Bush to Raddatz: “So?”
A couple of weeks ago, Dick Cheney interviewed with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, and dismissed the opinion of millions of Americans with a snotty, "So?"
CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So? [emphasis TP’s]
Tonight, President Bush did a Friday night news dump interview with Raddatz where he effectively said precisely the same thing–only this time about torture (h/t Scarecrow).
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
[snip]
In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals’ involvement was not so "startling."
[snip]
In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.
"We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it," Bush said. "And, no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew."
The President said, "I think it’s very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack — I mean, the 9/11 attacks."
"So?!?!?!" You’ve never seen a United States President order torture from the Oval Office before, you wuss? Well, get over it. It’s not so startling.
No, President Bush, it’s not startling at all. I understand you don’t have any problem authorizing the water-boarding of KSM.
But I would imagine your efforts to stage a show trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed just got a whole lot more difficult.
Why does Bush hate America?
He’s never been given any opportunity in this country. I kinda feel sorry for him.
One thing I’ll note (but which I suspect Mary will note, too, if and when she shows up): Bush chooses to emphasize the information they got from KSM, not the lack of information they got from Abu Z.
and not the lack of information from ksm, you get less information not more when you use torture, the information is less actionable and less likely to be real
And another note: I suggested that Yoo had basically allowed Bush et al to torture without having to stake their own moral authority on it. It didn’t take long for Bush to fall back on Yoo’s moral authority, in spite of the fact that the other reports on this say that the decision to torture came first, and the opinions came second.
“We are called upon to decide whether to preemptively immunize our benefactor and sovereign for acts clearly criminally illegal under US and international law, as well as unconstitutional, and go on to a life of luxurious makework appointments punctuated by lush retreats, or, in the alternative, to tell the truth about these designs and take an immediate one-way trip to Palookaville.”
Good grief … they’re going with the Chicken/Egg argument … come on Conyers/Pelosi … stand up and defend the Constitution as you’ve sworn to do …
Mea culpa: before I saw this post was up I stuck that paragraph of the interview on to the end for just that reason.
While the discussion on that thread convinced me that there might be necessary reasons for UC, and especially the Law Dean, to hold fire on Yoo for now, Edley’s inattention to the counsel’s role as enabler as a relevant issue in forming his argument is just almost fatally appalling to me, I have no idea what he could do to recover in my estimation. I suspect Thurgood Marshall whirls.
“And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
Admission. Off to the Hague.
Hmmmm….
“He was the person who ordered the suicide attack — I mean, the 9/11 attacks.”
I saw that too … wonder why he thought he had to watch his words?
Yeah, I’ve never heard anyone, ever refer to 9/11 as “the suicide attack”…
Slip of the tongue???
… or did KSM admit to planning another suicide attack and BushCo twisted it to lay 9/11 at his feet ?
Nah, these guys aren’t that corrupted … /s
Well, you’d say anything…if they frikkin’ torture you!!!! /s
It’s really interesting that they decided to find a legal way to torture people so that they could use their “confessions” to justify and cover up their own tracks….and then get all arrogant and say stuff like this. It looks bad, and it looks like what he said first was what he meant…not what he corrected himself to say…I said, but I meant. Nah…
First thought, best thought. No wonder he had to hold Cheney’s hand when they chatted with the 9/11 commission…to keep their story straight.
They are the epitome of evil. JMHO I happen to believe they are way worse than we can even imagine. I’d love to see W and Cheney alone in front of some really brilliant prosecutors.
KSM’s whole ‘testimony’ in the 9/11 report reads like a surreal adventure tale with too many things attributed to him. We now know that a) KSM’s children were tortured (maybe even killed) in front of him, b) Pakistan paid to stay out the report and c) Saudi Arabia has some pull (oil, personal relations with the house of Bush, whatever) that stopped investigations into the Saudi financing of Al Qaeda. Given that KSM was also tortured, the whole case is botched from the gitgo, and the principles must have had a confab to agree on what they were going to say/lie when the show trials come. Mind, I’m not saying KSM is anything other than the worst, but Bush’s ’suicide attack’ slip of the tongue may be an indicator of the line the show trial is going to take.
I can’t see the significance, what are you guys reading into this?
EW,
Just like finding a reason to go to war in Iraq, finding a reason to torture would have been morally easy for Bush. The bombing he order prior to the invasion killed many so remorse is no problem for him.
They are both so arrogant…pride comes before a fall…just keep on blabbing…We did it, we ordered it, we approved it..So!! Make our day…
Uh huh. We’ll make your day….
“We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it,”
So?
Then there’s this from Troutfishing
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..104/493151
Most telling quote from Jonathan Turley, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was aware of this. The only doubt is simply whether anybody cares enough to do something about it.”
Turley and Fein have been egging Congress to take action for too long … they have to step up or have their relevance diminished even further …
“enabled”…another stupid choice of words….that proves that they went to Yoo etal., and said, we want to do this, find a way to get around the law that says we can’t.
Pelosi. Are you braindead?
Pretty much the definition of a depressingly large majority of corporate law practice (I refer only to the high level stuff).
The CEO Preznit indeed.
One more thing…hasn’t their story always been that KSM “masterminded” 9/11, and OBL “ordered” the “attacks”…..that is a whole lot different than saying:
“He was the person who ordered the suicide attack — I mean, the 9/11 attacks.”
If you are telling the truth and if you are the President of the United States….you don’t mix this up….you don’t make that kind of mistake…unless you have been telling a story…now, the story has changed..and he had to “correct” what he actually said, which was probably the truth..and change back to the original “tall tale”…
Just sayin’….now, I’ll STFU…sorry, they just infuriate me.
“Suicide attack” usually is said in reference to the bombing of the USS Cole, not the 9-11 attacks.
That was exactly my reaction.
Huh. “Principals” leak to ABC News website yesterday, favoring W & Hadley by omission, and Ashcroft by commission. Today W downplays his own role to ABC News on camera. Do we have a pattern yet?
It seems to me that he is stepping right out there and saying, you can’t touch me. I knew about it, and I approved, and I made sure that I had a legal opinion that “enabled” me to get away with what is unlawful, so FU all…because I got an “opinion” and I’m above the law.
But, then he f’d up and leaked the truth and corrected it with the lie when referring to KSM, who was tortured to get a story that would further cover his sorry *ss…
Uh, how about they realized ABC was going to keep going and they decided to try to bury this on a Friday night dump.
I disagree taht they left out Hadley in significant way yesterday (Bush, yes, particularly the CIA people who served as sources for AP). But I think it likely they figured ABC was going to keep pushing this until they placed Bush at the scene. And now they’ve done that.
Here’s a wet dream.
Next year President, insert name here, goes before Congress and the American people, and exhorts Congress to fully investigate the illegal acts committed by the prior Administration and bring impeachment proceedings and judicial referrals against those officials, based on their findings and that of the Department of U.S. Marshals, the replacement for the FBI (it being to corrupt to be of further use in the Republic). In the interim, President, insert name here, stated he/she will honor arrest warrants for war crimes by any recognized authorized.
Well what’d you expect? It’s Friday and I’m on my second Cosmo!
Hey wait a minute, you don’t sound like a real Bushie…
LS, EW — Different interpretations, eh?
LS — Certainly wouldn’t be the first time W’s involuntarily splurted the goods out there, would it?
EW — OK, I buy that pattern. But in that case, it would indicate that the web story source was on the other side, not from W. That could make it either the Team W vs. Team Dick scenario, or the Bigdogs vs. Underdogs scenario. Had any more thoughts on who’s the source? Still thinking Richard Myers? I was thinking the Hadley idea made good sense too.
‘the suicide attack’ As opposed to what ‘the false flag attack’?
Bush’s involvement was an interesting omission from the original ABC story. The AP story indicated that there was an attempt to insulate Bush from this process. Now the Raddatz interview blows that out of the water. Bush knew. This was obvious but it is nice to have it nailed down.
I tend to be critical of Raddatz but she does have her moments.
I’m rather curious why she’s suddenly the White House’s favorite reporter of late.
Martha had been doing some rather effective reporting from Iraq what, late last year? Maybe they’re offering more access to get her back onto the ranch.
OT – Big FDL site hiccup, Kirk’s salmon post up and disappeared.
It’s back.
Sorry — the “suicide attack” is a possible allusion to . . . what?
That is a mouthful. Isn’t Bush admitting they got exactly what they needed in terms of legal cover in order to conduct torture? He can’t argue torture is legal he can argue only that he had OLC opinions that said it was legal.
Someone needs to shove this in Mukasey’s face and explain how this issue cannot be resolved by negotiation between Congress and the Executive.
marcy, you missed the elephant in the room and you’ve been working on it all week;
there it is
they leaked the yoo memo on purpose, it’s the very reason they had yoo write the opinion in the first place, so they could leak it when they were going to be found out
they had yoo write this crap so they could say “so?”
you MUST be disbarred, there is no choice, they are already giving yoo’s “opinion” the weight of historical precedence, they weight of presidential dererance
yoo must be disbarred, there is no choice
The torture session discussions about Zubaydah took place in 2002. This would have been the time of the Bybee memo the precursor to the later Yoo memo. I don’t have a link but from one of the comments earlier today at fdl I think Yoo in one of his interviews said that they were rushing around in 2002 sort of in tandem with the White House discussions to have a legal justification ready to use for them. Addington was heavily involved in putting the Bybee memo together. So it looks like Cheney was working both the White House and OLC ends of this.
as I have been saying from the very start, the more exposed they are the more brazen they will become
they are almighty and they posess the ring
lord of the rings, remmeber those books?
this president has the ring, the entire administration enjoy the ring
who here thinks they are going to give that ring to a femal or a black man?
anyone?
somebody needs to ask pelosi just what it would take for the president to commit an impeachable offence
really, what would it take?
we have a president who has committed our armed forces to war knowing he manufactured the evidence he presented
we have a president who actually stood down and enjoyed vacation when given precise information telling us of impending doom sure to occur within months
we have a president who unilaterally redifines treaties and law entered into by this country
we have a president who commits murder among americans and middle easterners
we have a president who diverted the assets we needed to win our battle against terrorism to go off invading a country he knew as a fact posed no threat
we have a president who does nothing when our covert assets are laid to waste by traitors
a president who writes his own laws and gives himself his own authority to break any law he chooses
so, I could go on for as many days as we have a president but the question remains for nancy;
“just what would she think is an impeachable offence”, because there is no crime left for this man to commit
Posted this in an earlier thread irt torture of citizens…
We are in the anniversary season of Donald Vance’s return to the US and the Donald Vance & Nathan Ertel v. Donald Rumsfeld original filing. (The two military personnel turned contractors in Iraq, turned FBI/CIA informants on illegal arms trafficing, then captured andtortured by the U.S.)
In light of new (not really) information, I wonder what changes for Vance & Ertel?
For a revisit to their story there are links below… If you have 25 minutes, the Chicago Public Radio piece is well worth listening to. Every time I listen, I’m struck by the constant failure of this administrations policies.
http://chicago.indymedia.org/n…../index.php
http://www.commondreams.org/ar…..04/05/337/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/24/22411/1187
http://www.chicagopublicradio&…..ioID=10073
I personally would like Raddatz to get Vance and Ertel on and have Bush-Cheney look them both in the eyes and say, “So?” in front of the entire nation.
bmaz, if you are around, and totally off topic,(forgive me), but are you going to host a Masters’ trash talk thread – you could start with the all universe par 4 that Woods made at the 18th.
Bush defends interrogation practices: ‘We do not torture’
USA TODAY
November 7, 2005
trust me – I’m the President – we got the information – really – we did. come on, please believe me – be your best friend if you do.
EW, you note that bush talks about KSM, but I was reminded of this. I have not read the interview but it comes up once in a while. According to observers, the CIA using torture got nothing out of KSM that he had not already told AlJazeera in the spring of 2002. I’m not sure what benefit bush expects from focusing on KSM. From Peter Bergen:
“What is perhaps most astonishing of all is that the mistreatment of KSM and bin al-Shibh was entirely unnecessary. Before they were captured, they had explained the details of the 9/11 attacks in an April 2002 interview with Yosri Fouda, an Al Jazeera correspondent. Fouda’s interviews resolved key questions that investigators still had about the plot—for instance, that United 93 was on its way to destroy the Capitol when it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, and that al-Qaeda had once contemplated crashing planes into American nuclear facilities. KSM and bin al-Shibh explained how they kept Osama bin Laden, then living in Afghanistan, informed about the timing of the attack, and they laid out the coded correspondence they had conducted with the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohammed Atta.
The CIA provided summaries of the interrogations of KSM and bin al-Shibh to the 9/11 Commission. There is little or no difference between the account that KSM and bin al-Shibh freely volunteered to Fouda in the spring of 2002 and the version the commission published in its 2004 report. Nor was Fouda’s reporting difficult to find: he hosted a one-hour documentary on Al Jazeera, wrote a long piece in London’s Sunday Times, and coauthored a book, Masterminds of Terror, about KSM and bin al-Shibh. By the time CIA officials captured the pair, a full account of their operations was only a Google search away.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c…..ergen.html
This is about KSM and Ramzi bin al-Shibh interview by Yosri Fouda, the al-Jazeera journalist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..fghanistan
Branding Rite Laid to Yale University
New York Times
Nov. 8, 1967
Has anyone got a link to the 2002 torture memo?
if it’s the aug 1, 2002 memo you are looking for, here’s a pdf from findlaw (2.6MB)
I am so frikkin tired of him telling me what I, as an American citizen, “have to know” or what I “have to understand”. I’m not an idiot, and I pay more attention to this stuff than he does, apparently. So I’m quite aware of who KSM is.
What I don’t understand is why he thinks that KSM’s monstrousness is some kind of a reason to behave like barbarians. It is particularly when faced with such heinous captives that honorable and decent people, (what Americans used to aspire to being) resist their base impulses and insist even more strongly on civilized process.
Bush acts like, if I knew the story, I’d do what he did. But he is WRONG.
Was George known to mistreat small animals when he was a kid? Blowing up toads and frogs with firecrackers perhaps? Kicking puppies? He is a sadist – People who enjoy inflicting pain on others are considered sadists.
Frightful as was the quality of John Yoo’s torture opinions, he was a cog in the machine, a virtual gofer, not the “made man” with his own locker and a seat in the member’s lounge he hoped to be.
It’s Cheney who must be chuckling. The legal liability primarily now rests with his sock puppet, the senior-most executive who has admitted being in the loop and explicitly approving – not ratifying after the fact – this conduct.
Torture is the inevitable hand-maiden of aggressive wars. Not for information, but as an expression of unbound aggression, the politician’s version of slapping it on the table and bragging that it’s the biggest one in the room.
It now becomes clearer why Bush went to such lengths – through Addington, Ashcroft, Gonzales and now Mukasey – to corrupt the Justice Department, and to claim the unilateral right to ignore laws that “conflict” with his unlimited powers as Codpiece in Chief. He and his team knew exactly what laws they had broken within a year of coming into office and were determined to brazen their way out of the hole they dug themselves and willingly jumped into.
Congress will now do what, exactly?
Mr. Bush made his pact with Cheney early in his administration. It would now seem wise to review his subsequent statements about torture, prisoners, the conduct of war and compliance with laws in light of today’s admissions. A long list of prevarications is likely to jump put.
These admissions make even clearer why Mr. Bush was unwilling to appear before Congress without Mr. Cheney, and why he refused to give his answers under oath. Sadly, I can imagine him thinking that he did no more than the equivalent of throw out a baseball to start a game.
somewhat OT
…more on bush’s cruelity: I had heard that bush ordered the distruction of Fallujah after the four contractors were killed, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in print. From Juan Cole, April 10, 2008:
“Fallujah related to gaza
Despite the curfew, hundreds came out Wednesday to protest in Fallujah, a city that Bush destroyed in a fit of pique. The Fallujans had held a city-wide strike on March 23, 2004, to protest the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, a quadraplegic and spiritual leader of Hamas in Palestine. A few days later, the Brigades of Sheikh Yassin, an Iraqi guerrilla group founded to protest his murder, killed 4 Blackwater security men, one of them a South African, and desecrated their bodies, as “a gift to the Palestinian people,” claiming that they were CIA or Mossad (Israeli intelligence). (You would have thought the Israelis could have put off garish assassinations by helicopter gunship of Muslim leaders in wheelchairs for a while, since the US was in a delicate position in Iraq at the time; Ariel Sharon made things infinitely worse than they had to be). Bush is said by Newsweek to have been royally teed off (I gloss the anger as that brown guys did that to white guys), and instructed “Heads must roll!” Bush ultimately made Fallujah his own little Carthage, in November of 2004. The Sunni Arabs were so angered that they boycotted the 2005 election. They had little representation in parliament. The Kurds and the Shiites crafted a constitution the Sunni Arabs rejected. And the country went to civil war, just as I predicted in December of 2004. In many ways it all started with the killing in broad daylight of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza as he was leaving a mosque. Couldn’t he have been arrested if he was wanted? It was not as if he could run away. And, you will note, that Hamas is still there in control of Gaza, and Ariel Sharon is now in oblivion.
On Wednesday there were still Fallujans chanting that the US should leave their country. I mean, they were chanting amidst ruins (the US damaged two-thirds of the buildings there), and many of their relatives are refugees living in tents in the desert, displaced from their living rooms by all the firepower a superpower can bring to bear. But there they were rallying. And Westerners engage in glib stereotypes about Arab fatalism. In fact, it is hard to keep some people down.”
The urgency of keeping Mr. Bush’s torturees out of the US and outside the jurisdiction of US law becomes clearer, too. As does why the DOJ and JAG prosecutors have fought so hard to keep all mention of the interrogation methods of prisoners out of the public record. Not just to avoid admitting facts prejudicial to their case, not just to avoid tainting all their evidence, but because the torture or prisoners was explicitly approved by the President of the United States.
Nice ambiguous sentence construction we should use:
“Mr Bush’s lawyer wrote an opinion that it is legal for Mr Bush to waterboard prisoners and crush the testicles of their children, and Mr Bush admits he did it.”
Bush – “If you’re not torturing, your not interrogating hard enough. You must be a Liberal democrat.”
Is Raddatz the new Russert for the Pixie Dust Twins or something?
Yes
Next question?
So why is this story about the NSC engaging in long discourse on how to torture and how hard being dropped on the press this week, complete with GWB sitting in the Master Chair of the Decider during at least some of the — well they refer to it as choregraphy?
We seem to have forgotten there is a Grand Jury and a Special Counsel out there in N. Virginia, the location of CIA, looking into the question of the destruction of the CIA torture tapes, which were then under subpoena by the court trying Zacarias Moussaoui, and also under formal request from the 9/11 commission. There have been various small hints over the last month or so that many people have been called to the GJ. So pure speculation…but is it possible that the locus for the orders to destroy the tapes might go higher than CIA leadership? Might it go up the ladder of the NSC all the way to Bush/Cheney — and might not those who imagined the dance steps to use in torture sessions sitting around the NSC Situation Room table, not have from time to time, wished to evaluate their arts by setting up a nice big screen monitor, and watching the proceedings while considering the criteria for proper evaluation? Perhaps some briefer down in “the bowels of the agency” was detailed to set up the technology for the “Friday Night Torture Flicks” — and got called to the Grand Jury, and with good legal advice decided to tell the whole truth, and not take yet another dive for the unworthy Principals Committee and friends. Perhaps there is documentation. Maybe the guy from the White House Mess who delivered the popcorn, had a requisition order?
Apparently all of the people on the ABC list have appeared before the Grand Jury — plus many many more. Perhaps they know the story is about to emerge in the form of something from the Grand Jury — and they think dropping parts of the story as a six part leak will take the edge off the anticipated public outcry. First part of the cover-up, (destroy tapes) didn’t work, and thus in the terms familiar from Watergate, what we are getting now is the modified limited hang-out.
This is of course just speculation — but there is a reason they dumped this stuff this week, and I think it is the results of that Northern VA Grand Jury’s work.
Isn’t this like Cheney’s statement during the “shooter” interview on Fox that it was his understanding that he had the authority to instantly declassify as a strategy to minimize exposure around the selective release of the NIE so crucial to the Plame story? Its a tired game of political pre-emption.
Sara
You must not have seen this. The likely people of interest behind the torture tape destruction also happen to be almost necessary sources for ABC’s first story. So, like you, I believe this is coming out, unless those who are being put out to dry can prevent it by threatneing to expose the president.
Which is what today’s limited hangout is about, I think.
Alan Bullock, an influential historian and later vice chancellor of Oxford, ran into a weather front of criticism for suggesting that the Austrian Adolf Hitler wasn’t much different than the ordinary German. Hannah Arendt coined a phrase – the “banality of evil” – nearly fifty years ago to describe the logistical architect of the Nazi murder machine, and to lament the unremarkable ways through which evil comes into the world.
We deplore the Japanese’ inability fully to address the atrocities committed by their army during its occupations of Korea and China and against US forces in the western Pacific, as exemplified in modern school books that are sometimes more romantic than historical. Just as Texas history books extol “our” manifest destiny to conquer the land from sea to shining sea, but minimize our centuries’ long brutal treatment of American Indians and the extent to which our economy, North and South, was built on slavery.
We face a similar challenge of recognition. The world won’t let us walk away from it:
What will we say and do about George Bush? He has thrown out three hundred fifty years of law and history. He has resurrected torture from the depths of the Inquisition and the dungeons of the Star Chamber, from the cells of the Gestapo and the Chinese secret police. And made it official US Government policy. Is that what he found when he saw the depths of Mr. Putin’s soul or is it why he could see them?
What will we say to our children tomorrow and a generation from now when they ask us, “What did you do in the torture wars, mommy and daddy?”
Right. This is the premise I have been struggling to express all week and you have done it well. What were the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment about afterall?
I appreciate your points. I do have to make a counterpoint. Alan Bullock was very wrong in his conclusions. Having had family in Bavaria who opposed Hitler, some who were executed for opposing Hitler, I have to strongly disagree. My grandmother opposed Hitler, my great grandfather, my great uncles and a host of extended family and members of surround towns and villages opposed Hitler. My sister-in-law’s grandfather was very high in the German government and he had secret meetings with the British government trying to seek help in eliminating Hitler. He unfortunately, in the dead of night while going to meet with his British informant, was captured and executed. I wish I could go on but it is a difficult story to write. Many attempts were made to overcome Hitler and none succeeded. Many who sought to organized with outside aid, were turned away. There was even a Catholic priest in Bavaria who organized opposition as well and he is never recognized in history.
Yes, none were successful. But MANY gave their lives to try and overcome Hitler and the Nazi party. It is difficult to read the generalizations of revered historians when not every German was like Hitler,nor w did my grandmother consider Hitler like every German.
The larger problem lies in humanity. Not that Hitler was so much like the average German but in the underpinnings of our reaction to fear and hate. My family was extremely average German but managed to opposed and fight against Hitler. They just did not buy into the hate and fear cards.
Now, have we as a nation done enough? Are we too showing our weakness as humans? Most definitely. We have not pack-filled our congressional offices with citizens refusing to leave until Bush-Cheney are dealt with. Who will do it?
It’s the “Who will do it?” that lies at the heart of the banality of evil driven by fear and hate.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment. The Nazis were brutally effective at silencing their critics, a lesson Karl Rove learned well, though he’s made do assassinating careers (Don Siegelman) and personal lives (Cyril Wecht) instead of the lives themselves. Perhaps stories of resistance like your family’s are less well known because few survived who did it or knew about it.
I think Bullock, writing in 1952, may have been intentionally overstating in order to bring about a reappraisal of how such evil came to be, and not just in Germany. Arendt’s famous reappraisal, in her coverage of Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem and its revelations of the banality of evil, wasn’t to come for another eleven years.
But in 1952, in France, after a spurt of investigations and revenge killings, Vichy officials and their public supporters were being ignored and reintegrated into high government positions. In Poland, thousands who lived near the death camps and supported their “commerce” denied knowledge and went on with their lives, some believing the Jews deserved their fate for having killed the Christ; the former center of European Jewry was and remains bereft of Jews. Hundreds of influential, if not top, German Nazis were protected by their fellow Germans, and in places the church, and a new cohort of believers was being raised.
The US, too, quickly forgot the Nazis and ended most investigations into their crimes. It chose reconciliation (and the employment of Nazi scientists and agents), purportedly to garner support to defend against the Soviet menace, measuring it a greater evil than past wrongs, as if the two were competitors in a horse race. A year after Bullock’s 1952 biography of Hitler, the notion of forgetting was so commonplace that a former senior English diplomat titled his popular autobiography, Old Men Forget.
We do it; it’s how we’re built. The ReichWing will want us to forget Bush’s crimes before we recognize them so that nothing can be done about them. They’re succeeding. Witness the related post about the MSM’s collective yawn at his revelations. If being called shrill is the price to pay for calling evil what it is, then let the games begin.
I don’t think I used the word shrill. I think my point is that many tried to oppose Hitler. They understood the depth of evil and human weaknesses they were up against and tried to bring in outside support to aid them because they also comprehended the cycle of violence they faced. It is beyond evil that those who were sought for support did not support the opposition movement. The outside countries contacted for help and support by the opposition did not lend support until it was quite late. I do not argue with any of your historic facts as posted but I do think it is important to not “clump” all the German people under one umbrella and compare all Germans to Hitler or Hitler to all Germans. I know that comparison would be difficult for my grandmother since she lost so many family members due to their opposition efforts.
I do not relate my personal history to belittle the reality of the evil that exists in history, especially Nazi Germany. To lose family because they fought the evil makes it all the more palatable to my life. I relate it because it is important to know there are those who are brave enough to do something but if there is not broad support, their efforts, their bravery and intent to save lives and carry out justice, dissolves. Not due to their lack of effort or effectiveness but because of a lack of broad support.
When you listen to what happened to Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, my guess is that the fear of having their same fate, paralyzes or self-censors one’s calling to walk out justice or to be part of a broad support in this country. And on that aspect of our nature, yes we are all capable. People can feel quite lonely in their desire to seek justice and may not know who to go to, where to start. Vance and Ertel have felt quite lonely in their efforts to seek justice and the price they paid.
Do I think Bush is like me, you or EW? No. Does he think he’s like me, you or EW? Obviously no.
I too am outraged at the response of the MSM, read and noted EW’s previous thread. Again, I am not calling you or anyone shrill. We agree on many aspects of history but the fact that there were opposition Germans who were not backed when they sought outside help. That is the dynamic we need to make sure does not happen again. The evil begins in the fear of taking actions that could hurt others you love which leads to self-censorship. Work like EW’s is bringing people together and growing courage to oppose the fear and self-censorship and seek justice.
I too want the games to begin. Like my family before me, I believe there is hope and justice to be found and acted upon the actors. The difference we need to make this time is to think of the “how” to bring the support together. We have less than 30% of this country in favor of this leadership. Quite a helpful dynamic.
Here’s my first suggestion. I would like to get an idea of the distribution of newspaper subscriptions by readers here and at the Lake ( I suggest other blogs participate). I then suggest a nationwide boycott of mainstream media, on the same day. End subscriptions on the same day and put in writing their failure to carry out their role as the Fourth Estate. Then I would back that boycott of the MSM with visits to our congress persons, overwhelming their staffs and hand carry letters letting them know why I am hand delivering a letter to their office. This would only have a remote impact if WE work together and gain support from friends.
Do I think this idea will work? I have no idea. But I was arrested for protesting against South Africa and I worked very hard in the divestment movement. Some of this did have an impact.
Economics can be a great moving point and our country is not in the best economic position right now. So, economic based opposition could make headway.
I hope there will be more discussion about “how” to make the games begin. But we need at least 45-50% of that 70% out there to step up.
By the way EOH, I do greatly appreciated all you share here. You are a wealth of information and have been accute at dissecting the many government documents EW presents. I mean this as sincere appreciation. Thank you.
Bush’s confession and challenge characterized by the paraphrased “so” is that he is ungovernable rather than a representative of self-government
Little off topic…
Apparently the Pope has decided not to attend the fancy dress State Dinner that was planned for him next week — he will watch the “old Guard” do their drill on the WH lawn, have a talk with Bush, but no dinner. A little late declining the dinner invite, but that’s that.
Do you think he might just have torture “confessions” on his mind? Apparently the dinner decline was out of the blue today, and of course, pretty short notice.
About two years ago we were all drowned in commentary about Gunter Grass’s autobiography wherein he outed the fact that at the end of the War he had been drafted into an SS unit, where he served for a few weeks before it fell apart, and he ended up in a POW camp. “Take away his Nobel Prize” and stop reading his books and all — (great books) But till about a year ago the Autobiography, “Peeling the Onion” was only in German. Finally, when it came out in English it was a huge surprise. Yes, the SS draft is there, but so too is the fact that in the POW camp, Grass shared a two man hole in the ground with half canvas shelter cover with Ratzinger for several months, during which they played dice with Dice Grass had stolen from an SS Officer who committed suicide, and talked about the pictures of the Concentration Camps and Death Camps posted in the POW camp, before which they were daily paraded by the American POW camp guards. Both were trying to comprehend and absorb the meaning and horror of the pictures, Grass through his untrained intent to become an artist, Ratzinger through his intent to return to the Seminary and become a theologian. As POW’s they were allowed something between 8-900 calories per day, so in addition to the dice games, they joined a class in Classic German and E. European Culinary Arts, taught on a blackboard. After their discharge from the POW camp, they never met again, but as Grass does, he imagines the feast he would prepare should Ratzinger accept an invitation, and who he would invite as guests, and how he would direct the conversation so as to further peel the onion.
Something tells me that Justification of Torture has upended a fancy dinner party in DC. Oh but to have some intelligence behind this move.
I haven’t read Peeling the Onion, Sara, so I appreciate that anecdote, which deepens things. Deepens the sadness, among other things.
They really are openly daring anyone to stop them. I remember Watergate pretty well, and it wasn’t like this. Shocking revelations actually shocked people then, at some points almost daily, got immediate public reaction. It feels now as though people just read the news, shrug, and accept the new norm. Michael Chertoff just informed Canadians this week that our fingerprints are not personal data; if we just hand them over to him, we will all be safer. And we are co-operating with this madness, democracy through the looking-glass. Excuse me while I go to gnaw something.
Brazen openness about complicity. A prelude to brazen openness about pardons, maybe? The final flourish of pixie dust?
I honestly can’t quite process this.
The assurtion that Abu-G was the result of a bunch of restless specialists and sergeants getting carried away in the middle of the night was always beyond absurd. Especially to those of us who actually have served in the armed forces.
However, to actually see the president of the US stand up and admit that the culpability goes all the way to the top – now that’s just out there. This man today, pulled the last block from the jenga stack, and now unleased is a chain of events that will undoubtedly take decades to play out.
I fully suspect that our congressional leaders are going to get calls from other governments. How it will play out, wow, who can say. But for all the bull shit that has happend over the last 6 years, now we are in a place the world has just not seen before.
I think finally, the administration has lost control of the narrative. They’ve been playing whack-a-mole, and they finally missed one – and there’s no going back. The US will never-ever be the same. We either become the nation that impeached it’s president for war crimes or the one who didn’t. And which happen has profound implications for the future of this nation and the world. But what of darkeness? When ever does it not spread unchecked? And will we still not check it, even now when it stands in the light before us and says, “Here I am.”
I will be truly ashamed if our congress remains flacid on this.
I realy doubt that GWB will ever leave the US again after his term expires. But then again, did he ever before it began?
Wow. I don’t live in the country I grew up in any more, and it keeps getting further and further away.
Good night all. I remain, dismayed…
From the Khadr trial at Guantanamo.
I won’t quote much because the logic is so twisty, but I knew that people here would be shocked — shocked! — to read this tidbit:
Where are other world leaders on this? Unless I’ve missed it, Britain, Canada, France, Germany – all the reasonably enlightened democracies of Europe – remain silent.
The US is responsible for its own conduct, but why are they going along?
I swore off Church (even attending with my mom when she was visiting) when a Benedict became Pope. But heck, if he actually make a stink out of our illegal warlike and torturing ways, I might even consider setting my foot back in Church.
Because someone has to start calling us on our crimes.
John Paul II condemned the Iraq war, but he was dying. I think you’re right: High Noon for Benedict. He’s been dangerously provocative towards Islam. What does the guy who’s billed as Christ’s representative on earth make of legalizing torture?
I can’t speak for the others, but our current guys are pretty much part of the same gang as yours, although they can still be embarrassed sometimes. Brown and Merkel are maybes, but Sarko, no.
Well, it was an interesting week. The German Chancellor, The British Prime Minister and the Secretary General of the UN, among others, found that they had schedule conflicts, and would not be able to attend the opening of the Olympics in Beijing this summer. Bush apparently still intends to attend, and all the presidential candidates are hot to offer him advice regarding formally standing up for Human Rights.
But in the Same Week, the Pope declines at the last minute, an invitation to a State Dinner in his honor at the White House. All during a week when the President admitted that in the Situation Room, under the Oval Office, his closest circle of Associates, with his participation and knowledge, choreographed torture sessions. Could it just be that all the Historical digging and analysis that has raised the question, “What did Pius XII do when the Germans were, in 1943, rounding up the Jews of Rome right under his nose?” finally born fruit? Have these questions finally brought home something of what might be expected of a moral leader? Could be, and the US Press just has, once again, missed the story while being all stressed out over the displacing question of whether Bush will attend the Hoopla in Beijing this summer.
Normally the planning for a State Dinner includes consultation between the Embassy of the visiting country and the Protocal Office at State on the wording of toasts. I am wondering if things fell apart as they tried to negotiate toasts. Oh to be a fly on the wall if such were the case.
Nice critique. In diplomatic parlance – infrequently used since Bush drove his wagon team here from Texas – the Pope’s snubbing a state dinner in his honor at the official residence of the chief executive of the world’s most powerful country is like Bette Davis landing a right hook on Joan Crawford’s jaw while three cameras roll.
No diplomat or their foreign ministry missed it. Won’t change the Hollywood studio system, but it should have the lawyers checking the contracts they once thought were water tight.
klynn, I’ve been waiting to hand-off a Roseanne Roseanna-danna Trophy I earned in spectacular fashion at the HuffPo a couple of years ago, but I just don’t think you ‘ran the wrong way’ nearly as hard as I did!
From the Digby quote in the ‘Bush OKs Torture, Media Yawns’ post:
“There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about “defiling the white house” with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.”
(italics mine)
I think the ‘clucked and screeched’ of the Digby quote was the object of the shrillness reference, and not the tone of your comment. The commenter is saying that if the Moralists in the Village took a ’shrill’ tone to highlight the ‘evil’ of a blow-job, imagine how shrill We could get over Torture?
Believe me, I’d love to pass the Rock to you right here, but it’s no where near the coke-bottle-lens-myopia I had when I took the producers of “Jesus Camp” to the proverbial woodshed for Promoting Fundamentalist Propaganda at the HuffPo a couple of years ago (I had just seen a ‘trailer’ for the film and completely missed that it was a Documentary! A couple of commenters ran me through the snark machine, before I caught on and humbly begged forgiveness.)
In my case, it affected me strongly to ’see’ children being brain-washed…and I wrote from that space. Perhaps Bullock’s work affected you in a similar way?