CounterPunch
by Vijay Prashad

12/15/05

Bayan Jabr, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, followed Bush in the defense of his ministry (and his Wolf Brigade militia). The Iraqi state, he said, does not torture. The logic is impeccable. 'Democracy,' as a concept, is antithetical to torture. If anything that resembles torture exists in a democracy, then it cannot be torture. It must be something else, such as the work of one or two 'bad apples.' Tyrannical regimes torture as part of their inner logic, whereas torture can only occur within a democratic system by deranged individual action. It is perhaps this amnesia sanctioned by our belief in the power of democracy that makes us forget 'incidents' like the US complicity at Con Son Island in Vietnam, and in the 'dirty wars' of Central America in the 1980s...

http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad12152005.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp