Apparently, it’s not enough for us to make deals with Gaddafi to kidnap and torture people, we’re tuning people over to the Afghans to torture too!!!
And so this utterly pointless, utterly amoral war continues. We have no exit strategy, no reliable government, no reliable police and army, and we’re complicit yet again in torture.
Gorilla says: “It a clown like Petraeus can leave the place, why can’t America?”
In addition to the war criminal Dick Cheney, there’s the charter plane industry…
Let’s never forget how amoral, cowardly, rapacious and evil the Bush Administration was.
Gorilla says: “And for all we know, it’s still profitable today!”
Yes, British soldiers tortured people in Iraq, but it’s not a systemic failure, it’s just a few bad apples who got out of hand!
Sound familiar?
What never happens as a result of these inquiries is any sort of punishment at any level further up the chain of command.
Heaven forbid we actually held the generals accountable for the failings of their troops!!!
Gorilla says: “Or their bankers, who also got away scot free!!!”
The Chamber of Commerce is indeed a stupid organization, chock full of Know Nothings, so what’s their next move?
Hire the former Attorney General to lobby to overturn anti-bribery legislation!!!
Now a morally bankrupt clown like Mukasey, like the morally bankrupt clown he succeeded, is certainly a man who believes in torture.
He’s also a man who apparently believes in bribery and corruption!!!
Gorilla says: “If only the Chamber of Commerce had bribed the Taliban, bin Laden, and Saddam, imagine the money we’d have saved!!!”
Torture is fine, so long as it’s a secret.
After all, the British courts won’t be intimidated by the efforts of the British government and security services to explain away and/or cover up their involvement in torture.
It’s a victory for the rule of law, as the article makes clear:
In a remarkable sequence of events, appeal court judges considering the case of Mohamed, who claims he was tortured, reinstated their findings about the security services, stating that some officials “appear to have a dubious record when it comes to human rights and coercive techniques”.
When will we see such clarity with respect to our own government’s involvement in torture, rather than the free passes and outright cover ups perpetrated by two successive Administrations?
Gorilla answers: “When the waterboard freezes over!”
A disgruntled idiot in Texas (a state full of disgruntled idiots) engaged in an act of domestic terrorism last week, flying a plane into a building in Austin.
And this terrorist’s daughter says he’s a hero, not for having murdered an innocent person, which apparently was inappropriate and wrong, even according to her psychosis, but for having fought “injustice” committed by the government.
Irony of ironies, the terrorist’s daughter now lives in Norway, because she lost her job and health care there is better!
Let’s be clear: had he survived the attack and been anything other than a white Christian, our political leaders would want him tortured (see: the Christmas underwear bomber).
Gorilla says: “Unless we condemn all acts of terrorism, regardless of race, color, or creed, and all acts of torture, whether committed by our own or other governments, we are no better than and just as deranged as the nut jobs who attack us”.
Summarizing the MI5 chief’s rationale:
So, we looked the other way, but we don’t collude in torture, but we don’t torture, but we did try to cover it up, but now it’s come out, but the courts are in league with al-Qaeda, but the Yanks might not let us know we’re about to be attacked, but we could have moved faster, but we don’t, but we don’t encourage these things, but we do…
Gorilla says: “Put aside Hannah Arendt, let’s talk about the banality of confusion!”
But the gist of the ruling, ordering the government to detail the torture, remains:
The government launched a successful last-minute bid to persuade the court of appeal to erase the most damning details of MI5′s complicity in torture from its decision in the Binyam Mohamed case – but has been unable to suppress a letter that details some of the contents of the original draft ruling.
On Monday, Jonathan Sumption QC wrote to the court warning that the paragraph in question was “likely to receive more public attention than any other parts of the judgments”.
This, Sumption pointed out, was because the paragraph would state that MI5 did not operate in a culture that respected human rights or renounced “coercive interrogation techniques”.
The letter also reveals that the judgment, before being rewritten, said this was particularly true of the MI5 officer known as Witness B who gave evidence in the case – and that this man’s conduct was characteristic of MI5 as a whole.
Furthermore, the letter shows, the judges originally ruled that MI5 officers had “deliberately misled” the Intelligence and Security Committee, the body of MPs and peers supposed to oversee its work, on the question of coercive interrogations, and that this “culture of suppression” reflected its dealings with the committee, the foreign secretary and the court.
Finally, the letter makes clear that the court ruled MI5′s culture of suppression “penetrates the service to such a degree” that it undermines any government assurance based upon information that comes from MI5 itself.
Gorilla says: “We’re still waiting here for the same or better justice!”
These were the events that mattered this week:
*Ted Kennedy died. A great American and a great Senator. Gorilla thinks his kind of liberalism seems as dead as can be in the world of Movingforwardville.
*Lots more talking about Middle East Peace. Gorilla thinks the odds of a serious peace process are about as remote and as good as they’ve been in the past 60 years.
*No real seriousness about health care reform. The crazies still rule the roost and the President doesn’t want to take on vested interests. Gorilla says we’ll get very little more than window dressing passed this year.
*Afghanistan continues to spiral downwards. There’s plenty of recognition that our policy isn’t working, but very little realism about what we can do to make things work. Gorilla believes we’ll be surging to withdrawl within 18 months.
*Goingbackwardville keeps getting in the President’s way. CIA torture, ever larger banks gaining ever freer passes to moral hazard, and rewarding the failures of Ben Bernanke et. al. with another term: Gorilla wonders when if ever we’ll decide that stupidity isn’t the first and only policy option.
*The dollar carry trade is the next bubble in international finance. We’ve become the new Japan, with the same old insolvent banks. Gorilla guesses this means we are the old Japan, with the same old insolvent banks.
