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.
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.
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.
It's a simple as this. Representatives of our country should not be committing crimes. Representatives of our country should not be committing torture.
Barack Obama did the right thing by releasing the "torture memos" yesterday. Glenn Greenwald has a cogent argument as to why Obama deserves credit.
One could, and IMHO, should argue that the torturers need to be prosecuted (we cannot abide by an "I was just following orders" defense).
But one should not argue, as former CIA director Hayden has, that the crimes ought to be left in the shadows.
More than once in these past few months I've heard the financiers who have torn our economy asunder for their own personal gain called "terrorists." And rightfully so.
Our nation, the world, our way of life is teetering on the brink so that these guys could get facials before their board meetings, and so their families could fly to Courchevel for a skiing vacation.
Undermining our government by destroying its financial base (isn't that what they've done), is treason.
I've heard others who have suggested, seriously, that the crimes against the Constitution by Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and David Addington, among others, could also be called treason.
So what is Barack Obama suggesting the country do about the treasonists and terrorists under our noses?
"We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth. And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law." Obama said. "But my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."
And while he plans to close Guantanamo, he's willing to somehow bend the rules laid out in the Constitution to hold, indefinitely, prisoners who have been accused of doing bad, or who have been tortured to admit they have done so:
"It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," the President-elect explained. "Part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."
Glenn Greenwald doesn't see this as particularly promising, and I have to agree.
Obama today rather clearly stated that he will not close Guantanamo in the first 100 days of his presidency. He recited the standard Jack Goldsmith/Brookings Institution condescending excuse that closing Guantanamo is "more difficult than people realize." Specifically, Obama argued, we cannot release detainees whom we're unable to convict in a court of law because the evidence against them is "tainted" as a result of our having tortured them, and therefore need some new system -- most likely a so-called new "national security court" -- that "relaxes" due process safeguards so that we can continue to imprison people indefinitely even though we're unable to obtain an actual conviction in an actual court of law.
Worst of all, Obama (in response to Stephanopoulos' asking him about the number one highest-voted question on Change.gov, first submitted by Bob Fertik) all but said that he does not want to pursue prosecutions for high-level lawbreakers in the Bush administration, twice repeating the standard Beltway mantra that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards" and "my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing." Obama didn't categorically rule out prosecutions -- he paid passing lip service to the pretty idea that "nobody is above the law," implied Eric Holder would have some role in making these decisions, and said "we're going to be looking at past practices" -- but he clearly intended to convey his emphatic view that he opposes "past-looking" investigations. In the U.S., high political officials aren't investigated, let alone held accountable, for lawbreaking, and that is rather clearly something Obama has no intention of changing.
We've only got one Constitution, and nowhere does it allow us to lock a prisoner up and throw away the key when we don't have legitimate proof of guilt.
The McCain campaign has finally figured out America.
What we don't know, can't hurt us. Or can it?
So, we have a Presidential candidate who has found a way to avoid a debate in which he will clearly be at a disadvantage. He's retreated from a cozy relationship with the press, to one which is downright frigid. He puts his campaign on "hold" though it doesn't seem to include not running commercials, or keeping his advisors from commenting in the press.
And a vice-presidential candidate, who is truly, "Bush-in-skirts," in the way she demonstrates a remarkable incurious attitude to anything outside of her immediate purview. Visit a foreign country? Why bother, Alaska is just fine. Think about the national economy? No need, Alaska's got oil. Worry about war, famine, disease? No worry, trust in Jesus.
We are now faced with a campaign willing to do damn near all to prevent us from knowing anything about them.
I'll admit a good deal of ignorance on the relationship between Russia, and the now independent states which used to be part of the Soviet Union.
But this I know, a country which has preemptively invaded a sovereign nation has no right to criticize a country which had done the same. The US no longer has moral ground to stand upon to criticize Russia for invading Georgia, when we invaded Iraq, for reasons which now can be seen as specious, at best, and at worst, similar in justification to Russia's invasion.
Worse still, two of the prominent promoters of war in Iraq Senators Lindsey Graham, and Connecticut's own Creepy Joe™ Lieberman, are at a more severe moral ebb tide than many other Americans who protested the invasion of Iraq.
Graham and Lieberman have co-authored an editorial on the Russian invasion of Georgia in today's Washington Post. Glenn Greenwald critiques it here.
The co-authors are shocked that Russia: spent last week destroying the country's infrastructure, including roads, bridges, port and security facilities. This was more than random looting. It was a deliberate campaign to collapse the economy of Georgia, in the hope of taking the government down with it.
Sounds like the techniques the US used in Iraq, and which Graham and Lieberman supported.
The pair is also aghast at: the innocent men, women and children displaced by the fighting, some of whom we saw last week. Would that this pair of death angels felt the same about the tens of thousands of dead and wounded innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that Lieberman could find a shred of empathy for any dead or wounded Palestinian child.
It's beginning to appear that the apocalypse twins haven't found a war they don't like - Iraq, Russia, Palestine, Iran, Syria. Bring 'em on.
Many commentators are concluding that the disastrous conflict between Russia and Georgia was propelled by an incompetent foreign policy, initiated by the Bush administration, which coddled the belligerent Putin, and urged on a naive and reckless drive for democracy by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Glenn Greenwald, who is quick to indicate that he has no evidence on which to make a statement about Bruce Ivins' guilt in the anthrax case, has plenty to say about how the press and the FBI has handled the case, from the beginning.
In addition, Greenwald offers lots of reasons why we can't, with any assurance, say "case closed."
Let's just say that Brian William's sensibilities are as leaden as his opinions. A Pulitzer for Peggy Noonan? Why yes, and another gold star for General Petraeus.
Sunday it seemed like news that would shake the world. The Pentagon had unleashed its minions disguised as "experts" on a gullible press corps, and the mainstream media had lapped up the bogus testimony like kittens over a tea saucer filled with milk.
And the righteously indignant press corps filled front pages and talk shows with defiant and fiery invective about remaking the media, and rediscovering the truth. Or not.
Once upon a time in an America that never really existed, some of the most respected members of our community were doctors and lawyers. They were professionals to be envied and trusted. To be emulated. These were careers to aspire to.
But as Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday, one of our country's most brilliant lawyers, John Yoo, is also one of our country's most diabolical. He used legal language and argument to justify torture, and to circumvent the power of the constitution. Greenwald concludes that Yoo is one of several war criminals in the Bush administration, and should be treated as such.
Perhaps more shocking to me are doctors who allow themselves to be drawn into the process of torture. I heard it again in the interview with Murat Kurnaz on 60 Minutes. Kurnaz recalled how he was strung from the ceiling, and when he seemed to be failing, a doctor came in, examined him, and declared he was fit for more torture. Who are these doctors? How do they justify their actions? Didn't we all grow up with the horror of torture and cruel experimentation by German doctors in Nazi death camps? And yet they still exist.
Should these torture doctors and lawyers ever be able to practice in the United States again. Would you want them treating or representing you?
They are the real monsters who make the ogres and beasts of fairy tales pale in comparison.
The Bush administration has run on the fuel of fear, and the Republicans have been pumping the high octane combustibles. But it isn't horsepower, it's horseshit.
My vote's for sale, sort of. As Glenn Greenwald points out today, the FISA fight is imminent, most Democrats are cowering (they're afraid of being called cowards, and in the process are demonstrating their cowardice), and Chris Dodd is preparing for a filibuster.
Greenwald points out that there will be web campaigns launched this week to help convince the top three Democratic presidential contenders to vocally and publicly support Dodd in his fight against FISA as it's being brought to the floor by Harry Reid.
So, whoever puts some public face time in the fight against FISA will get my support in the primary. Otherwise, it'll be voting my heart for Dennis Kucinich.
God bless Glenn Greenwald for making me see good in the feckless Democratic congress.
They love Jesus and Christmas, even if Jesus wouldn't much care for the dirty little war they're funding. I think these are the same folks who are skeptical of the fact that Mormon's believe that the Garden of Eden is in Missouri, and that Joseph Smith was talking to angels about a century and a half ago. These are the folks who believe that an angel poured the seed of Jesus into his mother Mary's ear.
I think Jesus had a lot of great ideas, but there's no way he walked on water, is there?
If you have a few moments of leisure to do some heavy reading in what's left of this Thanksgiving weekend, read the marvelous Glenn Greenwald's dissection of Joe Klein's serious lies and inaccuracies about FISA in this week's issue of Time.
Greenwald further extrapolates about the abysmal condition of in-the-beltway reporting.
Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, provides even more evidence of a complicitly lazy Klein.
Yesterday I put blame for the confirmation of Attorney General nominee directly at the feet of Senators Schumer and Feinstein. After reading Glenn Greenwald's astonishing analysis of the lack of filibuster on the vote, I'm more convinced than ever that, as Ralph Nader said when he made his run for President, "there's not a dime's worth of difference" between the parties. It's obviously about power, politics, incumbency and doing what they damn-well please.
If you don't believe it, listen to this debate between liberal radio show host Ed Sculzt and Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman about the way in which Democratic leadership (Nancy Pelosi) blocked Dennis Kuchinich's resolution to impeach Dick Cheney.
Glenn Greenwald (how does this man research and write as many columns a week as he does?), resurrects Robert Kennedy to demonstrate why the FISA bill should not provide retroactive immunity to the telecoms.
So rumors have it that Rupert Murdoch has his sites set on the New York Times. I encourage you to listen to Billy Bragg's "It Says Here," a song he wrote in the eighties about Murdoch's media monopoly in Britain. It has spread here in a way that's as devastating as mad cow disease.
So, perhaps the Great Gray Lady, will be tarted up with some rouge and new shoes. Pimp my paper, Rupert.
But the Lady has already stooped to conquer during the Bush administration, with Judith Miller's pandering stories about WMD's, and a tendency, until recently, to accept White House press releases as if they contained even a grain of truth.
So when, a few weeks back, I read a Sunday Op-Ed by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack that suggested the United States could actually "win" the war in Iraq, I had a moment of pause. Soon enough, the lefty blogs began to discredit O'Hanlon and Pollack's claims, but not before the mainstream media began to extol the wonderous progress being made in Iraq, as proclaimed by the Op-Ed. All of this was further driven, inexpicably given his lace of credibility, by claims from Dick Cheney that even the Times saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
