Month: January 2008

Torture Tape Update

A helpful official time-line from Scott Horton. Money quote:

The Bush Administration plan is simple: let’s think of this as a movie – Abu Ghraib, The Sequel. Instead of offering up a group of young grunts for the sacrifice, this time it will be a retired senior management figure at the CIA and some of his subordinates. And this sacrifice will, in the White House’s view, divert attention from the real source of both scandals, which is high in the upper reaches of the Executive Branch. Inside the White House, in fact.

Meanwhile, Back On Planet Earth

Goldbergmap

One antidote to campaign insanity is a brief purview of what on earth has just happened to the Middle East and what that might mean for the future. If that sounds worthy, you’re wrong. Jeffrey Goldberg’s new essay is one of those big, blue-sky think-pieces whose black humor actually made me laugh out loud at several points. Here’s a flavor from a Kurdish prison in Iraq:

The interrogator asked me if I had any questions for Omar. Yes, I said: Have you been tortured in this prison?

“No,” he said.

“What would you do if you were to be released from prison right now?”

“I would get a knife and cut your head off,” he said.

At this, the interrogator smacked Omar across the face with the Koran.

Omar yelped in shock. The interrogator said: “Don’t talk that way to a guest!”

Reality is likely to make one no more pessimistic than optimistic. The region defies both responses, I think. There’s a great NPod anecdote too.

Snip. Snip.

Michael Lewis gets a vasectomy and spares us no detail:

The nurse returned, wearing the same blank expression but now waving a new disposable razor, which struck me as a cheap tool for a dear job. She worked quickly and joylessly, like a Marine barber. I wanted to be helpful but there wasn’t much to do, except to hope she didn’t flinch. In the vast silence, insane thoughts flitted across my disturbed mind.

Is it possible to shave something off by mistake?

Jesus Christ … What if I get an erection?

Would it be my last?

Maybe I should pop one off, just for old time’s sake.

That Clinton MLK Gaffe

This sums it up pretty succinctly:

The analogy Clinton was implying was obvious: I’m Lyndon Johnson, unlovely doer; he’s Martin Luther King, charismatic dreamer. Vote for me if you want results.

Forty years ago, that arrangement — white president enacting African-American dreams — was necessary because discrimination denied blacks their own autonomous political options. Today, that arrangement — white liberals acting as tribune for blacks in return for their political loyalty — is a demeaning anachronism. That’s what the fury at Hillary was all about, although no one was willing to say so explicitly.