Addington and Yoo on the Hill, KPFA, with Various Legal Experts

Special Broadcast Thursday, June 26th, 2008

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Special Live Broadcast of the "House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Torture"

Pacifica Radio's KPFA broadcasts live from the House Judiciary Committee hearing on torture, where Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President David Addington and Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Yoo will testify about the use of stress and torture in interrogations and why many senior FBI and Department of Justice officials failed to take strong actions after identifying interrogation abuses. Join anchor Larry Bensky and our guest experts. [Experts, from Horton's blog, No Comment: "...The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, The New York Review of Books contributor Mark Danner, Torture Team author Philippe Sands, American University Professor Stephen I. Vladeck, and other guests."]

If this country is worth a damn anymore, these two yahoos will be going away for a long, long time. Of course, other countries may take care of this for us, given international jurisdiction for war crimes. At minimum, these criminals won't ever be able to set foot outside the US without risking arrest. Some lowlights here:

Clearly, Nadler nailed Yoo: if you have to take "context" and "facts" into account before you can outlaw any act any president or executive branch employee might want to do -- how about, oh, I don't know, anally rape a detainee with a fluorescent light bulb, say? -- then, by the logic of that argument, the president (or his employees) can, legally, do whatever it is they think is in the best interests of the country to anyone deemed an enemy combatant, US citizen or not. Note that "they think is in the best interests of the country" obviously comes down to, "well, if you're too 'cynical' to blindly believe that all possible presidents and exec. branch employees will always do everything out of pure national interest, then I'll have to say that, if you must doubt these brave men and women's intentions, if and when you ask them, you should surely just take them at their word when they say, 'Yes, I did it for my country.' Surely, if they did it for any other reason, they'd admit that."

And liberals are naive? These guys are Nazis, full stop. You think any Nazi said, "No, you got me guys: I didn't do it for my country." Everyone always claims, rightly or not, that they "did it for their country." What the fuck value does that have? Zero.

They are Nazis. End of story. I believe the Nuremberg principles apply; let's get the indictments underway. I know it's not really important enough for the Democratic leadership to fight fascism in the government, but I think some decent prosecutor (if any avoided the political purge, or sprout a conscience) will have to take this up. I'd love to see these motherfuckers try the "I was just following orders" line in court.