Janus-faced

We cannot meet the future either by mere gross
materialism or by mere silly sentimentalism;
above all, we cannot meet it if we attempt to balance gross
materialism in action by silly sentimentalism in words
--President Theodore Roosevelt,
Memorial Day, 1916
____________

Two stories clashed on the same page in our local paper recently (Tallahassee Democrat, p 15A, 5/21/08.) We'll call it a case of situational ethics.

First, President Bush apologized to Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an American sniper's shooting of a Koran (Bush Apologizes to Iran for Quran Shooting.)

Second, an audit shows that not too many FBI agents deigned to "engage in terror tactics" when interviewing detainees. Depending on which news outlet you read, this is either a bragging point or a great shame.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said, "While I take comfort in knowing that, for the most part, FBI field agents followed the agency's policies regarding interrogations, I find it very disturbing that many senior FBI and DOJ officials failed to take strong action after identifying interrogation abuses."

Some of the agents seemed embarrassed at the Howdy-Doody nature of events:

"At Guantanamo Bay, two FBI agents 'had concerns not only about the proposed techniques but also about the glee with which the would-be [military] participants discussed their respective roles in carrying out these techniques, and the utter lack of sophistication and circus-like atmosphere within this interrogation strategy session,' the report found."

The Justice Department audit exonerated most of the FBI agents, who "refused to participate when detainees were questioned under harsh and potentially illegal methods." But the AP report gave a free pass given to the CIA and military interrogators, whom the FBI agents reported had perpetrated the abuses.

There is no potential to it; all of the listed methods, including short-shackling to concrete floors and stress positions, are illegal. When did America cross this street? The FBI and Justice Department should have done more to stop the illegal interrogations, vs. just turning their collective backs.

A chart accompanying the article is titled, "Few agents engage in terror tactics;" subtitled, "Many FBI agents refused to participate in terror interrogations against detainees at military bases in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan." Comforting, no?

The chart lists abuses reported by FBI agents, 34 of which included "abuse of the Quran." Somebody was engaging in these FBI-reported terrorizing incidents of detainees, but thank goodness not many of the Men in Black played along, at least according to their own reportage.

But of those 34 abuses of the Quran, defilements of religious icons aimed at breaking accused terrorists to their will: Mr. Bush has not apologized for those tax-paid interrogators who desecrated the Quran during secret interrogations, so why the apology for the shooting?

A bit hypocritical to apologize for one incidence of offense while allowing implicit institutional endorsement for many other identical offenses via Department of Defense policy, y'think?