The Sheikh and the Torture Senator (truthout) By Ann Wright:

(Article also available at scoop.co.nz)

  I was in the audience February 12, 2007 during the Washington, DC, screening of the new HBO documentary, "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." After watching the documentary, panelists Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) discussed prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib.

  To the amazement of the audience, Graham said with a twinkle in his eye that "Americans don't mind torture; they really don't." Then he smiled broadly, almost gleefully, and said that the US had used certain interrogation techniques on "Sheikh Mohammed, one of the 'high-value' targets" - techniques that "you really don't want to know about, but they got really good results."

"There is no such thing as a little bit of torture." -- Alfred W. McCoy, author "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror"

Last night, literally by accident, I watched the new HBO Documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.  Although I've followed this issue and story for years now, I was still stunned at how this film completely deconstructs the Administration's talking points on what occured on their watch at the Abu Ghraib Prison.

Taking the issue step by step they show how rather than being a few bad apples playing "Animal House" on the Night Shift  the events of the Summer of 2003 were part of a concerted effort to marginalize the Geneva Conventions and redefine torture which began in the White House, went through the Pentagon and Gitmo and eventually led to the pictures that have left a permanent scar on our nation's honor and credibility.

Almost everyone who comes to this site has probably seen the ad for the Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (it is to the right as I write this), but I everyone who has HBO will watch it Feb 22nd  or when it repeats many times through the end of March (it will be out on DVD in June for those who don't).

We've all read about Abu Ghraib and seen the photos, but this documentary puts it together with a stong narrative in a way that hasn't happened before.  

Tonight on HBO, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib."

Although I agree with all the outcry at the treatment of the detainees for their sakes, I also see we’ve lost focus on the fact that we are turning patriotic American soldiers into instruments of torture and then dropping them back into their communities, families, and Walter Reed Hospital, all ill-equipped to meet the psychological needs of these returning soldiers.

Tom Shales says

It could easily be argued that it was the torturers and not the tortured who suffered the most as a result of what happened at Abu Ghraib. The damage done to the reputation of the United States was critical and criminal, and the torture that occurred can be seen as but a symptom of a much larger corruption: the pursuit of the war itself and the fallacious "evidence" fed to the American people to justify it.