The drip, drip of information that continues to leak out is torture. The play on words is not funny.
Over the past few days I ran across a few articles and snippets on the web that remind me that our country is still in the grip of a moral quicksand. We have not faced our own hypocracy. In the poutrage flury over Nico's question to the President from Iran and the subsequent question/answer on the Neda video, I found this question asked and not answered.
~attesting to how "heartbreaking" he found the video; how "anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust" about the violence; and paying homage to "certain international norms of freedom of speech, freedom of expression" -- Helen Thomas, who hadn't been called on, interrupted to ask Obama to reconcile those statements about the Iranian images with his efforts at home to suppress America's own torture photos ("Then why won't you allow the photos --").
The President quickly cut her off with these remarks:
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, Helen. That's a different question. (Laughter.)
Glen Greenwald
How do we keep our balance on this moral morass?
The World is Watching
Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker of Panetta's current role and the path back to the darkness of 'enhanced interrogation'
Panetta, whose conversation with me at C.I.A. headquarters was his first lengthy interview on the topic of abusive interrogations, said that when he took over the agency he "wanted to be damn sure" that there was nobody on the payroll who should be prosecuted for torture or related crimes.
But where did he go wrong? Many of those who still work at CIA are in some way involved in past abusive interrogations. Panetta's second in command, Stephen Kappes, served during the first term of the Bush Administration as a top official in the Directorate of Operations, a group that oversaw the Counterterrorist Center. Then there is Jonathan Fredman, the Chief Counsel to the group that ran the interrogation program. John A. Rizzo, Acting General Counsel, who under the Bush Administration received many of the 'torture memos' is still there until a replacement can be named. The list goes on. They are all lobbying hard to prevent the information from leaking out.
Drip, drip, drip.
Ken Gude, an associate director at the Center for American Progress, who specializes in national-security issues, and who has close ties to the White House, believes that Obama’s instinct, like Panetta’s, was to set up a truth commission of some sort. "I think the political staff walked it back," he says. "They said it would be a distraction." Obama’s political advisers dread any issue that could trigger a culture war and diminish his support among independent voters. They also see little advantage in picking a fight with the C.I.A. But the decision to discourage an accountability process, Gude says, has backfired. The Administration has lost control of the story, as revelations about C.I.A. misdeeds have continued to emerge through lawsuits and the press.
Losing control of this 'story' will in the end cost more than if they had risked the partisan sniping. The information will come out in bits and pieces and taint the current adminstration in the process. Why must we endure this acid drip of information on an open wound. Our President condems leaders of other countries for their vile acts, their response has been; "America has no room to talk, they do not even follow their own moral standard, how can they lecture me?" Their words are dismissed, ignored. But we are the hypocrites that we so often mock.
In January Jose Padilla, the alledged dirty bomber, sued John Yoo for violating his constitutional rights after suffering years of abuse in prison. Last week a judge, Jeffery White ruled that there was enough justification to deny a motion to dismiss by Yoo.
White's decision is the first of its kind: Until now, although other lawsuits have been brought, no government official has faced personal liability for his role in the torture or deaths of detainees. But it probably won't be the last. These cases are just beginning to address the fraught questions of justice that have emerged in the aftermath of the Bush era—what atrocities were committed in the name of national security, who bears responsibility, and how should they be punished? Although neither the Obama administration nor most members of Congress want to deal with these questions directly, they're even more opposed to letting judges (and juries) take a crack at them. Padilla v. Yoo is an example of a surprising development: a conservative judge putting pressure on the Democrats in Washington to create some system of accountability for the Bush administration. It could help spawn more such rulings.
Slate
The slow drip of information will continue to eat away as lawsuits are filed, information is leaked out, detainees are tried in court, or released and their stories told. The dam has developed leaks. The leak becomes a trickle. A trickle becomes a stream. A stream becomes a river, and then the dam will burst.
The river always wins.