MB Civic

By Ariel Dorfman | Monday, September 25, 2006 | The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201303.html

Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean American writer and professor at Duke University who wrote “Death and the Maiden,” among many other books. He previously campaigned for Salvador Allende and barely escaped with his life after the US-backed military coup that toppled the democratically elected Allende administration. In this second essay on torture, Dorfman says at one point:

“…when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the ‘intelligence’ that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age….” Eloquent and well worth reading…BS