Torturing Democracy: A Documentary That Could Put Dick Cheney Out Of Our Misery

Torturing Democracy, an expose of how and why America came to be involved in open large-scale torture of prisoners (many of whom were simply shepherds captured by mountain tribesmen and sold into captivity), is now available for viewing online.

As Scott Horton reported last month, PBS can't find a time slot for this Frontline documentary until January 21, 2009 -- the day after Bush and Cheney are scheduled to leave office.

Horton has reported more recently that this documentary could help to provide "A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney". Why? Because it has the power to change the minds of influential people in denial.

Horton explains:

Gene Burns is one of the nation’s most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood how important and serious an issue torture had become, Burns abruptly changed his tune. Here’s a transcript of his remarks.

I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.

I’ve always said that I’ve thought that even at Guantánamo Bay the United States was careful to stay on this side of torture. In fact, you may recall that on a couple of occasions we got into a spirited debate on this program about waterboarding, and whether waterboarding was torture. And I took the position that it was not torture, that it was simulated drowning, and that if that produced information which preserved our national security, I thought it was permissible.

And then I saw Torturing Democracy.

And I’m afraid, now that I have seen what I have seen, that I was wrong about that. It looks to me, based on this documentary, as if in fact we have engaged in behavior and practices at Guantánamo Bay, and in these illegal renditions, that are violations of the international human rights code.

And I believe that Dick Cheney is responsible. I believe that he was the agent of the United States government charged with developing the methodology used at Guantánamo Bay, supervising it for the administration, and indulging in practices which are in fact violations of human rights.

A large part of the population still credits the Bush Administration’s absurd claim that it never embraced or applied torture to detainees as a matter of policy. Two recent documentaries, Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (for which I was both a consultant and interviewee) and Sherry Jones’s PBS feature Torturing Democracy investigate the administration’s policies and conduct. Both draw from decision-makers inside the administration and soldiers on the frontline.

The administration did its best to spike both films. Taxi was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, but with Discovery Communications then in the process of going public and facing sensitive SEC clearances, executives apparently decided not to risk provoking the anger of the White House. As I reported elsewhere, PBS also found that it had no network space for Torturing Democracy until January 20, 2009 — the day the Bush Administration decamps from Washington.

Why was the administration so concerned about these two films? The conversion of Gene Burns supplies the answer. No one who sits through these films, I believe, will be able afterwards to accept the official version of events. George Bush has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries.

George Bush is not the only one who has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries. And that, in my opinion, is good incentive to watch them -- and to spread the word about them!

So here are those links again:
Torturing Democracy
Taxi to the Dark Side

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

60 Minutes Coverage Of Don Siegelman Story Blacked Out In Alabama

Larisa Alexandrovna is sizzling at Huffington Post, and rightfully so, in my view. She's been reporting about the political persecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman [photo], who is currently serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison, for nothing more -- apparently -- than having been a successful Democratic politician in a "Republican state".

As I mentioned in an earlier post, CBS aired a segment on this story on 60 Minutes earlier this evening. Well, guess what?

Larisa:

As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Over the last few days, as word got out that the 60 Minutes show would air tonight, Karl Rove's associates began planting defamatory stories about journalists working on this story (see example here) and attacking the whistle-blower who came forward, Dana Jill Simpson. If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony.

What you may also not know is that Governor Siegelman's house was broken into twice during his trial as was his attorney's office.

Yesterday, the attacks on Simpson and journalists increased with a series of emails from the Alabama GOP. See Here.

Tonight was something truly unseen in US history. During the 60 Minutes broadcast and ONLY during the Don Siegelman portion -- the screen went black for Huntsville residents and Mobile residents. There are other reports of other locations, but I have not yet confirmed those. In Florida, a series of strange ads were running about the FISA bill and how Democrats are not tough on terrorism, apparently during the 60 Minutes hour and also right before 60 Minutes, but not after (still trying to confirm when the ads stopped running).

In other words, in the United States of America, a man is imprisoned for being a Democrat. When reporters attempt to get this story out, they are threatened and smeared. When all else fails, the public is not allowed to see the news. This is not acceptable and I -- as a US citizen -- demand that Congress investigate this series of blackouts immediately. Any company involved in this must have their FCC license pulled too. Karl Rove may be gone from office, but he clearly is not gone from power. So long as his buddy, George W. Bush, continues to occupy the White House -- what used to be a symbol of how a nation could both be governed and be free -- we will continue toward abuse after imperial, no Soviet, abuse against us. That too is unacceptable.

Agreed. If we will sit still for this we will sit still for anything.

Patriots? Anyone? Have we become too numb to care?

Please read more of the background from Larisa Alexandrovna at Raw Story The Permanent Republican Majority Part I | Part II | Part III

Excellent coverage from Scott Horton at Harper's
More excellent coverage at Larisa's blog, At-Largely
This evening's 60 Minutes broadcast
Larisa's piece at HuffPo: Parts of 60 Minutes Broadcast Blocked in Alabama...

And finally [!?], an update at Larisa's blog says CBS is blaming a technical problem in New York.

Yeah, sure!

Oxy Morons At Work: Bush Justice

One of the questions that comes up from time to time here (and presumably elsewhere) concerns the legitimacy (or otherwise) of using 9/11 as a "litmus test". In other words, if somebody has a different view of 9/11 than you do, can you still pay attention to what he writes, and can you still take him seriously on other issues?

I have been critical of Scott Horton [photo] over his position on 9/11 and Afghanistan, which I regard as relatively uninformed.

But I'm absolutely uninformed about plenty of topics, and clearly the world has become so complex that nobody can be well-informed about everything.

So I don't buy the "litmus test" approach, and Scott Horton provides an excellent illustration of my reasoning: on issues he knows well, Horton paints huge, vital scenes, and he does it with powerful strokes.

In "Bush Justice Department Goes After Another Democratic Lawyer (And Why This is Bad News for Yoo and Bradbury)", Scott Horton gives yet another example of the Bush administration's use of the rule of law -- as a political weapon.

If applied to their own, it would mean prison time for the lot of them.

So instead they use it capriciously against the people who dare to cross their path. How quaint!

It’s beginning to sound like a stuck record. Another strike by the Bush Justice Department, keeping the country safe. Who’s the target this time? A crack dealer? An al Qaeda terrorist? No. It’s a wing-tip shoed Miami lawyer, who served as president of the bar association, is held in universally high esteem (outside, of course, of the political hacks who run the Bush Justice Department) and who advised Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount battle. According to the Justice Department, the lawyer’s involvement with Democratic politics has nothing to do with his being charged. Quite a few of his contemporaries are having problems buying that, and still bigger problems understanding his supposed “crime.”

What? Who? What's the crime? What's the charge? And what does this all have to do with Yoo and Bradbury?

The crux of the matter is this: Yoo and Bradbury gave legal opinions, widely held to be erroneous, which are now being used to shield torturers from accountability.

But Bush's department of "justice" is prosecuting a Florida attorney because of an opinion he gave which they say was incorrect and led to a crime.

Absurd? That's not the half of it. You have to read the whole piece. Horton spells it all out very clearly.

It's hypocrisy of the highest order, as we've grown (shrunk?) to expect from the Criminal Elite who run this country -- accusing a political opponent, on the flimsiest of evidence (or none at all), of something they do all the time, and quite openly.

Glug glug glug. Wake up and smell the Kool-Aid!

Chris Floyd On Antiwar Radio With Scott Horton

Scott Horton and Chris Floyd always have interesting conversations, and you can listen to their most recent one here.

Thanks to Scott and Chris as always, and best wishes to both.

Searching For Richard Reti? See Floyd On Horton On Siegelman/ Simpson/ Alabamagate

Chris Floyd has just posted a fine pointer to a great essay by Scott Horton -- a you-must-read-it-all piece about Karl Rove's most recent shenanigans in Alabama, in a case involving Don Siegelman and Dana Simpson, featuring all the usual "sleaze, graft and criminal conspiracy" (in Floyd's phrase), punctuated by a whistle-blower's house burning down. How quaint.

I was especially struck by this part of Floyd's comment, which makes a lot of sense even if you haven't yet read Horton (emphasis and space added):

As the Bush gang's tenure in office nears its end, the frantic thugs will face the possibility of prosecution for a number of high crimes, and they will resort increasingly to physical intimidation to cow or silence witnesses.

Does that sound far-fetched? Then consider this: at every single point, the Bush Administration's depradations have turned out to be even worse than originally thought.

For example, the "bad apples" of the "incident" at Abu Ghraib turned out to be the products of a deliberate, knowing, thorough-going, worldwide system of torture formally created and officially approved by the White House itself.

The "investigation" of 9/11 -- which had to be forced on the Bush gang in the first place -- turned out to be an ludicrous whitewash, directed by a close colleague of Condi Rice who later went on the State Department payroll.

The "shaky evidence" for launching a war of aggression against Iraq turned out to be a pack of falsehoods that were known to be falsehoods by the war's perpetrators, just as the "unforeseen chaos" that erupted in the wake of the invasion turned out to have been predicted beforehand with remarkable precision by government agencies.

The illegal wiretaps on "foreign terrorists" turned out to be part of a secret nationwide system of domestic espionage that has caught untold millions of innocent Americans in its web.

The "routine firing" of a few federal attorneys turned out to be the tip of a vast iceberg of legal and judicial corruption.

The "all clear" on deadly chemicals at Ground Zero in the days following 9/11 turns out to have been a deliberate deceit that has already killed many selfless rescue and reconstruction workers, and will kill many more in the years to come.

As a long-suffering chess-player I have always admired the writings of the long-ago grandmaster Richard Reti (1889-1929) [photo]. Apart from the charming wit that pervades his writing, there's also a remarkable pattern in the content: again and again Reti saw previously undocumented truths about the game, some of which had been lying in plain sight for years, and he expressed them in such a way that everyone who read him came away thinking "Well, of course! It's obvious, isn't it?" But it wasn't obvious until Reti said so.

What Chris just said is obvious, and has been for a long time. I've grown to expect it. As Ali led with a killer jab, Rove leads with a limited hangout. It's a signature in the M.O. -- plain as day. It's always worse than they lead us to believe in the beginning. It's a tactic that works and Rove is nothing if not pragmatic: we can expect to see the tactics that work again and again and again.

I say all this now in a jumble of words that flow freely: ah yes! It's so obvious, isn't it?

But have I ever had the presence of mind to say so before? No! I haven't even had the clarity of vision to formulate the thought!

As a young man I used to think they broke the mold when they made Richard Reti. But that was before I started reading Chris Floyd.

~~~

Scott Horton: Justice in Alabama

Go ahead. Click.

~~~