Thursday, May 28, 2009
Just in time for summer movies, but most likely headed straight for DVD:
Dick Cheney stars in Land of the Lost Arguments.
Also wearing loincloth in starring roles: Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, with not so much as a cameo by George W. Bush. He’s not even mentioned in the credits.
This Land of the Lost is advertised as a horror tale. It is so overacted and contrived, however, that audiences asked to suspend belief are simply guffawing.
A signature of the movie is the once-fierce dinosaur Ignoramus, a creature that will fall for anything. No suspense: In the movie, it falls.
Cast into the wilderness with their clubs and politically worn appeals, the shrinking band of ideologues seeks to stir us with these warnings that once sold to target audiences:
* Waterboarding works (if we did it).
Hard to keep track: Did we torture, or didn’t we? W. said we didn’t. Cheney is saying we did, and we liked it! And the terrorists sang like canaries, only they didn’t.
FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified to the Senate that he was having success interviewing Abu Zubaydah with traditional methods when CIA officers intervened and, against his protest, began “enhanced” means that, Soufan said, caused Zubaydah to clam up.
A CIA interrogator interviewed by ABC News disagreed, saying Zubaydah gave important information. However, former FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair he doubts the information prevented any attacks.
As to the veracity of admissions given under torture: One-time Navy Seal and ex-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura told Larry King, “You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
* Our methods saved thousands of lives.
See Mueller’s comments above. Also ask Matthew Alexander, Air Force interrogator, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald did.
Alexander performed 300 military interrogations in Iraq. He said, “We heard day in and day out from foreign fighters that the No. 1 reason they came to Iraq to fight was the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
“When they saw pictures of other Muslims being tortured and abused by U.S. soldiers, it was enough to convince them to travel to Iraq and give up their lives for a noble cause,” Alexander said.
* What we did to them is peanuts compared to beheadings they’ve done to others.
“Them” is the operative word, there.
A declassified report obtained by the ACLU about Abu Ghraib quoted a former military police commander on the scene: “It became obvious to me that the majority of our detainees were detained as the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were swept up by coalition forces as peripheral bystanders during raids.”
He said that perhaps one in 10 of the security detainees “were of any particular intelligence value.”
Yeah, but we really stuck it to “them.”
* Closing Gitmo will put terrorists in our backyards.
You mean like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, World Trade Center bomber Zacarias Moussaoui, shoe bomber Richard Reid — each seen roaming our streets, er, confined for life, in Colorado’s federal Supermax unit?
Of all bogus arguments . . .
The same people who told us we could invade two countries, occupy them, rebuild them, inoculate them with democracy and remake the Middle East are saying we can’t safely incarcerate a few hundred men with names we can’t pronounce.
Sapped of credibility though they are, the Land of the Lost Arguments warriors still plug on. But this is a new day. Thanks to their excesses, Americans once again are reminded why we have international law. It’s not just so that sissified foreign interlopers can call ticky-tacky fouls.
In the last scene of Land of the Lost Arguments, Sean Hannity finally backs up his Fox News brag that he can withstand waterboarding. Unable to shut his mouth, he swallows his own words and drowns.
John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
Comments
By Mark
May 28, 2009 6:20 PM | Link to this
John I drink the Kool-Aid Youg you really need to get your resume done.John I know you are trying to get readers but bashing our country is not the way to do it.
By Bert Hernandez
May 28, 2009 1:14 PM | Link to this
Mr. Young must be reading from leftist blogs to believe we prosecuted Japanese for waterboarding. Waterboarding was just incidental to the crimes they were prosecuted for,not the cause of the charges against them. I hate it when lies get printed because then they become authoritative and become a source unto themselves. By the way, I was waterboarded twice while I was in the Army. Doesn't seem to me, or to my family to have done me any harm. And I don't seem to have gone off an killed people and bombed innocents because I was waterboarded. And contrary to the statements on the Left -- waterboarding was performed on only three individuals. And I do seem to recall that the bombing of the embassies in Africa, the bombing of the Cole, 9/11 and all started before we ever considered waterboarding anyone other than our own troops to teach them how to resist. And as far as international law goes, I believe by experience and training I have a better perspective on it than does Mr. Young so I state this: There's a good reason we had better protect our sovereignty because it is our enemies and their fellow travelers who are writing international law. Check out how many signatories to Kyoto are abiding by their committments. Check out the background of the drafters of the Law of the Sea Treaty. All this writing and commentary comes on the heels of the disclosure that the great liberal journalist I.F. Stone was a Soviet agent too, so beware of the source of your enlightenment Mr. Young.
By Marie
May 28, 2009 12:47 PM | Link to this
Another waste of ink and paper for John Young's mindless dribble.
By John Young
May 28, 2009 11:43 AM | Link to this
John Young responds
Funny you should mention the Japanese, KDF. After World War II we prosecuted Japanese officers for waterboarding U.S. prisoners. I'm hearing you are say that it was a war crime when they did it, but not when we did it. Correct me, otherwise.
By KDF
May 28, 2009 10:04 AM | Link to this
Mr Young, you have made my morning again. You love to publicly bash your country and then proclaim you do it because you are a solid American. Remember the Japanese in WW II?? They were very torturous because they felt to surrender was the most humiliating thing a man could do, and they tortured our soldiers and sailors without thought. I mean true torture. Our men were not given bibles, real meals and allowed to pray at specific times of the day. The Germans were not much better in many of these areas, too. Waterboarding is no day in the park, but it beats public beheading and physical starvation. Let our newly elected president verbally and publicly bash the system that elected him. He is embarrassing me already.
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