DEAD DOG In Trash BEATS Bush Approval of TORTURE Says ABC

image above: implicit message, from ABC News website, Monday April 14, 2008: Story on body of dog 'taken out with the trash', and other info-trivia & human interest/tragedy tales trump story of how a sitting US President signed off on a torture program that violated US and international laws concerning war crimes.

Here's a list of some of the top stories according to ABC -

"Polygamy Custody Battle Set For 416 Kids"
"Two Illinois Babies Switched at Birth"
"Butter Knife in Boy's Head"
"35,000 For An Allergy Free Cat ?"
"Dead Dog Taken Out With Trash"
"Granny Fights Off Armed Robber"
"Can Mint Lead To Alcoholism?"
"Barton's Beach Pix Likely a Publicity Ploy"
"Lively 'Doogie' and Their Doggies"

Turn off your TV. Cancel your cable contract.

There are other reasons for doing this, sure. TV watching is one of the top risk factors for Alzheimers. Television may, quite literally, shrivel your brain.

But if the American mainstream media's concerted effort to bury the Bush/White House creation of a torture program...

... that led to abuses including, according to Senator Lindsey Graham, rape and murder and, according to Seymour Hersh, also the rape of Iraqi children isn't good enough reason for trimming your expenses, starting with whatever paid television service that pads your monthly budget I don't know what is.

Does torture matter ? Why should you care ?

Sure, it's true that US government human rights violations have been going on a long time, especially abroad. Following the "good war" of WW2 the United States proceeded to fight a lot of "dirty" wars and the effort, which was supposed to be about fighting communism, devolved into wars against nationalism and resulted in attempted counter-insurgency tactics, in Vietnam, including mass internment of Vietnamese civilians in concentration camps and "counter-insurgency" via napalm and carpet bombing. Not to mention a huge Vietnam-era torture and assassination operation called the "Phoenix Program".

"Torture and abuse also took many other forms, all of them criminal. Federal government documents obtained by the ACLU through our Freedom of Information Act litigation and reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross documented torture or abuse against U.S.-held detainees, including acts such as: soaking a prisoner’s hand in alcohol and setting it on fire, administering electric shocks, subjecting prisoners to repeated sexual abuse and assault, including sodomy with a bottle, raping a juvenile prisoner, kicking and beating prisoners in the head and groin, putting lit cigarettes inside a prisoner’s ear, force-feeding a baseball to a prisoner, chaining a prisoner hands-to-feet in a fetal position for 24 hours without food or water or access to a toilet, and breaking a prisoner’s shoulders.

But unpunished crimes go even further, to include possible homicides..." [from ACLU Letter calling for an independent prosecutor, linked at bottom of post]

So, isn't this business as usual ?

Well, even if you're morally comfortable with a government that behaves like a mafia you should consider your own personal safety well being:

In the Bush Administration's heady days of working to roll back American civil rights, to about the 13th Century [by trying to bury Habeus Corpus] the sorts of memos flowing from John Yoo's lawyerly pen included claims that a US President, George W. Bush at the time, could order that the testicles of US citizens be crushed, their eyes gouged out, their limbs lopped off or their skin burnt off with acid. As long as those methods were "non-lethal".

So much government secrecy has arisen during the Presidency of George W. Bush that it's very hard to determine, regardless of administration disavowals, whether such patently sadistic, pre-13th Century brutality has been repudiated or not.

What can we do ?

Well, this has been said before but ultimately one of the most direct forms of power we still possess is the power we wield as consumers.

Are you concerned about government claims, on being able to pluck you off the street and torture you with acid, blind you or hack off parts of your body as if that could be some rational approach to fighting terrorism rather than terrorism itself ?

Turn off your TV. Cancel the contract.

[image, right: "boy survives butter knife in head, girl survives screwdriver to head" beats 4-5 million Iraqis internally displaced, 4-5 million made into orphans, God knows how many wounded and killed, tens of thousands of US troops killed, wounded and suffering PTSD with some now unable now to get proper medical care... plus news that George W. Bush signed off on war crimes ?]

Much of what can be seen on TV is junk, but some of what is good can be watched now for free. South Park is free, the best bits of Olberman and Bill Maher tend to pop up soon enough on YouTube and, let's face it :

If you're watching TV while your government is torturing around the world in wretched prisons and secret detention centers, while government lawyers are writing memos on how they want to bring such a debasement of basic human rights to the US and institute a torture regime, in America, that sounds about on par with the torture abuses of Saddam Hussein's Iraq the the Bush Administration used as a pretext for invading Iraq...

If you're watching TV, letting your brain slowly shrivel (because the activity is so passive) while your government tries to fashion legal excuses for the psycho-sexual sadistic impulses of its top executives who apparently get sexually turned on by torture, given their obsession with the practice, then you've got a terminal reality gap.

Last Wednesday, ABC News broke the story of how top members of the Bush White House discussed, in graphic detail, proposed torture methods.

On Friday, ABC broke the news that, in an interview, George W. Bush had admitted he knew of an "approved" of the torture discussions.

Since that convenient emptying of the garbage on a Friday at the end of the weekly news cycle, ABC and all the other major networks have worked overtime to bury the story, the fact that President George W. Bush almost certainly signed off on torture (probably sexual torture too).

So, here's a picture of what we've come to:

[image, right: ABC says "Lively doogie and their doggies" beats presidentially authorized torture.]

It's been openly admitted that a sitting US President committed war crimes. Lawyers in the president's administration have written legal justifications claiming the president can gouge out US citizen's eyes, chop off their limbs, crush their testicles and douse them with acid.

The media finds this unremarkable. Especially the war crimes part.

You, as a reader, have more ways of exerting power in this than you think [also see ACLU letter  you can send or Crooks&Liars/ACLU statement you can send online, in blockquote at bottom of post]. One of those ways is to get on the phone now and cancel your paid TV service - and, tell your provider exactly why.

If you're an Obama supporter you have an incentive to do this as well:

According to US media, Barack Obama's speech, noting that PA voters are "bitter" (and, PA voters have agreed with Obama's point) because the PA economy's long slide has been ignored, was MUCH more important than news that top White House officials discussed graphic details of torture, like the "badda bing club" or that George W. Bush signed off on torture, on war crimes.

It's true. Try a search,on Google News on "Bush, torture, Iraq, White House" and "Obama, bitter, Pennsylvania" and . The first search gets less than 300 results, the second over 3500.

IN other words, mainstream media thinks it's over ten times more media worthy that Barack Obama noted Pennsylvania voters are mad their government has let the PA economy slowly collapse than the fact that a sitting US government openly admits he "approved" of the US government committing what were war crimes.

As a consumer, why should you subsidize this garbage ?

Think about it.

this is the 5th in a four part series [1, 2, 3, 4]  on the Bush Administration and torture. My series covers the structure of the National Security Council process, noting that George W. Bush is head of the NSC and signs off on all NSC decisions (including, presumably, torture) and emphasizes the sheer brutality and pervasiveness of the torture regime created, as ABC news revealed last week, directly out of the White House.

OTHER BLOGS covering the Bush/WH/Torture issue:

Last December, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a letter, which American citizens can send to their representatives in Congress and the Senate, which calls on Congress "to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws." [PDF of letter]. Today, Crooks and Liars has teamed up with the ACLU to push the issue. Digby's Hullaballoo has also been doing extensive and superb coverage of the torture issue.