Peggy Noonan Regrets Release of Torture Memos: “Some of Life Has to Be Mysterious”

[babylonsister]

http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/19/peggy-noonan-regrets-release-of-torture-memos-some-of-life-has-to-be-mysterious/

Peggy Noonan Regrets Release of Torture Memos: “Some of Life Has to Be Mysterious”
By: Blue Texan Sunday April 19, 2009 11:30 am
Video at link~


Watching this clip of the Villagers discussing torture is, well, torture.

Sam Donaldson comes the closest to making any sense at all, but even he has trouble stating the issue succintly: we're a nation of laws. Period.

Meanwhile, George Will wrings his hands about "the cost" of letting "the bad guys" know what "techniques" we can use on them (you mean criminals willing to blow themselves up to kill unarmed civilians have an advantage in a free and open society? who knew?!), and how "intelligent people of good will" believe the President of the United States can do whatever he wants to "defend the country."

Bizarre.

But easily the most vapid and annoying performance was, of course, Nooners:

It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that.

Got that? Nooners doesn't have a problem with the brutal, illegal, un-American acts of torture committed under Bush/Cheney. She's just worried about the bad PR.

Memo to Nooners: great nations don't torture. It's stuff of petty dictatorships. And memo to Will: those pesky laws that give the "bad guys" such an unfair advantage and restrain the actions of the chief executive are not an annoyance -- they're who we are. They are what make us great.

These wingers say they love this country but they don't possess even a rudimentary understanding of what makes it so special.

[annabanana]

1. She is another one that doesn't want to "trouble her beautiful mind"

with all that stuff. .

[dkf]

2. Of course they don't want the world to know what their precious Bushy

was up to.

Duh.

[Booster]

4. Trouble is, the rest of the world did know - we were the only ones

in the dark.

[spanone]

3. let's torture peggy and keep it quiet

elitist of the elite

[yella_dawg]

5. This isn't a matter of punishing criminals...

It's a matter of interrogating suspects. That's the key point that has to be hammered into these morons.

[mbperrin]

6. One of life's mysteries is how Noonan appears to be alive without even having

a brain OR a heart!

No sarcasm! I'm series!

[noise]

7. Hard to believe

Authoritarianism in action. Sickening to behold. It's no accident that this crowd equated patriotism with unconditional support for Bush. This led to the bizarre state of affairs where support for the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions was considered unpatriotic, seditious al Qaeda appeasement.

[tanyev]

8. I wonder if she sweeps all the dirt under the rugs at her house, too.

[babylonsister]

9. Peggy sweep? You're kiddin', right?! nt

[Faryn Balyncd]

10. Great nations don't torture. We will once again be a great nation.

[starroute]

11. Partly, they don't figure they could ever be the ones being tortured

I don't know if I'm just weird -- but there has been more than one period over the years when I've spent a considerable amount of time asking myself how I would react if this country ever went full-on totalitarian and the price for simply speaking out included the possibility of arrest, torture, even death. Would I continue to speak up and take that risk? Or would I duck and hide?

It's one of those questions I pull out every decade or so, chew over for a while, and then tuck away again -- because I've never come up with a definitive answer. I guess nobody really knows how they'd act in that sort of situation unless it actually happens.

But the one thing I have concluded for sure is that the very existence of torture is incompatible with a free and open society. Whether it's 17th century freethinkers expressing their most heretical insights only in code for fear of the Inquisition, or 19th century Italian patriots cheering operas that were thinly veiled allegories of their oppression by the Austrian Empire, torture forces authentic thought and feeling underground at best -- or makes them unutterable at worst.

That is why torture becomes the defining issue. In its absence, all other issues are on the table and can be freely debated and resolved. In its presence, all other issues become taboo.

But for the Peggy Noonans and George Wills of this world, that isn't the case. In their privileged enclaves they -- or their historical equivalents -- have always been able to speak freely among their fellows without fear of reprisal. In effect, the greatest perk of the kind of stratified society which tends to be created and sustained by torture is the right to act and speak as though torture does not exist.

And that, quite simply, is why Will and Noonan have no clue as to what is at stake here -- and no right to speak in the name of the people of this country.

[CAG]

12. "Some of Life Has to Be Mysterious"... Such as, why does anyone think

Peggy Noonan isn't a bag of s*&t.

Honestly, she thinks she's so intellectual, but she looks and sounds like a buffoon every time she appears on the talking head shows. Why do they think we want or need to hear from her?

[Odin2005]

13. What a sick, sick woman.

:puke: