A Nation of Laws

Dick Cheney was a frightened man.  Deeply shaken when the twin towers fell. His fear fed his own  harsh proclivities, it clouded his mind, as fear always does, and too easily lured his heart's own longing for the dark side.

Dick Cheney was not alone.  Too many Americans shared his mind frame. The only difference was that Cheney was the Vice President of the most powerful nation on earth.  He was also the inside man, the man with full access to the CIA, the man who got things done, the fixer, the enforcer.  And standing in his way was a nation that prided itself on being a nation of laws, laws that required that we "keep the gloves on" at all times, because that's who we think we are.  For Dick, however, gloves were always an unwanted impediment to his powerful sense of realpolitik.  His fear and 9/11 was the perfect excuse he needed to take them off.

From that, all else followed.     

And so, here we are.  What was known-but-not-known is now beyond denial, except for those whose jobs and reputations and legacies depend on their continuing The Big Lie. It's a tactic that will work because it always does.  Which is why the most discouraging thing about the recently released report on the CIA and Torture is that we can all be sure that nothing will be done.  There will be no accountability, no consequences, no perp-walks, no war-crime trials, no Truth and Reconciliation hearings,  no nothing.  Just a massive report which will be denied by those who administered the program, then put on a shelf.  Then . . . nothing.

Except we will once again start piously declaring to ourselves and the world about how America is a nation of laws.The rest of the world will snigger up their sleeves.  They know better.

America tortures.  America commits war crimes.  Just like a lot of other Thug Nations that America publicly decries.  But America gets away with its murders because Power and Expediency, not Law, not Justice, is what America is a nation of. 

So we regularly go through this sad dance of faux "Accountability," throw a few low-level folks under the bus, declare ourselves My Bad, write, then shelve a big thick report, and then The Great Forgetting will set in . Until next time.


I have no doubt that some very angry jihadists will use this report to engage in some war crimes of their own.  Murder always calls out for more murder.  And already the foxes are defending their chicken coops while a whole gaggle of politicians are diving under their desks in a fit of forgetting as to what they knew and when they knew it. This will play out in the 24/7 news media, and partisan politicians are already starting to change the narrative: The 9/11 "mood" of the country made us do it.  After all, everyone knows that torture works and war crimes are O.K. . . . . if you're angry.

In no time, that narrative will prevail and we'll be back cocooned inside our comforting belief that we are exceptional and so did no wrong because we are, after all, America -- a Nation of Laws.

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?    

    

Take Two Aspirins and Call Dick Cheney in the Morning

Calhoun’s Cannons for March 29, 2012

All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others.

                George Orwell, Animal Farm

            I must fess up.  I’m of two minds about the upcoming battle in the Supreme Court over whether Obamacare will stand or fall.  Part of me wants to see the Affordable Healthcare Act pass constitutional muster and survive so it can be improved and expanded.  After all, why shouldn’t we all end up with the same health care plan as former Veep Dick Cheney enjoys?  For years, we’ve all been paying for his top of the line government paid health care, subsidizing the kind of  taxpayer-financed “socialized medicine” that Dick’s political party has been moving heaven and earth to destroy. So, I see no reason why sauce for the goose can’t be sauce for all the rest of us ganders. Medicare for all and/or Congressional Health Care for all.  That should do the trick.

            But, part of me, the childishly evil part, wants to see the Supremes knock the Affordable Healthcare Act out of the park.  Make it a total no-go.  DOA.  After all, polls show that nearly half of all Americans don’t like or don’t want the evil Obamacare. So, I’d like to see their wishes come true.  Poof!  Gone. 

            Within days, free of all price restraints, everyone’s health insurance premiums would spike as insurance company CEOs demanded higher bonuses because they needed more gold-plated toilet fixtures for their private offices.  Millions of people who had some minor malady would get a letter in the mail notifying them that their major medical had been canceled and they couldn’t buy more because they were now considered to be uninsurable because of some “preexisting condition.” Other millions, right in the middle of cancer treatment, would be notified that their policies had been canceled. And for all those people who got their health insurance at work, those price hikes would force their employers to downsize, so they’d lose their jobs; no job, no money, no health-care and now totally uninsurable. That’s just the plucky, Republican Party, Ron-Paulian self-sufficient independence all these freedom-loving folks have been fighting for—no more evil creeping socialism and government rules meddling in their lives! 

            Then, by the millions, I want these hardy souls to get sick.  Not lethal sick.  After all, I’m childlishly evil, not mean.  No, I want them just sick enough to really rack up humongous hospital bills, like, say, a two-week stay, plus some sort of surgery.  That should do it.  It’s unlikely the average person could pay that highly inflated hospital bill.  And so they would lose their house and would end up sitting on the curb with their meager belongings, their kids stuffed into the station wagon, with the family dog tied on top.

            And then I could drive by and sweetly inquire, “Are you happy now?”

            But then I remember a friend of mine.  She’s self-employed and healthy and, like most of us, has a very minor condition that has rendered her pre-existingly uninsurable. One minor accident, one illness, and she’d lose it all – her business, her home, everything.  Under the new Obamacare mandates, for the first time, she was able to buy group insurance from a newly formed pool and now has the security of knowing she’s covered against a medically induced financial disaster.  If Obamacare is defeated, my friend will be once again put in danger.

            I don’t want that to happen.  She’s my friend.  She’s a hard working, responsible American. And I can’t imagine why nearly half of recently polled Americans just like her want to put her (and themselves) back into harm’s way again.

            No matter which way the Supreme Court rules, that’s the one question that will remain unanswered.  Whether Obamacare is still standing to be modified and improved, or shot down totally, the state of our health care system is profoundly sick and will remain a national problem.  Many other advanced, democratic countries have figured out excellent ways to deliver cheaper, better health care to more of their citizens at a much lower cost than we do, and with better outcomes.  There is nothing in the world preventing us from cherry-picking ideas from any of their plans and adapting them to our country.  It’s not rocket science, but it does take some smarts, and a pragmatic rather than a rigid ideological mind-set. 

            And a willingness to keep asking and answering two key questions:  Should basic, non-profit health care be a right for all citizens, or should it remain a high-profit luxury reserved only for the privileged few?  And, Why is evil socialized government-administered medical insurance O.K. for our seniors, our vets, our congress and Dick Cheney, but not O.K. for the rest of us?