Why did Fitzgerald very quickly ensure that he could investigate obstruction of justice and perjury in his inquiry? Maybe one of his first witnesses provided an authoritative, over-arching story that was immediately contradicted by subsequent witnesses. Maybe contradictions began appearing almost immediately. Here endeth today’s piece of informed speculation.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “[O]ddly enough, the scriptures seem to be telling us, this is part of God’s gift to us. God intentionally chooses to be mysterious – for our sakes. If God were to be fully and completely revealed, if we were to see God beyond all hiddenness and mystery, our freedom would disappear. We would be forced to believe, forced to be obedient. No, this hiddenness is God’s blessing.
Certitude is a spiritual danger. If we claim to know God’s ways without question, we limit God to the shape of our own minds. As St. Augustine put it 1700 years ago, ‘If you think you understand, it isn’t God.’
One of the troubling currents of our time is the tendency of religious people to speak as if we have seen God’s face. A lot of what is being said in religious circles can suggest that some people claim to have God figured out, under control, in their pockets.” – The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, Dean of Washington National Cathedral. Without doubt, faith is not faith.
SONG FOR THE DAY: An unorthodox recording of “Oh, Holy Night.” No, it’s not Cartman.
MENSTRUAL BLOOD AND TARANTO: I think we have a new low in defenses of government-sanctioned abuse of prisoners. On Friday, WSJ blogger, James Taranto, tried to dismiss my ethical concerns about U.S. interrogators in Gitmo smearing fake menstrual blood on the faces of Muslim detainees. Taranto regards such techniques as “excellent.” My concern, along with that of many others within the military and CIA, is that this technique deliberately targets Islamic religious taboos, shocks the conscience and undermines the war by making us as religiously intolerant as the enemy. This story explains the rationale behind the technique:
Islam forbids physical contact with women other than a man’s wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean. “The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to [the interrogator who smeared fake menstrual blood on his face], he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength,” says the draft, stamped “Secret.”
Taranto endorses the use of a detainee’s religious faith against them, but then appears to dismiss that angle as unimportant. The only people who would find this tactic abhorrent, he argues, are
adult men who remain strangers to the female body. Among them are homosexual men who identify as gay at a young age and thus do not have heterosexual experiences. Also among them are single men from sexually repressed cultures, such as fundamentalist Islamic ones, in which contact between the sexes is rigidly policed.
So my own concern with religious abuse is dismissed as a function of my sexual orientation! I have to say that of all the sad attempts to dismiss or belittle abuse and torture of detainees, this has to be about the lowest and lamest yet. For the record, my objection is because we should not transform this war into one against all Islam. Abusing Islam in military prisons or on the battlefield is both immoral and deeply counter-productive. Using people’s religious conscience against them is a mark of totalitarian countries, not one where religious freedom is paramount. Taranto’s exclusion of gay men from the categories of adulthood and masculinity is also, shall we say, revealing. Has the pro-torture right really been reduced to this kind of irrelevant bigotry? Is this all they have left?
The Dish 