The future will curse us for it...

Here's my prediction, nobody will be prosecuted no matter what happens -- it'll all be let bygones be bygones. Tragic, but probably the case.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, obviously disturbed as he and his cabinet colleagues discussed specific torture practices, stated that “History will not judge this kindly.”

When John Ashcroft is the voice of reason, you know there's a problem.

This is a stain that will not wash out.

There is also one major flaw in ABC's report and that is the actual facts regarding Abu Zubaydah:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques. […]

The Stain. IT. WILL. NOT. WASH. OUT!

Update:

Nicole Belle reminds us that ABC also failed to note the innocent men that were tortured because of these parties actions:

While ABC brings up two terrorists that were connected to 9/11–implying that even though our country’s leaders have dragged us down to torturing people, at least they directed it at bad men who committed the worst tragedy on American soil–but what they fail to connect are names like Maher Arar, Khaled al-Masri, Bisher al-Rawi and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah. Names of innocent men who were guilty of nothing more than being Muslim and were renditioned and tortured for information they could not provide.