Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

I am having a real "Alice Through The Looking Glass" moment right now. I just heard a report on NPR about a slew of internal FBI memoranda documenting prisoner abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq. These memos date back to at least last July according to the New York Times, and are disturbing not only for what they do report, but for what they don't, and why.

The agents doing the reporting specified types of abuses they witnessed, including prisoners having lit cigarettes put in their ears, being forced to stay in one position for hours on end, and being chained to floors so that they'd have to lie in their own urine and feces.

But what the FBI agents were concerned about was not that these actions were wrong; what they worried about in print was: (1) THEY didn't get to do these things, so why should the military?; (2) military interrogators doing these things were telling the prisoners that they were FBI, thus leaving the FBI "holding the bag" if the news got out, when rightfully, the Department of Defense was to blame; and (3) any evidence obtained would be useless in a court case against the prisoners, as it had been coerced.

What is wrong with this picture?

Where do I begin?

First, these memos document actions taken AFTER the initial publicity (including photographs) surrounding the Abu Ghraib abuses, meaning that no one learned anything from that debacle . . . except maybe how to cover his/her tracks a little better. (Besides, professional jealousy about who gets to do what to whom is so petty, she said, irony dripping from her voice.)

Second and of even more import, these FBI memoranda were addressed to people high up the chain of command, including the FBI director, and were also marked "urgent," meaning that more and higher up gov't officials were aware of the extent of this mess for quite some time . . . and apparently did nothing about it.

Third, and what prompted my "through the looking glass" feeling to begin with, was that no one paid even lip service to the obvious problem that torture does NOT produce reliable intelligence information. People being tortured will eventually say anything to get the torture to stop. They know (or at least have some sense of) what their tormentors want to hear; at their personal breaking point, they'll give it, true or not, just to get their torment to end.

Finally, and most disturbing of all, was that no one (at least, according to what's been published) made any kind of moral condemnation of the very fact of the torture--and this from an administration that professes to be "Christian."

Oh, you say that's not a problem because those being tortured are Muslim infidels who would do the same to us if they could? Oh, now I see! (She said, extremely sarcastically.)

After the presidential election results, I confess to having considered moving to Canada for about 5 minutes. I then decided that that would be more trouble than it was worth. But I don't know what to do now.

This administration's tacit (until we find a smoking gun, anyway) approval of such unconscionable behavior makes me sick to my stomach. I don't want to be associated with an "America" that tolerates such things. It makes a mockery of what America is and should symbolize to all the world.

Yes, I voted. Like it made a difference. Dubya claims he has a mandate, so we aren't going to see any changes for the better in his administration's actions.

So, since I am not moving to Canada, I'll do the next best thing and take a Canadian's advice: as Red Green advocates, since all else has failed, I'll just play dead.