When the photos of prisoners at the American prison called Abu Gharib hit the news, President George W. Bush looked into the camera, appearing distressed and said, "This is not who we are."
Of course, that is exactly who we were and still are, people who, like those monsters of the Gestapo in all those old movies who tortured people hideously.
The new movie, "The Report" is a blood boiler and you cannot watch it without thinking: We have American war criminals who have never been punished and we should have an American version of the Nazi hunter, Simon Weisenthal, hunting them down.
It is an odd sensation, having just listened to hours of Michelle Obama reading her lovely book, with its endearing portrait of Barack Obama, to see how meekly he shrank from his duty, how his instinct to see the other side and to over think prevented him from doing what anyone with a more rudimentary sense of basic morality would have done: condemned the torturers and pursued them relentlessly.
He did end the torture program within 3 days of taking office, but that only confirms he knew just how horrific it was.
Of course, this would mean throwing Dick Cheney, Kay Haslip, Brennan and a whole raft of CIA torture chamber "prison guards" into jail and having a Nuremberg trial.
Instead, President Obama reminded us we have to remember the climate of fear and the pressure to prevent another attack, possibly with a "dirty bomb" which prevailed and some of us remember the TV show "24" where the guy who has to save Washington, DC is always doing violent things. "If you have to crush a child's testicles to prevent the destruction of a city, you have to do it," someone says in "The Report."
The problem with this defense of torture, of course, is that torture does not prevent the destruction of the city. The key defense is, "Well, it works. It's necessary." The ends justify the means.
The fact is: It never did work. It was both unnecessary and counterproductive, and from the get go, it was always simply criminal and malevolent. Of course, there are always extreme examples of having to do harm for a greater good: The old problem of throwing the switch ahead of the runaway railroad locomotive which will kill a child but spare an entire train station full of people, or, for that matter, bombing cities to end a war and save all the lives which would be lost if the war continues.
The problem is, of course, torturers, war criminals always justify their sadistic acts as "necessary."
"We have to put on our big boy pants," Jose Rodriguez, a CIA official barks, justifying the torture chambers.
What Senator Diane Feinstein asks the main investigator, Daniel Jones, "If water boarding is so effective, why did they have to do it 183 times on the same prisoner?"
What Daniel Jones clearly demonstrates is that torture is completely ineffective, as the victim simply says whatever he thinks the torturer wants to hear.
Jones, interviewed on WBUR, says after devoting 7 years of his life to the investigation of the CIA torture chambers, two things really aggravate him:
1. The CIA claimed torture produced the information which led to Osama Bin Laden. The truth is OBL was caught by standard CIA traps started long before the torture program. None of the information which caught him was obtained by torture.
The CIA lied about that, later, to cover it's torture tracks, to argue, "Well, it works."
2. President Obama portrayed the torturers as "patriots," who simply over reacted in the fog of war. Jones notes dozens of CIA employees resigned in protest over the torture, and they were the real patriots, not the sadists, who convinced themselves they were patriots and tough guys making tough choices.
Now we are faced with Trump pardoning the war criminal, Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who murdered a prisoner, and we have to ask: Did Obama not do something similar with the CIA war criminals?
This movie will do little to convince people the federal government is anything but a swamp. But we have to remind ourselves:
The Senate did pursue the investigation; eventually, the truth is outing.
Of course, we can never know the "whole truth" but we can judge well enough, based on what we do know. We see clips of Cheney explaining that the world is a dangerous place and we might see Washington, DC or New York City wiped out by a dirty bomb, (like that movie, "The Peacekeeper") and what he is saying is, we have to take "extraordinary means" to prevent this. You know he approved the torture program, from other evidence presented, and he prevented anyone telling the President about it, including Condoleeza Rice, who also knew about it.
It is also another reminder that Obama failed as a President in very significant ways:
1. He did not withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
2. He did not prosecute anyone who was responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, as the Scandinavian countries did.
3. He did not pursue war criminals, over the revelations of torture, including Cheney. He allowed the crime to go unpunished, which, in some ways makes him an accomplice.
He was simply not tough enough.
No, this is to excuse those sadistic, murderous people, who are always present in our police and military, and who are itching to unleash their worst impulses, and who excuse their depredations, when they are caught, with naive blather that bad things and injustices happen in war and we were at war. In fact, we were not at war, that "war" was a metaphor made up to excuse behavior which is forbidden even in war, and our government did what despotic, repugnant governments the world over had always done--it unleashed a reign of terror. Just because it was directed at relatively few people, out of sight by officials who appeared on TV does not mean it's any less hideous.
Of course, that is exactly who we were and still are, people who, like those monsters of the Gestapo in all those old movies who tortured people hideously.
 |
| "Not Who We Are" |
The new movie, "The Report" is a blood boiler and you cannot watch it without thinking: We have American war criminals who have never been punished and we should have an American version of the Nazi hunter, Simon Weisenthal, hunting them down.
 |
| Rodriguez: Torturer |
It is an odd sensation, having just listened to hours of Michelle Obama reading her lovely book, with its endearing portrait of Barack Obama, to see how meekly he shrank from his duty, how his instinct to see the other side and to over think prevented him from doing what anyone with a more rudimentary sense of basic morality would have done: condemned the torturers and pursued them relentlessly.
He did end the torture program within 3 days of taking office, but that only confirms he knew just how horrific it was.
 |
| Haslip: Torturer |
Of course, this would mean throwing Dick Cheney, Kay Haslip, Brennan and a whole raft of CIA torture chamber "prison guards" into jail and having a Nuremberg trial.
Instead, President Obama reminded us we have to remember the climate of fear and the pressure to prevent another attack, possibly with a "dirty bomb" which prevailed and some of us remember the TV show "24" where the guy who has to save Washington, DC is always doing violent things. "If you have to crush a child's testicles to prevent the destruction of a city, you have to do it," someone says in "The Report."
The problem with this defense of torture, of course, is that torture does not prevent the destruction of the city. The key defense is, "Well, it works. It's necessary." The ends justify the means.
The fact is: It never did work. It was both unnecessary and counterproductive, and from the get go, it was always simply criminal and malevolent. Of course, there are always extreme examples of having to do harm for a greater good: The old problem of throwing the switch ahead of the runaway railroad locomotive which will kill a child but spare an entire train station full of people, or, for that matter, bombing cities to end a war and save all the lives which would be lost if the war continues.
 |
| Brennan: Torturer Apologist |
The problem is, of course, torturers, war criminals always justify their sadistic acts as "necessary."
"We have to put on our big boy pants," Jose Rodriguez, a CIA official barks, justifying the torture chambers.
What Senator Diane Feinstein asks the main investigator, Daniel Jones, "If water boarding is so effective, why did they have to do it 183 times on the same prisoner?"
 |
| Daniel Jones |
What Daniel Jones clearly demonstrates is that torture is completely ineffective, as the victim simply says whatever he thinks the torturer wants to hear.
Jones, interviewed on WBUR, says after devoting 7 years of his life to the investigation of the CIA torture chambers, two things really aggravate him:
1. The CIA claimed torture produced the information which led to Osama Bin Laden. The truth is OBL was caught by standard CIA traps started long before the torture program. None of the information which caught him was obtained by torture.
The CIA lied about that, later, to cover it's torture tracks, to argue, "Well, it works."
2. President Obama portrayed the torturers as "patriots," who simply over reacted in the fog of war. Jones notes dozens of CIA employees resigned in protest over the torture, and they were the real patriots, not the sadists, who convinced themselves they were patriots and tough guys making tough choices.
Now we are faced with Trump pardoning the war criminal, Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who murdered a prisoner, and we have to ask: Did Obama not do something similar with the CIA war criminals?
This movie will do little to convince people the federal government is anything but a swamp. But we have to remind ourselves:
The Senate did pursue the investigation; eventually, the truth is outing.
Of course, we can never know the "whole truth" but we can judge well enough, based on what we do know. We see clips of Cheney explaining that the world is a dangerous place and we might see Washington, DC or New York City wiped out by a dirty bomb, (like that movie, "The Peacekeeper") and what he is saying is, we have to take "extraordinary means" to prevent this. You know he approved the torture program, from other evidence presented, and he prevented anyone telling the President about it, including Condoleeza Rice, who also knew about it.
 |
| Cheney: Torturer |
It is also another reminder that Obama failed as a President in very significant ways:
1. He did not withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
2. He did not prosecute anyone who was responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, as the Scandinavian countries did.
3. He did not pursue war criminals, over the revelations of torture, including Cheney. He allowed the crime to go unpunished, which, in some ways makes him an accomplice.
He was simply not tough enough.
“I understand why it happened. I think it’s important, when we look back, to recall how afraid people were when the twin towers fell ...It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job those folks had."
--Barack Obama
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteI watched most of The Report in stunned horror. The graphic depiction of our sadistic torture of prisoners is even more disturbing on film than it is reading about it. What type of person spends their days devising various methods of cruelty-- and what kind of individual buys into this torture as a legitimate "strategy". The two twisted psychologists are certainly not the only villains here.
Maud
Will write more if I can post...
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteObama did end the "Enhanced Interrogation"(sick) methods immediately-to his credit. However, I agree that his desire to be bipartisan allowed war criminals to receive no punishment. Certainly going back and prosecuting members of the previous administration would have produced a political firestorm of epic proportions-but it was also the morally right thing to do.
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteWe can always dream that someday these creeps can be hunted down, some latter day Simon Weisenthal, hunting down not German Nazi war criminals but American government criminals.
We should probably go to political rallies for the various candidates and ask them about "The Report" and what they would do about getting these guys.
Mad Dog