All Americans Are Culpable for Torture

I've been making this point but Naomi Wolf says it so well -- we are all culpable. I knew the Bush administration was torturing. I mean, look at Cheney. Outside of a government setting, he could've been a full-blown criminal. I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, but as a nation, we weren't then what we are today. Today, we all know better. We all know we were misled. We chose to be bury our heads. Some of us didn't even vote when Bush was running for a second term. We can't blame Bush forever. The left needs to stop being so self-righteous because that's what the right wing does best. Let them fall by the wayside. We can only make the changes that need to be made and move forward:

Republicans have now accused Democrats in Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the escalating calls to investigate. I would go further: not only do Congressional Democrats have blood on their hands – but so do we, the American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to assuage their – and our – actual and associative guilt.

The suddenly urgent calls by our Congressional Democratic leaders, and even by many of the American people, to prosecute CIA operatives, military men and women and contractors who were certainly involved with, colluded in or turned a blind eye to torture are not only the height of hypocrisy, they are a form of unconscionable scapegoating. The scapegoating is political on the part of Congressional leaders, and psychological on the part of many Americans who are now "shocked" at what was done in their name.

Hello America, were you asleep for the past seven years? The fact that the Bush administration used torture has been the furthest thing from a secret. When the political winds were with the last administration, which framed qualms about torture as being soft on "the war on terror", just about every Congressional Democrat fell right into line to accept it, if not cheer it on. Even Hillary Clinton supported torture – right up through her presidential run. Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the torture in closed-door meetings. When activist groups and citizens called for a special prosecutor, all we heard from Congressional Democrats was how they did not wish to spend the political capital. Read the rest at the Guardian