Can You Hear The Screams Yet?

Now we know why Bush backed down on the McCain anti-torture bill. From SMH:

The US Justice Department will seek to dismiss more than 180 cases involving inmates at Guantanamo Bay who have challenged their detention in court...

In a concession to the White House, the [McCain anti-torture] bill limits prisoners from going to lower-level civilian courts for relief from confinement. They can only go to an appeals court once they have gone through a military court process.

And of course let's not miss an opportunity to trivialize the plight of thse poor bastards, lest our sense of moral outrage be pricked:

While some have protested their confinement in general, others have sued over the type of Koran they have been given while others want access to DVDs, a Justice Department official said.

Peter Brooks has a piece in Slate today, Bush vs. Camus, which compares the US treatment and torture of prisoners with French tactics in Algeria. The US public mindset today mirrors one described by Camus:

Anyone subjected to torture clearly deserves it. Such a person must be guilty. It is morally unacceptable to believe that anyone treated in such a way could be innocent.

Brooks also quotes Jean-Paul Sartre on WWII atrocities:

In 1943, in the Rue Lauriston (the Gestapo headquarters in Paris), Frenchmen were screaming in agony and pain: all France could hear them. In those days the outcome of the war was uncertain and we did not want to think about the future. Only one thing seemed impossible in any circumstances: that one day men should be made to scream by those acting in our name.