Torture-R-Us

No doubt visitors to the SOYMB blog will have read all about the newly released report on CIA torture. The details are adequately covered elsewhere, so little point in repeating them.

Just a few questions, though.

Will there be any prosecutions of CIA operatives involved, including the politicians such as the President and Defense Secretary who authorised the use of torture, for committing war crimes?
Will the USA itself be taken to international court on charges of contravening treaties againt the practice of torture that it had previously signed?
Will the professional bodies responsible for the psychologists who facilitated and assisted in the torture (plus other medical personnel) be striking them off for breaches of professional ethics and stopping them practising ever again?
Will those journalists and editors who the report said were complicit in the cover-ups and failed in  their duties as reporters to honestly inform now resign their jobs and hang their heads in shame?
Will the UK and MI6 now come clean about their participation and role in torture?
Having been told that those who defend torture have lied and deceived and misled, will the media desist from offering them credibility by permitting them to defend themselves on camera and in print?

Somehow, we thing the answer will be No to all these questions.

The whitewash has already effective begun if we take theGuardian editorial as an example. U.S. war crimes and brutality are still framed in such a way so as to mitigate them, or more precisely, to mitigate the state carrying them out.

According to the Guardian the report documents:

 "one of the darkest episodes in the history of a nation that sees itself, not unreasonably in many respects and in some eras, as a beacon to the world".

  

A nation founded on the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants of the land; that has practiced brutal slavery; that allowed and enforced apartheid through Jim crow laws; that still locks up huge numbers of people, especially black people; that still executes huge numbers of people, especially black people and many mentally ill; that spies on its population and marginalizes or outright criminalises its dissidents; that leaves tens of millions of its citizens living in abject poverty despite the country's vast wealth; that has spent decades undermining democracy and supporting tyranny worldwide, killing, displacing and immiserating tens of million in the process; and that continues to support tyranny and commit major atrocities to this day.

Yet the Guardian editorial can write "...in many respects and in some eras... a beacon to the world".

The report, says the Guardian:

 '". . . pulls few punches as it details the conscious and repeated subversion of law and justice by a state that is justly proud to be rooted in those very ideals. It is one of the most shocking documents ever produced by any modern democracy about its own abuses of its own highest principles".

Again with this is mythologising the idea of a just and noble U.S. contravening its own values.

It is:

"In one sense . . a tribute to the US that it has published such a report".

Bush tortured, and Obama has granted them immunity for it. But, hey, as the Guardian seems to imply, at least they've owned up, and said “It’s a fair cop, Guv” !

And the Guardian conclusion:

"The question now is whether enough will change. In the 1970s, the CIA responded to criticism by pulling down the shutters and building up the secret state further. Today, Americans face the challenge of stopping a repeat. The moral and practical authority of the democratic system around the world depends in no small part on them succeeding".

Can the Guardian not answer its own question from what has been happening since because drone-murdering, tyranny-supporting corporatocracy that is the United States of America is still at it and are at the heart of that system, and still " a beacon" and an example for the rest of us to follow.