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Thursday, May 14, 2009

Obama's Gesture; Tries to Block Torture Pictures That Are Already Out There. Nice Try...I Guess....
Posted by Melina | 7:57 PM

So, who is he blocking these pictures from? In the shadow of the looming snowball rolling down the hill behind him, President Obama seemingly caved today and decided to block the release of the new array of torture photos coming out of Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq. The pictures are more of the same series that we've seen already, and many have been already published in other countries. In a way, the President was able to play both sides of the fence in that the pictures had already been leaked anyway, and so he was able to appear thoughtful on the effect that these photos would have on our soldiers serving around the world, but also he could be sure that the outrage would be there because they, or some of them, would be out in a bigger way than they had been previously. The problem is that in trying to cover this up for whatever reason, we hurt ourselves more, in that anything short of demanding a thorough investigation of the torture program of the previous administration will not be enough to regain our worldwide moral standing.

In covering his bases, Obama maintains his legendary cool but can also find his outrage along with the people. He should, however, be careful in that there will be a point, if it hasn't come already, that he starts to seem disingenuous in his handling of the situation. There is really only one response to what has gone on; it has to be addressed, not buried. Whatever the reasons are for his decisions so far, there is no excuse for not appointing an independent prosecutor to look at this; especially in light of Nancy Pelosi's statements today...talk about disingenuous!I'm having alot of trouble buying that deer in the headlights exclamation of surprise! If I knew they were lying about everything then what did the likes of Ms. Pelosi need? We are supposed to believe that just now she put the dates of reported torture together with the briefings and realized that they lied to her!!? At least she has the power to demand an investigation, and it looks like she will. I think that we are going to see more and more of this, because the vortex of wrongdoing is going to suck everyone in who doesn't get on the right side of this thing. (and for a really disgusting experience, see Rove's article in the Wall Street Journal today about the Pelosi timeline, breaking down what she knew and when she knew it, according to the master manipulator himself!)



Lets recap, for those who have been watching the Cheney media circus this past week, and who might be a tad confused. First of all, contrary to the blathering of the Cheney machine, we know that torture doesn't work. This is a fact that has been proven by numerous experts over many years, and this example of torture has proved it again. Torture is only used to force captives to make untrue statements incriminating themselves and their countries or groups; this would be helpful only if one wanted to connect something like, say, 9-11 to Saddam Hussein...um...yeah.

The Bush/Cheneys decided to disregard all real expert opinion, and surround themselves with only those who would be blindly loyal to their plan, (Plan: the concept of which I use lightly in this instance,) and that meant that they had to find malleable fundamentalists or blind patriots who had less experience in these issues than they should have had and that would follow orders without question; as Bill Maher said "low hanging fruit."

So, how could this happen? The channels that are the checks and balances of this country were corrupted, so If the orders came directly from the oval office that this was an unprecedented national emergency, then I suppose that the spy agencies might lie to the congress, right? Who knows? It was such a mess and Bush/Cheney were rewriting the rules as they went along. The only example that I can think of as anything like this situation is, unfortunately, 24! That's all well and good, but the glaring sticking point is that it went on for so long. This wasn't a one shot deal, it was a program that reportedly came directly down from the Vice President's office.



Ultimately, all of that tin-foil-hat stuff that we were trying not to succumb to, turned out to be true. All along, I kept saying that next comes the dancing girls and elephants, because I couldn't believe that it could possibly get this much stranger than fiction. I have trouble still believing that all of this was done for the money and/or revenge for Bush one, but anything could be true....the only thing that resonates with me is that this is a sort of fundamentalist mental illness, and group-think of the kool-aid variety; cognitive dissonance. To break the very tenants that this country was founded on, and to perform acts that we tried and convicted others of in the past, thereby creating more recent law that we can cite along with the actual laws and the Geneva Convention, and to do it all so openly, leads me to believe that there is some sort of real deep mental problem here which we would could call any number of things, but the actions performed in it's service were clearly illegal and must be addressed.



Obama can block the images all he wants but they will see the light. The thing is that he must come out in favor of investigation of these crimes soon, regardless of any precedent he might set for prosecution of prior Presidents of the Untied States. He must assume that neither he or any other President would commit such acts and if they were ever implicated for actions in office, they would welcome at least an investigation. To not investigate and try to bury this is much more of a danger to our troops all over the world than looking at it in the light and punishing the criminals.


c/p RIP Coco

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