Bush's dishonor.

George W. Bush tried to blame the torture scandal on a "few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values." But Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales have also dishonored our country and disregarded our values. They are the ones who signed off on a system of interrogations that went way beyond the legal and moral bounds. It was Rumsfeld who said the Geneva Conventions do not apply in Afghanistan. And it was the Pentagon's lawyers who said the United States was not bound by the treaty against torture. All of these people paved the way to Abu Ghraib.

"The gloves are off." That's what one senior official told Bob Woodward in The Washington Post back on October 21, 2001.

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," one official who was involved in supervising the capture of suspects told the Post on December 26, 2002.

This cavalier attitude started at the very top. And now we have the graphic, horrifying evidence of what happens when the gloves come off.

This month, Investigative Reporter Anne-Marie Cusac reflects on the similarities between torture abroad and torture at home. And I try to explore America's amnesia about U.S. involvement in torture around the world over the past half century.

These are not cheery topics, I know. But to avert our eyes is to play into the torturers' hands.

We had a gala gathering for our ninety-fifth anniversary party here in Madison on May 8. More than 300 people came to our day-long conference, "A Progressive Tomorrow," and about 1,700 people filled the Orpheum Theatre for our evening celebration.

The panels during the day were lively, none more so than the one on "The 2004 Elections: What's a Progressive to Do?" I was on another panel down the hall, but I could hear the crowd erupt at frequent intervals. When I listened to the tape, I could tell why. While all the panelists acknowledged the defects of the Democratic Party and the shortcoming of its standard-bearer, and while they all agreed on the need to fortify a grassroots movement, there was vigorous disagreement on what to do in the voting booth.

At the evening event, Representative Tammy Baldwin gave a generous introduction, which included an account of how, after graduating from college, she was overlooked for a job at The Progressive. (I hope that was not my doing!) Singer Steve Earle served up two sets of his fierce folk music and spoke out passionately against the death penalty. Poet Martin Espada gave a powerful reading of several of his poems, including "On the Bus," which inaugurated our poetry page back in 1995, and "Alabanza," his ode to the workers who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Adolph L. Reed Jr. struck a chord with the crowd when he said that instead of fighting defensive battles, we should try to win something we actually want for a change, like free higher public education for all. And Kate Clinton entertained the audience with a hilarious ten-minute rift on Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft.

It was left to Howard Zinn to provide the most inspiration for the evening. "I'm hopeful about the future of this country," he said. "We are going to see the emergence and growth of a great social movement, which has the possibility of changing the character of this country into a place we can be proud of."

Here's to that!