Chilling

So Porter Goss enters the fray. His NYT piece is chilling, chilling on two fronts. First, he is correct, the elected officials in congress who were aware of the "High Value Terrorist Program" and who didn't speak out at the time (what they were doing were cringing, looking for political cover, not surprising, but just one brave soul?) should be swept right along with the rest of this to some form of justice. I hope they are all defeated and I will examine that situation upon my next vote. My Congressman wasn't elected at that time, but both my senators may be part of it. Especially, one who I like, Richard Lugar, he is on Foreign Relations. If he knew and didn't speak out or agreed with it, he has lost my vote. This is too telling a situation.

Thats is chill number 1.

Number 2 is the idea that if the CIA can't do this stuff, if they can't keep everything secret, and that the distinction between the CIA "professionalism" and the brutality (opposite of professional is amatuer) of the terrorists...he mentions the dull knife beheadings (I infer that if the CIA were beheading people we would do it more professionally, does that mean with a gulliotine or perhpas we would refrain from such acts). Mr. Goss doesn't make that clear.

Once again, chill number 2, the arguments of a police state...not a free democracy.

One other note, what about all those intelligence professionals who have now come out and questioned this entire foray into acting like terrorists only professionally? I guess they are just political grandstanders and they don't know anything.

Morality isn't for the weak

This article in the NYT Review of Books is something for all of us to be ashamed of. The US public should demand an investigation and prosecutions of those responsible.

Don't shrug your shoulders, read it

An excerpt:

Two and a half months after Abu Zubaydah woke up strapped to a bed in the white room, the interrogation resumed "with more intensity than before":

Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. Measuring perhaps in area [3 1/2 by 2 1/2 feet by 6 1/2 feet high]. The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 1/2 feet] in height. I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck, they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room. I was also repeatedly slapped in the face....

I was then put into the tall black box for what I think was about one and a half to two hours. The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.

This is real, not some fantasy entertainmment from the Fox Network.