Mash on Bush's Tortured defense of Torture

Mash at Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying has a very informative post up about the UN Committee Against Torture Report. There's a lot of good technical information on the legal wriggling the US is doing, but I'd like to quote Mash's thoughts on the issue:

For centuries the United States has been a beacon of hope for people fleeing torture and persecution. For centuries the wretched of the earth have pointed to the United States and said, "there, that is where there is hope; that is where there is justice." For centuries people have come to our shores with wounds emotional and physical and we have given them shelter and given them solace. We cannot be the great country we have been, the shining example to the World of human dignity and human achievement, if we allow our Government to torture and destroy all that this country has stood for.

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I believe in America. I believe in its professed values, and in its people. But it is difficult to fight for those values in Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, and all of the dark places in the world, when the world's only superpower, the shining city upon the hill, is sending people to these places to be tortured.

I'll close with the words of an Uyghur who is currently detained in Guantanamo. Uyghurs (pronounced wee-gurs) are a Muslim ethnic minority that is being oppressed by the Chinese govt. This fellow is innocent -- swept up by the Northern Alliance and quite possibly sold for a bounty to the US. These words came to us through declassified military documents, released thanks to the ACLU's tireless efforts with the Freedom of Information Act:

[censored name] stated that back home, he used to listen to the United States freedom channel, Radio Free Asia, on the radio. [censored name] advised that Radio Free Asia gives so much hope to the [Uyghurs] ...

The US is the light of hope, and if that light goes out, the whole world will be plunged into darkness.