FOLLOW THE STOPPED BUCK
Naming the rot:
There’s a bomb of a contradiction at the heart of what’s passing for a debate on the torture regime of the past eight years. President Barack Obama calls those years of secret prisons and “enhanced interrogation techniques” a “dark and painful chapter in our history.””That’s not just a suggestion of something amiss. It’s an admission and an indictment of wrongs, in terms that have been applied to atrocities like war crimes and slavery.…[snip]
CIA Director Leon E. Panetta opposed so much as the release of the memos, claiming it set a dangerous precedent for the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods. But sources of intelligence aren’t being revealed. Methods of torture are. Keeping them secret would only safeguard them for use in the future. And to date, not a single name of actual torturers (”interrogators,” as the preferred euphemism goes) has been released. Only the names of a posse of Bush administration staffers and lawyers tasked with finagling legality out of indefensible practices have: David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury.
[snip]
But if there’s a bomb of a contradiction at the heart of this debate, there’s also an elephant: George W. Bush. His name is hardly mentioned in all these stories of shame and torture. It’s all about the lawyers, the process, the exigencies of the moment. But it isn’t. The decisions were his. “I am the decider,” as he put it. And so he was. This “dark and painful chapter” began with him. His orders for secret memos. His orders to torture. It should end with him. Source
At the time of the Watergate exposures, it took a protracted amount of time for the public and the investigative process to assess the situation and remold their worldview into one which accepted that a sitting president could be capable of (and culpable for) what was done.
That sobering lesson in introspection and patriotism applied above politics must now be relearned by new generations, but this time as applied to a president no longer in office.
“Let bygones be bygones” cannot be permitted to prevail, not when what perfidiously transpired (in secret and not) served to work to recast, reconfigure and redefine the very nature of the country and the very core of each of its people into something wrenchingly in opposition to bedrock tenets, historical precedent, reams of law and the pillars supporting publicly professed principles.
Could not agree more.
With that “let bygones be bygones” reasoning, every criminal in the country would be running free. After all, their serial killings and armed bank robberies occurred in the past.
Disgusting.
Comment by Hill — April 27, 2009 @ 8:58 pm on Monday the 27th
I do not agree with torture, but. I do believe the United States government had a very big part of 9/11 (many facts don’t fit as to the way the government says it happens and what we saw on tv). I believe also, the men accused of this event were nothing but saps (scape goats?) and they believe also that the US government had nothing to do with it. The American way seems to pass the buck, blame it on some one else, not take responsibility, lie about it. As we saw with Clinton, a lot of people can end up dead or missing. Who has the bigger stick. You take away some ones “get out of jail card”, and they will squeal like a pig.
It’s late, tired, can’t c straight, cigar smoke in my face hahahahaha
Comment by mike — April 29, 2009 @ 4:42 pm on Wednesday the 29th