But torture is a matter of principle to this administration, and it looks like the White House is going to pull out all the stops (and maybe a few fingernails) to preserve in full the executive branch’s God-given authority to violate the Geneva Convention and the International Convention Against Torture.
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July 26, 2005
WB: Film Noir
Comments
Billmon, the gift that keeps giving.
I’ve got to think that they’re particularly afraid of more bad news just now, like an Abu Ghraib II. August is not the time for that, no Congressional bitches to rally round, no other action, just reporters with photos of children being buggered. Hard to hide, hard to explain away.
Posted by: Dick Durata | Jul 26 2005 5:56 utc | 1
Billmon, the gift that keeps giving.
again and again and again, what would i do w/out you?
Posted by: annie | Jul 26 2005 6:00 utc | 2
What is the state of the legal proceedings on the release of the visuals and audio? When does the judge rule on the Cheney admins non-release?
Posted by: nanook | Jul 26 2005 6:43 utc | 3
O, the timing they are arranging for themselves is simply delicious!
A couple weeks of wrangling, a few weeks of actual shrieking, screaming scandal about our combat heroes standing there doing squat about the anal rape of little boys —
all during America’s annual Back To School season!
All of it while moms and dads across the land are schlepping their kids to the mall buying them their training bras and baseball gloves and backpacks, their new clothes and notebooks — their well-being being the family’s focus.
After dinner, with Mom and apple pie, the family can sit on the sofa and listen to those little boys from Abu Ghraib shrieking in pain and terror as they are raped in front of our troops.
And the whole family will get the thrust of the situation. Repeatedly.
Posted by: Antifa | Jul 26 2005 6:47 utc | 4
Damn, can that man write or what?
I can’t even begin to examine all the images, media allusions, references and concept this man lays down. Damn, he is GOOD!!!!
Posted by: SME in Seattle | Jul 26 2005 7:04 utc | 5
It is folly to believe that the rest of the world doesn’t already know about our atrocities.
If London shows anything is that we don’t dictate the game. “Hurt America” is no longer an Al Qaeda minority position in the Third World now, it’s the default mindset of 2/3rd of the planet.
Am I the only one thinking the Kossacks’ optimism is unfounded: Bolton will be appointed, the Supreme Court will be packed, Rove will walk and a few more bombs will guarantee the regine endures some more, until its Gotterdamerung.
Posted by: Lupin | Jul 26 2005 7:24 utc | 6
Cheney will be very angry at not getting his way, and Bush will have that nervous, eye-darting, people-pleasing “Aw gee, how could this happen to me?” kind of look on his face–baffled, and even a little worried, because he really gets off on watching folks with weapons hurt other folks without them ( if he weren’t such a florid sociopath, you could call it a “guilty pleasure”). But the most amusing of all will be Rumsfeld, because this thing has happened on his watch, and it will stain his name from here to oblivion. No “Rumsfeld School of Military Diplomacy” at Princeton, alas!–because the great alumnus and “philosopher prince” will go down as a sleazy, unremarkable, if remarkably careless, glutton for unmerited glory and distinction. After seeing those tapes, real soldiers will piss on Rumsfeld’s ashes–something he doesn’t relish at all.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 26 2005 7:51 utc | 7
It must be a delaying tactic because these pictures are going to get out one way or another. I suppose if they only ever ccame ot via an unofficial ‘leak’ then they would have a limited deniability but the people that hold that view are pretty much limited to the people that are going to run that rabbit no matter how the images come out.
As we discussed the other day, release without indictment will cause outrage around the world, particularly in the Arab and Islam communities.
I imagine that the sealed argument is at least partially that the reaction to release will be so bad it could spark another 9/11.
From the way things are at the moment I reckon that is the least likely outcome. It will put Danish, Italian and Australian lives at risk but current fundie strategy seems to be to scare/terrorise the US by proxy.
That is probably more effective and is a lot less likely to provoke big time payback. My kids won’t be visiting their godparents for a while.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 26 2005 10:53 utc | 8
“If the Democrats support them? For some reason an image of a bear taking a crap in the woods comes to mind.”
Unfortunately, after 43 of the House yahoos voted FOR the PA extension when they even had enough Republican votes to send it back to the committee with a giant NO THANKS on it, I have no faith in the Senate Dems ability to get this one right either.
Posted by: wai | Jul 26 2005 13:44 utc | 9
A very interesting diary from Sherlock Google at DKos about Roberts, Weinberger, Bush Sr. and impeachment and prosecution.
Maybe not film noir, maybe more like Twelve Monkeys…can we go back into the past and find and stop the germ that has given rise to this current plague of locusts?
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 26 2005 15:09 utc | 10
The only way for the photos and the videos to ever be released is for someone who has copies to release them via the internet. And there are definitely copies out there!
billjpa
Posted by: billjpa | Jul 26 2005 15:26 utc | 11
Here’s how this will really go down:
Rape tape will be edited to no more than a thirty second sound bite, with all nudity pixelated out.
Aaron Brown will come on, beneath a super of the
previous atrocity, hooded guy standing on a box.
“Good Evening Prols.
Tonight we have some disturbing video from Iraq being released by the Pentagon. However, in the interest of real American family values, we can only briefly show this tape, without any sound.”
[The video will run for thirty seconds in a supered PIP above Brown reading from Yeats]
“I think it better that in times like these
A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.”
Final headshot of Brown, lips tightly pursed,
“Good night, and may God Bless America.”
If you miss it, the only way you’ll get to see it is splashed on a London tabloid for all of a day.
Posted by: Ille Ginni | Jul 26 2005 15:30 utc | 12
I can’t wait to hear Little Boots explain why he was against paying the troops before he was for it.
Well, of course, he won’t have to. It will never happen because of the media’s double standard. This and Democratic ineptitude are why we are as fucked up as we are today.
Posted by: Phil from New York | Jul 26 2005 16:03 utc | 13
“Unfortunately, after 43 of the House yahoos voted FOR the PA extension when they even had enough Republican votes to send it back to the committee with a giant NO THANKS on it, I have no faith in the Senate Dems ability to get this one right either.”
I’m afraid I have to agree with wai on this point. At no time in my memory has Dem opposition seemed so very unassured. The Pretender in the Oval Office once claimed to be “…a uniter, not a divider”; he appears to have made good on this promise by squashing any contentious ethical thought out of two branches of the federal government and is making very serious headway in the third.
I was never a tremendous cheerleader for either side of the Duocracy, what with wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller setting the “opposition” agenda… but at the moment, I can’t see any Left at all. I only see Plutocrats on Parade. If the Senate Dems do the right thing in this instance, it will be for no other reason than that they see political advantage in doing so. But there has been no good faith behind their votes to date and I am not so terribly optimistic that this situation is in the bag, either.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 26 2005 17:37 utc | 14
Maybe releasing the videotapes is what they need to cue their next 9-11 on US soil, so they can go nuke Tehran. It’s all in the timing….
Posted by: catlady | Jul 26 2005 18:17 utc | 15
“Little Boots???” ROFL Oh God I couldn’t get past that reference! “Oh that all liberals had one neck!” Keep it up Billmon…but don’t over do it. We need you straight through until 2006 and 2008! Pace yourself!
Posted by: Diogenes | Jul 26 2005 21:09 utc | 16