PoliTalkBack

Many people have suggested that Americans, simply by virtue of their being American couldn't be torturers. "This is not the America I know," said the president, and others. Let me tell you about the America I know. 1. It has been shown repeatedly that the CIA has conducted and taught torture in the 60's, and even as recently as 1983. 2. The Stanford Prison Experiment has shown us that brutality is possible in any environment where one group of people is given power over another. 3. I have said this before, but lynching was common in America until less than 100 years ago. I think that if more people had been willing to accept that the torture tragedy at Abu Ghraib prison could happen, they would have looked out for it, and possibly prevented it. It's time for Americans to take the blinders off and accept that we are human like everybody else, and not uniquely better just because we are American.