[Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

[g. crabtree]

Where and when did I insist did I insist that the term "MUST be stopped?"

g
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Campbell" <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
To: "Paul Rumelhart" <godshatter at yahoo.com>
Cc: "g. crabtree" <jampot at roadrunner.com>; <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you


> The use of the term "teabagger" to refer to refer to G's homophobic  
> friends. This Gary has complained about. Torture, war, racist rants  
> are all OK but the use of "teabagger" MUST be stopped, when it is used  
> to refer to a group of folks who are so out of it that that didn't see  
> this label coming!
> 
> Joe Campbell
> 
> On Apr 24, 2009, at 8:08 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>  
> wrote:
> 
>> If you can't demonize torture, what is there left to demonize?
>> Possessing people?  Carrying pitchforks?
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> g. crabtree wrote:
>>> And once again you miss the point, attempt to attach me to  
>>> positions I
>>> have not taken, hurl invective, and do your best to demonize and
>>> silence a point of view with which you disagree.You are as  
>>> predictable
>>> as a paperboy with OCD. You deliver on time, every time.
>>>
>>> g
>>>
>>>    ----- Original Message -----
>>>    *From:* Andreas Schou <mailto:ophite at gmail.com>
>>>    *To:* g. crabtree <mailto:jampot at roadrunner.com>
>>>    *Cc:* Paul Rumelhart <mailto:godshatter at yahoo.com> ; lfalen
>>>    <mailto:lfalen at turbonet.com> ; bear at moscow.com
>>>    <mailto:bear at moscow.com> ; vision2020 at moscow.com
>>>    <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>
>>>    *Sent:* Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:31 PM
>>>    *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so
>>>    shall you
>>>
>>>    Gary --
>>>
>>>    From the FBI report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay under Geoffrey
>>>    Miller, the general later brought in to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib:
>>>
>>>    "on several occasions, witness ("W") saw detainees ("ds") in
>>>    interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to
>>>    floor w/no chair/ food/water; most urinated or defecated on
>>>    selves, and were left there 18, 24 hrs or more. Once, the air
>>>    conditioning was so low that the barefoot d was shaking with cold.
>>>    Another time, it was off so the unventilated room was over 100
>>>    degrees, d was almost unconscious on floor with a pile of hair
>>>    next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the
>>>    night). Another time, it was sweltering hot and loud rap music
>>>    played - d's hand and foot was chained and he was in a fetal
>>>    position on the floor. Upon inquiry, W was told that interrogators
>>>    [military contractors] ordered this treatment. Took place in Delta
>>>    Camp"
>>>
>>>    The report goes on to substantiate that more than one detainee (d)
>>>    was brought into the infirmary with hypothermia after an
>>>    interrogation session. Detainees pissing and shitting all over
>>>    themselves. Being sexually assaulted by female guards. Forced to
>>>    stay awake for longer than the human body can stand. Being
>>>    partially drowned. Being stuck in a coffin with what you're told
>>>    are scorpions.
>>>
>>>    These are not conditions you will find any Hilton other than the
>>>    Hanoi. They are not on the continuum of acceptable behaviors any
>>>    more than a knife is on the continuum of 'comfortable objects'
>>>    because, like a knife, it's also an object. These are techniques
>>>    we reverse-engineered from North Korean torture techniques in
>>>    order to create SERE, and then reverse-reverse engineered in order
>>>    to create GTMO and the "black sites." This is despite the fact
>>>    that we -- as in, our country -- prosecuted Japanese soldiers for
>>>    waterboarding, and even Israel, no friend of terrorists, has
>>>    abandoned it because it produces bad intelligence. Indeed, if I
>>>    were just a little more cynical than I am, I'd say that that's
>>>    quite the point: we waterboarded KSM for information on the
>>>    nonexistent Iraq-al-Qaida connection, and Abu Zubaydah for
>>>    information on confabulated terrorist plots he had no reason to
>>>    know about.
>>>
>>>    You're wrong about the facts. You're wrong about the law. I could
>>>    go on about that, but I'd just be arguing with the tinny little
>>>    noises escaping from the echo chamber you pretend will replace
>>>    journalism. I'm waiting with bated breath to find out why you
>>>    think the FBI is infiltrated by ACORN or how George Soros is
>>>    dictating the legal conclusions of Republican appointees at Foggy
>>>    Bottom. That's just your intentional ignorance, plus arrogance,
>>>    tribalism, and smug self-satisfaction at your clever turns of
>>>    phrase. I can tolerate that.
>>>
>>>    What gets to me -- why I'm provoked to respond -- is that you're
>>>    willing, even eager, to sell out our country's honor in order to
>>>    soothe your rank cowardice. Or maybe it makes you feel like a real
>>>    man to hear that some punk Afghan teenager with an AK-47 was awake
>>>    for a week, stewing in his own shit, shackled to the floor.
>>>    Whatever the impulse is -- tribalism? sadism? fear? -- it's not
>>>    anything I recognize as American. What third-world tinpot
>>>    dictatorship did you grow up in that you think this is acceptable?
>>>
>>>    We consent to abide by certain principles. It's that common
>>>    consent that keeps our country from being a collection of
>>>    miscellaneous foreigners on someone else's land. I have
>>>    disagreements with conservatives about the metes and bounds of
>>>    those principles, sure. But here you are, disputing whether
>>>    America should have principles at all.
>>>
>>>    Americans, by which I mean FDR and Eisenhower, Reagan and JFK,
>>>    held off the Soviets and Nazi Germany, nations that both posed a
>>>    dire existential threat to our country, while banning torture,
>>>    expanding the protections of the Geneva Convention, and abandoning
>>>    the pretense that it's okay to attack civilian populations. These
>>>    are tempting tactics. Some of them work. Torture produces words
>>>    rather than silence. The Geneva Convention bans effective tactics
>>>    for making war. Killing civilians forces submission. We stepped
>>>    away from these things. We won. Twice. Over the two most
>>>    belligerent, technologically advanced, and staggeringly immoral
>>>    nations ever to exist, one armed with enough weapons to destroy
>>>    the world several times over.
>>>
>>>    But then 9/11 made you wet yourself. A crime of unimaginable scale
>>>    happened to people in New York City; people whom you don't even
>>>    accord the privilege of being called Americans. The crime was
>>>    carried out by guys carrying weapons you can buy at Home Depot.
>>>    Somehow, that uprooted your sense that America stands for
>>>    anything. But how deep were those roots, Gary, that fewer deaths
>>>    than those caused by the flu could pull them up?
>>>
>>>    Our soldiers make a commitment. They tell us they'll uphold the
>>>    Constitution. But there's a reciprocal side to that commtiment: we
>>>    tell them that they're the good guys; that they're not just
>>>    protecting American lives, but American values. That they're
>>>    fighting for liberty, mom, and apple pie. Because 9/11 made you
>>>    wet yourself, you're asking those soldiers to sit and play
>>>    Minesweeper while some dumb Afghan redneck shits his pants in
>>>    Arctic cold, chained to the ceiling of a lightless cell. If you
>>>    tell his President to tell our soldiers to do that, you've reneged
>>>    on our commitment to make our soldiers the good guys. Our moral
>>>    purpose doesn't come from who we are; it comes from what we do.
>>>
>>>    I don't know whether there's going to be a reckoning for the
>>>    people that authorized this. But you're the reason there should
>>>    be: to put the rudder straight and make people like you -- who
>>>    actively argues for torture -- too ashamed to speak up in public.
>>>    Anything you just said should be enough to make any decent person
>>>    drop their beer, walk out of the room, and go find another
>>>    locksmith. I'm looking forward to the day when it is.
>>>
>>
>>
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