What can we say now?

Today's Guardian front page carries a story about the aftermath of the democracy demonstrations in Burma/Myanmar and their brutal suppression by the military junta. The following is a description by one of the the demonstrators of his treatment at the hands of the police during his detention.

"I was sitting on the floor of the interrogation room," said the man, an art shop owner in his 20s. "There were five of them asking questions. The first day I was beaten very hard and they asked: who organised the monks? I told them we were following the monks, respecting the Buddha, they weren't following us."
"I was interrogated all night for three nights. They kicked and punched me on the side of my head with their fists. They asked me the same question over and over. I told them: you can ask anything, my answer will always be the same. I don't know who organised the monks. They didn't like that answer."

So the interrogators forced the young man to half-crouch as though he were sitting on a motorbike, made him put his arms out as if gripping the handlebars and demanded he imitate an engine, loudly.

The initial humiliation gave way to intense pains in his legs, arms and throat after several hours. When he fell over he was beaten again. He was held for a month and is still not sure why he was detained. He suspects the police identified him from photographs of civilians who marched with the monks. But he was not alone in the cells of police station No 14.

Isn't this a clear enough demonstration of the total loss of any moral authority that the United States might have once had? What indeed can we as a nation say in disapproval of these methods of torture intensive interrogation against an innocent man held illegally when our own government does the same things to innocent men held illegally and claims to do so in the name of freedom?

What indeed.