More Hysteria...

Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?

 

Tyler Durden, Fight Club

 

Andrew Sullivan continues with the hysterics:

The document reads, like so much else from the Cheney years, like a document from a South American  dictatorship in the 1970s or 1980s. If someone had told me a few years ago that it had popped up in the Soviet archives, I would have believed him. Read the whole thing if you can. It is a distressing document. Here's what the "CIA pros" did to prisoners (the non-CIA pros improvised the president's directive to torture and abuse prisoners in very similar ways): stress positions, nudity, hooding, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, long time standing, beatings, hypothermia, and walling. They key thing, according to the CIA, is to enhance "the potential dread a high-value detainee might have of US custody". Notice the shift from the standards of the past. In the past, the US was known for being a country whose soldiers would never mistreat prisoners; now, the US wants the world to know that US custody is something to be dreaded. That's what Cheney did to America. He's proud of it. If you are ever captured by a US soldier, and suspected of terrorism, you know that torture will be coming soon. The values of Washington and Eisenhower and Reagan are inverted. The reputation of the US as a defender of human rights is reversed. The point is that America must be feared for its willingness to abandon all human rights.

This is what the neocon right believe in, even as they prattle on about extending human rights as an American value.

And, evidently, the President of the United States, as well as his Attorney General, don't think such practices reach a threshold of human rights abuse to warrant the investigation of those ultimately responsible for these supposed violations.

So, Andrew, what you're reduced to now is Lear-like railing. You cannot have it both ways. If Bush and Cheney are criminals, then Obama and Holder are now criminally complicit for refusing to prosecute - or even investigate - them.

That's the way it works: It's either so grave an offense that you go all the way on prosecution, or it is no offense at all.

If you're willing to cut Obama "slack" for trying to equivocate his way out of having to take a clear-cut stand on this issue, then I can't get too worked up over all your thundering about the American Way of Torture and the evil neo-cons. If you're not serious about Bush and Cheney being in the dock, it's just piss in the wind.

You either go all the way, or you cave. 

Obama has. You have. Deal with it.

Comments

[PeterUK]

"stress positions, nudity, hooding, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, long time standing, beatings, hypothermia, and walling."

He could get all that in San Francisco - it would cost him though.

[DonnieDarko]

Dealing with it is not their strong point. Whining, ranting and hissy fits are. Oh yeah don't forget about wee wee'ing.

[Jim Ryan]

I think I'll spend the next ten years raving hysterically about this. It'll be a quick and easy way to gratify my deep yearning for moral seriousness.

[Dennis the Peasant]

Jim-

I'm gonna use that. Thanks.

[markg8]

Jim have you by chance been cheating the US government?

[markg8]

What happened to health care Dennis? It was your favorite hobby horse for weeks. I guess this is what happened to health care:

A new survey commissioned by the AARP asks respondents to what degree they support or oppose "[s]tarting a new federal health insurance plan that individuals could purchase if they can't afford private plans offered to them" -- a public option, in other words. The results are interesting, though not necessarily surprising to those who have been closely following the debate.

All: 79 percent favor/18 percent oppose
Dems: 89 percent favor/8 percent oppose
Repubs: 61 percent favor/33 percent oppose
Indies: 80 percent favor/16 percent oppose

Not only does a public option enjoy strong support (AARP finds 37 percent strongly supporting such a choice), it enjoys broad support -- a finding based not only in this new survey but also in SurveyUSA polling released last week. Indeed, a supermajority of even Republicans supports a federal program to provide individuals with a choice for their health insurance coverage, with just a third of the party membership opposing such a plan.

[Eric Blair]

If you believe a poll put out by AARP, I've got some land in Florida to sell you.

[just passin by]

this would be the same AARP that shut down a meeting on health care b/c the members didn't roll over for them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoMNDdQ1_h0