It's astonishing to me how many people on here seem to think that the CIA is completely monolithic -- as if not even one person in its ranks may joined it out of good intentions or concern for their country; as if every single member of the organization reveled in the opportunity to commit torture.

Here is what AG Eric Holder said:

"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department."

Emphasis mine.

What always ends up happening in these kinds of Washington scandals is that some low-ranking officials are left holding the bag. They're thrown out as human shields to absorb the slings and arrows because it was their hands that actually executed the policy, or signed the papers -- when the will to do it -- the orders to do it -- had come from on high.

You people are probably dumb enough to think that the fault for Abu Ghraib began and ended due to the actions of Lynndie England and Charles Graner and the neglect of Col. Janis Karpinski. Early on, England intimated that she had been acting under the orders of "OGA" -- "Other Government Agency" -- while Abu Ghraib commander Karpinski publicly alleged that the authority to torture had come down directly from Rumsfeld and that much of it had been conducted by "civilian contractors" (probably members of the ominous, ever-growing private security industry of which Blackwater was only the most obnoxious public face). Neither allegation was closely investigated and instead these three individuals became dartboards for all of the guilt and recriminations of the case. The case has now largely been forgotten and most people breathe a sigh of relief because some "perps" paid for the crime... but the real perpetrators and planners DID NOT pay and were continuing to indulge in the same conduct in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Stop freaking out because the Obama administration isn't turning on rank-and-file CIA operatives who got their hands dirty implementing a policy conceived of and approved by high-ranking authorities who -- let's face it -- will never get tried and punished.

Start pushing Congress to do go after Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Justice Dept. officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee.

Can the haters at least wait 'til the body's cold before they start to piss on it?

Ballard's prose was not "workmanlike," as a previous commentator slurs; his style was clinically precise. The film of Crash was one of those very rare instances of a novelist's work landing in the lap of a filmmaker with a complementary sense of vision. Like Ballard, Cronenberg's work is deceptively simple and clear.

It's hard to imagine how Ballard's work could be "wrong" about the future when it was never really about the future to begin with. His apocalyptic novels (THE DROWNED WORLD; THE CRYSTAL WORLD; THE BURNED WORLD) weren't proscriptive, plotting out realistic endings to our world: they were surreal meditations. And his triptych of alienated and alienating novels of the early '70s (CRASH, CONCRETE ISLAND, HIGH RISE) were bold reimaginings of the meaning and purpose of "speculative fiction." He posited the existence of radically futuristic ideas like automobiles, freeways, and high rise apartment buildings; it didn't matter so much that they already existed because Ballard rebuilt them in his imaginal space, pushing their dehumanizing aspects to their outer limits. Transformed, they stood revealed as aspects of the naked surreality of the then-present, crystallizing a hidden death wish lurking beneath the sheen of every car commercial, the cold contempt for the messiness of human emotion evident in every city planner's sterile, depopulated scale model.