;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 11, 2014
Internal links removed.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Even as [President] Obama repeated his belief that the techniques constituted torture and betrayed American values, he declined to address the fundamental question raised by the report, which the committee released on Tuesday: Did they produce meaningful intelligence to stop terrorist attacks, or did the C.I.A. mislead the White House and the public about their effectiveness? That debate, after all, has left Mr. Obama facing an uncomfortable choice between two allies: the close adviser and former aide he installed as director of the C.I.A. versus his fellow Democrats who control the Senate committee and the liberal base that backs their findings." ...
... Matt Apuzzo & Jim Risen of the New York Times: "Initially, agency officials considered a path very different from the one they ultimately followed, according to the newly released Senate Intelligence Committee report.... They envisioned a system in which detainees would be offered the same rights and protections as inmates held in federal or American military prisons. Conditions at these new overseas prisons would be comparable to those at maximum-security facilities in the United States. Interrogations were to be conducted in accordance with the United States Army Field Manual, which prohibits coerced, painful questioning. Everything at the prisons would 'be tailored to meet the requirements of U.S. law and the federal rules of criminal procedure,' C.I.A. lawyers wrote in November 2001." Read the whole report. ...
... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has urged a court to reject a request to disclose thousands of pages of documents from a Justice Department investigation into the torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency, including summaries of interviews with about 100 witnesses and documents explaining why in the end no charges were filed. The administration made the filing late Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times, hours after the Senate Intelligence Committee made public a 524-page executive summary of its own investigation into C.I.A. torture...." ...
... John Heilprin of the AP: "All senior U.S. officials and CIA agents who authorized and carried out torture like waterboarding as part of former President George W. Bush's national security policy must be prosecuted, top U.N. human rights officials said Wednesday.The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said it is 'crystal clear' under international law that the United States, which ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, now has an obligation to ensure accountability." ...
... Mark Udall Makes Good on His Threat. Lauren Fox & Dustin Volz of the National Journal: "In a career-defining speech, Sen. Mark Udall took to the Senate floor Wednesday to discuss a largely classified internal CIA investigation into the agency's Bush-era 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' and to call for the current CIA director's resignation. Udall, an outbound Democrat from Colorado, began highlighting key conclusions from the CIA's so-called Panetta Review, written in 2011 and named after then-agency Director Leon Panetta. Its critical findings, in addition to the agency's attempts to prevent the Senate from seeing it, Udall said, demonstrates that the CIA is still lying about the scope of enhanced-interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration." ...
... Richard Norton-Taylor & Ian Cobain of the Guardian: "MPs and human rights groups have demanded a judge-led inquiry into Britain’s involvement in CIA abductions of terror suspects, following the devastating US Senate intelligence committee's report. Under pressure from Britain and other allies, their role in the CIA renditions were redacted from the report." ...
... What Did the President Know & When Did He Know it? Fred Kaplan of Slate examines the question, concluding -- contra some implications in the Senate report -- that George W. Bush knew & approved the broad outlines of the torture program early on, but made an effort to retain "plausible deniability" as to the specifics. CW: And, hey, it looks as if the Most Heartless Man in America backs up Kaplan: "Contrary to the report's conclusion that Bush didn't know the extent of the CIA's efforts, [in a Fox "News" interview] Cheney said the President was involved in discussions about the interrogation techniques, and that Bush even pointed out some of those conversations in a book he wrote after leaving office." Cheney added, "I think we were perfectly justified in doing it. And I'd do it again in a minute." Notice he doesn't say "in a heartbeat." Because he doesn't have a heart. ...
... Peter Sullivan of the Hill has more: "The report says that Bush did not know the details of the techniques until 2006, years after they began, and that he 'expressed discomfort' when he learned of an incident involving a detainee chained to a ceiling and wearing a diaper. 'I think he knew certainly the techniques, we did discuss the techniques, there was no effort on our part to keep him from that,' Cheney said on Fox News. 'That the president wasn't being told is just a flat out lie.'" CW: Dick Cheney wants you to know that the buck didn't stop with him. "No effort on our part"? Who is this "we"? Cheney is acknowledging/boasting that he & unspecified others ran the whole 9/11 response -- including the torture program -- but they would occasionally report to the President on what-all they were up to & allow him to nod his approval. Now the bastards are not going to let the "Decider" off the hook. ...
... Gail Collins on James Mitchell & Bruce Jessen, the psychologists/contractors to whom the CIA outsourced our immoral, useless torture program, to the tune of $81MM, & counting. ...
... Benedict Carey of the New York Times has much more on Mitchell & Jessen's role. "'My impression is that they misread the theory,' said Dr. Charles A. Morgan III, a psychiatrist at the University of New Haven who met Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Jessen.... 'They're not really scientists.'"...
The report's full of crap. -- Dick Cheney ...
... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "In his aggressive efforts to salvage his reputation in the wake of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's use of torture, former director Michael Hayden has offered a number of defenses for the agency's conduct.... 'I mean what are they doing — trying to score my public speeches? What's that about?' he said in an interview with Politico magazine. 'You want me to go out and score [Sen.] Ron Wyden's [D-Oregon] speeches?' ... Wyden's former top spokeswoman, Jennifer Hoelzer, emailed over the following:'1. That's really fucking offensive given that all of Ron's statements are directed towards informing the American people and exposing the [intelligence community's] attempts to mislead, while Hayden's all about the lying/misleading. 2 - While I'm no longer Ron's official spokesperson, I think I speak for everyone on team Wyden, when I say 'Go the fuck ahead.'" ...
I don't believe these are torture at all.... We're not talking about anyone being burned or stabbed or cut or anything like that. We're talking about people being made to stand in awkward in positions, have water put into their nose and into their mouth. Nobody suffered any lasting injuries from this.... -- Rep. Peter King (R-NY), former IRA bagman, explaining "enhanced interrogation" ...
Okay, Petey, let's test that. We'll let the CIA stand you "in an awkward position," the way they do, preferably with one of their professional rectal-feeding implements up your ass. -- Constant Weader
... James Downie of the Washington Post: "... if the program was successful, then why hide it and lie about it? The CIA repeatedly 'impeded' oversight from Congress, the White House and even the agency's own inspector general." ...
The Feinstein report ... risks undermining the ability of our intelligence agencies to protect the nation at a time when threats abroad are rising, not falling. -- John Yoo, author of the torture memoranda, in a New York Daily News op-ed ...
... Ed Kilgore: "Bob Kerrey hasn't read the Senate Intelligence Committee's summary of the 'Torture Report.' But he's taken to the op-ed page of USAToday to condemn it. Why? '... The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.... This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.' When Republicans 'check out' of a bipartisan process because they cannot control it, it is by definition the fault of the Democrats for not finding a way to prevent it."
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post on the "CRomnibus" bill. "So, what's in the bill? We've sifted through the legislation, consulted supporting documents from Democratic and Republican aides, and called out some of the more notable and controversial elements below. (If you want to review detailed reports on all 12 parts of the spending bill, click here.) Please note: This is a fluid report that will be updated to add more detail or correct errors." ...
... Good News for Oligarchs. Ashley Parker & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "The $1.1 trillion spending agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators on Tuesday night would vastly expand the amount of money that donors can give political parties, bolstering party leaders' ability to tap into the wallets of their largest contributors and reclaiming some clout from the outside groups that can accept unlimited dollars.Depending on how the new law is interpreted by election officials, the provision could expand the amount that any one person can give to national party committees to more than $777,000 each year from what is now a maximum of $97,200.... Neither party's leaders in Congress would claim responsibility for inserting the new provision, which was tucked into the final pages of the more than 1,600-page spending bill on Tuesday evening." ...
... Matea Gold & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "A massive expansion of party fundraising slipped into a congressional budget deal this week would fundamentally alter how money flows into political campaigns, providing parties with new muscle to try to wrest power back from independent groups. The provision -- one of the most significant changes to the campaign finance system since the landmark McCain-Feingold measure -- was written behind closed doors with no public debate." ...
... Screw You, Working People. Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "A measure that would for the first time allow the benefits of current retirees to be severely cut is set to be attached to a massive spending bill, part of an effort to save some of the nation's most distressed pension plans. The rule would alter 40 years of federal law and could affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as trucking, construction and supermarkets." ...
Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan of Politico: "Nancy Pelosi and progressives aren't ready to support a carefully crafted government funding compromise, throwing the $1.1 trillion bill into doubt one day before a potential shutdown. In question are a provision that would weaken Wall Street regulation and a measure that would loosen campaign finance laws."
... Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on Democrats in the House to use their leverage and reject a bipartisan spending bill to keep the government open until a measure tucked inside rolling back a piece of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is removed. 'Who does Congress work for?' Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon. 'Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers, or does it work for all the people?'" ...
... The Washington Post story, by Lori Montgomery & Sean Sullivan, is here. "Meanwhile, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that 'it is certainly possible that the president could sign this piece of legislation,' even though it would undo a pillar of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul by freeing banks to more readily trade the exotic investments known as derivatives. The legislation ranks among the administration's biggest domestic achievements." ...
... Erika Eichelberger of Mother Jones: "Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway Congress Just Snuck Into a Must-Pass Spending Bill. The bill, drafted almost entirely by Citigroup, would allow banks to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money." ...
... Dana Milbank argues that Ted Cruz has lost his ability to create havoc in the House & Senate.
Annals of "Justice," Ctd. Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times: "A federal judge has told the Obama administration to decide by next week whether it intends to force a reporter for The New York Times to testify at the trial of a whistle-blower, bringing to a head the most serious confrontation between the government and the news media in many years. The reporter, James Risen, has been fighting government subpoenas in the case since 2008, but the Justice Department has refused to abandon its effort to force him to discuss his confidential sources. In June, the Supreme Court declined to review the matter, letting stand a federal appeals court ruling that allowed the government to compel his testimony."
Timothy Phelps of the Los Angeles Times: "Opening the door for what could be a lucrative and controversial new industry on some Native American reservations, the Justice Department on Thursday will tell U.S. attorneys to not prevent tribes from growing or selling marijuana on the sovereign lands, even in states that ban the practice."
Americans Getting More Gun-Happy. Pew Research Center: "For the first time in more than two decades of Pew Research Center surveys, there is more support for gun rights than gun control. Currently, 52% say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns, while 46% say it is more important to control gun ownership. Support for gun rights has edged up from earlier this year...."
CW: Help Me! I think I agree with George Will: "The scandal of mass incarceration is partly produced by the frivolity of the political class, which uses the multiplication of criminal offenses as a form of moral exhibitionism. This, like Eric Garner's death, is a pebble in the mountain of evidence that American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post: "In their first interviews about the events of that September 2012 night, [Jackie's] three friends separately told The Post that their recollections of the encounter diverge from how Rolling Stone portrayed the incident in a story about Jackie's alleged gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity.... The friends said they were never contacted or interviewed by the pop culture magazine's reporters or editors." ...
... Hanna Rosin of Slate: "The Post story doesn't connect all the dots, but it's not hard to do. Jackie has now given her friends two different names for the man she was with that night. Neither of them was in fact with her, ever dated her, or even knew her all that well. She appears to have invented a suitor, complete with fake text messages and a fake photo, which suggests a capacity for somewhat elaborate deception.... When confronted with what appear to be so many orchestrated lies, it's getting harder to see Jackie as a person whose memory may have been shaken by trauma." CW: Again, I have to ask, WTF was the supposed fact-checker doing? It is beginning to sound as if Jackie fabricated the whole gang-rape story, perhaps to attract a young man who wasn't interested in a romantic relationship with her. Her semester-long depression, then, could have been a result of that failure, not of trauma caused by a grotesque sexual assault.
Oh Lord, no. -- Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), on whether she would run for public office again, after having lost her Senate seat in a run-off election last week ...
... What a Surprise. Anna Palmer & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Mary Landrieu may have lost her Senate seat, but the Louisiana Democrat is a hot commodity on K Street. Several headhunters, veteran lobbyists and consultants said Landrieu's status as a moderate Democrat and senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee make her a top recruit from Capitol Hill."
Nobody Loves You When You're Out. Marin Cogan of New York on Michele Bachmann's lonely good-bye. CW: I'd advise Bachmann to get a dog, but she's got Marcus.
Nicole Egan of People: "Tamara Green, a retired California attorney who says Bill Cosby drugged and groped her in 1969 or 1970, filed a defamation lawsuit against the entertainer Wednesday. In the suit, filed in Springfield, Massachusetts, not far from where Cosby has a home, Green says comments made by Cosby's representatives to The Washington Post and Newsweek this year 'impugned' her reputation and exposed her to 'public contempt, ridicule, aversion or disgrace.'" Via New York.
Presidential Election
We don't grapple with that here. -- Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas), on how he mitigates income inequality in his state (Texas "ranks fifth or sixth among states on income inequality")
Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont & former chair of the Democratic National Committee, in Politico Magazine: "Hillary Clinton is by far the most qualified person in the United States to serve as President. If she runs, I will support her."
Beyond the Beltway
Nathan Bomey & Matt Helms of the Detroit Free Press: "With Detroit officially out of bankruptcy, now-former emergency manager Kevyn Orr said it's not the next couple of years he's worried about for the city, or even five years out.... Crediting [Mayor Mike] Duggan's administration as being top-tier, Orr said he worried that, if Detroit does well, starts to turn around and even reflect some of the remarkable recoveries that parts of cities like Miami and New York have seen in recent decades, Detroit leaders and residents won't remember the lessons learned." Via New York.
Dillon Thomas & Zuzanna Sitek of 5 News Fayetteville, Arkansas. "Fayetteville voters have repealed the city's Civil Rights Ordinance following a special election Tuesday.... Those in favor of repeal got 52% of the vote.... The ordinance would have prohibited local businesses and entities from discriminating against employees and customers based on gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and other factors. The Fayetteville City Council passed the ordinance in August...." CW: Fayetteville, BTW, is a university town. One might have hoped the voters would be a little more enlightened.
News Lede
Time: "The [U.S.] Department of Defense said Thursday that it had shuttered the last American detention facility in Afghanistan, bringing to an end a controversial practice of holding prisoners in the country without trial. The U.S. said it no longer had custody of detainees in Afghanistan following the transfer on Wednesday of remaining detainees from Bagram Airfield north of Kabul, which once held hundreds of detainees, Reuters reports."
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Reader Comments (20)
At least one blogger gets it:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/torture-its-morally-wrong-spockosbrain.html
Virtually all MSM pieces beg the question (I am using it correctly this time): Asking if "meaning intelligence" was obtained presumes that torture was morally justified if it was effective. Bah, life is cheap, but moral principle is precious.
It must be noted that most of the wing nuts who are condemning the Senate Intelligence Committee's Torture Report have NOT read it! Yes, truly. This includes Dickhead Cheney, Petah King, and Karlie Rover. I am sure there are more, but I heard all three of these sorry asses give throwaway lines admitting that of course they had not read the silly report. Waste of time. Geez I wish Obama had the balls to prosecute these war criminals!
I do want to congratulate Mark Udall on his speech to the Senate today strongly condemning torture. Nice way to leave. Too bad he is going.
A few thoughts on our Torture Presidency and the current state of our society.
One thing that I've seen many journalists hint at but not say directly (albeit I've been too busy to read all the good pieces linked) refers to Obama's high-minded rhetoric about American values rejecting human rights abuses.
First of all, for anyone who's read a real history book, there are plenty of exceptional cases for our "Exceptionalism" in this category. But beyond that, I'd say almost unequivocally that a large majority of Americans do indeed reject outright the torturing of fellow human beings, especially in programs conceived, developed and financed by our own government at the highest levels of power, bankrolled by the public. But as we've seen with the right wing outrage at the report, we can officially drop the discourse of One America and start coming to terms of referring to our country as The Americas, or maybe the Assembled States of America. While we come from a shameful past of genocide followed by entrenched slavery, modern discourse has almost always shamed these actions to the extent of being 'politically correct', but short of condemning the perpetrators in order to reconcile differences and "unite" under the flag of democracy, human rights and the pursuit of happiness for all. Wherever detractors have bubbled up, racism rearing its ugly head time and again, the public discourse quietly pushed the outliers into the shadows to preserve the veil of unity. Yet now, after unveiling egregious violations of the human rights, dignity and basic freedoms that we have supposedly stood for and protected in the world, blessed directly by the leader of the "Free World" and his cohorts, the thin veil of unity around democratic principles has been ripped off.
We have an entire political apparatus, anchored in the White South, with a huge contingent of the population that walks in lockstep devotion, that has steadfastly refused to admit to any wrongdoings. In their eyes, everything is justified. Despite clear evidence of abuses coming from the CIA itself, those Americans just close their eyes and see no evil. Some even claim they'd do it again.
Let's be clear. These are no democratic principles, and this contradicts everything represented by the beacon of freedom we sell ourselves as to the rest of the world. If American values truly do lie in the ideals of protecting human rights, preserving basic freedoms and a belief in justice where its due, then reasoning can only deduce that those right wingers denouncing the horrible abuse of all of these ideals are NOT AMERICAN. At least not as a member of the imaginary identity we have cultivated for ourselves. But surely the right-wingers would beat their chests, scream 'Freeedom' slogans and claim to be ultra-Patriots, denouncing OUR ideas as un-American. National identity has many shades and nuances, and overall that's an asset to our vibrant nation, but to diverge on such fundamental foundings of our supposed identity has developed a chasm between Americans.
We share a nationality with these people, to some extent a similar history, but the disparities emerging and sharpening nowadays have put to rest, at least in my mind, the ideal of the United States.
United bureaucratically, yes, but in identity, surely not.
"At least not as a member of the imaginary identity we have cultivated for ourselves."
Thanks Safari. There is a schism between the two camps, and it's widening. One believes in human dignity; the other believes in American convenience.
safari, thanks for the excellent post. Let me add that the disparity between the two countries claiming to be one includes, not by coincidence, the fact that the people most likely to believe in our exceptional state and at the same time support the 'enhanced interrogation' are the same people that claim to believe in the words of a man who was publicly tortured to death.
P.S. I agree that a majority of Americans believe in the true America. And to solve the problem we just need that majority to get out an vote!
And I wonder, safari, if all the while America the beautiful was looking nice and nifty, in the black holes of the underground there were nefarious goings on not only in the dark days (Indians, Asians, Black, etc. atrocities) but continuing in small increments all the time and we now are bombarded with it because of the new technology of instant and constant news. Bill Cosby, an American icon, beloved father figure of one of the most successful TV sitcoms, was, all the while, raping and drugging women. How could this be? we ask; perhaps a metaphor for concealment known as the Cosby Coverup in years to come–– We either have to face up to our failures and fight like hell to make us better or we'll fall flat on our big ole American butts and become insignificant and a laughing stock to the rest of the world. And we are right to question as you do, safari, what does it mean exactly when we talk of freedom, democracy, and equality––anyway, thanks for a beautifully written post even though it breaks my heart to read it.
Glad to see that someone else around here gets it, even if Peter Baker and the NY Times do not.
Thanks, Mr. Owen, for pointing out that the central question is most decidedly not, 'Did torture produce meaningful intelligence?'
That sort of attitude can justify anything. These people are beneath contempt.
A.N.Mouse: Thanks. It should not only not be a central question, it is irrelevant, should not be even broached in the first place. Especially by the likes of Baker and the Times. And thanks for correcting my typo.
And thanks to Safari for excellent insight.
To top off this morning's news just got an email from my brother–-you know the one–-colorful picture of a bridge with neon lights–-the headline above it reads: America's Response to Ferguson's "Hands Up, Don't Shoot"–– in neon lettering: "Pants up, Don't Loot."
Yep––"this sort of attitude can justify anything."
The Bernard Carey article in NYTimes, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/health/architects-of-cia-interrogation-drew-on-psychology-to-induce-helplessness.html, is well worth the read. "Seligman, M.E.P., Maier, S.F., and Geer, J. (1968). The alleviation of learned helplessness in dogs. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 73, 256-262; Maier, S.F., Seligman, M.E.P., and Solomon, R.L. (1969). Pavlovian fear conditioning and learned helplessness. In Campbell, B.A., and Church, R.M. (Eds.), Punishment. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 299-343.
I immediately see the connection with what Republicans do with their base supporters and everyone else when possible. The systematic removal of spirit from living beings is just about as evil as Cheney/Bush and their torture. It doesn't seem a far extension of learned helplessness to blame others for your own lack of will and/or efficacy. Obama and Democrats and everyone "different". Too bad these political leaders and their psychologists, including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen and Kirk M. Hubbard, will likely turn up on another government funding request.
Safari,
Excellent points. The right's inability to admit errors or even acknowledge the questionable nature of certain actions, mirrors George W. Bush's frequent difficulty in recalling any mistakes he's ever made. When you see one of the most incompetent, ludicrously inept and unqualified men to ever sit in the White House scratching his head to come up with any errors or miscalculations on his part, it has to be more than simple obtuseness.
The right's refusal to admit mistakes or errors in judgement or policy, I believe, is as much tribal as it is anything else. They would rather be waterboarded themselves rather than ever "giving in" to the hated Others in America and around the world. It's in part a result of their over-active and constant state of victimhood and paranoia, their belief that that they are always, somehow, behind the eight ball. Just consider the embarrassingly puerile screed in response to the Torture Report by Fox's Andrea Tantaros, about how awesome America is, meaning, I suppose, that whatever we do is A-Ok because, U-S-A! or something. The name of the Fox show on which she made that head shaking declaration? "Outnumbered".
In their minds they're always outnumbered even when they're in complete control. When you try to figure out why conservatives so often scream bloody murder when policies that have originated from their side are put into effect, it's largely tribal. They're not going to give an inch to any damned Democrat (especially not a black one). Even issues that don't seem to have any essential partisan component (or shouldn't), will face staunch opposition if they see there might be a chance for the Others to "win". They'd rather see the whole shootin' match go up in flames than admit that they might be wrong about something or that the Other Side has a point.
And if you were to get most of these people one on one and ask them if they thought torture was okay, I think many of them would say no. Now it's true I'm not taking into account the baleful influence of constant brainwashing which has handily edited the moral component from this debate, or rather, relocated it so that anything is okay as long as the desired result for the USA (or the right wing) is achieved. For people who pride themselves on their religious belief system, this warping of one of the most basic understandings of morality represents a supreme victory for ideological propaganda.
So we've got toxic tribalism matched with ideologically deformed thought patterns. No wonder it seems like these people inhabit a different country, a separate universe.
They do.
AK, I wanted to add to your psychology speculation of yesterday. To me, torture is just a continuation of the authoritarian tradition maintained by the master class in slave societies. America has taken ownership of the world, although the world doesn't seem to know it yet. So, America's overseers are out there whipping slaves and torturing non-believers so that other miscreants know that a certain standard of behavior is expected. I believe that this sort of "kill a few and the others will come around" approach has been tried by pretty much every invading army since the dawn of history with equally unpleasing long-term results. Cue Where Have All The Flowers Gone ...
Note that such behavior is also exhibited in the portions of America where live those who must be suppressed. Kick asses and take names seems to be the preferred method.
Lost in the details is the fact that our armies are currently occupying parts of Iraq and Afghanistan. What should have been at most a short-term anomaly has become permanent reality, so business-as-usual that we don't experience heated discussions in multiple venues as to the legality of continuing our occupation one more day.
We pretend to be Athens, but we have become Sparta. City on a hill, indeed John Winthrop.
I was reminded of this quote from Harry S Truman: "I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Cenral Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven if I'd known it would become the American Gestapo."
Ran across this in another forum:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
— George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Well, well, well.
The MORALITY and RULE OF LAW party has a bit of setback today.
Fortune magazine, no bastion of progressive politics, has published a listing of the 10 most corrupt states in the country. Guess how many Red States are in that group? If you guessed "Almost all" you'd be right.
But how that can that be, in states where the rule of law and Christian morality are so highly prized? (*snicker*)
"According to the report, 'states with higher levels of corruption are likely to favor construction, salaries, borrowing, correction, and police protection at the expense of social sectors such as education, health and hospitals.'"
In addition....
"...construction spending, especially on big infrastructure projects, is particularly susceptible to corruption because the quality of large, nonstandard projects are difficult for the public to gauge, while the industry is dominated by a few monopolistic firms. Corrupt states also tend to, for obvious reasons, simply have more and better paid public servants, including police and correctional officers."
So much for hatred of government. Hatred of government only extends to states where they can't get their cousin appointed to a $100,000 year no show sinecure.
So, drumroll....
The worst states in the union for unapologetic corruption and criminal skullduggery:
1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. Tennessee
4. Illinois
5. Pennsylvania
6. Alabama
7. Alaska
8. South Dakota
9. Kentucky
10. Florida
So it looks like 8 out of 10 are rock solid Republican states. Hmmm....anyone surprised?
In addition to the standard propagandistic right-wing bullshit spread like carcinogenic manure across red states, they are also most likely to indulge the self-serving conservative propensity for bribery, malfeasance, crookedness, nepotism, unscrupulousness, and downright criminality.
No wonder they think torture is perfectly okay.
Assholes.
@AK: In the assessment of "The Best & Worst Run States in the U.S. that list ranks them thus: Compare, my brother, ain't too surprising.
I. S.D.–13th
2: Alaska-14th
3: Penn–-22
4: Tenn–35
5: Alabama–39
6: Florida–42
7: Ill–43
8: Miss–44
9: Lou–46
10: Kentucky–50th
Why the sanitized language using euphemisms - "enhanced interrogation techniques" and passive tense - "mistakes were made"?
The truth is actually quite simple: The U.S. brutally tortured prisoners.
Why are none of our leaders willing to genuinely confront this and express anger and shame?
@Janice: Because they are neither angry nor ashamed?
@Janice-
The answers are:
1) "That is not who we are." HA! (my favorite punch line)
2) Obsfucation is a requirement of being in politics or the military.
3) Anger and shame? Our leaders? Who did you have in mind?
I think all except Obama are shameless--a big piece of narcissism
4) Why use passive tense? Because that means I am blameless. "It"
just happened.
5) Of course the US brutally tortured prisoners. We also committed
genocide against the Native Americans who were here when our
Founding Fathers decided they would make it their own. And we
enslaved Africans believing they were sub-human. Still do.
6) Bottom line: Right and Might are White. And the South will
rise again. Actually, it already has. Look at our Congress and
governors elected last month.
@James and Kate
"How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind."