Still reading the report. It’s as bad as we knew and worse. Fuckers.
I’m recommending not watching cable news because the apologists will drive you insane. I’ve got season 1 of Vikings going on in the background. I might watch Chris Hayes at 8, but I don’t think I want to deal with this report and all the bobbleheads at the same time.
rikyrah
Good plan, Cole.
schrodinger's cat
Don’t subscribe to cable, its all shouty TV and crappy reality shows any way. Not having cable has done wonders to my sense of well being. I watch BBC world news, so much better even than the Snooze Hour.
Tom Levenson
Nicolle Wallace sets the tone:
I know, I know. Just raising everyone’s blood pressure. What can I say? Misery loves company.
Every one of those Bush criminals, up to the man himself, belongs in jail, facing trial in the Hague. Wallace too, that cringing, gutless, terrified accessory-after-the-fact.
Won’t happen I know, not ever.
But should.
The Other Chuck
@Tom Levenson:
Because nothing says fighting for our ideals like jailing members of the press we don’t like. That’ll never get abused or anything.
David in NY
The only person likely to be punished in all this is John Kiriakou, a CIA whistleblower who has spent 20 months in prison so far. Time to call for his pardon.
Zandar
Womp womp wommmmmmmmp.
*cue audience laugh track*
shelley
@Tom Levenson: Oh yeah, I saw her on ‘Morning Joe’. Like I posted before, the woman was practically salivating over the whole thing.
But look on the bright side, Cole, At least Betty Cracker’s dog’s tail is just a sprain. Lets take the little good things as they come.
Tenar Darell
@Tom Levenson: I imagine that they have all been advised to never leave the country, ever, for the rest of their lives.
RaflW
Officials torturing foreigners and cops shooting black men and boys dead at home. They are related.
Long road ahead to fix our f’d up society. This report may help, eventually, after the hotheads shut up (in 10 or 20 years…)
[edited for grammar and composition]
Davis X. Machina
Next time you’re in the checkout line, contemplate the fact that of the three people there — before you, behind you, and you — a minimum of one, and maybe two, of them has no problem with the US torturing people.
Abu Ghraib was a shande only because the pictures came out and made Team USA look bad.
brent
@The Other Chuck: Well I think the point was more that she worked for Bush, Communications Chief, although I agree that she probably didn’t do anything that would warrant her being tried for a crime.
Suzanne
I haven’t read the report yet, because I’m working, but I just saw a brief story on Vox that points out that we accidentally (accidentally-on-purpose?) tortured some of our own informants. Way to go, y’all. Bang-up job.
With job performance like that, you could be a CEO of a major bank. Or the New Republic.
SiubhanDuinne
Someone on my radio (I was listening to the local public radio station but honestly can’t remember if it was an NPR reporter or someone from the BBC, which is a drop-in newscast here) said that “some (unnamed) people” were objecting to the release of the report because releasing it might embolden our enemies to attack us.
Right, then. The problem isn’t torturing in the first place. It’s admitting to it.
Fuckers.
beltane
@RaflW: Yes, these two phenomenon most certainly are related. The post-9/11 USA has managed to exceed the vileness of the worst ant-American conspiracy theorists out there. Long road indeed.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
FTFY.
srv
I, for one, am waiting for Catholic Peggy Noonan’s update from 2009:
RaflW
Gramps McCain manages to say some solid things today on the report release. He’s become a nutter on lots of stuff, but I’m in alignment in this (rare) case.
burnspbesq
Don’t forget to read the minority views, if you really want to push the outrage meter to 12.
Belafon
@SiubhanDuinne: See, torture isn’t wrong. You do it to protect the country. What’s wrong is exposing to the rest of the world that we torture. When someone can’t see that torturing is wrong, you just don’t tell them you’re doing it.
(I’m not really able to make that sound all authoritative like it needs to be to sound like it’s coming from an apologist.)
rikyrah
I’m watching Bitten.
And, Netflix has added The Borgias and The Originals. Might even watch some Lillyhamer
schrodinger's cat
Has anyone interviewed John Yoo today?
Cacti
@Belafon:
We don’t talk to strangers about Daddy hitting Mommy. They wouldn’t understand.
mai naem mobile
@RaflW: the only reason McCain is against torture is because he went through it in Vietnam. Its always like that with the GOP. If their kid’s gay, they’re all for gay marriage. If they have AIDS they’re all for compassionate treatment of people with AIDS. Ditto with Alzheimers.
KG
@Tom Levenson:
we could have just nuked everything between Jerusalem and Seoul, I mean that would have helped us kill people who want(ed) to kill us regardless of what we do. but, my guess is that people would look at that as morally objectionable.
i suspect (hope) that people will read some of this stuff and be horrified by it, be disappointed, be ashamed. i think that when most people hear “torture” they don’t think about the things that happened here, but they think about things they see on TV where someone is tied to a chair and beat up. i don’t know if it’ll happen. looking at the right side of the blogsphere, it looks like nobody is talking about it, so maybe they won’t.
Culture of Truth
I’m reading the report now. We already knew about the waterboarding, the coffin, the insect, etc…. but the report makes clear just how incompetent the whole thing was, a big scam from these two idiot psychologists who bilked the CIA out of $80 million to tell to trying burying someone alive.
Also, there ethical and legal objections all along, making its practice all the more inexcusable, and finally, assuming one believes this report, the report shows CIA lied and misled and covered up over and over and over.
Oh, and also torture is useless and counter-productive. If you believe the report.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@David in NY:
John Kiriakou, the guy who went on national TV and said that torture totally worked and we got a lot of good information by torturing people? That John Kiriakou?
Sorry, but he was either in on the attempt to sell torture to the American public from the start, or he was an unwitting dupe in a CIA propaganda campaign. Either way, I’m not sure that “whistleblower” is the right way to describe him. Google “Kiriakou foreign policy magazine” for some interesting coverage.
scav
@Tom Levenson: Dear Nicolle Wallace:
It doesn’t make us less great exactly. It reaveals how non-great we are and have been and, moreover how non-great some of us aspire to be by willing complience and continued support.
It is a revealing mirror sweetheart. Stare into it.
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: McCain issues forth from the Blind Squirrel Refuge with an acorn of wisdom there. Good for him.
mai naem mobile
Gee, did anybody ask Nicole about Dubbya ignoring the imminent attack on US soil? Or Condi’s statement about whodanode about flying planes into buildings because Tom Clancy was such an unknown author.
Suzanne
You know, I used to have this impression that the CIA was a group of ultra-brilliant, stealthy, unflappable people who could do amazing things without blinking an eye. In short, I thought they were like James Bond.
This makes me realize that they’re more like Biff Tannen.
KG
@schrodinger’s cat: they’ve been rather quiet at NRO, where he’s on the payroll.
SatanicPanic
@Zandar: that fucking sucks really. Someones trying to help us out and they end up getting tortured.
KG
is it possible that this report leads to tearing down the CIA? obviously, it’ll be replaced by something, but hopefully with none of the current employees.
JPL
The torture program did not work. Let me repeat, the information gained by torture was information they already had. The only thing it did was unleash, some sadistic bastards to do terrible things.
schrodinger's cat
@KG: Probably, waiting for Frank Luntz’s talking points
Culture of Truth
I did see some pundits on tv. David Gergen said we should not have released the report because of “Ferguson and all the race stuff” Not making that up.
Belafon
@KG: The people who will defend Bush/Cheney via the CIA are now in charge of Congress. I would have had my doubts with Democrats in charge (as the previous post points out, a large chunk of Americans have no problem with torture), but I really doubt much will change.
the Conster
@schrodinger’s cat @Culture of Truth: I’m with Villago on this – I really wouldn’t have a problem torturing the Village Idiots. At all.
Mike E
Spending my next few days/weeks making calls to generate heat on Duke Energy for their stalling campaign to avoid cleaning up 100 million tons of coal ash in NC. This is a far better use of my time, and keeps me from literally banging my head against the wall. Too.
Iowa Old Lady
@Culture of Truth: What?
Zandar
@SatanicPanic: Oh absolutely. The incompetence is staggering, but we should trust them because LIVES WERE SAVED.
Or something.
Mustang Bobby
This sounds like the perfect day to turn off the radio, put on a Beach Boys CD, put the top down, and drive to the end of the road in Key West. I do not want to drive home and listen to NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) interview the Republicans who will claim that by releasing the report the terrorists win, followed by a treatise on the history of bobbleheads
Zandar
@Culture of Truth: Ferguson And All The Race Stuff is my Pogues cover band.
beltane
@Culture of Truth: Very telling, though inadvertent, admission on the part of a Villager.
RaflW
@Culture of Truth: Ahh, yes. A classic gaffe. Gergen gets what I was saying above, that our use of torture abroad and our use of excessive violence against black and brown people at home are connected.
I’d say thank you, but you are a moral crevice, Mr. Gergen, so I can’t really feel grateful for your inadvertent honesty.
Betty Cracker
@KG: No, but it should. Not only has the CIA given the country a well-deserved reputation as a force for evil, it has been thoroughly inept at its primary mission. And the report details the CIA’s attempts to escape oversight. It’s a rogue agency that should be disbanded. I’m not naive enough to think we don’t need spies, but if this weren’t such a fucked up country, this report coupled with the agency’s inexcusable record of failure would be enough to spell its doom.
Hungry Joe
Reading John le Carre’s “Smiley” series convinced me that pretty much the entire British spy network — and the CIA as well — could be disbanded. Inevitably they spiral into a crazed loop in which their main objective is to catch other spies, whose main objective … etc. Whatever nuggets of secret info that “enemy” spies manage to pick up (when they’re not busy trying to catch our spies) don’t harm our country nearly as much as horrowshow shit like torture ultimately does.
As for overthrowing governments we don’t like, well, that can always be outsourced.
Haydnseek
@Tom Levenson: Every time I see her on some talk show, she’s introduced as Bush’s communications director. This is like being Ray Charles’ optometrist.
SteveinSC
As I have said here many times before, Cheney, Bush et al. have done more damage to the United States than all the terrorists that have been, or will be. Cheney deserves to hang for treason.
Cacti
And of course, Gergen assumes that the non-whites of this country haven’t already noticed that the state-sanctioned violence of the American empire falls disproportionately on the brown-skinned peoples of the world.
Suzanne
@Zandar: Honestly, I’ve been convinced of their evilness for a long time, so none of the details of their horrible acts have surprised me. They’ve saddened me, but not surprised me.
However, the level of absolute fucking incompetence is surprising to me. I am honestly reminded of this zitty tweaker kid at the take-out wings place by my house that gets my order wrong all the time and always looks completely high. These people are like that kid, but with instruments of torture and guns. FFS.
I am humiliated to be American right now.
PJ
@Suzanne: I recently read No Good Men Among the Living by Atul Gawande, about the US occupation of Afghanistan (a great read), and it was standard operating procedure for informants to accuse other citizens of being terrorists/Taliban because a) they were potential political opponents of the informer; 2) they had spoken out against the informer’s corruption/bad acts; 3) the informer wanted their property; and/or 4) the informer just wanted the cash they would get for accusing someone. A great number of the accused were pro-US and/or had actually fought against the Taliban, and many were part of the “democratic” government that the US was trying to form. US forces would then sweep down on the houses of the accused, killing their family members and abducting them, after which they would be tortured. When US interrogators realized that these people knew nothing (or had been working with the US), they would be released into the custody of warlords, who would continue to torture their prisoners until a ransom was delivered by their family. After they were released, a short while later the whole cycle would be repeated, until the detainee and his family were broke.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: This.
dedc79
@Hungry Joe: If those three didn’t do the job, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold sure would. The end of that book is one of the harshest punches to the gut in the entire history of western literature.
Mandalay
@RaflW: One of the few good things about getting old is that you are more willing to say what you believe, and truly not give a flying fuck about the consequences. McCain already had a long list of enemies within the Republican Party, and that list got longer today.
His statement certainly hasn’t helped the Republican Party, and their presidential hopefuls. What a shame.
elmo
@JPL:
One of the findings of the report was that the individuals conducting the torture were known to be problematic, including an employee with anger-management issues and another who had admitted to sexual assault.
America’s Finest. Fuck Yeah.
schrodinger's cat
@SteveinSC: Their party is continuing to dismantle this country brick by brick.
KG
@elmo: well, if you’re looking to torture someone, that’s probably the kind of person you want to have doing the torturing.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: The Party is the Vanguard of the Revolution. Come the Revolution, the state is fated to wither away…
Tree With Water
When my father set the TV up in the kitchen to listen to Kennedy’s Cuban Missile speech, I asked him if we could watch cartoons instead. Then I asked him what was going on. He replied, “the Russians have missiles pointed at our house”. A succinct, beautiful explanation of the situation tailored to a child.
Every conversation about torture should begin by speaking this simple truth: We the People are the torturers. You, me, my 93 year old mother (and boy, is she pissed off) were made guilty the first time a person was tortured. The fact neither you nor I personally inflicted torture is irrelevant. It was done in our name. It is being defended in our name. We are no less culpable than an accomplice to a murder. Those OK with that truth are among the sickest people on the planet, and should be reminded of that fact at every opportunity.
Hungry Joe
@dedc79: Agreed. I think it’s his best book.
Over time, le Carre came to see the whole Spy vs. Spy scenario — especially the semi-official, below-the-radar arms trafficking — as dehumanizing and evil.
opiejeanne
@Davis X. Machina: *shudder*
I sent off for a passport again just as the Abu Ghraib pictures hit the fan. My last name on this passport came back as England. I suppose because Lynndie England was all over the news.
The first one I received had my last name as Ringwald, which is also wrong also but less disturbing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Culture of Truth:
The fuck he did. These people are . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know enough adjectives.
beltane
@elmo: It’s like this with any authoritarian regime. Torturers are invaluably drawn from the ranks of rapists, thugs, and the uncontrollably violent. In any healthy society, these people would be in prison or receiving treatment somewhere. In a sick society they act as enforcers for the regime.
Gin & Tonic
@Mustang Bobby: put on a Beach Boys CD, put the top down
If I did that here today I’d be bailing water the rest of the day. Still probably better than watching the teevee.
Cacti
UN human rights rapporteur:
US legally obliged to prosecute senior Bush Administration officials for torture program.
“The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorized at a high level within the U.S. government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability.”
GregB
Remember when Dick Durbin was forced to apologize for calling these Nazis Nazis?
geg6
I simply can’t read it. I just can’t. I am still numb at the thought of Abu Ghraib and I just can’t look at this stuff and know that it was done in my name. I am so deeply ashamed of my country. Deeply, deeply ashamed.
elmo
I can’t generate anything out of this but grim, resigned acceptance. This is who we are. And if you have any understanding of this country’s history, or if you read even a handful of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essays, or heck, if you’re a person of color, you know this is who we have always been.
The “shining city on a hill” has ugly, dark neighborhoods, full of rot and filth. They’ve always been there. We just don’t talk about them.
JustRuss
@Suzanne:
You have to be more specific. Biff Tannen with Gray’s Sports Almanac or without? Wait, I think I know the answer.
catclub
@Tom Levenson:
Whatever it was, it did not work.
Mandalay
From page 118 of the report:
So history will show that Powell was a gullible sap rather than one of the crooks. Ouch.
SteveinSC
@schrodinger’s cat: The party of Christian conservatism, preserving what is proven and good, not swayed by mob or expedience. But what are these old values? Some must be waterboarding, beatings, the whip, anal torture, and entombment. Psalm-singing hypocrites pissing on the graves of the Founding Fathers and the victims of 9/11.
JPL
So is r.e.c.t.a.l hydration kinda what I think it is? A hose and some liquid…..
Emma
Am I being out of bounds if I say that the torture horrifies me but the incompetence infuriates me?
shelley
@Suzanne: Dontcha remember all those cunning plans to exterminate Castro, back in the day. Things like poisoning or exploding cigars!
JPL
I was just refreshing my memory on the Camp Chapman bombing that killed several agents. The head of the base was one who was involved in the interrogation program. This is a link to a NYTimes article. If you can’t get the link, google Jennifer Matthews. Betty is correct they need to start over.
bluefoot
@Hungry Joe: Even Fleming says this outright a couple of times in the James Bond books. That it’s essentially a bullsh*t game played by a bunch of self-important boys and their dupes that has little to no bearing on real life.
Mandalay
@elmo:
Heh….it’s hardly surprising that Senator Angus King disagrees with you, and has given this as his response to the release of the report: “This is not America. This is not who we are”.
But as you say, that’s exactly who we are: unaccountable torturers.
Cacti
So what do the Balloon-Juice denizens think about the ACLU executive director’s suggestion that Obama should issue a Presidential pardon for Bush/Cheney/Yoo et al?
The reason for the suggestion is that it would memorialize for future generations that they did something that warranted a pardon, as their criminal prosecution in any US court is exceedingly unlikely.
Tree With Water
@elmo: “In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
Hunter Thompson—The Great Shark Hunt, 1979
KG
@Mandalay: they’re both right. this is who we are because this is what we did. this is not who we are because we have long believed we are the good guys and the good guys don’t torture. it’s reality versus ideals. if you want to change the first, you need to have the second.
KG
@Cacti: would a pardon be valid under international law? i mean, let’s say that Obama granted them a pardon (which, at this point, I’m fundamentally opposed to), if Yoo then decided to go teach a summer school law course overseas, would the country he traveled to be able to arrest him when he stepped off the plane?
burnspbesq
i’m not particularly interested in hearing from Ben Emmerson today, if it’s all the same to you. Brits have their own crimes to answer for, and his cheap publicity stunt isn’t making that any more likely.
burnspbesq
@Cacti:
Worth thinking about.
raven
@Hungry Joe: Spy vs Spy
Cacti
@KG:
No. A domestic pardon has no binding authority on an international prosecution for crimes against humanity.
Otherwise, every tinhorn dictator would be sure to pardon themselves when their hold on power started to slip and they had to flee.
GregB
Contemporary Conservative Thought 101.
Increasing healthcare access to millions of Americans=Tyranny.
State sanctioned torture, murder and rape=freedom.
kindness
Me thinks this Senate report should have been released about a month before the elections.
Which Democratic Einstein didn’t think this one through?
On another note after looking over the other blogs, Conservative sites aren’t talking about it at all. Sully is blaming Obama for it. Liberals are speechless.
We as a nation should have known this report earlier.
burnspbesq
@Emma:
I don’t think so, but views may differ.
I have thought for a long time that if we had treated 9/11 as a crime, the FBI and DOJ had their act sufficiently together that KSM would have arrived at the Federal Supermax in about 2004.
Cacti
@GregB:
I actually saw a commenter at another site say, without a trace of irony, that the difference between us and other nations who torture, is the US does it for the right reasons.
The moral argument of a sociopath.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
When I read about the “rectal feeding” I said to myself, “Hang on a bit, the digestive tract doesn’t work that way …”
Tripod
@KG:
I went to H.S. with an illiterate alcoholic with a serious lack of cognitive ability, who eventually enlisted to do prisoner interrogation. My impression was they took him in because of his shortcomings, and the lack of interest from normal human beings in the billet.
I lost track of him a long time ago, but I’d guarantee he’s a cop somewhere.
RaflW
@Emma:
I don’t think so. But I’m infuriated x2 because the incompetence is one of the reasons the CIA resorted to torture. And yet even that doesn’t work.
It is the worst deal with the devil: sell your soul and get nothing. But that’s his top play (not that I literally believe in the devil, just usin’ the metaphor)
MomSense
@burnspbesq:
I guess I would only support pardons if the pardons were part of a rigorous truth and reconciliation commission modeled after the commission in South Africa post apartheid.
Mandalay
@KG:
But simply believing something does not make it so, and who is “we” anyway?
An earlier thread cited that 49% of the country supported the use of torture. Our media mostly justified it, or looked the other way. Congress rubber stamped it. The Adminstration planned it. The CIA and the military executed it with zeal. Support for torture permeated American society.
Sure, not every American supported it. But even if you didn’t, a heck of a lot of us did.
That is who we are: supporters of torture.
KG
@Cacti: then, no, I can’t support them at all (which was my first instinct). it just says “we know this happened and it was illegal, but it was justified by the circumstances.” that’s not who we are and that’s not who we should be.
elmo
@SteveinSC:
You put me in mind of Winston Churchill: “rum, buggery and the lash” are the traditions of the Royal Navy.
RaflW
@MomSense: I agree. I cannot imagine a truth and reconciliation process happening with the howler monkeys we have in Congress right now.
But maybe, just maybe, this release could at least be a precursor to some point down the road. I’m 49, maybe we’d see truth and reconciliation in my lifetime? Dunno. Not feeling hopeful today, but not ruling it out.
drkrick
@elmo:
Sometimes you have to walk on by.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Fuck no! Pardoning Nixon was a huge mistake, but one I can almost forgive Ford for because one could possibly claim not to foresee how badly it would encourage lawlessness in future administrations. Now that we know how much of a mistake it was, there’s no possible excuse for pardoning Bush, et. al. All a pardon will accomplish is to prove that the punishment for rampant illegality is a pardon.
schrodinger's cat
ETA: A question I have about crude electoral politics:
Why didn’t the Senate Democrats release this report before the elections? It would have gotten ISIS and Ebola off the headlines.
Tenar Darell
@kindness:
Analyzing Sullivan is definitely a mug’s game, but he’s probably projecting his very real guilt for his warmongering and enabling onto Obama. He may have compiled his posts from back then, but I doubt he ever really admitted to himself how his cheerleading enabled the torture too. How could he live with himself then?
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: Presidential pardons can precede (and thus obviate) indictments and convictions — but accepting one is seen by some legal authorities as (almost) an admission of guilt.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: I found this on the Guardian
Remember when torturers said KSM was just subjected to some pours? “abdomen somewhat distended & expressed water when abdomen pressed” 86
It’s from a tweet from emptywheel. The body doesn’t work like that, either.
Rex Tremendae
@kindness:
And what do you think would have been the result of that? Surely you don’t think our Red State Dems would have performed better if they would have come out against torture (assuming they would have done so much as that).
MomSense
@kindness:
Sully is blaming Obama for the Bush torture regime??
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat:
It would have reminded GOP voters of things they like….
Corner Stone
@JPL:
Who knows what the body does after being waterboarded 182 times?
Oh, wait. I guess we kind of do. Now.
schrodinger's cat
@Davis X. Machina: Perhaps, it could have also changed the minds of some apathetic voters to vote and convinced some of the mushy independents to pull the lever for the Democrats.
KG
@kindness: the only places on the “right” where i’ve seen any discussion is at Sullivan and at Reason. both have been appalled. and i don’t think it’s fair to say that Sullivan is blaming Obama. he’s been saying for a long time that the Obama administration should prosecute these war crimes, but that the administration didn’t want to do that. that’s a legit criticism.
schrodinger's cat
When Hillary announces her candidacy, Sully is going to jump ship and become a Rand Paul supporter.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: Romero makes a strong argument in his NYT op-ed. Since the bastards are never going to be brought to justice in the US, a pardon could be the only way left to label their actions as a crime. Besides, it would be fun to watch the Foxsters shit themselves in outrage.
Corner Stone
This is kind of amazing. All the bullshit cries about dudebro concerns with us killing people around the world, the overwhelming portion of which we had no idea who they were.
What do you people think that sprung from? This. It’s all of a piece. You can’t condemn stress positions and sleep deprivation and then hand wave away taking someone’s life with no due process.
Jacel
@Mustang Bobby: If you follow that plan today, just try to avoid playing a Beach Boys CD that includes “Student Demonstration Time”.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: There should never be a pardon. Never.
There is no tacit placement of guilt that will take the place of what should happen. And if it never happens in my lifetime, maybe one day some generation will have the sack to do this.
Seth Owen
Cheney will probably expire before justice is served. If Bush inherits his dad’s longevity genes he may live long enough to face some legal consequences a la Pinochet. Some if the other ones such as. Hayden! Yoo and Rodriguez are young enough that they ought to be worried about sentiments changing down the road,
skerry
The Onion’s take on the report
CONGRATULATIONS!
OT but of note: Supreme Court votes 9-0 to stick it to hourly workers.
You call some of these people liberals? Fucking obscene.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): You are a real piece of work.
elmo
@Cacti:
Obama is the Executive. Prosecution is every bit as much within his purview as a pardon. If he can issue a pardon, he can direct the Attorney General to bring charges.
IOW I think a pardon would be the biggest act of political and executive cowardice since Gerald Ford.
elmo
Halp! I am in moderation and didn’t use any forbidden words or links!
hoodie
@Tom Levenson:
US voted against the Rome Statute, now we know why.
Corner Stone
@CONGRATULATIONS!: If the conditions of your employment mandate you go through a screening after work hours, how is that not worth being paid for?
Let’s see the workers refuse to go through the screening and bypass the line to get to their ride home.
If they are fired then it is a vital and necessary portion of their employment.
Tenar Darell
@MomSense: The way I read the initial flood, Sully seems to be blaming Obama and the Senate for slow walking the report. But that could have changed since the release a few hours ago as he absorbed it. It’s like anything that git comments on…he will undercut and contradict himself then try to correct the overcorrection. (Hello, let me introduce myself: I’m addicted to the mug’s game of Sullivan analysis).
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat:
I predict this will be in headlines for three days or less. Possibly fewer if the House and Senate accidentally fail to get a continuing resolution to fund the government by Thursday.
elmo
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I was absolutely stunned when I saw that. A very, very large part of my professional life is taken up with the nuances of Dept of Labor wage and hour regulations, and specifically the rules that govern “preliminary” and “postliminary” activities. I would absolutely, positively have insisted that employer-mandated time spent going through employer-mandated and employer-run security checks, when the employee is not in control of his own activities but the employer is – OF COURSE THAT’S COMPENSABLE TIME.
My own organization spends a great deal of money to pay employees for “walking time,” in two- and three-minute increments. I’ve been told by the Dept of Labor that even thirty seconds is not “de minimis” if it’s repeated often enough. And these people wait up to a half hour and aren’t getting paid?
What the everlasting fuck?
Belafon
@kindness:
It wouldn’t have mattered. More liberals would have stayed home because Obama didn’t prosecute Bush and Cheney. Republicans would have cried about it hurting America which would have gotten Teabaggers angrier.
catclub
@Corner Stone:
They will be fired. …But who will bell the cat.
skerry
@CONGRATULATIONS!: It’s not in the Government’s interest to say workers need to be paid for screening. Imagine all the time workers at secure facilities spend in security checks.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: No. Mushy independents are mushy on torture.
Soprano2
Listening to a CIA apologist now on NPR. I want to throttle him.
catclub
@elmo: I don’t get it either. The 9-0 decision maybe means that some issue of protocol/procedure overruled any common sense.
Bex
@drkrick: “Sometimes you have to walk on by.” Hey Peggy, you mean like the priest and the Levite on the road to Jericho?
elmo
@catclub:
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Okay, I’ve now read the opinions. They are in line with existing precedent, but the thing they don’t recognize is how far beyond the facts of existing precedent this could take us. Under the Court’s reasoning, all that matters is that “going through screening” is not indispensable to performance of the work the employees were hired to do, which is stock shelves. So under the Portal-to-Portal Act, it’s noncompensable.
Under that logic, the employer could require every employee to perform 10 jumping jacks, 10 pushups, and wash the manager’s car before leaving, and it wouldn’t be compensable time – even though the employer required it – because such activities are not indispensable to the work of stocking shelves.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Corner Stone: Precisely. The entire court has obviously not worked a legit job in their entire lives.
@elmo: I’ve worked retail management. Had I ever been told to clock a guy out but not let him leave, I’d have quit on the spot. That shit is just wrong. The Court’s copout of “it’s the law” is bullshit. The Court can throw out anything it doesn’t like if they hate it enough (Bush v. Gore). I gotta assume with a 9-0 vote that they liked this outcome. Very much.
Motherfuckers every one.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@skerry: Don’t need to really go in depth as to how I would know this, but that time is pretty much zero once you have your access badge.
AxelFoley
A country that committed genocide and fought a war over slavery and practiced Jim Crow for a century…and some of you are shocked? This is the same country that has shown that black lives don’t matter (nor red, nor brown).
elmo
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I’m still stunned, and thinking through the implications. I’m an in-house corporate lawyer, at a large business that provides services, not widgets. So employee compensable time is a really, really big deal.
And I would never, ever have allowed this case to go to trial. Because I would have been sure the company would lose.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@elmo: Well, IANAL, but I simply would have assumed the same thing. Always had it drilled into my head my entire life that you can’t ask guys to work off the clock, because that’s lawsuit city and firing time for a manager.
Your point about washing the manager’s car is spot-on. That is directly where this leads to.
skerry
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Not going into detail either, but that has not been my experience.
Culture of Truth
What Gergen meant with all the unrest in the United States we can’t afford to upset more people around world. “Now is not the right time”, etc etc
D58826
@kindness: Actually Sully is saying that to the extent Obama fails to condemn and prosecute these war criminals then he becomes an accomplice after the fact. It will be a stain on his legacy. He is not blaming Obama for the torture program itself just that he hasn’t done enough to clean up the mess.
cmorenc
@KG:
Yes they could, because Obama can only issue an effective pardon for violations of US law, not international law governed by a non-US body. Of course, prosecution could still practically only happen if the non-US authority attempting to hold and prosecute Yoo was not effectively subject to US control, veto, or overriding influence.
Another Holocene Human
The apologists on NPR got started already. Wyden (sp?) of Oregon was great but obviously doesn’t do much media. They cut him off.
Wyden needs to get out and say more stuff, I guess? Because otherwise you leave the convo to liars/manipulators like Rand Paul. Or blowhards like McCain.
Plenty of young people falling for Aqua Buddha’s calculated shtick when they should be rallying around somebody who has stuck his neck out for the truth and the right thing.
Xboxershorts
Hmmm, lets see. What kind of people did they need to find who would actually be ok with going over there and doing this kind of work?
yeah, this is my shocked face.
Another Holocene Human
@Culture of Truth:
As incompetent as the rest of the Bush admin and the Dept of Homeland Security, TSA, etc. Bush was giving credit cards to petty officers in the armed forces and then shocked, SHOCKED! when personal expenses were charged and people had to be cashiered. Defense was paying millions in contracts to scam artists, whether it was fraudulent bills being paid out without oversight until years later (American Greed has some good ones) or fraudulent products like those dowsing rods the Americans and British sunk real money into.
Another Holocene Human
@Suzanne:
Their biased hiring practices and the lawsuits over their biased hiring and promotion practices kind of prove it.
And then there was the whole blowing up the wrong targets in Iraq because we had old maps.
When your govt bureaucracy is functioning like GM divisions prior to the big bailout, ya got problems.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL:
B-b-b-but 24!
Another Holocene Human
@Zandar: This is the same leadership that stuffed DOJ with graduates of bible schools. Fake credentials and bullshit to replace expertise. Works if gov’t is just a scam, go big, cash out, and go home.
Another Holocene Human
@Mustang Bobby: Key West just elected a Republican rep!
Tally has a Dem, kinda conservaDemmy but hey! And FSU, but please overlook that. And the state lege, er …
Maybe send a postcard.
Another Holocene Human
@Hungry Joe: Disband CIA and the Anglo-Americans elites will just repurpose our somewhat more professional at present diplomatic corps to serve the same damn purpose. At least right now they’re separate so you can tell the CIA to fuck off.
Cutting off the endless cash spigot would be nice. I guess the boat sailed for affirmative action but you could force all of their top leaders to be military, so something more like the pre-Dulles days where the “fizz kids” are chafing under the boring mil proles in charge. Put it under the Army. There would be less late night high/drunk frat boy projects pulling down millions in funding because Army don’t play that. And there would be the Army commanders getting in their way when they want to do shit that endangers soldiers.
Jeffro
Jane Mayer covered all of this back in 2008, in “The Dark Side”. Would have been nice if we could have had this discussion then.
Another Holocene Human
@PJ: Wunsler’s feckless son back from his overseas tour on the Boondocks cartoon series just about summed up Bush II’s American military adventure for me.
Incompetent, insensitive, thrillseeking, ignorant, triggerhappy, violent, destructive, and racking up lots of collateral damage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human:
If you gave the army the budget for it, it would certainly be interested in all sorts of “late night high/drunk frat boy projects.”
ETA: A lot of the projects would involve building even bigger, faster tanks.
Mandalay
@Another Holocene Human:
You obviously haven’t read what McCain has had to say today:
Of course McCain has hated the CIA for a long time, but even if revenge is his motive let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. McCain is the very last Republican to be going after over this report.
Corner Stone
Man, WTF is wrong with Richard Engel?
dmbeaster
So if the torturers were patriots according to Bush and his mouthpiece, why were the Abu Gharib torturers a “few bad apples” meriting imprisonment? Is it just the little people who were not patriots when they tortured?
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay: That’s okay, you can kiss McCain’s ass without me. Not hatin’.
Jeffro
@Culture of Truth: With Gergen, it’s never a good time to hold high government officials accountable. He is truly a bootlicker of the first order.
Fester Addams
Is anyone else getting a little tired of the endless repetitions of “torture doesn’t work”?
Torture works very well, if what you want is to make people say what you want them to say. If you want them to say Saddam Hussein has WMD, if you want them to say he was behind the 9/11 attacks, it works. If you want them to denounce others so you can torture them too, it works. If you want to extract confessions–true or false–it works.
The Americans who ordered the torture and the Americans who did the torturing know this, they’re experts.
The worst horror: it’s why they were doing it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fester Addams: Yes, torture can elicit confessions. It that is what you want, it works. If you want the truth, it is far less effective.
Mandalay
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m only kissing his ass today. And I’m also kissing Feinstein’s ass, and Udall’s if he’ll let me.
But unfortunately the ass kissing list for this report is a lot shorter than the ass kicking list.
Irony Abounds
I haven’t taken the time to read the entire thread, so I apologize for any redundancies. My 2 cents: The majority of Americans don’t give a rat’s ass that Muslims were tortured, including some who were tortured by mistake, and in fact are more than happy it occurred, so this is another political battle that will do more to get the Republicans’ base riled up and angry, while a substantial portion of Democrats’ base could not care less, and thus work to the advantage of the Republicans. A very sad state of affairs, but it just goes to show once again that loud and dumb generally trumps quiet and moral.
I I find Andrew Sullivan’s outrage that Obama hasn’t prosecuted the torturers almost laughable. Any attempts by Obama to prosecute anyone would have resulted in the end of his Presidency, perhaps literally, perhaps practically. Ironically, anyone thinking America will prosecute its own for these offenses has to assume an American exceptionalism that is disproved by the very offenses they want to prosecute. Countries don’t try their own war criminals, except when a dictator is overthrown and the other side wants revenge. To think otherwise is a pollyannaish way of viewing the human race.
Fester Addams
@Omnes Omnibus: Right, and that’s why saying “Cheney’s torture program didn’t work” contains an implicit falsehood, that being that Cheney ordered the torture program because he wanted the truth. He didn’t. He wanted support for lies, and using torture to make people say what you want them to say, well, that worked.
tones
@D58826:
Which is of course entirely correct.
I was gung ho Obama if we were going to get to the bottom of this and heads roll, but according to international law at the very least, to shirk his duty to prosecute is to be complicit and also guilty.
bago
Cheap ceramic cortex bombs will be fun in 20 years. How do you work the logic of torture when with a thought it can all be over?