Do you know about the 82nd Airborne's systematic torture of prisoners? You should. Mark A.R. Kleiman, Scott Horton (long post), the NYT's Eric Schmitt; all based on this Human Rights Watch report. (HRW is not Amnesty International, by the way, so either the whole human rights community is being a big meanie or the U.S. is committing serious abuses.)
It's obvious that responsibility for the torture goes way up the chain of command, and responsibility for the coverup goes even farther. Henry Farrell's quote from Horton's post shows that even the best Army investigation was designed as a cover-up. Our government has gone to great lengths to ensure that the American people lack the information they need to make a responsible choice at the ballot box.
(I beat Michael O'Hare to the history of the 'bad apples' metaphor. That post must have been from when I was trying to keep off politics.)
Not related, but Josh Marshall has some ideas about how our government is run.
Posted by Matt Weiner at September 26, 2005 05:49 PMAs I write this, I should be hiding every online thing I've ever written, but did you mean "committing" when you wrote "considering"?
Posted by: washerdreyer at September 26, 2005 08:37 PMYou are correct, and it is a material difference. I will edit.
Posted by: Matt Weiner at September 26, 2005 09:37 PM