After the past eight years, we have a few questions (The Oregonian)

[struggle4progress]

by David Sarasohn, The Oregonian
Friday February 13, 2009, 11:33 AM

What was always striking about the pictures of prisoners being transported to Guantanamo --orange jumpsuits, blackout goggles, huge sound-blocking headphones --wasn't just the worldwide announcement they put out about how the United States did its business. We had, after all, appointed three successive assistant secretaries of state, with great fanfare, to upgrade the American image in the world, and all expressed bewilderment that it wasn't getting any better ...

What was striking about the pictures was how much the treatment -- being hustled along and kept from seeing or hearing what was going on around you -- resembled the way the American people were treated for the past eight years ...

Last week, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested it would be worth learning what was going on during those years, when the government was making such frenzied efforts to keep us from finding out. What the United States needs, argues Leahy, is a truth commission, to gather information on just who was being tortured, who was being kept under surveillance and who ordered it and thought he was entitled to do so ...

"We've been through a very terrible experience," explained <Paul> Krugman, "and we're trying to pretend nothing happened" ...

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/david_sarasohn/index.ssf/2009/02/after_the_past_eight_years_we.html