The Young Turks

Leave it to Cenk to see what others have missed: torture does work, if your goal is evil.  If you want reliable information, try another tactic.

by Dogger on 12/12/2007 06:39:59 AM EST

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The plane used for the extraordinary rendition: the Boston Redsox charter 747, on loan to the CIA, with the logos covered over. (This information, once freely available is now classified as Top Secret.) Thirteen CIA officers were prosecuted in absentia by the Italian gov't for interfering with police business in connection with the extraordinary rendition. Shortly after, the Italian gov't decided to pull its troops out of Iraq. Several days later, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war and the Italian presence there, an Italian journalist, was shot dead by US forces while driving through a checkpoint. The US soldiers claimed they told the vehicle to stop, at which point they started firing. It was reported in most press as a coincidence.

Trust is the basis of our economy. Do you trust your gov't? We are currently experiencing a crisis of faith in everything from baseball to subprime mortgages. We could talk about consumer confidence and America's tarnished image around the globe till the cows come home, but pretty soon that old republican adage, the business of America is business will have to be changed to, the business of America is war. And the war business is booming.

There is this sentiment that good ol' Bill Clinton will have to come in and wipe up the mess, that if Hillary gets elected Bill will go around the globe and shake hands and make friends and play nice and all will be well. It goes hand in hand with the idea that politics is a two party game with a pendulum that swings back and forth and that when it goes too far right or left, like clockwork it will correct itself.

Do you trust your gov't?

This goes beyond the notion that George Bush has allowed for a culture of corruption, in which it isn't just that lying is not only permissible but favored, but that whomever lies best gets the big props in the back room. The poker face. This goes beyond the brass balls of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfkowitz, Delay, Abramoff, Gonzalez, Brett Wilkes, Ney, Cunningham, et al. because it goes beyond Nixon, beyond Hoover, and Oliver North and Herb and J. Edgar and Harding. This shakes the foundations of our gov't, the only thing this is on par with is Lincoln and the secession, because to face the full reality of our actions would literally tear America in two.

Denial is a good thing. We're lucky we can put our heads in the sands and say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. If I don't see it, it matters a lot less to me. If I don't see it and it only stays in the press for a few days, the chances are I can blank it out with enough beer and football on the weekends and not have to think about it.

I really don't want to think about little girls getting gang raped and stuffed in boxes. I really don't want to think about US marines raping Iraqis and then killing and burning them to hide the evidence. I really don't want to think about a gov't that at best hides a blind eye and at worst encourages such behavior.

I really don't want to look at that and then realize I give equal weight to stories about how the price of oil is offsetting any gains made by exports this quarter, but realizing I have to because oil is the one thing we can be sure about as a reason we are there, and thus, indirectly doing these things.

Restoring America's image around the world is one thing, but what if we've become the Nazis, what if that is the image of America to the rest of the world. Then I am complicitly part of these actions by being an American citizen. But you know I can't square the image I have in my head of America, from West Bend in Indiana to East Egg on Long Island, from the Boston Harbor and Faneuil Hall to Maryland and Baltimore's Inner Harbor, from cheap condos and rainy days in Orlando to overpriced cheap plastic souvenirs in Anaheim. From giving and listening to speeches on everyone from Daniel Boone to Fredrick Douglas growing up, saying the Pledge of Allegiance everyday, to moshing at CBGB's (and OMFUG) and discussing high priced art like Elsworth Kelly as an investment strategy and tool with Captain Picard stuck in an elevator in a midtown high rise gallery. I just can't square that image with Nazis, with torture, with gangrape, with all this in the name of protecting billion dollar oil hedge funds.

But then I remember 9/11 and Rudy G. and the NRA and his wife and his cellphone, and I remember, hey, he's just an ordinary guy like me, a paizan from the neighborhood, just trying to make an honest buck and help his fellow citizens find their way up, and look, he's got a nagging wife who calls him when he's in the middle of something really important, he's an ordinary Joe. And I remember the islamo-fascists and the axis of evil, and the trifecta (recession, 9/11, and the war in Afghanistan) and Enron and Katrina, and....

But then I remember Osama Bin Laden and the Russians and Afghanistan, and how we funded him and trained him, and I remember Saddam and George H.W. Bush (who's herb?) and how we funded him and gave him WMD (because we had armed the Iranians with Israeli ICBMs during the Iran Contra affair) and had to even out the sides (Rummy went to Saddam and did the deal, good soldier, back in the 80's-curious it started in 1984, hmm, wonder if the arming of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard went back to before Bush took office as VP in '81) and I start to get nervous again.

Then I remember Rudy as a mayor in NY, and before that as Schools chancellor, how he was a glorified accountant, a master bureaucrat with shady ties to organized crime, how he became power hungry and turned the city into a police state, shut down clubs, how he was intolerant and suddenly I get more worried.

Do you trust your gov't?

I'm glad I hate Rudy and Bush and George H.W. Bush, and Rummy and Libby and Nixon and Ken Lay, and became disillusioned with McCain (though I was never a supporter) and don't really know much or care to about Romney and Huckabee and think they are jokes and will soon be forgotten about (if they don't get elected, of course).

I am hopeful that Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Kucinich, Kennedy, are all running and offer such clear visions of their America and offer such bright hope for the future, though personally I'm disgusted by Biden (mainly for his role in going to war but more for his denial of it). But I'm worried Edwards might be right about the state of affairs in Washington.

And then I start giving in to crazy talk: What if the CIA planned and carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center? Osama certainly was on the payroll at one point. We now specialize in farming out work to subcontractors. The attacks have certainly fueled military spending and the military industrial complex. I look for holes in the logic, sure sure, that is total crazy talk. But then I remember we were also working closely with the Taliban (many of whom were formerly known as the freedom fighters when Rambo was killing the Ruskies in Afghanistan) in the months preceding the September attacks, with the DEA, wiping out poppies.

Do you trust your gov't?

Where is the line? We will not just negotiate with terrorists but trade them ICBM's, will arm street gangs with machine guns and have them sell crack for us to fund it, we'll pay soldiers to gangrape girls and then cover it up, we'll kill innocent children with computers in the sky with daisy cluster bombs and fancy algorithms filled with heuristic artificial intelligence, and we'll do it all in the name of capitalism and democracy and selling more pepsi or building more mcd's or protecting our strategic investment, ie oil, oil, oil, but we wouldn't plan and carry out 9/11 to pay for it all. Is that the line? God I hope so, but I really don't see why the CIA wouldn't have done it and covered it up.

I know, I know, trust me, you don't need to know.

by tiggerporn on 12/14/2007 02:09:31 AM EST

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