Best Oscar acceptance speech

[Helium Three]

Alex Gibney, writer and director of Taxi to the Dark Side:

My good wife wanted me to make a romantic comedy. After Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition that wasn't possible. This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us - Dilawar the young taxi driver featured in the movie, and my father, a Navy interrogator, who urged me to make this movie because of his fury at what is being done to the rule of law.


...

From Roger Ebert's review of the film:

We have to work the dark side.

So said Dick Cheney a few days after 9/11, discussing the war on terror. Is this what he meant?

In December 2002, an Afghan named Dilawar had scraped together enough money to buy a taxi. He was fingered by a paid informant as a terrorist connected with a rocket attack. Taken to the American prison at Bagram, Afghanistan, he was tortured so violently that he died after five days. An autopsy showed that his legs were so badly mauled, they would have had to be amputated, had he lived. Later, the informant who collected U.S. money for fingering him was proven to be the terrorist actually responsible for the crime the innocent Dilawar was charged with.

An official report said Dilawar died of "natural causes."

[mr_anderson]

All in the name of Freedom !

[Helium Three]

The positive response from the audience brought it home to me how far US opinion has moved on this, compared with the reaction Michael Moore got a few years ago.

Our own government continues to side with the diehard remnants of the Bush school of law. Even the British have realised now those guys word on not running rendition flights through certain friendly countries cannot be taken as Gospel but Bertie and Dermot are still true believers.