Cheney’s doomed, quixotic effort to salvage something from the jaws of remorseless historical judgment is actually quite fun. For the first week or two, Movement Kool Aiders we knew reflexively fell into place, saying it takes a tough chicken to tenderize a man. Guffaws were absorbed as positive baleful energy, signs of oppression by the vast MSM conspiracy.
By this weekend even the Dead Enders saw that Dick was on as senseless a kamikaze run as the Yamato steaming to Okinawa with fuel for a one way trip. When the Swine Flu polls higher than your most visible political spokesperson defending torture, some re-think is in order. How fitting the Agency denied Cheney’s request for declassification of post facto CYA memo. In ruins, its reputation destroyed forever, thousands of careers ended in despair and bitterness, the building using the name CIA gets one small revenge. Good on them.
My Right Wing Nut friends are still are hot and bothered by Pelosi and the briefing flap. We could care little either way and that somehow is an even more venal sin in their eyes. Indifference? Pelosi’s various stories strain credulity — although one should never underestimate the mendacity of briefers, especially under the Old Regime. If Pelosi, Rockefeller and other collaborationists pay a price for their compromise with anti-liberal democratic socialist authoritarianism, so be it. Pour encourager les autres.
We are also pleased that the Administration is withholding the military photos. Now is not the time for their release. Our decayed political process no longer has the means or maturity to hold multiple concepts distinct while working towards a constructive political outcome. We are far too decadent now. The torture issue is of paramount importance. Let Eric Holder conduct a factually intensive review. (Congress will sputter and posture regardless but in its current Congress of Peoples’ Deputies decline largely useless). Holder’s work will serve the basis for future war crimes indictments either by a U.S. or extra-territorial entity.
We can turn to military photos in due course. The Army just had a 4 star defenestrated. Some of its major Christmas toys aren’t gonna come. As an institution it’s near the human capital depletion point. Get Cheney et al. in the bag. We should, as the old saying goes, ‘keep our eyes on the prize’.
Comment says
JP Stevens embracing the rightist Oxfordian ethos causes confusion on the right:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0428bp.html
Comment says
Jesse on point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9yfMdNC6cQ&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejahDWoYk2A&feature=player_embedded
Comment says
Pelosi will probably expand on this:
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/14/senator-says-cia-made-up-dates-of-torture-briefings-then-admitted-it/
Comment says
re the photos – we too are glad he did not release them – We think they will probably be released at some point in SCOTUS or whatever.
The irony is that releasing the photos would just embolden the chickenhawks and the enemies of US soldiers overseas – They would end up showing those who followed illegal orders and not those who gave the illegal orders – The irony being that it would replicate the Abu Ghraib situation where the Liddy Englanders and the Graners took the fall for the Yoo and Haynes and Bybee and Addington.
In addition – by leaving them up to the imagination, the political potency is stronger and helps to focus the attention on where blame lies, ie Bush and Cheney et al.
We admit that our emotional response is the opposite – just to spite the ogres in the MSM who want to sweep the whole mess under the rug – ie the elites at WaPo like Ignatius etc have a vested interest in upholding the perogatives of the Imperial mindset. But that’s just an emotional reaction.
The war criminals will have their comeuppance at some point in the future when they are dislodged from the natural alliance with the cultural warriors etc.
Comment says
We just heard the GOP wants to adopt some demented resolution promising the call the Dems the Democrat [sic] Socialist Party or some such and they contextualize it by comparing it via Reagan to the USSR –
So after embracing a communist torture ethos – here’s another example of the right morally equivalencing themselves toward what they were supposed to hate — The cliche is there, but it’s really too much to say they have become what tthey hate, because they are really just downing themselves in their own infantilism.
True – Rush the entertainer is their real intellectual leader – That’s why they have to apologize to him all the time.
If they keep this up – with the ones who know better like Mitt et al sounding like jackasses, then they really
will become a 25 percent party
Comment says
From the NYT webpage:
“David Brooks and Gail Collins long for the end to the squabbling over who did what when in the “war on terror.” ”
Yeah – you betcha. Those bipartisan losers would rather
offer up piffle about Michelle Obamas arms or Cheney’s smirk or the surprising goodness of food at Chilis and the portents of that.
Comment says
re Pelosi’s various stories – we agree, but we think that’s both the problem and her ultimate excuse.
Pelosi often seems absorbed in her own small-bore world and it probably never occured to her to probe some
vagueries that were presented.
We think she was briefed in a vague way – with lots of words that had double meanings or contradictory meanings and she did not really delve – Rockefeller, the same.
Both hid behind the classification excuse so as not to have to claim to be worried about being accused of weakness from the pundit class ethos – But they
probably did not think it thru, like Harmon with
her Nixonian CYA memos claiming to object to torture.
But it’s sort of like the Brits pretending to be upset that the US wants to cover up torture evidence in the UK by threatning Intel co-operation. When likely the Brits are using this as cover for their own weak complicity in the torture of their own people and everyone is playing along.
What we’re seeing in Pelosi is a breakdown in the see-no-evil good/cop bad cop roles that were assigned. Pelosi is gonna be forced to clear herself by implicating others – in doing so, she will accidentally commit good politics by forcing the uglies in the gop to keep talking sadism on tV.