I hope you all will take some time to read the most recent posts by Glen Greenwald on the topic of war crimes (I follow and link to his blog). They are very instructive regarding our media's recent fixation on the Blagojevich scandal while systematically ignoring the Senate Armed Services Committee's report (issued last week without any Republican dissent) essentially acknowledging that high level Bush administration officials authorized policies that constituted war crimes and resulted in the deaths of dozens of detainees. The press has also ignored Vice President Cheney's admission, in a nationally televised interview, that he supported and worked to implement our interrogation policies, including waterboarding. Read back over the past week - its well worth it.
One thing that absolutely infuriates me is that Vice President Cheney can, in the span of a few sentences, (1) admit that he supported our use of waterboarding, (2) insist that "we do not torture," and (3) not be challenged on these obviously contradictory statements.
Think about it. Cheney and Bush have both insisted, repeatedly, that our "enhanced interrogation techniques" are effective and vital to our intelligence gathering operations. In layman's terms, they've claimed that waterboarding works. Why can't at least one reporter ask the obvious follow up question, "how does waterboarding work?"
For example, traditional interrogation methods, such as trust building, work by inducing a suspect to view the interrogator as a friend and, as a result, to relax and reveal information that he or she would otherwise withhold.
Torture "works" by creating pain or terror so unbearable that the victim will give up information to get the torturer to stop. (I'm not suggesting that torture actually works in the sense that it yields accurate information - most experts believe that torture motivates its victim to say whatever they think their interrogator wants to hear, regardless of whether what they say is true. However, the theory regarding how torture allegedly works is uncontroversial).
So, how does waterboarding work? Under which theory of "information solicitation" does it fall? The former or the latter?
Are all of our reporters idiots? Are die hard supporters of the Bush administration really that stupid (or tribal)? After all, this analysis isn't rocket science.
And what the hell is wrong with the rest of us? Why aren't we clamoring for prosecution?
Will somebody, anybody, please call these bastards out on this "we don't torture" nonsense before I blow a gasket.
Joe H.
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The Years Of Writing Dangerously
9 years ago
3 comments:
As Jack Nicholson's character in A FEW GOOD MEN explained, Americans will turn a blind eye to the bastards protecting us by doing all these despicable things to protect us from the Others. They only get prosecuted in the movies, and only when they confess under oath that they indeed were bastards. It's a problem for us that we're not interested in the number of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places we've posted troops, except to have our media note that the military disputes that a civilian target was mistakenly hit, or that our military was involved in those incidents. We don't deal with it unless confronted with photos of national guardsmen humiliating naked prisoners. . . . Unless you're watching MSNBC's left wingnuts, you don't even get a riff on Cheney's cavalier admission about condoning and even approving waterboarding. . . . At Nuremberg, I hear we prosecuted waterboarding by the losing Japanese "war criminals." I guess since we're the winners in Iraq, who's gonna convene a tribunal?
So you're saying I'm just gonna have to blow a gasket?
I hope you're wrong. I hope momentum for prosecution builds.
But even more than that, the mere fact that Cheney can get away with such obvious contradictory bullshit makes me almost as crazy as the fact that he authorized torture.
I know that makes little sense, but its the philospher in me that's driving me crazy.
Enjoy a great Maui Christmas Bilbo and greet your wife for Arlene and I.
Joe H.
I simply don't pretend to understand how Washington, D.C. works. . . what makes the momentum to impeach a sitting President for lying about an affair with intern overwhelming while taking a look at war crimes by high public officials seems too charged to take on -- the values and ideals that we're taught about in American schools would seem to suggest that we'll do the right thing (but as in the case of the Japanese internment, the annexation of Hawaii and other issues, perhaps decades down the line we'll issue an official apology?)? You're old enough, like me, to remember that the Iran-Contra investigation didn't have the same effect as Watergate (chair and Hawaii Senator Inouye was called a Nip and other derogatory terms; Oliver North emerged intact to run for U.S. Senate himself -- and in the wisdom of Virginians, lost).
Don't blow a gasket.
Happy holidays to you and yours as well.
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