Americana Mirror

December 11, 2014

M-C--Escher-Hand-with-Reflecting-Sphere-113278Rain still a-coming here this late afternoon on California’s drenched northern coast — seems not as windy, though.

Straight-up comment off the ‘CIA Torture Report,’ this from David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” on his blog yesterday:

Fuck writing reports. Fuck arguing about reports.
For the very soul of the country, some people must go to prison for these crimes against humanity, and for ordering crimes against humanity in my name, in your name, in our names.
They were working not to save our country, as claimed. They were working to destroy this republic.

And the nasty-assed bottom line of ‘…actually torturing other human beings with exacting cruelty in secret and then arguing about whether we can dare discuss it in public.’

(Illustration: M.C Escher’s ‘Three Spheres II‘ found here).

This ‘torture’ subject is a moral issue, and Americans sometimes have a stutter-and-a-two-step when it comes to morality — ‘slavery,’ ‘genocide,’ two that come to mind — but fall forward mostly, hopefully. Shit coughed-up in the report should be faced, and the perpetrators punished.
As Simon says: ‘That there are elements of the American government still arguing against this cold blast of truth, offering up the craven fear that the rest of the world might see us as we actually are, or that our enemies will perhaps use the evidence of our sadism to justify violent retribution or political maneuver — this further cowardice only adds to the national humiliation.’

(Again, h/t The Dish).

And another ‘CIA Torture Report’ blowback nugget came this afternoon in the form of a supposedly feisty Sen Dianne Feinstein, throwing shit-for-tat against CIA Director John Brennan, who held a rare Q/A from the press about the report.
From CBS News:

The CIA director argued that there was valuable information gained after using enhanced interrogation methods, although he said it was “unknowable” whether that information could have been obtained using other methods.
He also said it was just a few agents who went beyond the legal and policy guidelines during interrogations, and expressed surprise that the committee did not interview current CIA personnel while conducting its investigation.

Feinstein and her staff jumped on the Twitter hotline, scolded Brennan for being a liar/asshole — in decent Tweet language, of course.
Rebuffed Brennan’s bluff with 26 Tweets, bearing the hashtag #ReadTheReport. One such as: ‘CIA says “unknowable” if we could have gotten the intel other ways. Study shows it IS knowable: CIA had info before torture

This story ain’t going away anytime soon.

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