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By Ellen Ratner
I had a perfect view of the Statue of Liberty from the vantage point of my U.S. Airways shuttle seat from Washington, D.C., to New York City last week. There she was in the distance, holding out her lamp – a lamp designed to shine a light to mark the path of justice, liberty, and human rights for all. I am a thick-skinned White House correspondent, so I normally try to avoid the luxury of entertaining my own emotions. This day was different.

I felt a profound sense of loss. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Extraordinary Rendition and the Bush administration's insistence that the ends justify any means, has given me cause for a deep sense of grief. Even what should have been a landslide decision to prohibit executing juveniles turned into a down-to-the-wire, 5-4 vote in the highest court of our land. Our nation has morphed into a nation of angry vengeful players in the Bush administration's theater of the absurd.

We can expect more of the same over the next four years. The man who opened the door to sanctioned torture, arbitrary detention and the death of due process is now the attorney general. The Anthony Gonzales confirmation went off like a Republican fund-raiser – smooth as silk. There is no accountability because this government and many Americans do not see a problem with torture when it comes to suspected terrorists. Guantanamo Bay is a great example of a complete lack of empathy. As my true-red Republican cousin says, "Only 10 zip codes in this country really care about what is happening there."

I realize it's hard for some to muster a sense of compassion for a "suspected terrorist" who was arrested several thousand miles away. But imagine if it was your son who was arbitrarily turned into the local police for a bounty of $5,000? What if the only cause for holding him was that he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if the local police told you, "I'm sorry Mr. Smith, we don't know when Johnny is going to be coming home. You see, we are fighting an indefinite war on terror and so we have the right to keep him as long as we need to."

The ends that are supposed to justify the means in the case of Guantanamo Bay have proven to be highly questionable on their best days. According to an article written by a former Army officer, Phillip Carter in Legal Affairs, titled, "Asking for Trouble – Why the counterterrorism interrogations at Guantanamo Bay have been counterproductive," intelligence experts (those who have been inside Guantanamo Bay) say that less than 20 percent of the inmates actually have ties to al-Qaida. Some might argue it's OK for 80 percent to suffer if we can prevent another Sept. 11. Given this logic, why don't we just prevent any Arab male from ever flying on an airplane or entering our country again?

Arbitrary detention and torture is useful for one thing: creating enemies. Our policy in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan has done more to recruit jihadists than any fire-and-brimstone spewing imam ever dreamed of. To use an expression Karl Rove is fond of, "It's the gift that keeps on giving."

There are no worthy ends to justify the means. The intelligence that we have gathered out of Guantanamo or through the policy of Extraordinary Rendition – where we outsource torture to our friends in Syria or Egypt and other Middle Eastern locations have yielded little if any useful intelligence.

In his book, Guantanamo, David Rose writes that less than one-third of the detainee population at Gitmo had any real intelligence value. Other reports have indicated that as few as 50 of the detainees at Gitmo, out of roughly 600, had intelligence value. There is a "blowback effect" to this policy – it ends up creating more terrorists. According to recent reports, 25 of the 202 prisoners freed from Guantanamo have rejoined the fight in Afghanistan as Taliban or al-Qaida insurgents.

I'm sure America is tired of hearing about Guantanamo Bay and Extraordinary Rendition and Abu Ghraib. We would rather punish the lowest person in the chain of command, promote those who enabled and encouraged them and chalk it up as, "war is hell." I am deeply saddened by the actions of our soldiers at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, but punishing them and leaving the civilian and higher ranking leadership in place is comparable to trying the Germans who processed Jews in Auschwitz, and leaving Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess to ski in Switzerland.

Given the complete lack of accountability on the part of this administration for a host of dangerous and harmful decisions that affect the daily lives of our servicemen and women, it's no wonder the military finds is necessary to offer some soldiers bonuses of over $100,000 to stay in the service of their country. Why would they stay, when they can be hired to do the same job as a "contractor" for four times the pay and they won't have to risk a court martial? I'm sure the contractors have armored vehicles and Kevlar and plenty of insurance for health care when they are injured, even if they have to leave their jobs as a result of those injuries.

America is not perfect, we never have been. We have betrayed the legacy of Lady Liberty before, but never in our history, has a government been able render human rights, the rule of law and justice to be "quaint and obsolete" principles. The Bush administration considers this gross breach of human rights part of winning a larger war on terrorism. There are no facts to support the claim that we are winning the war on terror. CIA Bush appointee Porter Goss told Congress recently that a terrorist organization is poised to strike again soon in the United States. He was dismayed to say that al-Qaida has successfully built a network of partners who are exceptionally difficult to track.

Perhaps our nation would do well to reflect on the words of Anthony Romero, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union: "We must remember what we are fighting for, not only what we are fighting against."