From Gulag To Gitmo

I've been catching up a bit. Dan Froomkin writes a daily column for the Washington Post online, blogrolled at the right under "White House Briefing." He pulls and comments on various articles and media concerning the White House (duh!) and Administration. Here's a bit concerning President Bush's speech Wednesday, September 6, 2006, when he disclosed (acknowledged) the existence of those "secret" overseas prisons:

A skeptical view on what Bush said yesterday suggests that under the cover of some impressive-sounding but fragmentary and in some cases dubious disclosures, the president was actually making some very controversial demands.

He was, in fact, calling for the CIA to continue to be allowed to use interrogation tactics that many people would reasonably consider torture; he was demanding retroactive legal immunity for American interrogators who used tactics that many people would reasonably consider torture; he was calling for the unprecedented admission of coerced evidence in an American legal proceeding; and after all those years of refusing to give Congress any role in this matter, he was insisting that they take action in a matter of days.

What has become of us, as many have said before me, when we are actually debating the proper use of torture! Shouldn't that be a rather brief debate? What about holding prisoners without any of the basic rights we take for granted? What about ignoring the Geneva Convention? Who could have imagined any such discussion just a few years ago?