We’ll start with this wonderful piece of misinformation from WaPo, which should know better than to publish crap like it, in this case, insisting that “torture works” because “KSM was so forthcoming” after waterboarding. If that’s the case, than kindly explain why it was necessary to waterboard him 183 times? Sounds like something other than “torture works”… unless it “works” to get some official’s rocks off, maybe. The ever-vigilant Glenn Greenwald enumerates the plethora of things wrong with the WaPo piece (hint: everything, including being at odds with WaPo’s own less “shilling for Dick Cheney” reporting, by actual journalists rather than stenographers). Honestly, forgetting about the mere fact that all civilized societies, including our own, reached the conclusion that torture was not merely barbaric but ineffective at anything other than false confessions two or three centuries ago, as set forth in my interview with Dr. Steven Miles, you might want to try this DOD Working Group Report which documents the long-held conclusion of the ineffectiveness of torture… a report prepared by Don Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, btw. But, of course, the facts don’t mean much in “the new America.”
And of course, the old lawyer’s adage is, if you don’t have the facts on your side, argue the law. O.K. It seems, that the Obama Administration has not missed a beat, and has decided that court orders can be complied with only if it feels like it, such as the apparent decision to “skirt” a decision of New York City federal judge Alvin Hellerstein on disclosure of CIA-torture documents, perhaps avoiding an outright contempt of court, but hardly providing the kind of “transparency” (not to mention “change”) we were promised by candidate Obama. It seems, the law doesn’t mean too much here in “the new America” either.
And don’t ask me why KTK’s smackdown of David Brooks in LeanLeft caught my attention, but it seems to be a rather succinct indictment of our holy and sacred capitalist system where, well, see above re: “the facts don’t mean much” here in “the new America.”
I suppose I can best sum things up with the words of a clever bus driver, on the Newark Airport to New York’s Port Authority run, several years ago, once reported to me by Mrs. TD: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Dodge. Stay alert. Stay alive.” It’s the best advice I can give you for life here in “the new America.” It just seems we’ve gone off our moral bearings.
I’d like to believe we can get back on track; if anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears…
tdog
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