we owe a lot to mark danner , who has done great work on the bush admin torturers and black site secret prisons, and who published the extremely disturbing red cross report in the new york review of books. i was watching hardball this evening, and michael smerconish, the philly columnist, radio host etc was making the following argument. we don't need any investigation, criminal charges, truth commission on this. he said we don't need to "re-litigate" it. he said we need to focus on the future, not the past. he said he has a hard time feeling sorry for terrorists. he said we already know everything and who's responsible (he wanted to put it all on john yoo). he said that it would be a public relations disaster for the united states government, various agencies, and foreign governments. then because these vicious fools have nothing else, he re-hashed the ticking bomb justification.

ok. well. can't re-litigate it since it's never been litigated. seems odd to say we already know everything, when new information appears all the time. let me ask you this: how many black site prisons were operated by the cia or other agencies? how many are still operating? where were they? how many people were held? who? why? and what happened to them there? how many people died in american custody? how? like these chumps have been doing for years, smerconish asserted that the torture victims were terrorists while also arguing that the government has no necessity of producing any evidence in any forum that they are in fact terrorists, either a touching yet bizarre faith in the truthfulness of anyone representing state power, or a pathetic begging of all the relevant questions. we need to nail everyone who pushed for yoo's memos and many other such cover documents, and everyone who took them seriously as guidelines for action. and we need to get ahold of any similar documents as may still exist. it's just sick to rest fundamental questions of moral identity and the adjudication of crimes on the order of kidnapping, torture, and murder on public relations effects. but of course the truth is just the opposite: a continuing cover-up confirms everything every anti-american ever said, and coming clean is obviously the only way to address one of the worst public-relations disasters in national history. and obviously, if we keep coming up with the same ridiculous rationalizations, the future will be exactly like the past anyway.

i truly do not understand how anyone could think that all the evil and stupidity - which, by the way, we actually paid for - should not be exposed, much less keep on justifying it after all the justifications have been eviscerated.