Olbermann on “the surge”
Olbermann responds to the decider’s speech:
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Archive for January 13th, 2007
Iran attack needs no authorization, decider believes
Glenn Greewald provides an analysis making it clear that the Bush administration does not believe the President needs any Congressional authorization to launch war against Iran. Well worth reading as we stand on the precipice.
And while your at it, read Greenwald’s The President’s intentions towards Iran need much more attention:
The AEI/Weekly Standard/National Review/Fox News neonconservative warmongers are mocked because of how extremist and deranged their endless war desires are, but the President is, more or less, one of them. He thinks the way they think. The war in Iraq has collapsed and the last election made unmistakably clear that Americans have turned against the war, and the President’s response, like their response, was to escalate. How much more proof do we need of how extremist and unconstrained by public opinion and basic reality he is?
In response to the unprovoked attack by the United States on an Iranian Consulate in Iraq, an act of war by all international standards, Greewald asks:
Isn’t it a definitive act of war for one country to storm the consulate of another, threaten to kill them if they do not surrender, and then detain six consulate officers?
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Torture and the American public
Daily Kos diarist fbb reminds us of the sad moral state of our country:
To be tortured is almost by definition the worst fate that can befall a person. This view permeates literature: look at Dante’s circles of hell in the Inferno, where spirits are given infinitely creative tortures to suffer. It also permeates the popular imagination in America, where serial killers are looked upon with a mixture of awe and revulsion, and the more disgusting their methods of torture or depravity, the more popular their stories become. The last decade has seen a rise in movies depicting gruesome scenes of torture, from Pulp Fiction to Sin City to Saw. It seems safe to say that America views torture with a mixture of revulsion and fascination….
Yet our government tortures people, and the American public accepts it. Torture has even made its way as an acceptable practice into mainstream television and cinema. Witness the television show 24, in which, in the first season, the hero Jack Bauer threatens to torture a suspect by shoving a towel down his throat. He also handcuffs a double agent to a desk, and while threatening to hurt her, threatens to bring her young son in….
That this worst of all actions, this most Satanic of all deeds, can be official American government policy is, to me, the worst atrocity in our nation’s history. While our country has lived through many dark hours, through many horrible, seemingly endless misdeeds, from the extermination of the Native Americans to slavery to lynching and persecution, at least through the 230 years of our nation’s existence we have held up human rights — the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — as our creed, our motto, our reason for being. The right to habeus corpus, in existence since at least 1215, is now gone. The right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, if that phrase has any meaning, is now gone as well. Our government openly practices torture, and the American public supports it.
Quoting the great American Henry David Thoreau, fbb calls for resistance, including civil disobedience, to the torture regime
Let us act, then, in civil disobedience; let us not fear prison; let us wake our country to the evil it has become.
Add comment January 13th, 2007
Webb to power
So far, its a pleasure to have Jim Webb in Washington. Despite a career as Navy Secretary (under President Reagan), he hasn’t forgotten how to speak bluntly and show the administration exactly the respect they deserve. In response to Defense Secretary Gates during the Secretary’s Senate testimony:
I also want to say something about my longtime friend, Senator McCain’s comments when he was talking about the consequences of pulling out of Iraq and in your statement, Secretary Gates, you list some of these as an emboldened and strengthened Iran, a base of operations for jihadist networks in the heart of the Middle East, an undermining of the credibility of the United States. In many ways, quite frankly, those have been the results of the invasion and occupation. There’s really nothing that’s occurred since the invasion and occupation that was not predictable and in fact, most of it was predicted. It was predicted in many cases by people with long backgrounds in national security…and in many cases there were people who saw their military careers destroyed and who were personally demeaned by people who opposed them on the issues, including members of this administration. And they are people in my judgement, who will be remembered in history as having had a moral conscience.
Ouch!
Let’s hope Webb never “grows up.”
[CORRECTED 1-16-2007 5:07 EST "Gates" --> "Webb"]
Add comment January 13th, 2007