On one side we have Joseph Stalin and on the other George W Bush. One was a tyrannical ruler responsible for countless deaths and widely blamed for destroying the country he presided over. The other was the ruler of the Soviet Union but both have something in common, they are being brutally exposed by the man who has taken over the hot seat from them.
Khrushchev's secret speech set about exposing Stalin and his cronies misdemeanors and tore down the image of cuddly Uncle Joe. Not that George W Bush could ever be considered cuddly but Barack Obama is doing a similar hatchet job on his predecessor and his associates.
With the release of the Bush administration torture memos, Obama is playing a clever tactical game of jerking the knife everybody had already stuck in Bush's stomach. By showing just how morally bankrupt and twisted the former Administration was, Obama's star can only rise globally as the antidote to Bush's poison.
The Obama administration is now set to intensify the torture debate to an even greater level by releasing as many as two thousand new pictures that had been blocked by the Bush administration, showing prisoner abuse by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The original pictures from Abu Ghraib created outrage around the world when they came to light in 2006 but were described by the Bush administration as 'a few bad apples' and 'isolated incidents' at the time, also repeatedly stating that they didn't torture prisoners.
There is now growing momentum for an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration’s approval of enhanced interrogation techniques, known as torture everywhere else, which would incriminate the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Tony Blair and his cabinet followers will be watching proceedings nervously because British involvement in the secret prisons and what went on in them is widely suspected despite frantic denials.
Maybe the consequences for their unlawful and illegal actions before, during and after the Iraq war is finally going to catch up with the Wars architects.
2 comments:
sunlight is the best antiseptic, i heard someone say. let it all come to light at last.
"enhanced" and "torture" just don't go together. you know?
Will be amazed if it happens, but to see Rumsfeld, Cheney, Blair and the rest of them held accountable for their actions would be a real boost.
Especially Rumsfeld, out of that particular gang, his smug little face irked me the most.
Post a Comment