The media is atwitter with the release of a 500 page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that describes actions by the US intelligence community in the period shortly after 9/11. By design the report only talks about events and actions the occurred during the Bush administration and does not address numerous equally reprehensible actions that were taken by subsequent Democratic administrations since that time. Since the report was issued by only the Democratic majority of the committee it's easy to suppose that there is more than just a little politics behind the report.
The 500 page report has in excess of 38,000 footnotes for an average of 76 footnotes for each page. As an author I know that that a good way to confuse the reader is to litter a document with footnotes and get them lost in the minutia of your argument. Authors who are unable to state their case clearly depend on footnotes to confuse the focus of their debate and to overwhelm the reader with (often) extraneous information,
That being said the report reveals, to no one's surprise, that the US did in a number of cases apply physical and emotional torture to individuals in an effort to obtain information. I don't care if they were successful or not ... this country has always portrayed itself as a defender of freedom and a moral bellwether for others to admire and follow. And for a brief period of time we failed and now we have to recognize that fact and return to the founders position that these United States are a "shining city" for others to admire.
I can only hope that a moment of moral failure is just that, a moment in time that we as a country regret and will not allow to occur again.
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