One hundred and eighty-three times. It must have been that last one that made KSM say, “Oh fuck it, what do you want me to say? Where do I sign?” Any in-depth reading of the depravity to which the Gestapo and the SS sunk tells the story that we don’t want to hear. Any perusing of the memoirs penned by those who managed to walk out of the Lubyanka sings the same refrain. There should be no surprise in any of this. Don’t be surprised by the insects, and don’t be surprised when we someday find out about the rubber hoses and the 12V batteries attached to genitalia.
Any surprise is either the result of willful ignorance or the feigned sort that the Obama administration is proffering. We certainly should not be surprised by the political manipulation of the issue. Release the memos and the damning evidence with one hand, and sign the motion to prevent prosecution with the other.
There’s a very good reason that a government of Democratic control is not interested in seeing all this placed on the scales of justice: the upper echelons of the Democratic Party knew all about it. They didn’t raise a finger to stop it then and have no intention of being dragged down with it now.
We all knew it was going on. Senator Obama knew it was happening; he knew that the United States of Freedom and Democracy was torturing. I must have missed the impassioned political oratory on the Senate floor calling on America to follow its better nature and rise above the level of totalitarian behavior.
Instead we get a “closure” of Guantanamo while arguing for Bagram to be free of legal meddling so that nobody can poke around the bloodstains. We’ve gotten rock-solid assurances that all those black sites are “closed”, or will be closing, or might be closing if they’re not too valuable in our War on the Unnamed..since we don’t want to call it the War on Terror anymore.
Let me know when hope manages to change this sorry state of affairs, and do not bring the argument that we must “make Obama” do the right thing. It seems to me that he swore on the Bible of his choice to uphold the Constitution. That oath includes all treaties that the United States has signed and ratified, meaning all four Geneva Conventions that we spent the last eight years breaking. (and are almost assuredly still breaking)
If the man does not have the backbone to do what’s right then he has no more claim to lead this faltering union than his predecessor.
Until then we are no better than Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, or any number of tin-pot dictatorships throughout history.
Categories: Freedom/Privacy, Politics/Law/Government
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
Memo to the Attorney General……Investigate and prosecute or resign!
Memo to the CIA….. Clean house!
Memo to the FBI…. Clean house!
Memo to Military Intelligence …… Clean house!
Where did all these little Eichmans come from.
I’ve been playing with the question “Why do we torture?”
It has been proven over and over again that the information gleaned from torturing isn’t worth the thumb screws that it came from. So that can’t be it.
Since this was suppose to be secret, it wasn’t done to intimidate the “suspect population”.
In 1984, torture was used to break someone down so when the prisoner was returned to society, everyone could see that they were broken down to the point that they were harmless and assimilated. Since, the Bush Administration had no intention of releasing its detainees, that can’t be it either.
Now that I have seen that they have waterboarded a known associate of al Qaeda 183 times in a few weeks, well after every last shred on info was gleaned from him, I have concluded that there is only one reason left.
Retribution.
The same reason that a bully kicks a stray dog on the way home from being humiliated at the ballpark. And then looks around to see if no one is looking and kicks it until it moves no more.
Consider all of the legal maneuverings and justifications that have been drummed up to ensure that they wouldn’t have to pay for kicking that dog. Consider the incredible amount of political and legal risk the White House had to run in order to strap on that steel-toe.
That’s who was running the country for the last eight years.
The debate between whether or not to prosecute the previous administration, and then whether or not the administration was in the wrong as it performed these actions, have been creating public discussions and debates throughout the country. On the one hand, we want our country to remain safe, yet on the other hand, we want to trust our government/know that it’s acting legally. I would say that one of the largest dangers lies in violating the law to potentially gain information. Thus, if it was illegal to perform some of the acts that the CIA and FBI performed over the years–and it looks like that is a yes–then there should be some concern. I watched an interesting video on all of this at newsy.com earlier today. It’s worth looking at:
http://www.newsy.com/videos/making_sense_of_the_memos/
I’d like to add all the Capitol Crusaders who knew about it and signed off on it to Tom’s list.
I’ve been running with the same thought process, Djerrid. Retribution is probably the best answer, except that it would require the Bush administration being truly upset about 9/11…and they weren’t. It was the perfect excuse to implement the regime change plan for Afghanistan that was already on the books and was (apparently) going to be carried out in the same time frame regardless of a terrorist attack.
Retribution works for the individuals who did it, but not for those who wrote the orders and the legal justifications.
I still haven’t settled on a cause of all this, but i know the result: decadence. This is how we fall and become – overtly – everything that we supposedly stand against. Pretending that it didn’t happen or admitting that it did but trying to quietly move past it leaves the cancer.
A lot of people want to liken Obama to Gorbachev, but this particular issue (unless he changes course) reveal him not as Gorbachev but more like Khrushchev…who handled what Stalin did in a very similar manner.