Exterminate the brutes!

October 30, 2005 12:09 PM

Cheney Plan Exempts CIA From Bill Barring Abuse of Detainees "This is the first time they've said explicitly that the intelligence community should be allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. Now, he said, the administration is saying more concretely that it cannot be forbidden.' Like Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Cheney started as an imperialist, but even that methodology seems to have fallen by the wayside. Is there nothing left of U.S. foreign policy but nihilism?
posted by Smedleyman (12 comments total)

Fuck you, dick cheney.

Also, is he just trying to get into the CIA's good graces after fucking them over Valarie Plame?
posted by delmoi at 12:14 PM on October 30, 2005

Double.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:16 PM on October 30, 2005

Although Kurtz does come to mind when I think of Cheney (mostly as the dark shadow to Bush's 'light' public persona), I think King Leopold's Ghost is closer to what the effects of Cheney's plan might be. And how would we be any different from 'uncivilized brutes'?
posted by Smedleyman at 12:16 PM on October 30, 2005

Listen, it's really simple, people: if the CIA can't continue to torture detainees, the terrorists win.

Why do you hate America?
posted by mullingitover at 12:16 PM on October 30, 2005

Ok. I specificly searched for Dick Cheney, Torture, etc. on the search. In the past year and since day one. It didn't come up.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:20 PM on October 30, 2005

Fuck Dick Cheney in his implanted ass.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:25 PM on October 30, 2005

Ah. Just Cheney. Ok.....comes up there. Makes no sense to me, but...
Well, feel free to bitch at my lack of l33t skill5.



I do think the comparison is worthwhile though. How did we go from the merely imperialist ills to openly justifying torture when only 100 - odd years ago everyone from Mark Twain on was denouncing it?

Because the Star Wars metaphors don't make it for me. Palpatine had force powers, etc. He didn't have an apparatus behind him.

It's like we're sliding back into slavery.

What was there in the 1880s that isn't here now?
posted by Smedleyman at 12:26 PM on October 30, 2005

I say let's employ a little torture on Scooter Libby.

Clearly, he is lying and hiding something that is a far bigger threat to American democracy than anything the "Islamo-fascists" could do.

Water board him for a few hours and then let Lyndie England loose on him with a dog leash and let's find out what's really been going on in the VP's office.
posted by three blind mice at 12:39 PM on October 30, 2005

It's like we're sliding back into slavery.

What was there in the 1880s that isn't here now?

Slavery ended in 1865...
posted by Sangermaine at 12:40 PM on October 30, 2005

I say let's employ a little torture on Scooter Libby.

Clearly, he is lying and hiding something that is a far bigger threat to American democracy than anything the "Islamo-fascists" could do.

!!!
posted by destro at 12:41 PM on October 30, 2005

Well, just a shot in the dark, here, but in the 1880's, it was generally still expected that military action would be part of capitalistic business endeavours. At least, it was a carryover from days past when nations competed militarily for resources and thought nothing of it.

Through an evolving sense of morality, international law -- as flimsy as it is, partly due to our insistence to not abide by it, and more international consensus and trade blocks, military and particularly capitalist military endeavours need to be disguised to meet with popular approval. And when they stand naked, the cognitive dissonance involved in remaining patriotic, especially as the patriotism machine kicks into overdrive -- patriotism not because your country is in the right but for its own sake -- we begin to take on the mentality of the ends-justifying-means society. Need doesn't drive you there. The addiction to comfort drives you there. If its abide by a one-size-fits-all morality and pay $5 for a cup of coffee, or maintain the current world order and get all the cheap goods you can get for next to nothing, it's become a pretty easy choice for people. And patriotism is a handy way to devalue those wage slaves overseas to boot.

on preview: Starbucks notwithstanding the $5 cup of coffee example.
posted by dreamsign at 12:42 PM on October 30, 2005

1880s. Let's see. There was Jim Crow in the South, the blatant racism against Chinese immigrant workers, the Gilded Age...nothing really compares to a VP defending torture as a valid intelligence, technique, though. I'm hoping for an extinction-level asteroid strike, anymore.
posted by alumshubby at 12:43 PM on October 30, 2005