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You are here: Home / Politics / Torture / She moves in mysterious ways

She moves in mysterious ways

by DougJ|  April 20, 200912:15 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: Torture, Assholes

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Sully catches Nooners waxing philosophic about torture:

“Some things in life need to be mysterious … Sometimes you need to just keep walking.”

The following is disturbing and I won’t want to include it in this post, but it’s been rattling around in my head apropos of torture after reading a bit of a Wells Tower short story about an unprovoked Viking assault on nearby island. I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to face the fact that we are the kind of society that now condones this sort of thing (to some extent, the story may be a metaphor for the Iraq war). Edit: I took out the graphic description from the story. You can read it at the link.

I find all of this terrible to think about, but to just “keep walking” is barbarism.

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Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker

    April 20, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    So, the drill here is to keep ratcheting up the rhetoric until ….what?

    What’s the end game here? You are seriously going to draw a comparison between a Viking attack which pulls a man’s lungs out while he lives, to something represented in the recently released torture memos?

    Seriously? Even for a master troll like yourself, I think this is called Jumping the Shark.

    What’s next, a video of you gouging your eyes out?

    Jesus.

    Not my yard man.

  2. 2.

    KG

    April 20, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    To his credit, Jonah Goldberg finally admitted that it was torture. Of course, it took the revelation of it happening 183 to one man in one month for it reach torture. And of course, he adds the obligatory updates including reader emails saying it couldn’t be that bad if it happened that much.

    I made the mistake this morning, on my way to jury duty, of flipping over to the talk stations on Sirius. Listened to some jackass named Mike Church on the conservative station. The leaps of logic were so great that I’m surprised he didn’t get the bends.

  3. 3.

    BDeevDad

    April 20, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    to just “keep walking” is barbarism.

    It’s also cowardice in that the person walking does not take a side and probably just wants to be ignorant.

  4. 4.

    DougJ

    April 20, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    What’s the end game here? You are seriously going to draw a comparison between a Viking attack which pulls a man’s lungs out while he lives, to something represented in the recently released torture memos?

    Yes.

    I’m sorry, but I think if we don’t face what has gone on, then we lose some of our humanity. I find that more important than catering to your every single whim.

  5. 5.

    DougJ

    April 20, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    And by the way, my point is not that I think Obama should prosecute people, it’s that for people like Nooner to say “just walk away” is disgusting.

  6. 6.

    mellowjohn

    April 20, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    c’mon, ya gotta cut nooner some slack: she went a whole roundtable session on this week without once invoking ronald reagan’s name.

  7. 7.

    Napoleon

    April 20, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    The Washington “elite” is completely corrupted.

  8. 8.

    anonymous

    April 20, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    DougJ wrote,

    I’m sorry, but I think if we don’t face what has gone on, then we lose some of your humanity.

    I don’t disagree with your take on torture, but I don’t understand why everyone focuses so much on it.

    In strictly utilitarian terms, the criminal invasion of Iraq was orders of magnitude worse than the torture.

  9. 9.

    MikeJ

    April 20, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    I prefer to keep swimming on by, just me and the magic dolphins. Of course the magic dolphins are now doing anti-piracy patrols for the chinese.

  10. 10.

    Face

    April 20, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    I believe “keep walking” is a euphanism of “ignore clear, obvious, and wanton illegalities and war crimes”.

    But y’all already knew that.

  11. 11.

    John PM

    April 20, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    I love the title of this post; two other songs come to mind that also seem appropriate:

    “Look away, baby, look away”

    “The boots are made for walking”: These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over your exposed genitals.”

    P.S. – As more information continues to come out about the crap that the Bush Administration did in 8 years, I hope this gives people pause who keep calling for Obama to do something. Clearly, there are many things that need to be done and only so many hours in the day. If I were in Obama’s position I do not know if I would be able to get out of bed in the morning.

  12. 12.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    April 20, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    God, I wish I hadn’t retired Ectheow the Geat.

    That blog persona was born for this post.

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    April 20, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    Nooners is just doing what she’s told. Keep spreading the meme that there’s nothing to see here. This is the official Village consensus.
    She has neither contemplated what the means, nor does she want to. Just does what she’s told and moves on to the next inane talking point she can wax mysteriously about.

  14. 14.

    Singularity

    April 20, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    The Blood Eagle. Lovely. But not particularly any more barbaric than torturing a man’s teenage son in front of him, which is something we did at Abu Ghraib. Not any more barbaric than beating a man to death and then taking “humorous” candid stills with the corpse, which is also something we did at Abu Ghraib. Just to take something from the Bybee memos, trapping a man in a box with something he fears more than anything in the world is straight out of 1984. Fuck, we’re all going to Hell.

  15. 15.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    DougJ, I’ve a request to make of you.

    Next time, would you mind just giving a summary and leave the obscene and graphic matter for those who are interested in clicking through the link?

    My delicate sensibilities thank you in advance for your consideration of this matter.

  16. 16.

    DougJ

    April 20, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    Next time, would you mind just giving a summary and leave the obscene and graphic matter for those who are interested in clicking through the link.

    I’ll make it a click through. I originally thought to do that, then decided that would be gutless.

  17. 17.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    The Norse, now they knew how to torture, and they did it just for kicks! Of course after a hundred-some-odd trips to the water board one has to wonder if one of the Bushmen wasn’t pumpin’ a chubby over it.

  18. 18.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    @passerby: You say graphic, I say realism.
    Keep it real DougJ.

  19. 19.

    srv

    April 20, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    Unfortunately, like most Catholics with a megaphone, Nooner is very selective about her morality.

  20. 20.

    HyperIon

    April 20, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    @John PM:

    Clearly, there are many things that need to be done and only so many hours in the day.</p

    Bullshit.
    If they are so fucking busy, why don’t Obama administration officials stop stating that they do not intend to prosecute ANYONE for the torture stuff.

  21. 21.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    @DougJ:

    Thanks.

    [It would have been “gutless” but not on your part.]

  22. 22.

    kay

    April 20, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    @KG:

    I think Goldberg probably read the memos. That’s why the 183 matters. The memo starts with some assumptions. One of them is that the techniques won’t be repeated a lot because they lose effectiveness with each repetition.

    The whole memo is predicated on that assumption.
    They didn’t even follow the law they made up. It was created to cover their ass, and then they broke it anyway.

  23. 23.

    HyperIon

    April 20, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    @DougJ:

    decided that would be gutless

    sounds like Bush Admin reasoning to me.

  24. 24.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    @Bootlegger:

    Realism? Yeah, people get vivisected everyday by American torturers. Uh huh.

  25. 25.

    jake 4 that 1

    April 20, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    Nothing new here. “Don’t talk about it!” has been the Bushophile mantra since Sept. 11th. Christ, it’s like attending a family reunion where everyone knows Uncle George is a drunk, sadistic bastard but they’d be horrified if you said anything when he starts knocking his wife around.

  26. 26.

    El Cid

    April 20, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    In the same way, young children believe that if they cover their own eyes, you can’t see them.

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    April 20, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    @jake 4 that 1: That’s because she probably deserves it.

  28. 28.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    April 20, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    Everyone is wondering where John Cole is so I’ve got an update. John found a companion for Tunch and him, a dude named Bruce. They’ve been inseparable now for days, exploring each other’s bodies and emotions in a tangled mess of arms, legs and lips. Tunch is very hungry. I’ll let John provide the rest of the details.

  29. 29.

    srv

    April 20, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Noonan on The Passion of Christ:

    … It is a moving film, and what it moves you to is tears, and thought. It doesn’t rouse, it seeps in and inspires introspection and consideration. It is the story of a Jew who was the Messiah; it is the story of his loving Jewish mother, his ardent Jewish followers, and his Jewish opponents, who saw him as heretical and dangerous.

    He is brutally put to death by non-Jewish Roman soldiers, who are portrayed as sadistic in a businesslike way, on the acquiescence of a tired, non-Jewish cynic who then sought to wash his hands of culpability. It is a film that leaves the viewer indicting not Jews and not Romans and not cynical bureaucrats. It leaves you indicting yourself: it leaves you wondering about what your part in that agonizing drama would have been back then, and what your part is today.

    We know what Noonan would do, she would walk away.

  30. 30.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    @El Cid:

    In the same way, young children believe that if they cover their own eyes, you can’t see them.

    All we need to see, and more, is in the torture memos. For those who need to see even more? well, I’m sure there are entire websites devoted to gore out there for you to visit.

    And didn’t we already understand that Noonan’s an idiot tool even before the memos were released.

  31. 31.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Prof. Cole,

    It was called the Blood Eagle because it made you look like you had bloody wings.

  32. 32.

    JK

    April 20, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Peggy Noonan is one of the most repulsive right wing pundits in the nutosphere. Her demeanor and personality are as nauseating as the nonsense she’s spewing.

    On tv, she pronounces every word with such reverence and awe it’s as if she believed her comments were being carved in marble.

    I’d love to see Noonan get a banana cream pie in the face.

  33. 33.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 20, 2009 at 1:04 pm

    Tunch is very hungry. I’ll let John provide the rest of the details.

    Oh noes! I think I know the answer. Tunch ate John. He did look unhappy with his diet.

  34. 34.

    MobiusKlein

    April 20, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    @anonymous:

    I don’t disagree with your take on torture, but I don’t understand why everyone focuses so much on it. In strictly utilitarian terms, the criminal invasion of Iraq was orders of magnitude worse than the torture.

    We focus on torture because it is a microcosm illustrating the same logic as the Iraq War, just written in smaller typeface. And stripped of any possible self defense argument. In the heat of battle, shots get fired and the wrong people die. In the torture room, there is no ambiguity. We have the torturer and the tortured. And now we have the memos from the top saying ‘it’s legal.’

    In the Iraq War, we have the notion of ‘You broke it, you fix it.’ telling us we can’t leave yet. With torture, there is 100% moral clarity for those still possessing a soul – but yet Noooners wants to just “keep walking”.

    Oh yea, and fuck Alan Dershowitz

  35. 35.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    @HyperIon: Um, because he never said that.

  36. 36.

    WereBear

    April 20, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    In strictly utilitarian terms, the criminal invasion of Iraq was orders of magnitude worse than the torture.

    For myself, I think it’s because war, however horrible, is still a legal enterprise in the world. We were conned into giving permission, but permission was given.

    Torture is just flat wrong.

    So wrong, in fact, that you might notice the wingers do not even attempt to justify it anymore. The new talking point is that what was done, wasn’t torture.

    This actually represents some progress.

    Obama is now saying nationalization of the banks will proceed if needed. Wasn’t he saying before that he wasn’t considering nationalization? Didn’t he get a hard time for saying this was not in the cards at the moment?

    So you see where I’m going with this here…

    Also, there can be psychological reasons for torture actually being worse.

    Remember that climber who got his arm stuck under a boulder and had to free himself in a dramatic, proactive way?

    Compare that to losing an arm through deliberate torture.

    There’s trauma and a missing limb in both cases. But the second case has far more trauma; having someone do something awful to you is far more interpersonal, and soul-shredding, than having the same damage occur through accident or disease.

  37. 37.

    Keith G

    April 20, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    @anonymous: You are so right.

    Maybe this is because it is easier to envision holding a smaller number of torturers accountable than the much larger number of “invasion leaders” and their enablers.

    Also it is easier to envision, and therefore personalize, crimes committed against an individual as opposed to crimes against an entire society.

  38. 38.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    @passerby: My point, to those with the density of a black hole, is that we shouldn’t forget or try to mitigate the experience of torture.

  39. 39.

    Cat Lady

    April 20, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Catholics have a screwed up relationship with torture. Their most sacred image is one of torture. The Inquisition, the papal ambiguity about holocaust denialism, the forced conversions of native populations, it all requires that the faithful walk by and look away. It seems to all be of apiece.

    I did not see the Passion of the Christ, but I saw The Fixer at a very impressionable age, and recommend that for Jewish torture apologists.

  40. 40.

    Corner Stone

    April 20, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    @JK:

    On tv, she pronounces every word with such reverence and awe it’s as if she believed her comments were being carved in marble.

    That’s her stand in for gravitas. She fully believes that if she sounds important ( a la George Will) then she *is* important and intellectual.

  41. 41.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    Off Topic:

    The Rage of the 1%

    The attitude of 1 AIG exec regarding the bonuses:

    “No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?” e-mails an irate Citigroup executive to a colleague.

    How do you deal with people like this?

  42. 42.

    DougJ

    April 20, 2009 at 1:12 pm

    we shouldn’t forget or try to mitigate the experience of torture.

    I agree completely.

  43. 43.

    Ann B. Nonymous

    April 20, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Unlike the American use of torture, the living ‘blood eagle’ is most likely a myth. Kind of hard to get the lungs to inflate once they’ve been detached from the diaphragm, you know? If I remember it right — and Wikipedia seems to agree with me on this — it’s only found unequivocally in one saga a few hundred years after the event, before later chroniclers picked up the theme, and there it could simply be a bizarre form of corpse mutilation.

    As we moderns surely know, you crack the chest open from the front.

  44. 44.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    @angulimala:

    How do you deal with people like this?

    Bloody angel.

  45. 45.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    @Bootlegger:

    My point, to those with the density of a black hole, is that we shouldn’t forget or try to mitigate the experience of torture.

    Upthread I wrote:

    All we need to see, and more, is in the torture memos. For those who need to see even more? well, I’m sure there are entire websites devoted to gore out there for you to visit.

  46. 46.

    Krista

    April 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    They’ve been inseparable now for days, exploring each other’s bodies and emotions in a tangled mess of arms, legs and lips.

    Speaking of torturous sights from which one cannot look away…

  47. 47.

    KG

    April 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    @22: yeah, I just figured with as much shit as we give the Corner around here, we should at least point out when they finally get something right. Stopped clock, blind squirrel, and all that.

    I’ve only skimmed one of the memos and, as a lawyer, was astounded by the shoddy work. If my first year law clerk were to give me something like that, I’d fire them. I also had the opportunity to meet Yoo a while back. It took every ounce of self control I had to not bitch slap him. If it happened again, I don’t think I could resist. Which is why I’ve decided not to go to a couple of recent Federalist Society events that I would have otherwise gone to.

  48. 48.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    @Ann B. Nonymous: True, and if the victim wasn’t dead during, they soon were. This was a form of execution (to the extent it was used).

  49. 49.

    The Moar You Know

    April 20, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    The Blood Eagle is a myth.

  50. 50.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    @passerby: I’m not saying you tried to mitigate the brutality of torture, I’m saying DougJ’s use of the graphic description has a purpose and isn’t just gratuitous bloodlust as you suggest.

  51. 51.

    Laura W

    April 20, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    @Krista: Walk on by, Krista, just walk on by.

  52. 52.

    Keith G

    April 20, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    @Bootlegger: I would just add that it may have been the equivalent of putting a head on a pike – a message, a warning.

  53. 53.

    J.D. Rhoades

    April 20, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    The Norse, now they knew how to torture, and they did it just for kicks!

    Actually, they probably did it (if they did it at all) to strike fear into the heart of any enemy who heard about it. You know, terrorism.

  54. 54.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    @Bootlegger:

    Sorry if I misunderstood you Bootlegger. It occurs to me that anyone with the density of a black hole would not be visiting this site.

  55. 55.

    Darius

    April 20, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Noonan deserves to have this “keep walking” quote thrown back in her face every time she complains about anything else, for the rest of her career in punditry. She has effectively forfeited the right to be morally outraged.

  56. 56.

    John H. Farr

    April 20, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    I find all of this terrible to think about, but to just “keep walking” is barbarism.

    I’m with you, Doug. We prosecute or we’re fucked and don’t deserve to survive as a nation. There is NO WAY Obama can sweep this under the rug.

  57. 57.

    Cat Lady

    April 20, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    @angulimala:

    Joe Klein today:

    On late Friday afternoon, a senior Obama Administration official met with a group of Time-Warner journalists in New York and shocked the group of us by saying, “I don’t understand bankers,” even though he’d spent his adult life working with them. And then added that “they don’t understand the scale of damage that they’ve done.”

    I’d love to know who the senior official was. The banksters need to keep it up, especially on the heels of Obama telling the CEOs that his admin stands between them and the pitchforks a/k/a bloody angel.

  58. 58.

    Riggsveda

    April 20, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    The trap, Doug, is believing that once upon a time, America, or any other culture for that matter, was incapable of accepting torture as a legitimate response to conflict. It was never so. We’ve always tortured, and it’s always been acceptable: slaves, Indians, Yankees, women/witches, Filipinos, heretics, all were once subjected to torture under color of American law over the course of our history.

    As for the squeamish among us, I understand not being able to read descriptions of violence; I had to finally put down Blood Meridian because it actually hurt to read it (talk about people who epitomize the American spirit!) But let’s be clear about this. The reason drones have become so popular is that they represent the ultimate remote control war fantasy, allowing us to visit horrors on others without risking so much as a hangnail, let alone having to actually look at what we’ve done. We are spoiled and weak, and nowhere is that as obvious as in our desire to hurt others while avoiding seeing it happen.

  59. 59.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    @The Moar You Know: Not everyone agrees.

    This particularly gruesome act was a form of Viking ritual murder known as the ‘blood-eagle’. The practice has been rejected by certain academics who feel it is based entirely on folklore, and that later descriptions are the result of mistranslation. However, the fact that the term ‘blood-eagle’ existed as a meaningful concept in the Old Norse vocabulary indicates that it constituted a ritual form of slaying in its own right.

    But its a pedantic point IMO because the point isn’t whether or not this particular practice was done regularly by the Norse or not, but rather to illustrate the kinds of self righteous horrors human are willing to visit on each other. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is the whole point of the post. And we all know perfectly well that many things as bad or worse than this were and sometimes are done to humans by other humans.

  60. 60.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    @Keith G: Indeed, one that’s hard to “walk on by” it would seem.

  61. 61.

    Bootlegger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    @passerby: The lame density smack was just me believing you were intentionally misrepresenting my argument.
    Peace.

  62. 62.

    GregB Formerly GSD

    April 20, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    Any time Noonan professes her mock outrage over anything political, from blowjobs to spending, the answer should be STFU and walk away Peggy.

    -G

  63. 63.

    Jose C

    April 20, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    It appears the people who stood by while Kitty Genovese was being killed, who have been reviled by both conservatives and liberals for years, have finally found their muse in Our Lady of the Dolphins.

  64. 64.

    ironranger

    April 20, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    I’m not seeing much difference between Noonan & women who fall for convicts in prison.

  65. 65.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    April 20, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    @ironranger:

    I’m not seeing much difference between Noonan & women who fall for convicts in prison.

    Bush isn’t in prison yet?

  66. 66.

    TenguPhule

    April 20, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    Noonan deserves to have this “keep walking” quote thrown back in her face every time she complains about anything else, for the rest of her career in punditry. She has effectively forfeited the right to be morally outraged.

    Noonan has never been genuinelly morally outraged about anything that doesn’t adversely impact Noonan personally.

  67. 67.

    Brachiator

    April 20, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    I find all of this terrible to think about, but to just “keep walking” is barbarism.

    I have to confess that I was distracted from your larger point by the utter stupidity of the short story review and the cited story itself. You mention the “Wells Tower short story about an unprovoked Viking assault on nearby island”. But the whole point of Viking assaults were that they were unprovoked. The use of surprise, fear and extortion (e.g., danegeld, the payoff to prevent a land from being ravaged) was standard operating procedure. So the nonsense about the wife wanting the Viking marauder to stay home is utterly phony, as is the linkage between Vikings and American frontiersmen.

    The point of rejecting American torture is that it is supposedly counter to our values. I don’t find much illuminating in comparisons to lame revisionist fiction.

    He is brutally put to death by non-Jewish Roman soldiers, who are portrayed as sadistic in a businesslike way, on the acquiescence of a tired, non-Jewish cynic who then sought to wash his hands of culpability. It is a film that leaves the viewer indicting not Jews and not Romans and not cynical bureaucrats. It leaves you indicting yourself: it leaves you wondering about what your part in that agonizing drama would have been back then, and what your part is today.

    I continue to be amazed at the various reactions to Gibson’s Passion. I am surprised, for example, that more supposed Christians did not see analogies between how the Romans treated Jesus and the way that American soldiers treated prisoners at Gitmo. In The Passion, an order for some display punishment inevitably escalated into sadism. At Gitmo, the supposed need for urgent information equally generated into sadistic brutality for its own sake, cover-ups, and the Kafka-esque assumption that anyone who did not immediately spill the beans obviously needed to be tortured to get to the truth since there was the presumption of guilt.

    However, The Passion never led me to indict myself for anything.

    As for Noonan, it is absoutelty disgusting how she not only upends the Santayana quote: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” she also upends Christian religious dogma, by seeking to make acquiesence to torture a “mystery.”

  68. 68.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    The Blood Eagle is a myth.

    Far too confident of a declaration.

    The only fantastic element is the idea that the guy lived through it for any length of time. It is entirely possible that the only exaggeration was in the length of time it took the victim to die and that the drawing of the lungs was actually done immediately postmortem. Probably to make the display of the corpse more striking – like the scene in Silence of the Lambs.

    The fact that the few attestations of the Blood Eagle describe it being done to Kings and other “notorious” people makes me think that it has it’s basis in the very real and widespread practice of postmortem mutilation and display.

    Cultural context is also appropriate. Multiple bodies have been found in bogs that show how “unnecessarily” elaborate Germanic sacrificial rituals could be. Some bodies appear to have been sacrificed in multiple ways (such as having been garrotted, stabbed, and drowned together – a practice also attested in their literature). Now,obviously this is “impossible” – one cannot die of all three things simultaneously. Some of the work must have been done immediately post-mortem for ritual purpose. For example, a well placed stab will kill you quickest, leaving the “garroting” and “drowning” to be purely ritualistic postmortem event.

  69. 69.

    TenguPhule

    April 20, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    . For example, a well placed stab will kill you quickest, leaving the “garroting” and “drowning” to be purely ritualistic postmortem event.

    Unless they went the other way around, of course.

  70. 70.

    bago

    April 20, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    Now that words are permanent, the word-smiths who concoct such vulgarities will be hung by their prose until the end of time. There is no memory hole anymore, and people who rely on said hole for a justification of their fulminations shall be held accountable. Forgetting is so 20th century.

  71. 71.

    Bill Teefy

    April 20, 2009 at 1:59 pm

    @passerby: Wrong by them is wrong, by me its only wrong by degree.

    Move the goal posts from we don’t torture to we don’t torture much. Move that goalpost to we don’t torture anywhere near as harshly as the Vikings and not for the same purpose.

    Somehow comfort in the fact that we are not Vikings wantonly pillaging a village is not comforting.

  72. 72.

    Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)

    April 20, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    @John H. Farr:

    I’m with you, Doug. We prosecute or we’re fucked and don’t deserve to survive as a nation. There is NO WAY Obama can sweep this under the rug.

    My guess is that giving the CIA agents a pass was Obama as “good cop”. Soon some “bad cop” (DOJ?) will come along and say “Hey, you can’t do that”, and prosecutions will ensue.

    That’s my guess/hope.

  73. 73.

    DougJ

    April 20, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    I have to confess that I was distracted from your larger point by the utter stupidity of the short story review and the cited story itself. You mention the “Wells Tower short story about an unprovoked Viking assault on nearby island”. But the whole point of Viking assaults were that they were unprovoked. The use of surprise, fear and extortion (e.g., danegeld, the payoff to prevent a land from being ravaged) was standard operating procedure. So the nonsense about the wife wanting the Viking marauder to stay home is utterly phony, as is the linkage between Vikings and American frontiersmen.

    I liked the story but not the review, personally.

  74. 74.

    Calouste

    April 20, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    @angulimala:

    Well, they think they are aristocracy, and I could cite some examples of how recalcitrant aristocracy has been dealt with over the years.

    But yes, people who think they are owed something just because their parents had enough money or the right connections to get them into a big name university are a problem for society. It would be nice if they understood that society really starts measuring your contributions after you have finished your education, and that having an education in itself doesn’t contribute anything to society, it’s what you do with it.

  75. 75.

    aimai

    April 20, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    This has been quoted all over the blogs recently for a number of reasons

    ““Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire.

    There is a reason Peggy Noonan referred to the desirability of “mysteries” and then suggested that the safest thing to do was to “walk on by”–its because she chooses to be Catholic where everything, from the original texts to communion with god is mediated by mystery and authority. That’s not a knock on Catholics, its just a cultural analysis of where she’s coming from and going too. She prefers a soft focus lens on things that are scary.

    aimai

  76. 76.

    sparky

    April 20, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    I think that if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to face the fact that we are the kind of society that now condones this sort of thing

    Yes. As an American native, I am embarrassed to admit that I thought we might be better than other countries in that we wouldn’t do these sorts of things and then, when presented with evidence, ignore them. I was wrong.

    And I also stupidly thought that oligarchy could not be so stupid as to just want to sweep everything under the rug whether it was torture or bullshit crony capitalism. I was wrong there, too.

    For me the moral has been that at the end of the day the oligarchy doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything other than the oligarchy. I’ve got mine should be our new flag. Yech.

  77. 77.

    Ash Can

    April 20, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    @angulimala:

    How do you deal with people like this?

    Ignore their whining and pay them what they’re worth, which is probably significantly less than the guy down the block who’s providing an actual service by delivering restaurant supplies.

    As for Peggy Noonan, I seriously think that she’s somewhat fucked up in the head. I am not a psychoanalyst, but let’s face it, she was one of the main facilitators of the rise of the wingnuts in the Republican Party going all the way back to Reagan. It’s possible that she was bright enough to see, even way back when, where the wackos would eventually take the party, and on a visceral level didn’t want to believe what she saw. Now that it’s all come to pass as she had feared and her wingnuts have FUBARed the country, she can’t deal with it. And the torture issue just sort of crystallizes it all for her, hence her inability to face it.

  78. 78.

    Phoenix Woman

    April 20, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    This is what Obama is facing: The fact that the people who have run DC and our media for the past four decades are determined to make sure the vast majority of the American public either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

    I’ll bet most of your friends, co-workers and neighbors have heard a LOT more about Roxana Saberi than they have about KSM being waterboarded 183 times. (And if they’re heard about KSM’s being waterboarded, there’s a good chance they’ll say “So? He deserved it.” Never mind that his torturers didn’t actually get anything helpful from him, despite the initial myths perpetrated.)

  79. 79.

    Jon H

    April 20, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    @angulimala: “The only fantastic element is the idea that the guy lived through it for any length of time. It is entirely possible that the only exaggeration was in the length of time it took the victim to die and that the drawing of the lungs was actually done immediately postmortem.”

    I’d think it highly unlikely that the person wouldn’t quickly be unconscious from massive blood loss and asphyxiation.

    And I’m skeptical of just how far you could pull out the lungs from the back, since they’re connected to each other by the bronchi and the bronchi would be blocked by the spine, etc. You’d have a limited ability to pull them out, reducing the supposed effectiveness of the display. You’d just get a coupla limp sacks protruding partway from the guy’s back. It’d look nothing like ‘wings’.

    To the extent that there was a real practice, I wouldn’t be surprised if it consisted only of cutting the ribs and bending them away from the body.

  80. 80.

    bellatrys

    April 20, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    The major difference between the blood eagle and this which was done at Bagram is the former was a hell of a lot quicker.

    Bombing runs do a fine job at vivisecting people alive, too, in a thoroughly modern way, from everything I hear.

  81. 81.

    Blue Raven

    April 20, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    @angulimala:

    Multiple bodies have been found in bogs that show how “unnecessarily” elaborate Germanic sacrificial rituals could be.

    Since pedantry about older cultures is the rule of the day, did you mean Celtic there, or is this one of those moments where we note the similarities between Celtic and Germanic pre-Christian rituals?

  82. 82.

    Unabogie

    April 20, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    I just occurred to me that the only thing standing in the way of Obama releasing the details of the torture and then walking away is that moral reprobates like Noonan say he should.

    Put another way, if we could be sure that the nation would shame the torturers so that they could never again show their faces in public or hold important jobs, it could partially justify the lack of prosecutions. The reality is that as long as cretins like Noonan defend the indefensible, we know that no shaming will ever occur and so she undercuts her own argument.

    A moral paradox, indeed.

  83. 83.

    JL

    April 20, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Peggy Noonan was doing her best Scarlet O’Hara impression.

    Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream.

  84. 84.

    ChrisB

    April 20, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    @srv:

    We know what Noonan would do, she would walk away.

    Just a perfect comment. Several other commenters are equally correct: that line should be thrown in Noonan’s face for the rest of her career.

  85. 85.

    gocart mozart

    April 20, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    If ripping the lungs out of a ferriner might save one Norwegian damsel’s life, I say bring it on. Have you seen Norwegian women? Most of them are pretty hot!

  86. 86.

    gocart mozart

    April 20, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    Nooners is low hanging fruit, but I thought Christopher Buckley was one of the good guys. from TheDailyBeast

    I’m glad that President Obama is not going to prosecute the CIA interrogators for torture. As national intelligence director Dennis Blair wisely commented in a written statement, “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.” The memos, that is, issued by the Justice Department in the days following 9/11, authorizing harsh interrogation techniques. These techniques, we learn, included “Sleep deprivation,” “Nudity,” “Dietary Manipulation,” “Abdominal Slap,” “Attention Grasp,” “Waterboarding,” “Water Dousing,” “Confinement With Insects,” and “Walling.” This last one is when the interrogator “quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall…The head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel … to help prevent whiplash.”
    I think I remember that one, from boarding school—only the senior boys left out the rolled hoods and towels.

    t is, yes, good that the U.S.A. is not doing this anymore, but let’s not get too sanctimonious about how awful it was that we indulged in these techniques after watching nearly 3000 innocent Americans endure god-awful deaths at the hands of religious fanatics who would happily have detonated a nuclear bomb if they had gotten their mitts on one. And let us move on. There is pressing business. (Are you listening, ACLU? Hel-lo?)

    The operative question becomes: What do we do now with captive bad guys who possess information that could prevent another 9/11? We may have moved on. They, assuredly, have not. Remember the Monty Python “Spanish Inquisition” skit, where the lads torture the sweet old lady with such cruel techniques as “The Comfy Chair!” and “The Extra Pillow!”? Or the Spanish Inquisition musical number in Mel Brooks’ “History of the World”? . . .

    And so on, and some lame torture jokes etc,

  87. 87.

    passerby

    April 20, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    @Ash Can:

    As for Peggy Noonan, I seriously think that she’s somewhat fucked up in the head. I am not a psychoanalyst, but let’s face it, she was one of the main facilitators of the rise of the wingnuts in the Republican Party going all the way back to Reagan.

    I agree Ash Can. How can any sane, 21st century, human being read the content of those memos and not decry the behavior of those who would do such things as were described?

    And furthermore, what kind of sick men (and women) would participate in violent, vile and sick acts on imprisoned men and claim it to be in line of duty. Hogwash! There is no honor in that.

    Can’t help but wonder how many of these torturers were getting their freak on. You’d have to be suffering some kind of serious disconnect to visit pain on a shackled human being.

    That Noonan can be so un moved as to say “walk on by” is a good indication, in my view, that she has no conscience (or is at least willing to push it aside for fame and fortune).

    I’ll be writing ABC a letter encouraging them to keep her off the show for her abominable positions. Might be effective right now considering the slide of MTP and the desire of ABC to become the Sunday king.

  88. 88.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    @Blue Raven.

    And your basis for calling me a pedant is ?

    The real fact is that we know a hell of a lot more about the Germanic peoples than the Celts because most of the core areas of Celtic culture were conquered and Romanized hundreds of years before they wrote anything about themselves down. Most of what we “know” about them is based on (often erroneous) Roman accounts, linguistic evidence (ie. place names) and their material culture. We have essentially NOTHING even remotely contemporary that comes from the Celts themselves – they didn’t write their own histories and legends until many hundreds of years after they had been both Romanized (except for the Isles) and Christianized .

    The British Isles is the only place where a significant degree of traditional Celtic culture survived Roman times. The problem is these areas are the PERIPHERY and not the heartland of Celtic culture (which spread East to West over a long time). There is good evidence that the Island Celts had some real cultural differences from their mainland cultural ancestors and that their culture retains many things that originated with the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the Isles and NOT the Celts. We do NOT know how much we can really generalize the Celtic culture of Ireland and Scotland to the mainland Celts.

    The Germanic peoples, maintained their traditional culture longer and with less Roman influence and they wrote their history and legends down much sooner after Christianization. We have more information about them and we have more reliable sources for that information.

  89. 89.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    I said “Germanic” because we know that the Triple Sacrifice is attested in their folktales and histories. We also know of something similar from Ibn Fadlan’s Account of the Rus.

    I am unaware of any account like that from Celtic sources. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, since most of our accounts from Celtic sources come from Ireland and Scotland (not from the area, like Belgium, where the Celts and Germans were in close contact) and from long after the demise of both Celtic and Germanic paganism.

    We know that Celts and Germans influenced and borrowed from one another – material remains make this clear. Still, it is not proper to take this general knowledge and then make specific assertions without specific evidence. I prefer to stick with Occams Razor and describe it as Germanic rather than take a leap, based on flimsy evidence, and label it as Celt. We KNOW the Germans did this. We do NOT know that the Celts did (though they may have).

    We know from German legends of Triple Sacrifice.

  90. 90.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 20, 2009 at 4:00 pm

    OT
    DougJ:
    What is latest on NY-20 special election? Do we have a winner yet, or is it going to be a replay of Coleman vs Franken?

  91. 91.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    It was now Friday afternoon, and they led the girl to an object they had constructed which looked
    like a door-frame. They lifted her and lowered her several times. Then they handed her a hen,
    whose head they had cut off. They gave her strong drink and admonished her to drink it quickly.
    After this, the girl seemed dazed. At this moment the men began to beat upon their shields, in
    order to drown out the noise of her cries, which might deter other girls from seeking death with
    their masters in the future.
    They laid her down and seized her hands and feet. The old woman known as the Angel of Death
    knotted a rope around her neck and handed the ends to two men to pull. Then with a broad dagger
    she stabbed her between the ribs while the men strangled her.

    Thus she died.

    This has long been interpreted (I think correctly) as an account of an Odinic ritual. The combination of Strangulation and Stabbing is an earthly recreation of his heavenly feat when he three days hanging by the neck from Yggdrasil with a spear stuck in his ribs.

    Yggdrasil means Ygg’s Horse. Other evidence indicates Ygg is an epithet/other-name for Odin. The very name, therefore, seems to come from this legend of Odin “riding” the World-Tree or an earlier version of it, indicating it’s importance in the religious culture and explaining why it would show up in rituals in various Germanic cultures.

    You will not find ANY evidence from Celtic culture that is anywhere near as compelling.

  92. 92.

    Comrade Kevin

    April 20, 2009 at 4:13 pm

    “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. “

    There’s a reason for that.

  93. 93.

    bloodstar

    April 20, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    For what it’s worth, the Viking Wings of Death are pretty much impossible to do without killing the person right away. After all, the lungs can’t do much when they’re no longer able to use the diaphram and stuff. so gruesome as it is, it’s not viable.

    blood loss, shock and all that along with a few other reasons it wouldn’t be very viable.

  94. 94.

    timb

    April 20, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    @KG: Federalist Society? The home of bureaucratic defenders of a torturing oligarchy. Those jackasses should change their name.

  95. 95.

    timb

    April 20, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    @angulimala: Didn’t I read somewhere that she had to have “relations” with all six of the pallbearers? For a virgin (oh, hell, for anybody) that is really the itinerary of one awful day. At least, she could have some solace that her family was freed as a result of her gruesome sacrifice.

  96. 96.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    timb

    The girl meanwhile walked to and fro, entering one after another of the tents which they had there. The occupant of each tent lay with her, saying, “Tell your master I did this only for love of you.”

    Sounds like a bad deal to me too. Especially in light of this:

    They are the filthiest race that God ever created. They do not wipe themselves after a stool, nor wash themselves thereafter, any more than if they were wild asses.

    ….

    Every morning a girl comes and brings a tub of water, and places it before her master. In this he proceeds to wash his face and hands, and then his hair, combing it out over the vessel. Thereupon he blows his nose, and spits into the tub, and leaving no dirt behind, conveys it all into this water.
    When he has finished, the girl carries the tub to the man next t him, who does the same. Thus she continues carrying the tub from one to another until each man has blown his nose and spit into the tub, and washed his face and hair.

    (A scene in “The 13th Warrior”- I forget the book title – appears to be directly based off of this account).

    Now, one must understand Ibn Fadlans reaction in light of Islamic laws governing ritual purity. He may well have been somewhat overreacting and exaggerating how filthy they were because of their total disregard for the specific traditions that he took for granted.

    I’m sure the vikings would have described his home as filled with fucked up anal retentive OCD suffererering pussies who fear menstrating women.

  97. 97.

    DougJ

    April 20, 2009 at 5:56 pm

    What is latest on NY-20 special election?

    The Democrat seems to have won. It should be fairly final soon, so I’ve been holding off on writing about it til then.

  98. 98.

    TenguPhule

    April 20, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    The Democrat seems to have won. It should be fairly final soon, so I’ve been holding off on writing about it til then.

    So the Republicans are going to appeal this ad infinitum then?

  99. 99.

    timb

    April 20, 2009 at 10:07 pm

    Yeah, the stories I read of Saladin and folks complaining about the stench of the Franks. There’s a reason we call them perfume Cologne! I think most wingnuts (and here I think of Victor Davis Hanson) would be shocked to know their precious and “superior” Western civilization was rescued not by these disgusting barbarian murderers, but by the Greeks in Byzantium and the Muslims in Spain. I know I would have rather lived in Cordoba than Paris.

  100. 100.

    angulimala

    April 20, 2009 at 11:28 pm

    timb,

    True.

    To be fair to our ancestors …. Europe is a lot colder than the mid-east so it’s not surprising that bathing was not as much a part of the culture. Sweat less and have cold seasons where bathing is potentially dangerous to your health.

    I think it is important to remember that “Europe” was an economic and cultural backwater for much of it’s history.They were still barbarians in many ways. Europe used to be a harsh environment that bred harsh people.

    It is also important to remember that the Middle-East was not advanced because all the women were tall, the men were good looking, and the children we’re above average. It was advanced because it sat on a crucial position in the overland East-West trade routes and so lots of money was moving through the place and the rulers always took a cut. When you are massively rich because every merchant has to pay for tolls and permits and stuff, it’s really easy to fund scientists and philosophers and shit.

    What the members of the “West is the Best” 300-Fanboy brigade don’t recognize is that acknowledging this is not an insult or a put down. In fact, I think it puts a whole lot of the Wests later imperial history in perspective and argues against some of the overly harsh judgments one sometimes hears.

  101. 101.

    gocart mozart

    April 21, 2009 at 1:00 am

    Sorry to jump into this conversation and pimp my own comment on another blog but Mr Buckley has really got my dander up. I am a big fan of his “not smoking”movie and also respect him for the fact that he spoke up and was fired from his dads mag for saying conservatives were being too extreme. He also seemed to be a good guy on the Daily Show. His latest column really pissed me off.

    Funny thing, if someone were to ask me a few days ago if there were any decent conservative left, I would have answered “Yes, Christopher Buckley and a few others.” Boy, you sure fooled me Chris.

    Perhaps it is a congenital thing with the Buckleys. His dad gussied up his blatant racism in a veneer of genteel sophistication but at heart he held the same views as a typical klansman. Go read National Review articles from the sixties if you don’t believe me. Likewise junior uses “wit” to mask his sociopathic, un-American and moral degenerate character.

    Finally, did your boarding school hazing also involve naked pyramids and the smearing of feces on each other as was the case at Rush’s fraternity Mr Buckley sir?

    Q. What do you call a decent conservative?
    A. A Democrat or perhaps an Independent.

    Kudos Mr Cole.

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