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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Billmon
Published Letters: 9
From the Whiskey Bar, August 3, 2006:
"It is a stunning testament to the political devolution of this country that the most effective anti-war movement in America is inside the walls of the Pentagon or buried deep in the bowels of the CIA! But that is the reality, thanks in no small part to the Dems and the Israel lobby."
I hate to tell you I told you so, but I told you so.
From these email exchanges, a couple of things seem kind of obvious about Col. Boylan.
1.) He is a liar. It's pretty freaking obvious he sent the original email, realizes that he spoke, shall we say, with far too much candor, and is now trying to squirm off the hook.
2.) He clearly regards Greenwald as the enemy -- not a journalist and taxpayer who's entitled to his cooperation, if not his respect. This isn't particularly surprising, given that the ultra Red Staters tend to regard all Blue Staters that same way. But it's rare to hear it expressed so openly and publicly (see point #1)
As far as Boylan's actual rant, Greenwald, as a lawyer, ought to recoginize the tactic. As they say: If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law, pound the law. If you don't have the facts OR the law, pound the table. And that was a heap of electronic table pounding on Boylan's part.
The longer-term implication is pretty sobering: The military establishment, or at least a large part of it, is easing itself over the line that separated passive hatred of the "liberals" and the Democratic Party to active political opposition and open collaboration with the authoritarian rump of the conservative movement.
Banana Republic (not to mention Banana Republicans) here we come!
Maharashtra's financial managers may well expect the dollar to continue its decline against the rupee. However, if they're using the standard macro models, downside dollar volatility also implies potential upside volatility -- and they would have the example of the 1997-98 Asian crisis to look back on.
Given that the state's income stream is totally or very largely in rupees, it makes all the sense in the world for them to want to borrow in rupees.
The real story is that they are now able to do so, which implies that India's central bank now has as much or more economic credibility than the Federal Reserve.
Given the Journal op-ed page's track record, Glenn could have saved a lot of time by simply identifying the TRUE statements in their pro-immunity screed.
It would have been a much easier post to write.
Madame Supertanker has a definitely talent for this kind of doublespeak. It was almost as good as this one:
"Rice, in Egypt, said that the U.S. is no longer willing to tolerate repressive regimes to bolster regional stability. She flew next to Saudi Arabia."
Wall Street Journal
June 21, 2005
I mean the set up on that gag was damned near perfect.
Glenn should have noted the sly way that asshole Mazzetti slides from "the CIA's secret detention program remains a particularly incendiary issue for the Democratic base" -- because, of course, only those wacko lefties worry about war crimes -- to the completely bogus assertion that said concerns have made it "difficult for Mr. Obama to select someone . . . who has played any role in the agency’s campaign against Al Qaeda since 9/11. " (emphasis mine)
So, according to the New Pravda (sometimes known as the New York Times) to criticize crimes against humanity is to oppose the entire campaign against the people responsible for 9/11. Dick Cheney couldn't have put it better.
Now THAT'S some sleazy journalism we can believe in.
But having one in charge of the Criminal Division would be a damned sight better. I want to see the bastards prosecuted, not just overruled.
I understand Glenn's desire to use Reagan and the Anti-Torture Convention as a reproof to the neocon war crimes caucus, but I'm afraid it really only proves the opposite: That America has long been capable of immense, even monstrous, hypocrisy when it comes to human rights.
We know now, thanks to a number of amazingly casual disclosures to the corporate media, that the Reagan Administration supported, armed and advised the various Central American death squad operations -- who routinely used torture as one of their lesser sanctions against the poor peasants and workers who constituted the vast majority of their victims.
We also know, thanks to years of patient investigation, about the use of the School of the Americas as a facility for training Latin American military officers in -- to use the Cheney Administration's wonderfully Orwellian phrase -- "enhanced interrogation techniques," techniques that were either developed or refined at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca.
So when Reagan signed the Anti-Torture Convention and issued his little statement, he was simply doing what the neocons believe all US presidents should do: Lie to the world with the impunity, while doing whatever is necessary -- up to and including emulating the Stasi and the Gestapo -- in the pursuit of US national security goals.
In that sense, as in so many others, the neocons are Reagan's true heirs.
Holder has made it clear that any investigation -- should there ever be one -- would be limited to CIA torturers who exceeded the "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved by Yoo. So the Bush White House, and Yoo himself, are already off the hook. (Unless, of course, they had a direct operational role in giving CIA personnel the green light to go beyond the approved torture methods.)
Also, Cheney's role in concealing CIA black ops from Congress isn't even part of discussion, according to Holder, despite what that pinhead Brzezinski seems to think.
But apparently, even a timid, limited investigation of conduct that clearly constituted a war crime even under Yoo's tortured legal reasoning is too much for the Villagers to stand.
These guys lost their natural environment when the USSR went down in flames.
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
