Just Another Monday
October 20, 2008, Matthew Good Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald had something rather profound published in yesterday’s edition. He went on a bent about some memos, waterboarding, the CIA, the Bush Administration, the fact that no one really noticed – you know, the usual…
“You remember the War on Terror, don’t you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank till it was worth maybe dinner and a movie, it was considered quite the important news story. Abu Ghraib? Extraordinary renditions? Fight ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em over here? Surely you recall.
I only ask because of a news story that broke last week to a yawn of media disinterest. The Washington Post reported on two secret White House memos explicitly endorsing the use of waterboarding — simulated drowning — on so-called high-value terrorism suspects. This is, says The Post, the first time the still-classified memos have been disclosed. They were written in response to requests from then-CIA Director George Tenet, who worried his agents might be hung out to dry if the practice were discovered and the people or their representatives demanded someone’s head.
According to The Post, the White House issued written authorizations in 2003 and 2004. Yet in 2006, President Bush told the nation, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it — and I will not authorize it.”
Which was, of course, a lie.
You’d think the latest proof of that lie — yet another smoking gun to stack with all the others — would merit attention. But a computer search Thursday turned up only seven newspaper stories mentioning the memos. Searches of the CNN and FOX news websites also came up dry, though the story did appear on MSNBC’s site.
If you think my point is that the media missed an important story, it isn’t. No, the point is that normal is not where we thought it would be.
You remember how it was just after Sept. 11, 2001, right? Some of us vowed we would never enter a skyscraper again. Some of us didn’t want to leave our houses again. The minutiae of popular culture became staggeringly unimportant. Humorists like David Letterman and my colleague, Dave Barry, wondered if they could ever return to the business of laughter.
We were scared dry. And some of us said: Get used to it. This was the new normal.
But skyscrapers did not close from lack of use. We did not become a nation of agoraphobics. We did not lose our interest in singers and movie stars. Letterman and Barry went back to work.
Fear, which had cut through us like a hot poker, became instead a low-grade fever, ambient noise, wallpaper, something you feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing.
Then you look up one day and realize how profoundly that fear has changed your world. People are imprisoned without charges or access to attorneys, and it’s routine. People are surveilled, their reading habits studied, their telephone usage logged, and it’s commonplace. People, including children, end up on a secret list of those who are not allowed to fly, nobody will tell you why, there is no appeal, and it’s ordinary. We swallow lies like candy, nod sagely at babblespeak, and it’s unexceptional.
Torture is inflicted with White House approval, the president lies about it and it’s just another Tuesday.
Once upon a time, Americans were fond of looking upon backward nations, upon places where law was whatever the king said it was, and noting with pride that we do things differently in our country. But that was a day long ago and a country long gone.”
This little symbol lets you @ another comment
[...] Source: Just Another Monday [...]
So Bill Clinton has a role in the hay with Ms. Lewinsky and he is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and was damn near impeached. Apparently we got all excited and concerned over that.
George W., lies about torturing detainees and it falls by the wayside?
(so note to future politicians: Do not under any circumtances get caught banging your 22 year-old aid. Worry less about torturing people - nobody will give a shit and just lie about it if you are asked).
I don’t know if this has been presented on the site already, but the documentary below does an excellent job of revealing the torture and abuses that have happened since the war on terror was declared. I hope that if Obama is elected he keeps his promise of shutting down Guantanamo. Although the damage has been done and will take decades to repair it will be a start. I would also hope that an Obama administration would expose the perpetrators and hold them accountable, but I wont hold my breath on that one.
http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/
Dear Mr. Good,
Contemplating civil liberties, both individual and collective is something I’ve been thinking of lately as well. I read, with interest this article, written by John Boscariol at McCarthys aimed at corporate executives doing business in the U.S. The article contemplates the law in the Customs Act surrounding customs officials’ rights to rifle through your data, just as they might rifle through your suitcase.
http://www.mccarthy.ca/article_detail.aspx?id=4148
When you are fearful for security, the fundamental values of democracy are diminished - liberty - the rule of law - justice.
Now that your freedoms have eroded, do you feel any safer?
Do you recognize your world?
Is it a better world?
Probably not.
Quoting Bush: “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
It’s pretty obvious Bush decided to make the good old USA his little “kingdom” – from the blatant imperialism of American foreign policy to the torture of innocent people – all under the semblance of protecting Americans from terrorists.
Looks like it will be left to Obama to repair the damage caused by that moron.
MG - Hope your shoulder and neck pain is subsiding.
For the past 7 years I have been a practing attorney in WNY. I recently went out on my own. Joe the Plumber can go f@#k himself, Call me Dan the Litigator, or Danny Twelve-Pack (in buffalo we call them chills’ Danny Chills) I pay $450 dollars a month for health insurance and that is through the Bar Association. The tax credit John McCain is proposing will not help me one bit. The nationalized group insurance Obama is proposing is something I will sign up for. I could write for days about how McCain and conservatives have destroyed America. I am dreading the holidays, as I represent on average 5-10 people who get caught stealing X-Mas presents for their kids. Les Miserables. I am finding it harder and harder to find anything good in all this. All I know, this empty road, keeps me lookin for a place in its heart.
This article makes me sad to be a student in journalism.
Brian, Bill Clinton was impeached. As soon as he admitted lying in a Courtroom, he made it inevitable that he would be impeached. Congress could not let stand a confession like that. It was evident to most that the Senate would not convict him. I long suspected there was a deal way before the public knew of it.
Thanks benditshapeitmoldit - for posting the link to the torturing democracy film. I had not seen it. If I was an American citizen I would be mad as hell and ashamed of what my country is doing - both in the prisons and to the country itself. This abuse of power is frightening. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al should be tried for treason and locked up.
Yet the country got all fussed about Clinton.
I hope you guys somehow get it together down there…
The article is interesting to me only in that it confirms what I have suspected about human nature for years. What have you done for me lately? Time moves on - the World is a stage - etc. No matter how bad the news or the nature of the carnage, time has a way of bulldozing us softly with it’s steady tread. World War I was terrible in it’s mustard gas sickness and World War II left us whistling past the Atomic Cemetary. But did any of it change us? No. Mr. Pitts seems to have just figured that out.
Robert: Actually I knew that they process was begun with Clinton but as far as I know, the impeachment process was overturned before they actually got a chance to kick his randy ass out of the Whitehouse. If I recall, the vote at the end was mostly Republicans voting to remove him and Democrats either not voting or voting to not complete the process. I am not a historian - I might have that wrong.
Brian - The way it works, the House votes to Impeach. Which is to say; put on trial. Then the Trial takes place in the Senate. Which did happen; but the vote wasn’t even close. As I say, no one expected it to be, but they HAD to try him if for the sake of the kids!!!!!
It’s interesting how whatever any of these clowns do, it’s never what they got busted for. Nixon, Clinton, maybe Bush. They always get caught up in the cover-up. Clinton should have just admitted it. “Yep, i’m porkin’ her!” It would have made him vulnerable to Middle American voters; but hell, he wasn’t going to get them anyway!
Same with Nixon. I don’t know which of his two elections the Watergate break in happened, but in the Nixon-Mc
Govern election he won 49 States!!!!!!!!! What could the
Republicans possibly have learned in a break in?????/ It was Nixon’s paranoia!
It all sounds so insanely obscene when someone stacks them all up and says them out loud.
Strange to call this profound. Just follows the rules of survival - something happens - period of panic - majority gets used to it in order to not go mad - have to carry on with daily life - simple as that. Moving on, what’s next? Kids playing in the garbage ? minefields ? Screw those who are on the list or are subject to waterboarding - doesn’t sound that bad anyway…