Thursday evening I attended a panel on torture and other extra-legal US activities being held at Fordham Law, and who says I don’t know how to have fun? One of the panelists was Josh Rushing, with whom I wrote the just published Mission: Al Jazeera, and I had really come in a show of solidarity. (Josh will also be reading and signing books Tuesday, June 19 at the Barnes & Noble on Astor Place.)

Given the subject matter — the official title of the event was “Sunlight in the Torture Chamber: Expert Views on the United States’ Use of Secrecy, Detention and Interrogations in the War on Terrorism” — I thought the few hundred in attendance at Fordham’s McNally Ampitheatre constituted a pretty good draw. But fellow panelist and former Army Colonel Janis Karpinski wondered aloud why it wasn’t “standing room only.” As the proverbial fall guy for the abuses of Abu Ghraib, Karpinski had more insight than most into the institutional nature of our national insanity and had several revealing anecdotes about the brass that brought the tactics used at Gitmo Bay to Iraq. Where is the outrage? she seemed to be asking, while the last time I checked most Americans were saying, Where’s the remote?

Tara McKelvey, author of Monstering: Inside America’s Policy on Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War, was perhaps more realistic when she said, “I’m surprised anybody comes to these things at all given the subject matter.” McKelvey, who waded into the blood of this business researching her book, may be more jaded that Karpinski (who resigned her commission after the Abu Ghraib scandal) but she also saw signs of hope. In response to a question from an audience member regarding the rights of individual soldiers to refuse torture orders, she recalled a 230-lb guard at a US military prison who had been instructed to put his charges on “the sleep plan” — to play loud music at periodic intervals to keep them from sleeping.

One night, she recalled, he couldn’t take it anymore and turned the music off. And nothing happened. Why was he able to get away with that, she wanted to know? “Not everyone has that gift,” he told her, by which he might have meant his height and weight — though I suspect he was also talking about character.

For those who wish to do more than merely talk about this topic, the ACLU is sponsoring a “Day of Action to Restore Law & Justice” (who comes up with these zippy titles anway?) in DC on June 26. There is free tranportation from NYC as well as that good feeling you get when you don’t look away when unspeakable things are being done in your name.