Sunday, October 19, 2008

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)



Even if you wholeheartedly support the War on Terror(ism), you'll probably find it difficult to watch this film and not arrive at the conclusion that the government needs to seriously reexamine its policies regarding the detainment and interrogation of suspects. It's also difficult to make the case that international scandals, like Abu Ghraib, and other unfortunate incidents, like the death of the innocent Afghan taxi driver pictured here, had a singular cause of "a few bad apples" getting carried away. Shortly after 9/11, Dick Cheney told the late Tim Russert that "A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful." Those methods include extreme humiliation and torture, and anyone who still claims otherwise is kidding themselves to an absurd degree. President Bush has said that language in the Geneva Conventions is "very vague". Perhaps. But look at these photos, watch the footage, listen to the stories of the former military interrogators who speak freely about their experiences, and then ask yourself: if these are not "outrages upon human dignity" then what the hell would be?
IMDB

2 comments:

The Fallons said...

sad and disgusting. hard to watch.

scituate said...

Yeah. By the way, too bad McCain didn't stand up to Bush on the torture issue after all his big talk.