U.S. and Torture

Via 1155.org:

"Fact: at least 4 prisoners have been killed (tortured to death?) by the CIA and/or its subcontractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fact: the Justice Department has declared its intention of bringing no charges against any CIA employee for said deaths.

Fact: no one seemed to particularly care when this was announced. There was no outcry either in the blogosphere or in the traditional media.

Fact stranger than fiction: Now everyone is outraged and agitated because it seems that the U.S. has:

“been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement” , and because this “secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe”.

Will someone other than Scott McClellan please explain to me why this is more outrageous than prisoners being killed by interrogators practicing interrogation techniques that are in gross violation of the Geneva convention? And the U.S. government deciding that there was no harm no foul. That no one even needs to get their knuckles rapped. Since when does torture trump murder on the moral outrage scale?

Question: Would anyone care to speculate on the correct answer to this one? If x is the number of prisoners who were tortured to death in non-secret detention facilities where the deaths would come to light and inquiries would have to be held, and y is the number of prisoners tortured to death in secret detention facilities where such deaths will never come to light, which is likely to be greater, x or y?

Fiction: The Bush administration will, in stark contrast to every previous action with respect to prisoner detention and interrogation, acknowledge what they did, and admit it was wrong, and apologize for bringing shame and dishonor to the American people. Everyone involved, including Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, will resign. One of these three will be unable to live with the guilt, and will commit suicide.

Fact: The foreign governments that are alleged to be the host countries for these secret detention facilities have vociferously denied their existence.

Fact or fiction: everyone concerned, except for Dana Priest of the Washington Post, is telling the truth."

How can the US claim any type of moral superiority in the world when we act no better than the worst 3rd world dictator?