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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
thomas dumm
Published Letters: 73 Editor's Choice: 3
Once again kudos to Glenn Greenwald. You are tenacious.
There is a very telling quotation Glenn provides early on in his post, that says a lot about the mentality of the "insiders."
I'm wondering what these CIA insiders think the job is? The beginning of the response to that question by one of the insiders is very telling. Beats me,” said a well-wired former senior intelligence official. “Brennan’s hands were not very dirty at all. . . "
I am wondering what it means, in the dirty hands business, to have not very dirty hands. Since the very inception of the CIA the agency has been corrupt, dirty. The "romance" of the agency is that it does the dirty work that the rest of us need done, but that we are too squeamish to admit. And then we throw up our hands when assassination, subversion of government, torture, illegal harassment and wiretapping, and the whole panoply of extra-intelligence illegal and unethical activity is uncovered. We who insist on rule of law. I hope that the job becomes to end these hideous practices that are done in our name. But I tend to doubt that is what they are asking.
I recall when Clinton, at the beginning of his second term, floated Tony Lake for DCI. Suddenly, Lake's name was dragged through the mud over personal matters. His real sin? He was an old skeptic of the CIA.
A rumor is not a report. If Obama decides to retain Hayden, I think many of us will have reason to go to Washington DC on the day of the 20th of January, but not to celebrate.
There is a way that success can make a once progressive vehicle become timid. The writers follow the editors, become cautious, moralistic, way too conventional. Joan Walsh, Thomas Schaller, Camile Paglia, Joe Conason, these are the core of a Clintonesque, triangulating crew of journalists who seem to be becoming more worried about their credibility with the most conventional news people in DC than they do with speaking the truth. Thankfully, there is still Glenn Greenwald hanging in there.
Schaller sounds like the kind of guy who would have tisked tisked Vietnam era protesters for "going too far" in suggesting that LBJ had blood on his hands, chanting in front of the White House, even though he did have blood on his hands and didn't deserve to sleep.
What Bush has done to Iraq is far worse than what Johnson did, if not in numbers, in sheer illegality and long term harm to the world. The guy threw shoes, an act that should have been symbolically devastating to Bush were the man not a moron. The act was hardly "immature," especially since the guy undoubtedly knew that he would immediately be beaten and then whisked off to prison, where, I would bet, he is being tortured right now. Did he say anything about Bush that isn't true? Blood is on these people's hands. This isn't just some game he was playing to punk the American president -- he wanted to tell Bush to his face what a murderous and evil thing he has done. And Bush's response? Oblivious in front of the camera, and undoubtedly petulant in private. A fitting conclusion to his foreign travels.
If there is a modicum of justice, Bush and his agents will end their lives in prison. But I'm not holding my breath when there are people like Schaller willing to pity the powerful over their victims.
The destructive force of corporatism is no more evident than it is here -- an indifference to even the written word in the search for impossible profits. Years ago, Routledge, beloved by us nutty pomo academics, a leading press for avant garde thought (and the publisher of Wittgenstein, among others) fired Bill Germano, who had resurrected it as a force in thought, once bought by a German conglomerate. You had to wonder then, and I continue to wonder now, what is going to happen.
As an author (who is in an article in yesterday's Salon!) with a major university press, I am beginning to think that such places may be our last refuge, though even here, it is becoming almost impossible to make the profit needed to continue. Are we entering a new dark age?
I am very glad to see this appointment. Thanks to Glenn for providing details concerning her stance. Now let's see if there is a will to go where she wants the administration to go.
This morning, to my astonishment, the op ed page of the New York Times gave over a very large space to John Bolton and John Yoo to lecture President elect Obama concerning the Constitution and treaty power. While Bolton is bad enough as an intellectual fraud, to my knowledge he has not committed the crimes that Yoo has in providing legal cover for torture. What a sign of willingness to simply "move on." So I wrote to the Times basically the following:
I was interested to see that the New York Times has seen fit to give space to John Yoo, he of the infamous torture memos, to lecture the president elect on constitutional matters. What is next? Giving David Duke space to advice Obama on race relations?
Obama has also indicated that he might respond to pressure when it comes to the reinvigoration of the federal government as an agent for stimulating the economy. Axelrod suggesting that Congress won't be a potted plant in response to progressive criticisms of the tax cut portion of the stimulus package indicates that. Watching the shifting of the ratio of tax to spending on infrastructure, health etc., will be telling. It will move in the progressive direction only with more pressure. Glenn, as usual, has the template right.
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
