Ted Rall: The Long Slog of Rebuilding American Democracy

NEW YORK--The military tribunal lasted a week. At the end the 17 defendants were permitted to make a closing statement. Alexei Shestov, 41 years of age, stood up and admitted being a terrorist and traitor. "In that struggle," he confessed, "I employed every loathsome, every filthy and every destructive method." Coercive interrogation techniques--what effete and weak-stomached liberals would call torture--loosened the terrorist's tongue. "For five weeks I denied everything," he said, "for five weeks they kept confronting me with one fact after another, with the photographs of my dastardly work and when I looked back, I myself was appalled by what I had done."