PATHETIC

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

PATHETIC!

For anyone wondering why the establishment media is held in such low regard one need look no further for evidence than this video of today's Morning Joe program. Pathetic is the best word I can use to describe the entire conversation that occurred. The entire video is full of distortions, CYA comments and some just outright lies. I was so angered after watching this disgraceful display that I felt I needed to make this post in order to do my part in holding our media accountable for telling us the truth, not the kind of  garbage we saw this morning.

Have these people even bothered to read any of the government documents about our treatment of our prisoners? It's mind boggling to me that people in our media can actually sit around and make comments that what was done to our prisoners was no different than what we do to our own military. That is just factually false. Is this willful ignorance or are these people so delusional that they actually believe this ? Or maybe it's just that lying is the only way for them to convince the public that there should be no accountability for this outrageous program? 

This video is such a clear example of what our establishment media has been pushing from day 1

NO PROSECUTIONS - even if we find out that the evidence reveals that crimes were committed or in the case of Meacham, a call for no prosecutions before the investigation is even started. 

Meacham: I don't think we should be prosecuting people, uh,  but I do think we should be finding out exactly what happened and why.

Scarborough: It would be very difficult if we started prosecuting people because you couldn't stop with the lawyers it would  have to go to Dick Cheney & Condoleeza Rice & Don Rumsfeld & George W. Bush -  all the people around the table. As Donnie said that is the last thing this president wants for this own political reasons.

Meacham: I completely agree with that. I think that you have to go to the top responsible officer and everyone likes to talk about VP Cheney in this context, and they should, he was a critical player but we had a president, we had I think a president who history will show was much more hands on than we think and so you would have to somehow or another figure out how to hold a president culpable in his official role which has been a very complicated thing in our Constitutional history. You mentioned the Nixon example which is the best, I think. And I think you're right in that a criminal prosecution takes us to a very different place then we've been in the past...at the same time I would love to see a terrific senator or congressman doing a 911 commission kind of thing.

So Meacham, in typical beltway establishment fashion,  evidently holds the view that we shouldn't prosecute the unethical lawyers who wrote memos to provide legal cover for this illegal torture program because then we'd have to go after ALL the high-level officials responsible and we can't do that because that's too "complicated." Evidently prosecuting those few lower level  "bad apples" that we've already prosecuted will just have to be good enough.

Scarborough: I hear from some agencies that 100 people died while in captivity in these type of prisons I don't know whether that's the truth or not I would like to know though -  I think you're exactly right that we have these  investigations - we clear the air but we need to be focused and rational about it and not emotional.

Meacham: ...I don't think we know exactly what happened... Let's do a Post 911 commission. 

Deutsch: Let's not prosecute I think we all agree on that...

Meacham: nods his head in approval.

Think about this conversation...Scarborough brings up that he's heard that 100 people died who were in our care....He then says we need investigations but we must be focused and rational about it and not emotional...Meacham says we don't know exactly what happened but he nods in agreement when Deutsch says we shouldn't prosecute. 

I wonder how anyone can hear that there might have been 100 prisoners that died while in our custody, agree we should investigate but without knowing what evidence that investigation shows agree in advance that there should be no prosecutions. What kind of twisted mind does it take to  agree with such thinking?

These people in this discussion have all been on the wrong side of this issue and they know it. They're desperately trying to grab at anything that will prevent them from having to admit that they were wrong like you see in this disgusting comment by Deutsch.

Deutsch: John don't we all know what happened? And you set it up best -  on Sept 10th we were one country on Sept 12th we were a different country and we all know that if you said to everybody in this country OK, if by waterboarding one terrorist you could save your brother would you do it? We all know the answer to that and that was the tenor of this country so without an investigation and Joe help me out here or disagree with me, don't we all kinda know that we walked into that grey emotional and legal area and obviously these are things that people are taught in U.S. military training techniques so there is a precedent there, so don't we kind of know what went down?

How presumptuous of you Mr. Deutsch to pretend to speak for everyone in this country. Quite frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. There were and still are a lot of people in this country who would never agree to waterboard anyone and even if everyone in this country said "yes" to your self-serving hypothetical, it's up to our leaders to resist the passions of the mob and follow the law. What you've outlined in your scenario isn't a legitimate reason for breaking the law and you should be ashamed of yourself for even insinuating that it is.

After defending the torture program these guys finally get around to defending their own culpability. All of these men have been on the wrong side of this issue for years. They've ridiculed the rest of us who have been advocating for accountability for torture. But now when they finally see the accountability freight train coming directly at them these guys cynically try to minimize their own role in allowing the torture program to go unchallenged by saying that everyone was at fault (not just them). No, everyone was not at fault. And no,  everyone didn't have a different mindset about the rule of law on Sept. 12. Maybe you guys did, but a lot of us didn't and YOU KNOW IT.

Scarborough: The important thing though is John, as with the economic crisis, we love blaming Wall street, we love blaming Washington. We need to blame ourselves also. I remember, you know,  I am a  conservative/libertarian,  I want small government . I remember on Sept 12th  turning to my wife and saying -  you know I love small government, I don't trust federal authority  but  I'll tell  you what we need to do, whatever we have (you can hear Deutsch saying...exactly exactly at this point) to  do to make sure it never happens again and I'll be damned if 300 million Americans didn't say the same thing at the same time, so lets not be self righteous now 8years (Another Deutsch "exactly" heard in the background) later when we think that the skies over New York are safe.

Meacham is nodding in agreement during this whole self-serving comment by Scarborough.

Meachum then (mis) quotes Arthur Schlesinger in order to try to cover up his own incompetence on this issue now that he sees that it's not going to be ignored, as he and his fellow establishment clowns have been advocating.

Meacham: (supposedly quoting Schlesinger) Self righteousness and retrospect is easy and cheap

The accurate Schlesinger quote is:

Righteousness is easy in retrospect.

Meacham knows that a lot of us were saying the same things then as we are now so his "cheap" shot about self-righteousness is nothing more than a self-serving comment designed to deflect attention away from the fact that he's been wrong about this issue all along.

Perhaps he should have used this Schlesinger quote instead because it certainly describes Scarborough, Meacham, Deutsch and other establishment media personalities, both then and now.

For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life.

Please watch the entire video because I only scratched the surface on the objectionable comments.

torture

The Best Kept Secret in Washington: Conservatives Against Torture

Photo: Two men on springboards with saw felling tree 1900. John Fletcher Ford photographs

In my previous post I talked about how I think the establishment media has deliberately tried to characterize the torture issue as a left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal and Republican vs. Democrat issue.  

...I've noticed for a long time that our establishment media has tried to sell the public on the false idea that the torture issue is all about liberals vs. conservatives, left vs. right  or Republicans vs. Democrats. They are doing this so that citizens of all political persuasions, who are horrified about what our government has done in our names, will not band together to force our government to hold these war criminals accountable.  Our media and political elite want us to continue squabbling with each other, just like the guests do on the "crossfire" type shows, in order to divide us so that our power to demand accountability will be diluted. That's why they don't want us to know that there are conservatives who favor accountability (more on that in my next post) or liberals who don't advocate  prosecutions of Bush administration officials just because they hate Republicans. That's also why they don't want us to know that there are more people who favor accountability for torture than those who don't. 

Our establishment media and political elites know that if we know the truth about all of these things that there will be no way for them to stop us from forcing our government to hold our leaders accountable. They also know that once we stop viewing each other as the "enemy" that we will all discover who our "real" enemies have been all of these years. And once that happens then the chummy club of insiders, who have had a stranglehold on our country for decades, will no longer be running the show and calling the shots. And the thought of having a true democracy positively scares them to death.

Back in March of this year, Glenn Greenwald wrote a blog post about an Evan Thomas cover story in Newsweek that sheds even more light on the attitude of our establishment media.

In his just-released cover story on Paul Krugman's status as Obama critic, Newsweek's Evan Thomas includes these observations: 

By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are.  Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring.

Thomas then acknowledges what is glaringly obvious not only about himself but also most of his media-star colleagues:  "If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am) . . ."

That's right, our establishment media is all about protecting the status quo. They don't want anyone (including the American people) rocking the boat which is why I think they've gone to such outrageous lengths to keep us divided on the issue of torture.

So in order to begin challenging the inside-the-beltway establishment mentality on this issue I think we must first tackle their use of stereotypes about the views of conservatives and liberals on torture.

Despite what the media would have us believe all conservatives do not favor torture and all liberals are not "liberal score-settlers."  These claims are just false.

Yesterday I ran across a piece by Michael van der Galien called Christian Conservatives Against Torture that appeared on the PoliGazette website. 

We have all heard a lot about Christian conservatives in recent years. We know the standard talking points by now. They are radically right, in favor of a total war on Islam, intolerant even hateful towards those with unorthodox sexual preferences (hey, is that the political correct expression of the day or what?), and support torture.

Or not

In Mr. van der Galien's piece he links to an excellent piece by David P. Gushee at the Christianity Today website where Gushee authored a piece called 5 Reasons That Torture is Always Wrong. 

Say what? Conservatives against torture? But I thought according to the media all conservatives favor torture? Don't they?

I also ran across several pieces by conservative Rod Dreher where he talked about Bush lying to us about torture and about how those who tortured should be held accountable.  

One thing that nobody should ever be permitted to say again, after reading these memos: "The United States didn't torture." When President Bush said it, he was a liar. The only question is whether or not he was lying to himself, so that he could sleep at night, or consciously lying to the public for reasons of political expediency.

[Snip]

I disagree. Those who approved of torture should be made to defend what they did. The public should be forced to confront these things, and to learn what our government is capable of, so that we might prevent it in the future. I'm inclined to former Reagan Justice official Bruce Fein's view.

[Snip]

How is it that even after the CIA station chief on the ground told his superiors that the terrorist being tortured had said all he knew that the CIA kept on torturing the guy? What does that tell us about what we were really up to? Was it really a "necessary evil"?

That can't be undone, obviously, but if we don't try to understand how and why that happened, what will our refusal to look at our deeds, and what was done in our name, say about the American soul? "Yes, but they are terrorists," is not much of a defense.

What a conservative calling for accountability on torture? But that can't be or I would have heard about it on TV, wouldn't I?

Mr. Dreher also alerted his readers to another gentleman by the name of Mark Shea, a social conservative, who has been regularly posting critical commentary about torture on his blog. I visited his website last night and found a piece called That's the thing about committing war crimes and this one The Awesome Human Capacity for Rationalization of Evil where he says this:

[Snip}

So, according to the Rubber Hose Right it's *not* torture *because* it was done 183 times. Now, I recall back in the day, when torture apologists were explaining that it was not torture because it was so brutal and effective that KSM cracked instantly. "A couple of dunking and it was all over. What's the big deal?" Now we are told that he didn't crack instantly by the same apologists for torture--and that this proves it's not a big deal too. 

And this:

[Snip]

But yeah. Sure. Waterboarding somebody 183 times. That's not torture. 

Enjoy the bubble.

Today I went back to visit his blog again to see what other pieces he wrote and I found one called:

The Red Cross Torture Report 

Now and then, there has been talk of prosecuting the Bushies who ordered the creation of our torture regime and the commission of war crimes. I'd be completely in favor of that since I'm one of those people who thinks the US remains a nation of laws under God even when it is inconvenient to the fortunes of Movement Conservatives.

However, as some of the Left are now discovering, the big problem facing those who would like to pursue this course is not primarily GOP opposition (though it, of course, exists) but rather fellow lefties (including their very own President) who, having now seized the One Ring as suddenly reluctant to just give up all that reckless unilateral power.

I haven't gone through his entire archives but I'd be willing to bet that there are other pieces on torture that I've missed. But the point is that he's a social conservative and his view is not represented in the media just like Dreher, van der Galien and Gushee's views are not represented in the establishment media.

Quite some time ago I also ran across a piece by Becky Akers, a member of the John Birch Society, entitled Mainstream's Media Moral Meltdown where Ms. Akers advocated for accountability for Bush administration war crimes. I even sent several members of our media a link to her piece but because it also criticized the media I guess they weren't interested in it for multiple reasons.

We've also seen quite a few pieces  by conservative Bruce Fein, who eloquently argues for accountability for both the Bush administration and the Obama administration.

With the exception of Bruce Fein, who appeared on TV a couple of times and had a few op-ed's published,  we don't see these other  conservative voices represented in the establishment media.  All we see are the conservatives who represent, as Mark Shea calls them, the Rubber hose Republicans - people like David Rivkin, Andy Card, Dick Cheney and a whole host of other low level professional politicos (the usual suspects) who appear on cable talk shows. 

Recently we saw two pieces in the WSJ where you had Mukasey and Hayden team up and Rivkin and Casey team up to argue for torture. 

Just like in the photo above, where it takes two men to fell this tree, maybe anti-torture conservatives and liberals need to start teaming up in order to take down the media barriers that prevent all of our voices from being represented on the issue of torture? Maybe it's time for anti-torture conservatives and liberals to team up and start demanding accountability from our Department of Justice and inclusion in the national conversation on torture.

Update:  Gene Healy at the Cato Institute is clearly not buying David Rivkin's claim that we didn't torture. Check out his latest piece: Of Course It Was Torture

Update 2: QuietObserver posted an interesting post at Daily Kos about Shepherd Smith. The post includes this video that shows Shepherd Smith and former Judge Napolitano on Fox News appearing to be challenging the "Rubber Hose Republicans" and hopefully in the coming days they will do even more of it.

torture

Deliberately Obfuscating To Deny That We Tortured

Once again the   Wall Street Journal editorial page has allowed their newspaper to be used for propaganda purposes by another pair of torture apologists. This time we have the team of David Rivkin, who's made a career lately out of defending torture, and Lee A. Casey, Rivkin's frequent sidekick for defending the indefensible.  Rivkin has defended torture so much lately that one has to wonder if he is currently on retainer by one or more of the former Bush officials who authorized torture (I wish a reporter would ask him about that).

The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture

The Red Cross was completely wrong about 'walling'

Disingenuous pieces like this one from Mr. Rivkin and Mr. Casey and Friday's WSJ piece by Hayden and Muskasey make it even more necessary than ever to have a full investigation into the Bush torture program, so that the American people can finally see just how much we've been lied to by Bush administration officials and their lackeys. 

When I read this Rivkin/Casey piece I noticed at the end of it that they falsely claim that the Obama administration concluded that the "dedicated public servants" at the "Justice Department" should not be prosecuted. 

The dedicated public servants at the CIA and Justice Department -- who even the Obama administration has concluded should not be prosecuted -- clearly cared intensely about staying within the law as well as protecting the American homeland. 

      
As you can see, President Obama said nothing in his statement about not prosecuting public servants at the Justice Department. 

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs

Attorney General Eric Holder also made no mention about  not prosecuring Justice Department public servants.

Holder also stressed that intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice from the Justice Department that their conduct was lawful, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct.    

This false claim by Rivkin and Casey, where they say that the Obama administration has concluded that officials at the Justice Department should not be prosecuted, is at best wishful thinking on their part and at worst a deliberate attempt to mislead. In fact, Rivkin and Casey's entire op-ed is so filled with false assertions that I won't even give it any credibility here by wasting my time discussing their specific, specious claims. 

Quite frankly, I don't believe for a moment that this Rivkin and Casey piece was written to legitimately analyze the Bybee and Bradbury legal memos, as it pretends to do. Nor do I think that Rivkin and Casey actually believe what they wrote. I think it's pretty clear to anyone, who's actually read the memos, that this op-ed is nothing more than their attempt to deliberately distort the devastating content contained in these memos, in order to try to defend the Bush administration officials from legal exposure and to provide "talking points" to comfort the people, who continue to cling to the false hope that we didn't torture.

Let's face it, people like Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials need rank and file Republicans to unquestioningly stand behind them in order to help them defend against calls for holding them legally accountable for their actions. But because most rank and file Republicans are against torture, people like Rivkin and Casey are cynically sent out to deliberately obfuscate what we did, in order to manipulate the rank and file into continuing to believe that we didn't torture just so they'll continue to protect Cheney and friends. 

This "formula" for holding the rank and file together to stand behind the Bush administration officials has worked pretty well up until now, primarily because a large number of our media personalities, who don't favor accountability for torture, repeatedly characterized the torture issue as a "liberal" issue. For instance, people like David Ignatius at the Washington Post labeled anyone who wanted accountability for torture as "liberal score-settlers." Ruth Marcus, also from the Post, joined him by painting this as an issue of the left. But they were not alone, there were many others in print and TV who did the same thing. I think they all thought that if they could make everyone believe that this was only something that liberals cared about that they could divide and conquer in order to ensure that pressure for accountability would gain less traction.

So with the media helping to reinforce the false idea that this was nothing but "partisan politics" at play, a lot of rank and file Republicans, who probably hadn't read the government documents themselves, thought that there was no truth to the torture charges, and that it was all just "political posturing" as the Bush administration officials claimed. But now that the ICRC report and the "legal" memos have come out, a lot of rank and file conservatives and other Republicans are starting to look at the actual evidence instead of taking the word of their party leaders or media personalities and they don't like what they see. They're finally starting to realize that they've been lied to and they don't like that either. 

While it's very encouraging that the Republican rank and file are beginning to question the lies they've been told I sure wish they were at the point where they too were calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the torture program because we need to have this investigation under way as soon as possible. Like a lot of people I worry that if another attack comes before an investigation into the torture program is completed that the radical, torture zealots like Rivkin, Casey and others will take advantage of the attack by playing the fear card. They will claim that we got attacked because we stopped torturing and sadly the traditional media will probably be right there to help them with their deception.

I don't know if Malcom Nance, founding Director of the International Counterterrorism Center for Excellence is a Democrat or a Republican but I do know that he's another voice rightfully calling for prosecution on torture. His piece in the NY Daily News is one that is well worth reading.

If America wants to win the war against al-Qaeda, we have to start anew. The Obama administration will have to forget about the pressure they are getting from Bush administration officials and Republicans to hide all further releases of torture memos they themselves defended for years.

Then, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury - who, as Bush administration legal officials, have documented their own complicity to explicitly authorize crimes - will have to be calmly prosecuted, based on the evidence, with all the due process rights to which they are entitled. Who knows, they may well be acquitted.

Update: After I posted this piece I found out in an article in the Washington Times that Rahm Emanuel has muddied the waters about who should not be prosecuted when he appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Read it and weep.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  What about those who devised policy?

EMANUEL:  Yes, but those who devised policy, he believes that
they were should not be prosecuted either, and that's not the

place that we go as he said in that letter, and I would really

recommend people look at the full statement not the letter,

 the statement in that second paragraph, "this is not a time

 for retribution."  It's time for reflection.  It's not a time to use

 our energy and our time in looking back and any sense of

 anger and retribution.

We have a lot to do to protect America.  What people need to
know, this practice and technique, we don't use anymore. 

He banned it.

**In light of this update that I was unaware of at the time I wrote this piece I will have to extend my apology to Mr. Rifkin and Mr. Casey for falsely accusing them of making a false claim. However, I still stand by my other comments about their piece.

Mr. Attorney General: Appoint a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture

Yesterday the Obama administration released four previously secret Bush administration legal memos, here, here, here and here, that had been used to give legal cover for the Bush "enhanced interrogation" program. After reading the recently released ICRC report and now these legal memos, one can plainly see why someone in the Bush administration was in such a hurry to destroy the 92 videos that provided clear evidence of the lawless interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. 

But even without these videos it doesn't take much of an imagination to understand the full horror of this monstrous program that our own government created and mercilessly used on so many of our prisoners. 

While I congratulate the Obama administration for having the courage to release these memos, despite the considerable political pressure they received from people, both inside and outside of the administration, there is still much more that needs to be done before we can even begin to restore our country's honor.

We are now at a point where the citizens of this country must become fully engaged on this issue. We can no longer ignore the massive amount of evidence in front of us. If we're honest with ourselves we must finally face up to the fact that there is no longer any doubt that our country systematically tortured our prisoners. The question now is what are we going to do about it?

While the torture that was done in our names can't be undone, we can make sure that the whole scheme is exposed and discredited by confronting it head on. We can also make sure that those who were responsbile for these war crimes are held accountable in a court of law in order to prevent future officials from even thinking about repeating this dark chapter in our history. And in case you don't believe that torture can happen again just look at the comment made yesterday by a former Bush official:

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says the Obama administration is endangering the country by releasing the memos. 

Hayden tells The Associated Press the release will give terrorists a precise guide for what to expect in a CIA interrogation if those methods are ever approved for use again. 

Unbelievable as it may seem, Mr. Hayden, is actually envisioning a day in the future when we might want to use torture again. Even in the midst of the well deserved, worldwide condemnation for our horrendous use of torture this man still wants to torture and sadly he's not alone. We have a small, radical element in this country who don't support our traditional American values and instead believe that the president is above the law and can do anything he wants, including torture. They must be stopped by us or we risk having them come to power again. Zealots like Mr. Hayden, Dick Cheney and others of their ilk are convinced that they are right, even when the evidence clearly shows that they are wrong. They will continue to harm our country from within until they are stopped.

In order to stop them we must all take off our political hats and come together as citizens to fight this danger from within. This fight isn't about Democrats vs. Republicans. This fight is about citizens vs. a small group of radicals, whose extremist views endanger our country. If we have the courage to come together, despite our political differences, we can defeat them. 

Please call, email or send letters to your Senators, Congressional Reps., the President, the Justice Dept., Party leaders,  and the media demanding that a special prosecutor be appointed to thoroughly investigate and prosecute these war crimes. To do anything less will make us all complicit in torture.

Update: Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post up today that I would encourage everyone to read

Update 2: Michael Mukasey has now joined General Hayden in defending torture

Update 3: Bruce Fein, former Reagan official, also has an excellent post up today that was cited in this piece by Rod Dreher.

Update 4: My previous headline on this post was wrong. It read: Mr. President: Appoint a Special Prosecutor. This was incorrect as it is up to the AG to appoint a Special Prosecutor not the President. I have corrected the headline and removed a sentence from this piece that repeated that mistake. My apology to my readers for getting this so obviously wrong.

Armitage: Against Following "Rule of Law" for Torture, Favors "Remedial Corrections" Instead

In this remarkable video snippet from an interview with former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, conducted by Avi Lewis of Al-Jazeera, Armitage cynically advocates against holding  anyone legally accountable for the Bush administration torture program.

While Armitage admits that prisoners were tortured (waterboarded) he is not for “throwing someone into the Hoosegow” (slang for prison) as he explains it, but instead thinks the appropriate consequences for these crimes should be nothing more than  providing “remedial corrections.”  

So why does Armitage think that there should be no legal accountability for Bush administration officials who were responsible for creating and running the torture program they called "enhanced interrogation?" According to Mr. Armitage it’s because the Framers of the Constitution placed the oversight role of the Executive Branch in the hands of the Congress and, therefore, only the Congress can determine the consequences for these crimes through the oversight process. And then to make the circle of no accountability complete, Mr. Armitage then goes on to condemn the lack of oversight by the Congress during the Bush years, even going so far as to call the Congress  AWOL.  He bemoans the fact that they didn't stop these officials at the time and gives the listeners the impression that because of the lack of oversight that it's now too late to do anything about these crimes other than "remedial corrections."

I certainly agree with Armitage that the Congress was AWOL or MIA in their oversight duties and that there are probably members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who were complicit in the torture program. But I don’t agree that because they were MIA that it means that officials, who were responsible for creating, running and covering up for the torture program, should receive a “get out of jail free card” because of it. That’s not how our system of government works and Mr. Armitage is well aware of that fact.  We have a long history in this country where our Department of Justice has brought charges against members of the executive branch and legislative branch without any prior Congressional activity having taken place. So watching Mr. Armitage twist himself and the Constitution into a pretzel in order to advocate that there be zero accountability for these people is quite disturbing.  

When Mr. Armitage was actually asked a straight forward question about the law, he used a trick, favored by some of our traditional media personalities - he borrowed part of President Obama's words about looking forward and then combined them with his own twist on those words in order to help buttress his argument that there should be no legal accountability for torture.

Lewis: If torture is against the law and you say that the United States tortured, waterboarding specifically, that that’s a crime and surely it should be prosecuted. 

Armitage: You’re making…you're using terms like surely this and surely that. I happen to prefer the formula used by our president where he says he’s much more interested in reconcillation and correction of these problems. He wants to be a forward looking man and that’s where I am.

I actually think that Armitage’s comments in this interview may have been nothing more than Mr. Armitage running interference for his former boss, Colin Powell. As we discovered last year, Powell attended the Principals meetings, where it was reported that various Bush interrogation methods were discussed in detail and approved by those attending the meetings. And because of that, Powell might very well have some legal exposure should a criminal investigation go forward (for all we know Armitage may have some legal exposure of his own).    

At the end of the interview when he's asked why he didn't resign once he found out that the Geneva Conventions were not being followed, Mr. Armitage offers up, what I consider to be nothing more than  a self-serving comment designed to mitigate his own failures.

In hindsight maybe I should’ve. But in those positions you see how many more battles you have. You maybe fool yourself. You say how much worse would x, y, or z be if I weren’t here trying to do it? So torture is a matter of principle as far as I’m concerned. I hope, had I known about it at the time I was serving, I would’ve had the courage to resign. **

After watching Mr. Armitage in this video I'm convinced that even had he known about the torture at the time (he may have) that he still wouldn't have resigned over it. He would have rationalized why he should stay just like he did in the statement above. And, even now, when we all know about the torture, Mr. Armitage still lacks the necessary courage to stand up for principle and demand that the people responsbile for these hideous crimes be held accountable through the rule of law. 

No, Mr. Armitage, you would not have had the courage to resign, of that, I'm certain.

**Update: One of the pieces (Mark Silva's) that I used for a quote by Armitage  has now altered that quote on their website. Here is the information they changed since I wrote this piece early this morning.

He hopes that, "had I known about it at the time I was serving, I would've had the courage to resign,'' he said. "But I don't know. It's in hindsight now.''

Rank & File Republican Stands Up for Principle on Torture - Is Brutally Denounced by Bully-Boy Limbaugh

Looks like another rank and file Republican is pushing back on torture.  People like veteran, Charles, who spoke on the Rush Limbaugh show in the tape below,  are no longer willing to let people like Rush Limbaugh pretend to speak for them on this issue.  I'm not surprised by this. I've thought for a long time that the majority of conservatives were against torture and it was just self-important blowhards like Limbaugh, who talked the loudest, that were publicly promoting the thuggish  "torture is good" narrative. 

I hope this veteran and others like him continue to stand up for their principles by pushing back against the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity version of what it means to be a Republican. I also hope they will join with rank and file Democrats & Independents, who share the same view that torture is wrong, no matter who does it. 

If we all join together, across party lines, then maybe we can finally force our supposed  "leaders" in government, on both sides of the aisle,  to stop playing political games and start following the rule of law by holding Bush administration officials accountable for their crimes.

Good for you Charles, whoever you are. The majority of Americans agree with you and not Rush Limbaugh. To paraphrase an old Cary Grant movie - if Limbaugh stood on top of a ladder he still wouldn't be able to touch the bottom of your shoe because he's a little man in both spirit and in intellect.

Can "Saving Face" Bring an "About Face" on Torture

Originally posted at Daily Kos and Oxdown Gazette 4/1/09 (Revised here)

Most of us posting at this website are horrified that our country tortured prisoners under our care. Most of us have also written diaries, posted comments, written letters to the editor and made phone calls to politicians demanding accountability for those Bush administration officials and possibly Democratic officials who enabled this to happen. Most of us have also criticized the Obama administration for refusing to initiate a criminal investigation when we all know that one is warranted. And most of us don't understand why more people aren’t demanding accountability. But maybe it's not about what most of us do maybe the key to getting Obama to act requires us to take a critical look at what some of us don't do.

Awhile back I started searching for pieces critical of the Bush torture program that were written by conservatives. I thought if we had more conservatives on record, who were critical of the Bush torture program, that it would make it much more difficult for the traditional media to dismiss people, who wanted accountability for these crimes, as just “liberal score settlers”. I also thought it would prevent "bi-partisan" loving Obama from ignoring this issue. While I found a few conservative pieces here and there I realized that I wasn’t finding very many. And then I started wondering why weren’t there more of these critical pieces? What's wrong with these people?  

Unlike some, I don’t believe that most conservatives approve of torture. I think the ones who do are in the minority among conservatives but just happen to be the loudest voices. So if I was right about this, why weren’t there more conservatives out there condemning the obvious torture that occurred? 

I think I may have stumbled upon one reason to help explain why some of these conservatives weren't speaking out. On Monday I did a Google search on torture and wound up on a moderate/conservative website reading a piece by Jason Arvak that took issue with another piece at that same site by Eric Martin whose piece theorized that because Petreaus had come out against torture that it would be difficult for him to win the Republican nomination. The person challenging this remark, Jason Arvak, stated that torture is NOT a core conservative value. Mr. Arvak's comment piqued my interest so I posted a comment to his blog post. What I learned during the discussion was that evidently one of the reasons that some of the rank and file conservatives are not voicing criticism of the Bush torture is because they are afraid that if they give an inch they will appear weak in the eyes of their enemies (Us). In other words, they are not treating this issue as a rule of law issue, as they should do, but as a partisan issue to be defended at all cost.

"It ignores the hyper-partisan atmosphere within which conservative bloggers are forced into a siege mentality where any concessions are perceived as a sign of weakness by merciless leftist attack dogs." - Jason Arvak

Now why is any of this inside the conservative camp information important to those of us who would like to see a criminal investigation of the Bush torture program? Why should we care about the self-imposed predicament that these right-wingers find themselves in? I think it’s important because it's just possible that we have an opportunity to allow these rank and file conservatives to save face so that they can feel comfortable enough to begin standing up for their own principles again. Do I think they should have enough guts to do this on their own? Sure, but obviously it hasn't happened yet so maybe we can help that process along be giving them the opening to save face.  

I ran across this piece on the Conflict Research Consortium's website called Face Saving that gives a pretty good description about the concept of saving face.  

[snip]

Face saving (or saving face) refers to maintaining a good self image. People who are involved in a conflict and secretly know they are wrong will often not admit that they are wrong because they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. They therefore continue the conflict, just to avoid the embarrassment of looking bad.

It then talks about how gloating can wreck the process.  

[snip]

One aspect of this principle is the rule of not gloating or bragging when one has won a victory. Gloating makes the other side look bad and feel badly, which can encourage them to withdraw their cooperation with any previous agreements.

Now I know some people would prefer to see these conservatives nailed to the wall rather than helped out of their jam. I can certainly understand that feeling myself. Some of these people are real jerks (so are some people on the left and in the center) and I have no sympathy for them but some of them just got caught up in defending Bush because they initially thought it was a garden variety political attack not something of substance. By the time they realized their mistake they'd already committed themselves and didn't know how to get out of it. For these people, in their mind, our "gloating" provides them with an excuse to keep them solidly in the "defend Bush camp" when they really feel very uncomfortable defending Bush on torture.  

I know gloating can be extremely satisfying but in the larger scheme of things is it worth it? Is it worth sabotaging our long term goal of investigations for the short term pleasure it provides? I'm certainly not advocating that we grovel and pretend that they were correct to defend Bush because they weren't. I'm also not suggesting that it's in any way our fault that they won't do the right thing just because we gloated because that's just ridiculous. I am, however, suggesting that if we use this knowledge about the power of allowing our adversaries to save face to help convince these conservatives that this is a rule of law issue and not a partisan, protect your party at all cost issue that we may get more people advocating for accountability. Anyway it's at least something to think about.

This piece by Jeff Jacoby from The Boston Globe may give us an idea of how to begin to bring these conservatives along. Mr. Jacoby is clearly a Bush man yet he has written this critical piece about the torture program. The angle that he uses may be one that we can also use to help prod these conservatives into recognizing that this is not a partisan issue.  

Saying Nothing is Torture in Itself

[Snip]

As regular readers know, I write as a war hawk. I strongly support the mission in Iraq. I voted for President Bush. I believe the struggle against Islamist totalitarianism is the most urgent conflict of our time.

But none of that justifies the administration's apparent willingness to countenance -- under at least some circumstances -- the indecent abuse of prisoners in military custody. Something is very wrong when the Justice Department advises the president's legal adviser that a wartime president is not bound by the international Convention Against Torture or the US laws incorporating it. Or when that legal adviser tells the Senate, as Alberto Gonzales did last week, that ''there is no legal prohibition under the Convention Against Torture on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas."

If this were happening on a Democratic president's watch, the criticism from Republicans and conservatives would be deafening. Why the near-silence now? Who has better reason to be outraged by this scandal than those of us who support the war? More than anyone, it is the war hawks who should be infuriated by it. It shouldn't have taken me this long to say so.