Tag: Keith Olberman

h/t John Amato, Crooks & Liars

During his confirmation hearings to replace Leon Panetta as CIA director, General David Petraeus, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, told Senate Intelligence Committee that:

(Sen. Mark) Udall was clearly trying to get Petraeus to reiterate his opposition to torture – he read back several quotes Petraeus himself had given saying such techniques are immoral and when they’ve been used, they’ve “turned around and bitten us in the backside.” Udall asked, “do you see torture any differently in a CIA context than in a military context?”

But Petraeus instead pivoted to the TV-ready “ticking time bomb” scenario, and said torture might be justified if you have a “special situation” where an “individual in your hands who you know has placed a nuclear device under the Empire State Building. It goes off in 30 minutes, he has the codes to turn it off.” Then he urged legislators to consider crafting such an exception into the law:

I think that is a special case. I think there should be discussion of that by policymakers and by Congress. I think that it should be thought out ahead of time. There should be a process if indeed there is going to be something more than, again, the normal techniques employed in such a case. And again, I — I would certainly submit that that would be very helpful if that kind of debate could be held and if some resolution could be made as to what should be done in a case like that so that it is worked out ahead of time, rather than under an extraordinary sense of pressure in such a situation.

Torture is not a value that Americans have died for and it is beyond being stupid, it is illegal.

This may be a bit of an enigmatic title, so I shall explain posthaste.  I have quit listening to and watching the extreme right wing talkers.  I have monitored them for years, so you do not have to do so, but I finally just had enough, and could not take it any more.  There are a couple of reasons, but the largest one was that I was stupider after listening than before.

Ma always told me that after I read a book, listened to a radio program, or watched a TeeVee show to ask myself one question:  what have I learnt?  In the case of the radical, hate filled, ultra right wing talkers, NOTHING lately.  I learnt some time ago who they were and what they were preaching, and it is nothing but hatred and fear.  I guess that I was just listening more recently for how they would do it.

That is enough.  I am gone.  I quit listening to the drug addled and deafened Limbaugh some months ago because all he does is bellow.  More to follow.