Connections

I wonder if this:




...might hook into this:



Big O has been really really careful never to say the word 'torture' in any public setting - not that I can recall anyway (update*).  So I have to wonder why he's saying it now, and I don't think it's solely because it's come up and he's trying to do the damage control thing by blaming Bush or whatever.  That said, tho', the guy can be crazy stupid good at political judo, and keeping in mind that it's never just about what they tell us it's about, here's a few possibilities stumbling thru my brain clutter today:

• he's floating the torture thing to counteract the impeachment thing.  "you fuck with me on impeachment, and I'll fuck you back even harder by arresting Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and a hundred others and I'll personally deliver 'em all the The Hague to face charges for their war crimes". (you'll notice Liz Cheney popped up on DumFux News almost immediately to slag the Prez for a good 4 minutes - talking about torture and making no mention of her dear ol' dad - of course)

Anyway - back to stumbly thingies:

• he's angling for better support from his own wingers.  The guy does an awful lot of Hippie-Punching, and so he's throwing a bone to the Left Wing to get 'em all out to the polls this fall.
• he's finally getting around to addressing the post 9-11 madness.  And so this is all about trying to signal an attempt to make up for doing nothing about it; or he needs to move a little closer to traditional foreign allies in order to get something from them(?) - maybe shore up support for sanctions on Russia and Iran and/or slapping Israel(?)

Dunno, but things happen for a reason, and maybe this happened late on a Friday so it wouldn't get much coverage, which means it'll generate very little heat, which means  everybody's expecting the Press Poodles to keep it on the down low because there's a coupla dozen trainloads of politicians and operatives and bureaucrats and Press Poodles who should rightly be in prison because they took an active part in the shittiness or they actively avoided doing anything to prevent it, or they made sure we didn't notice or whatever.

As long as you can make it look like everybody's responsible, then nobody can hold anybody accountable for anything - ever.  Welcome to America's Imperial Era.

*Update = From Little Green Footballs:

Obama’s statement on torture wasn’t really news; in May 2013 he said pretty much the same thing: Remarks by the President at the National Defense University | the White House.

Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses — hardening targets, tightening transportation security, giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror.  Most of these changes were sound.  Some caused inconvenience.  But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance that we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy.  And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values — by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.

Still seems kinda odd to me tho'.