The interesting thing to me about the torture memos Obama decided to publish was the fact that, to readers of Daily Kos (as well as probably numerous other publications actually interested in true facts), this was not news at all, since it had already been revealed and discussed at great length for years.
The interesting thing to me about the torture memos Obama decided to publish was the fact that, to readers of Daily Kos (as well as probably numerous other publications actually interested in true facts), this was not news at all, since it had already been revealed and discussed at great length for years in such publications; and the nub of the interest, again to me, is some kind of insight (somewhere) into what it means to publish true facts in various media.
It seems to me that, among the (I imagine) extraordinary number of extraordinary inferences one could draw from this, are
(A) the inference that the people who were part of the face-to-face controversy within the government about whether to publish these things did not think that the fact that the information had long been out there and thoroughly discussed in the above-mentioned publications (about which they must have known) was particularly meaningful;
(B) the inference that that history of publication of these true facts (which history "The Villagers" did not think meaningful) nevertheless likely played a part in creating the pressure necessary to support the decision to publish; and
(C) the inference that there are numerous other true facts (some of which has been published in the above-mentioned publications and NOT in the corporate or government media, but not as thoroughly as the information in the torture memos) which it is much easier for officials in the government and in the corporate and/or government media NOT to acknowledge -- all of which un-acknowledged information continues to act as a poison, infection or cancer eating away at the body politic (until such time as fortune may allow the information to see the light of day.
One, for example, has read and received emailed photos to the effect that the famous photos of Abu Ghraib are just the tip of the iceberg, both in volume and in moral opprobriousness. Keeping coming back to the same types of question (having to do with controlling information to the detriment of the population): Why is it so easy to denigrate good information which "The Villagers" refuse to cognize (but which stand nevertheless un-rebutted by reason) by simply smearing it with such phrases as "conspiracy theory" or "tinfoil hat"?
Ever since Rwanda and Bosnia/Kosovo (where it was so clear that controlled media could INSTANTLY create Civil War and mass butchery), it has been clear to me that control of the media (and therefore the flow of meaningful information) is the major evil of our time.
I think Obama both understands this and has been threatened (I think directly and intentionally) by what it could do to him; and that this might well explain some of the weird things he has done ever since he began to look like he would actually win [such as (a) his vote on the FISA Bill, (b) his support of the Bush Administration's positions on unconstitutional wire-tapping and detentions, and (c) his Justice Department's weird double standard in aggressively attacking the corrupt prosecution of Ted Stevens, and letting him go even though he was likely guilty, while intentionally ignoring the much worse abuses inherent in the Siegelman prosecution and in the previous administration's politicization of so many other patently frivolous prosecutions against Democrats directly intended to gain Republican electoral advantage, not to mention the previous administration's undercutting of meritorious prosecutions of Republicans].
The evils of these things I think are obvious to anyone who has read the plenty about them on Kos and numerous other publications; and I have no doubt that that group of readers includes Obama; and what other conclusion can be drawn from that besides the conclusion that Obama's failure to even discuss these problems is the product of coercion, maybe even illegal and/or violent coercion?
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: To add to the list of inexplicable decisions Obama has made about which he has said nothing: Putting in charge of economic/bank/credit recovery (a) Clinton's Treasury Secretary who supported Graham/Leach/Bliley which is largely responsible for this mess, and who even recently has received millions from players whose interests may not be exactly the same as the majority of the population or the economy as a whole; and (b) the Head of the New York Fed at the time the un-checked abuses were going on, who said and did nothing about them (although it was probably in his power and/or authority); and then absolutely ignoring the opinions of most of the recognized economists, Nobel prizewinners, others who have been right about this stuff for a long time (e.g., Stiglitz, Krugman, Roubini, Dean Baker, even Peter Morici and Martin Feldstein), who are universally, repeatedly and publicly (even in the corporate media) saying that what Summers and Geithner are doing is too small, lacks transparency, and is following the Japanese model into the ditch instead of the Swedish model which actually succeeded. The thing about Obama is that he is too smart and knowledgeable to hide behind ignorance or stupidity; and so the tipoff is when either the things he says don't make any sense or he fails to speak on an issue (such as the raging controversy over what Summers and Geithner are doing or not doing) about which it cannot be argued that he should not speak.