[johan osterman]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Although Kerry may be a wimp, he is certainly not the embodiment of evil , as G. W. Bush has proven himself to be. Together with Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet and Rice they have now (with the recent knowledge that the atrocities commited by soldiers upon prisoners in Iraq and Cuba are by no means isolated mishaps but sympomatic results of a systematic means-justifies-the-ends utilitarianism and demonization or dehumanization of that which is deemed a foreign threat being the dead giveaway) succeeded in drastically harming America for what will certainly prove to be 50 years or more (not to mention all the other damage to civil liberties, human rights, and other once-upheld American ideals, as well as ecological and economical damage).

...

I don't think the abuse is a result of any policy or rethoric, as far as I can tell these things almost ivariably crop up whenever people are given the amount of power over other people that prison guards do under these circumstances. The failure here is not as much the official rethoric as failing to insure that the proper checks and control mechanisms are in place to stop these sort of things, or so I believe.