Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and Dick Cheney
August 26, 2009 27 Comments
reductio ad absurdum
This is just nonsense. I swear, as hapless as the Democrats may be, every time John Boehner opens his mouth I realize just how much more pathetic the Republicans are. In the midst of a torture scandal, the minority leader thinks it’s wise to push Nancy Pelosi to “present evidence” that she was mislead or, failing that, to apologize. This is obviously an exercise in distraction and illusion, but Boehner is no illusionist, and his sleight of hand will either backfire or fizzle out – just like all his preceding theatrics have. Via the Washington Post:
“Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime,” Boehner said yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And if the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they can be prosecuted.”
He added: “And if that’s not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world.”
Now, does this also apply to George W. Bush and the rest of the Bush administration who routinely lied about torture being used (among other things) because if that’s the case then I’m in total agreement. It’s a crime. Let’s lock up Pelosi and Cheney and Rummy and Yoo and whoever else is behind all this lying. Probably Boehner, too come to think of it. Let’s lock up the CIA officials and the military leaders involved. This is the logical outcome of what Boehner is suggesting, after all, with all this talk of “lying or misleading the Congress” and “presenting evidence.”
Perhaps we should just limit our truth commissions to determining whether or not Pelosi lied. To hell with all this trivial “torture” nonsense. The real question is whether or not she was mislead by the CIA.
I like this apologizing idea, though. Boehner’s on to something there.
Watching Dick Cheney stand before a camera and apologize for his role in starting two senseless wars, in undermining American honor by master-minding widespread torture, and for abusing the trust and responsibility given to him by the American people – it might almost be justice. It would certainly feel like justice.
I think the theatrics of all of this is just starting to wear thin. I am starting to grow cynical in my old age, or old in my young age. Something like that.
May 18, 2009 16 Comments
all the president’s spies
John Judis would like to have more discussion about the possibility of ditching the CIA, or at the very least completely restructuring it:
The question that Congress might ponder, but won’t, is whether the structure of our foreign policy apparatus – the power and responsibility vested in a secret branch of government – invites abuse. That was the position of the late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan who argued for abolishing the CIA. He didn’t want to eliminate intelligence, but he wanted to return it to the purview of the State Department, while giving the armed forces the responsibility for overseas intervention.
The CIA, of course, was born after World War II, when the sudden lack of a real war rendered the OSS irrelevant. President Truman was reluctant to charter an intelligence agency to replace it, so former members of the OSS started what was essentially a private spy agency and then – for lack of a better word – forced their way into government. From that point on, clandestine operations have been largely out of the hands of the State and War Departments, and certainly out of the control of Congress. [Read more →]
April 25, 2009 13 Comments
Taking the Wrong Approach
The pro-waterboarding side’s real argument isn’t that waterboarding, etc., aren’t torture, which I think is a clearly losing argument that frankly disturbs the hell out of me. By making that argument, they implicitly concede that whether it is “effective” is meaningless.
Similarly, the focus of the anti-waterboarding, etc. arguments is also too much on the morality issue. I say this not because the argument is wrong, but because it’s so clearly right. By even arguing it, we give the belief that it may be something less than torture more credibility than it deserves, thereby marginally increasing the possibility that it will become acceptable in even situations where thousands of lives are not potentially at stake.
The trouble is that for the vast majority of people, the issue isn’t whether torture is moral or immoral, but whether the results it provides warrant the breach of morality. For some of us (and I include myself in that group), the morality breach is never or almost never worth it. But that’s just not going to be the case for the vast majority of people in just about any nation. Similarly, for some small number of people, there just is no morality issue at all.
But most people in a free society are far more concerned about their personal morality and decisionmaking than they are about their government’s morality. This is as it perhaps should be – what good is having a moral government if all of its citizens are robbing and looting, murdering and beating? And of course, a huge part of being a moral person is taking care of one’s family. This means that relatively few people have the time or the interest to concern themselves much with the morality of their government, at least as long as their government is dealing with them and the people they know in a relatively moral fashion.
April 23, 2009 33 Comments
