My Heart Trembles

We've been hearing about this. I don't know what Hitchens knows, but my supposition is that this article is well-founded.

According to Hitchens, the Abu Ghraib scandal "is going to get much worse."

I've already heard more evasiveness than I can stand about Abu Ghraib. That what we'd already seen didn't amount to actual torture. That however bad it might be, it paled in comparison to Saddam's antics. Bush's chilling exhortation to take "comfort" that U.S. law was not violated when I read memo after memo coming out of his administration arguing that torture isn't actually prohibited by our laws.

We'll see what more it yields. But by now it should be pretty obvious that what happened was an outgrowth of a systematic policy, considered at the very highest levels of the chain of command. Every official who mouthed off about "bad apples" in full knowledge of this scandal's true scope should be brought to account. Frankly, I hope to see Congress bring some Cabinet Officials (at a minimum) to task for what can only be considered perjury and obstruction.