Sunday, January 30, 2005

Jacoby agonizes...

over the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay in his Sunday Globe column today. He even traces the whole mishaugas up the line to policymakers at the topmost level. However being a decorous man, he pussyfoots around the admin torturecrats declines to recommend that any of these persons be relieved of their duties.
Translation, Jeff doesn't have the guts to call for Alberto Gonzalez's ouster as AG designate. The other interesting thing about today's column, a seemingly heartfelt exercise, is it's timing. The Abu Ghraib revelations popped up during last year's presidential campaign and yet all we heard out of Jeff were worshipful barks at the mention of George Bush's name and thin snarls at John Kerry. As far as torture is concerned, Jacoby has been absent from the debate-til' now.
Of course, timing may admit other dimensions here, Iraq is voting today, if Jeff feared a bloodbath then the last thing he'd wanna do is run yet another "we are making progress in Iraq" piece. It'd be his four or so in a row that was attended on by some horrific carnage somewhere in that benighted land. The safe thing to do might be to get atop the whole torture issue.
All this does raise a curious question though, does Jeff Jacoby, that proud fantasist actually have one foot planted however lightly in the reality based camp??

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