On torture

Last year, Jon Edelstein (aka the Head Heeb) wrote an excellent piece about how the US was subcontracting torture to other nations as part of the 'war on terror' ending with the conclusion:

I will support this war again when we return to fighting it like the United States of fucking America.

The revelations from Abu Ghraib have prompted him to return to the subject once more, with another powerful piece:

Some go faster than others - if Abu Ghraib is any indication, the United States has gone almost as far down the moral slope in one year as Israel has in thirty-seven - and once the downward spiral begins, it's hard to stop. The puerile Nazi comparisons currently making the rounds are ridiculous, but Rhodesia and Algeria seem uncomfortably possible as models for the future. It's the nature of the beast.

That you should go there now and read the whole thing goes without saying, of course.