In the year 177, the Roman empire initiated renewed persecutions against Christians.  At Lyons in Gaul, authorities tortured slaves from Christian households to force testimony that Christians practiced cannibalism and other perversions.  An angry public reaction influenced the governor’s decision to sponsor several days of public spectacle in the amphitheater where crowds were entertained by fatal beatings, burnings and animal maulings. 

 
In 2002 the American empire took custody of Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and “rendered” him to Egypt where under water torture, beatings, and confinement in a small cage they produced a “confession” linking Al Qaeda with the Iraqi government.   The following February, Secretary of State Colin Powell citing information from “a senior terrorist operative” made the case for war before the UN Security Council based on two fabrications that had been corroborated through torture – the allegation that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and the allegation that Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda. 

 
Now we know there were no WMD’s and no significant connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.  Libi later recanted the testimony; he allegedly took his own life in a Libyan prison last month.  But in 2003 Americans watched broadcasts of the “shock and awe” attacks on Iraq, TV images of bombs and tracers that looked remarkably similar to a video game.

 
Secretary Powell’s chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson has stated that the “harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002… was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and Al Quada.”  Former Army psychiatrist at Guantanamo Major Charles Burney confirmed to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful…  The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link… there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”  They got their results, and they were false.

 
Torture doesn’t produce truth.  It produces whatever the torturer wants to hear.

 
The picture of the Bush White House and parts of the military deciding to make coercive detention and torture the official US policy in the war on terror is a picture of a great nation whose leaders lost their moral bearings. 

 
Torture is wrong, and it is a crime.  It is a violation of Title 18 of the US Criminal Code.  To carry out torture in the context of war is a war crime.  It may well be that our leaders may be guilty of crimes against humanity. 

 
Torture is evidence of weakness, and it feeds weakness.  The effect on the tortured and the torturer is dehumanizing and barbaric.  It degrades a civilization. 

 
Yes, it is hard to look at torture.  Newspapers and politicians cover up its ugliness with dishonest euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation techniques” and “harsh methods.”  Honesty and clear-eyed morality demands that we look, however.  Excerpts from Sherry Jones’ award winning documentary “Torturing Democracy” are available on line from Bill Moyers Journal at torturingdemocracy.org.  Watch it.

 
We need something in America like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that South Africa used to bring a degree of healing to their nation in the wake of the nightmare of apartheid.  In South Africa victims of violence could be heard; perpetrators could give testimony and then request amnesty from prosecution.  Confession and forgiveness are good for the soul.  Our poor soldiers and operatives who carried out their orders to administer torture need a process for confession and forgiveness.  Let them be released from the some of the burden they carry in their memories.  We need to know the truth.

 
Our national character and our principles are at stake.  To sweep this ugly chapter under the forgetful rug of the past would be poisonous and dangerous to our corporate soul.  Denial is a form of weakness and mental sickness.  We can be a strong, mature and just society again.  We can reassert our commitment to the rule of law.  We do not need to follow the path of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

 
If we are to reclaim our role as moral agents, we must be courageous enough to shine light into our darkness.  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  (George Santayana)