The truth of the matter seems to be irrelevant
The New York Times published an article today about torture.
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations I duoubt anyone was really surprised.
There's lots of hand-wringing, of people pretending outrage. Why do I say pretending? Because this isn't news. For it to be news it would have to be new, unexpected.
It's not. It's, at most, a variation on a theme. I know this because I've been bitching about this theme for a long time.
Raise your hand if this isn't something you didn't already believe was happening.
And that's the crime here. No one seems to give a shit. The rah-rah crowd are happy. They believe in torture, and, so far as I can tell they support all the rest of the authoritarian trappings. The silence is resounding.
The silence from the rest of the nation; that's damning.
In any state with a functioning electorate there would have been an uproar years ago. There would have been investigations, hearings; and I like to think, impeachements.
Maybe not of the president, but of the AG, the SecDef, the head of the CIA. People other than Libby would be in jail.
But no, this is just one more straw, one more thing piled on the back of a camel who seems to have the strength of Atlas, able to hold the sky suspended.
Where's the fire? We fought a rebellion because we didn't think we were getting a fair shake. Because the King was doing things like holding prisoners incommunicado, haling them across the sea to face a picked jury, issuing general warrants, refusing to hear our pleas for redress.
Now?
We shrug our shoulders and let our employees ask limp-dicked questions to witnessess they don't swear in; because the President would take offense.
Good. The Congress, in it's role as overseer ought to be offending the president, esp. when he's pulling bait and switch operations. The politicians in this country work for us. We ought to be clogging the lines, filling the inboxes, standing in line to talk to them in their offices; queueing up to leave messages with their hometown aides.
To go with that we need to copy the e-mails to the leadership (both general, and committee).
Because if we don't get off our asses now, someone is going to hand them to us later, and our kids (or grandkids, or God forbid, our great-grandkids) are going to be taking the streets in arms.
Hyperbolic? I don't know anymore. Mercernaries are being contracted to fight drug war. The FBI has issued unknown numbers of general warrants NSLs, performed unknown secret searches.
The President has admitted to an ongoing practice of breaking the law. He boasts that he won't stop. To add insults to his injuries Congress seems to be planning to immunize the telcoms who made his trammelling of the law possible.
At which point; what point laws? Why not just make it official... the president gets to do what he wants, and the people can just suck it up.
I'm tired of people pointing at what I write and praising it. So fucking what?
I'm not so tired I'll stop. I'm not so fed up I'll no longer write my congressman, my senators, etc., but it sure seems pointless.
Because being told we have a president who is lying to everyone, and doing whatever he pleases, and the law be damned is just one more petty scandal to mention at the water cooler today, and worry about whether the damned Yankees will make the world series, or the Steelers will beat the spread will be the topic tomorrow.
Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and all those guys who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors in the protest of what they saw as tyranny ought to be spinning in their graves.
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations I duoubt anyone was really surprised.
There's lots of hand-wringing, of people pretending outrage. Why do I say pretending? Because this isn't news. For it to be news it would have to be new, unexpected.
It's not. It's, at most, a variation on a theme. I know this because I've been bitching about this theme for a long time.
Raise your hand if this isn't something you didn't already believe was happening.
And that's the crime here. No one seems to give a shit. The rah-rah crowd are happy. They believe in torture, and, so far as I can tell they support all the rest of the authoritarian trappings. The silence is resounding.
The silence from the rest of the nation; that's damning.
In any state with a functioning electorate there would have been an uproar years ago. There would have been investigations, hearings; and I like to think, impeachements.
Maybe not of the president, but of the AG, the SecDef, the head of the CIA. People other than Libby would be in jail.
But no, this is just one more straw, one more thing piled on the back of a camel who seems to have the strength of Atlas, able to hold the sky suspended.
Where's the fire? We fought a rebellion because we didn't think we were getting a fair shake. Because the King was doing things like holding prisoners incommunicado, haling them across the sea to face a picked jury, issuing general warrants, refusing to hear our pleas for redress.
Now?
We shrug our shoulders and let our employees ask limp-dicked questions to witnessess they don't swear in; because the President would take offense.
Good. The Congress, in it's role as overseer ought to be offending the president, esp. when he's pulling bait and switch operations. The politicians in this country work for us. We ought to be clogging the lines, filling the inboxes, standing in line to talk to them in their offices; queueing up to leave messages with their hometown aides.
To go with that we need to copy the e-mails to the leadership (both general, and committee).
Because if we don't get off our asses now, someone is going to hand them to us later, and our kids (or grandkids, or God forbid, our great-grandkids) are going to be taking the streets in arms.
Hyperbolic? I don't know anymore. Mercernaries are being contracted to fight drug war. The FBI has issued unknown numbers of general warrants NSLs, performed unknown secret searches.
The President has admitted to an ongoing practice of breaking the law. He boasts that he won't stop. To add insults to his injuries Congress seems to be planning to immunize the telcoms who made his trammelling of the law possible.
At which point; what point laws? Why not just make it official... the president gets to do what he wants, and the people can just suck it up.
I'm tired of people pointing at what I write and praising it. So fucking what?
I'm not so tired I'll stop. I'm not so fed up I'll no longer write my congressman, my senators, etc., but it sure seems pointless.
Because being told we have a president who is lying to everyone, and doing whatever he pleases, and the law be damned is just one more petty scandal to mention at the water cooler today, and worry about whether the damned Yankees will make the world series, or the Steelers will beat the spread will be the topic tomorrow.
Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and all those guys who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors in the protest of what they saw as tyranny ought to be spinning in their graves.