I'm reading bybee memo while a PBS doc re: the daughter of Nazi Amon Goeth is on tv

[ourbluenation]

The tv has been left on after watching a great documentary about two guys who traced the steps of Marco Polo. After it ended I thought I'd take a look at the memo's that were released today. Goeth's daughter is tortured by what her father did. You might remember him as the character Ralph Fiennes played in Schindlers List.

We placed insects into confinement boxes.

Goeth's daughter just met a survivor of her fathers torture, another woman, she can't look the survivor in the eye. She's sobbing.

We waterboarded.

How do people do these unspeakable things to their fellow human beings...terrorists, nazi's, torturers. And this memo - written like it's about some benign legal thing. Like a rental agreement.

Rule of law. Got it.

I could just hurl.

But first I have to stop this weeping.

[leftstreet]

1. Well

No words here.

Other than K&R

[sabrina 1]

2. There is a PBS documentary of a meeting between

Goeth's daugher Monika and one of his victims, a young, jewish girl, Helen, he enslaved in his home. It is called 'Inheritance':

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/inheritance/index.html

Monika begins Inheritance with a powerfully understated observation that few can make with equal authority: "Every father in a war should think about his children." Born in 1945 and only a year old when Polish authorities hanged Goeth, Monika never knew her father and had little curiosity about him.

And every elected official in this country should think about their citizens and future generations before engaging in the kind of monstrous behavior perpetrated by the Bush administration.

How do people do these unspeakable things to their fellow human beings...terrorists, nazi's, torturers.

I don't know if that question will ever be answered. People who can torture and murder others so easily are obviously 'different'. Wars seem to attract them to positions of power, or maybe their governments deliberately use these obviously very sick people when they 'need' them. I wonder how many of them would actually do these awful things if they were not sanctioned by their governments? If it was not in the name of 'patriotism'? The only reason I can think of is that there really is such a thing as pure evil.

Those memos released by Holder require this country to prosecute the perpetrators.

History will not be very forgiving of us for what these people did unless it is clearly demonstrated through prosecution of the perpetrators that we mean it when we say 'we do not torture', as both Bush and Obama have now said in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.

[ourbluenation]

3. that's the very show I had on the tv. It was tough to watch. n/t