The Torture Mentality, Part 4 It’s impossible to keep up with the ever-creative arguments of torture apologists, but I’m trying. For the moment, let me step back from the cornucopia of metastasizing specific torture apologies and focus for a moment more on the larger picture. Have you ever wondered how Dick Cheney can be a … Continue reading
How it Looks to the Terrorists Transcript of an intercepted conversation between two terrorists in a cave somewhere along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border: Did you hear Dick Cheney’s speech to the American Enterprise Institute last week? I did. It was funny how Cheney said we think it shows weakness when the Americans argue. I know. The … Continue reading
Our Warden-in-Chief Mostly I agree with Glenn Greenwald that only a politician’s actions matter, and speculation about his or her motives is pointless. But when a politician reverses himself repeatedly on core campaign promises and rhetoric immediately after taking office, as Obama has done, it’s hard not to wonder what’s driving him. It’s not just … Continue reading
Incoherent Truth Suppression As op-eds go, this one in the NYT praising President Obama for reversing himself and deciding to block the publication of additional torture photos is particularly vapid and incoherent. You have to read the whole thing to appreciate just how nonsensical and self-contradictory it really is, but here’s the author’s argument, boiled … Continue reading
The Torture Mentality, Part 3 Still trying to keep up with the messages I receive from torture apologists. Recently I received one from a gentleman named James R. Hostert on my Amazon blog. Mr. Hostert’s opinions in favor of torture are depressingly common and therefore worth addressing in spite of his equally common refusal or … Continue reading
The Torture Mentality, Part 2 Last week, I posted a set of pro-torture talking points sent to me by a persistent torture apologist, along with my responses. The talking points were extensive, by not comprehensive. There are plenty more to enumerate, but today I’d like to talk about the one favorite technique and the most … Continue reading
The Torture Mentality As I pointed out recently, it’s difficult to keep up with the denial, obfuscation, and sheer, tendentious illogic of torture apologists. Even now, despite Bush-era DOJ memos acknowledging that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a single month, Liz Cheney is still clinging to the Jack Bauer fantasy that KSM … Continue reading
Politicizing Criminality Just got back to Tokyo after another week on the road for Fault Line promotion. No time to write while I was traveling, but I did have a chance to read a number of establishment opinion pieces about torture. They were so alike in various respects that they could have have been churned … Continue reading
Privileging the Posterior As Ian Fleming’s Auric Goldfinger said, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” So when I heard Rush Limbaugh’s recent comments about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown getting “anal poisoning” from slobbering over President Obama, I couldn’t help wondering whether something was going on. And indeed, here’s Rush … Continue reading
Criticize Govt = Hate America? Back in Tokyo after three weeks on the road promoting Fault Line, drained as usual after these things but happy. Not much of a break this time, either, with the Japanese version and the Rain Fall movie coming out this month, but these are quality problems and no complaints. Got … Continue reading