I didn't want to bang on about politics this week, what with 2 days to go to Christmas, but I figured it's worth bring up this stuff because I still think we're all collectively numbed to the notion that troops and agents representing our government and therefore by extension us, are doing torture. We're so inured to this fact that we consume movies like 'Zero Dark Thirty' without really challenging the premise that torture got us the information that led to finding where Osama bin Laden was holed up.
Anyway, this week saw the cover blown on the agent upon whom the character Maya was based. Yes, the agent who allegedly tracked down Osama bin Laden's whereabout was also known as the Queen of Torture, and her name is now out in public.
I'm not going to name the officer here because frankly I don't know where that puts me legally. But you can find out her name if you follow that link.
What's interesting is that amongst other things she:
- was amongst other things, responsible for missing the 9/11 threat, bungling the sharing of information.
- misled congress about the Agency's use of torture.
- participated in the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
- witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah
- misrepresented intelligence in such as ways to send the agency on a wild goose chase in Montana
- over saw a three month rendition of another detainee whose detention was case of mistaken identity.
She sounds like a real piece of work. She sounds like a sadistic psychopath who has found her dream job. The Intercept is leaking her name because it says otherwise the wider community won't be able to put 2 and 2 together to understand just want is going on and who is doing it. Sounds like she's the CIA torture mistress of your BDSM nightmares.
Get Dorky
The New York Times is saying the USA should prosecute the likes of Dick Cheney and the others the GW Bush administration who condoned torture.
Americans have known about many of these acts for years, but the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality: In addition to new revelations of sadistic tactics like “rectal feeding,” scores of detainees were waterboarded, hung by their wrists, confined in coffins, sleep-deprived, threatened with death or brutally beaten. In November 2002, one detainee who was chained to a concrete floor died of “suspected hypothermia.”
These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.
So it is no wonder that today’s blinkered apologists are desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were. As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted at the time that what they intended to do was illegal.
In July 2002, C.I.A. lawyers told the Justice Department that the agency needed to use “more aggressive methods” of interrogation that would “otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute.” They asked the department to promise not to prosecute those who used these methods. When the department refused, they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They got it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods. Government officials now rely on the memos as proof that they sought and received legal clearance for their actions. But the report changes the game: We now know that this reliance was not made in good faith.
No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in the report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one can be held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a full and independent criminal investigation.
Amen to that. Now we'll see if they have the balls to follow through. They need to get Cheney in the dock. It's nice that all this stuff is out there for once and not covered by official secrecy acts and the such.
Spiritual Alzheimers
In other more delightful news, the Pope of Rome took the Curia to task for being greedy scheming careerists with 'Spiritual Alzheimers'. I don't quite know how that disease works, but it sounds pretty bad. The affairs of the Catholic Church are really none of my business but this is the sort of thing that makes you take up and notice. This Pope is trying to make a difference. In the scheme of things, it's not totally insignificant that he wants to effect a change of culture within the Church. After all, there's still too much Alexander VI and the Borgias about the Vatican and its politics.
Still, it wasn't what the Curia were expecting. That's pretty impressive to go off script and put the boot in that hard.
John Robertson Falls On His Sword
Never has there been an ALP politician so happily seen off since, ...oh I don't know..., Kristina Kenneally? Anyway, it turned out John Robertson signed some document for Man Haron Monis. And that was all (s)he wrote, so to speak. Is this bad luck? Is this bad judgment? Is this a bad break? Is it just good fortune that John Robertson managed to crash his career on the name of the man who carried out the Martin Place Siege? Really, who'd a' thunk it?
Anyway, the man variously described in the most negative ways by his own party - and given the leadership after the landslide election defeat because they couldn't stand him and wanted him to fail - has miraculously crashed out of being the Opposition Leader in NSW with only 3months to go to an election. Was this fair? He might even ask that himself but one thing's for certain in NSW politics: fair's got nothing to do with it (an invective otherwise known as "Suck Shit And Die").
The ALP in NSW have a long l-o-o-o-ong way back from the depths of reputation damage inflicted by Morbid Obeidity, and Joe Tripodi and the rest of the Terigals. The brand value of NSW ALP is about as good as Nickelback (maybe even worse). Finally being rid of Robertson at the helm might be the first step in rehabilitation.
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