Naomi Wolf : "WE ARE ALL TORTURERS IN AMERICA"

[kpete]

We are all torturers in America

The sudden clamour to prosecute the CIA operatives who carried out waterboarding is the height of hypocrisy

As citizens' outrage over the torture memos heats up, and the US Congress is barraged with calls to appoint a special prosecutor, Americans may be about to commit an egregious miscarriage of justice. Republicans have now accused Democrats in Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the escalating calls to investigate. I would go further: not only do Congressional Democrats have blood on their hands – but so do we, the American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to assuage their – and our – actual and associative guilt.

The suddenly urgent calls by our Congressional Democratic leaders, and even by many of the American people, to prosecute CIA operatives, military men and women and contractors who were certainly involved with, colluded in or turned a blind eye to torture are not only the height of hypocrisy, they are a form of unconscionable scapegoating. The scapegoating is political on the part of Congressional leaders, and psychological on the part of many Americans who are now "shocked" at what was done in their name.

Hello America, were you asleep for the past seven years? The fact that the Bush administration used torture has been the furthest thing from a secret. When the political winds were with the last administration, which framed qualms about torture as being soft on "the war on terror", just about every Congressional Democrat fell right into line to accept it, if not cheer it on. Even Hillary Clinton supported torture – right up through her presidential run. Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the torture in closed-door meetings. When activist groups and citizens called for a special prosecutor, all we heard from Congressional Democrats was how they did not wish to spend the political capital.

President Bush hid the torture in plain sight by championing it. Vice-President Cheney gave such explicit interviews about his role in directing the policy of torture that in legal terms, were there a prosecution, they would amount to a confession. Did the Congress that is now so piously calling for the investigation of rank-and-file agents and military personnel express their horror and outrage then? With a very few exceptions, they did not.

.......................

more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/torture-hyprocrisy

[Echo In Light]

1. K&R for Naomi!!!

[Kashka-Kat]

2. But our torture was "better" than Saddam's torture!

I recall all too clearly the surreal nature of some of these online forums & talk shows Id listen to on the radio - our torture was SOOO much better than other countries!!! Supposedly.

The contents of the Red Cross report was reported in European & Canadian press & Seymour Hirsch's reports were widely acknowledged to be credible. Even by Bush's definition(organ damage or death) it was known that torture was occuring.

I gotta say when I read about what they were doing to children in some of those prisons I cried for a week. I told some people I knew about it ... these were good progressive people ... a lot of them didn't believe me. Didn't want to believe me. I went kinda numb myself and still am somewhat.

Sure we weren't the party in power but we could've done so much more. At least we can do the reckoning now - take responsibility for the part that was ours, and demand accountability and appropriate consequences for those who misused/abused their power not to mention broke the LAW.

[Supersedeas]

22. means-ends; ends-means; pain is pain and cruelty is cruelty

[derby378]

3. Present company excepted, of course...

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Too many of our fellow Americans decided to sleep instead of staying on guard.

We can never allow that to happen again.

[Towlie]

4. That's crap! We are NOT all torturers in America. The shame belongs to the party that was in power.

We wanted to stop it then but we didn't have the power. Now we can do what should have been done back then, and that's what we must do. We only share the blame if we don't push ahead for justice now.

[Echo In Light]

6. I suspect she means that in a rep democracy, the actions of govt are carried out in all our names

[PassingFair]

7. "The shame belongs to the party that was in power."

And the Vichy "opposition" force (DLC)
that HELPED them.

[Papa Boule]

8. It is crap. That brush she's painting with is broader than a barn. n/t

[leftyladyfrommo]

16. That's what I think, too.

Lots of people were screaming bloody murder about it - but no wanted to even listen.

[cali]

5. sophmoric. pitiful, really.

not to mention dishonest. just about every congress critter did not fall in line. Furthermore, it's a flat out lie to say that bush openly championed it. fuck, bush denied over and over that they were using torture. yes, we knew he was a lying pos, but Klein is engaging in revisionist history here and providing scant evidence for her claims.

she's rather a shallow thinker. and she's full of shit in the facile claim that all of us are torturers.

[seemslikeadream]

9. Hello America, were you asleep for the past seven years?

seemed like everyone was dreaming to me

[PassingFair]

10. We knew...everyone knew.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article729944.ece

When the HEAD of the CIA's COUNTER-TERRORISM
department is FIRED because he wouldn't TORTURE
enough to satisfy the GHOULS in the White House...

This needs to be dragged back out into
the light.

[seemslikeadream]

14. but I hear Americans want a little mystery in their lives

[PassingFair]

21. !

:puke:

[sattahipdeep]

27. Buzzy The Magic Genie

Krongard's brother, Buzzy, made a fortune in crooked pre-9/11 stock trades which suggest he knew the attacks were coming prior to 9/11. In a perfect world both sleazebags would be arrested, tried and hanged for TREASON.

[sattahipdeep]

26. Buzzy Krongard Lmao ....Buzzy The Magic Genie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1xrQ-EGIfs

Note: Chief of CIA's Counterterrorism Task Force durring Buzzys term

was Kofer Black. Black then was CEO of Blackwater.


Buzzy Krongard, who was the agency's executive director when the coercive interrogations began.


"Cookie" Krongard on the Tomlinson Affair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0r1E3xotc

[cali]

11. just one more thing I disagree with Wolf on.

Don't agree with her that abortion is murder.
Don't agree with her that burkas aren't oppressive.
Don't agree with her sexual harassment claim against Harold Bloom- which she made over 20 years after he supposedly touched her thigh.

I think her writing sucks and her scholarship is even worse. she has repeatedly had to make retractions of shit she's written.

Wrong message, sucky messenger.

[TahitiNut]

12. Indeed. The blame is shared by each and every person who COULD have done even a little more ...

... but didn't -- always for "good reasons," of course. Absolutely every time the "good people" chose to stay home instead of join a protest (or protest alone!), every time the "good people" chose to do something else instead of write or call their representatives, every time the "good people" chose to spend money for something other than political action, and all the other everyday choices to do anything other than speak out ... that's a point of complicity. Most of us will give ourselves a "pass" - since it was hopeless. Yup. After all, we "did as much as we could." (Hmmm.) How much was that? In a political context where people are being killed, people in our military and people called "collateral damage" and people in opposition who stand up for their beliefs, how much is enough?? When we fall short of even getting a paper cut ... or suffering even a small inconvenience ... and others are sacrificing their lives, it has to be noted we could have done more, if only a little bit.

[Echo In Light]

13. Solid points

:applause:

[Winterblues]

15. The only thing for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing

:shrug: "Impeachment is Off the Table"

[Occam Bandage]

20. No, not really.

There are innumerable causes. If a person were to have spent every waking moment of their life (for that would be the only condition in which they could not have done more) fighting American torture, they would be perhaps the most guilty person on Earth when it comes to the genocide in Darfur, or oppression in Burma, or lack of universal clean water in Africa, for they would not have given such causes a second's worth of thought.

And if they were to engage in such single-minded devotion, they would completely neglect their families to the point of dissolution, would neglect their job to the point of losing it, and would neglect their own physical and emotional needs as a human to the point of burnout.

Life requires balance. You cannot blame people for making only a good-faith effort to stop a particular problem; it is unreasonable to attempt to shift blame off the perpetrators of torture and onto people who attempted to stop it, for no reason but that those people did not spend every second of their lives focused on that one particular issue.

When it comes to endemic personality flaws, liberalism has far fewer than conservatism. Still, it does have a few, and the pathological desire to accept blame for the acts of others is one of those.

[Occam Bandage]

17. Sorry, Naomi. I'm not a torturer.

I opposed torture from the beginning. I did not accept the "bad apples" theory at Abu Ghraib; prisoner abuse is not something unforeseeable, but rather a natural and expected result of a deliberate lack of oversight. I made my opposition to torture clear to all my representatives. I did not vote for any politician who was in favor of torture.

To blame all Americans for what some did and said is not only absurd, it is demonstrative of a brain no more powerful than a child's. Given her reputation in left-wing circles, I would expect better.

[cali]

19. you shouldn't expect better

she's full of shit on so many issues. I disliked her since reading her first over hyped book, "The Beauty Myth". Wolf is constantly looking to be relevant and she'll say anything- including making shit up- to do that.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

29. Perish the thought, O.B.. Have you ever been wrong about anything? eom

[asteroid2003QQ47]

38. I'll take your absence as a no, O.B.. n/t

[arcadian]

31. Funny, I posted the same thing a few weeks ago and you tried to mock me.

By posting a picture of a puppet. You done playing with your little dolls now? :rofl: What have done to demonstrate your opposition to torture? Tap away at your keyboard? By the way Occam, have you been published? Thought not.

Occam's response will be something the he thinks is mocking, with a header of "ROFLMAO!" or "LOL!" or "Bwahahaha!" Then he will drool something idiotic in a fialed attempt to respond. After he fails miserably, cali will join in a response as well and add something equally pedantic.

[NeedleCast]

18. LOL @ guilt by association

[dem629]

23. Speak for yourself, Naomi.

She's torture.

[datasuspect]

24. if i get the blame, then give me some no-bid government contracts in iraq.

or a least a seat at the banking feeding trough.

[mmonk]

25. I don't see how we get to the top without striking deals

with those at the bottom. If you give them the deal with no strings attached, will it go anywhere?

[karynnj]

28. Naomi Wolf ignore that MANY Democrats did speak out and most Democrats are NOT Calling for

investigating rank and file agents. So, she is wrong on both counts - but what does truth matter when it gets in teh way of a passionate rant.

Senator Kerry followed by Howard Dean later the same day called for Rumsfeld to resign over it - this was the day that Abu Ghraib was revealed. They were two of the most prominent Democrats. Kerry has given hundreds of speeches including that the US does not torture period.

When the MCA (torture bill was up) Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Kerry and Dodd all gave incredible Senate speeches completely against torture.

What Wolf has done is cherry picked by pointing to HRC, who voted against the MCA, but a few months later told teh NY Daily News that there were special cases and to Pelosi, who was briefed.

[azul]

30. The nation has been duped and is in denial.

The government and its actions the people own, and must own up to. Or was there a coup in 2000 and the government is owned and paid for by special interests, and the people are left holding the bag, wondering WTF just happened?

The was a concerted program of propaganda and psychology to justify and make acceptable law breaking and criminal activity after an emotional shock when the public was vulnerable and desperate for leadership and safety. We got suckered into letting our reps break laws and making us complicit by not stopping it. Now is a time of reckoning, when the curtain is lifted.

[Echo In Light]

33. And the dupe is even bigger, and the denial deeper, than most care to contemplate

[bdamomma]

32. all the more reason

why we must prosecute and have a special prosecuter appointed, or will we never be able to move on.

[cali]

34. That's a poor argument.

Yes we should prosecute, but there's actually little reason to think we couldn't "move on" if we didn't. Other countries have. France. Spain. Many others.


We should prosecute because laws were broken and because we hold that no one is above the law.

[bdamomma]

35. to me this just needs to be out in the open, and we all know

these crimes were committed, and I agree with your statement of no one is above the law.

[omega minimo]

36. torture being one of the reasons those who were awake called for IMPEACHMENT

[cali]

39. I was pro-impeachment BUT I know damned well it wouldn't

have stopped torture. And it couldn't have been clearer that bush wouldn't have been im0eached in the House let alone convicted in the Senate- no matter the evidence presented. It's likely, in fact, that bush would have emerged from the process with greater support than he went into it.

Those of us who were truly awake suffered no illusions about the outcome of impeachment.

[groovedaddy]

37. As long as you don't call it torture, then it isn't, right? n.t