From the conservative maverick St Andrew of the Trendy Hairshirt:
Here’s one detail about Don Rumsfeld’s summer home that a historian found poignant: it was once a renowmed [sic] center for torturing slaves. Frederick Douglass was assaulted there—and escaped. Of course, those slaves weren’t actually tortured, as Alberto Gonzales would argue. They were merely subject to “coercive disciplinary techniques”.
You know, I’d love to point out just how humiliated Sullivan should feel about posting something that—from both an historical perspective and the perspective of our current efforts to determine the boundaries of useful interrogation practices—is so objectively idiotic, but doing so would mean that Andrew could conceivably be found guilty of torturing himself, and I’m not sure John McCain has as yet told us how to deal with such a situation.
So, you know, I’m gonna take a wait and see attitude for the time being.
(h/t Allah)
I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask Andy to stop torturing us with his melodramatic scenery-chewing about “torture,” would it?
But as you have already pointed out, he uses the Sullivan Attribution Shuffle – he gets to point to something someone else “found poignant”. Then he makes the mistake of letting the mask slip with the poignant little snark about Gonzalez and torture. So really, he’s only guilty of not following his own SOP, right?
Now, if you will excuse me I have to go waterboard myself for having given him $50 in his first pledge whine, er…hamock fundraiser…um, bandwidth, intern and relaxation payfest(?)
Is he married yet?
Here’s a detail about Abu Ghraib that one website commenter found poignant: it was a renowned center for interrogating and torturing Iraqi citizens thought to have harbored animus toward the Saddamite regime. Forensic teams are still attempting to identify some of the skeletal remains found buried in mass graves nearby.
Yet another poignant detail uncovered by Andrew (or, at least, found poignant by some PhD candidate on a history site) about Rumsfeld’s house:
Four walk-in closets!
BECAUSE RUMMY HATES TEH GAY!
Furthermore, the Rumsfeld home is thought by some to have originally been built on the site of a Native American burial ground, which causes caretakers to take axes to Scatman Carruthers and visitors to blow each other in leftover Magical Mystery Tour movie costumes.
I built this comment over an Indian burial ground.
Sullivan is apparently so enamored with himself that he believes writing tripe like this will make hordes of obedient twits submit to his will. His will being helping him find his self esteem which left on a slow boat for Gitmo.
So, let me see if I capture the idea correctly:
–Anyplace, whenre anything bad happens, is permanently tainted
–Any future owner is somehow taking at least partial on responsibility for the past “bad” that happened on the property
Right. Gotcha.
Narcissism, thy name is Sullivan.
This is more evidence of the “Actus = Sullivan” theory.
It would be nice if he acknowledged that “torture” is a spectrum. If touching someone with fake menstrual blood is torture (and I do not think it is), that’s at one end, like really long radio waved on the electronamagnetic spectrum. What Saddam did is at the other end, like gamma rays.
Sullivan has all of the perspective of a Picasso painting.
You know what they say about people who hate torture, torturephobics if you will. They all secretly lust for torture, but are too ashamed or repressed by the prevailing moral dogma to admit it to themselves or others. Me, I’m secure enough in my own commitment to human rights that, while I don’t prefer waterboarding for interrogations myself, I am willing to tolerate others doing it. Sullivan, on the other hand, has an animus towards it that is so clearly hostile that one must assume he secretly wants to be in a naked guy pyramid in Abu Ghraib.
fwiw, Rumsfeld had the place renamed after he and the missus finished the renovations to ‘Mount LikeIGiveaFuck’
The IHT ran a piece on this in December – apparently they pulled two cannonballs from the structure vintage “War of 1812” – Rumsfeld had them on display next to the fireplace, until a security guard pointed out that they may still be live.
that second part is true, btw.
.
You know what they say about people who hate torture, torturephobics if you will. They all secretly lust for torture, but are too ashamed or repressed by the prevailing moral dogma to admit it to themselves or others
I was thinking the same thing, Chairman Me. Sully protests too much and uses tortured reasoning and rhetoric. He’s all about torture all of the time, especially as allegedly committed by our uniformed soldiers and authoritative national leaders. He does seem to be setting himself up for ridicule, so, yes, Jeff, maybe Sullivan wants the humiliation. And a cruel rebuke or encounter.
Self righteous torturephobiac?
I guess so. But wow, that Andy fella sits pretty
high on his morality pedestal doesn’t he….
Y’know, I wish that Herman Hesse had written “Narcissus and Goldstein.” I need some summer reading.
How the hell do you weave a Madras hairshirt?
That Sullivan Attribution Shuffle is not original Sullivan material I’m afraid Major John. He’s borrowed that shtick from Howard Dean:
Not only has Sullivan used this “interesting” theory practice to it’s most absurd heights, he has gone right off the deep end with Dean to the point he makes posts like the one Jeff just cited. I’m convinced he’s blinded to reason at this point.
Is a butt plug torture???????
Andrew lied, gerbils died.
BECAUSE OF THE DUCT TAPE!!
So, lemme get this straight…back in the day they used to wrap slaves in Israeli flags at Rumsfeld’s summer house?
Barbaric.
Poignant, indeed, that Rumsfeld is just like a modern-day slave-owning capitalist. It’s almost like when my dog died.
I once enjoyed a mint julep in front of my black neighbor who was cutting his lawn in 100-degree Maryland heat.
It was like I practically lynched him.
Torture came up in discussion with a freind of mine who is about to begin a job in the Justice Dept.
The only statement about torture he made, which befuddled me, was that torture doesn’t work.
Has Jeff, or anyone else written about the effectiveness of torture, or coercion, or whatever-you-call-it?
“Is a butt plug torture??????? “
No,maybe, I don’t know
But I hear the use of a life size rubber fist can be considered torture….
I have disciplined many of torture-phobics. Sure they have their do-gooder jobs working for this or that human rights commissions. However in the evening they are coming to me wanting to be tied up and having all that liberal guilt paddled out of them.
TW: It really is a “labor” of love I perform.
Here’s one detail about Andy Sullivan’s site which future generations will (invariably) find poignant: it was an intellectual sinkhole, renowned for the torturing of logic.
And hissy fits.
Here’s yo’ julep, sir! All frosty an’ minty, hyuk hyuk hyuk!
That masterful humor, Jeff, is why you’re the host here and we’re jusy guests.
Well, that, and the fact that you’re the one paying for the blog site…
Oh, and you kin spel and typ.
JoAnnArbor—Actually, you’ve just pretty much summed up New Jersey environmental law…
I don’t know that I would go quite that far, but it is food for thought…
bumoperstickerist—“live” solid roundshot from 1812? Or were these howitzer shells or old mortar bombs? Keep in mind the IHT is owned and operated by the NYT…
Andy Sullivan: “Putting the MAN Back Into MANDINGO—!”
Why not extend this trope to all journalistic exercises?
“…..Tony Blair remarked during a photo opportunity at the entrance to No. 10 Downing Street, poingnantly enough on the very location of Roman Londinium, once burned by Boudicca in retribution for her humiliation and that of her daughters at the hands of rogue imperial forces…”
“….only short steps away from the residence of Japan’s Emperor Akihito, overshadowed by the poignant reminder of numerous Toho studio productions of misunderstood radioactive leviathan Godzilla, whose very existence was a testimony to the hubris of….”
Columbia, you listening? This could be a trend!
Okay, someone explain the Hesse thing to me, please. I looked up the novel in Wikipedia and STILL don’t get the allusion…?
Well, I find it poignant that Andy is writing from his desk, where once a Sailor and a Cowboy lathered creamcheese all over his nipples and played “Sink your battleship, baby!” all over the office.
I’ll bet Rumsfeld once watched the remastered DVD of “Gone With the Wind” in that house, too. Maybe even Season 1 of “The Jeffersons.”
Bastard.
My quick search of the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” did not reveal any incidents of panties being worn on the head.
Perhaps Excitable Andy can elucidate on that point.
Further research reveals that Edward Covey, 19th century owner of Mount Misery and locally famous “breaker of slaves”, wrote a pamphlet called ‘The Feven Habitf of Highly Effective Torturerf’.
This work later became known as ‘The US Army Field Manual’
….
GMG – the article didn’t specify solid shot or not. A security guard, apparently, made the recommendation to Rumsfeld that the cannonballs should be moved away from the fire.
Dee–
It wasn’t very well worked out. The allusion is to narcissistic Andrew Sullivan. What if instead of Hesse’s bildungsroman, we had Andrew and Jeff, two very different sensibilities? Goldstein would have ditched Narcissus in the monastery and hit the road. And he’d be getting these weird hysterical emails from Narcissus, and he’d run into . . . uh, what’s the name of Treacher’s Roumanian Dog-Boy who ran away?
Anyway, Treacher’s been posting again at his own site. The cigar one was kind of teh suck. Mind you, I thought the gams were nice. Where were we?
Yeah, it’s ridiculous that Sullivan is claiming Southern slaveowners once “tortured” their slaves. For one thing, the slaves were their PROPERTY. How can you torture your property? Sure, I can torture my computer by forcing it to go to Sullivan’s site, but that’s just metaphorical. Anyway, corporal punishment was widely accepted at the time as a legal punishment, so calling whipping slaves “torture” is totally ahistorical, unless half the criminals in the US justice system at the time were also being “tortured”. And finally, the slaves were tortured for refusing their owners’ orders or trying to escape, which was against the law. And the Convention Against Torture – which didn’t exist at the time anyway – specifically exempts punishments meted out for crimes from its definition of “torture”.
So saying that slaveowners “tortured” slaves is as ignorant and ahistorical as saying that Stalin “tortured” the people in the gulags, when everyone knows they were just undergoing their lawful punishment for crimes they had been tried and sentenced for—and mostly they suffered because of 50-below-zero temperatures and typhus, which can hardly be blamed on Stalin, and was hardly worse than what average Russians in Leningrad were going through at the time. Besides, if those slaves had still been in Africa, they would have been subject to much harsher punishments from barbaric tribal chieftains, including human sacrifice, so they were lucky to be slaves in Maryland. People who think that because we whipped our slaves in America, we were just as bad as the Ashanti, are just engaging in standard moonbat moral equivalency. But of course you’ll never hear Sullivan decrying the evils of Ashanti slavery or the Union concentration camp at Andersonville. Because that wouldn’t give him a chance to insult white American “crackers”.
Right?
Puce. That is Treacher’s e-mail Rumanian pal.
Dario – I realize Dean had done the “isn’t it interesting bit” – but Jeff had narrowed down Sully’s take on the whole approach:
1. publish carefully selected e-mail
2. appear to chide e-mailer for worst excesses
3. “consider” select part of e-mail
4. preen
So, you, of course, were correct to recognize the technique as applied by Chariman Dean.
brooksfoe,
Are you that much a putz in real life, too, or just in cyberspace?
JD–Mary Mapes has it on very good authority that a document in the hand of Frederick Douglass has recently come to light in which he specifically recounts having been tortured by one Richard Cheney (including head-pantying). This portion of the text appears to have been redacted by someone called “Illuminatus.”
An excellent example of either missing the point or attacking a strawman – I cannot figure which one. Nobody is saying slaves were not tortured, we just have a small problem with St. Andrew thinking the past history of a house has any relevance. He is a posturing twit and you are trying to raise him up as a buckler…oy.
Posted by brooksfoe | permalink
on 07/05 at 09:04 PM
Someone just wrecked their brand new ‘06 Logic on I-80.
I don’t think that’s what Sullivan was claiming, was it, brooksfoe? Is that really going to be your premise? Here’s some fodder for your next self-righteous rant, you dolt: a commenter on Goldstein’s blog called me a frickin’ fucktard, just because I was defending Andy Sully from all the mean things they were saying.
Your so right, brooksfoe. The rest of you are clearly in denial of brooksfoe’s amazing arguments.
The treatment of slaves was not torture at all, especially when compared to the evil things done at gitmo and abu ghraib like wrapping people in Israeli flags or smearing them with fake menstrual blood or putting them in naked prisoner pyramids. It was ridiculous for Sully to even think of suggesting that slave treatment was anywhere near as bad as the evil things we do to detainees these days, which was obviously Jeff’s point.
Nick–
Oh. NOW I see!
Well, that was a substantive comment, JohnAnnArbor.
What trips me out is that the conservative community has actually worked itself up to the point where, when someone says “We shouldn’t torture people”, the instant response is mockery and even fury.
Presumably, you do recognize that whipping slaves and treating zeks the way Stalin did – holding them indefinitely incommunicado, keeping them awake, subjecting them to cold and inadequate medical care – was “torture”. Why, then?
Brooksfoe said:
Blah, bla, blah bla, blah, blah, etc., etc., and so on and so forth…
I’ve rarely seen someone use so many words and say so little. Must be a…gift.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous that Sullivan is claiming Southern slaveowners once “tortured†their slaves
Hey! Nice Strawman.
Union concentration camp at Andersonville
The mother of pearl codpiece is a bit tacky though.
What trips me out is that some people think it’s significant that some historians think it’s poignant that Frederick Douglass was tortured in a home owned by Dick Cheney a hundred and fifty years before Dick Cheney owned the home. It’s even trippier that someone else thinks mocking this bullshit reveals the true, evil slave torture apologist nature of those who do so. Unfortunately, I don’t possess a great enough capacity for derision to do it justice.
Fine, Dan. Just say it better than I could, just you go ahead. Oh, you did…
panties on head != Stalin’s gulag
Andrew doesn’t do that sort of thing. Remember, he’s a good Catholic boy, and that makes the baby Jesus weep.
What we are mocking is the faux fury of the reactionary left over treatment that I’m sure you’d be willing to pay $200 an hour to have inflicted on you.
tw: coming.
let’s not go there.
Oh, come on, Brooksfoe, be fair… gay men were in much shorter supply back then. They had to abuse somebody…
sorry to nitpick, but it’s “mund”. Narcissus & Goldmund. i believe the original title was Death & the Lover. great book…
If I may SGT,
I think what brooksie is saying is that if Deb Frisch’s bush looks like Fredrick Douglass’s fro, when she puts her panties on, it’s an allegory for Abu Ghraib.
No, it’s “when Brooksfoe says anything, the instant response is mockery and extensive peals of laughter.”
But I can see how you might get that mixed up.
Nice catch, BenzoilBenny. I just added a link so that we all can see just how much of a Freudian slip brooksfoe made.
Or did Brooksfoe type too fast in his rage over Cheney torturing prisoners by forcing them to watch taped concerts of the Dixie Chicks?
TW: methinks brooksfoe is a bit too involved with torture.
brooks:
First, you miss the entire point of the post, then you make an ass of yourself in public. The issue is not torture, but an attempt by Sullivan to create a phoney guilt by association over a span of over 150 years. If we accept that logic, what’s to stop anyone from saying, ‘Hey, brooks, I’ve discovered that your family owns a house once owned by a member of the KKK; you must be a rabid racist.’
It’s a rare gift to have such a tin ear for language, but it’s nothing to crow about.
Ahem,
So to clarify, your saying that just because my great grandfather’s grandfather owned someone elses great grandfather’s grandfather that doesn’t make me a racist?
Damn, what do I do with all my manufactured white guilt?
Oh… wait.
I work in Oil and Gas, I never feel guilt.
It’s ok, I’m good
Andersonville is union, Southern Thai muslims oppressed for centuries by Bangkok…missing the ENTIRE fucking point ALL the time…
And they wonder why we don;t like it when they run the country…
“Miss the point”?!?! Sullivan said: it’s poignant (might have said “ironic”, but whatever, either adjective works) that this torture-enabler who’s attempted to get the CIA interrogation SOP to allow anything that doesn’t cause organ failure or permanent health damage lives in a house where torture was once practiced on slaves.
He wasn’t alleging a causal link. That’s an idiotic reading. He was saying it was “poignant”, in the sense of an aesthetic echo. If an Olympic decathlon winner finds out he’s living in a house Jim Thorpe used to own, it’s appropriate to call that “curious” or “fitting”. Same diff.
And yeah, the Union internees at Andersonville, though a good analog for the zeks in the gulag, cut the wrong way for the “cracker” point in that counterfactual. Obviously that whole argument is a tissue of illogic and deceit, just like the arguments that are made to justify US torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
What part of idiotic did you not get? Abu Ghraib = slavery? Something like that?
Carry on, brooksfoe. That hole will eventually lead to China, I promise.
More like a hot, scalding death, Verc.
But brooksfoe will be here in a moment to identify the layers of the earth’s subsurface incorrectly.
The first is the mantle, brooksfoe.
Loud music and having Lindy Englund point at your privates is not torture, but she’s going to the hoosegow nonetheless. Defining torture down just makes you look silly.
Kind of like Andrew Sullivan in a speedo.
isn’t the first the crust?
Jesus, Verc, this is really testing my faith in human logic, here. Sullivan believes Cheney supports and enables torture. You disagree – fine. But granted that Sullivan thinks this. If he then learns that Cheney has bought a vacation house which was once used to, indisputably, torture people, what is the error in noting that and calling it “poignant”? There’s nothing weird or illogical about what Sullivan said. Nothing. If it were Charles Manson’s or Beria’s old house, it’d be equally appropriate to note it. The only explanation I can find for the level of vituperation Sullivan’s quote provoked is that the issue of “torture” has by now created this whole series of knee-jerk responses in the conservative community which triggers tirades of fury and underwear-on-head comments at the merest mention of the subject.
How about it simply shows Sully to be obsessed, silly and will go out of his way to relate anything he can to his pet causes – no matter how far a stretch he has to make?
It serves as a wonderful example of of how Sullivan’s writing declines when he hops on his high horse(s).
Beating someone to death, propping someone with massive internal bleeding up against a wall until he suffocates, and sicking dogs on someone (and letting them bite him) are. All of these took place at Baghram and Abu Ghraib, though they were not revealed in the initial batch of photos, but subsequently. And, in fact, the treatment you cynically mischaracterize here (mock electrocution, forcing people to engage in sexual acts, blasting music in concert with forced sleep deprivation for many days on end, prolonged cold that induces hypothermia, etc.) is torture too. You might try looking at the Convention Against Torture to verify this. True, that’s just some treaty the US ratified. But some of us like to think of the US as a country that abides by the treaties it ratified.
You’re the one ragging on Stalin, brooksfoe.
I would say, your capacity for same, which is very little.
Oh, and we KNOW that in Sully’s world of torture, he earnestly believes that Abu Ghraib (US) = Abu Ghraib (Saddam) = Slavery = Gulag = etc = BAD.
Why the hell would we spend more than thirty seconds poking at Sully with a stick if we thought he made a typo in his predicate calculus? We are ridiculing his jackass belief THAT Abu Ghraib (US) = anything worse than Riker’s Island.
Consider it a ‘poignant echo’ of his intolerable jackassery. And we are poking at you for missing the point, AGAIN, for the, what?, third time? Fifth?
Sure. Like basically everybody else in the blogosphere, there.
Well, I know at least one person that fits the mold, brooksfoe. If you leave for a couple of weeks, I’ll email you his address.
I’ll email you. But if you come around here, I won’t call you. Don’t you ever come around here again. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever ever ever ever ever come around here again.
And brooksfoe,
Those people are being held accountable. And the instances to which you refer are aberrations, because, just as in the case of civilian deaths, if the US really wanted to kill civilians indiscriminately, it could–ditto on torturing people.
And I don’t recall any of you idiots getting this upset when it’s Americans getting gang raped in US prisons. You’re a hypocritical bunch, huh?
Your reasoning is absurd. I want you to brief us all again on how Marine Security Guard Detachmenets are in embassies to “evacuate” you or how the Muslims in southern Thailand are oppressed by Bangkok (in a country with constitutioanlly guaranteed freedom of religion and a couple of thousand mosques).
You are an empty shell masquerading as an expert. Again I say, “Punt!”
Verc:
– Jeff
(Sorry, Major John)
Not making the point you think you’re making. As for your posts, I think mostly they boil down to “Andrew Sullivan has sex with men. Heh heh. Heh.”
I left out the positively HowardDeanesque silliness in which you engaged a couple of days past:
“Cutting the US military 90% would not have an effect on American prosperity or stability. Except that it would.”
Does that pretty much capture it, brooksfoe?
As I said, kid, a tin ear. You are articluate, but you don’t know much about the devices of rhetoric. Sullivan isn’t mentioning slavery and Rumsfeld in the same breath to create an objective, dispassionate impression. Only a naif would believe such a thing–and I grant you your poetic juxtaposition.
Jeff was merely pointing out that Sullivan’s increasingly left-wing spew undercuts whatever claims he may be making to ‘conservatism’ and objectivity.
Your worldview–as I’ve suggested before–is predicated on a dislike and distrust of the United States so deeply ingrained that you are not even aware of it. From this single attitude, all else in your “political philosophy” devolves. Yet, you examine yourself and find yourself to be a reasonable, liberal fellow. Logic, my ass. You are not the one to judge the quality of a logical argument. You haven’t the tools.
Yours is an attitude that is as repellent to others as it is to me. That’s where the hostility is coming from. You have no gift for perspective, knowledge of history or sense of the ebb and flow of life. You are a nihilist. You read neither broadly nor deeply. You do not interpret the things you have read very well. You cobble your arguments together from dry cuds left over from your school days and bits of hoary leftist propaganda you’ve collected from various fashionable, politically-caressed news sources. Contrary to what you may believe, you haven’t an original idea in your skull. You are a dupe, a tool and a useful idiot.
Yet, even that fails to prevent you from speaking arrogantly about issues of which you know virtually nothing and disparaging honorable people whose feet you are not fit to kiss.
tw: trial
There is nothing worse than a tedious, boring troll.
At least actus’ predictable contrarianism is sometimes amusing.
Despite massive prison building programs, the demand for space has outstripped funding in many areas, with jail and prison systems suffering from acute overcrowding, cuts in amenities and inadequate medical or mental health care. Overcrowding and lack of supervision has also meant that vulnerable inmates (such as the young, weak or mentally ill) are often at increased risk of abuses (including beatings, extortion and rape) from predatory inmates. – report on human rights in the US, 2000
But you’re right. We don’t try hard enough to force the US to guarantee the safety of US prisoners from other inmates. If we did try harder to have that done, I’m sure conservatives would rush to join us in safeguarding the human rights of convicted criminals.
I knew you would fall for it and miss the point yet again.
Your outrage is so selective that the algorithm must resemble Microsoft code for Windows, except that the end result is always: ‘It’s them Rethuglicans and militray types that are ruining the world and sabotaging our chane to just get along.”
Idiot.
btw, I missed it where brooksie must have made the “beheading school girls in Thailand”=”blowback for eleventy million years of Buddhist (!!!for the love of Kee-rist!!!) oppression).
Some
one fill me in?
That would be “Ha ha ha.” Everything else sounds queer.
TW: What?
Because it’s not, dimwit.
TW: Do your parents take you out in public, or are you just to embarrasing to bring outside?
I think Brooksfoe should tell us his age. If he is under, say, 23, then we should go easy on him and wait for him to come around. If he is over that then we should continue to ridicule him for his deliberate obtuseness.
He reminds me of some friends that, yes, seem totally brain-dead in their “philosophy†but are nonetheless likeable in day-to-day life, and will someday gain a better perspective on things.
ahem,
this is your last response for a while. You make too many ad hominem attacks. You want to talk, talk about things, not about you or me. You will no doubt make some little celebratory and dismissive comment now, so go ahead.
– wishbone
I believe you guys are the outraged ones on this thread. I see nothing wrong with what Sullivan wrote. But I share your abhorrence of Windows.
I’ll go runninrebel one better. I think there’s a good chance that brooksfoe’s penetrating insights are going to convince Jeff that: (a) sticking panties on someone’s head should get the same treatment under international law as sodomizing someone with a chemical lamp; (b) torture as defined by US law was instituted as routine policy, despite several investigations showing this to be untrue; (c) letting the enemy define torture for you by claiming that this or that tactic is “humiliating” is exactly what US policy should be; (d) Sully really wasn’t equating the institution of slavery with isolated cases of military misconduct that have been and are being prosecuted when he was making that exact metaphor, even if you try to call it an “aesthetic echo”; (e) Sully was not subtly trying to play the race card by suggesting the mental image of Rummy as plantation-owner; and (f) Sullivan’s worn-out dodge of presenting it all as someone else’s opinion is Pulitzer material.
And the part where brooksfoe pulled a Durbin and threw Stalin’s gulag into his rhetorical mish-mash? Pure brilliance!!! I don’t know how ahem could possibly dismiss him as a knee-jerk leftist tool.
Can you discuss the torture committed by US soldiers and interrogators without reference to panties? Because US captors have also beaten people to death, withheld medical treatment resulting in death, lowered temperatures to the point of inducing hypothermia, staged mock electrocutions, etc.
That is not the allegation. You should know that by now. The allegation is that US leaders weakened and confused our strict regulations prohibiting torture (with the Yoo memo etc.) in a fashion which, had they been competent and intelligent managers, commanders OR lawyers, they should have KNOWN would result in torture under the conditions of war and occupation. When that torture indeed occurred, many US officials and politicians concealed it, pooh-poohed it, and made sure that the commanders who ought to have prevented it were not blamed or punished. And, finally, Cheney and others defended convoluted definitions of “torture” (organ damage, e.g.) which would allow US interrogators to continue doing things (like waterboarding) that most Americans, and the current legal counsel for DOD itself, do consider torture.
Your arguments here are part and parcel of the effort to deny the seriousness of the US’s mistreatment of detainees. I do not see the point of arguing in the direction you take. What is the POINT of trying to excuse the beatings and murder at Abu Ghraib and Bhagram by characterizing the whole issue as “panties on the head”? How can you not hear the uncomfortable echoes of “breaking a few eggs to make an omelette” when you talk that way?
brooksfoe, are you saying there is no difference between widespread, state-sanctioned (or at least tolerated) torture and isolated incidents of abuse and torture by a few rogue people who are eventually punished?
brooksfoe, what, exactly, have you got against panties? Do you hate corsets, as well? What about bras? Pasties?
It looks like brooksie has been taking translation lessons from Marcotte, so he probably does know a thing or two about torture.
Perhaps as a child he was traumatized by a rogue peignoir?
A torturous excercise in brooksfoeian logic (and Sulluvanism, as well):
Abu Gharib = Entire US Military guilty of “torture.”
Inner-city African American street gang members shoot each other over crack rocks = all inner city African Americans guilty of gang violence and drug trafficking? No?
Hence, no consistency in the logic, the outrage or the justification for either.
Liberal-world, in other words.
tw: brooksfoe never stooped to figure out why he makes no sense.
No—I’m not saying there’s no difference. Of course you’re right, there’s a huge difference. But torture by US soldiers and agents is not so isolated, and the perpetrators are not so very few; and not all have been or will be punished. What unifies the cases of torture by US soldiers and agents is that they are caused by a systematic confusion over US torture policy, which was created by policy changes at the very top of the US government. The Yoo memo, statements by Cheney and Rumsfeld, new interrogation instructions from the CIA etc. made it clear that some policymakers wanted soldiers to push the envelope of physical and mental harassment. People were unsure about what the rules and instructions were. That’s the environment in which your assholes like Charles Grainer and your weak characters like Lynndie Englund are going to get the messages mixed and wind up acting out. The Yoo memo itself was a pro-torture policy; it was properly rescinded, but the confusion had been created. And the criticism of the Administration to which I subscribe is that it’s your job, as commander in chief or secdef or any other senior official, NOT to send mixed messages about something like torture. And those messages are still being sent, every time anybody says, “Oh, gosh, but that’s not REALLY torture,” or “Those assholes deserve whatever they get,” or “they do it to us, so we should do it to them.”
Personally I think Sullivan has cerebral AIDS. His writings have been degenerating for years.