Sunday, July 12, 2009

Operation Blackbriar

We don't know what this program was. They tell us it wasn't waterboarding or the other torture methods. (You do realize that "harsh interrogation methods" is a euphemism worthy of the Nazis or the Soviets, right?) They tell us it wasn't the massive surveillance that essentially rendered the Fourth Amendment so much empty language.

They also tell us that it was never an "operational" program, even after nearly eight years. Oh, bullshit. To believe that, you'd have to have your head buried so far up your ass that it would be looking out your navel.

Dick Cheney, the true power of Duhbya's maladministration, ordered this program kept secret from Congress, kept immune from the oversight of democracy. He explicitly evaded the rule of law. (Again!) This was - and still is - the canonical impeachable offense. It's also a violation of his oath of office.

There is no way that Darth Cheney would have been interested enough in "planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year" to suppress disclosure of it. The New York Times is playing along to even print such nonsense.

Note: In all the wingnut foofaraw about Nancy Pelosi accusing Leon Panetta of lying about the CIA's legal obligations to brief Congress is the most obvious bullshit. Panetta did not say the CIA always briefed Congress in compliance with its legal obligations. He said that it was not the CIA's policy to withhold legally required briefings. Is everyone in the media too dense - or too happy to play along with the inside game - to notice this?

(h/t Boston Globe, where I first read the Times report on this)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This should be called the "Cut and Paste Blog." This garbage reads like it's straight from the AP.

lovable liberal said...

Still trying to out-bullshit your previous postings, eh? But, of course, you're from the pro-torture faction. You don't want to know how the Constitution is being subverted because you don't believe in constitutional democracy. Bonehead.

lovable liberal said...

Oh, and the AP couldn't touch this, though it would be good if they weren't so easily taken in by the lying of the Bushists.

Anonymous said...

Our from of government is NOT a democracy. It's a Constitutional Republic. So who is the "bonehead" exactly?

lovable liberal said...

Ah, at last, an argument. Not a good argument but nonetheless an attempt at argumentum ad dictionarium (heh).

DC a republic is a form of democracy. No, it's not pure democracy, in which all citizens vote on every issue. That may be the factoid you were trying to regurgitate.

I guess it's even more clear now who the bonehead is. The young doe in my back yard this morning could crush you.

Silence DoGood said...

A republic's main definition is the LACK of a monarch. It is not necessarily a democracy at all. Consider the People's Republic of China. No monarch and no democracy.

From my namesake's quotes:
a young citizen inquired: "Dr. Franklin, what kind of government did you give us? A monarchy or a republic?" Franklin's keen response was: "A republic, if you can keep it!"

With a recent legacy of Nixon, Reagan, Cheney and now Saint Obama, we are well on the way back to a monarchy.

lovable liberal said...

Words can get debased over time, and they often have different senses. A "people's republic" is not a republic at all, not in the context of discussions about the U.S. The word republic in our founding documents denotes a form of democracy (i.e. government by the people) that is representative and constrained from the tyranny of the majority by the doctrine of rights.

The PRC is an authoritarian, self-selected elite, certainly not a democracy, as it doesn't belong to the people in any realistic sense, nor is it a republic in the sense that our Founders used the word.

Silence DoGood said...

I like your definition of republic in the context of the US.

Although as a footnote, "by the people" meant the minority of white male land owners. But the flexibility designed in has mitigated that initial situation.