq, as they'll be paying for the "$3 Trillion War" for the foreseeable future.
Five years ago, you'd never have known that costs were a concern, or that the price of the Bush war on Iraq would include the soul of the United States. Back then, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC, Paul Bremer's hand-picked coterie of exiles from Saddam Hussein) apparently had nothing better to do than dream up a new symbolic flag for the country that was then tearing itself apart outside the Green Zone (see image, thanks to CRW "Flags of the World," of the ill-fated flag unveiled 26 April, 2004). The flag was such a laughing stock that it joined other great IGC/CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) ideas in the dustbin of history.
While Viceroy Bremer and the IGC were playing at governance within the Emerald City, the niceties of torture were being observed at places like Abu Ghraib. Just like the trillions that will haunt future generations, so too will the images of torture and abuse - soon to be multiplied by additional, graphic, horrors to be released next month. Will that include photographic evidence of the sexual abuse of women and children that Seymour Hersh alluded to five years ago?
At a recent Brussels discussion of President Obama's 100 day report card, someone had the temerity to suggest that there was no difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, only "stylistic" changes. It was all I could do to remain diplomatic and suggest that there were in fact many crucial policy differences, and a monumental moral difference.
The "Program" that Bush liked to justify was nothing other than what autocrats, bullies, and zealots have justified over the centuries, that the ends justified the means, and that only they could define what is permitted/forbidden, good/bad, us/them... It was called "the unitary Presidency."
Those days are over, but should not be forgotten. Today, in a style and with an erudition that few journalists can match, Frank Rich of the New York Times showed us the link between torture and Iraq. The link was a straight line, drawn by crooked men.