New memory aid revealed: Subpoenas — Now With Immunity
An ad for an important new drug for memory loss problems like those that tormented so many Justice Department political appointees: : Subpoenas: Now With Immunity.
Add comment May 24th, 2007
Archive for May 24th, 2007
Scott Horton on the meaning of torture
Scott Horton has learned that torture has nothing to do with “interrogation,” with obtaining information. It has rather everything to do with asserting power. Absolute, unchallenged, uncontested power to do anything to anyone:
The Talisman of Torture
by Scott Horton
About two years ago, I was asked to give an address concerning the organized bar’s engagement on the torture issue before a gathering of bar association presidents from throughout the Western hemisphere. When it was over, a former president of the Argentine bar came up to me. “You must fight this with every ounce of energy you possess,” he said. “Because in the end, you will find that this torture is not about intelligence gathering, or ticking bombs or any other such nonsense. It is a talisman. A talisman of power. A government that can torture and do it with impunity can do anything. No law stands in its way. The very idea of the rule of law crumbles into dust. It means brutal tyranny.” At the time, I thought this was a bit crazy, but I knew what the Argentines had gone through and I respected the comment. As time progresses, I see exactly what he meant. Indeed, the experience of the bar in Argentina and Chile from the seventies and early eighties is perfectly on point for America today. First they introduced torture. And getting away with it, they have begun systematically to defy the notion that they are subject to the rule of law. We see this every day in dark figures like Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and Dick Cheney. Torture, as my Argentine friend said, is but a talisman.
Add comment May 24th, 2007
Olbermann on the Democratic sellout
4 comments May 24th, 2007
Rumsfeld overruled plan to stop Iraqi looting
An Australian lawyer says that Rumsfeld explicitly overruled a plan to stop the massive looting that destroyed Iraqi infrastructure at the beginning of the occupation. Was this just stupidity or did they, in fact, plan to have much of Iraq destroyed to create a need for a long-term US presence?
Add comment May 24th, 2007
The tragedy of death, death on one individual, and of democracy
Every death is a tragedy. But, as we become overwhelmed with the massive death unleashed by war, deaths gradually turn into statistics, as Stalin so cynically noted. This process is stopped for a bit when one has a personal connection, even a minimal one, to a death. Thus, the news last week that Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich died in Iraq came as a shock to many of us in the Boston area. I had met and heard his father, retired Colonel and Boston University Professor Andrew J. Bacevich, speak to our local peace group, Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice. Other people I know well were friends with the younger Bacevich. Even at the distance that I am from this death, one of the hundreds of thousands accompanying this illegal, destructive, and lost war, I feel a sense of emptiness in contemplating it.
Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com expresses some of these feelings well as he discusses the fathers despair at the death of his son, and the slowly-evolving death of American democracy: ‘What Kind of Democracy Is This?’ A grieving father wants to know. As Raimondo puts it:
He was, by all accounts, anything but a tragic figure, full of the life-force and an inspiration and joy to those who knew him. Yet this very quality underscores the tragedy of his demise and inevitably leads us to raise the questions his father, Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam and now teaches at Boston University, asked in an interview with National Public Radio: “One of the things that I’ve been really struggling with over the last several days is to try to understand my responsibility for my own son’s death.”
Bacevich, a prominent conservative critic of the war who has deemed the invasion “a catastrophic failure,” thought his responsibility was to voice his opposition to the war, but, he asks:
“What kind of democracy is this when the people do speak and the peoples voice is unambiguous – but nothing happens?”
It is a question that needs to be addressed to the leadership of both parties, not only the Republicans – particularly Mitt “Two, Three, Many Guantanamos” Romney – but also Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. These two Democratic Party bigwigs were propelled into power by rising antiwar sentiment, yet they have just signed on to a war funding bill with no timelines, no preconditions, and no real congressional oversight. It’s just another blank check – drawn on an account long since drained dry.
The senior Bacevich’s question is more than a father’s lament for his son: it is a eulogy spoken over the remains of our old Republic.
Add comment May 24th, 2007