Hi all. Been away all day and just back now! See the BBC is bigging up the story about Barry the Brave publishing “torture” memos from the Bush era. It soooo fits the narrative, doesn’t it? The BBC salivate in true left-wing style at this sort of non story – it is made to confirm their most fevered imaginations about the evil Bush. Let’s hope that Obama’s GOP successor in the White House is also quick off the mark to expose any politically expedient memos from this presidential period – and trust that the BBC are quick to carry it so prominently! BTW – the BBC seema tad subdued about the Tea Parties for some odd reason?
WORST EXPECTATIONS.
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Did the BBC tell you the part where President Obamessiah is continuing Booooosh’s policy of rendition?
No? What about the part where, in The Obamessianic Age, Guantanamo Bay – which we all know makes the Duke of Norwich’s exploits look like a lighter episode of TeleTubbies – is closed forever, but the US President has authorized the unlimited detention of naughty people without recourse to the law at the spartan accommodations of Bagram AFB in Pakistan?
No? Well, still, He has risen, eh?
Great point made on Fox. Will Obama’s people be so willing to give particular advice if they know the following administration may well make everything public just to embarrass them and possibly end up with some people being chased by the media and lawyers?
Katty Kay just lied about everything I said in my first comment.
She introduced the segment on these memos by saying “as much as the Obama Administration has tried to make a clean break” with the previous President’s actions.
Total lie, and in a news broadcast produced for the US audience.
Good stuff again Mr Presier – but isnt Bagram AFB in Afghanistan?
Ignoring a lot of very grey issues that need careful thinking about at a personal level to come to a view, much less comment sensibly upon, I must say the ‘Bush Admin’ theme of the BBC reporting was trowel-like in its subtlety. I don’t ever recall an incumbent’s efforts to promote themselves over a predecessor being quite so enthusiastic or personalised.
However, at a national level, and bearing in mind no potential transgressors are to be held to account, I have to wonder what the point of all of this was/is.
It just makes the USA look bad, and that might be nice in global meetings with your new chums at executive level, but seems less helpful on the ground.
Would it not have been better to deal with this more discretely and simply allow a new broom to be measured by what it does now and in the future, rather than shouting about what someone else did in the past..
If we get a sensible replacement for Brown and his GOATs, I expect the next administration to quietly get on with the business of making Britain Great again, and not using the past to show how great they are doing it.
At best, much that has been done would seem to be from excessive patriotism and a possibly misplaced short-term view of security issues, weighing local scenarios over bigger geo-political consequences in a new media age. But it’s hard to see what those who were involved had to gain personally through going to such dark places.
Grandstanding on hanging them out to dry, but still draped in the flag of the country they were trying to serve, seems more designed to aid the enemies of America, and from the glee with which such as the BBC has so far spun it all, it’s with sadly great effect, evidently.
What next? Proof Kennedy did try to whack Castro?
I’d like to see Aunty cope with that one.
I have to disagree on this point. I think it was important that these legal opinions be published to help explain how the White House helped the CIA go to where they did. I’ve read the memos and they are redacted so that no names are revealed and Obama has exempted the CIA people on the ground from prosecution – so hardly a win for the left. But the simple fact is the CIA were torturing people. Let’s not delude ourselves that the politically convenient euphemisms used by Bush were anything other than torture. Some people have a legitimate opinion that the government should be doing these things (and much more) for national security but in doing so they have to come clean about calling the methods they want to use torture and not trying to hoodwink people with fluffy, meaningless terms like ‘enhanced interrogation’. Under those conditions Pontius Pilote’s treatment of Jesus was just enhanced interrogation.
There is also a misunderstanding of CIA ‘rendition’ which was invented under Reagan and operated by Bush Snr. and Clinton who use it against the first WTC bombers and others to get them before a court. This is different to Bush’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ (extraordinary kind of gives it away) which was to snatch people for the purpose of torturing information out of them and had no intention of delivering them to a US court.
I haven’t read about Bagram AFB but if they are still detaining people without recourse to legal representation then that is wrong in my opinion.
Doug
“But the simple fact is the CIA were torturing people…….Under those conditions Pontius Pilote’s treatment of Jesus was just enhanced interrogation.”
So the US is lashing the skin off suspects’ backs with a cat o’ nine tails and then putting a crown of thorns on them? Gross!
Can any of the former servicemen on this site – pounce? – tell us how the activities outlined compare with what British servicemen are trained to withstand when captured? I mean, an insect in a box frankly sounds a bit, er, “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”. Not exactly an atrocity, particularly when the person being interrogated has consciously placed himself beyond the protection of the Geneva Conventions.
Yes, but the transparency of the bias is actually good news. More and more people are starting to see through its risible pretense of objectivity and recognise it as – to quote a friend of mine, a stolid psychiatrist of liberalish leanings – a “force for evil”. (I should add, not many in our group of educated, liberalish people tried to defend it).
So this may hasten the end of the disgusting, lying, cheating, bigoted, grasping, extorting, thieving BBC.
The only thing that gets close to “torture” is waterboarding. And it was used only a handful of times, directly after 9/11 when the US was hugely concerned about further attacks. Khalid whoever was one of the people who was waterboarded and evidently he revealed important information that helped prevent further attack.
But the way Obama and the BBC are playing this, you would think that waterboarding was an everyday occurrence. Don’t they know how little it was used ? Doesn’t Frank Gardner know, for example ?
BBC – spin, spin, spin for Obama.
……………
And yes, Obma has continued with other aspects of the “Bushite” ant-terrorist policies. And what is Bagram other than an Afghanistan version of Gitmo ?
Liquid P Gasse | 17.04.09 – 8:50 am |
but isnt Bagram AFB in Afghanistan?
Yes, you’re right – my bad. It says Afghanistan right in the thing I linked to, so it’s just my sloppiness.
Sorry to be a clever arse…
Liquid P Gasse | 17.04.09 – 8:34 pm |
No problem – honestly. I try to admit my mistakes, and have no problem with having actual errors pointed out to me. I was pointing out in my own weak defense that I fortunately did link to the actual facts, even if I screwed up writing it. That wasn’t meant as a snap back at you.
-David