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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
CTO
Published Letters: 93
I haven't had a chance to hear the interview yet, but was there any discussion on why all these important messages were nearly totally suppressed over the last six years? Were the officers ordered not to speak out, or if they did what happened?
I don't want to pick a fight here, but is it possible that Obama is thinking along the lines of FDR must have been when he hired Joe P. Kennedy to head up the new SEC to clean up Wall Street? Kennedy was one of the dirtiest dealers on the street and fleeced millions out of the unwary ways that would land anyone in jail since then. The thing is he knew all the tricks and what it would take to stop them.
If I wanted to clean up the government on the torture issue, I would want as many of the participants turning "state's evidence" as possible, as high up as possible. Nobody outside the innermost circle worries about pissing off Karl Rove or Dick Cheney anymore. They would, however, want to either stay out of jail or at least avoid indictment. They also will be looking out for number one (i.e. their future government income), so you can give them a deal that turns them all into singing choir boys overnight.
Apparently the media has no idea on how to "sell" the story. When we were marching into Iraq the story was all win win win. Everyone wants to be on the winning side and rooting for the winning team.
And it turns out that there is no win in Iraq -- just different degrees of losing. So who wants to read about that? Even worse, the they have to say that leadership that prevailed in two elections are evil sonofabitches that YOU (and we) supported! You think corporate-owned media that can be felled with Janet Jackson's nipple has enough courage to run with a story like that?
I read somewhere about Cheney that he proved that stonewalling works as long as you don't mind a 13% approval rating.
We are talking about the guy who:
1. Successfully shut down any GAO scrutiny into his office.
2. Established secrecy to the level that nobody knows how many people the VP Office employs.
3. Invented a new Senatorial verb: go "Cheney" yourself.
4. Beat Patrick Fitzgerald when all the basic facts of the case were known.
5. Got all correspondence to the president to go through his office.
6. His energy task force minutes have still never been released, again even though most of the details are common knowledge.
7. Claimed and got executive privilege while simultaneously claiming himself to be a super-constitutional branch of government and above any oversight.
That's just off the top of my head. I am sure there are many more.
I have seen pictures trucks for shredder services at the VP residence. Does anyone think that those trucks have stopped coming? Does anyone think that this set of individuals would care in the slightest about any order to not destroy evidence? I don't.
OK, then. Cheney seems to enjoy telling people to cheney-off just for the pleasure of it. Let's give him all the pleasure he can handle.
Let's see hwo deferential Gregory is when questioning Democrats when they are in power.
Whatever cards they have to play, Republicans play them to the hilt. They have utterly no compunction about being inconsistent. There is no end to the list of principles that they will totally reverse.
They will feel quite differently now about filibusters. And the nuclear option.
When their guy is ahead by a few hundred votes, the right thing to do is for the Democrat to bow out gracefully for the good of the nation. When the situation is reversed, lawsuits galore.
Let's see how they feel now about transparency of the executive branch.
Anyone else?
But that's not guaranteed at all -- whether they'd be willing to come in and quash an ongoing investigation of this type.
That's not what I would be asking for. We should be demanding that Holder re-hire the guy at a more senior position than before, grant back-pay, and put him in charge of protecting whistle-blowers.
You think the Republicans would settle for less, were the positions reversed? I don't think so. The would add a Medal of Freedom to the deal.
If nothing else Holder and Obama should be thinking about how they will look when the Hollywood blockbuster on the story comes out.
Glenn, any chance in the near term of you doing an interview with Phillipe Sands, author of "Torture Team?" I heard some of his talk with Terry Gross and was quite impressed, but of course there were a lot of questions she didn't ask that she should have.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
