[Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you
Joe Campbell
philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Sat Apr 25 07:42:35 PDT 2009
It was hyperbole for comic effect. I think the point is clear enough.
Joe Campbell
On Apr 25, 2009, at 6:25 AM, "g. crabtree" <jampot at roadrunner.com>
wrote:
> 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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