CYA

by digby

The other day I wondered why there was so much being written and discussed among the villagers about how Obama should (and mostly shouldn’t) deal with the torture regime, when I didn’t see it as being a top agenda item among the public. I guessed that the intelligence community was probably heavily lobbying, but beyond that the whole discussion seemed bizarrely outsized considering how disdainful the establishment is toward civil libertarians. Why are they working so feverishly to ensure that the new administration let bygones be bygones on this?

Greenwald hits the nail on the head: the members of the political establishment are all complicit. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were frantic to ensure that torture is removed from the realm of taboo because they all advocated breaking it. I should have realized that if these people had publicly indulged themselves in violent expressions of primitive bloodlust, one can only imagine what they must have been saying to each other in private. They have to excuse the torture and insist that it was necessary because they’ve all told each other for years that was so. Theydon’t want to play the blame game because they are all guilty.

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