Unholy Trinity

[Xavier_Onassis]

"Before all else, you must be efficient," said U.S. police adviser Dan Mitrione, assassinated by Uruguay's revolutionary Tupamaros in 1970 for training security forces in the finer points of torture. "You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more." Mitrione taught by demonstration, reportedly torturing to death a number of homeless people kidnapped off the streets of Montevideo. "We must control our tempers in any case," he said. "You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist."

Florencio Caballero, having escaped from Honduras's notorious Battalion 316 into exile in Canada in 1986, testified that U.S. instructors urged him to inflict psychological, not "physical," pain "to study the fears and weakness of a prisoner." Force the victim to "stand up," the Americans taught Caballero, "don't let him sleep, keep him naked and in isolation, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve him dead animals, throw cold water on him, change the temperature."
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Mitrione, despite being Frank Sinatra's buddy, was nabbed by the Tupamaros and seems to have gotten a good and fatal dose of his own medicine. Philip Agee's ratting out the CIA was due to what he witnessed in Uruguay.

As for Alan Dershowitz, he is shameless, and has no moral compass whatever. He is an exemplary bad example for all lawyers.

This is why I say that the CIA needs to be abolished.

[Michael Tee]

I still remember the Chicago Seed's epitaph for Dan Mitrione - -

"R.I. P. Dan Mitrione - [cartoonish drawing of Dan Mitrione's head with a neat circular hole in his forehead clear through to daylight on the other side] -  You will encounter nothing new in Hell."

Doesn't anyone want to draw this out beyond Dershowitz, who is all too obviously an appalling specimen and an embarrassment to Jews everywhere, but would a guy like Dershowitz, always keeping one eye out for his own career and its advancement, have been able to say the things he does in the America of FDR or even JFK?  I mean I don't give a shit whether Dershowitz personally lives or dies, but what do his utterances say about America itself?  The guy is a law professor, for Gawd's sake!  John Yoo is a law professor.  WTF is going on?

[BT]

America has been and can be again better than this. 

Let's not pretend that all this bad behavior is a new phenomena. T's article shows the lie to that.

[BT]

Then again, there are those of us who think America should be better than it is. That it is not and that some folks in places of authority seem uninterested in that notion is sometimes a bit dismaying.

What we are and what we can be are two different things.

What are your suggestions for getting us from point A to point B.

[Michael Tee]

Leadership in the broader sense.  Opinion-makers including elected officials, TV talking heads, talk radio hosts, cartoonists . . .

I think JFK contributed his share.  His promotion of "unconventional warfare," the romanticizing of the Green Berets - - there was an ethic that glorified success, "winning," at all costs, bending the rules.  All facilely justified because "the enemy" (supposedly) was even more ruthless.  "We" had to be ruthless because "the enemy" was ruthless.  That was the key.  The judgment of one's character suddenly slipped from a more absolutist view of right and wrong to the more relativistic one of, "It's OK, as long as you're not the worst one."  This was fictionally supported at more or less the same time in the Ian Fleming novels featuring "James Bond," British Special Agent 007, with a "licence to kill."  Before Bond, nobody - - or at least none of the good guys - - had a licence to kill.

We have this decayed moral sense because our leaders themselves reflect it.  Change those leaders.  If they are politicians, vote them out.  Morality is a prime qualification.  Our leaders reflect us - - if they permit torture, who can keep our own men from being tortured in return?  If they are talk show hosts, denounce them, don't buy from their sponsors, DRIVE them off the air.  If they teach, walk out when they preach torture and murder.  Protest to the administration - - you pay to study law, not to learn criminality.  Speak out and act out against this moral rot wherever you find it.  Men sacrificed everything so that people like Dershowitz would not rule this planet.  The least we can do is denounce the guy and try to make his life a living hell.

I think we (Canada too) need leadership with moral backbone - - REAL morality, not this "abortion is criminal" "gay life-style is wrong" kind of morality.  We need someone to say from the top, "Shit like this is WRONG, and it won't be tolerated.  I want laws passed that permit capital punishment on offenders.  I want the ability to dismiss commanders who let shit like this happen on their watch.  Bust 'em down to pfc and they don't get any pension either.  This is gonna STOP NOW."  THAT is the kind of leadership we need, not someone who denies, minimizes, excuses.  Leadership that can make heads roll.  Literally.

[BT]

Interesting that you would be as ruthless as the people you condemn.

[Michael Tee]

Interesting that you can equate the execution of a torturer with the insertion of steel nails under a person's fingertips.  At the beginning of the Revolution, Castro had dozens of guys like that lined up against the stadium walls and shot.  Nobody seemed to regard it as any great loss to humanity.

[BT]

It all boils down to a respect for human life, doesn't it. No real difference between torture and a firing squad.

Ruthlessness in pursuit of ideology seems to be the common denominator in all this.

[Brassmask]

Doesn't matter what we or the bleacher boys say. What matters is what the residents of the DC war zone neighborhoods say.

I suspect if you son were in danger of being killed by a stray drive by bullet you would welcome a strong police presence in your neighborhood.

I would NOT, however welcome arbritrary check points for "papehz, pleez" regardless of danger.

[BT]

Are they doing that or just making sure people have legitimate reasons to be in those neighborhoods.

[Brassmask]

Are they doing that or just making sure people have legitimate reasons to be in those neighborhoods.

It's none of their business.  You can't just stop any old car for whatever reason the law wants.

[BT]

You can't just stop any old car for whatever reason the law wants.

The courts disagree.

Having said that i understand your concerns.

I also understand the pain of a parent who loses a child to some stray bullet fired by gang bangers fighting over drug concessions in a tiny piece of turf.

Which right outweighs the other?

And please don't take the cop out of drugs should be legal. They aren't. And people are dying taking them or fighting over the profits from them.

[Michael Tee]

<<No real difference between torture and a firing squad. >>

No sarcasm at all intended, but I really just find it very interesting that you can say that.  I am sure that most people subjected to real torture of the kind that Dershowitz is advocating would prefer death.  This is the reason that cyanide pills are handed to agents who need to go behind enemy lines.  Although there are many people in Western society who have gone on public record as authorizing executions by firing squad or other means, I know of none who would want to go on record as authorizing Dershowitz-type torture for anyone.

I see a huge difference between ordering someone to be shot, which is relatively painless and often necessary, and ordering steel needles to be inserted under someone's fingernails - - basically, I would easily order the death of a torturer, no matter whose side he was working on, whereas I have no opinion about the morality of a firing squad until I first learn who was shot by whom and what for.

But I don't think this is something that we could ever settle by argument.  This is just something that I see and feel in my bones and my gut, and something that you just don't see that way.

[Michael Tee]

I'll just add one more thing to my last post - - the difference is one of empathy.  I can feel the pain of the torture victim and understand how much worse it is than that of a firing-squad victim.  The torture is prolonged and endless.  The firing squad kills almost instantly.  It's because you can't feel the pain of the torture victim that you can equate torture with the firing squad - - from you're POV, they are both "ruthless," so where's the difference?

IMHO, this is one of the main reasons why liberals are so much better human beings than conservatives.  Liberals can really put themselves in the other guy's shoes, conservatives just don't give a shit.

[sirs]

IMHO, this is one of the main reasons why liberals are so much better human beings than conservatives.  Liberals can really put themselves in the other guy's shoes

Just so long it's another liberal/socialist/communist in those shoes, of course