• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

When I was faster i was always behind.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Mobile Menu

  • 4 Directions VA 2025 Raffle
  • 2025 Activism
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Media / She could steal but she could not rob

She could steal but she could not rob

by DougJ|  July 2, 201010:14 am| 44 Comments

This post is in: Media, Assholes

FacebookTweetEmail

I hate to admit this, but I find the torture debate so depressing that I can’t follow it anymore. But Greg Sargent (via Andrew Sullivan, who on this topic at least, is excellent) has summarized the media decision to drop the T-word quite well:

The decision to refrain from calling waterboarding “torture” is tantamount to siding with the Bush administration’s claim that the act it acknowledged doing is not illegal under any statute. No one is saying the Times should have adopted the role of judge and jury and proclaimed the Bush administration officially guilty. Rather, the point is that by dropping use of the word “torture,” it took the Bush position — against those who argued that the act Bush officials sanctioned is already agreed upon as illegal under the law.

Think of it this way: We all agree that pickpocketing constitutes “theft.” A pickpocket doesn’t get to come along and argue: “No, what I did isn’t theft, it’s merely pickpocketing, and therefore it isn’t illegal.” Any newspaper that played along with a pickpocket’s demand to stop using the word “theft” would be taking the pickpocket’s side, not occupying any middle ground. There is no middle ground here.

No, there is no middle ground. It’s torture or it’s not and by not calling it torture, the Times is taking a side. The pickpocketing/theft analogy Sargent draws is a good one. Remember when Dick Cheney didn’t shoot that guy but only “peppered” him?

(Yes, I realize that stealing and robbery are in fact different things, I just like that song and thought it was somewhat apropos.)

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Open Thread
Next Post: Lindsey Graham, Free Spirit or Wild Child? »

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    Kryptik

    July 2, 2010 at 10:24 am

    It’s not war. It’s Preemptive Defense.
    It’s not oligarchy. It’s corporate legal sponsorship.
    It’s not unemployment. It’s temporary personal financial disturbance.

    I know what George Carlin would think about this, but I don’t think he regrets not living to see the NYTimes blatantly defend this bullshit.

  2. 2.

    Linda Featheringill

    July 2, 2010 at 10:24 am

    You’re right. Cool song.

    But refusing to say “torture” was quite widespread. I remember the [pleasant] shock I experienced when some actually said the word.

    I am not defending the folks at NYT. They are, to a man, tougher than I am and can defend themselves. But I am saying that they were not alone in committing this particular sin.

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    July 2, 2010 at 10:25 am

    Why doesn’t Sargent ask about The Post while he’s at it? Has he taken the old saw about the Times being the only newspaper worth criticizing to heart?

  4. 4.

    geg6

    July 2, 2010 at 10:25 am

    Don’t know why but when I saw the thread title, I was sure this would be something about Sarah Palin. Can’t imagine where that came from.

    And as I said in another thread, I can’t wait til all these fuckers die. And I really don’t give a damn how many vapors it gives Jeffrey Goldberg.

  5. 5.

    bkny

    July 2, 2010 at 10:26 am

    and don’t discount the role that ’24’ and ‘don’t tase me, bro’ played — along with the collusion of the liberal, pointy-headed, east coast media elite.

  6. 6.

    Howlin Wolfe

    July 2, 2010 at 10:26 am

    The cowardly Times could have hedged honorably by saying something like “. . . waterboarding, which most legal authorities consider torture, and have prosecuted it as a war crime, . . . “. But they are real chickenshits, and they want to be on top when they ride the failed capitalism of this country down in flames. Heckuva job, Punchy!

  7. 7.

    Zifnab

    July 2, 2010 at 10:27 am

    The media took Bush’s side a long time ago on a whole host of issues. When ABC decided the Iraq War just wasn’t worth covering. When you had the NYT and the WaPo allowing Joe Wilson’s wife to get outted as a CIA agent. During the ’00 and ’04 elections, when Al Gore invented the internet and John Kerry needed to have his purple heart investigated.

    We’ve been having the torture debate for years now, and every day the “debate” goes on, the media seems intent on giving a little more ground to the pro-torture movement.

    And, at the end of the day, it shouldn’t even be a god-damn issue. People shouldn’t need to call water boarding torture to recognize it is illegal. US courts have already prosecuted foreign military and civilians for use of water boarding. US laws already forbid the use of harsh interrogation techniques. You can call it torture or you can call it enhanced interrogation or you can call it “petting the adorable kitten” and it shouldn’t matter.

    The real villainy the NYT perpetrates is continuing this mockery of a “debate”, rather than treating water boarding as the unprosecuted crime that it is.

  8. 8.

    El Cid

    July 2, 2010 at 10:31 am

    As a New York Times editor, I must clarify that although we did clearly state that the Bush administration was giving cocaine and methampetamine — two substances which many consider to be illegal — to children, in exchange for money, on the White House lawn, it would have been irresponsible to take a side on a political debate about terms and label this activity “drug dealing” or “criminal”.

    On the other hand, we should harshly condemn Hamas for regularly torturing those charged as informants and we are slightly uncomfortable with Israel’s justified, although overly harsh and not planned well, shooting of 9 alleged Turkish terrorists repeatedly in the heads and backs while they were trying to perhaps smuggle weapons into Gaza for Hezbollah and Iran.

  9. 9.

    Kryptik

    July 2, 2010 at 10:31 am

    @MikeJ:

    I’m seeing the criticism as less focused on the NYT in specific, so much as the exact excuse and rationale that everyone used, but NYT just put into words so limply.

  10. 10.

    cleek

    July 2, 2010 at 10:32 am

    it’s definitely not just the Times.

    i’ve been pissed at NPR for a long time about their refusal to use the word. Greenwald went a few rounds with them, last year. but nothing changed, AFAIKT.

    liberal media strikes again.

  11. 11.

    El Cid

    July 2, 2010 at 10:32 am

    @MikeJ: True, but it was the New York Times which had an executive speak on the record that it chose not to use the word ‘torture’ because of Bush Jr. administration and Republican complaints.

  12. 12.

    sparky

    July 2, 2010 at 10:33 am

    @Zifnab:

    The real villainy the NYT perpetrates is continuing this mockery of a “debate”, rather than treating water boarding as the unprosecuted crime that it is.

    well, that would be looking backwards, not forwards, and we can’t have that. especially now as some members of the current administration are now also subject to prosecution for various war crimes.

  13. 13.

    DougJ

    July 2, 2010 at 10:33 am

    @geg6:

    I wanted to use that title for a Palin post, but let’s face it, she *could* rob.

  14. 14.

    DougJ

    July 2, 2010 at 10:34 am

    @Linda Featheringill:

    For me, it’s interesting when it’s the Times, precisely because I do respect the Times, in general.

  15. 15.

    Lev

    July 2, 2010 at 10:37 am

    I just read Charles Simic’s essay about Serbia from a year or two ago, where he talks about how intellectuals and journalists in the country did nothing to stop the war crimes and excesses of Milosevic’s reign, and mostly just enabled the man. One sentence stuck with me, about how the only time these people cried was when one of their own was killed.

    Of course, it’s not like this is an original idea. Orwell wrote on the same theme many years ago. These sorts of people are the ones with the most to lose. Ed Murrow is remembered as a tough and gutsy journalist for helping to take down Joe McCarthy, but what most people don’t remember is that Bill Paley fired him shortly afterward. They are just a part of the power structure, but they won’t admit it. If they could, maybe they could correct for it.

    Not that it really matters. It’s always been the pamphleteers that have spread the truth that nobody wants to speak. Tom Payne did it in the Revolutionary War, William Lloyd Garrison during the slavery era, and so on. These guys had nothing to lose. I think that’s the key ingredient here.

  16. 16.

    Maude

    July 2, 2010 at 10:39 am

    While we’re at it, the NYT didn’t publish the wiretap information for a year.
    Judith Miller also. too.
    Eisenhower would be spitting mad about this sugarcoating of torture.
    Barbaric, cruel and psychopathic behavior by the US government is not acceptable.
    I wonder if the news folks are trying to CYA by not stating the facts and playing word games. They didn’t raise a stink when they first heard about the torture of Muslim men.
    The issue isn’t going away.

  17. 17.

    sparky

    July 2, 2010 at 10:39 am

    @DougJ: i do as well, but i think it is unrealistic to expect what is in essence the house paper of the Establishment to not routinely kowtow to that Establishment. i suppose, given the general state of affairs in the Empire these days, it’s a surprise they disagree as much as they do with the powers that is [sic].

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    July 2, 2010 at 10:45 am

    @Kryptik:

    It’s not war. It’s Preemptive Defense.
    __
    It’s not oligarchy. It’s corporate legal sponsorship.
    __
    It’s not unemployment. It’s temporary personal financial disturbance.

    War is Peace.
    Freedom is Slavery.
    Ignorance is Strength.
    Minitru is Hiring.

  19. 19.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    July 2, 2010 at 10:45 am

    The primary problem is the public. Too many people just don’t care, or care enough to bother themselves to find out just what waterboarding is. They hear someone calling it torture, then Liz Cheney comes on their teevee all sweet faced outraged that anyone could possibly think squeaky clean Americans could torture anyone, and spew nonsense about “enhanced interrogation techniques” and us doing the same thing to our own soldiers. Not to mention the gall of smearing her sweet pappy. The corporate media can read polls, and won’t risk losing viewers when clear majorities of them don’t have a problem with what we hung Japanese officers for doing in WW2. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Just one more example of a decaying empire.

  20. 20.

    Paul L.

    July 2, 2010 at 10:48 am

    The “study” disingenuously uses words that describe methods of torture using water as being the same as waterboarding.

    Before 2004, “waterboarding” had been referred to variously as “water torture,” the “water cure,” the “water treatment,” el submarino (or the wet submarine), dunking, and forced ingestion, among other terms.

  21. 21.

    LittlePig

    July 2, 2010 at 10:49 am

    @sparky: well, that would be looking backwards, not forwards, and we can’t have that. especially now as some members of the current administration are now also subject to prosecution for various war crimes.

    Bingo.

  22. 22.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    July 2, 2010 at 10:51 am

    @Paul L.: You have done some wanking here over the years, but this comment could win the grand prize. You sound like BoB sniffing glue.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    July 2, 2010 at 10:52 am

    @Paul L.:

    The “study” disingenuously uses words that describe methods of torture using water as being the same as waterboarding.

    You mean it uses various terms for simulated drowning that all refer to simulated drowning? Fail.

  24. 24.

    El Cid

    July 2, 2010 at 10:53 am

    @Paul L.: Next time try reading the quote you reprint.

  25. 25.

    Zifnab

    July 2, 2010 at 10:54 am

    @Paul L.: Sorry. All I read was Duke Lacross, Duke Lacross, Duke Lacross. Must have left my pie filter on. Could you repeat?

  26. 26.

    Sentient Puddle

    July 2, 2010 at 10:55 am

    (Yes, I realize that stealing and robbery are in fact different things, I just like that song and thought it was somewhat apropos.)

    If you can find a way to work the name of the song into the title of a post, you would win the Internet. Assuming that the post was not about a woman breaking and entering through the bathroom.

  27. 27.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    July 2, 2010 at 10:57 am

    @sparky:

    especially now as some members of the current administration are now also subject to prosecution for various war crimes.

    If you have evidence of these “war crimes”, I suggest you present it. I might join you in calling for such prosecution of this administration. Though I am skeptical, admittedly. But always open to facts.

  28. 28.

    Paul L.

    July 2, 2010 at 11:02 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You mean it uses various terms for simulated drowning that all refer to simulated drowning? Fail.

    Nothing simulated about the drowning in the Water cure.

    Water cure as a term for a form of torture refers to a method in which the victim is forced to drink large quantities of water in a short time, resulting in gastric distension, “water intoxication”, and possibly death.

    But that is Wiki
    So according to the “study” causing something to experience the sensations of drowning is the same as pouring water down their throat.
    Epic Fail

  29. 29.

    JGabriel

    July 2, 2010 at 11:04 am

    DougJ:

    I wanted to use that title for a Palin post, but let’s face it, she could rob.

    Raised On Robbery does seem destined to become the Palin family theme song.

    It really doesn’t take much imagination to see Bristol or Sarah on a hotel barstool trying to pick up someone with lines like “I’m a pretty good cook, sitting on groceries. Come up to my kitchen. I’ll show you my best recipes.”

    .

  30. 30.

    Zifnab

    July 2, 2010 at 11:10 am

    @Paul L.:

    Water cure as a term for a form of torture

    Everybody back up. I think Paul L just won the argument. You see, if you torture someone by forcing him to ingest vast amounts of water, that is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than forcing said person to experience simulated drowning.

    Ergo, neither are torture. Ergo, perfectly legal. QED, bitches!

    Now, if you don’t mind, Mr. Yoo – err, I mean Paul L – has a class he needs to get back to teaching in law school.

  31. 31.

    El Cid

    July 2, 2010 at 11:13 am

    There are a bunch of right wing retards who get all hot and bothered by a news report which errs on the caliber and type of ammunition or gun used, because they’re needledick obsessives.

  32. 32.

    El Cid

    July 2, 2010 at 11:15 am

    @Zifnab: The presumption is that waterboarding cannot be a subset of the category water torture.

  33. 33.

    frankdawg

    July 2, 2010 at 11:17 am

    Hang on a minute! American’s do not torture. We all learned this in school, only evil countries torture. Boy Blunder and most of the blathering gasbags his administration sent out all told us “America does not torture!”

    ERGO – if we do it it is not torture Q.E.D.
    If the President does it is is legal

    The wingnuts have won, because everyone knows there is no more liberal member of the liberal media than the NYTimes and the Whore Post. The inconvenient fact that they supported and promoted both the illegal war & these war crimes can safely be ignored.

  34. 34.

    Stefan

    July 2, 2010 at 12:05 pm

    causing something to experience the sensations of drowning

    The sensation of drowning is the same as drowning. There’s no way to have someone experience the “sensation of drowning” without cutting off their air supply through the use of water, which is, you guessed it, drowning.

    It’s like saying “I didn’t stab him, I only caused him to experience the sensation of stabbing by pressing a knife into his skin until the skin broke and the knife entered his body….”

  35. 35.

    Paul L.

    July 2, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    @Stefan:

    There’s no way to have someone experience the “sensation of drowning” without cutting off their air supply through the use of water, which is, you guessed it, drowning.

    Wiki

    Drowning is death from suffocation (asphyxia) caused by a liquid entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia and myocardial infarction.

  36. 36.

    Sentient Puddle

    July 2, 2010 at 12:34 pm

    @Paul L.: Small difference of opinion, but I think this is the more important part:

    …and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia and myocardial infarction.

  37. 37.

    kay

    July 2, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    You don’t brutalize or torture people who are in your custody, because you took responsibility for their well-being when you made it impossible for them to escape or defend themselves. That’s what “custody” means.
    A bound and detained and helpless prisoner belongs to his captor. Everyone has a human responsibility to refrain from brutalizing the helpless, and prisoners are helpless.
    Its simply wrong to take him prisoner and deny responsibility for his care, and that’ s been recognized a really long time. Either you allow him to defend himself, care for himself, or you defend him from others, and care for him. There’s no middle ground. The custodian can’t drop the duty using some legal construct.
    It’s really disturbing to me, and I feel it has huge ramifications for anyone who may be 1. a custodian or, 2. in custody, that conservatives have managed to convince us that there’s no duty there. It’s always been there. They can’t argue it away.

  38. 38.

    satby

    July 2, 2010 at 12:55 pm

    @Sentient Puddle:
    Why don’y you and Paul L go get waterboarded a few times and let us know what you think: torture, or springlike rain?

  39. 39.

    satby

    July 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    Kay broke the thread, not me.

  40. 40.

    Sentient Puddle

    July 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    @satby: Erm…for what it’s worth, I am most assuredly of the opinion that waterboarding is torture. I don’t think I need to try it out.

  41. 41.

    Interrobang

    July 2, 2010 at 6:32 pm

    “Ingestion” isn’t the same as “inhalation” and dying of hyponatremia doesn’t mean you drowned. Granted, dead is dead, but it ain’t gonna say “drowning” on the coroner’s report.

  42. 42.

    Gregory

    July 2, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    It’s torture or it’s not and by not calling it torture, the Times is taking a side.

    This, this, a million times this.

    And to top it off, the Times, and NPR, and the rest of those rancid cowards, are taking the side of bad faith actors who will call them part of the “liberal media” whenever it suits their purposes.

  43. 43.

    mclaren

    July 3, 2010 at 12:48 am

    What’s the difference? Torture has been legalized and fully integrated into everyday life, so the “debate” about torture is over.

    Police now use tasers to torture everyone from 10-year-old kids to 86-year-old grannies in their beds, and the judges love it. The prosecutors love it. The police chiefs love it. And the public hasn’t squealed, so the debate’s over.

    Torture won. America is now Torture Nation. All torture, all the time. Ask “Why?” or lie on a roadway with a broken back pleading for help or sit up in your sickbed with an “aggressive posture,” and a cop will whip out a taser and torture you to death with it. And the public will applaud.

    Coming soon: the handheld microwave pain ray, successor to the taser. Much more painful. You’ll scream like an animal and beg for death when the cops use that microwave pain ray on you for jaywalking.

    America, where every hospitality suite is now Room 101.

  44. 44.

    Lex

    July 5, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    No one is saying the Times should have adopted the role of judge and jury and proclaimed the Bush administration officially guilty.

    Actually, given the clarity of the language of the UN Convention Against Torture, I’m saying that that is EXACTLY what the Times should have done.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Deputinize America - Moorea 2024 2
Image by Deputinize America (7/14/25)
Donate

Recent Comments

  • prostratedragon on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 6:53am)
  • Suzanne on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 6:51am)
  • Professor Bigfoot on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 6:42am)
  • no body no name on Late Night Open Thread: Obama Speaks (Jul 15, 2025 @ 6:41am)
  • Jim Brown on Boomer Nostalgia Open Thread: Nuclear Terrors (Jul 15, 2025 @ 6:38am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Feeling Defeated?  If We Give Up, It's Game Over

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!