Saturday, February 07, 2009
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
I'm utterly disgusted by Leon Panetta saying he would not hold various interrogators liable for what they did because they were following orders. Wow: the last sixty-odd years of history were just thrown down the toilet. Nazis. War crimes. Remember? "I vass chust following ordersss..." Goddamit, this stinks. Panetta's stomach should turn itself inside out if he has a soul. How many people did we hang, how many people did we hang for following orders? What was the principle?
War crimes. Our new administration has announced to the world that we do not commit war crimes. Because we say so, basically. Oh, sure, torture may be a war crime, but our torturers believed they were acting legally. I'm sure there were many Nazis who believed you could not commit war crimes against Jews because they were sub-human. Maybe we need to offer posthumous pardons to them. Fuck. I'm glad I'm old; I won't have to watch the utter degradation of this country—just the partial degredation, yeah.
War crimes. Our new administration has announced to the world that we do not commit war crimes. Because we say so, basically. Oh, sure, torture may be a war crime, but our torturers believed they were acting legally. I'm sure there were many Nazis who believed you could not commit war crimes against Jews because they were sub-human. Maybe we need to offer posthumous pardons to them. Fuck. I'm glad I'm old; I won't have to watch the utter degradation of this country—just the partial degredation, yeah.
