http://neverinournames.com/

Influential Talk-Show Host Shifts Position: Cheney To The Hague

by: blueness
Thu Nov 13, 2008

For 30 straight years KGO has been the most listened-to AM radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area. From dusk till dawn, it can also be heard throughout the entirety of the west coast, from Canada to Mexico. [...] Occupying the 7-10 p.m. time slot is Gene Burns, who has been in radio for more than 40 years, the past 14 at KGO. [...] He is a pedant, and something of a blowhard, but is extremely influential with more moderate listeners put off by the station's fire-breathing lefties.

Burns has consistently opposed impeachment proceedings against George II and Darth Cheney as frivolous and unwarranted: these men have not, to his mind, committed impeachable offenses.

Challenged by callers contending that these men approved the torture of fellow human beings, Burns has maintained that the United States has not tortured; even waterboarding, to him, does not constitute torture.

Wednesday night, all this changed.

After viewing on his local PBS affiliate the documentary Torturing Democracy,Burns told his listeners, he realized he had been wrong. The United States has tortured. It has also engaged in extraordinary renditions, for the purpose of torture. While Burns still believes impeachment to be a non-starter, he has concluded that, in the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and in other sites overseas, Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and should be brought to trial before an international tribunal at The Hague.

[...]

The very first caller, an aging veteran, announced that Burns had "disgraced" himself; that "war is hell" and thus such things happen; that to sound such views but two days after Veterans Day constituted an offense against the United States. The caller concluded by saying that it was his belief that Burns should be jailed. Burns, who has a temper, invited the caller to go out and purchase some handcuffs, and then come down to the station to see whether he might succeed in locking them around Burns' wrists.

A little later came the opposite end of the spectrum: a caller who sneered at Burns for coming too late to the issue, and demanded that Cheney be "publicly executed."

Somewhere between these extremes must steer the serious people.

Can Dick Cheney be made to stand before The Hague? Maybe. Maybe not. The concept of international criminal tribunals is so fresh, and Darth Cheney is an awfully fat fish. But it is certain that every step taken towards such a day, even if that day is in the end never reached, helps insure that future Cheneys will be less likely to engage in similar behavior. And it is equally true that every sober, serious voice that states that Cheney deserves to be brought before The Hague, helps to push that position farther from fringoid fantasy, and closer to common wisdom.

- - http://neverinournames.com - - 11/13/2008

"(I'm one of those All-but-dissertation MA people) "

Pick a subject, find an open question, answer it. Just get it done!

Graves' Claudius is awesome--a lot of fun. And the BBC's filmic version isn't bad either. How can you beat the over-the-top portrayal of Caligula by John Hurt?

Pick a subject, find an open question, answer it. Just get it done!

Yes, I know you're right.

And Glenn will probably be angry with us for cluttering his thread in this way.

Haven't seen it. I have generally not made much time in the last four decades for visuals beyond the occasional old chestnut or 'beyond the pale' sort of work, so I don't see many films. I wish I had time for more fiction, but there's so much good science being written about. If I had to list my top three recent (relatively) great fictional reading experiences, they'd be:

Kristin Lavransdatter (Sigrid Undset)

The Book of Ruth (Jane Hamilton)

White Bird in A Blizzard (Laura Ican'tevenbegintospellherlastnameitsPolish)

Mostly I've spent the last decade writing accreditation documentation for clinical academic programs (thankfully done with thatnow. Imagine the Sahara...on a really DRY day.

I'm in need of some GoodCelery! Poet mine, weave me a tale of mercy, forgiveness, decency, and honesty. Can you do this with inscrutability? I know you can. You are GoodCelery!

And Glenn will probably be angry with us for cluttering his thread in this way.

Well at least our literary discussion brings down the level of vitriol...that' worth something!

Like GoodCelery!, you never cease to amaze me. Here I am, blustering about like the Hindenburg on a bad day, and you guys have the decency to put me through my paces. I value that beyond $$ (well, kinda ;)). (I hope I got the emoticon right, since I really don't use them)

Well, history - on it's smallest scale - is about "connections".

How lucky we are to have technological tools to transcend (excuse all that alliteration) distance and time.

(And yes, GC! is a most blessed personage.

Well, history - on it's smallest scale - is about "connections".

Amen, brother. You know I'm serious.

my apologies for having veered off course. It's catamitebastard's fault, you know. Well, mine too. I must take responsibility (that's what my therapist, karr(sic), says).

...Time to change Mom and put her to bed and set the movement alarms...

Let's all argue again tomorrow!

Let's all argue again tomorrow!

Done and done!

It's been a real pleasure, my friend.

While Mr. Greenwald is surely right that important principles (and principals) hang in the balance as Obama considers whether to hold Bush and Co. accountable for their felonies, it is pure fantasy to imagine that Obama might mend fences and achieve a cooperative "bipartisanship" by letting the crooks go

As Robert Parry outlined in a recent piece, "Obama: Beware the Lessons of '93," Clinton, perhaps in an attempt to bridge divides, turned a blind eye to Bush '41's serial felonies. Not only did the GOP not reciprocate, sensing weakness, they went for Clinton's jugular.

As Polk Award-winner Parry put it:

"Sixteen months into his Presidency, Clinton was getting clobbered by the Republicans – and by the news media – over his Whitewater real-estate deal. There had been a firestorm, too, over allegations from Arkansas state troopers about Clinton’s philandering as governor.

"A woman named Paula Jones had emerged from that controversy with claims that Clinton had crudely propositioned her. He also was taking flak over the firing of employees in the White House Travel Office.

Then, there were bizarre suspicions circulating about the suicide of White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster, who had come with the Clintons from Arkansas. Foster shot himself in the head after growing despondent over the harsh press criticism he had received for his role in the Travel Office affair, but some conservatives were spreading rumors of a deeper mystery.

"Clinton felt besieged not only by aggressive Republicans but by the national press corps. Since the last Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, left office in 1981, a powerful right-wing media had come into its own, built in part as a defense mechanism to shield Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush from criticism.

"Besides Limbaugh and the bevy of other talk radio hosts, right-wing print outlets had grown in number and in influence, the likes of the American Spectator and The Washington Times, not to mention The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages and conservative columnists in newspapers across the country.

"Many of the commentators also appeared on TV political chat shows to reprise their opinions for millions of more Americans nationwide.

"Mainstream journalists at outlets such as NBC News and The New York Times also joined in the Clinton bashing, seemingly eager to prove that they could be tougher on a Democrat than any Republican. They were determined to show they weren’t the “liberal media” that the conservatives long had railed against.

"Indeed, it was The Washington Post, the newspaper credited with unraveling Richard Nixon’s Watergate mystery, which had led the charge on the Whitewater case with front-page stories that put Clinton in a public relations corner and forced him to acquiesce to a special prosecutor ... ." [http://consortiumnews.com/2008/111108.html]

Obama can expect to be under constant Republican assault. If we've learned anything from Clinton's travails, it may be that the best defense is a good offense. And what could be a better offense than defending the rule of law by demanding government officials answer to the same laws that we "mere" citizens have to?