Lieberman and Graham at it again

It appears that Creepy Joe™ Lieberman and his twin of terror, Lindsey Graham are working diligently to make sure that the American people never learn the depths to which their government has sunk. The scary thing is that they are assisting the Pentagon, and the Obama administration to prevent the release of Abu Ghraib photos which are, reportedly, more horrific than anything we've seen already.

Keeping these photographs secret prevent America from pursuing the people who have given torture an American trademark.

Tortured logic

Both Glenn Greenwald and Dan Froomkin have taken the Obama administration to task for Obama's sudden reversal about releasing further photos taken at Abu Ghraib.

Froomkin, in a Washinton Post editorial lambasts Obama and pulls apart each and every excuse the administration concocted to explain their reversal.

Greenwald admits to puzzlement over a public which seems to agree that our government should not release evidence of its own wrongdoings. It's what the Bush administration did, again and again. To see the Obama administration walk this path is frustrating, angering and impossible to understand.

It's pretty clear. Either we tortured, or we didn't. And the answer to that question, inevitably seems to be, "we tortured."

And if we tortured, then we broke laws, we allowed immoral, unethical behavior in our names, and the people who put us in this postion need to be revealed, at all levels, and brought to justice so it never happens again.

As a torturing country we are in the company of Stalin's Russia, Pinochet's Chile, Idi Amin's Uganda, Saddam Hussein's Iran, Marcos Phillipines.

While it drains the life from any moral imperative we thought we had, new evidence shows that on a practical level, it may increase the use of terrorism on these shores.

Each and every one of us needs to stare hard at what our leaders ordered the men and women of the military to do. Then, only after we've seen every photograph, should we decide whether men like Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush belong in a cell.

Lieberman loves torture, just not the photos

Creepy Joe™ Lieberman has lobbied for the continued use of enhanced interrogation techniques, that most people now refer to simply as "torture." He thinks it will help get good information in case someone ever walks a nuclear device into the Chrysler Building. CJ™'s been watching a bit too many episodes of 24.

Now, it seems, he's not so fond of releasing photos of torture, because those photos will put our troops in danger. That's an argument he's resisted when others have used it to explain how torture actually works against us.

His mobius strip logic is classic Lieberman. As long as the enemy doesn't find out our soldiers were sodomizing their sons, they can't use it against us.

Wrap your flag around this patriots

To all those true Americans who have risen to the defense of waterboarding, and other forms of torture as a means to defend our beloved homeland, read what Seymour Hersh has to say about the dirty secrets of Abu Ghraib.

Hersh is careful not to speak until he has the facts on topics, and he's rarely been wrong.

And when you're done reading, think about how sodomizing a boy in front of his mother protects the homeland and makes this country great. You'll have to reach deep into the playbook of the Catholic church to come up with the appropriate defense.

The leaders in the Bush administration, all the way to Bush himself, and the leaders in the military and secret agencies are culpable in allowing this country to sink to despicable levels of official torture. And if Obama doesn't do something about it, he's responsible too.

We're torturing people, people

Regrettably, as I predicted a few days ago, the press of the United States has ignored an amazingly important set of memos authored by John Yoo about the president's right to torture alleged terrorists.

It's disheartening that this issue, as complex and riven with shame as it is, has not been an important headline. This goes to the core of the notion of an imperial presidency which has stripped our government of the checks and balances guaranteed by our constitution.

And the press is preoccupied with a presidential campaign that hasn't said anything new in three months, the final four and American Idol.

Of course there were exceptions, but Keith Olbermann is not considered part of the main street media.

UPDATE: There's also an important editorial in the New York Times.

Girl in the war

Want to know what happens to an American kid sent into an immoral war? Read the New Yorker article which explains what happened to Sabrina Harman at Abu Ghraib, and understand that her superiors have never been disciplined.

What we can get used to

It's depressing and scary to consider what humans can come to know as "normal" and "right."

I watched the film Munich this weekend, and I'm just finishing up Ishmael Beah's amazing and frightening book, A Long Way Gone, about being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, and then I read Sy Hersh's latest New Yorker report on Abu Ghraib. It makes one fear for the future in a world where individuals can so easily discard standards of morality, ethics, law, family and community, and live in a nightmare of perverse and violent "righteousness".

I feel lucky to live where I do, and how I do. I know there are people who live on my street who live in fear and desperation, and whose idea of a civil society is far different than my own. I know there are people who despise what our country stands for (and I don't mean that they hate freedom, I mean they hate wasteful, boastful, arrogant bullies). I know there are religious zealots who feel they are living and acting inside a higher order. I know this and it threatens to paralyze me, when it should be motivation to do more to make sure that our country and community are on the right path.