Breaking A Few Eggs

Charles Pierce here, on police unions following the usual right-wing M.O.: screaming loudly enough to block all other sound. He compares police PR to that of interested parties during two other "obvious public policy disasters," supposedly powerful enough to present the country with "Teachable Moments."

Example One: the NRA's Sandy Hook massacre response, so successful by this week's two-year anniversary date, "there are now places where you can carry your AR-15 to the pharmacy to pick up your anti-anxiety meds."

Example Two: CIA actions and public willingness to accept torture. Of this, Pierce writes, "What we did was justified, but don't tell us about it because it will disturb the Exceptionalist diorama that we have built in our heads."

Which leads Pierce to conclude—

If the public has demonstrated its willingness to eat the omelettes without learning how the eggs were broken on these two obvious public policy disasters -- and that is being incredibly kind to their architects -- why wouldn't they Support Their Local Police in these times of trouble and woe and obvious danger? The unions have every right to feel confident that the public, eventually, and not necessarily slowly, will come around to their way of thinking. One of the chief ingredients that are crucial to the narcotic concoction that is American Exceptionalism is the idea that everything the country does is for the purposes of moving it toward...something, some hazy Utopia in The West where all will be forgiven and all will be justified by their faith in the fable alone. Therefore, any of the episodes of the country's basic brutality-- slavery, the genocide of the Indians, Jim Crow, the bloody reaction to the Civil Rights movement, the killing of a 12-year old boy by a cop who wouldn't have passed the competency test to be a crossing guard -- are seen as hurdles to be overcome on the golden road to some vague land of redemption, and not as demonstrations of a fundamental moral deficiency in the entire experiment that desperately needs to be examined before the country can move forward at all. We love the Teachable Moments as long as we don't have to learn anything from them.

Second Trumps First

Free Speech—in the intimidating form of a T-shirt—outranked by the usual.

An impressive response—

"I was taught that justice is a right that every American should have. Also justice should be the goal of every American. I think that's what makes this country. To me, justice means the innocent should be found innocent. It means that those who do wrong should get their due punishment. Ultimately, it means fair treatment. So a call for justice shouldn't offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn't warrant an apology."

The common element in the recent killings attracting notice: there's no "drop the gun" warning by the police—who also are not necessarily bothering to determine if a suspect is even armed, or a child. These police incidents are matters of shoot to kill, and later... well, questions can always be shut up later.

Though it is impressive how police are the soul of discretion when facing armed right-wing whites.

Tag Team

Of course "Meet the Press" would be given over to Cheney on Sunday, but Steve M noticed another public appearance that day—

THIS IS HOW GEORGE W. BUSH SENT THE MESSAGE "9/11 MEANT TORTURE WAS OK"...

Bush "just happened to show up" at the 9-11 Museum in NYC on Sunday.

Oh yeah -- it's so obvious that it wasn't a photo op. (Here's a local news slideshow of the visit.)

And why does Bush always talk about 9/11 as his presidency's defining moment? Why, for Bush, is 9/11 all about him? Why is it all about how 9/11 shaped his write-up in the history books?

...

...the museum opened in May; the memorial on the grounds opened in 2011. What took him so long? It's not as if he has a job.

No, he wanted to wait until now because of the torture report. Oh, and because he hopes it will occur to some people that his new book about his father would make an excellent Christmas gift. Oh, and Jeb's clearly running for president -- gotta polish up the Bush brand on his behalf.

We Resume Our Regular Programming

Pierce on this Congress' last favor to the oligarchs.

Barry Friedman, in comments—

Clearly the GOP listened to the voters: Last month, throughout the land, we heard that it was time that arbitrage and derivative specialists were released from the shackles of their private hell, that truckers had it too easy, and that there wasn't enough money in politics.

Why, if Democrats listened to their constituents--wait, that's class warfare.

Now we can get back to anticipating the next media cycle. Though we already know who will be in charge of history cleansing.

Brainchildren

Tom Sullivan on details emerging about our torture regime, including how Camp Bucca prison in Iraq  became the incubator for ISIS.

So much of the post-9-11 operation so ludicrous, "it would be funny except for the torture part"...

Pro-torture's Exhibit A.

Too bad for Jose Padilla that he wasn't the only one to take seriously The Journal of Irreproducible Results.

Expect No Less Than Impunity

Steve M. compares "CIA Fifth Columnists" to "defiant, petulant cops."

Will Bunch on the likeness of torture to unaccountable police killings.

Not New News

Some specifics are new, thanks to the newly public portion (small) of a report (voluminous). But among those details that are new, the most lurid and sexually sadistic ones merely confirm what was clear all along.

That's to say, what would be clear, if we bothered remembering... We've already seen such evidence as the pictures from Abu Ghraib, which showed sexual humiliation of prisoners was all in a days' work for guards.

The same goes for "rendition" routines, as described years ago by Jane Mayer.

The current report—and CIA response—are in a familiar mode. And newly released details of "'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding without medical necessity"—complete with "lunch tray" menu—those details are unsurprising after Mayer's 2007 reporting. Her work revealed procedures of "takeouts": the snatching of targets for transport to "black site" prisons—

... A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the "takeout" of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.

A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to "sodomy." He said, "It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone's sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation." The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, "because it's demoralizing." The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.'s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review.

Back in 2007, Mayer's reporting exposed how post-Korean War torture resistance training of military personnel ("SERE") was reverse-engineered after 9-11—

The SERE program was designed strictly for defense against torture regimes, but the C.I.A.'s new team used its expertise to help interrogators inflict abuse. "They were very arrogant, and pro-torture," a European official knowledgeable about the program said. "They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses. It takes a psychologist trained in this to understand these rupturing experiences."

Just for the record, here's Charles Pierce on CIA torture report release day, in three parts: "What It Says"; "What It Means"; "What Will Happen Now."

Action on "What Will Happen" was immediate and decisive. Throughout the Liberal Media, the pundits' verdict was duly endorsed: A Partisan Report.