Story here.
Just so, but can we expect anything serious to come of this? Since the new Congress took office, there have been committee investigations of the U.S. attorney firings, use of torture, and all kinds of other scandals, but how many officials have been impeached or indicted?
Attorney firings - even though there was no reason they couldn’t be fired without cause the AG still was forced to give his resignation.
Use of torture - if this issue isn’t still being discussed, why is it still on the news every day?
“All kinds of other scandals” - A rather general statement, didn’t you mean to make it a bit more specific by saying “scandals committed by Republicans” or is that naturally assumed?
I meant by this Administration.
Anyway, Judge Kennedy is proceeding on his own, also against the pleas of the Justice Department.
No, unless your threshold of seriousness is being mentioned in a 30 second clip on the nightly news somewhere. Then there’s a possibility.
Re: Torture and extraordinary rendition, why would the Democratic Congress punish anyone for following policy they support? I suppose I could see some low level lackey being busted somewhere to show how serious they are to the increasingly desperate blogosphere but other than that…
Optimistic, isn’t he?
I’m always hesitant when someone calls a scandal a “new Watergate.” Do they mean severity or political ramifications? If severity, then even Watergate wasn’t a Watergate. And if he means this stale torture story will ever lead to political ramifications similar to Watergate then he must be smoking some good stuff. Unless he envisions Bill Clinton and large portions of the Congress also being brought before the World Court in chains as a co-defendant with Bush 43 in this fantasy where anyone cares what some ski masked CIA men do to some random Arab or Canadian in Eastern Europe.
To be fair, a lot of these investigations take a prodigious amount of time. Often times they only get resolved long after the media spotlight has long wandered. I mean, just look at how many administration officials, congressmen, etc. have been essentially forced from their positions in the last two years.
Perhaps it’s just because I wasn’t paying much attention to politics during the last couple of decades, but it seems like there have been an awful lot of public officials resigning amid allegations and scandals unearthed by interior investigations. Litigation is just a slow, slow process, and something that most people don’t pay attention to in the first place.
A good example can be found in this case. The reason practically no one trusts the Justice Department is because of the reputation created by formber AG Alberto Gonzales (practically forced to retire) and several other JD officials. I’d say most of them were quite publicly cleansed from the Justice Department.
Damn, did I get out of this one light. I expected to be chewed up and spit out. Oh well maybe next time. :smack:
Nixon wasn’t brought down by the break in, which he didn’t know about, but by the cover up. The scandal here isn’t the torture, but that the evidence of the torture or whatever was destroyed despite specific instructions not to do so.
If Nixon had thrown CREEP to the wolves right away, he would have been in deep political doodoo, but not enough to have to leave office. I don’t know if White House involvement in this case is at the same level, but bringing up Clinton is asinine.
Unless and until we have some reason to believe the CIA has changed its methods, there is nothing “stale” about this story.
Pity really. In the current circumstances the tapes would have made a great recruiting tool for the American military.
Screen them at fairs and the local churches and town halls and the boys would roll in.
I think what they are hiding is the ineffectiveness of torture, not the fact of it. For one thing, everybody pretty much already knows, don’t we? Still, it always hard to see the shapes in water deliberately muddied, by professional silt disturbers. But I think we can gather a pretty reliable guesstimate by the process of induction. You take these wires and you attach them to their…no, no, inductive reasoning. A purely rational excercise, best undertaken by a mind free of bias and innocent of partisan leanings. Mine, for instance.
(That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Don’t like it, go suck an egg.)
The Gentle Reader likely already knows there are competing scenarios as to what Zubaida might have revealed. One, bandied about as loosely as its antagonist, claims that Zubaida gave operational intelligence, he had beans to spill, great big 'uns. That he provided intelligence that prevented attacks.
Naturally, you ears pick up! “Do tell! Which attacks were these, that were thwarted? Which evil cells of skulking terrorists were cleansed? What do you mean you can’t tell me? Secret? Might reveal methods? We already know the methods, so do they, so does my Aunt Grendel.”
So then they try some tired crapola about how the tapes might reveal the interrogators identity, put them and their families at risk! Jesus fuck a duck, is that the lamest shit you’ve ever heard? Tom Clancy wouldn’t touch that plot line, that the Islamofacist Terrorists are so sophisticated, and so totally knowledgeable about CIA personnel, that they can determine who these people are from grainy video tape, and send a crack squad of terroristas to kidnap his daughter from Happy Bunny Day Care.
Starting to wonder what they’re hiding? Yeah, me too, but I got a guess. I’m guessing, like many others are, that Zubaida didn’t give them anything because he didn’t have anything. Stands to reason.
Anybody with the intelligence of cottage cheese would know that that would have to be a guiding principle in clandestine skullduggery: if the other guys have got your guy, you assume, immediately, that he has told them everything: the troop positions, the codes, his mothers maiden name, your mother’s maiden name, all of it. You assume that any operation he may know about is blown, period. And at that point, the only thing he can tell you is about what has already happened.. While it is possible that he may have revealed details of things that happened, it is exceedingly unlikely that he had info that could stop something that was going to happen. Because as soon as they knew that we had him, it wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Numero two-o, I am convinced that if they could actually present us with a despicable plot foiled by the use of enhanced methods of interrogation (don’t you just love a well-crafted euphemism?..) they would have made sure we found out about it. The only question would have been whether to leak it to Robert Novak or Sean Hannity.
So what they are hiding is not the fact of torture, but it uselessness. By and large, I think a majority of Americans are willing to look the other way so long as its effective. But they will balk at torture for its own sake. Because we’re the Americans, and we don’t do that sort of thing. (Ah! Remember when you believed that? Wouldn’t you like to again? Boy, I sure would.)
Zubayda didn’t give them diddly squat, because he couldn’t have it to give. And that is the ugly secret they so desperately want to hide.
A couple weeks ago i read a story that the tapes were destroyed because the connection to the terrorists was Saudi Arabia. It was not the answer that wanted out. We all are aware that it was 19 out of 21 plane hijackers were Saudi. We also know 40 % of the foreign insurgents in Iraq are Saudi. Connections for Saudi financing has been known for some time. But we want Iran to be the bad guys.
Yale Global | Yale and the World This article says 50 %.
I´d only like to come in here to underline something from that cite:
Hundreds of hours spent torturing two men?
And the men running the show are going ahead with a cover-up…
I mean, what the fuck?, where are the torches and pitchforks? WTF is wrong with the US that this kind of things don`t get dealt with harshly and swiftly?; is this some kind of Victorian posturing, trying to maintain the facade of normality and respectability while vice runs rampant behind? Because yeah, sure it stinks to high heaven, but god forbid that we upset some people.
I know I´m talking to the chorus, mostly, here; and this goes to the knuckle dragging, indifferent, complacent and collusive mass of americans that can`t be bothered with demanding, scratch, requesting…* scratch goddamit*… expecting a minimum of decency and accountability from the people they are supposed to be represented by.
Wake up for Ogs sake!, and take your goverment and ideals of your nation back from the bunch of suited up thugs that you have put in control. Its your goverment, its your country; for goodness sake stir it back into the path of common, human decency that it was set forth by its founding fathers.
I grew up admiring the US, but gosh, it`s been so depressing to see how it has become more and more like a mafia operation where you hafta do what you hafta do, ya know?
Ugh, enough ranting, sorry.
The success of the current administration is built on exactly the contrary proposition: That persons such as yourself have been a dominant and oppressive authority over the natural American spirit. Instead, the revolution bought about by the 2000 election is that the time has come for the long-oppressed majority to cast off its chains. Moderation and law are quaint hangovers from Ye olde Europe.
No elucidator, America did not go crazy after September 11. For what does government do, but restrain crazy and popular impulses? That date allowed the nation to achieve clarity of purpose and identity. So now, at long last, the USA can stand in self-regard and state: ‘This is who we are.’
What happy days are predicted, where interrogation techniques and the dutiful conquest of lesser races are the main curriculum of American education. Why then were the tapes destroyed? Simple, part of the US identity is an inhibition regarding frank statements of purpose and identity. Kept rare, kept precious.
So torture is maybe a little disagreeable but there will be repercussions if you don’t document it correctly? We should change the laws about having to document it then. I’m sure that’s the next item on Pelosi’s “to do” list.
By all public government accounts the current extraordinary rendition program began early on in the Clinton administration, signed off by Clinton and Gore with lukewarm support from their legal advisers. They’d tell you the program protected American interests and put terrorists where they belonged. When Bush and his officials say the same thing no one believes them and rightly so, given the evidence to the contrary. So if we’re going to be hauling (hypothetically) the Bush administration before the courts we also need to look back to the origin of some of these programs. Which was Clinton, according to their own words.
Sure it’s stale. The U.S. is torturing semi-randomly. Canadians and Europeans get snatched off the streets. Some people have died. People get to use scary phrases like “CIA black site in Eastern Europe.” Yawn. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing will change. No one who matters cares. The public doesn’t care either. It’s a non-starter as far as the real world goes, given the bi-partisan consensus. This current story may not be stale in the sense that it is new but the entire torture plot arc is green bread at this point. Or black. Time to toss it before the rats come.
Good morning. President Wilson can not be reached at the moment. May I schedule an appointment?
That’s the technique for sweeping it under the rug. Obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / obstruct / “old news, yawn.”
And marshmallow, after World War II, enemy soldiers who engaged in the very same behavior currently being performed by U.S. agents were executed for war crimes. If you honestly, truly believe that that’s no big deal, then I advise you to take a long look in the mirror.
A polite “Cite”?. I been hearing this for several days, and I’m a little uncertain about it. I know that some Japanese were executed for war crimes, primarily for abusive treatment of POW’s. Most importantly, the Matsushita case, wherein it was determined that a commanding officer was reponsible for the behavior of his subordinates, even if he didn’t order such behavior, condone it, or was even aware of it. His lawyers effectively proved he was kept in the dark, but they strung him up anyway.
But I am not sure about whether or not anyone was executed for waterboarding, and would much prefer to be.
If you would be so kind?