Mountain Man: I bet you can squeal like a pig. Weeeeeeee!
Bobby: Weee!
-
Mountain Man: What do you want to do now?
Toothless Man: [grinning] He’s got a real pretty mouth on him, don’t he?
Mountain Man: Ain’t that the truth.
Toothless Man: [to Ed] You gonna do some prayin’ for me, boy. And you better pray real good.

If they crank up the noise machine, we crank up the noise about the Fairness Doctrine. They’ll spend more time burning energy on the unfairness of the doctrine (even though it was successful and worked for years), sucking up time and oxygen they’d otherwise burn on the special prosecutor.

I’m sure you can think of other hot button issues like this one; we simply keep them on their heels so that the investigation and prosecution are not done in the court of Fox’s public opinion.

JimHarrison (25) — the petition is the beginning to an answer; the actions taken under the authority of the last administration’s flexible legal guidance is morally repugnant, putting our entire nation at risk and sustaining global bad will against us because we have lost any pretension to moral authority. The investigation and any prosecution must be outside of the political machinations of Congress or even the White House, deserving a special prosecutor who will act independently to determine the full extent of any criminal behavior and report it to the public. In this manner the substantive minority of Americans who authoritarians by nature and are okay with abuse will have to deal not with the president’s opinion on torture or Congress’ opinion on torture, but that of a majority of the public who are still sane and understand the difference between right, wrong, moral, immoral, legal and criminal.

DrZen (13), your comment regarding Obama wishing to use these illegal methods requires more than your personal assertion; what evidence do you have to back that up? I just don’t see it; what I do see is a White House which still does not have an Attorney General, and is subject to veiled threats by dark players within the intelligence and other communities who do not wish the truth to come out. What I also see is that it was necessary to bargain the release of these documents — a promise not to prosecute those acting in good faith in exchange for the full documents. What exactly was the threat to the White House, or for that matter, to us, if that promise not to prosecute was not provided?

We need the truth, all of it; the truth will set us free. In the absence of any laws to provide an independent prosecutor, a special prosecutor is needed to find the truth and report it, and punish criminal acts as they are uncovered. Without this, we are little better than accessories, bearing witness without taking affirmative action to reveal the truth.

Perhaps Zubaydah’s morbid fear was based on an allergic reaction, or experience with a toxic caterpillar as a child. Note that they mention he might have an allergy to the insect…but they don’t know for “certain” and so they are given a thumbs up. In other words…don’t bother to check. Claim ignorance on everything. “Plausible deniability” of the consequences seems to be what they are aiming for.

Yet stress is widely known to reduce immune system response and to slow healing rates.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/me…..11;4115-1/

That the physicians and psychologists would have allowed this to continue is criminal. And that they can bald-facedly assert that they didn’t know about any of this actually harming him PHYSICALLY and PSYCHOLOGICALLY is as well.

Many comparisons are made with SERE. But in SERE the participants know it is training. In addition they are selected in advance to be individuals that perform well under stressful situations and continue to score high on cognitive tests when under pressure. They are never allowed to continue in the training if they show psychological collapse or become physically injured. The evidence was that Zubaydah, who was not a pre-selected SEAL, Green Beret, or Army Ranger candidate…was seriously injured and had pre-existant psychological issues. Those would have been exacerbated by the tortures they put him under.

To assert that the creme de la creme of our militaries were able to withstand some of these acts (while knowing it was a training exercise of limited duration) without “permanent psychological damage” ignores that Zubaydah was not an elite, was unwilling, did not know when the torture would end (if it ever would), was seriously injured, and was already mentally fragile.