This. Is. Obscene.

hilzoy links to a Times Book Review describing torture as practiced by US authorities at Guantanamo.
I'm linking in case I want to make future reference, but I have no desire to read the content closely or have any of it appear in my archives. This comment says all I need to know.

I read that article about a half an hour ago and almost stopped breathing.

But what really surprised me was the opening to the article, the first several paragraphs. It initimates that this report was not supposed to see the light of day, and the author is very murky about how he came upon it. "A short time ago this document came into my hands...."

Is this a modern-day Pentagon Papers?

Living in the Bible Belt as I do, I have been exposed to a certain view of morality during the last twenty-five or thirty years that selectively ignored some truly horrible examples of immorality while perspiring in anger at others. I'm thinking here of how many people ignoring torture cannot see how the abortion debate and it's cousin, the embryonic stem cell debate, is just as filled with moral contradictions. Unable to discern how choosing to carry a baby to full term is preferable to being forced to do so because they want abortions criminalized, there is for many no room for discussion. And in the case of fetal stem cell research, the same people who oppose the idea are very quiet about IVF (in vitro fertilization) without which "deselecting" one or more fertilized embryos is routine. The recent high-profile story of the "octomom" illustrates what happens when "deselection" is not practiced.

I know. I live among these people. They are good people and they mean well. They are deeply committed Christians.

But I find indignation about one issue even more disagreeable than silence about the other.

Thanks for reading. I had to get that off my chest rather than go over to Dr. Bob's place and start an argument.