The Really Important Question
While asking for a bi-partisan whitewash investigation into torture the neo-conned WaPO editors ask the most important question of our times:
Should Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger and their team have been held criminally or civilly liable for dereliction of duty 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, given that they knowingly allowed Osama bin Laden to flee Sudan for sanctuary in Afghanistan?
No, I didn't make that up.
Posted by b on April 24, 2009 at 7:27 UTC | Permalink
By asking a question, the audience assumes the ground for the question is not to be debated. But did Bin Landen do 911 ? Every one who looked into the 911 comical farce cannot avoid seeing that it was planned and carried out by rogue elements within the US security apparatus. Read Webster Tarpley's "911 Synthetic Terrorism" and watch all these documentary films starting with "In Plane Sight" and "Loose Change 2nd".
Posted by: Stephane | Apr 24 2009 9:37 utc | 4
I kind of like this way of thinking... maybe we should just jail everyone who has been elected to national office since Kennedy; the list of crimes range from starting several illegal wars to economic malfeasance on a grand scale and I suppose they're all guilty as hell.
Posted by: DavidS | Apr 24 2009 10:06 utc | 5
Is it dereliction of duty that Bush hadn't (and still hasn't) found hard evidence against bin Laden so that the FBI can finally list him among their "Most Wanted" as being responsible for 9/11 -- rather than only the two embassy bombings in Africa? And when the Taliban offered in 2002 to turn bin Laden over to the US after an extradition hearing or try him in their own court system with Bush's evidence, Bush said no. I wonder why?
Posted by: Ensley | Apr 24 2009 14:09 utc | 7
Ensley,
Good questions!
I remember when Bush refused the Taliban's offer to turn over bin Lauden - it was very apparent that the Administration was very set on war, and weren't going to have their main excuse for war jerked out from under them by having bin Laden given over to our custody. And certainly, the neo-cons may not have been willing to have a trial (anywhere) that would expose Osama or any of his family, other Saudis, or Saudi/Pakistan ties that many believe were part of the 9-11 conspiracy. That said, I remember seeing the very first interview of bin Lauden after 9-11, which happened the night of the same day, and he was uninformed of any detail of the incident, perplexed at the interviewers questions about it, and rather unbelieving although enthusiastic that it had happened. At least that's how I interpreted his behavior.
Posted by: David | Apr 24 2009 14:45 utc | 8
On one side, you have the sacred American tradition of peacefully transferring power from one party to another every four or eight years without cycles of revenge and criminal investigation.--from the editorial linked by b.
No mention, here, of Clinton's impeachment by the Republicans in Congress after he beat their party to a pulp in 1996 and then again in 1998--with the eager participation of the WaPo itself, of course!
These people agonize over their credibility, their market-share, the menace of the internet, the protection of their sources, the gravity of their considered judgments.... and then they wonder why no one takes them seriously.
Well, being taken seriously is something that has to be earned, and we never earn it without showing some signs of having struggled, however fitfully, to be honest.
When the editors go after Clinton as a remote cause, if only through negligence, of the destruction of the Twin Towers, proceeding all the while to talk loudly about the "sacred tradition of peacefully transferring power from one party to another every four to eight years without cycles of revenge and criminal investigation"--neglecting, among other things, the most distracting , not to say the most profane, "cycle of revenge and criminal investigation", frivolous in its nihilism, that any President has ever had to put up with during his term in office--then we have trouble ignoring the fact that those editors are hopelessly smothered in their own sacred traditions of lying, assassinating, cowering, pontificating, and "cherry-picking".
These folks are false. They surely know this, or know that some, if not most, of their readers know it.
Why else would they invite us, at the end of their verbiage, to "debate a member of the editorial board today in the Editorial Judgment discussion group?"
They invite us to denounce them, and would use our denunciations as proof that some kind of dialogue, or debate, is unfolding. But there is no debate, and no dialogue is unfolding. Because torture is against the law, and folks accused of breaking the law have to answer the charges. If they are found guilty as charged, they should serve the sentence pronounced. It took centuries of peine forte et dure to secure a place for these procedures. They were instituted with the greatest determination over the greatest level of resistance, and should never, ever be taken lightly.
There's been an ongoing debate for centuries over the question of whether sovereigns and animals live outside the law. Perhaps, in fact, they do. For example, we cannot try a President in a court of law before his term has ended (or so I seem to recall). But this rule only holds for the sitting President. Everyone else is bound to observe the law. This includes the Vice-President, and it includes the editors of the Washington Post. If they were caught practicing some kind of torture on their readership, for example, they would surely be liable to prosecution.
p.s.: For some strange reason, b, I can post messages on firefox, but I can't post messages on Safari. Is there any explanation for this bizarre state of affairs?
Posted by: alabama | Apr 24 2009 15:24 utc | 9
Sorry for the imprecision--an obvious one: sitting Presidents cannot be prosecuted during their terms, but have to be expelled, or retired, from office before the judicial process can begin. Everyone else, absolutely everyone, can be prosecuted and tried in good time.
Posted by: alabama | Apr 24 2009 15:47 utc | 10
ask the most important question of our times
i assumed b was snarking. my earlier comments were related to the torturers. the propaganda value in the usage of this tool is explained in the hasbara handbook (pg 21) under the section called Errant Equivalence, drawing a comparrison between 2 situations concepts or actions which are actually very different from eachother to make the audience think they are essentially the same for the purpose of making something better or worse than it is by exploiting the audiences misconceptions.
Posted by: annie | Apr 24 2009 15:56 utc | 11
Obfuscation:
The media cannot admit that the American Empire is crumbling. Fighting wars it cannot win. Wars it cannot afford.
So no one mentions that a sovereign Pakistan government will not survive if it looks the other way as a foreign Overlord bombs its territory.
An economy cannot recover with its manufacturing base off-shored, its financial institutions run by crooks and its politicians bought by overseas political action committees.
Posted by: VietnamVet | Apr 24 2009 16:01 utc | 12
Than, this question should be extended to Ronald Reagan, or for US governing political and military class.
Posted by: Balkanac | Apr 24 2009 16:28 utc | 13
Bush-Cheney for war crimes and deliberately provoking pre-emptive attack by allegedly Saudis and Egyptians, since Osama bin Laden has never been charged with involvement in 9/11, and there were no Taliban on the planes, but let's not split hairs here.
The Afghan Pipeline Project
In 1997 the Taliban signed a £2 billion contract with an American oil company led consortium to build a 876 mile gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan across Afghanistan. It was Unocal, a Houston based company, that did the bidding and hosted the Taliban delegation in Texas. The consortium to do this was called the Central Asia Gas Pipeline Project. UNOCAL had a controlling interest of 46.5% but aborted the project in December 1998
the pipelines across Afghanistan agenda was taken up again immediately George Bush came to power in the USA in February of this year (2001). The Bush administration brought a strong oil interest into control in the White House. Apart from Bush himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, the director of the National Security Council Condoleezza Rice, the Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham, have all worked for a long time for U.S. oil companies. In fact between them they have a variety of personal interests in these oil projects.
Bush-Cheney provoked 9/11. ''At one moment during the negotiations with the Taliban in August, 2001, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.
Note this was one month before the attack on the World Trade Centre.
Wait, it gets better.
"US policy on Taliban influenced by oil
By Julio Godoy
PARIS - Under the influence of United States oil companies, the government of President George W Bush initially blocked intelligence agencies' investigations on terrorism while it bargained with the Taliban on the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.
In the book Bin Laden, la verite interdite (Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), that was released recently, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July, 2001, in protest over the obstruction by the Bush White House.
Of course, now the Taliban are the Central Front in the War of Terrorism, and the 'Good Guys' have to smoke some Tango before they lose Islamabad.
Ain't it cool?
Posted by: Smokey Stover | Apr 25 2009 2:26 utc | 14
Brad DeLong would either describe this as WaPo being in a death spiral or in the midst of crashing and burning. DeLong is far too pompous for my taste, but this still doesn't stop me from enjoying the way he phrases things sometimes.
Posted by: Cynthia | Apr 26 2009 12:18 utc | 15
The comments to this entry are closed.
Praise the Lord and pass the buck...
Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 24 2009 8:41 utc | 1