Milosevic’s problem was that he didn’t have enough lawyers …
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November 10, 2005
WB: How Do You Say “Dick Cheney” in Serbian?
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Y’all have heard the fundie Xtian rationale for torture? I heard something to this effect on NPR a couple mornings ago:
“If there’s a terror plot set in motion, and we only have x number of hours to stop it before our children get blowed up, and we gots one of the trrrrrrists in custody, then don’t you think we need to be able to do whatever it takes to find out how to stop it?”
Oh, so that’s who Jesus would torture. And explains all those mistakenly arrested folks getting raped in Abu Ghraib.
Posted by: catlady | Nov 10 2005 2:01 utc | 1
When our sacred nation, so Beloved of God, teeters like this on the brink of destruction — only 45 minutes away from a mushroom cloud — there’s simply nothing else to do but rape the children and watch the clock and pray that we see another sunrise.
And change your pants if they are wet.
Posted by: Antifa | Nov 10 2005 2:13 utc | 2
@ catlady
That meme was started by Alan Dershowitz following 9-11. You can check NPR archives if you doubt. Different sicko, same prescription. So I guess Moses proposes but Jesus teases.
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Somehow I can’t envison chickenhawk Cheney in a pen, while Kaiser Kissenger scampers about as a free-range poult.
Billmon’s article reminded me of a story which tells us more about the mainstream media than Serbians.
A close family member considers himself a war correspondent. He doesn’t quite get himself up in an Abercrombie and Fitch zillion pocketed vest but he hasn’t missed a good war for a long time. (that’s bit harsh actually but not as harsh as WP)
Anyway he also went through Kosovo after the Serbs withdrew and I don’t know if it was the same charnel house that the reporter in Billmon’s article went to but it was definitely similar. There were lots of foul smells and undefinable pieces of organic matter about the place. He got some shots of the place and then went out in search of some local talent to tell the viewers about what they were looking at.
It was a bit odd because he could never be sure how much the neighbors knew or were involved in but eventually he came across an Albanian Kosovan who had some English so he interviewed him about the torture/execution centre.
The chap described horrible noises and screams shots eminating from the place and so he was asked if he knew who was running the joint.
The talent looked at my relative sort of pityingly as one does at the asker of stupid questions and said “Arkan’s Tigers”. So he was then asked how he knew that to be the case which elicited an even more contemptuous response and said Because they were driving @@@@ brand SUV’s.
Apparently it was known right throughout Kosovo that Arkan’s thug militia could be identified by the make and model of their 4wd.
Good story and he sent it back to air which it never did. @@@@ were the main sponsers of the news show.
This may not surprise people in larger countries but even my relative was surprised that in NZ commercial interests are given that much deference that a story is killed on the grounds it may offend those interests.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 10 2005 3:30 utc | 4
I was scrolling up and down on my list of favorite places for Moon of Alabama. When I finally located it, I was amazed. Has it been that long since Billmon said goodby? And it has been. A long time. A long time that a community that was and did exist, and now does not. Billmon said his site had devolved to a chat room, but what a chat room it was. Maybe the best ever, because it attracted people from all over the world to voice their opinions about things that mattered and matter. With a leader that set a tone that was just a step above.
Was there ever a time, a moment, that cried out for a leader in prose?
We Americans live in a country that is dominated by very scary people. People the likes of, we have only read about in history books. We need someone, a Billmon, to provide a light in the darkness, to give voice to evil seen and defined. We need the courage to stand up and say ENOUGH by what ever means we are afforded. But we are afraid-afraid for our jobs, our families, our health insurance, our pensions, et al.
Billmon, this is the moment-That moment-that we can make a difference. We just need a voice, an articulate voice.
Please, may this wake the sleeping GIANT!!
Posted by: Mary | Nov 10 2005 3:36 utc | 5
@Mary
I understand the sentiment, but this “white knight” mentality in which we pray somebody… anybody… (The Democratic Party, Patrick Fitzgerald, et cetera) will come down like a messiah and make everything right for us again is exacerbating the problems. We don’t need a Saviour, we need to roll up our collective sleeves and deliver our damned selves from evil. Calling for a “hero” on a Bertolt Brecht-themed site is a little ironic.
“Sad is the nation that has no heroes, but not as sad as the nation that needs them.” -Brecht, from Mutter Courage.
P.S. Mary, the people who dominate this country scare the living crap out me as well. I’m not trivialising your thoughts. But we need to act in spite of our fear instead of praying that someone else will take all the risks and die for our sins.
Posted by: Monolycus | Nov 10 2005 4:17 utc | 6
Clearly, Milosevic’s problem was that he didn’t have enough lawyers and flacks to help him redefine torture out of existence.
That’s certainly how Milosevic (and a lot of other Serbs, BTW) see/s it. Nice. It’s pure marketing genius to call the Cheney version ‘American Exceptionalism’. Oh yeah, it’s a very select club.
I hope that part of the political change which is coming will include some ‘for good measure’ points, gut level and general – most especially this: When the country was confronted with a scary new adversary, these leaders were weak; faced with the fundamental choice many leaders have faced in the past, these people chose to become more like our adversaries rather than more like ourselves. They were weak and merely reacted; they lost their nerve. And there was no Cold War cover this time. Pure, elective badness. Never mind the legal definition of ‘treason’, these people are traitors in the sense that matters most. That’s why Ann Coulter has been screeching about that kind of stuff for years. More brilliant, crude-but-effective marketing. Making mental illness the Law of the Land.
Cheney is the real cowboy, of course. Don’t think about the Muffled-Fart-Cheney gliding around the WH all those years; think about the congressman, that asshole cheney from WY. He was able to insinuate himself and then apprenticed for power in the WH itself. God, it looks so obvious in hindsight. Remember the old Dick and you know the new Dick. And there was at least one review in the press of Cheney’s career in congress before the 2k election, advising, ‘this guy is realllly conservative’. I guess we thought dubya was gonna be the pres to some greater extent. Or something.
It’s sweet to see Cheney in the craphouse. I don’t even worry that much about letting dubya off the hook. People were sold (and did buy) a bill of goods from the start. Cheney was a key part of the deal. It was fishy all along, really, with the ‘tell’ being Cheney’s choosing himself.
I know I’m not really adding anything new here. Sorry. Just complaining.
Posted by: jonnybutter | Nov 10 2005 4:55 utc | 8
“Oil company execs defend windfall oil profits.”
If you’all really want to change ‘things’, here, start by learning a second and a third language, then put your retirement fund into non-$ assets, and dial back your spending to 3rd-world levels.
You may ask why? And the answer is rather simple.
See, eventually you are going to *have* to do all those things, whether you want to, or you don’t.
You are being depleted just like Texas oil wells.
Salaam alakum, you’all. Toto, tambien, por nada.
Posted by: اتصال مفتوح | Nov 10 2005 5:05 utc | 9
“Oil company execs defend windfall oil profits.”
If you’all really want to change ‘things’, here, start by learning a second and a third language, then put your retirement fund into non-$ assets, and dial back your spending to 3rd-world levels.
You may ask why? And the answer is rather simple.
See, eventually you are going to *have* to do all those things, whether you want to, or you don’t.
You are being depleted just like Texas oil wells.
Salaam alakum, you’all. Toto, tambien, por nada.
Posted by: اتصال مفتوح | Nov 10 2005 5:08 utc | 10
Well, that pretty much establishes that the US deserved 9/11 (and more) since from the heyday of its Napalm Days in Vietnam it’s wantonly engaged in that kind of shit.
Posted by: Lupin | Nov 10 2005 6:12 utc | 11
“Well, that pretty much establishes that the US deserved 9/11 (and more) since from the heyday of its Napalm Days in Vietnam it’s wantonly engaged in that kind of shit.
Sorry Lupin I can’t agree and I realise you are probably just speaking out of justifiable anger and I’m sounding like a self rightous prig.
The thing is Joe Lunchbox on the Nth floor of WTC had more in common with the crispy critter on the front page than he ever would have with GWB.
GWB and whatever assholes instigated 911; OBL or whoever had more in common with each other (hell they probably played cowboys and indians together as kids) than either of them had with the dead humans.
If I really stretch it I can sell myself on the Pentagon target although I have pause when I consider the real assholes would have been in their bunker and double that with the thought of the last flight being EMP’d rather than run the risk of any elites getting scorched.
Our best chance of beating these fucks is if we stick together in what they used to call solidarity. Yep it can sound quaint like ‘paper tiger’ or somesuch but one of the reasons that word has been so earnestly devalued is because of it’s power.
When all of us humans stick together and resist the assholes, asshole power evapourates.
We are all really good at hassling each other about what we believe in, eat or the clothes we wear and those insecurities have been exploited by the likes of boyhood friends GWB and OBL to have us kill each other instead of tearing their heads off and shitting down the hole on their shoulders.
For me legitimate targets are things that are a real threat to me or my family not some deluded fool who is doin the best he/she can under the circumstances.
Cheney is always a target, but some boneheaded, rednecked, semi-literate, testosterone soaked 18 yo grunt is only a target while he’s pointing a gun in my direction.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 10 2005 11:16 utc | 12
In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.
– Ernest Hemingway
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.
– Francois Fenelon
Casualties of War:
Deaths: 8.5 million dead in WWI, 57 million in WWII, 110 million killed in all wars in 20th century.
Over 100,000 civilians have died from the violence since the ‘end’ of the 2003 Iraq War. (Lancet 2004)
Proportion of civilian deaths increasing: From Casualties of Conflict. Upsulla University, Sweden 1991, cited in State of the
WWI 14% Worlds Children, C. Bellamy. 1996 New York: Oxford University Press.
WWII: 67%
1980s: 75%
1990s: 90%
Injuries: During the Vietnam War, the US dropped the equivalent of nearly one 500 lb. bomb on every person in the country. (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute SIPRI). Increased use of chemical weapons: White phosphorus and now defoliants on plants in Columbia.
In contrast, decreased military loss of life from injury over the 20th century due to improved medical attention and nutrition. In Iraq, the dead to wounded ration of US soldiers is about 1:10, with twice as many casualties surviving than in the 20th century.
Though being ‘alive’, yet with no limbs and multiple permanent trauma, may by some, not be considered an improvement …
Yes. even though our ‘technology’ gives us ever more accurate ‘precision’ weapons (barf ! a myth), the civilian casualties as a direct result of military force keeps rising almost exponentially …
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 10 2005 12:16 utc | 13
John McCain came out and said that one thing that helped sustain him and his fellow POW’s in the North Vietnamese torture chambers was the conviction that we were better than that, and did not resort to such methods.
America has come a long way from that to Lynndie England.
I can understand exemptions for “hot pursuit” involving serious, current, clear and present terror threats, but these have to be clearly defined and and regulated exceptions.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Nov 10 2005 20:17 utc | 14
It was not Milosevic’s specialty. Torture has been seen on all sides during these wars. It was not “Milosevic’s army” that did it because it was people’s army of conscripts .Special forces did it…as always is the case. It’s horrific what people can do to each other but it’s a WAR… gloves are off. After the war losers have to pay for what they did and winners are pardoned for their crimes because they were “right”.
I find it pretty hard having to “grow up” and realize that there is no “right” or “wrong” “black” or “white” in a sense that we were lead to believe. OUR side will always be “right” of course one way or another especially if we were winners. I could laugh if only I don’t cry for the “justice” and what people are capable of doing in its names…
Posted by: vbo | Nov 11 2005 2:47 utc | 15
John McCain came out and said that one thing that helped sustain him and his fellow POW’s in the North Vietnamese torture chambers was the conviction that we were better than that, and did not resort to such methods.
yes. much better to drop bombs on vietnamese civilians as a navy fighter pilot.
Posted by: slothrop | Nov 11 2005 2:53 utc | 16
From Democracy.Now!
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
The Battle of Algiers (excerpts): 1966 Film Depicting Algerian War of Independence Against French Occupation Parallels Brutal U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Comparative footage of Helen Thomas challenging Scott Mclellan re Cheney seeking CIA torture exemption
Includes part 1 of an interview with Robert Fisk: On Torture: “We Have Become the Criminals…We Have No Further Moral Cause to Fight For”
Transcript | Audio | Streaming Video
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 11 2005 14:25 utc | 18
Even apart from all the bombs dropped on civilians in Vietnam, the fact is that both sides practiced torture in that war. The idea that America never used torture until Bush II is absurd. What’s so bad about Bush is that the pro-torture people actually feel strong enough to advocate for their position out in the open.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | Nov 11 2005 20:54 utc | 19
@Donald Johnson
Quite true. They are so bold now, that they openly argue for it’s enshrining into law … all to create precedents, me thinks.
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 11 2005 21:03 utc | 20