Joe Biden agrees with John McCain that the government should share what they’ve learned about the torture committed during the Bush administration. Then Biden goes further and compares Bush and Cheney to Slobodan Milošević and Adolf Hitler.
Speaking about the classified Senate Intelligence report on the use of torture or enhanced interrogation by the United States, Biden suggested that his personal view is that he agrees with McCain that more information should be made public, while he noted it has been the subject of intense debate at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Now this voluminous study has been done,” Biden said. “And the internal debate that goes on in the Congress and in the White House is, do we go back and do we expose it? Do we lay out who was responsible and how we got to where we are?”
“It offends the fundamentals of what kind of country we are, and the practical side of it is, don’t think it didn’t damage the United States’ image in the world in ways that we’ll be paying for for years to come,” McCain said, noting his support for disclosing more details of what happened.
“It is not resolved yet, John, but I’m where you are. I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge, you acknowledge exactly what happened straightforward,” Biden said. He explained his position that issues related to torture must be laid out before a country can move beyond them, citing the war crimes committed in the Balkans and other acts of torture overseas.
“The single best thing that ever happened to Germany were the war crimes tribunals, because it forced Germany to come to its milk about what in fact has happened,” Biden said. “That’s why they’ve become the great democracy they’ve become.”
Can America come to its milk?
Is “come to its milk” a mid-Atlantic thing? I’ve never heard that before.
Oh, yeah: Biden’s right.
Way back when gramps had a dairy farm, “come to its milk” meant a cow that “dried up” again produced milk. I can’t for the life of me think of a connection between that an Biden’s point though. I suppose it’s kind of like “returned to health”?
I get it now.
We lost something when we started torturing, and we need to get it back.
Can America come to its milk?
No!!!!! #FreeShakerAamer
On this issue we are lactose intolerant.
Pf cpurse, none of those comparisons work. If Germany had won, do you think there would have been those trials? Of course not. In the circumstances Biden uses, the exposure and punishment all came from outside.
I’d be satisfied to see us following the example of Chile or Argentina or South Africa. If the exposure is thorough and comes from inside, the punishment isn’t necessary. Let students refuse to take their classes–let the Grand Strategy classroom at Yale be empty–let readers refuse to buy their books, and let their grandchildren be embarrassed about their names.
Now that the whole question of a second term has been answered, could there possibly be a slight opening to start talking somewhat openly about this recent travesty? McCain seems to be dropping hints that he might consider it. My optimistic, feel-good side says, “Yes”. My realistic and cynical side says, “No Way In Hell”. I think we all know that today’s GOP will never allow this subject to see the light of day. EVER!!!
It’s the test of whether Obama is really 11-dimensional or not. Same-sex marriage is the pre-test. Today’s GOP is already a fossil, it’s tomorrow’s voters who are changing their minds today.
Can America come to its milk?
Which milk, Booman?
The politically expedient milk of blaming war crimes on Bush and Cheney? (A watery and tasteless kind of milk more than likely because they will no more be punished for their crimes than will Henry Kissinger or any of our other war criminals of the past.)
Or the real stuff…cream and all. No skimmed shit, just the real deal.
Could Biden stand up in an impartial court of law…as if there is or ever has been such a thing…and prove that his hands are clean of innocent blood and suffering?
Could McCain?
Could Obama?
Of course not.
McCain and Biden standing together on something?
Only when the PermaGov fix is being further strengthened.
Bet on it.
WTFU.
AG
Arthur doesn’t recognize the difference between committing war crimes and prosecuting a war.
He thinks that this demonstrates his moral elevation.
when the war is a war of choice not of necessity, AG isn’t alone in not seeing the difference.
No, there are numerous people with muddled moral reasoning.
Fortunately, we have the Geneva Conventions and an extensive body of international law that make it quite clear that they are wrong.
You are arguing that there would be no moral difference if there had been no torture at Abu Ghraib.
I don’t give flying fuck about my or anyone else’s “moral elevation,” fool. Not even yours. All I really care about is seeing the U.S. repair its brokenness, and soon.
How did it get broken?
It got fat and complacent after winning W.W. II and let a gang of thieves progressively take it over, that’s how. And now it is well on the way to becoming the world’s richest third world country….which is kinda like being the world’s tallest midget, come to think of it.
“Prosecuting a war?”
Against what, Joe?
Against the possibility that we might have to begin to pay oil prices that are on the same level as almost all other high energy using countries. Do the math. The U.S. has sent trillions in the direction of various wars in order to save trillions in energy costs. We’re actually only breaking even, if that. I suppose if we were really “breaking even” on the deal we wouldn’t be up to our hatbands in debt.
And what have we earned by these efforts other than moderately cheap oil?
We have earned the enmity of millions upon millions of people. Murderous enmity.
We have turned our national culture into one of almost suicidal despair. Death by cop, death by terrorist, death by nutball and death by suicide in the news, every day. As the esteemed prophet Micheal Ray Richardson once said about a foundering basketball team, “The ship be sinkin’.”
It be stinkin’, too. The smell of defeat hangs heavy over this country. Can you imagine Winston Churchill telling the residents of London to lock their doors and stay inside when only a single bomb had been detonated? Please. But here? The stink of fear is everywhere.
There is only one way out. Stop the madness and pay the consequences in terms of economic change. But the politicians who could actually change this situation are are owned lock, stock and barrel by the criminals who are “prosecuting” the real war.
The war for them to get rich at any cost to others.
Wake the fuck up.
“Moral elevation” my ass. I just want some politicians to do something other than make automated, automatic war-for-profit on brown people. Stop doing that shit and recovery is possible. Keep it up? Dumb motherfuckers is all.
Dumb motherfuckers.
Like the so-called “uncle” (Uncle Spook, looks like to me.) said about the bomber boys.
Losers.
WTFU.
AG
It will never happen because the warcrime criminals are still in office.
Strike down the The Hague Invasion Act and join the ICC who are most capable to judge the Iraq War invasion, occupation, torture, rendition, Guantanamo detention. etc. etc.
Historians will judge harshly and in the meantime most particpating nations will suffer from blow-back. The Syrian War will exacerbate the spread of terror violence.
“the war crime criminals are still in office”
Notice how this clears any and all Bush administration officials of any guilt.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Yoo, Goss – you know, the people who actually ordered torture – are not, apparently, “the war crime criminals.”
I bet he’s talking about people like John Brennan. I doubt he’s excusing W., Darth Cheney and John Yoo(among others).
Sure, shortly after invading armies from the east and west meet in Iowa to convene the tribunals…
Exactly right. When did a country come to grips with its own history of torture and persecute its own war criminals? This has been happening since never.
It’s an interesting question considering there’s a few glass walls in the Obama/Biden house and the timing where Obama is taking a hard look at the intel on Syria is begging for America to use good judgment this go round.
Was also thinking of the ongoing simmering abuse of America’s poor vs the chapter of overseas torture. The distinction bothers me. Sort of like the distinction of a single bombing event killing 3 vs daily gun deaths.
People like Krauthammer and Dershowitz defended torture as necessary when used to prevent such extraordinary things as an impending nuclear attack the plot for which was already unfolding.
But our military and security forces abused prisoners viciously when there were no grounds to fear anything so exceptional or outlandish, or to believe the people they abused had knowledge that would avert any such thing.
Even granting – and there is not really any good reason to grant this, that I know of – that torture was necessary to get OBL, that use also does not fall under the nuke-attack-in-progress scenario or any plausible variant of it.
That entire debate was illicitly related to the question whether terrorists can be regarded as “unlawful enemy combatants,” it being equally criminal to torture them, I believe.
So far as I know, POWs, “unlawful” or not, cannot be tortured or mistreated under American law or under treaties we have accepted and never repudiated.
They can be tried and punished for their crimes under normal processes and with their normal rights intact.
But that is quite another thing.
And, so far as I know, there was never any reason to suppose any of the prisoners abused at Gitmo, at Abu Ghraib, or elsewhere fell under anything like the nuke-attack-in-progress scenario people volubly insisted justified anything, no matter how horrific.
Our military and security forces abused prisoners and treated them inhumanely partly as vindictive and exemplary punishment and partly as a routine way of gathering information useful in or relevant to combating terrorism, but not remotely covered by the nuke-in-progress scenario.
It was the Third Degree on steroids.
And it was probably widespread during the Vietnam War and often done in all our other wars, too.
War is hell.
People are the devils.
Oh, POWs can be held for the duration, of course, with no charges and no trial.
Another reason some wanted the Boston Bombers considered “enemy combatants.”
On the other hand, it seems incontestable that many people would insist prevention of terrorism, deliberate attacks aimed at killing and maiming ordinary civilians going about their ordinary business, in large numbers or relatively small, is itself a sufficient justification for the use of outright torture.
Not just in the nuke scenario but in pretty much any scenario.
And maybe not just terrorism, sensu strictu, but any form of mass or serial killing.
And if there is an objection, here other than a moral or religious one, I don’t know what it is.
We’re not in a recognized conflict, to which the laws of war apply, with the Tsarnaev brothers. We’re in a conflict with al Qaeda, and with the Taliban. Only people fighting for the other side in a conflict can be held under those powers, not any shmuck who sets off a bomb.