Well, that is done
So, I did the oral part of my generals exam today. I won't find out if I passed for like two weeks, so I will be able to fill my time with ... well, I suppose getting drunk until the 10th, at which point I will have tons of paper grading to do.
So that is nice. Here is something else that is nice. It may be my last wikileaks post (I promise!) for a bit, but the vanity fair story is pretty good.
However, who cares. Look, I suppose this is the point for me. I am very, very confident that dozens, if not pushing into the hundreds, of people detained in Iraq and Afghanistan by US forces died while being subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques." In other words, they were tortured, and murdered. This is the darkest underbelly to what happened, and it is not openly acknowledged. Some of them were surely colossal dickheads. But still. We (speaking for us Americans) tortured people to death. And nothing consequential has happened as a result. Wikileaks is the only outfit I can see that can push that fact into the public consciousness. I do not want to be 65 and read some nice historical survey of the "shitty noughts" or whatever to read about that. It needs to be as public as possible, and wikileaks is the only outfit I see who even would do that. Whether they do more or less depends on how many people in the CIA and the defense department have souls. But the important part is, right now, it is wikileaks or nothing. And that is an incredibly good reason to be thankful for the existence of wikileaks.
I mean, can you imagine the release of documents (maybe someone saved those deleted CIA videotapes!) that systematically detail the torture and death of incarcerated iraqis and afghanis? The only way that happens is if wikileaks exists, at this point. So long live wikileaks.
So that is nice. Here is something else that is nice. It may be my last wikileaks post (I promise!) for a bit, but the vanity fair story is pretty good.
However, who cares. Look, I suppose this is the point for me. I am very, very confident that dozens, if not pushing into the hundreds, of people detained in Iraq and Afghanistan by US forces died while being subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques." In other words, they were tortured, and murdered. This is the darkest underbelly to what happened, and it is not openly acknowledged. Some of them were surely colossal dickheads. But still. We (speaking for us Americans) tortured people to death. And nothing consequential has happened as a result. Wikileaks is the only outfit I can see that can push that fact into the public consciousness. I do not want to be 65 and read some nice historical survey of the "shitty noughts" or whatever to read about that. It needs to be as public as possible, and wikileaks is the only outfit I see who even would do that. Whether they do more or less depends on how many people in the CIA and the defense department have souls. But the important part is, right now, it is wikileaks or nothing. And that is an incredibly good reason to be thankful for the existence of wikileaks.
I mean, can you imagine the release of documents (maybe someone saved those deleted CIA videotapes!) that systematically detail the torture and death of incarcerated iraqis and afghanis? The only way that happens is if wikileaks exists, at this point. So long live wikileaks.