Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

How the Bush-Cheney years changed Andrew Sullivan’s view of America

This is harsh, but I think he captures it well. I never thought I would be a citizen of a country that endorsed torture. It still makes me sad to think about that. I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved ...

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

This is harsh, but I think he captures it well. I never thought I would be a citizen of a country that endorsed torture. It still makes me sad to think about that.

This is harsh, but I think he captures it well. I never thought I would be a citizen of a country that endorsed torture. It still makes me sad to think about that.

I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved that America isn’t, in the end, different; that its core moral principles, such as the prohibition of torture, are nostrums to be tossed aside at the whim of a few very scared and incompetent men; that the rule of law ends when it comes to presidential power, when he can simply order dipshit lawyers to say black is white; when no regret is ever truly expressed about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died under US occupation; when the architects of these strategic and moral disasters are given legal immunity and peddle books on talkshows defending and bragging of their own awful legacy.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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