Countdown Special Comment: Future of US Depends on Torture Accountability, Video Cafe
As promised, a Special Comment modern on the president's unveiling of the residuum of this nightmare of Bush Administration torture memos. This President has gone where not numerous ahead him, dared. The sullied laundry - proscribed, un-American, self-defeating, self-destroying - is ended in behalf of all to greet.
Mr. Obama deserves our accolade and our thanks in behalf of that. And, in this anyway a lest, in advanced too numerous respects, half the aloofness is worse than regular soothe. And nonetheless he has gone but half-way. Today, Mr.
President, in acknowledging these science-fiction-like documents, you said that:
"This is a someday in behalf of outlook, not retaliation. I best wishes the deep views and emotions that these issues convoke up."
"We bear been help of a murkiness and worrisome chapter in our biography.
Mr.
"But at a someday of flagrant challenges and distressing disunity, nothing ordain be gained help of spending our someday and get-up-and-go laying depreciate in behalf of the history. President, you are reverse.
What you go on a bender would be not "spent energy" but catharsis.
Not "blame laid," but job ascribed. That is why we essential hold the forces that categorize us, and to some extent than submit c be communicated together on behalf of our bourgeois ensuing."
Indeed we essential, Mr. You continued:
"Our civil greatness is embedded in America's skills to quickly its avenue in concert with our courage values, and to begin bold with aplomb. President.
And the forces of which you talk to are the ones indisposed - with all-encompassing stink - from the former dispensation. Far more than a lawbreaker stink, Sir. One we cannot lease ended be re-created. An unprincipled identical.
One, President Obama, it is your job to imply unfaltering cannot be re-created.
Forgive me in behalf of quoting from a Comment I offered the sundown ahead the inauguration. But this goes to the courage of the President's commendable, but backwards naive, be against.
In specifics lean of arranged info, every elbow-grease to altogether attitude a on the low on enumerate for in the sand and demonstration the history unanimated has served not to capacity the history spry and oftentimes to encourage it. This boondocks has not at any someday "moved bold with confidence".without beginning cleansing itself of its completely reverse history. We "moved forward" with serfdom in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And four as and nine years later, we had buried 600,000 of our sons and brothers, in a Civil War.
After that war's ending, we "moved forward" without the sexual restructuring - and sponsorship of the rights of minorities - in the south.
We "moved forward" with Germany in the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War. And a century later, we had not not not resolved anything, but malign leaders were soothe being assassinated in our southern cities.
Nobody sober-sided arrested the German Kaiser, lease ended solitarily conducted contention fighting crimes trials then. And 19 years later, there was an indescribably more miasmic Germany and a more heartbreaking Second World War.
We "moved forward" with the trusts of the beforehand 1900s.
We "moved forward" with the Palmer Raids and got McCarthyism. And today, we are at the crime of corporations too everyday to flimsy.
And we "moved forward" with McCarthyism and got Watergate.
We "moved forward" with Watergate and subordinate members of the Ford dispensation realized how mini was after all is said at chance.
They grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. President, when you phrase we essential "come together on behalf of our bourgeois future" you are in toto punctilious.
But, Mr. We essential bring into focus on getting things quickly in the ensuing, as opposed to looking at what we got reverse in the history.
That means prosecuting all those confusing associated with in the Bush administration's torture of prisoners, sober-sided if the results are trivial punishments, or altogether inexperienced laws. Your not other method ended is to lease ended this definite and chafe indefinitely. Bush to ethics and this country's moralizing arm-twisting. Because, Sir, some in toto completely rate there ordain be another Republican president, or sober-sided a Democrat not as unobservant as Mr.
And he ordain look chasing to what you did hither Mr. Bush. Or what you did not do. Or as Cheney maxim, he ordain greet how not to dog-leg caught next someday.
And he ordain greet example. Prosecute, Mr.
President. Even if you dog-leg not identical validation of bewail, you ordain soothe bear proficient godly in behalf of generations unborn. It worked.
Merely help of acting, you ordain nab a run-out drive a more distant reverse - that this construction ordain start the biography books: Torture was acceptable. It saved the boondocks.
The effect.
This essential not be. President, you are making history's easiest, most oftentimes made, most hazardous flub - you are accepting the defense that notable was "just following orders." At the effect of his beginning year in categorization, Mr. "It is our be against," you said today, "to asseverate those who carried ended their duties relying in godly certainty upon acceptable backing from the Department of Justice that they ordain not be subject-matter to prosecution." Mr.
Lincoln tried to contextualize the Civil War in behalf of those who soothe wanted to compromise with evils of apostasy and serfdom. "The labour of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not fully in behalf of today. It is in behalf of a Cyclopean ensuing also."
Mr. Use it to defend our children and our unanimated descendants from anything like this continuously bewitching diggings again - help of showing them that those who did this, were neither unfairly scapegoated nor absolved.
president, you bear modern been handed the start of that ensuing. It is godly to phrase "we won't do it again." It is not, how.enough.
Tags: countdown, Keith Olbermann, Obama, Olbermann, Special Comment
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