by Cheryl Rofer
I've been of several minds on the question of how to approach the dreadful things that President George W. Bush and his administration did in the name of protecting the nation. Quite honestly, I don't like to think about the detentions and torture for two reasons. First, I feel very sad that a country I've thought of as mine and as something to be proud of would do such things; I struggle with denying that these things happened. Second, it's hard for me to read the descriptions without seeing and hearing the events, even at times feeling the water running into my nose or the chill of airconditioning on wet clothes; too vivid an imagination, I guess.
But when I read this, I said, yes, we must have a presidential commission. Over the weekend, I read Mark Danner's article in the New York Review of Books. The article contains extracts from the Red Cross report on the treatment of fourteen "high-value" detainees. As I read it, I realized that we must face this horror.
The rationales presented by the Bush administration have been transparent and odious; they have slopped over into accusations against all Muslims. A few memos from John Yoo and his associates have become public. There is much more to come, and it may be coming quickly. We need a commission to put these documents into context and to call witnesses to provide information missing from the documents.
I would go further than Pickering and Sessions: we need a commission to sort through these actions so that we can accept that we, the public, allowed terrible things to happen. Refusing to face such actions will damage the country.