Former CIA agent John Kiriakou's been speaking out against torture so, naturally, the government's now seeking legal methods of shutting him up. The good news is that we haven't yet reached the point where politically inconvenient types are just sent off to Gitmo without charges and then tortured 'till they confess to something.
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Silence Is Golden
22 Dec 2007 03:22 pm
Comments (8)
...we haven't yet reached the point
You don't know that. That one particular former spook has not been sent to Gitmo doesn't mean that no one else has.
John Kiriakou? Is this the guy who's been saying that the intel gained from waterboarding captured Al Qaeda has prevented dozens of attacks?
OR, Matt is falling for an obvious ruse. This guy goes on and on about how torture is unfortunate, but also very effective. He makes his rounds, and once his propaganda value is done the CIA pretends to muzzle him to give his statements credibility.
The good news is that we haven't yet reached the point where politically inconvenient types are just sent off to Gitmo without charges and then tortured 'till they confess to something.
Yet!
we haven't yet reached the point where politically inconvenient types are just sent off to Gitmo without charges and then tortured 'till they confess to something.
Sure we have. If the government has the power to grab any citizen off the street, illegally detain them for years without charges, torture them to the point of insanity, and then "lose" the tapes of the interrogations (i.e., torture sessions), then how can you claim we haven't reached this point? And that is just one case we happen to know about it.
Of course, the rejoinder from the authoritarians is that "these are good people just trying to proctect us," so therefore the government should have unlimited powers and we should be glad we live in a quasi-police state. ("You have no civil rights if you are dead.") Ditto on illegal surveillance. ("Dick Cheney doesn't want to read your email. He just wants to stop the bad guys!") Not to mention rendition and "disappearing" people and national security letters.
This whole country needs a Civics 101 lesson. Remeber? "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
no apostrophe on 'till'.
Don't worry about him: Bush will obviously give him the same deal he gave that nice Mr Libby.
Or do you need a nickname for that?---no problem, Bush can supply one ("The K-Man" seems likely, unless Kerik's using that one).
Comments closed January 05, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
"Silence is Golden"
Was Matt thinking of the Reid/Pelosi response to the torture issue when he dreamed up this title?
Posted by kafka | December 22, 2007 5:02 PM