Seriously, isn't there something that would be a better subject for a webpage on the world wide internet than your choice of a "troll of the year" in this EXTREMELY IMPORTANT chat site?

-- something stinks

Yeah, Jebbie! How about a website dedicated to proving that Obama doesn't have a US birth certificate? And be sure to address anyone and everyone who comments on your "Is Obama a U.S. Citizen" site as "Dear". Just because that sounds so gawl darned cute, don'tcha know.

Kitt, I appreciate your comment and I have perused a small sampling of shooter242's writings. I don't think s/he is so bad - just one of the few who disagree with Greenwald. I did happen upon this choice fragment, which really is more than anything a paraphrase of what I wrote (the core of which is that Greenwald's writing style is hateful and frankly obnoxious):

"When Glenn asks for an example of a left wing hater, Mr. Allen didn't have the brass to say, Why, you Mr. Geenwald. You would be a good example.

Consider this last paragraph from the blog post...

I once thought that Politico would be a pernicious new addition to our rotted media culture. Instead, it actually provides a valuable service by packing every destructive and corrupt journalistic attribute, in its most vivid form, into one single cesspool.

-- Glenn Greenwald

So let's count up the personal attacks, slurs, and tasty bits of hate speech....

* pernicious,

* addition to our rotted media culture,

* destructive

* corrupt

* cesspool.

That's quite a bit for one paragraph, even for Glenn."

Can't say I disagree with shooter in this. It is an old saw, but I have yet to find any issue that has only one side. I believe the only way one can ever hope to convince someone to agree with you is to show them respect - I don't think GG does a very good job at this. Of course, he's the one selling books, not me.

I think you do not understand how bad waterboarding is. Bush&co have portrayed it as a relatively harmless "enhanced interrogation technique." Perhaps you need to do a little more research.

But even so, can we agree that the rule of law counts, and it is illegal?

Damn-- I stop to get a cup of coffee, and when I get here I discover that y'all finished off the Jeff_S!

There's nothing left but a few scraps of carcass and a grease spot.

OK, the comment didn't have that much meat on it to begin with-- it was really more of a sketch of the broken electric garage door fronting Jeff_S's mind, which only raises an inch or two after the button is pushed, then grinds to a halt. It merely reveals the writer's underlying prejudices or presumptions, i.e. that Amerika, while perhaps flawed, always and forever occupies the high moral ground-- only foreign strongmen and despots operate amoral governments and military forces.

First of all, even with "all we now know" from the perpetual trickle of information seeping around the mendacious Official Sources and embedded corporate media flacks, there's no reason to believe that all crimes and atrocities committed by the Amerikan-led Coalition of the Wilting are public knowledge. So it is fatuous to assume that We the People have a pretty good handle on exactly what-all our military and intelligence operatives got up to.

Second of all, while it is true that heinous crimes of violence are codified and classified in criminal law, which establishes a relative scale of evaluating wrongdoing, it is absurd on its face to defend or justify less pervasive and extensive war crimes and atrocities by comparing them to more extreme examples.

The difference in degree may be significant, but not exculpatory. One might as well argue that Richard Speck wasn't so bad-- he only killed eight nurses! How can you even compare him to Ted Bundy?

Get a grip!

I wouldn't go as far as JoeMammaSan and claim that the United States has either "always" or "routinely" practiced torture, but there is considerable evidence for widespread American complicity, training and actual participation in systematic torture that considerably pre-dates the War on Terror.

Naomi Klein, in her exhaustively researched book, The Shock Doctrine, painstakingly documents the profound involvement of the CIA, Nixon and Reagan administrations in the brutal torture of political, academic and social dissidents in both Central and South America, most notably Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina and Uraguay.

Klein also draws a very clear ideological link between these earlier "aberrations" of American policy on torture in the 70's and 80's and their latest, nearly identical, incarnations in Abu Graib, Guantanamo and numerous "extraordinary rendition" destinations.

I agree torture occurs in the US.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2002-03-14/news/torture-chamber

And it was commonplace in the past. Donald Rumsfeld's vacation home, for example, was once owned by a "slave-breaker" in the ante-bellum south.

Whether torture/inhumane cruelty is commonplace today in the US is another matter, although reading your comments here may provide compelling evidence.

"tasty bits of hate speech...."

-- tommy1733

Please allow me to reply with the same lack of originality that your comment deserves. 'The gentleman [you] doth protest too much'. Tasty bits of "hate speech". Righto!

Mike, thank you for being the first to give a sensible rebuttal to Jeff_S. I really think we get a lot more out of a forum when people avoid childishness (especially when it comes from the article's famous author!).

November 8, 2007 - “Contrary to popular opinion, [water boarding] is not a simulation of drowning. It is drowning. […] As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured.” - Malcolm Nance, former instructor at (SERE), at a hearing before the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee.

http://www.webdsi.com/jebbie/ttpage14.html

"It isn't torture if the US does it."

"when people avoid childishness"

-- tommy1733

So you don't think it's childish to believe that waterboarding, just for an example, is just the good old USA daddy types maybe 'stepping over the line' whereas the villainous bad guys of Africa and the Middle East, now, they're all together another kind of monster?