Credit and Shrugs Where Due

We Chipsters are glad that the Senate has finally released its “Torture Report” and, much as we are loathe to, we applaud Senator Feinstein for shepherding the report from darkness into light.   Given the political realities of Washington D.C., that was no easy task.

That said, we roll our eyes with boredom at the now engulfing tsunami of opinion, counter-opinion and “in depth news analysis.”   Screeches the New York Times

SENATE TORTURE REPORT FAULTS C.I.A. FOR BRUTALITY AND DECEIT

Really?  We never would have guessed.

The problem with Amurrikans is that they neither remember nor deduce.  Their brains are toggles that switch on or off at the presence or absence of triggers.  What spews out of their mouths could as easily be reduced to strings of rubber stamped “concepts.”

We remember an interview many many years ago when Mike Wallace of Sixty Minutes asked the then Shan of Iran whether it was true that his secret police shoved “broken Coke bottles” up detainees’ rectums.

An indignant Shah guffawed.  “Uhh, no! We have much more sophisticated methods of obtaining information than that.”

 
“Such as what, your highness?”

The Shah, annoyed at what he evidently considered a kindergarden drill, muttered something about more effective techniques.

 
A wide eyed Wallace, evidently thinking that he a cornered the Shah into one scoop of an admission, expressed astonishment that such techniques were used and openly admitted to being used by an ally of the United States in this day and age.

An equally astonished Shah, evidently realizing he was talking to a child, replied: “...And from whom do you think we acquired learned these methods?"

CAN  ANYONE  IN  WASHINGTON NOT  KNOW  THAT  THE  UNITED  STATES  DEVELOPS,  TEACHES  AND  EMPLOYS TECHNIQUES  OF  TORTURE?

The long list of Latin American dictators installed at U.S. connivance and supported with U.S. funds and advisors attests to the long history of this country’s propagation of torture.  And if the United States teaches torture to its satraps and puppets abroad can there be any reasonable doubt that it employs those same techniques itself?

It is a minimally decent thing that the Senate publicly acknowledged the misdeeds of the United States and it is nice enough to hear at least a partial mea culpa.

All the rest is stuff and nonsense. 

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