Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Conservative Judges

Robert Sheer's latest article reveals that apparently the person who wrote the memo in defense of torture is now a judge on the 9th circuit court of appeals.

"Conservatives once were identified with protecting the rights of the individual against the unbridled power of government, but this is not your grandfather's conservatism. The current brand running things in D.C. holds that the commander in chief is above all law and that the ends always justify the means. This has paved the way for the increasingly well-documented and systematic use of torture in an ad hoc gulag archipelago for those detained anywhere in the world under the overly broad rubric of the "war on terror."

Kind of a tough situation. What we have is a memo at the beginning of this process that appears to be an intellectual justification for the administration to allow torture. We have the actual abuse / torture occurring in Abu Ghraib. It's hard not to believe there wasn't some sort of connection between the two. But I'd feel a little more comfortable seeing a flow chart of exactly how the decisions that led to torture were made.

But I understand that that is unlikely.

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