Month: August 2009

Old As Time

by digby

As we gird ourselves for the inevitable caterwauling from the right about how the horrible liberals are politicizing Teddy’s death, you should read Aimai’s meditation on death rituals and their meaning. An excerpt:

I don’t fault Republicans for having their own heroes, or for using funerals and memorials as places to gin up support for Republican policies. I don’t even fault them for using the imagery of 9/11 and its victims over and over again to rally support for their wars and their depredations. There’s nothing wrong with that. Waving the bloody shirt has a long history and its not always the wrong thing to do. I disagree with the policies but not with the notion that we use social occasions to promote social goals. I wish they were honest enough to acknowledge the fact that we all do the same thing: we celebrate that which we think is good, we fight for the continuance of policies that we want to see continued, and we use the lives and the deaths of our members to further those policies. Its human. Its Civil. Its Social. Its Public. These aren’t dirty words and they don’t dirty the memory of the deceased.

Now take a deep breath and get ready for the Wellstoning.

Update: Here we go:

LIMBAUGH: So I predicted — well, anybody could have predicted this. We know these people like the back of our hands. Well, it doesn’t matter. I predicted it, and I caught, you know, all kinds of grief for it out there.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: I’m being dead serious here. I think it would be a tremendous disservice to come up with a health care bill that we have now in the House and is floating around the Senate, the one that Obama’s talking about, where the government is going to decide whether people like Ted Kennedy get to go through every aspect of survival that he did. Exercise their spirit. He had a spirit for life; he wanted to live. He did not want to die.

Now, Obama has said, well, we can’t look at that, because costs — looking at someone’s spirit, will to live. Well, Ted Kennedy’s spirit was to live, and he chose to exercise as many options were available to him to prolong his life. And to put his name on a health care bill that denies that to other people and say we’re doing this in his memory is hypocrisy, and it would be insulting to his memory.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: I doubt that any of this will have an effect on anybody because passing the bill is what’s first and foremost on the president’s mind and on the Democrats’ mind. And sadly, Senator Kennedy now becomes a pawn. His death becomes something they can use to facilitate a political aim. And they will be saying things and doing things claiming this is what he wanted, this is what he inspired.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: Well. I’ll tell ya what, I’m a little uncomfortable today going after Senator Kennedy on matters of politics, which is why I chose to call it a eulogy or whatever in the previous mono — what are you laughing at in there, Snerdley? What are you laughing at? Well, lookit — I think it suffices to say that it would be as hypocritical as it could be to put his name on a health care bill that forces things on people that he was not forcing on himself. I think it would be an insult to his memory.

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Clarifying Partisanship

by digby

Here’s Mike Enzi basically telling the Democratic members of the Gang of Six that he’s acting in bad faith:

Mike Enzi, one of three Republicans ostensibly negotiating health care reform as part of the Senate’s “Gang of Six,” told a Wyoming town hall crowd that he had no plans to compromise with Democrats and was merely trying to extract concessions.

“It’s not where I get them to compromise, it’s what I get them to leave out,” Enzi said Monday, according to the Billings Gazette.

As I wrote yesterday, these guys are basically forcing Conrad, Baucus and Bingaman into a corner. If the GOP won’t give them any bipartisan cover, they are out there all alone. It’s quite the game of chicken at this point.

This health care debate is looking like it’s finally going to tell us what our president really believes in. (We know where he is on national security, but then nearly all presidents of both parties are hawks so it doesn’t really tell you anything. Domestic policy is where the rubber meets the road.) The Republicans have completely taken themselves out of the debate and the only arguments are among Democrats. And that means President Obama’s going to have to decide which side he’s going to put his weight behind. It’s hard to believe he’ll come down on the side of the liberals after all the effort he’s put into placating the medical industry, but it’s always possible.

One thing’s becoming completely clear — he won’t be able to do anything with bipartisan cover and that means it’s all coming down to his partisan leadership. Which way will he go?

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In The Bottom Quarter

by tristero

Not in the least surprising:

U.S. students placed below average in math and science. In math, U.S. high schoolers were in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated, trailing countries including Finland, China and Estonia.

According to the report, the U.S. math scores were not measurably different in 2006 from the previous scores in 2003. But while other countries have improved, the United States has remained stagnant.

In science, the United States falls behind countries such as Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic.

Duncan told a room full of science and math experts of the National Science Board on Tuesday morning that this will hurt the United States as it competes internationally. “We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways,” he said.

“I think we have become complacent. We’ve sort of lost our way.”

What you mean “we?” Some folks have been far from “complacent” when it comes to American education: they’ve been quite focused on working extremely hard to wreck it.

This is one more tragic example of what happens when our country’s discourse gets hijacked by the extreme right. Instead of focusing on what is really needed to prepare kids for reality, everyone sane – be they teachers, students, parents, administrators, school boards, legislators, prominent scientists, interested laypeople – has to waste their precious time wrestling with the right’s truly bonkers obsessions: fighting attempts to get lies taught in science or proving that Obama really is not trying to turn America into a socialist dystopia like his birthplace, Kenya.

It’s worked beautifully. Even if plenty of us don’t really believe the lies of the rightwing fanatics, more and more of us increasingly tend to entertain them as serious, thoughtful points of view worthy of discussion. And time stands still in this country while others…progress. A few years ago, it was preventive war, this week it’s death books. Next week, Jonah Goldberg will write that Lenin designed the modern windmill. Then, while the experts go into painful detail once more exposing Jonah a lying ignoramus, mainstream pundits will engage in an oh-so-sober discussion about whether the purpose of alternate energy research is, in fact, to sap American capitalism of its vital essence, or simply a bad idea.

Let’s not get confused. of course, there are very real and extremely important differences of opinion within, for example, evolutionary biology, climate change, and healthcare policy. But serious discussions of these differences are invariably swept aside by sheer idiocy advanced by seriously powerful people. It’s hard to focus on the real tradeoffs of genuine healthcare reform when US Senators are saying Obama is trying to establish death panels to ration end-of-life treatment.

In education itself, this country’s attention has been distracted from the serious job of figuring out how to improve our schools. Instead, we’ve been sidetracked by endless, ridiculous arguments over whether biology teachers should give “equal time” to creationists, say, or whether abstinence-only education might be a good idea. Until the extreme right has been pushed back to the margins of American discourse where it belongs, until these nutjobs can no longer count among their members the most important members of a major political party, this country will continue to fail to confront the very, very serious issues and problems it faces.

It is way past time that the most influential Democratic leaders address the dangers of rightwing extremism in the Republican party in a forthright, blunt, and courageous manner.

Biden On Kennedy

by dday

I just read Joe Biden’s tribute to Ted Kennedy, though I haven’t seen the video. Biden and Kennedy shared many similarities, though I don’t think even the Vice President would ask for the comparison. Both reached the Senate at the minimum required age of 30, and both spent a lifetime there. Both had moments of incredible tragedy, the death of loved ones, and moments of deep regret and wonder if they could carry on in public service. And both worked their way through them, in their own ways.

Practically every politician has released a statement today on Kennedy’s passing, referring alternately to their privilege of working with him in the Senate, the long list of accomplishments, or how we must honor his memory by passing comprehensive health care reform. Biden talked about his friend, confidant, counselor and inspiration. I’m not much for speechifying, and this one includes some of Biden’s signature tics – the word “literally” appears about 8 times – but this is a great statement, and an intensely personal one.

I’ve added it below.

UPDATE: Video:

P.S. If you’re in LA tonight, Digby and I will be having a nice ol’ Irish wake for Sen. Kennedy at Drinking Liberally. It’s at Trip, 2101 Lincoln (@Grant) in Santa Monica, starting around 7. John Amato from Crooks and Liars is scheduled to show up at some point as well. Stop by if you’re in the area.

Teddy spent a lifetime working for a fair and more just America. And for 36 years, I had the privilege of going to work every day and literally, not figuratively sitting next to him, and being witness to history. Every single day the Senate was in session, I sat with him on the Senate floor in the same aisle. I sat with him on the Judiciary Committee next — physically next to him. And I sat with him in the caucuses. And it was in that process, every day I was with him — and this is going to sound strange — but he restored my sense of idealism and my faith in the possibilities of what this country could do.

He and I were talking after his diagnosis. And I said, I think you’re the only other person I’ve met, who like me, is more optimistic, more enthusiastic, more idealistic, sees greater possibilities after 36 years than when we were elected. He was 30 years-old when he was elected; I was 29 years-old. And you’d think that would be the peak of our idealism. But I genuinely feel more optimistic about the prospect for my country today than I did — I have been any time in my life.

And it was infectious when you were with him. You could see it, those of you who knew him and those of you who didn’t know him. You could just see it in the nature of his debate, in the nature of his embrace, in the nature of how he every single day attacked these problems. And, you know, he was never defeatist. He never was petty — never was petty. He was never small. And in the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger — both his adversaries as well as his allies.

Don’t you find it remarkable that one of the most partisan, liberal men in the last century serving in the Senate had so many of his — so many of his foes embracing him, because they know he made them bigger, he made them more graceful by the way in which he conducted himself.

You know, he changed the circumstances of tens of millions of Americans — in the literal sense, literally — literally changed the circumstances. He changed also another aspect of it as I observed about him — he changed not only the physical circumstance, he changed how they looked at themselves and how they looked at one another. That’s a remarkable, remarkable contribution for any man or woman to make. And for the hundreds, if not thousands, of us who got to know him personally, he actually — how can I say it — he altered our lives as well.

Through the grace of God and accident of history I was privileged to be one of those people and every important event in my adult life — as I look back this morning and talking to Vicki — every single one, he was there. He was there to encourage, to counsel, to be empathetic, to lift up. In 1972 I was a 29 year old kid with three weeks left to go in a campaign, him showing up at the Delaware Armory in the middle of what we called Little Italy — who had never voted nationally by a Democrat — I won by 3,100 votes and got 85 percent of the vote in that district, or something to that effect. I literally would not be standing here were it not for Teddy Kennedy — not figuratively, this is not hyperbole — literally.

He was there — he stood with me when my wife and daughter were killed in an accident. He was on the phone with me literally every day in the hospital, my two children were attempting, and, God willing, thankfully survived very serious injuries. I’d turn around and there would be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never even asked for, literally sitting in the room with me.

You know, it’s not just me that he affected like that — it’s hundreds upon hundreds of people. I was talking to Vicki this morning and she said — she said, “He was ready to go, Joe, but we were not ready to let him go.”

He’s left a great void in our public life and a hole in the hearts of millions of Americans and hundreds of us who were affected by his personal touch throughout our lives. People like me, who came to rely on him. He was kind of like an anchor. And unlike many important people in my 38 years I’ve had the privilege of knowing, the unique thing about Teddy was it was never about him. It was always about you. It was never about him. It was people I admire, great women and men, at the end of the day gets down to being about them. With Teddy it was never about him.

Well, today we lost a truly remarkable man. To paraphrase Shakespeare: I don’t think we shall ever see his like again. I think the legacy he left is not just in the landmark legislation he passed, but in how he helped people look at themselves and look at one another.

I apologize for us not being able to go into more detail about the energy bill, but I just think for me, at least, it was inappropriate today. And I’m sure there will be much more that will be said about my friend and your friend, but — he changed the political landscape for almost half a century. I just hope — we say blithely, you know, we’ll remember what we did. I just hope we’ll remember how he treated other people and how he made other people look at themselves and look at one another. That will be the truly fundamental, unifying legacy of Teddy Kennedy’s life if that happens — and it will for a while, at least in the Senate.

Mr. Secretary, you and your staff are doing an incredible job. I look forward to coming back at a happier moment when you are announcing even more consequential progress toward putting us back in a position where once again can control our own economic destiny.

Thank you all very, very much. (Applause.)

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Teddy

by digby

I heard about the passing of Ted Kennedy last night just before I went to bed, and recalled that it was a year ago exactly that I’d seen him speak at the convention, a moving experience made more poignant by the knowledge at the time that he was unlikely to ever appear at another one. There’s been some time to prepare for his death, but it remains strange to think of the American political system without him.

I don’t think people who are much younger than I am can really imagine the meaning of “the Kennedys” in quite the way generations earlier do. My earliest political memory in life is sitting around one afternoon in 1960 with my mother’s friends and hearing them wax on about how “Jack” was so “cute.” This memory is odd to me, because for right wingers like my parents, JFK was the living example of everything they hated. But maybe my mother had secrets. In that era, women often did.

My father loathed the whole Kennedy family, but none more than the one he always called “Teddy” in the most derisive tone possible. In his mind, Teddy was some sort of hippie playboy or at the very least a lightweight among lightweights. (On one level, however, my dad loved him — Teddy’s “troubles” assuaged the guilt people like him felt over having hated the two martyred brothers so passionately in life.)

The Kennedys always pissed off the wingnuts to an absurd degree, and yet they never complained about it, even though they paid such a huge price for their public service. It’s one of the things I like the most about them.

Teddy himself was a fascinating figure in liberal politics. Although I was still in elementary school when JFK and RFK were assassinated, until I was nearly 30 I just assumed that Ted Kennedy was going to be president. It was as inevitable as the tide. I don’t think I ever questioned it until the extremely trying 1980 primary campaign, when it became clear to me that the moment had probably passed. I don’t think he did either.

But once it became clear, he didn’t just turn his seat into a sinecure or retreat into cynicism, he carried on valiantly, becoming one of the few master legislators in American history, insisting on making progress by hook or crook even during the long era of conservative rule in which he served. And he took the slings and arrows from his enemies along the way with humor, dignity and class.

John McCain said the other day that Kennedy’s great gift was in making concessions to Republicans. That may be correct, but not in the way McCain meant it to be. Kennedy’s great gift was fighting for progress without shame or obfuscation, making the moral argument for liberalism, and always trying to move the ball forward, inch by inch if that’s all he could get and in great leaps if the opportunity presented itself. If he made the right concessions, it sure as hell wasn’t in service of McCain’s pinched and cruel agenda.

He was everything the conservatives hate: a proud, fighting liberal who didn’t shirk from the label. Each day his presence was a rebuke to everything they believed in. So when you hear the inevitable lugubrious paeans from the right over the next few days, keep in mind that their movement and its people spent the last 40 years treating Ted Kennedy the way they treat Barack Obama today — with utter, single-minded contempt.

And all the while, Kennedy just kept going, getting more concessions from Republicans by being true to his principles than mealy mouthed centrism ever did. There’s a lesson in that.

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Neighbors

by digby

You may have already seen this, but it’s so depressing that it needs to be documented again. Senator Tom Coburn, a doctor, tells one of his constituents whose disabled husband was discharged from a nursing home and told “you’re on your own,” that the answer to her problem is that people need to help out their neighbors. Seriously.

Americans refuse to pay an extra penny in taxes to make sure that they and their neighbors don’t go broke and wind up without any support if they get sick. But we are supposed to rely on our neighbors to come in and change our bedpans for us.

These are the answers these crackpots have for people in desperate shape: if you are 62 and work for a small company that doesn’t provide insurance, you need to quit and find a large one that provides it. And when you get sick and inevitably go broke, you should go out and beg your neighbors to take care of you.

Whatever you do, don’t ask the government to solve the problem. Once you do that, the next thing you know they’ll be taking over Medicare and regulating the food supply. And then where would we be?

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One Year Ago Today

by digby

It was a privilege to be there.

RIP Teddy.

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Filling In The Blanks

by dday

ABC has some news on what was inside those blocks of redacted text in the CIA Inspector General report:

The CIA and the Obama Administration continue to keep secret some of the most shocking allegations involving the spy agency’s interrogation program: three deaths and several other detainees whose whereabouts could not be determined, according to a former senior intelligence official who has read the full, unredacted version.

Of the 109 pages in the 2004 report, 36 were completely blacked out in the version made public Monday, and another 30 were substantially redacted for “national security” reasons.

The blacked-out portions hide the Inspector General’s findings on the circumstances that led to the deaths of at least three of the detainees in the CIA’s program, the official said. Two of the men reportedly died in CIA in Iraq and the third died in Afghanistan.

The Inspector General’s findings about a fourth death involving a prisoner in Afghanistan were made public in the report. A CIA contract employee was convicted of assault in that case and is now in prison.

The still-secret portions of the Inspector General’s report also describe fears that the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed came close to killing him. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 separate times, according to the report.

The unredacted version of the report makes a reference to the “unsafe” nature of waterboarding but makes no mention of its actual effects on Mohammed or the two others who were subjected to the technique.

Again, much of this is not new information. We know quite a bit about deaths in American custody. They made an Academy Award-winning movie about one of these deaths. We’ve known for several months that the Bush regime suddenly changed their policies on waterboarding to require a medical doctor and a tracheotomy kit, suggesting that they were well aware of the dangers of the technique. The Bradbury memo from 2005 describes what appears to be a near-death experience on the waterboard:

In our limited experience, extensive use of the waterboard can introduce new risks. Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness. An unresponsive subject should be righted immediately and the interrogator should deliver a sub-xyphoid thrust to expel the water. If this fails to restore normal breathing, aggressive medical intervention is required. Any subject who has reached this degree of compromise is not [censored hereafter].

Abu Zubaydah has admitted that he lost consciousness on at least one occasion during waterboarding.

Later on in the report, ABC describes how the CIA flat-out lost detainees in its maze of black sites:

Also hidden from public scrutiny, according to the official, was the discovery by the CIA Inspector General that the CIA could not adequately account for several of the 100 al Qaeda suspects who were part of the detainee program that the CIA maintained had been well administered.

The official said “a few just got lost and the CIA does to know what happened to them.”

Other detainees, said the official, were transferred to other countries and their whereabouts are still unknown. In other cases, “incomplete records” were to blame for the failure to account for the detainees’ status after leaving the program.

As the report says later, Hassan Ghul is one such “missing” detainee, and his name inadvertently showed up in an OLC memo released earlier this year, the first acknowledgement that the CIA even had him in custody. He either got transferred to a third party or simply got lost in the shuffle.

These were the serious adults in charge of your safety.

Maybe it’s fine that these revelations have to get uncovered over and over and over again. But it would be nice if the Administration simply came clean and acknowledged what everyone already knows, that American interrogators murdered detainees in their custody. He’s being opportunistic, but Pete frickin’ Hoekstra agrees with all this:

The ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), said he thinks more of the CIA’s blacked out information should be made public. “If the sections of the report don’t talk about sources and methods, at this point in time, my bias would be toward transparency and toward releasing more information.” Hoekstra, who has read the unredacted version of the CIA report, said he could not comment on its contents.

Since most of this material is already out, the repeated discovery of it just leads to further outrage around the world and at home. This is a cover-up where everyone already knows the crime.

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Squeeze Play

by digby

Alert the media. Bipartisanship only goes one way:

The Hill flags the latest right-wing attack on Republican Senator Bob Bennett–a TV ad from the Club of Growth that slams the Bennett for supporting “massive government control of health care” that will impose “job-killing tax increases.” If you missed the first five seconds of the ad, it would be easy to assume that Bennett’s bill–which the ad doesn’t even bother describing–is one and the same as Obama’s health care plan. In fact, the ad rather obliquely attacks the Healthy Americans Act, the alternative reform proposal that Bennett co-sponsored with Wyden, flashing the bill’s formal title (S. 391) for just a second on the screen. From the start, of course, Wyden-Bennett bill has been attacked from the left and right for changing fundamental elements of the current employer-based insurance system. But the new climate of right-wing fear-mongering has allowed conservatives to sharpen their claws, accusing anyone who consorts with Democrats of turning the country’s health care system into a socialist (or is it fascist?) boondoogle.

In fact, the Wyden-Bennett bill would actually facilitate consumer access to the private market, allowing far more people to access a national health insurance exchange and choose between different (private!) insurance plans. But Bennett’s right-wing opponents have seized on the fact that the government has any role in setting up such an exchange as evidence of big-government-loving heresy.

There has been talk that Obama could have passed the Wyden-Bennett bill because it had bipartisan buy-in. Clearly not. (I’m not saying he couldn’t have passed it, just that its Republicans sponsors would have likely ended up voting against it themselves.)

The good news is that it’s possible the Democrats are recognizing that because of this kind of behavior, their excuse that they must have bipartisan support is looking more and more like the sell-out it is. Their friends in the GOP aren’t giving them any cover, the pretense is ridiculous. Perhaps that’s why you have gang of six member Jeff Bingaman saying this:

A Democratic member of the “Gang of Six” senators charged with finding a bipartisan solution to health care reform said at a town hall Monday that he would support using the budget reconciliation process to push a bill through the Senate if necessary.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico has been one of three Democrats participating in the widely-watched Finance Committee negotiations. His willingness to consider reconciliation is another sign that a a genuine bipartisan deal may be impossible.

“We made a provision in the budget resolution [earlier this year] that it could be used to try to enact health care provisions related to health care reform,” Bingaman said. “There are restrictions to what you can include in that…but I would support it if that’s the only way.”

What’s interesting about that is the tone more than anything else. The sell-outs are almost begging the Republicans to help them pass the terrible, insurance company giveaway bill they want so badly — and the Republicans just won’t cooperate. They are making the Democrats go this alone, which is the last thing they want to do because they have to face their own voters after passing something that won’t work — and now they know the Republicans will kill them no matter what they do. They have nowhere to hide.

If these Democrats had a brain in their heads they’d realize that the best way to maintain their power (and keep getting those big bucks) is to pass a good bill. Successful reform will be their only defense because the true political downside to passing a bad bill now is being out there alone selling out the American people all by themselves.

It’s quite clear these corporatists really don’t want to pass a good bill — they are, after all, more loyal to big business than the Republicans at this point, who see that there is great political hay to be made in taking the populist side (at least until they get back into power.) But in the end the Republicans may just force them to pass something decent anyway by failing to give them the cover for capitulation they so desperately need. It’s an interesting squeeze play that may backfire on the GOP in the long run if good health care reform is passed. (Let’s hope so anyway.)

It’s ironic that if real health care reform is ultimately achieved, it will be at the hands of obstructionist Republicans who refused to help the sell-out Dems. What a screwed up system.

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Fourthbranch’s Lawyer-Speak

by dday

As soon as you begin to have an argument over torture’s effectiveness, the argument is immediately lost. But it’s worth noting that Dick Cheney, the Great Dissembler, claimed for months that documents would show the how torture worked in saving lives, and yet, while those documents were released along with the IG report, none of the information contained in them prove Cheney’s hypothesis. Jane Mayer sez:

OLBERMANN: What about Mr. Cheney’s assessment that there would be documents that prove that torture worked where traditional and legal interrogation did not or would not. Is there anything in those documents that were released today that supports that contention?

MAYER: Well, the documents that I’ve seen, and maybe I’m missing something, but so far, I am amazed at how little support there is for the things that Vice President Cheney has been saying. There is nothing but a mass of claims that they got information from this individual and that individual, many from KSM, who apparently has been the greatest fount of information for them, but there’s absolutely nothing saying that they had to beat them to get this information. In fact, as anybody knows who knows anything about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was dying to tell the world, when he was interviewed by Al Jazeera before he was in US custody, about everything he knew and everything he did. He was proud of his role as the mastermind of 9/11. He loves to talk about it. So there’s no evidence that I see in this that these things were necessary. I spoke to someone at the CIA who was an advisor to them who conceded to me that “We could have gotten the same information from tea and crumpets.”

OLBERMANN: Or buying a copy of the Al Jazeera interview.

The Cheney documents were deliberately created at the time to rebut both this CIA Inspector General report recommending prosecutions, and the heat put on by Congress about allegations of torture. They were actually conceived to deceive people into believing that torture works, an irrelevant point at best. And yet these same memos do not support Cheney’s claims. They say that certain individuals gave up information, but only after questioned through traditional means, which was happening contemporaneously to the torture. It is impossible to say definitively, therefore, which information came as a result of what techniques.

And yet, not only has traditional media largely ignored the fact that the documents do not support Cheney’s claims (which were given tons of media attention previously), but an extremely carefully worded statement by Cheney, stating that “The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda” – which says nothing of WHAT techniques caused this intelligence to be gleaned – has been taken completely at face value by reporters, in particular CNN, which ran Cheney’s comments as facts:

Cheney says documents show interrogations prevented attacks

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says documents released Monday support his view that harsh interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects prevented attacks and yielded crucial information about al Qaeda.

A simple read of the documents shows this to be completely untrue. Jane Mayer, as expert a journalist on this subject as anyone, calls them unsupportable. But too many reporters just write down these things and run with them, the facts be damned. It’s part of this pattern of the traditional media waking up every day with a blank slate, without even bothering to consult the full timeline of the issue.

We already know they tortured. We know that DOJ bureaucrats illegally approved the torture on Dick Cheney’s request and we know that a bunch of unprofessional, untrained interrogators complied and then went beyond even what was approved. We know that innocent people were tortured and we know that prisoners were killed. We’ve known all this for a long time. The question is not what happened, it’s whether anyone will be held accountable for it.

On that point, here’s Jane Mayer talking about the Durham investigation, actually hopeful about what it may find:

MAYER: Well, my guess is that if they actually open some kind of serious investigation, and Durham is said to be a very serious prosecutor, that even if they start at the very bottom, it’s going to keep leading up and up through the chain of command. Because, if nothing else, if they actually bring charges against anybody at the CIA who was at the bottom of the food chain, the first thing that person’s going to do is say “I was authorized, let me tell you what my orders were.” So they’ve begun a process that could lead to the top.

OLBERMANN: Well, if it works along the Archibald Cox lines, as I analogized last week, where they’ve supposedly circumscribed it, but people want to get out from the scapegoat for the whole operation, then I think your assessment is correct.

We know that none of the torture here happened by happenstance, but through a directed policy emanating from the top. Instead of prosecuting “bad apples” who were young MPs on the night shift in Baghdad, we’re talking about mid-level career CIA. They aren’t dupes, and they know how to shift the attention up the chain of command. I don’t think these interrogators will live with being the scapegoats. It may take some time, but we really could see some legitimate accountability here. And I hope so – because otherwise this will remain a black mark that can never wash out.

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