Awww, I Told You So

Ah, seems like such a short time ago.  I was writing a Can(n)on about the Newtown shooting -- 20 children dead and everyone clamoring for "gun control," and "get the weapons of war off our streets," and such like, and I said, very clearly, that nothing much would be done except for some cosmetic tinkering with additional registration rules, since Americans love their guns more than they do their children.

And, Lo, it cometh to pass.  Senator Harry Reid stripped out the assault weapons  portion from Senator Feinstein's gun bill before taking it forward for a vote.  Reason?  He doesn't think a single Republican and a number of Democrats, fearful of losing their next election in a gun-loving district, will vote to reduce those "weapons of war" on our streets.

The New York Post carried a front page with photos of the dead children and the words, "Shame on US."  Shame?  Not a bit of it.  Not this gun-sick, gun-addicted country.  So, we wait for the next mass shooting.  After all, we've now got a target to go for -- 20 kids.  That's a record and in this country, we love challenges.  So load and lock, America. The game is on. 

Country Song

 When I was young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and unicorns were plentiful, "country" music was pretty plain, twangy and rootsy as hell.  Bill Monroe and Hank Williams were just getting barely traction with a wider audience, but most of country music was generally considered to be some kind of low-class, hayseed stuff relegated to low-power radio stations in the Bible belt.  But somewhere in there rock and roll started drifting into the Appalachians and when I next looked up, Old Timey country had turned into "country/western" and it had changed from a whiny simplicity (mah dawg died, mah wife ran off with another man, ah'm waiting ta go ta Jesus) into something far more frisky and upbeat and downright witty.

Since our local KYNS station turned into a Faux Noise wannabe, I started listening more to our several Country stations and one thing I began to notice is how unstereotypical and revelatory country lyrics are. I mean, to a latte-sipping liberal progressive like me, I always assumed gender roles in "country" were pretty rigid: big, tough, macho guys and helpless, sweet, little gals, (and of course, dead hound dawgs and a pickup  that won't run.)

Surprisingly, that's not the story that comes out of the songs. Instead, the guys are helpless, sweet, soft and in thrall to their women, without which they'd be nothing but an abject failure, a loser puddle outside the local bar. And you should hear the tender, sweet songs they sing about the love they feel for their little daughters. The word "sentimental" doesn't even begin to cover that tender sweetness.

As for the women, Holy Shit.  They are the macho, rawhide tough, fully self-sufficient, whip-cracking adults riding herd over their errant child-men and willing to go to war if betrayed.  Prime sample: "I'm a Tornado," sung full-throat by a whirlwind Medea in cowboy boots, a vengeful Dorothy whose man has done her wrong and she's baaaaack as a force-10, squared, who's gonna lift up his house, turn it around and bury it deep in the earth . . . with him in it. Yikes!

It's all funny, rich stuff.  And happy feet music, to boot.

On Trial

Is it just me or does anyone else feel that the world would be a better place if the whole murderous "family" that battered Dystiny Myers, should all be wiped off the face of the earth?  Mommy Dearest eating her own children alive and consuming everything around her, Medea in an orange jump suit. Perfect example of what scociopaths and meth can do to people.

And in a surprise move, one of the killers, Cody Lane Miller, who plead out to a 39 year sentence, changed his plea and asked for life in prison, no possibility of parole, because he said he feels he doesn't deserve forgiveness with plea-deal lighter sentence.  If that's a genuine attempt at penance, at least one soul here has a chance at redemption. But what a waste.   

What's In A Word, Anyway?

 Calhoun's Cannons for January 11th, 2013

" When I use a word, "Humpty Dumpty said," in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

                               Alice in Wonderland's Through the Looking-Glass

The new movie, "Zero Dark Thirty" has opened in theatres near you and certain folks in Washington are having a cow.  Seems that the movie, a retelling of the hunt for, finding and killing of Osama bin Laden suggests that it was "torture" that gave the CIA the needed information that led to bin Laden; No waterboarding, no bin Laden.

That had been the Republican storyline from Creepy Veep Cheney who, you could just tell, was all a-tingle when he growlingly announced, like some cheap-suited gunsel, that sometimes it was necessary to go to the "dark side." Heh-heh.  He and his PNAC NeoCon cronies were all thrilled with the Jack Bauer "24" macho-man idea of torture and had their own manicured, soft handed Justice Department lawyers parsing out and approving each and every "medically supervised" turn of the screw.  And, now, like very bad pennies, and despite having history proved  them so wrong on so many levels, this same gang of Zombies are still turning up on the Sunday Yak-Yak Shows to defend their appalling record on torture and again flog their old, failed PNAC (Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran) schemes. Which always prompts my hollered query, "Can't talk-TV find anyone else but these wrong-headed dinosaurs?" 

Well, apparently not.  As far as the media is concerned, even Republican idea men who stopped evolving in the 10th century and are stuck in re-run mode are apparently the  only guest on the right they can find.  So we keep getting one endless rerun of  out-of-date  Republican Pax Americana with a gun.  And a waterboard.

Meanwhile, Democrats are also having a cow. Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have always contended that torture didn't work, that "no significant information" about the courier, the key link to bin Laden, came from detainees after they were subjected to torture.  Oh, excuse me, "coercive techniques."  They maintain that information about bin-Laden's courier came from a detainee before he was tortured.   Pardon, I meant to say,  "subjected to coercive interrogation techniques." And that the movie gives a totally false picture of what really happened.  Furthermore, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, is demanding that senior CIA official, Michael Morell, who acted as a consultant on the film,  'splain himself for a message he sent to CIA employees that "some information" leading to the Al Qaeda chief  "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques." 

Because, lurking in the middle of all this is an interesting, unarguable fact:  One unknown man, one unknown name -- bin Laden's courier -- turned out to be the one tiny key that lay in plain sight for years, yet turned out to be the one who unlocked the door to bin Laden's compound.

Which allows Feinstein and others on the Intelligence Committee to claim that "no significant information about the courier came from detainees after they were subjected to coercive techniques" because  "the detainee who provided crucial information about the courier in 2004, identified by U.S. officials as Hassan Ghul, did so before he was subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.  He was never waterboarded." All of which lands Mr. Morell in hot water and the defenders of torture on the hot seat.    

So there we sit.  Did torture work? Or did it hinder and delay? No? Yes?  And in the middle of it all, weasel-wording Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of the word "torture" and "enhanced interrogation techniques." And what, if anything, does "significant" mean, anyway? 

In his extraordinary book, "The Looming Tower; al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," Lawrence Wright made one heartbreaking, furious, frustrating fact very clear: In tracking bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, everything was both significant and insignificant at the same time. Information is information.  And whether information that is obtained by torture will turn out to be "significant" or "insignificant' can't be known until after the fact. 

Which means that spook-hunters have to be jigsaw puzzle experts, tapestry-weavers,  psychics, psychologists, sly and subtle master interrogators and  time-travelers, moving magically into the future on a thread from the past.

Or they rely hard slogging grunt-work, or on sheer dumb luck, or both -- one needle stumbled upon in a painstakingly sifted haystack.  Or not found, and because not found, the twin towers fall and thousands die.

And so we're left with war crimes on America's books, with only low level prosecutions completed, thereby assuring that no one in high office will be  held to account because America is always conveniently in need of "moving on."  And the only question left is, are we still enhancing our interrogations? 

In  a drone and spook-filled world engaged in limitless war-by-any-other-name, who knows?  I certainly don't, do you?