Hear No Evil

Alberto Gonzales and the Bush Administration seem to think that the American populace is made up of fools. How else can you explain their constantly shifting, self-contradictory statements? Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and especially Syria (a member of the “Axis of Evil”) are human rights abominations and have histories of abusing and torturing prisoners. However, when the CIA sends prisoners there, we have no evidence that they are mistreated. This is the claim that new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made last Monday in a press conference. While he admitted that the government has little control as to what happens to the detainees once they are turned over to security forces in a foreign state, he also said that the US would never send suspects to a location in which we knew that they would be tortured. A very strong suspicion, apparently, is enough. Despite allegations of torture by several detainees who have been released, Gonzales continues to deny any knowledge. After all, we sought “additional assurances” of proper treatment from nations with poor human rights records before sending terror suspects to them. It’s absolutely amazing that the “assurances” of a dictator that he doesn’t have WMD are insufficient, but the “assurances” of a similar dictator that his forces will change their abusive practices are not. The White House, which claims to have the wisdom to see through the hollow lies of its enemies, seems to be quite content with the hollow lies of its friends.
Even worse, however, is that many do not even bother with the hollow lies. Many Americans seem to openly support using torture and other abusive tactics on terror suspects. They do not worry that CIA now no longer needs case-by-case approval to “render” suspects to security forces in countries like Syria or Saudi Arabia, both of which got the worst possible rating in Civil Liberties by Freedomhouse.org. These people who worship Reagan, a man quoted as saying “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I'm from the government and I'm here to help,’” have no problem with Big Brother government saying “It’s okay if we torture them, they’re terror suspects.” Since we know how these people feel about gays, liberals, communists, anarchists, and just about everybody else who isn’t them, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if the next step were “It’s okay if we torture them, they’re social deviants.”