Thinking of Americans, generally - how do you think most of them feel about the torture report?

[Sweeney]

2. Americans are for the most part good people.

While they can justify much depending upon party affiliation, this is not always the case. People can know torture stinks and is morally wrong and yet what government we elect cannot be wrong short of condemning the whole people, and they are not doing it, and they do not even have to listen to the tapes.

America doesn't have to listen to grown men cry, and they don't have to listen to them beg for mercy, or sell out their mothers for a moment of peace. If they did, I am certain most people would find a soul, and stop it. So for them it is not simply a banality of evil question, but is a delegation of responsibility question. Just as you can bureaucratize responsibility so widely that no one is to blame, in that same fashion, the people are let off the hook. Ignorance may be no defense, but it is still ignorance.

Look at what trouble the government had taking a peek at its own butt. How would we ever get the same picture at the same price. I knew torture happened. Hands on who didn't know torture was happening in our territory? Why do you think they offer no guided tours? And naturally, they are happy to make us guess what is going on in our names in our own country. Figure that. But we know the bad people who don't like us very much are guessing too. What happened to old whatzizname and why haven't we seen him since, and what does he know, and whom? This torture cannot possibly be for the benefit of the people tortured because they are so few. It is the wider audience for the show of life that is being served. And I am happy to see it happen before my eyes, so there is no doubt. I'm a people, they're a people, we're a people too. What your government will do to them, it will do to you.

These Muslims scarecrows are not to warn other scarecrows. These scarecrows are to scare you. If the government will shoot them. If the government will drone them; If you get my point.
Don't tick your government off. Don't think you can push it over with a feather. Don't get all cocky and mad. Use your head and drag your feet. Think of how many would have been saved from the gas chambers if everyone had just dragged their feet. Remember who you are dealing with. Think of all the official people who might shoot you where you stand if they cared to drag your body away.

All I am saying is a lot of people on the other side of this issue, as in the delivery of pain and mortification have not got one part of respect for life. Like so many in the Bureaucracy of Death, in Russia, and Nazi Europe, it was just a job. And a good job would eat them up too as it went along because the world will always have enough sociopaths to lose a few. Look at how some good people justify death for some dumm kid in Missouri, and how would they feel if he was theirs? Would they feel ashamed, hurt, numb, outraged. How far is the government from turning these guns on us?

That kid isn't a cause, and he isn't a comedy. That kid was a human being, and these scarecrows we crucify are human beings too. It is not a matter of numbers. It is not a question of information. It was a chance to prove our morality and instead we witnessed our inhumanity. If it was me doing it, I'd never admit to nothing but being a drunk, and say all I did was put in my eight chatting the guy up, and if he was screaming it was only to exercise his larynx. It's a bureaucracy. Everyone shares the responsibility and no one gets the blame.

Sweeney