Bush Admin’s support of torture

/ 2 April 2008

I've never been so grateful for the New Yorker magazine, as when I'm reading various pieces about Iraq and this so-called "war on terrorism." Their long-form journalism makes it possible to gain a much more complex and nuanced view of what is happening there, and this month they have an article about Sabrina Harman, the woman who took so many of the iconic photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. She's been punished by the Army in all sorts of ways since, but this article really makes clear how torture was standard policy at Abu Ghraib. It ALSO makes clear how the conditions at Abu Ghraib intentionally and deliberately evoked precisely the kind of behavior she exhibited.

As more and more evidence comes out about this administration's deliberate and intentional use of torture, articles like this help to point out how easily we human beings succumb to evil, how easily we cooperate with and ultimately perpetuate it, how much Sabrina Harman could be me or you or any of us.

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