Seymour Hersh is my new hero

From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Ask him why the Abu Ghraib scandal is important, and you'll get an earful. "Why are you asking me that question? Are you trying to torture me? Is that a torture question? If you can't answer that question, I'm not going to answer it." He's picking up speed. "Why is it important? It's important because -- let me tell you why it's important, in a nutshell! It's important because it's a symptom of a lack of care by the people at the top," he said.

"The president and (Vice President Dick) Cheney and (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld dehumanized the opposition from the beginning -- out of fear, out of anger, out of want of payback."

A disastrous consequence of that dehumanization, Hersh says, was a tacit agreement to overlook the Geneva Conventions.

"You don't mistreat people for the simple reason that you don't want to ever treat a soldier any different than you want your soldiers treated.

"People say Abu Ghraib was just horseplay, what am I worried about? But it's a symptom. When we learn about Guantanamo, we're going to be shamed. It's as bad as Andersonville," he said, citing the notorious Civil War prison where soldiers were starved."