Accounting for Torture

"Democracy dies behind closed doors". The secrecy, the absolute secrecy that the Bush Administration would like to impose on any of its judicial and prosecutorial actions in matters relating to terrorism suspects can be compared to an iron curtain and all its connotations. We do not seem to care because, paraphrasing Berthod Brecht, "they came to arrest my neighbor, but, because I am not a terrorist, I said nothing. When they came in the night to arrest me, there was nobody left to to speak out."
It seems as if both ancient and modern citizens harbor the lingering feeling that when the police arrest our neighbor "he must be guilty of something." Which is why the first right of a citizen is the right to a fair and open trial. This cannot be denied to anybody, under any circumstances, for any reason, least of all "national security", that favorite and comfortable retreat of bureaucrats.
As many have been pointing out, the treatment being meted out at Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere may be so much beyond American legal principles and custom that the subjects will be, in effect, unsuitable to be tried in open court. Are they going to be held "in undisclosed locations", without a chance to prove whether the charges against them, if they get even to know them, have any substance, for the rest of their lives.? And the cost to taxpayers of such confinement? We are quibbling over the cost of basic services to the citizen, health care, medicine, good transportation, but sinking millions into secret detentions.
Think about it.
Accounting for Torture