cheese it, the cops!

against mason

for such an unprepossessing person, michael hayden's resume is really something, as is his testimony. four-star general and director of military intelligence. nsa director as the program of universal surveillance was established and of cia as, let's speculate, most of the records of the bush-era programs were cleaned up in anticipation of the transition. lord knows how he's contracted into the security state through the chertoff group, while like all such careers today, his makes it clear that the corporate boardroom, the surveillance state, and the torture chamber are located in the same compound. he is the primary spokesman for the pro-torture cabal currently invading the media in a years-in-the-making attempt to avoid trial for crimes against humanity.

what an academic might find disconcerting, though, is that he is also a distinguished professor at george mason university. this is the sort of problem i pointed to with regard to the gruber scandal. so perhaps your tendency there was to think there's nothing so wrong about the same professor helping write obamacare and being hired to sell it and also providing mit-stamped objective research showing that it would have good effects. but, if so, you might also be the sort of person who'd be disconcerted by a pattern of contributions to a university coupled with appointements that do not have even a vague academic justification. at many academic institutions, you are a distinguished professor just merely in virtue of raw power you wield, and also you have next to no academic duties. what a miserable excuse for a university george mason is, an object-lesson in academic boot-licking, like the philosophy department at moscow u under yuri andopov or something. but at any rate, in setting out the whole squishy totalitarian thang, i should have included the professoriate along with the corporation and the state. all forms of prestige and wealth gather around power, wait in line to shower it with accolades and cash.

intelligence coup, contd.

i do think it sort of eyeballs like john brennan is at the center: he is the fact that the torturers are still in charge. how in the name of god did he survive after it was revealed that the cia was hacking feinstein's committee to delete files etc? there has never been a clearer occasion on which someone should have been fired instantaneously, outright. if one really took the cia in that event to have been acting qua part of the executive, it is impeachable. and yet it faded in everyone's mind but feinstein's. she surely demanded brennan's resignation months ago and got nothing, so she's also pissed at obama, and may well have issued her report despite his attempts, at brennan's behest, to redact it in its entirety. but anyway, i don't think brennan could possibly have survived that if he actually served at the pleasure of the president, because a president is going to respond to the utterly justified outrage of a major figure in his own party. obviously, every day all day, you have to understand that john brennan has access to the last fifteen years of barack obama's communications. 

brennan is part of the group that mobilized immediately, that was already poised, to respond to the report. it is all one voice in many bodies: cheney, alberto gonzales (who you bring in only when you're down to your very last lawyer), hayden, jack rizzo, porter goss, mike rogers, and a swarm of staffers; brennan and all of them are saying the very same sentences. the republicans on the committee and the cia itself released complementary replies to the report instantaneously. now, does all that strike you as odd, when brennan serves at the pleasure of a president whose first act was to end the program and who calls it torture plainly, even as all these people still deny or evade even that? it's almost like brennan is part of another government, one consisting of supposedly former intelligence and homeland security and anti-terrorism officials now lodged here and there, maybe working for homeland security or whatever as consultants or in state-in-waiting thingtanks, and also the republican intelligence establishment in congress. it might not be entirely clear whether that group or the white house actually controls the intelligence services of the united states. and info is power, baby.

one thing that, for me, distinguishes american torture programs since 9.11 from any old torture by anyone here or there, is that i helped pay for them. that rather annoys me, i must say, though i draw some comfort from the fact that they obtained this money from me under coercion. i do appreciate that part of it.

giving it up for dianne

i have rarely seen a more formidable or angry or focused senator than dianne feinstein over the last two days. and i will say this: a straight-up totalitarian system could never have released that information. but the difference between sheer totalitarianism and something not that - under conditions of universal continual survellance, militarized police power, intelligence services as the basic centers of abusive power, and so on - is just the principled anger of someone like feinstein, who actually does have some power. also it depends, as i argued a few months ago, on such people being clean, on their having no skeletons whatsoever. if feinstein had a drug habit or had engaged in a series of affairs, john brennan would control her without effort.

it's been a pleasure

a wide-ranging debate has opened up about whether we gained actionable intelligence from torture. but that's only one way to defend torture, and if enthusiasts for other people's pain such as john brennan and charles krauthammer lose the argument on that ground, they should shift to this: torture isn't justified by its outcome; it is intrinsically satisfying. forced rectal feeding, for dick cheney or john brennan or mike rogers, needs no external justification: it is its own reward. all of these men are part of an oppressed and stigmatized sexual minority. what they were doing at black sites the world over was expressing their sexual identity, and that exonerates them because we are born with our sexual identities. god doesn't make junk, though he provides victims in abundance. the release of this report is a chance for all of us to confront our own sadophobia. the good part of 9/11 is that it opened up new dimensions of pleasure for michael hayden and george w. bush, pleasure that may well have outweighed the pain they were inflicting, leaving the world with a net increase in happiness. another good part is that it revealed who these people really are, and has been revealing it ever since. 

all decent americans must hope that the report - devastating though it is - doesn't lead to any actual changes in policy, for then it would become slightly more difficult to dangle michael hayden, alberto gonzales, john yoo, porter goss, and scooter libby from a pipe in the official us dungeon they themselves built in thailand, and use them as pinatas. admittedly, they're full of shit rather than candy. but sometimes the most amazing erotic experience for a top is to get flipped, and i would not want to deny various pundits and politicians and so on that opportunity. fortunately, according to justice department legal guidance - on which i always rely to enhance my own actions - no approval is needed to whisk these guys off and drop them off naked at isis hq with little bows on their heads. 'merry xmas, or whatever it is y'all celebrate over there. hope you enjoy these, because they aren't returnable. do send back video, though. cheers, the american people.'

bombing yourself

mike rogers - the nonstop apologist for war and domestic oppression - argues that releasing the torture report will lead to violence and death. of course what might be irritating to rogers is that such violence would be a response to learning the truth about something, namely the values and identity of people such as rogers. what really gets under rogers' skin isn't any old violence; it's violence that he himself helped make completely justifiable by facts. it's like his office got bombed by the reality of who mike rogers himself is. it's like the terrorist blowing himself up in mike rogers' office with a suicide vest is mike rogers' double, from a universe in which each of us has double, but where our doubles speak the truth. that kind of violence is peculiarly irritating to mike rogers.

putin on the hits

really, i have not taken sides on ukraine so far, and in the first post where i sort of predicted an invasion (feb 27), i speculated that the us, faced with a similar situation, would consider military intervention too. but now let me point out a few things about putin. he consolidated his power and established his reputation with the chechen genocide. people claimed to be worried about security at the olympics, but there is no one you'd rather be handling your security if you don't care how it's done. he used tried and true techniques: rounding up the young man of, e.g., dagestan, torturing them, and dumping their bodies in shallow graves. he may be the richest man in the world, with all the feeling of impunity such a status bequeaths. he has no significant internal opposition, or threat to his political status; by a hundred techniques he has eliminated or isolated opponents. i don't regard him as a classic semi-cracked conqueror a la hitler or napoleon; but he is cagey and extremely aggressive and brutal when he wants to be. there is liable to be again something well-described as an empire when he is done.

yet more knowing what you don't know

eugene robinson has written many passionate, convincing anti-torture columns, and i agreed with all of them. but this one, flatly declaring that we didn't catch bin laden through 'enhanced interrogation,' is simply premature, or a priori. the facts can't be read off your moral principles. indeed, that they are your moral principles makes your factual conclusion suspect. it just can't turn out that way, for robinson. (alright, no facts can prove that they couldn't have gotten the info without the torture; but no facts can prove that they could have, if they actually did get it under torture.) but that doesn't mean it can't turn out that way. so: did they actually get information necessary to find bin laden through torture? i don't think we have enough information to make that assessment. the robinson a priori approach to empirical knowledge is also a way of failing to face up to the actual moral dilemma that might emerge: is torture wrong even if it works in some key or fundamental cases? well, robinson and many others don't want to square up on that, so they don't. 

knowing what you don't know, contd.

one thing i would take as an example of trying not to declare you know what you don't; it's going to take a lot more info to assess whether we found bin laden by 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' or what role torture actually played in the killing. i'm completely opposed to it; i think it's shameful. but whether it yielded key information is not a question to which my moral repugnance is relevant, and i'm going to try to admit that this is what happened if it looks like there's convincing info that it did.

if i were the operations coordinator for al qaeda or the greek anarchists or a fringe right-wing militia, or indeed for the pta of the local elementary school, i'd work on devoting the next few years - or as long as it takes - to erasing the oprah winfrey network. suicide vests, truck bombs, airbuses loaded with high explosives, dirty bombs, anthrax, sarin, beams of anti-matter, etc: i'd try them all, then start in again. then i'd devote myself to removing every trace of oprah from the cultural record: mention that name and you will be tortured just short of death, then sent crawling back out into the world, so that your horrendous disfigurement can serve as a warning. one good thing about this approach: you might get bono too.

cultural hippopotami, they bellow bigger than you and i, or even you and me; but what they bellow is meaning-free.

it's getting to be important to see that the obama administration is basically down with bush-era international torture programs, secret prisons, etc. the head of bagram says: there are no american prisons in afghanistan aside from bagram, which is subject to red cross inspection. well, bald lies are better than obscure semi-utterances. while you're at it, groove on this. and on april 16, i grin at the fact that i am myself paying to accomplish these things, and then paying again to cover them up. from myself. in virtue of being taxpayers, we are torturers and murderers. that's the social contract, baby.

in an era of fiends, nothing is more fiendish than  music torture, nevertheless, i'd like to offer my amazing expertise to the intelligence services as a music consultant. imagine "the long and wnding road," played at a pleasant low volume, over and over again. oy the melancholy!

whatever you do, don't tell david addington about this. he uses these guys as role models.

well, i would suggest hooding charles "cully" stimson, stripping a cord, and electrocuting his balls. but charles "cully" stimson has no balls.

washpost continues

the washington post has again found its center. that was an extremely strong anti-torture editorial, informative and calmly outraged. let me say again: the post should publish every bit of information it has on black sites, starting with their precise locations.

well now this is interesting, especially because it seems likely that libby, in muttering "valerie plame is a cia agent" to various reporters, was doing cheney's bidding; according to his testimony libby first heard her name from cheney. indict, convict, and then remove dick cheney to a black site. hood him. put dogs on him. leash him, bend him over naked, and take pictures up his ass.

A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; the former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet; and his deputy, John E. McLaughlin.

A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward's source.

Mr. Cheney did not join the parade of denials. A spokeswoman said he would have no comment on a continuing investigation. Several other officials could not be reached for comment.

oops! in keeping with cheney's constitutional insights: skip the indictment and conviction and go straight to electrocuting his testicles.

i have found the perp, and he is i

iraq government begins inquiry into torture. what? you mean i skinned people alive? this shocks me. i will investigate my actions immediately, and, if necessary, exonerate myself without mercy.
the interior minister, who is conducting a thorough investigation, has an office and a bedroom at the bunker that was used a torture facility and personally appointed most of the commando-types who worked there. imagine the shock of discovering that your staff has been torturing people for months in your own bedroom! at least that would put you in a good position to find out what happened: you have only to investigate your own memory.
previously, this scenic torture facility was the headquarters of paul bremer of the "coalition" provisional authority.

we torture

ok. let's just examine a few of the charming developments in the cruel and unusual area.
(1) the discovery of a nightmare dungeon in the iraqi "interior ministry"

According to The New York Times, the detainees — who appeared to mostly be Sunni Arabs — had allegedly been tortured by their Iraqi captors — mainly Shiite police officers — leaving two apparently paralyzed and several others with the skin peeled off their bodies.

"A joint statement by the American Embassy and the United States military command called the situation "totally unacceptable" and said American officials "agree with Iraq's leaders that mistreatment of detainees will not be tolerated."" what is that, some kind of joke? despite the fact that the thing was revealed by US soldiers who "stumbled on to it" while searching for a missing boy, it would surprise me if the torture chamber was not created with the connivance of the american government. why would that surprise me? gee whiz, maybe because we tortured iraqi captives ourselves in saddam's prisons. maybe because dick cheney is an explicit advocate for, an enthusiast for, torture, rejecting the mush-headed torture survivor john mccain's liberal attempts to ban it. maybe because the US gov operates a gulag of secret torture facilities. torture is our main strategy in the "war on terror," indeed perhaps we are not torturing people in order to fight terrorism, but fighting terrorism in order to torture people.
at any rate what we need is a joint investigation by the american and iraqi governments. that's funny.

(2) it seems that the u.s. gov has been flying 747s full of "detainees"  to our own secret, um internment facilities, and to such torture allies as (get this) libya, transhipping them through spain. this makes you realize that there are probably hundreds of people being tortured around the world by ourselves and our cool torture dudes such as qaddafi.

(3) the senate voted to limit due process rights of guantanamo detainees while also providing some semblance of due process, much more in fact than most republicans or the admin wants. what does the admin want? of course: to hold anyone it pleases for as long as it likes with no charge or representation and do anything to them it pleasess. it is worth considering, however, that even a vidication of the rights of gitmo detainees is likely to have a horrendous backlash effect: it motivates the administration to instead hold people secretly in "undisclosed locations" or remand them secretly to dictatorships for torture. that is - more or less obviously - why the population at gitmo has not increased.

we, americans, are evil. we are torturers. we are enemies of the rule of law. we are leering betrayers of our professed values and of our traditions.