Writing Life

I find this new technology, or more accurately, it’s application, very disturbing. It glosses over the fact that what the mind believes is the truth might not necessarily be the truth. Research and evidence has shown for decades that people may truthfully believe something that didn’t happen. This happens all the time in witness testimony. It also doesn’t address what happens if the person is trying to be deceptive about what he/she believes.

If issues of guilt and innocence weren’t so important, I’d almost want to joke and reference the Monty Python witch detector from their Holy Grail movie. There, we see how easy it is to use machines and mental states to show that if a woman weighs as much as a duck, then she’ll float in water, … and thus she’s a witch. This new application of MRI technology is not much more scientific at the moment.

Equally disturbing is article writer Anand Giridharadas and his editors at the New York Times. The article’s second sentence says “Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete.” Yet again they perpetuate the Bush & McCain axiom that one must say “harsh interrogation methods” instead of saying torture. The author and the Times are so bold as to say that waterboarding is just a harsh method by linking it with the words “and other”. By continuing to not call it what it is, they do a disservice to their readers and are coconspirators, albeit not in the room, with the U.S. torturers themselves.

Guess who’s investigating the disappearance of the CIA’s torture tapes? The organization that videotaped its torture of captives (CIA) AND the organization headed by a Attorney General (Justice Department) who refused to answer during his confirmation hearings whether or not he thought a specific act of torture was really torture. Said act, waterboarding, had been considered torture by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Government since about the time of the Spanish American War, and has been called torture since the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

Now, these two groups, and the White House, are saying that Congress shouldn’t use its Constitutional oversight right to help investigate the potential illegal destruction of these videotapes as well as the acts shown on the tapes. The Attorney General say that such an investigation would politicize it. Does he realize his boss is doing just that, telling a court not to investigate? That the US tortured these people is without dispute. Even a former CIA interrogator said so, citing his own involvement in the crimes videotaped. That these tapes were destroyed even though a court order told the U.S. Government not to destroy such evidence, is also not in doubt.

So, a crime has been committed. The White House’s insistence that the courts ignore the situation is moot. Of import now is to remove the Attorney General, who’s boss is the White House, and the CIA, who tortured, taped, then destroyed those tapes, from leading the investigation. How can they investigate what they themselves have done? Let’s appoint a special prosecutor to independently assess the situation and bring charges where necessary.

Seems like the CIA and the intelligence community have been getting pretty smart lately. First, their new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) says that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.

Now, it appears the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations it conducted with suspects it’s held in connection with the war on terror. [Note that I say suspects not terrorists, because with this new disclosure and all the rest this Administration has done, including this, we don't even know who's who among those arrested and detained without charge for years.]

That smacks of destroying evidence. Especially since no videotaping is done anymore, and these are supposedly the only tapes ever made. [One wonders if any home video is floating around, like what happened with Abu Ghraib.] The CIA destroyed the tapes as public and congressional opinion was beginning to urge a review of interrogation practices of the Bush regime. The ostensible reason is that the tapes might be leaked or become public and reveal the identities of the interrogators. Come on people! I’m thinking they were more afraid of practices that they knew were torture being shown on those video tapes. That’s pretty hard evidence. And, as the mood of the country swings away from free-flowing torture (except for the Republican presidential candidates), it’s best to not have too much evidence around.

A Dutch delegation visited the U.S. prison in Cuba and then Washington had a confrontation with U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA 12), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee. Lantos, you might remember, recently derided fellow House members who spoke up for a Congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide. A genocide survivor himself, from the Holocaust, it seemed a very surprising stance at the time.

It appears he seems to like this spotlight. In response to the Dutch parliamentary delegation’s call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, Lantos complained that “Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.” Lantos then demanded the Dutch keep their NATA troops in Afghanistan. To bolster his stance, he spewed out a whoper:

“You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany.”

Oh yeah, that’ll tell ‘em Tom. That pretty much shut down any discussion. So much for our enlightened leader of Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. While alienating most of the delegation, Lantos found himself in close agreement with one of its members on the Guantanamo issue. Lantos hasn’t called for closing this stain on America’s international reputation. In this, he was joined by far right Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders:

“Let’s not forget we are in a state of war — not only the United States but also my country — with Islamic terrorists. I think we could only learn from Guantanamo.”

Nice company you’re keeping, Tom.

Seems that Attorney General nominee Michael B. Mukasey isn’t that far away ideologically from his predecessor Alberto Gonzales. First, he refuses to call waterboarding torture. Now, it appears he’s all for making presidents into kings, as long as there is a war going on, regardless of the legitimacy of such a war. In a report from the Washington Post on his testimony, it seems as if Mr. Mukasey thinks that the president can use his supposed powers as commander-in-chief to supersede U.S. law:

Under sharp questioning about the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Mukasey said there may be occasions when the president’s wartime powers would supersede legal requirements to obtain a warrant to conduct wiretaps.

But yesterday, he said this:

Mukasey also said the president cannot use his powers as commander in chief to override prohibitions against using torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading conduct in the interrogation of prisoners.

Do these two points of view contradict each other? It seems that he’s hedging the second one, since the President and his cohorts have already said that by definition, anything the US does isn’t torture since the US doesn’t torture. I used to get in trouble in high school geometry class when I tried to prove things using such tautological arguments. No one seems to be scolding the cronies in charge, at least not yet.

Words are hard to find to describe the depth of disgust and utter disbelief I have in what George W. Bush has done to our country, our Government, and our reputation int he world. All for personal political gain and ideological purity. Any who try to defend Mr. Bush need to sit down and read through this article in tomorrow’s New York Times. It discusses the history of CIA interrogations and how they were secreted away and justified by political appointees who passed loyalty oaths to George W. Bush, not to the almost sacred Office of the President of the United States. George W. Bush has brough shame on the office, more than any other president in our nation’s long history.

You’d think that this Administration and its criminal appointees would get it, wouldn’t you? Seems the CIA Director, General Michael Hayden, believes that secretly arresting, detaining and moving about the world individuals is something that we should just shut up about and trust our government. They’re dangerous terrorists, warns the General. He conveniently leaves out the fact that a few of the folks who’ve lived long enough to get out of this secret American gulag system were actually innocent? Sometimes sold out by countrymen who thought they’d make a quick buck off an American eager to “nab himself a terrorist.”

Almost 800 years since the Magna Carta and over 200 years since the founding of America, this President and his appointees want to throw out all our freedoms based on their trust. As Ben Franklin said, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” You all remember Ben Franklin, don’t you? One of the Founding Fathers? You remember the Founding Fathers, right? Bush and his cronies always extol the Founding Fathers words as sacrosanct. I guess it’s only if the words fit an Orwellian Newspeak?

See Andrew Sullivan’s post about Fox New’s segment on waterboarding, where they pathetically attempt to show how wonderfully efficient this form of torture is as well as illustrating the fleeting impact and lack of long-term effects this technique has on its victims. This is the most disgusting piece of faux journalism I have ever seen and I thoroughly wish only the worst for Fox News and its minions of evil.