How a Torture Protest Killed a Career

A powerful and moving story from Consortium News that everyone should read, told by the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who, upon learning of the torture being carried out there on behalf of the CIA, felt impelled to speak out. As a result, his career was ruined.

As Max Weber, who was an expert on bureaucracies, pointed out in the 19th century: "as an instrument of 'societalizing' relations of power, bureaucracy has been and is a power instrument of the first order - for the one who controls the bureaucratic apparatus."

It is that part of the picture that Craig Murray, whose account is retold below, still finds perplexing - how decent people can go along with indecent and monstrous things because those above them have ordered it to be done and because those above them have succeeded in frightening the public into going along with profoundly immoral practices.

People tend to believe that people in high office, such as an Ambassador, have the power to right wrongs.

Let us suppose that George W. Bush, while still President (who is more powerful than the president?), was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past and as a result of that visitation, vowed to become a truthful and decent man, regardless of the consequences. How long before Dick Cheney made sure that Bush had an accident and was unable to serve out his term?

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