Great stuff---"government" as a con-game, with one manipulation after another to paper over "concerns" with paid-for pablum by sympathetic fellow-travelling conservative "experts". Basically, the whole thing reads as a comic satire that a modern day Jonathan Swift might write.
A shame that our DC elites (elected, appointed and pundit varieties) don't care and have banded together in self protection mode, while the cable news head lice refuse to cover the torture story as independent professionals and instead defer to lying Gingrich-clones for their daily edition of "He Said--She Said!!"
The other major piece of the torture puzzle that we'll never know without some sort of national commission is what actual "value" was obtained by our egregious torture---what exactly did we "gain" from torturing detainees?
We know the costs---war crimes, institutionalized government lying, a hopelessly compromised DOJ, judicial payoffs for young conservative white male DOJers that played along and gave the legal green light, diplomatic disaster, terror recruitment---but what did we get for it? Then, over and above this question, is could we have gotten that "value" without torture?
Posted by euzoius at April 26, 2009 12:02 PM"could we have gotten that "value" without torture?"
...if you can prove that, would you please work on "miracles" without God next?
PS: I believe the proper description is "talking head lice". I coined it myself, check WIKI.
Speaking of war criminals....
"Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Sunday that a US raid in which a policeman and a woman were shot dead was a "breach" of a landmark security pact signed with Washington in November."
Posted by manapp99 at April 26, 2009 01:12 PM
My what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive....GReat work...keep digging.
Posted by emal at April 26, 2009 01:28 PMso what you are saying man-ape is that you are a war criminal?
just WHAT the fuck are you babbling about now?
During the infamous Bush/Cheney years we actually had two governments: the official U.S. government with its Constitutional branches and Dick Cheney's/Donald Rumsfeld's shadow government, comprised primarily of crony Republican private for-profit contractors hired to do government work, including interrogation of detainees.
So to read that Gardner Peckham, a Republican lobbyist, praised the effectiveness of the Bush administration's torture program makes perfect sense, especially if one realizes that private for-profit contractors, or their representatives, would. Hey, these torturers-for-hire probably received incentive pay based upon how much "information" they extracted and relayed up to Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices...and these "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e. torture) must have generated a whole lot of "information" for Dick Cheney to put a man-sized safe in his office.
So, just like the Bush administration tried to block (often successfully) any investigations into the private for-profit contractors operating in post-invasion Iraq (security or otherwise), you can bet that these same firms are working overtime, through their lackeys in Congress and in the White House, to stop any investigations into private for-profit contract torturers-for-hire. You know, investigations and prosecutions would be really, really bad for business (and profits), especially on the torturers-for-hire market.
Posted by The Oracle at April 26, 2009 11:10 PM