Change....

It's not easy moving from Germany to the United States. When I grew up in Germany, World War II was occasionally mentioned -- as a really bad time -- but nobody really dwelled on it. In America, on the other hand, popular comics still included the World War II comics like Sergeant Rock. Even Captain America was still battling mostly Nazi villains. It was considered very humorous to make gestures in my direction ("A German! Let us machine gun him!") Popular culture had Germans always ready to kill and torture innocent people. I so did not want to be a villain - there weren't, to my knowledge, even S&M clubs around where that sort of rep would make us popular.

Imagine my dismay when America came out in favor of torture - or at least winking at it. As long as our side was doing it, it was just "enhanced interrogation techniques." Orwell really knew his stuff.

One of the things that made me prefer Obama to Bush was that he didn't seem to want us to be the villains. Greenwald points out nothing has changed.