Prestwick Bound

The Nation has a special on Americas recent pronouncements...

"..there is no point in arguing about whether US policy condones cruel, degrading or torturous treatment of prisoners. Practices authorized by Rumsfeld on a small scale in Afghanistan have now metastasized into a worldwide network of prisons, detention centers and surrogates ranging from private contractors to authoritarian foreign governments. What Rice defended to European critics -and what has Cheney at loggerheads with John McCain - is not merely a desire to take the gloves off in the occasional back room in Bagram or Baghdad, as the Administration's apologists insist. Rather, it is a wide-ranging conspiracy to facilitate torture, in which many sectors of American society are now implicated. The new torture complex -centered in the executive branch of the government but with tentacles throughout the country - is the subject of this special issue, which spotlights both collusion and resistance in key American institutions: the military, the law, medicine, media, the academy...."