Another Day, More US Torture

This is the kind of thing that makes it hard, as an American, to sleep at night. But I am heartened by true patriots like Bob Herbert, who along with Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, are fighting the current national psychoses.

From Bob Herbert's op-ed in today's Times:

No charges were ever filed against Mr. Ali, and he was eventually released. But what should be of paramount concern to Americans is this country's precipitous and frightening descent into the hellish zone of lawlessness that the Bush administration, on the one hand, is trying to conceal and, on the other, is defending as absolutely essential to its fight against terror.

The lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, a New York-based group, on behalf of Mr. Ali and seven other former detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan who claim to have been tortured by U.S. personnel.

The suit charges that Mr. Rumsfeld personally authorized unlawful interrogation techniques and abdicated his responsibility to stop the torture and other abuses of prisoners in U.S. custody. It contends that the abuse of detainees was widespread and that Mr. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were well aware of it.

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(The committee [International Committee of the Red Cross] has noted, among other things, that military intelligence estimates suggest that 70 percent to 90 percent of the people detained in Iraq had been seized by mistake.)

More.

The ACLU is suing Donald Rumsfeld, among others, for violations of the United States Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Law of Nations.

There's more info here. I am sending out a check to the ACLU tonight to help fund this lawsuit.