Monday, February 18, 2008

We don't do stuff like that

I didn't read the News of the Week in Review in yesterday's NYT until last night, so I did not get to post on this earlier.

Morris Davis, Colonel in the Air Force and until recently chief prosecutor of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, wrote an important piece, "Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence." The article is especially powerful coming from the prosecutors' side.
TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”
How times have changed. Read the whole article here.

2 comments:

Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper said...

This is an astonishing article. I really do wonder what Bush and Cheney think when they read stuff like this.

I just wish Colin Powell had had the decency to resign when he should have. I wonder how that might have affected history.

Thanks for posting on this. I've sent it on to many.

The Old New Englander said...

If Bush and Deadeye Dick read things like this, maybe they wouldn't do the things they do.