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The White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years
- TOGoS 13y agoNext time we get an opportunity for a constitutional amendment, I suggest mandatory death penalty for any official found to have condoned or covered up the use of torture.
- puppetmaster3 13y agoI'm almost sure there is no way this will lead to blow back - no way this comes back to us. /s
- rthomas6 13y agoIs "torture" here waterboarding only or something even worse? I'm not condoning waterboarding, but it's already unofficially common knowledge. What other "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used under approval?
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoBush authorized CIA to do 'whatever it takes'. CIA cited him on it in their interrogation guidelines. Some of the documents were released with authorization blacked out. Now white house trying to keep specific wording of that authorization hidden. Rest is purely speculation.
- nabla9 13y agoThis is bipartisan issue. If Bush&Cheney administration goes down, so goes Clinton&Gore. Either everyone protects everyone else, or all go down together. The CIA was granted permission to use extraordinary rendition (torture flights) in a presidential directive signed by Bill Clinton in 1995. The practize was started by George H. W. Bush in 1993.
- griffinmahon 13y agoInserting "bipartisan" into the conversation is moot. This issue -- torture -- is one of authority and the moral beliefs of society.
- privong 13y agoi believe GP mentioned bipartisanship to point out that its unlikely either a D or R administration would actively try to rectify the situation because there's no political gain and there's likely political loss.
- griffinmahon 13y agoAh, I see. In that case, bipartisanship here is still moot.[1] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
- 001sky 13y agoNo, this issue is not "non-partisan". Both sides support covering up the tracks of the ancien regimes of their successive dynsastys. A Clinton will be running again in 2016. So its best to bury this if you are a Dem, not to try to pin it on Bush (whom everyone already has their minds made up), because that will backfire, when the two sides look more alike than not.
- privong 13y agoit's not obvious that "bipartisan" and "nonpartisan" are always auto-antonyms. it may often be the case in practice, but there are are other parties for voters to choose from. for that reason, it's not a universal anto-antonym like say, flammable / inflammable.
- ballard 13y agoThe patterns of drone strikes and raids points to JSOC as processing an ever-growing kill list directed by the POTUS. Feel free to peruse Dirty Wars docu.
- tokenizer 13y agoIf you believe in karma then you know this doesn't bode well for future Americans. I doubt the next few generations of Pakistani will like them. That said there's so much room for improvement at this point. Eventually people are going to start losing faith in these 20th century institutions and ideas, and hopefully the Millennials and future generations will fix it. Unfortunately for the baby boomers and gen x, history will look back on them as morally bankrupt, hypocritical and selfish.
- ballard 13y agoThe psychological precept of projection on an institutional level effectively inspiring terrorist behavior, to further continue what the institution was doing. It's as diffuse and pointless as Vietnam.
- cdooh 13y agoNot too shocking. I'm sure this is too much of a generalisation but Anericans don't like to know of the atrocities done in their name as long as their "catching the bad guys". The global war on terror has you making enemies of people who would otherwise leave you alone...
- Crito 13y ago> I'm sure this is too much of a generalisation but Anericans don't like to know of the atrocities done in their name as long as their "catching the bad guys" I think it is worse than that. I think that they either don't care, or perhaps even support it as long as it isn't too close to home for them. See the treatment of torture on American television shows like 24 or Fringe (related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017222).
- throwawayaway 13y agoWell I don't know, I doubt they care how close to home it is, provided they still get paid. The purest cynicism I ever did see was in response to the drone attacks on funerals. People cried "you're creating more terrorists". The cynics replied, "That's actually the point". A self perpetuating war machine. There are people out there that have this as their goal.
- a3n 13y agoNo corporation gets to count "peace" on their balance sheet, but man those bullets pile up on the bottom line.
- cdooh 13y agoI remember that discussion. When these wars "come home" then there'll be cries to stop the torture.
- Crito 13y agoI think that will likely depend on how effective the government and media is at "othering" the targets of the governments aggression. An important part of any related propaganda would be ensuring that the bulk of Americans do not feel like they have any relationship with the victims, even though they both live in the same country.
- spodek 13y agoIt's like watching Lance Armstrong just before his fall. You know where it's going to go and just wish they'd come clean and quit breaking the Constitution instead of insisting on their innocence. Too many scandals that went similarly ended up revealing cover-ups to expect the Executive Branch to come out clean. It looks like it's trying to make the most of a bad situation. Tylenol's 1982 recall remains the gold standard for disaster recovery -- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/your-money/23iht-mjj_ed3_.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/your-money/23iht-mjj_ed3_..... Doing something like that could salvage something and get people on the White House's side. But it only works if you act with sincerity.
- rhizome 13y agoAnd like Lance Armstrong, they'll hold out until the bitter end. In a sense, the only thing that can be done to shorten that rope is to publish more information, either by leaks or otherwise. I'd love to see an ad campaign (billboards in DC, Virginia and Maryland, for instance) imploring government and intelligence workers to leak.
- Crito 13y ago> "I'd love to see an ad campaign (billboards in DC, Virginia and Maryland, for instance) imploring government and intelligence workers to leak." Would that possibly run afoul of "inciting imminent lawless action"? I would also love to see such an advertising campaign, but I suspect you would get some pretty fierce and heavy-hitting push-back on it.
- jrockway 13y ago> fierce and heavy-hitting push-back You mean, the media would start running your ads for free?
- Crito 13y agoGreat point, the Streisand Effect would definitely be working for you. Here is a somewhat related ad campaign, encouraging people with jury duty to refuse to convict people for crimes without victims: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/metro-billboard-advocating-jury-nullification-concerns-local-prosecutors/2013/10/29/fe53edbc-3da9-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/metro-billboard-ad... They tried to get this guy for jury tampering: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/nyregion/indictment-against-julian-heicklen-jury-nullification-advocate-is-dismissed.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/nyregion/indictment-agains... Those campaigns managed to ruffle some feathers, and got lots of media attention because of it. I imagine that this propose whistle-blower campaign would raise even more.
- morsch 13y ago"These are not just academic exercises. We’re not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that. We’re dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in. We, as citizens of democratic societies, are directly involved in and are responsible for." (Eminent MIT political activist)
- ballard 13y agoThis might be a completely crazy thought: Given technological enablement, why cant govt be more run as a StackOverflow tempered by the elder wisdom of the Supreme Court? Rip the executive branch out and make the president more of a city manager than the political emperor. Absolute power corrupts...
- InclinedPlane 13y agoThe problem isn't necessarily who has the power or how many people are in control of it (the President isn't a monarch, and congress holds most of the power generally). The larger problem is the size of the power and the weakness of the current checks against it. The way the system works today politicians bribe the public with their own tax dollars and in so doing get to hold onto power and the perks thereof. But even if we make it more direct the problem of people funneling the government trough into their own mouths, to the detriment of society, will still exist and, if anything, be even worse. And that's aside from the explosion of bureaucracy and regulation which has happened and continues to happen which is also a big part of the mess we're in. Edit: Also I should mention that a lot of the aspects of the system works today which seem like defects (gridlock, slowness, etc.) are there by design. The system is designed so that gridlock is typical and to have a lot of friction on big changes. That ensures that the power of the government isn't subject to random vicissitudes, fads, or slight changes in the balance of power. It takes consistent majorities in public opinion over periods of time to translate into action, or very large majorities to translate into action quickly.
- danso 13y agoPutting aside the new dynamic of not having an elected executive...what exactly does StackOverflow run, i.e. execute? The job of the executive branch is to execute the laws of the land. StackOverflow is for fostering discussion and finding answers. I'm not sure what a StackOverflow that has the ability to take action would look like...though judging by HN's frequent unhappiness with SO's moderation actions, I'm thinking it would not be optimal.
- Anechoic 13y agoYou mean Direct Democracy? I suspect folks here would be even more unhappy with policies under that regime.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoThe bigger problem is societal acceptance of torture. There are countless fictionalized portrayals of the "good guys" participating in torture and not only remaining good but also getting benefit from it. That points to a deep seated cultural acceptance of torture. And you see it in practice as well. Many people believe that torture is acceptable if it's used towards important ends (stopping terrorism). Even if we put the brakes on the use of torture in an official capacity in the here and now so long as it's culturally accepted to any degree it's only just a matter of time until it creeps back to the forefront.
- nl 13y agoPeople are framing this as a coverup story. It is that, of course. But the reason it has happened is because the executive branch of government is fighting to preserve its power, even across party lines (ie, the Obama Whitehouse is covering up things that happened in the Bush Whitehouse). Coming from somewhere with a Westminster system of government I find that dynamic quite interesting. Clearly in this case it is bad, but I do like the way the US system isn't as bound along party lines as Westminster systems usually are.