kirk anderson

The Minnesota Independent contacted four outspoken critics of America’s torture policies and practices — Dr. Steven Miles, Douglas Johnson, Coleen Rowley and Kirk Anderson — for reaction to recent revelations about Bush-era treatment of prisoners. None of them said, “I told you so.” But the truth is … they told us so.

For two years of the Bush era beginning with Hurricane Katrina, the Star Tribune published a weekly comic strip on its opinion page that was unlike anything else in American newspapers, sending up current events in a serial format with heaping doses of dark humor and giddy gore. “Banana Republic” dispensed satire so bruising and brutal it made you want to die of shame — but also so funny and true it gave you reason to live. Now cartoonist Kirk Anderson’s new book compiles every episode of “Banana Republic,” letting readers re-live tortuous times and die of embarassment all over again.