[466] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Torturegate, the Internet, Obama's Error,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Thu Apr 23 22:20:20 2009
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:53:50 -0700
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Torturegate, the Internet, Obama's Error, and Startling Candor from Fox News
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000551.html
"And now your highness, we will discuss the location of your
hidden rebel base."
-- Darth Vader -- "Star Wars" -- 1977
Greetings. It is now very clear that President Obama significantly
misjudged and underestimated the intensity of reactions related to the
George W. Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogation" (torture)
policies. Instead of relegating the associated issues to the past,
the (completely appropriate) release of the Bush-era torture memos has
exploded a slowly smoldering flame into a vast firestorm, and Obama's
declaration that U.S. policy has changed in these regards will not
prevent the conflagration.
The waterboardings, shackles, collars, leashes, stress positions,
beatings, extraordinary renditions, and host of other horrors
promulgated by Bush and his underlings in the name of national
security, have created a snowball that may well grow to rival the
likes of any previous scandals that this nation has ever endured.
And in many respects, the topic of torture is more fundamentally
important than most of the issues that have grabbed our collective
attention in the past. Bill Clinton's sexual excesses and even
Richard Nixon's Watergate seem to pale in comparison to the ancient
and utterly basic ethical and moral issues surrounding torture.
Thanks to the Internet, we'll have a front row seat as these events
unfold, in a manner impossible in the past. Every possible Net venue
is already being utilized to disseminate, discuss, analyze, and
otherwise ponder the basic "good vs. evil" aspects of this situation.
This is the Internet at its finest.
Various military personnel who were condemned as renegades at Abu
Ghraib are taking to the airwaves and the Net to proclaim their relief
at the memos revelations that -- indeed as they had claimed all
along -- the pattern of their behaviors was dictated from the highest
levels of the Bush administration.
Now preserved on the Internet for all time is a remarkably candid
(*** warning: and profane ***) outburst yesterday by Shepherd Smith,
a popular Fox News anchor, who verbally exploded in reaction to
suggestions that torture might be OK "if it produced results."
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEtFMj6ZiHM )
Mr. Smith indeed hit the heart of the matter dead center. The GOP and
ex-torturer-in-chief Dick Cheney
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000550.html ) have been attempting to
push the degrading concept that torture not only is acceptable if it
can be shown to work, but that even discussing the issue may have
violated the privacy rights of associated parties. I view these lines
of argument as nothing less than pure evil. One can only imagine how
Cheney's outspoken "logic" may affect the futures of our own brave
military men captured in future conflicts. God help them from our
adversaries who will quote Cheney and his cronies as justification for
those foreign torturers.
We are about to embark on a televised and Internet-enabled
investigation of the modern incarnations of a most ancient evil --
torture -- as was applied under cover of authority, and with our
national honor and pride victimized as a result of those activities.
You probably remember all of the attention paid to Bill Clinton's
affair, even if you're too young to remember Watergate. "Torturegate"
(I haven't heard anyone say this yet in the media, but I'm sure they
will!) seems likely to rise to similar or even higher levels of global
focus -- and for damned good reasons.
This is going to be a learning experience like none other. We are
about to explore in the most graphic sense possible what it means to
be Americans, in terms of goals, ethics, morality, and simple
humanity. For how we behave under stress and attack tells far more
about us than our behavior on better days.
Fasten your seatbelts.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: LW1
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