SULLIVAN ON TORTURE….Andrew Sullivan responds today to a typically fatuous Denis Bowles column in NRO about torture:
The only word for this is denial. Please, Denis, read the reports. At least thirty inmates have died after “coercive techniques” in U.S. custody. The government itself has conceded that the U.S. has tortured five inmates to death. Hundreds more have been hospitalized or permanently physically scarred. Even if you radically restrict your analysis to the night shift in Abu Ghraib, the abuses far outstrip forcing people to listen to music or laughing at nakedness. What has happened to American conservatism when it is reduced to ridiculing genuine and important issues of human rights?
Needless to say, I have a different answer to Andrew’s final question than he does, but at the same time I have to say that his site has become a must read for anyone who cares about the torture scandal. He had a very good review piece in the New York Times Book Review yesterday, and has been following the subject aggressively on his site for quite a while.
For what it’s worth, I can’t really forgive him for his relentless and demagogic post-9/11 dismissals of war opponents as little more than craven cowards and rape room apologists, but at least he’s on the side of the angels on this subject. That’s something.
