More Torture

My god do we just have the same arguments over and over. It is like somethings never have happened. More and more studies show that torture is not an accurate way to get good information, never mind the moral aspects of it. They show that it didn't work between 2002 and s008 and still those people who are important and should be listened to crap their pants and want to torture the most recent brown guy who gets busted because he bought too much peroxide and acetone and he is another Osoma? Geeze. Perhaps he just wanted to advance to hair stylus from car driver.

More Colonial War Stuff

So it now appears as though Obama is simply planning on closing the prison in Cuba and shipping the prisoners off to other prisons outside the USofA, while continuing to kidnap and imprison individuals who will become the new prisoners whom someone, either our military, or various spy masters, or our clients, decides is or may in the future be a danger to us (or to our clients I would guess).

In the meantime we have doctors who work in that prison system who would make the doctors who worked in the German concentration camp system feel like they have finally been exonerated and have in fact found their true brothers under those clean white (or green) medical scrubs.

I know that politicians lie, but I really don't expect them to lie about everything. I wonder if the wonderful constitutional law scholar we now have as our president is much of a historian and remembers what happened to the democratic party after Wilson completely reversed himself in 1916? (Hint, the democrats did not regain control of much of anything until the depression of 1929 booted the republicans out of office. Then the democrats promised a lot and lived up to most of it.)

But hey, today we are all bi-partisan friends and the guy in the White House is setting up a situation that looks more like Wiemar Germany than America of the late 20s and we all know who followed Wiemar to power in Germany.

More Torture

Well isn't this special though.

House Keeping

I've added a blog and removed a blog on the right. The addition is the ACLU torture blog which subsumes the torture memos I had up.

Ok, We Are Just Stupid

Wow exiled to Bermuda and Palau. The journey really sucked though. $200 million to Palau to take a few of these innocent guys. Are we assholes or what? (Hint, the answer isn't what.)

A Ticking Time Bomb

So the murderer of Dr. Tiller says that more murders are planned. It's time to start torturing him immediately. I mean all the public media and most christians and republicans must be calling for his torture. Right?

Well Now

This is about as bizarre a take on the suicide at Guantanamo as one can imagine. Although, given where it was published I can only assume that it is probably an acceptable way for the right to excuse what we are doing in our various gulags around the world.

Man are these people cold.

Aren't We Just Brave As All Get Out (although breave is also good)

Well isn't this just precious? Aren't we just brave and wonderful? Isn't it just great that a majority of us think torture is well just swell? And you know, no matter what the experts say and those whose real job is to get information, well gee that Chaney guy has been so right so many times before, well I guess we should just believe him on this too.

I Call Bullshit

This up date from Greenwald linking to an article by Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic is just crap.

"Obama was blunt [in his meeting with civil libertiarians]; the [military commissions] are a fait accompli, so the civil libertarians can either help Congress and the White House figure out the best way to protect the rights of the accused within the framework of that decision, or they can remain on the outside, as agitators. "

This is a very clever piece of bullshit. "Help me make more just a system that is unjust by its very definition." Is there a way to make slavery more just than the system that existed in the United States before the Civil War? Is there a way to make the Jim Crow system that existed before the civil rights movement more just, but keep its basic parameters?

So lookie how Obama phrased it. You want the power? I'll give you the power (or rather I will give you what looks like power), but you have to agree with me to subvert our most basic laws, but in a more just way then would be done without you. But guess what happens when they agree to help. They no longer are able to really argue against it. They are now corrupted beyond, I think, hope of redemption. So smart so clever. How many will be taken in do you think?

Oh yeah, I don't think that their input, if they give it, will amount to anything more than a patina of false gold gilt. It will sparkle prettily in the little sun that will shine on it. Like the famous rotten mackerel it will both shine and stink in the sun light.

What's Happenin

So anything interesting on the tvvvvs this morning?

More Bad News

So I think that Obama is turning into Clinton without the blow job. Probably no Whitewater either as no important people in Illinois hate him the way the powers that be in Arkansas hated Clinton.

The thing that amazes me is, like Clinton, Obama is busy doing the job of the oligarchs and our colonial warriors (see Greenwald on the right there, just about any day and this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow in today's Salon). And they still hate him with a passion that passeth all understanding.

It now appears to me that the idea of what liberal means to our rulers (and to be fair most of the voters) is to be in favor of stem cell research and keep abortions legal for the wealthiest. Beyond that I don't think there is much left.

I am now nearly certain that I was wrong in supporting Obama (not that anyone cared). I guess the frog in the water thing has become us. I mean most middle class and poor seem to be more than happy with the current guy. I wonder what will happen in a couple of years as things just kind of slowly get hotter and hotter until we just kind of boil them pesky liberties and that silly economic safety web away. Personally I see a massive right wing reaction because the people who have been called "radical leftists" will have failed in their moderately conservative policies (moderately conservative in relation to social policy, very conservative in economic and military type of policies).

So I've been following the contretemps concerning the Philly Inquirer hiring of torture enabler John Yoo.

The comments and the defenses by the paper are most interesting. One person yells, I think, that Nancy Pelosi enabled torture. Others argue that we've got to torture these people because if they have information that will save our children (or grandchildren seems to be a favorite) then "what ever it takes." Some then go on about various arcane legal aspects of the law against torture: i.e. because they (being terrorists in their minds, but really people accused of terrorism)aren't state actors they are not therefore protected by law or treaty. Some claim water boarding isn't torture because it doesn't leave marks. At least no one in the comments section linked to, cries about "freedom of speech."

I look at these arguments and wonder at just how pathetic they are. I am stunned at really how easy it is for 21st century Americans to justify torture. How close we are to the Spanish Inquisition. What a thin layer of civilization separates us from the "savages" (savages being in quotation marks as I really do not know how much more savage savages could be).

What is it Jefferson said: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." Speaking of slavery to be sure, still is there anything any different here, not just justifying, but engaging in torture? You really wonder what those dirty fucking hippies Jefferson and Madison and Franklin would have thought.

Pretty Pictures

So even though Obama and his republican supporters and the military don't want the pictures released it looks like the world has decided otherwise.

Look at the pretty pictures.

OOPS: My mistake old pictures of Iraq I guess. Certainly still pretty pictures though. No new stuff. Move along nothing new to see here.

More Torture

Wow well trust the New York Times to publish an article that is just a bit of wonderful CYA shit from the people who made the decisions and all leaking like a tire that's run over fifty yards of broken glass.

These people, the main players in the spy and counter spy business want us to believe that they did not know the history of what they were doing and they claim that they did not know that water boarding was torture. On top of that the number of unnamed high level players who claimed that they (or their immediate superiors) did not have the proper information to make the decisions that they made (all the time speaking off record of course) just boggles the mind.

This is a major story in the major newspaper of record (hahahaha) and I can see that most of it is bullshit and I live in East ,Ohio. First, we are expected to believe that these people couldn't get the correct information. Second, we are expected to believe that these people believed the limited amount of information they claim to have been given. Third we are expected to believe that these decision makers did not know what water boarding is and how it was used in the past. Fourth, we are expected to believe that these people, all of whom are old enough to remember the Korean War (that is they were kids right after that war) and given their general interest in politics would have been aware of the brain washing and torture of American prisoners; that they do not remember the false confessions. Finally we are expected to believe that they made these decisions and stuck to them after it was clear that they were getting bad information and false confession, stuck to them because they thought they were working, not because they are simply sadists. Well why shouldn't we the NYT does.

Do you suppose that this is just a plot to take our minds off their fuck up of the economy?

Banality of Evil

How banal those memos were and how banal are all those people in Washington. In fact that may be the definition of the main stream media right now: banal and evil. (Maybe I should start a twitter account?)

Torture

So the New York Times, in response to the torture memos says on the one hand and on the other hand. And gee isn't something that isn't torture nearly as bad and why don't people object to bombing people and killing family members and blahblahblah. So I guess this should all be looked at in a reasonable manner. In a way that serious people look at things like torture.

Torture

So I didn't realize that this was so far along. A kind of sad reason to drop the case against our former rulers, huh? Think Obama will do anything?

Forgive and Forget

So I'm at home kind of celebrating what I now understand is Washington's and not Washington & Lincoln's Birthdays.

So what do I run into, but Greenwald and Firedoglake commenting on Conason's article arguing that Obama should pardon the Bush people who approved the torture. Now at last a guard from Guantanamo has come out. He talks about massive amounts of torture which are still being justified by those formally in charge.

New information is also coming out about Yoo and the others who wrote the torture justifying memo. A bunch of lawyers violating their oaths. Interestingly enough lawyers don't like other lawyers violating our codes of ethics. We look bad enough as it is.

Lets say you asked me to give you a legal opinion as to whether or not you could smoke crack in your office and I came back and said that in my legal opinion you can't. Then, let's say you offered me something to tell you, you could (or let's just say I'm some sort of pathetic puppy dog who wants your love). After that, if I came back with an opinion that you could indeed smoke crack in your office you might be surprised when the cops came and arrested you (but if you can tie your own shoes, probably not). Guess what, you wouldn't be able to show the cops and the judge that opinion and walk out of the court a free man or woman. Not only that, but I would be referred to the Bar Association and proceedings would be instituted to prevent me from giving such (or any) opinions in the future. One thing that wouldn't happen is that I wouldn't be given a tenured position at a law school.

Of course as Greenwald points out enabling torture is a crime. So Yoo and Bush and those guys are not just enablers, but criminals themselves. By any definition really. My clients often end up in jail or prison. Why not jail for the powerful and wealthy too? Oh wait: powerful and wealthy, I guess I've answered my own question.

So Conason, who was so right about the proceedings against Clinton, is so wrong here. He might be one of those folks Thoreau wrote about who are too limited by their own experiences to see something new.

What a Surprise

Well I guess we can just believe this now can't we? I am sure that the government has all this information. I believe that it can be accessed from the same departments that had all that information concerning the WMDs.

Torture and Warrantless Searches

You know one of the saddest thing concerning search and seizure and torture is that there is so little debate.

Oh, if you go to the left wing web sites and some libertarian web sites you'll see outrage, and some back benchers, but really nothing from the MSM or the powers that be in congress. It really am stunned that it takes a Red Cross report and then it is a one day wonder. I am confused.

We go back to Clinton and a failed investment plan and a blow job are all over the news for years. But today torture is barely mentioned and when it is the powers that be simply say that when we do it it doesn't count as torture.