Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

"As Clear As An Azure Sky Of Deepest Summer"

[Photo of NY District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein was unavailable using conventional searches, but thankfully the helpful people at the Free Republic have managed to supply one]

It would be easy to dismiss the government's response to today's judicial ruling that releases a bunch of pictures of videotapes from the Abu Gharib prison disaster as simply self-serving. I mean, the arguments made by Pentagon lawyers are exactly that, of course. None of the people directing the government's argument are in any danger of getting in the line of fire of any energized insurgents or terrorists, and they enjoy their salaries, pensions, and occasional Congressional Medals of Freedom when they are finally forced out of their job on becoming a political liability to the President. However, if their main argument is partially correct, the average soldier in a world of shit will get a little extra shit dumped on them.

Taken to its extreme, it's the perfect Catch-22. The government would be able to commit as many atrocities against human rights as possible during wartime, and could paradoxically fight against the disclosure of the atrocities on the grounds that they're so bad, it would embolden the enemy to learn of them. I don't know how widely known the internment/concentration camps for Japanese-Americans were at the time. Could they have been kept secret for fear of enraging and stiffening the resolve of the Japanese? How about preventing anyone from learning about the illegal bombing of Cambodia while the Vietnam War was going on? Look, we know it's illegal, but the lines for the Southeast Asian Communist Party recruitment offices will go around the block! Extraordinary rendition and detainee deaths in Afghanistan? Not now, we've got a fragile democracy to build!

That certainly doesn't provide much of an incentive structure for the military or its leaders to act within the bounds of international law, the Constitution, or basic decency. The tipping point may be this: I fully expect that a lot of the more horrific abuses depicted in these photographs are already known on the streets of the cities of Iraq. I think that enough first- or second-hand stories have circulated about shootings of civilians, rape, torture, humiliation, and religious degradation so that it would be next to impossible to lower our image in that country any further. I'd rather be hated for our freedom, after all.

Of course, this will be appealed longer than most death penalty cases, as the Pentagon and CIA use the billions of dollars they've lost track of in the War on Terror to fund increasingly secretive layers of black operations that make a travishamockery of American values. Please advise of real estate opportunities in Vancouver, por favor.

Unrelated story update: I'll be she comes out all buff with a crewcut and like 12 new tattoos.

Posted by Norbizness at September 29, 2005 08:56 PM