The Rude Pundit: "We Tortured Some Folks" and We Will Do Nothing About It
Someone's gonna have to fuckin' explain this to the Rude Pundit. Someone's gonna have to fuckin' explain how Barack Obama, the President of this damn nation, can go before the press, the TV cameras, the world, and declare, "
I)n the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we did some things that were wrong...we tortured some folks" and not follow that up with "And we're going to prosecute those who did it and those who ordered it."
Someone smarter than the Rude Pundit is gonna need to tell him how what the President said next is any sort of alibi: "I understand why it happened. I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this."
And what the fuck does this even mean? "And it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots." So if we think that it was possible to defend the country without breaking the law and torturing innocent people, we're sanctimonious? Fuck you, man. There's a shit-ton of military, intelligence, and law enforcement professionals who would say, "Fuck you" to that, too.
Let's be clear: when someone says that we're talking about torture right after 9/11, as if a couple of rogue agents twisted the nuts of Abdul al-Suicidebomb as he ululated, "Death to America," that's a fucking lie. That's revisionist history for our increasingly short-term memory. What we're really talking about is a system of torture used for years that was approved at the highest levels of government. We didn't just torture "some folks." We tortured lots of people. And if we weren't torturing them bad enough to get the answers they didn't have, we sent them places where they could be tortured even worse.
And let's be clearer: By not much of a stretch of Obama's reasoning, any time a cop, in the heat of an interrogation, beats the shit out of a perp, he is justified. Hell, every Stand Your Ground incident is legitimate because of the "enormous pressure" on the person thinking the stranger knocking at the door is going to off them. Most frighteningly, everything our government does after an attack is ok because, goddamnit, those interrogators forcing nude, kidnapped detainees into stress positions and slamming them around are motherfucking patriots and the rest of us Don't Understand Reality.
Don't worry, though. Obama is on the case: " W)e did some things that were wrong. And that's what that ("forthcoming" Senate torture) report reflects. And that's the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report." Which is great, kudos, and all that shit, but "some"? Not "all"? And what about the people who tortured? What about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, and the rogue's gallery of unapologetic cunts who made it happen?
Said the President, "And my hope is, is that this report reminds us once again that the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard. And when we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line." So we're gonna frog march the bastards and put 'em in prison, right?
No. "And that needs to be -- that needs to be understood and accepted. And we have to, as a country, take responsibility for that so that, hopefully, we don't do it again in the future."
In other words, the character of the country is shit because we did such things, and we just need to accept it and move on, hoping we don't repeat these crimes that no one was ever charged with. You know, apparently Obama doesn't think he's the leader of a nation based on laws in this case. No, apparently, he's our pathetic dad, telling us that, hey, your uncle raped you, but we don't want to cause turmoil in the family, so you'll just have to get over it, even though you'll see him at every cousin's birthday party.
(One last thing: Could someone tell Obama he's a fucking law professor and to be a little more precise in his words? The people who were tortured are "folks." The people who did the torturing are "folks." We're all just "folks"? Maybe the Rude Pundit's being sanctimonious, but there's some monsters he doesn't want to be lumped in with beyond species.)
Update: Tom Tomorrow pointed out the "some" in the interrogation techniques statement. Yeah, that's fucked up.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2014/08/we-tortured-some-folks-and-we-will-do.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Yeah, look forward so they know they've gotten away with it and will do it again.
Just above the law.
Pot-smoking cancer patient? JAIL
Torturer and War Criminal? BFFE
FFS, focus on what really matters!
May it be stress-free, the poor dear, and may he have 53 more! 
I remember that, too. The cure for this crisis is - everybody go shopping!
"accept" it as normal. You and I are on the same wavelength, zeemake. 
When I think about it for too long, just all the patriotic crap we've all heard growing up sounds like so much bullshit. Land of the free? Land of the brave? Are you fucking kidding me?!
Every time someone talks about how "we were attacked on 9-11, and need to do whatever it takes to be safe," I just think we're a bunch of whiny-ass (insert your chosen word here for "not-brave"
. We're so ready to throw our freedoms away for the illusion/delusion of security that ol' Ben would slap us silly. Of course, this doesn't apply to most people here, it applies a lot more to conservatives.
I read Obama's statement on this as, "But we waz skeerd!"
wealthy and powerful are always the ones left off the hook. To me that looks like a pattern. 
Mr President, "taking responsibility" does not mean saying "Aw, we diddums bad thing." Yes, it does include acknowledging culpability, but it is meaningless without taking some action to rectify the situation, or at least to try to ensure it doesn't happen again. Setting aside, for the nonce, the question of holding accountable the folks "responsible" for our acts, many of the folks we tortured are still being held in durance in our prison of Guantanamo, without charge, without any hope of relief or even a process by which they might find relief. So long as we continue to hold such folks in violation of the human rights for which we claim we are fighting, we perpetuate the very "mistake" you are attempting, in your inimitable way, to "explain." (I won't say "justify" Would you care to "explain" that, Mr President? Or does your message amount to nothing more than "Well, we can be scum. Let's get on with it, then."
-- Mal
There's no mistake -- you're right -- it was all total bullshit.
- It was a performance that Richard Nixon could only envy: ''They are not crooks.''
K&R
Oh, and I'm saving this rant for posterity's sake.......
If that's the logic, I'm going to be a very rich man in a few hours.
Thanks, Obama! 
It has all to do with John Brennan, who was one of the main architects of torture, not to mention father of the drones, and who now was sitting on the hot seat in deep doo-doo for lying about his CIA snooping in DiFi's Senate Intel Committee computers, the Congressional Committee who has oversight over the CIA, the very Committee that had been investigating the torture issue for I don't know how many years and was ready to publish their report this very week, that is until she got it back from the Adm/CIA in a state of great redaction last Fri morning (I believe), whereupon she hit the ceiling because this meant she was going to have to go back and rework the whole thing in order to present it to the public, then, enter PO to the folksy presser, late Fri afternoon.
Now. How's that for a run-on sentence? Did I lose you?
Nathaniel Hawthorne would be so proud.
... anymore either, but if you remember, she was all FOR John Brennan in his confirmation hearing. Did you see any of that? In the matter of one year, John Brennan stabbed her and her committee in the back. John Brennan's CIA spied on it's Congressional oversight committee while the committee was investigating the CIA per the torture allegations. And not only did they just spy on the Sen Intel Committee, they removed info from their computers, and they read their e-mails. Get it? The CIA obstructed justice. And then Fri afternoon late, the President had the presser and swept it all under the rug. Said he had total confidence in John Brennan & the CIA, etc., etc., etc. Go back and read my run-on sentence again. Slowly. 
hoping that there was more to the press conference than what I am hearing. Sadly, it doesn't sound like it.
Some say I'm conspiracy happy but I like to call it "thinking outside the box". I think Pres Obama is an honest person that has the best of the nation at heart. But it is very logical to me that there is a, call it a organization, for the lack of a better word, that out-ranks the President. It's hard to guess how far back it's gone but it seems very straight forward to me that during the lost Bush decade, the NSA/CIA/FBI group was given unlimited funding and carte blanche to spend, build programs, etc. to fight the enemy, without essentially any oversight. There is really no reason to believe that they didn't push or exceed the very loose limits of the Patriot Act and FISA laws. I am not saying they are evil but I believe very powerful. I can see that when Obama took office that the heads of the Security State got together with him and explained how it would not be in the best interest of the country if he tried to mess with the systems they had set up. Go ahead and tell me I'm crazy but that might explain why he hasn't fired Brennan or Gen Clapper.
despicable
despicable
stoop to rampant illegality and feign a threat out of proportion to the actual threat to scare the people shitless so they would acquiesce to having their personal liberties shredded and a national security surveillance state implemented.
" W)e did some things that were wrong. And that's what that ("forthcoming" Senate torture) report reflects. And that's the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report."
I fully expect a watered down report peppered with various excuses as to why we did such horrible things and those horrible things were apparently our only recourse.
doesn't any of this exhaust you as well?
we are a nation of fools.
