10/13/2007
The general malaise in the media over the latest torture revelations
Greg Mitchell (pictured), one of my fave columnists over at Editor & Publisher, weighed in this week with an examination of the media's general lack of response to latest Bush war-crimes revelations.
He points out that some bloggers (not loonies like me) are taking this very seriously:
Andrew Sullivan, who now blogs for The Atlantic, and a onetime Bush-backer and war supporter, heads his latest posting with a photo of the president and the title: "War Criminal."
Referring at least partly to the media, Sullivan declares, "A couple of things need to be stressed, because I've learned the hard way that intelligent people simply refuse to absorb what is staring them in the face, when what is staring them in the face is so staggering." What does he mean? He quotes from the Times story: "Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics."
He closes with this: "There is no doubt - no doubt at all - that these tactics are torture and subject to prosecution as war crimes. We know this because the law is very clear, when you don't have war criminals like AEI's John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power. ,,,We have war criminals in the White House. What are we going to do about it?"
I know I get tiresome about this stuff; but I'm sitting around the house on a Saturday waiting for guests to arrive, and poking at the computer while I hang...
The NY Times article that started everything.
I don't agree with Sullivan on practically anything else, but it's worth keeping in mind that things must be really bad when stuff like this is written by someone who proclaimed proudly that Donald Rumsfeld was his personal friend.
No more:
,,,the law is very clear when you don't have war criminals like AEI's John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power. We know this because the very same techniques - hypothermia, long-time standing, beating - and even the very same term "enhanced interrogation techniques" - "verschaerfte Vernehmung" in the original German - were once prosecuted by American forces as war crimes. The perpetrators were the Gestapo. The penalty was death.