On the Contrary

Yesterday we had some very interesting testimony on torture when a former FBI interrogator who actually participated and led the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that they got good intelligence from Zubaydah until the CIA showed up with their harsh techniques and amateur hour contractors, and shut him down.  Even more interesting was Senator Lindsey Graham’s attempt to impugn the witness when he asked about the claims by a former CIA agent that within two minutes of water boarding Zubaydah, he was telling them everything he knew.  As the ex-FBI agent pointed out, the trouble with this was that the former CIA agent had retracted his statement after admitting he had never been part of any of the interrogations.

What should disturb everyone is that Lindsey Graham apparently didn’t know this and his only intent in the hearings was to protect the past administration instead of getting at the truth.  Anyone who has read Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side already knows all this, but apparently the people who run our government don’t have time to get the facts.  What is sad about these Republicans is that they so want to believe torture works and therefore justified, they can’t look at reality.  Ex-Vice President Cheney has been beating the drum of effectiveness and claiming there are memos that show how well it worked, which Republican ditto-heads have been repeating every chance they get.  There are memos alright, self-serving and mostly inaccurate memos written by the CIA to justify their program and satisfy their bosses, but there is very little truth in them, which might I add, will come out if the memos do.

Even more interesting was the testimony of Former State Department counselor Phillip Zelikbow.  Mr. Zelikbow, a card carrying member of the Republican Party, was an advisor to Condi Rice in the Bush administration and he wrote a memo, yet to be disclosed because we aren’t adult enough to read it, laying out the legal errors in Yoo’s and others finding for the legality of torture.  He tale is one of how his views were suppressed and the memo ordered to be destroyed.  Oh no, they weren’t shopping for the legal justification to do the illegal.  Just like weapons of mass destruction, they weren’t looking for any other answers and the truth is what they already knew, not the reality swirling around them.

So as the truth is finally getting out, the President Obama took a giant step back yesterday when he announce that he was bowing to the pressure of the military to not release the photos of torture at other prisons besides Abu Ghraib.  He had the audacity to say that those responsible for this treatment of prisoners had been dealt with.  Now I can understand the argument that more photos could inflame Muslim hate and result in further attacks on U.S. forces, but to say that the guilty have already been punished is a giant lie and fails to examine how this pervasive abuse of prisoners was systemic, not a few bad apples.  Sooner or later we have to examine our moral failure as a society, and the leaders who took down this road, instead of continuing to blame this on a few scapegoats.  I am deeply disappointed that President Obama has failed in his role as our leader and took the easy way out.  Hopefully the courts will prevail and the bandage covering this wound will be ripped off so it can be treated and healed, not left festering.

Sadly it just isn’t on the torture front that President Obama is falling down.  His failure to confront the banks is leading to a continuing and festering wound in our economy.  The idea that we could just restore the banks to their past “health” is a recipe for disaster which is now becoming quite obvious.  As more and more people are losing their jobs, and shortly thereafter, their homes, President Obama looked the other way as the bill to allow Judges in bankruptcy court to modify loans went down to defeat.  This was a failure of moral courage to fight the banking industry not only by President Obama, but by the 12 Democrats who also voted against the bill.  You know how the Republicans voted.  Then there is the watered down bill of rights for credit card holders.  Ask your self why there is a waiting period of 9 months before even these water down protections go into effect and it tells you everything you need to know about the continued arrogance of the banking industry and their control of Congress.  The fact that this Congress, including 27 Senate Democrats, couldn’t tighten these regulations, but could add an amendment to allow visitors to national parks to openly carry loaded firearms tells you who these morons represent and it is not us.

I have written before that until the banking industry feels the pain that the rest of us are suffering because of their incompetence and unethical behavior, nothing will change. Right now they are just trying to restore where they were before the fall and at our expense.  If nothing changes, then we are just bailing water on the Titanic. Well it is obvious that nothing is changing and nothing is getting fixed.

Whether it is facing up to our immoral and unethical behavior on torture by treating we the people as adults and letting us know what really happened through full and open disclosure, or by realizing that bankers and their mentality of Master of the Universe got us where we are today and they need to be brought down, President Obama seems to be failing badly.  What we wanted was leadership and moral integrity driven by what should be, not what is politically expedient.  What we are getting is compromise to nowhere.  Just think about health care reform.  Why is the single payer system off the table?  What about gays in the military?  Are we just seeing Republican-lite?  This is not change.  It is a milder form of a trip to nowhere.

Mr. President.  It is time to take charge.  We need a full investigation by an independent prosecutor on torture we we need to release all the memos and pictures.  We need to break-up the banks so they are not too big to fail, or some rich they can buy their way with Congress.  We need real relief in this country and one of the ways to make the banks feel the pain is real bankruptcy/mortagage/credit card reform.  And you better than anyone should understand that making gays second class citizens by your neglect is just as bad as being part of their persecution.  Can we get on with what you promised?