Sunday, April 19, 2009
Torture Memos Part II
Ok, I have a confession. I still have not read this latest group of documents. The stuff I am reading in my two cases right now is more than enough to make me ill and pissed off.... I will save these new memos for some time in the future. But several of you have emailed and asked me to comment on these latest documents so I will point you to the talking dog and Scott Horton. Coincidentally they share a certain theme. I reread Kafka's The Trial after watching the inaction of our courts in these cases a few years back, and I discovered that the Gitmo litigation was more Kafka than Kafka. I guess now it is time to reread 1984.
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3 comments:
Reading portions of the memos is absolutely bone-chilling, but really they only provide further evidence of what we already knew - at least anyone who hasn't had his head you-know-where for the past 8 years.
But I want to say the one of the profoundest disappointments is learning how much Michael Hayden is up to his eyeballs in this crap. I never really liked him, and I thought putting a military person in that position was exactly the wrong thing, especially at that time. Still, at least he seemed to have some sense of decency, so, naively, I was under the impression that he was going to dial it back after his two predecessors, Tenet and Goss. Well if he dialed it back, what the hell was going on before he got there?
Now to hear him today giving a full-throated defense of torture is infuriating. His opinion that CIA agents have to be allowed to operate without any constraints whatsoever is an outrage. That bum should go to prison with all the rest of them.
They are all doing their best to justify the unjustifiable. Of course now they have even more self interest in trying to justify this illegal and unconscionable conduct...
their own necks (so to speak) are on the line.
The sad thing is that many people might think that this conduct only went to a few... and therefore they are more willing to excuse. The illegal conduct went much further than these memos describe... that is one of the reasons I cannot stop until the whole story is out there.
sigh.
As one link mentioned, "it goes all the way to the top." That's a fact. This applies equally to Bush and Obama. There's only one position which to take on torture: it's wrong no matter who does it, and all those involved, whether they order it done, do it, attempt to hide it, or attempt to excuse it, are guilty of a great crime.
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