Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

For only the second time (the first being after the Boumediene decision) I’m not going with the usual title of my wrapup for the week.  President Obama ordered the closing of Guantánamo and CIA black sites, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice gave a couple of blockbuster interviews detailing some of the abuses the NSA (and as Dick Durata noted in the comments at Avedon’s place, the silence was deafening), and Sheldon Whitehouse looks poised to start looking at some of the abuses of the Bush years.  Here’s hoping it’s the start of a trend.

Heh indeedy.

Republicans’ seeming constitutional requirement to define themselves explicitly in terms of opposing whatever it is Democrats want now has them looking cruel (John Cornyn), callous (John Boehner) or hypocritical (Saxby Chambliss).  Guys: You’ve gotten walloped at the ballot box two cycles in a row.  A couple more results like that and there won’t be enough land left to slide, know what I mean?  Step away from the crazy.

Memo to Dennis Blair:  Waterboarding is torture.  President Obama, does this gentleman represent your views?

Christopher Hitchens:

“I know something for a sure thing,” Hitchens continued. “The demand for torture and other methods I would describe as illegal, the demand to go outside the Geneva conventions — all this came from below. What everyone wants to say is this came from a small clique around the vice-president. It’s not educational. It doesn’t enlighten anyone to behave as if that were true. This is our society wanting and demanding harsh measures.” Therefore, he went on, the demand for prosecution or other measures against Bush administration officials would likewise have to come from below, via the grassroots. “Otherwise it’s just vengeful, I suppose, and partisan.”

digby:

From the perspective of the village that’s quite true: the mechanism for this demand was that villagers like Jonathan Alter and Thomas Friedman —- who believe they are perfectly in tune with salt of the earth Real Americans —- were screaming at the top of their lungs for the leadership to “get crazy” and torture suspects (who turned out to be completely innocent.)

More digby:

[W]hen Hitchens talks about coming from below he really means the media elite who “represent” Real Americans. They don’t listen to the polls, they listen to their guts, which are a far more reliable gauge of what the grassroots really believe than polls or elections.

It is with no small amount of shame that I write when I first heard Dick Cheney’s “We also have to work sort of the dark side” comment I felt a sort of grim satisfaction about it.  I wanted the homicidal maniacs that murdered thousands of my countrymen to pay, and the idea that we had our own people going after them on their grounds and their terms was fine with me.  My blood was up and Cheney’s proposition sounded good.

Two points:  First, that was the immediate aftermath and it was only a vague sense of “make them pay.”  Once the initial shock began to subside I began to think differently, and here I’m talking about a matter of weeks or maybe a month.  Hitchens’ “demand for torture and other methods” was in my case an inchoate desire for vengeance, not a call for specific methods.  (And when exactly did the Bush administration ever respond to pressure from below, you fatuous boob?)  Furthermore, that sense of frenzy largely subsided for much of the general population fairly quickly.  It’s not as if there was a persistent, ongoing demand for torture of detainees.  For Hitchens to claim that is simply not serious.

Second, even if that claim is completely true: Society demanding something doesn’t require leaders to do it. They should be expected to know the law and follow it, even if the public is demanding otherwise. And they get prosecuted if they don’t. That’s the downside to the position. It’s not all limos and banquets.

UNPACKING JANE:  On page 129 Mayer describes how Jeppesen International Trip Planning - still proudly offering “personalized and professional trip planning,” by the way - was the preferred provider of torture travel:

While Aero operated the CIA’s fleet of planes, a little-known subsidiary of the huge blue-chip aerospace company Boeing, called Jeppesen International Trip Planning, secretly handled the computerized flight plans for many of the rendition trips.  According to Sean Belcher, a former employee of the company in San Jose, California, while the Bush Administration was insisting that it did not render suspects to be tortured, executives at Jeppesen had no such illusions.  He described a meeting in which one of his bosses, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said, “We do all of the extraordinary-rendition flights - you know, the torture flights.  Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.”  Overby and other Jeppesen executives declined to comment.  Boeing officials also declined to comment on the company’s role as the CIA’s travel agent.  But the company evidently felt that it accrued enough benefits from the business to offset the distasteful aspects.  Belcher, the former Jeppesen employee, recalled his boss, Overby, saying of rendition, “It certainly pays well.  They” - the CIA - “spare no expense.  They have absolutely no worry about costs.  What they have to get done, they get done.”

The subsequent account by a victim of the incongruous-bordering-on-surreal luxurious accommodations offered to a man on his way to be tortured has to be read to be believed.