The Torture is still going on.

The American press (and more than a few bloggers, like yours truly) have allowed Terri Sciavo and Michael Jackson to completely distract all attention away from criminality in Iraq and corruption in Washington.

Thank God Bob Herbert isn't one of them.

"The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging. But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused.

These atrocities have been carried out in an atmosphere in which administration officials have routinely behaved as though they were above the law, and thus accountable to no one. People have been rounded up, stripped, shackled, beaten, incarcerated and in some cases killed, without being offered even the semblance of due process. No charges. No lawyers. No appeals."