Last saturday LA Times had an understated, but sobering op-ed on the co-option of doctors in military's administration of torture in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.

I grew up in a social environment that had an abiding respect for the written word and for doctors. I have known about torture by some practioners of medicine in Nazi concentration camps. But I always felt that it was a complete aberration anyway - that most people who go into medicine and practice medicine maintain some fundamental commitments to morality and ethics.

When I read that alongside this Newsweek story on Pentagon's thoughts about putting assassination squads in the middle east, I start questioning my basic assumptions about democratically elected governments of our times (obviously, we are not talking about Kazakhstan here where the president boils his political opponents or about West Africa where torture and cruelty have lost their power to shock).

I dont see any hope at all of things getting any better anytime soon.