Coming Clean, With Bloodstained Hands
Why the release of the damning, horrific Senate torture report could be a bright spot for American democracy.
BY David Rothkopf-DECEMBER 9, 2014
The release of the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture during the War on Terror is a vital step toward bringing to an end the Age of Fear that has perverted American national security policy and, more importantly, undercut our most basic national values for almost a decade and a half. Indeed, the core abuses listed in the report — and they can go by no other name than torture — are the signal failure of U.S. leadership of that era, worse even than the invasion of Iraq. Both were disastrous. Both damaged us. But the use of torture cut deeper into the fiber of who we are, and who we have always aspired to be as a nation. The issue the report raises is not just what we did to these people, but what we became by doing it.