The latest from Sy Hersh

I read the latest article from Sy Hersh in the New Yorker. Rumsfeld's sanctioning of the interrogation methods that led to the disaster at Abu Ghraib, just leaves me with a depressed, sinking feeling, for some reasons that I can articulate and others not as well. On the one hand, the revelations about interrogation methods that go beyond the Geneva Convention are hardly a surprise, especially post-9/11. The article suggests that these methods, selectively applied, were producing a good amount of actionable intelligence. What is perhaps most depressing about the article is that its final conclusion is not that these methods are to be deplored outright, but that the real disaster of Abu Ghraib is that Rumsfeld, through his assistant Stephen Cambone, allowed these methods to be far too loosely applied, allowing something like Abu Ghraib to essentially blow up and reveal the existence of such methods to the world - in the process doing incalculable damage to the effectiveness of these methods, to the moral stance of America in the world, and as a result of both, to the War on Terror. Which is to say that Rush Limbaugh, in the onslaught of brainless comments he made in the previous week about Abu Ghraib, was right to a point, before becoming completely wrong. Yes, selectively applied, these methods were effective. But by approving the extension of these methods to areas (i.e. Abu Ghraib) where such methods could not be, as they must be, carefully controlled, Cambone, and by his approval, Rumsfeld, made a lethal miscalculation.

But beyond the necessary cover-up that has occurred as a result of this mishandling, beyond the existence of the methods themselves, and the abuses that occurred as a result, beyond the further demolition of America's standing in the global community, there is something else to my personal sinking feeling I can't quite put my finger on. Forced to define it, i suppose I'd have to say that it is the feeling of confirmation of my worst assumptions about this administration, a certain bloodless concession to ruthless cynicism, coupled with an almost maniacal, therefore irrational, therefore blinding, sense of self-righteousness, that leads to these kinds of "experiments". The question is - and it is the ridiculously innocent part of myself, the six-year-old that doesn't want to grow up who is asking this - when a person has decided that it is okay to go so far to achieve an end, where does a person's, or a group of individual's, boundaries on their personal actions finally end?

There is also the depressing calculus that one is forced to perform - as bad as these abuses at Abu Ghraib are, they still are nothing, a drop in an enormous bucket, compared to what Saddam did at this same prison. This doesn't forgive the abuses, but doesn't it ameliorate the emotional effect of the abuses to the degree that they are virtually forgiven? Not, apparently, when the one remaining argument for our invading Iraq in the first place, is a supposedly moral one. And it is this in particular that made Rumsfeld's choice to allow these methods to take place, without careful control, so abysmally bad.

The sad thing is the degree to which this same article will inflame the worst of the conservative press - Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael "That Liberal's Liver Tasted Great with a Nice Chianti and Some Fava Beans" Savage - with false vindication about Rumsfeld's judgment in the first place... it's all really just the fault of the LIBERAL PRESS, who allowed all of this to blow up out of all proportion. The liberal press! And it's Sy Hersh! On the one hand it's Vietnam, on the other hand, it's 1972 and Watergate, with all of the same heated reactions, accusations, and denials, coming from every which way, all over again...

To think in 1972, I was only four at the time, I was just a babe, addicted to Bugs Bunny and the Odyssey Home Video Game, I had no idea what was going on in the sad, overheated adult world swirling around my head, Republicans in full Republican-denial mode....