Find a spine, pursue the truth (Galloway / McClatchy)

[struggle4progress]

BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway

... We're back to the question of which Bush administration officials ordered Justice Department lawyers to concoct some legal way to use illegal torture methods on the prisoners we were taking in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere ...

Even if you believe the end justifies the means and ignore the numerous factual flaws in this ex post facto defense, it doesn't address the question of how many of the 4,954 American troops who've been killed to date in Afghanistan and Iraq were killed by Islamic jihadists who were recruited in part by the revelations we were torturing helpless Muslims. How much safer did those orders to torture make our young men and women? ...

What's truly disheartening is to watch all the ducking, bobbing and weaving in the nation's capital -- like so many powder-haired dandies prancing a minuet.

Yes, it's an ugly chapter in the life of a nation that prides itself on its freedoms and its rule of law. But it's more than that: It's a splendid opportunity for a bunch of politicians from both parties to find their spines, or borrow some, and get to work cleaning out the dark corners in the White House and emptying the closets of skeletons.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1016509.html