Mr. Keillor, I hope after reading the comments here that you do some soul searching about your opinion. The majority of us who are working so tirelessly to ensure that there is accountability for these war crimes are doing so not to seek political payback but because we love our country and don't want this to ever happen again.

Our country decided long ago that the best way to deter crime is to provide appropriate punishment. Those punishments should be the same for all citizens. When we only punish our public officials in the court of public opinion and not in a court of law we ensure that they or others like them will commit those same crimes again. We can't allow that to happen - not this time - the crimes are much too great.

I hadn't heard much at all about the recently released NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll or the NYT/CBS poll so I did two blog posts about these polls. Both of the polls have some interesting information about torture.

http://democracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/nbcwall-street-journal-poll-torture.html

http://democracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-york-timescbs-news-poll-torture.html

Hey, Jim, now that you're almost famous are you going to still talk with us. LOL

Congratulations!

Retired Military Patriot, wow the Stewart/May debate was terrible. John Stewart obviously doesn't know enough about the issue to debate it. Cliff May is insufferable. He lied through the whole debate and then brought up the same crap that Pat Buchanan tried with Turley. Because Turley is well versed on the issue he was able to slap Pat down but Stewart was not as well equipped. How sad. Nope, not one of Stewart's better momennts.

Here is the first part of my response to the disgusting Kinsley column.

Don't let Kinsley fool you into believing that everyone is equally guilty for torture because it’s just not true. Like most of our establishment media personalities, Kinsley, is projecting his own guilt onto the public in order to mitigate his own miserable failings as a journalist. He knows in his heart that he didn't use his powerful position in the media to inform the citizens about what was really going on about torture. He also knows that when the Abu Ghraib story broke right before the 2004 election, our establishment media, almost to a person, was uncritically repeating the Bush administration claim that this was just the result of "a few bad apples." We also heard that this was just a political stunt designed to take down Bush before the election. And yet, Kinsley wants us all to believe that our citizens, who get most of their news from TV, are the real culprits responsible for torture because, in effect, they should have known that what the media told them was a lie and therefore, they should have voted Bush out of office if they weren't for torture.

While a lot of our citizens can certainly be blamed for being stupid enough to unquestioningly believe our establishment media (especially TV) and our political leaders, they most certainly can't be blamed for torture if they relied upon the media coverage of torture prior to the 2004 election. The only people who can be blamed for torture, other than the Bush officials, are those who knew the truth back then and did nothing or those who continue to do nothing.

Did you hear that, Mr. Kinsley?

For the rest of this piece to here:

http://democracity.blogspot.com/2009/05/michael-kinsley-wants-to-leave-public.html

Link also at sig.

Did everyone see the Pew poll about religion and torture? It is stunning. I'm simplifying this but it basically showed that those respondents who went to church more often were the ones who were more often in favor of using torture on terrorists. Those who were unaffiliated or who went to church rarely or never were the opposite. So any suggestions on how we get this group of "Christians" to stop viewing the Muslim "terrorists" as sub-human so we can move these poll numbers?

Link at my sig if you haven't seen this polling data.

Thank you. I haven't been over at the Lake or Oxdown today. I'll check it out. Actually Jim posted a comment on my blog yesterday asking me If I'd seen the Pew poll so I worked on a post last night. I had no idea he was going to do one or I would have done something else. LOL I'll have to tease him about that.

While I agree with the overall view of Mr. Kamiya. I disagree with him that the American people were fully aware of what was being done right before the 2004 election. When the Abu Ghraib story broke the media was pretty much uncritically reporting the Bush claim that these were just a few "bad apples." While a lot of us news junkies saw through this narrative a lot of the American people did not.

I do agree that once more evidence began to spill out that everyone should have known what happened but right before the 2004 election the media did not do it's job to inform the people about what was really going on. I also agree that it's up to our leaders to follow the rule of law and to resist the mob when they cry for revenge. Unfortunately for us there were far too many of our media personalities and our leaders who were not only part of the mob but leading it.