President Obama Vs DNI Dennis Blair

post from TalkLeft on 21 April 2009 05:18:00 PM. © TalkLeft

Sandy Levinson noted that President Obama said to the CIA yesterday that:

What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so....

However, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said upon the release of the torture memos:

Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Blair seems to contradict President Obama in my view. This dissonance from the Obama Administration, particularly from people like Blair, Panetta and Brennan, makes it difficult to imagine a true repudiation of torture by the United States.

On how to "uphold our values," Levinson observed:

I dearly hope [Obama] means it, but I must say I'm not optimistic. "Upholding our values" means that people are truly held accountable, and the Administration seems extraordinarily reluctant to do that. As it happens, I am ambivalent about criminal prosecution, as much as I would love to s[ee] a number of high-level Bushies go to prison. But I have come to the conclusion that the better response would be a blanket amnesty followed by the setting up of a high-powered "truth commission," with full-scale subpoena power, that would force everyone to testify, under oath, about the gestation of the policy, its implementation, and, very importantly, the known consequences.

I do not disagree. I am skeptical that the impeachment of Jay Bybee and a few prosecutions will really signal bringing to account the idea of the United States as a torturing state. After all, the prosecution of Lyndie England did nothing in terms of bringing the US to account for Abu Ghraib.

I am strongly of the view that only a Truth Commission that looks at how torture came to be the policy of the United States will be effective in bringing accountability to the United States for its torture policies.

Speaking for me only

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Geithner: Hard To Value Bank Assets. Just Like
Krugman Said!

post from Crooks and Liars on 21 April 2009 05:15:42 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Uh, isn't this what Krugman and Stieglitz have been saying? It's why the two Nobel prize winners have been urging Obama to nationalize the banks:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday said difficulty in setting a value on banks' toxic assets was a continuing hindrance to their ability to lend and borrow.
In prepared testimony for delivery to the Congressional Oversight Panel that monitors Treasury's efforts to bail out troubled banks, Geithner said toxic assets were "congesting" the U.S. financial system and making it hard to get credit flowing normally again.
"Uncertainty about the value of legacy assets is constraining the ability of financial institutions to raise private capital," he said, adding that he hoped a public-private investment program will improve the ability to put a price on troubled mortgage and other assets.

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Lost in Hannity's "liberal translation": the full
context of Axelrod's "unhealthy" comment

post from Media Matters for America on 21 April 2009 05:13:24 PM. © Media Matters for America

On the April 20edition of his Fox News program, Sean Hannity misleadingly aired a croppedportion of an exchange between White House adviser David Axelrod and Face the Nation guest host Harry Smith andclaimed that Axelrod "had, well, some interesting commentary about thetea parties that took place this weekend and last week." But Hannity did not provide the question to which Axelrod wasresponding, which was about both tea parties and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's (R) remarks regarding secession.During[...]

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Nerdarian Rhapsody

post from Jesus' General on 21 April 2009 05:10:00 PM. © Jesus' General

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Media quote Cheney on torture memos without
noting his role in matter

post from Media Matters for America on 21 April 2009 05:08:04 PM. © Media Matters for America

Media outlets have highlighted former Vice President DickCheney's April 20 interview on Fox News' Hannity,in which he criticized President Obama over the release of four previously classifiedJustice Department memos that hadauthorized the CIA's use of several harsh interrogation techniques, without notingCheney's self-acknowledgedrole in authorizing the use of techniques described in the memos. For instance,The New York Times reported in an April 21 article that"[s]ome Bush administration[...]

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James Inhofe Challenges Judicial Nominee Fearing
He is Secret Muslim

post from Firedoglake on 21 April 2009 05:04:43 PM. © Firedoglake

Inhofe is threatening to filibuster the nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit for being too logical.[...]

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"Harsh" is the Most Popular Sickening and Morally
Bankrupt Cliché Expression Going

post from The Francis L. Holland Blog on 21 April 2009 05:02:00 PM. © The Francis L. Holland Blog

The hottest cliché word in politics and journalism now is "harsh", as in "harshest interrogation methods,". Look up the phrase "harsh interrogation" and you'll find it 247,000 times at Google. This usage makes my stomach turn. When one college student calls another an idiot, a third will admonish the name-caller by saying, "that's harsh". Harsh
Over the last two days, the Washington Post used the word "harsh" here and here and here and here and here and here and here to describe torture. Unlike torture itself, the mealy-mouthed adjective "harsh" quickly loses its bite when used over and over again, as if it were the only possible adjective for torture. Meanwhile, adjectives like relatively objective adjectives like "violent", "disgusting" and "vile" are disfavored, and mostly nowhere to be found. So, when did the Washington Post decide that the word "harsh" was the most "harsh" adjective that would be applied with respect to torture methods? Harsh and torture are both oxymoronic and redundant, since all torture is, by definition, much more than harsh and at the same time torture must be more than "harsh" or it probably doesn't constitute torture.
Harsh is a word used to describe verbal assaults, while "abusive" is the word used when the assaults go beyond being merely "harsh." So, if mere words can go far beyond merely "harsh" and be emotionally abusive, certainly torture starts out somewhere beyond "harsh" and quickly becomes "outrageously abusive" and "unthinkably cruel". "Harsh" doesn't cut it as an adjective where torture is concerned.

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"Harsh" is is a Repugnant Word to Use to Describe
Torture

post from The Francis L. Holland Blog on 21 April 2009 05:02:00 PM. © The Francis L. Holland Blog

The most disgusting and omnipresent cliché in journalism right now is "harsh" as a word to describe "torture, as in "harsh interrogation" (WaPost) and "harsh methods" (NYT). Look up the phrase "harsh interrogation" and you'll find it 247,000 times at Google. Look up "harsh methods" at Google, and you'll discover that virtually all of the most salient hits are about the George W. Bush torture program. In fact, over the last two days, the Washington Post used the word "harsh" here and here and here and here and here and here and here to describe torture, using the word in EVERY RECENT ARTICLE.
This euphemistic usage of the word "harsh" makes my stomach turn, when the word is applied to torture. "Harsh", by definition, is simply too mild a word. Merriam Websters Online Dictionary defines "harsh" as (1) "difficult to indure" and (2) "disagreeable to one's aesthetic or artistic sense, e.g. "the harsh lighting in the cafeteria makes the food look slightly off-color."

Torture, on the other hand, is the intentional effort to make pain impossible to endure, not merely "difficult". There is a significant difference between "difficult" and "impossible", and that's why the WaPost and others should stop enabling torture by referring to it as merely "harsh". It's like saying "harsh murder" or "harsh rape". ALL rape and murder is at least harsh, so the word is meaningless when used in that context. And all rape and murder is vastly worse than "harsh", and so the word invariably minimizes the violence of the acts.
When one college student calls another an "idiot", verbally insulting someone, a third will admonish the name-caller by saying, "that's harsh".
So, to describe torture with an adjective that means often means only "disagreeable to one's aesthetic or artistic sense" is a linguistic usage that is itself an obscene, foul and offensive use of the English language. It clearly minimizes the torture itself and makes people who use the word complicit with those who would justify and condone torture. Why not torture if it is merely unpleasant in an "aesthetic" way, and unpleasing and "disagreeable" to the "artistic sense"?
I smell a conspiracy. Did the minions of George W. Bush go to the news media and warn them that describing torture as more than "harsh" would threaten the success of the "War on Terror"?It sure seems like it, since only the intensity of the pain inflicted is minimized in the press.
One would think that simple concern for good writing would make journalists seek out other adjectives, if only to avoid being so repetitive and seeming as though their vocabularies start and stop with the letter "H". Unlike torture itself, when used repeatedly and relentlessly the mealy-mouthed adjective "harsh" quickly loses its bite, whatever mild mustard bite it had in the first place. Meanwhile, relatively objective adjectives to describe torture, like "violent", "disgusting" and "vile" are disfavored, and mostly nowhere to be found. How about "insufferrable". How about "repugnant"?
Those seem like far more appropriate adjectives for torture, since the very purpose of torture is to inflict suffering that is unendurable. So, how about "unendurable"? And if the purpose in using the term "harsh" is to avoid value judgments, then why not call torture "very painful". Is there any torture that is not very painful?
When did the Washington Post and the New York Times decide that the word "harsh" was the most "harsh" adjective that would be applied to torture methods? "Harsh" and "torture", when used together, oxymoronic and redundant. All torture is, by definition, much more than harsh, and at the same time torture must be more than "harsh" or it probably doesn't constitute torture.
Harsh is a word used to describe verbal assaults, while "abusive" is the word used when verbal assaults go beyond being merely "harsh." So, if mere words go far beyond merely "harsh" then certainly torture starts out somewhere far beyond "harsh" and quickly becomes "outrageously abusive" and "unthinkably cruel". "Harsh" simply doesn't cut it as an adjective where torture is concerned. Stop using it.

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Accountability and the Fear of Retribution

One of the main activities Open Left has been engaged in during its two years of existence is[...]

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White House Press Corps Badgers Gibbs On Torture
Stance

The White House press corps gave Robert Gibbs a hard time today about President Obama's comments this morning that left the door open to prosecutions of Bush officials for torture.

It's true that the president's comments go further than anything he'd said before, and could suggest that the White House is tacking this way and that on a crucial subject. That impression is strengthened by the fact that the White House has now had to walk back Rahm Emanuel's comments from Sunday that the Bushies wouldn't be prosecuted.

But the reporters' obsession with political process -- "Is this an example of this White House giving in to pressure from the left?" asked CNN"s Ed Henry -- seems particularly ill-suited to an issue of such grave importance.

Anyway, watch the video:

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