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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
David Tarrell
Published Letters: 45
... that it was a news organization, the supposed "watch dogs" of potential government oppression who mention this database of anti-depressant users without even a hint of concern about how this information might be misused by the government or whether maintaining it might violate the law.
Did they forget the watergate break in of a psychiatrist's office to gather confidential information about a potential political rival?
I'm not the DT who tipped Glenn off, but I read this yesterday and was stunned to hear about its existence and also to hear that such a program isn't even shocking to most people anymore. We are indeed being boiled slowly and most people don't even notice.
... about "Why can Tony Snow say with impunity that Plame "wasn't a covert agent" when their own CIA confirms that she was?" is that a group of RWA's bold enough to fix the intelligence around their policy of invasion (as the Downing Street Memo showed) thinks nothing of fixing the information in the press around their desired reality.
It's an inconvenient truth for them that Plame was covert or that Scooter was convicted but they can quite easily minimize the damage, and create a convenient untruths, by constantly repeating lies such as "Plame wasn't covert" or the "Fitz was on a partisan fishing expedition." They do this even when the CIA says otherwise and despite the fact that Fitz is a decorated Republican terrorism prosecutor chosen by Comey.
The real question for me is how do you deal with an opponent who cares nothing about the truth and who believes he is above the law when the institution charged with enforcing the former lets them get away with lies and the institution charged with enforcing the latter is headed by Alberto Gonzalez, who takes his orders directly from Turdblossom?
I agree that, rather than focusing on whether their alleged conversion is real or not, we first need to combat the destructive actions and uncover the philosophical framework that lies beneath leaders like Bush and Nkunda. Whether they quote scripture for devilish purposes or truly believe their unlawful, immoral, unChristlike means are justified is a question for historians as we have bigger, more pressing fish to fry.
Bill Moyers created a series in the late 80's which featured the Rev. Forrest Church (son of Sen. Frank Church of the commission) in which he described our nation's "virtues" as potentially more dangerous than our "sins." He summarized this by warning that "the devil most often appears in drag." Recently, Church commented on the grip of Bush's brand of Christianity on our foreign policy:
"American fundamentalism... by trivializing sin into a moralistic catalogue of personal foibles... reserve[s] the badge of real evil for others... Luther put it this way: "The final sin of man is his unwillingness to concede that he is a sinner. ... [R]evelations of prisoner abuse in Iraq... should serve as a reminder to all of us, especially the idealists who drive our nation's foreign policy, of the first law of history: to "Choose your enemies carefully, for you will become like them."
Isn't that a pretty good summary of "the Decider" and his tragic legacy? Rather than contemplating how the sermon on the mount (which ironically I discovered via a reference in Vonnegut's last book) should affect a Christian politician's view of government, he simply says "We don't torture" and forces the soldier who reported this into retirement. (And he does this after viewing a picture of a naked Iraqi decorated by an American soldier with lights made in a Chinese factory to celebrate Christ's birth!) In short, the administration is so blinded an "with us or against us" mentality, that they don't see evil even when it plainly emerges from our side.
Rather than mobilizing the moral authority we held in the pre-9/11 world or utilizing any of the world's sympathy we received as a result of it, they disregard this rule of history, along with the Constitution and the law they swore to uphold. Instead of considering whether their policies made us like our enemies, their only response was (and still is) to accuse anyone who questions them of being a terrorist sympathizer or even an outright enemy.
This policy not only distorts true Christianity and corrupts our nation's legacy, it also plays right into the hands of a fundamentalist Islamic radical who similarly, though mistakenly, believes his own faith permits him to use devilish means to achieve heavenly ends.
... Mary Louise Kelly made the comment that the "family jewels" documents were released yesterday at the behest of Gen. Michael Hayden who "decided when you're dealing with a secret spy agency [she's referring to the CIA, not the NSA] you should try to be transparent and set stuff out."
I was quite stunned to hear a NPR reporter state that the former head of the NSA, who ran the agency in the aftermath of 9-11 and who was complying with a Freedom of Info Act request, was doing so not because the law commanded him to do so, but because he was "trying to be transparent."
In other words, when you violate the law, most of the press, without evidence, assumes your intentions are pure. Then when you follow it, they praise you for transparency. Have we now reached the point with this administration in which the instances they follow the law are occasions for praise? That it should come to this.
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"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
