I love wikipedia!

Cannon, not canon.

One's for fightin and the other's for teachin.

When the almighty vested you with the responsibility of defining the worst troll on a daily basis, I assume he probably wanted you to reserve that title for those who come to wreak havoc (although far be it from me to divine HIS will, unless of course I want to), not simply those who are wrong and can't admit it.

If anything, the conversation here today has been enjoyable, and that is in no small measure caused by Wb's insistence on his point. In turn, WB may come to see the fault in his reasoning and grow new logic lobes.

In any case, have a care; your karma may end up sending you to hell or even Gehenna.

From the BBC history site @ sig.

"As tragic as 'The Fire' was, it was instrumental in bringing the deplorable state of the Lower Cuyahoga River to an end. Federal officials were embarrassed into providing funding to improve the water quality. During the first Earth Day in 1970, the Cuyahoga Fires were part of the impetus to 'clean up our act.' Finally, the fire was to be the instrumental rallying point in the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972."

Recovery

"After the 1972 Clean Water Act, waste that went into the river was greatly reduced, and the Cuyahoga slowly began to heal. In 1998, such a great degree of improvement had occurred since the fires that the Cuyahoga was designated as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The water chemistry of the Lower Cuyahoga River has finally become suitable for aquatic life, and the fires are a thing of the past."

BTW, PiB is a long way from the burnin' river. No worries.

Oh!, Good Grief Cannon, not canon. One's for fightin and the other's for teachin.

Very nice. I would nominate you as something or other, but that's your department. Self-nomination, sez I!

Cannon, not canon.

One's for fightin and the other's for teachin.

Sometimes the cannon is more effective. Trust me.

P.S. I found your e-mails in my spam folder last night, just in case you were wondering why I was so rude.

See subject.

However, she did note that the Manual could be altered by Executive Order [I'm surprised it is that simple] which could leave a loophole for another Bush or Cheney to incorporate techniques which could be called torture.

Future congress or president may well issue law or order that run contrary to the constitution or signed treaty, but they can be brought to court if they do it.

But then there's that damn 'standing' thing.

Nice touch with the bold and italics. I had no idea a machine could do such things.

There's more than one way to be a troll. You don't always have to hijack the thread with nonsense. Sometimes a troll will try to engage everyone possible with absurdities disguised as earnest opinions or queries and pretty soon all the reasonable posters will engage him and he sits there and laughs and says, "Ha! I got all these smarty pants at Greenwald's blog to discuss this crap."

This is what I suspect bgonne was all about. I could be wrong, but, as our pal Dubya would say, this ain't mah first rod-ay-oh. Ah been around the internetS fer a long tahm.

stanczr

Glenn, I have to agree with the Senator's assistant. She clearly stated that the Army Field Manual in its present form is the best standard available to ensure legal compliance for interrogations. However, she did note that the Manual could be altered by Executive Order [I'm surprised it is that simple] which could leave a loophole for another Bush or Cheney to incorporate techniques which could be called torture. She indicated that legislating a standard would be more effective and more difficult [uhh maybe not] to change. Especially by the Executive Branch.

Then why did Wyden spend the year -- before Obama was elected -- advocating that the law be changed to use the Army Field Manual as the standard?

If -- as you claim -- using the Army Field Manual as a standard is a bad idea because it "could leave a loophole for another Bush or Cheney to incorporate techniques which could be called torture," why did Wyden advocate exactly that when Bush and Cheney were in office?

To answer your question perhaps Wyden did not advocate this because there wasn't enough support or votes in the Senate. Things have changed in the last month. Dems have a stronger majority in Congress and a democratic president. I think both Feinstein and Wyden are leaving wiggle room but I don't necessarily think it means looser restrictions, I think it means they are open to an alternative if Obama creates one, that might be better in some way.

Still, in the case of CIA/torture stuff I am glad you and other bloggers are on the case because they need to know that we are going to hold them accountable in this area.

...did they change their positions? Well, I suppose the answer, as ALWAYS is "Follow The Money". But where to start with these two practiced dissemblers?

The torture cheerleaders are like the pentagon, they only want to live in their bizzaro world where tough guy spooks save us all from bad guys by pushing the moral envelope, you know, like Batman's privacy invading super sonar bullshit in The Dark Knight that he used to find and track the Joker. According to the cheerleaders and their team, there is no other alternative, in order to protect us from evil anarchists and cybernetic Islamonihilists, one might and/or must cross "the line". The only options are to torture the scary people for intel or face the destiny foretold by the prophet Newt "lose a city" Gingrich. The ability to flush the Rule of Law down the shitter to protect us, that is what makes one "brave" and a "true patriot" in the eyes of the establishment and its cheerleading squad. Like Alexander said in his OpEd re: the Field Manual:

After my return from Iraq, I began to write about my experiences because I felt obliged, as a military officer, not only to point out the broken wheel but to try to fix it. When I submitted the manuscript of my book about my Iraq experiences to the Defense Department for a standard review to ensure that it did not contain classified information, I got a nasty shock. Pentagon officials delayed the review past the first printing date and then redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material -- including passages copied verbatim from the Army's unclassified Field Manual on interrogations and material vibrantly displayed on the Army's own Web site. I sued, first to get the review completed and later to appeal the redactions. Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; they don't even want the public to hear them.

Like Harold Pinter said:

To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

...

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

...

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all.

...

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest.