Torture is something that one had not associated with the United States for the past forty or so years. Torture occurred in Vietnam if one is to accept the testimony given by Vietnam veterans. But since the seventies, America has been supposedly the beacon of human rights.

Since Abu Ghraib, that image no longer stands. American troops tortured prisoners repeatedly and regularly and in a number of documented cases, this led to the death of the prisoner. In many cases, the prisoner was not even guilty of a crime in any sense of the word. It has been a dark time for this country.

Just so that we don’t get yanked off track by strawmen arguments about defaming the troops, this is not about the troops. This is about the degradation of a nation that was once regarded as a voice of reason and a leader in the fight against the abuse of humans and their rights across the globe, to a country that incarcerated children and tortured juveniles. It is about the attempt to pervert what this country was purportedly about.

This story is the story of Donald Rumsfeld and many others in the Bush administration, who’s actions, deeds and words, led directly to the torture of young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees," claims a Senate Armed Services Committee report issued Thursday.

According to the committee, prisoners were tortured in the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib, the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other US military installations. Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) were responsible for the content of the Senate's findings.

This article will illicit, I am sure, a response from the right. The very right that is alarmed by Barack Oabama’s past associations with people like Bill Ayers. People scared because they don’t know, or pretend not to know, who the real Obama is.

Where are their voices calling for Rumsfeld’s head? For Cheney to be indicted? For the responsible members of the Bush administration, who have brought shame onto this country to be held accountable? These are not tin-foil-hat ideas about affectations which may or may not have occurred decades ago. These are hard facts. These men and women in the Bush enclave, these supposed real American patriots, in fact not only dragged this country through the mud, but endangered it:

The report determined that placing the blame on "a few bad apples," as Bush administration officials attempted to do in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, is inappropriate.….

The report finally claims that Rumsfeld's torture policies "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies and compromised our moral authority."

Where are you, you who are concerned that barrack Obama may be tainted by his former acquaintances, when you are faced with terrorism in your own party? Terrorism in the form of memos, meetings, nods and ultimately torture. Where are your cries of indignation?

But it’s remarkably still around them as far as these topics go.