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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (73548)	8/26/2009 7:28:03 AM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Will There Be Outrage? By Jonah Goldberg The Corner I haven't read the IG report yet, I've just seen a few write ups and excerpts around here and other places. Without getting into the substance of the controversy, I'm doubting that there will be a lot of popular outrage over any of the allegations of abuse. Right or wrong, I think the average American assumes that some rough stuff goes on behind the scenes and that's okay. One reason for that assumption is that Hollywood tells us so every day. I've long been fascinated with the disconnect between what pundits, politicians and various activist groups complain about and the status of interrogation techniques in the popular culture (here's a column I did on the subject in 2005). In countless films and TV shows the good guys -- not the bad guys -- do things to get important information that makes all/some [see update] of the harsh methods and allegedly criminal techniques in the IG report seem like an extra scoop of ice cream and a Swedish massage. In NYPD Blue, The Wire, The Unit, 24 and on and on, suspects are beaten, threatened, terrified. In some instances they are simply straight-up tortured. In movies, too, this stuff is commonplace. In Patriot Games, Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In Rules of Engagement, Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk. In Guarding Tess, Nick Cage blows off a wimpy little man's toes until he talks. In The Untouchables Sean Connery conducts a mock execution. Now, I know I will get a lot of "it's just a movie" or "TV shows aren't real" email from people. At least I have every other time I've made this point. So let me concede a point I've never disputed while making one these folks don't seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them. Harrison Ford in the Tom Clancy movies would never torture wholly innocent and underserving victims for the same reasons he wouldn't beat his kids or hurl racial epithets at black people. But given sufficient time to lay out the context and inform the viewers of the stakes, as well as Ford's motives, the audience not only understands but applauds his actions. Of course it's just a movie. But the movie is tapping into and reflecting the popular moral sentiments. Think of these scenes as elaborate hypothetical situations in the debate about torture and interrogation that are acted out and played before focus groups of normal Americans. If Harrison Ford was an unrepetent racist and anti-Semite in Patriot Games and audience-focus groups still loved him, reasonable people would agree that said something troubling about American audiences. And if, as a matter of principle and sincere conviction, you think it is always evil and outrageous for interrogators to beat, slap, terrify or abuse suspects, no matter what the stakes or the context, then you should be deeply, deeply offended by these films and TV shows. And you might even have the better argument. My only point here is that, as a general proposition, the American people don't agree with you. Update: From a reader: <<< The IG report details someone beaten to death with a metal flashlight in the course of an interrogation, and that this is under further investigation. I don't recall this in any of the various televised depictions of somewhat-justified torture that I've seen. There are whole categories of torture that are in the report and redacted that we presumably don't know about yet. Whole sections whose headings are too sensitive to reveal. There are about a dozen of these. I don't recall any instance in shows I've seen where forced nudity, extended sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, and forcing someone to live in their own excrement are justified. These are all detailed in this report; many were deemed legal by the DOJ's OLC; in many instances agents stepped beyond those lines. There are definitely many scenes in entertainment where coercive physical violence is tolerated. I don't know that I've ever seen psychological torture employed to the extent detailed here. In fairness, I've only seen a few episodes of 24 so maybe Jack Bauer's all about telling people he'll take off their diapers and let them escape from their own st if they answer his questions. >>> Me: Some of this is fair, some of it is tendentious.** But the upshot is I shouldn't have said "all" of the methods, but merely "some." I've changed the post above to reflect that. As for comparable stuff in movies, we could play this game all day. But I've got a deadline. More later. Though the wait won't be as long as it was for the guy who had to sit in the chair being electrocuted in Taken or the Klansmen's torture session in Mississippi Burning. corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (73548)	8/26/2009 8:08:13 AM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Respond to of 90947

Just so we're clear: two left-wingers planned to bomb police cars outside the RNC, and their allies rallied behind them by threatening informants with violence, and we hear nary a word about it. Where is the widespread condemnation and discouragement of such violence in the name of anti-war, Bush-hating beliefs by our friends on the left? Where is the requisite orgy of self-examination and brow-furrowing about the future of a country populated by such people? Left-Wing Violence Against Cops and Republicans By Mark Hemingway The Corner </> Funny, with all this talk of the alleged threat of political violence in the health care debate coming from the right, the national media has been strangley silent about this story: <<< A 23-year-old man from Austin, Texas, who was connected to a group that planned to disrupt the Republican National Convention (RNC) in September 2008, was sentenced today in federal court to possessing destructive devices. On May 14, in Minneapolis, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Michael Davis sentenced Bradley Neal Crowder to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release on one count of possession of a destructive device. Crowder was indicted on Sept. 22, 2008, and pleaded guilty on Jan. 8, 2009. [SNIP] According to trial testimony, McKay and Crowder, angered by the loss of the shields, purchased supplies for constructing Molotov cocktails at a St. Paul Wal-Mart on Aug. 31, including a gas can, motor oil and tampons. They also purchased gasoline at a gas station. They then manufactured the eight Molotov cocktails at an apartment on Dayton Avenue where they were staying. During a FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation, authorities learned through an informant that McKay and Crowder had manufactured the Molotov cocktails. Crowder was arrested on Sept. 1 for disorderly conduct during an RNC demonstration. During a conversation overheard by law enforcement through electronic surveillance on Sept. 2, McKay told an informant that he intended to throw the Molotov cocktails at police vehicles parked in a lot near the Dayton Avenue apartment. >>> Oh and there's this related nugget: <<< A Texas woman faces trial this month in Austin on charges she threatened to kill a government informant who infiltrated an Austin-based group that planned to bomb the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., last fall. >>> At the Weekly Standard, Mary Katherine Ham sums it up: <<< Just so we're clear: two left-wingers planned to bomb police cars outside the RNC, and their allies rallied behind them by threatening informants with violence, and we hear nary a word about it. Where is the widespread condemnation and discouragement of such violence in the name of anti-war, Bush-hating beliefs by our friends on the left? Where is the requisite orgy of self-examination and brow-furrowing about the future of a country populated by such people? >>> corner.nationalreview.com