I don’t think it is any giant secret that the Democrats were complicit in the torture of detainees, but it is nice to have some names and dates (I’m assuming you all are not named Rosen, and as such, understand the value of facts mixed in with your assertions): Intelligence officials released documents this evening …
Torture
A slap on the wrist for torture
This is not surprising. And we can expect the media to support these efforts to make sure no one is punished: Former Bush administration officials are launching a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with …
Two People Who Did Not Agree On Much, Agreed On One Thing
Via two posts from Sullivan, I have learned that the two most successful interrogators and spybusters from WWII, one German and one British, never harmed an inmate. No German won as many intelligence coups as Hanns Scharff. Scharff worked for the Luftwaffe interrogating allied pilots and bomber crews, so successfully that the U.S. military taught …
Two People Who Did Not Agree On Much, Agreed On One ThingPost + Comments (77)
Cliff May Declares That America Tortured The Crap Out Of People
Paraphrasing Cliff May on Jon Stewart, sincerely and not in the satirical ‘shorter’ style: The so-called “torture memos” are actually anti-torture documents. They accomplish this because they establish a bright, shining line that we must not, under any circumstances, cross. Emptywheel captured this key point from Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memo. …where authorized, it may be …
Cliff May Declares That America Tortured The Crap Out Of PeoplePost + Comments (100)
Regrets, I Have a Few
But Judge Bybee does not: Judge Bybee said he was issuing a statement following reports that he had regrets over his role in the memorandums, including an article in The Washington Post on Saturday to that effect. Given the widespread criticism of the memorandums, he said he would have done some things differently, like clarifying …
It Is Kind of Amazing
Larison: One of the things that has kept me from saying much over the last week or so is my sheer amazement that there are people who seriously pose such questions and expect to be answered with something other than expressions of bafflement and moral horror. Something else that has kept me from writing much …
What Is At Stake
Frank Rich puts it on the table: Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote …