The Torture Memos are Killing Me

Last week, NPR ran a series on the Torture Memos. There was an Op-Ed piece by Ali Sufan in the NYT. See Frank Rich's opinion piece in Sunday's NYT. At the time the Bush administration first began justifying it's horrific and horrifying behaviour, revulsion, anger, dis-ease was an automatic response. And the horror continues, as well as shame and embarrassment. Two cultural pieces that make one think long and hard about the question of what each of us would do in compromised situations are 1) a review in Saturday's NYT of an exhibit at New York Public Library "Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life Under the Nazis". and 2) Nancy Pearl's review of Janice Y. K. Lee's new novel "The Piano Teacher." And finally, listen to Jacki Lyden's interview with reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, who finished her assignment reporting from Baghdad for NPR. The connections between all these news items are both obvious and nuanced: but they remind each of us to be wary of smugness, propaganda, and how easy it may be to be sucked into a swamp.