Letters to the Editor
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jamie gorelick
i feel like part of this is my fault because i defended jamie gorelick from rightwing smears all during The 911 Commission.
granted, it was just on blogs & no one listens to me, but i believed in her.
i just feel like there is so much betrayal with the dems. the repubs are evil & i know not to trust them; it is heartbreaking & soulcrushing when dems behave the same way...even if it is a "kinder, gentler" fascism.
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Distraction not as important as the brain implant
When we first started many threads ago discussing the value of the ad, I and another poster made the point that from a Madison Avenue point of view, the more attention, the more Betrayus is associated with Petraeus, the more the word image is implanted in the American people's consciousness regardless of what side of the issue you are on.
It clearly has had that impact and in the long run will have made considerably more of an impact than the controversy over its use. For those of us opposed to the war, it reminds us that we have to evaluate a military source on the politics or lack thereof involved and then decide its validity. That is a very valuable outcome considering the propaganda, lobbying times we live in today.
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The Quality of Mercy
I can well understand the desire of telecom and internet providers, as well as government officials, to escape liability for their conduct in these matters. And, to some degree, I am sympathetic. Even the largest corporations were operating at a time of extraordinary panic and administration fearmongering. And they are all small fry in these matters in comparison with the big Kahuna offender, George W. Bush, President of the United States.
There is an admirable latin maxim which speaks volumes:
FIAT IUSTITIA,RUAT CAELUM !- Let Justice be done, though the heavens fall. It has a nice rhetorical flourish to it, but it is far from the reality in contemporary America- unless you are an African American in Jena, La. Today it might more realistically be stated as:
Let justice be done, so long as it does not inconvenience the rich and powerful, or embarass even the lowliest bureaucrat. This is the inevitable rot permeating the system of justice as a result of the Courts defering to concepts of National Security in handling litigation before them.
As to Amnesty for these people, I think a compromise ought to be possible on the model of the Truth and Reconciliation commision in South Africa:
(1) There should be an unequivocal admission of wrongdoing and an apology to those affected and to the American peple as a whole.
(2) There should be a full accounting of all activities to a special officer established under the Act- a sort of special prosecutor, who would report his findings to Congress.
(3)There should be payment of a significant fine in exchange for further immunity, such immunity to be conditional on the cooperation of such offenders with such action as Congress and/or the Special Prosecutor may choose to take. This should only apply to offenders with significant ability to affect the decision to comply with administration requests.
(4)There should be no immunity for members of the Cabinet or for the President Of the United States.
(5)There should be hearings as to whether the President Of the United States ought to be Impeached on the basis of this and other abuses of his office in tandem with this partial grant of immunity.
(6) In the case of minor actors in this affair, employees of corporations and civil servants, there should be absolute immunity conditional on their full and fair disclosure of their actions and their cooperation with other Congressional and Special Prosecutor initiatives as above.
I believe that something like this would serve the interests of justice and those of the rule of law in the vibrant democracy that ought to be the American Republic. Unfotunately, the United States of today more closely resembles Vichy France or the Weimar Republic in Germany than the shining city on a hill of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln.
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been stuck in a hole
Though I've beeen totally cut off, i've managed to read most of Glenn's work these last few weeks and it has been so amazingly accurate that it heralds a new wave of understanding about the extent to which the whole beltway world is a true phenomenon these days. Something so Vile and New and Terrible has happened to our Beltway "press corps" that it belongs in the same wretched stew with the govt itself. The insulary world they inhabit has them so utterly cut off from what the rest of America thinks that years of study could be dedicated to figuring out what has happened, (though I have some idea as to how much of the pathology has rotted the whole place.) When I get done riding through the desert with no access to computers whatsoever I'll have more to say. In the meantime, BRAVO to Glenn. Without your steady hammering I'd probably give up on it and quit my job and move to the deep woods.
Truly excellent work lately.
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DanJoaquin
For daring to utter the (gasp!) word "distracting" you suggest that I've allowed myself "to be played for a fool" & "posted exactly what they hoped you would post." Hyperbolic, much?
-- DanJoaquinOz
No, my post about your post was not the least bit hyperbolic. Your sentence, ..."daring to utter (gasp)", was hyperbolic if not just plain nonsense, and it certainly had nothing to do with what I posted to you.
You've made a big deal out of the title of the Moveon post. You're trying to blame that on move on rather than on yourself for falling for the same old predictable shit that the noise machiine pulls every time. You're telling yourself that if Moveon hadn't used that title, then not only would the totally predictable noise machine had not had something with which to clutch their hankies about, and which to 'distract' with, then the ad would have been read and discussed for its content. Neither of those assumptions are true. If the ad didn't have the title it most likely would have been discussed very little if at all. If the ad hadn't had its title the noise machine would have found something else to clutch hankies about.
So, your post in reply to mine just shows to me all the more that you're allowing yourself to be lead and fooled by way the right wing noise machine chooses to frame the debate.