here's a link to a survey of american foreign policy that doesn't get enough publicity.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/unholy_trinity/

in brief, the cia has been in the torture and murder business since the 50's. anyone who opposes american policy in south or central america, in south east asia, or now in the middle east, was/is liable to be connected to electrical implements, or beaten, or shot, or thrown from helicopters. many just 'disappeared'.

it's going on today. it is the cause of anti-american terrorism. terrorists are people recruited to a cause which even the simplest can understand: resistance to foreign murderers.

nothing to do with us? if you hold his coat while some serial torturer and murderer amuses himself, you will suffer his fate when he is caught. less abstractly, the new 'anti-terrorist' laws which curtail civil freedoms are a penalty for holding america's coat. worse penalties will come, for america has stored up hatred that will not go away, and will spill over onto coat-holders.

the american alliance was never necessary, and has become a source of shame and danger.

Yes agreed. Pilger's War on Democracy is a good example of this, although he does champion the cause of some fairly questionable characters like chavez. Chavez appears to have good intentions on some counts like alleviating poverty, but also starting to come across as power-hungry.

didnt get in to link, just got a car ad.

me too. but if you click the 'enter salon' button,in upper right corner, voila.

I think that only the die-hard clingers onto their own sense of propaganderized (it's a word, shut it) bleated reality would deny such a statement. It's funny how originally that idea was that "they" hate our way of life, and beliefs, when in reality it is merely a massive cosmic boomerang of negative karma that came whistling back and clocked western civilisation smack between the eyes.

" Things are so freewheeling that Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz -- who, at his perch at Harvard would undoubtedly be outraged if he were to be tortured -- thinks that the practice needs to be regulated, as if it were a routine medical act. He has suggested empowering judges to issue "warrants" that would allow interrogators to insert "sterile needles" underneath fingernails "to cause excruciating pain without endangering life." "

sounds like my type of a guy... A responsible torturer. unbelievable.

We can easily propagate the lie that only American torture is horrific and inhumane. We need balance in what actualy happens in all countries regarding torture in foreign policy. At least if a case on inhuman torture treatment can be established in America then the whole world will know.