The Torturers

With their ice-hearted, dark-minded, and fork-tongued sponsors now no longer in a position to give the orders, what is to become of all the bright-eyed American boys -- and girls -- who became torturers?

They can't be expected to go back to cats and butterflies, just as we are told that shipwrecked victims in the old, sailing ship days who felt constrained to resort to cannibalism (after accusing all inhabitants of Africa of the same), had trouble thereafter losing their taste for that abominable delicacy.

But we can hope that these demobed boys and girls won't find too much new employment as local police and prison guards.

When all the other pressing concerns give B. Obama some time to turn his attention to it, he might want to put out some words about the U.S. having a larger proportion of its population behind bars than any other country.

That could begin with doing something about the drug laws. Those should vanish into oblivion right behind the poll taxes and the Jim Crow laws -- all three of which legislations had exactly the same ultimate purpose.

Like torture, indulging in a taste for prisons as a growth industry is not the American way either.