(I wrote a response to Booman’s recent post Rex Tillerson is Fired. It grew, so here it is as a standalone. Read on.)
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Booman wrote:
I guess the only remaining questions are whether Tillerson played a vital role in restraining the president and, if so, whether Pompeo can continue to fulfill that function.
Trump is not going to be “restrained,” Booman. Not as long as he is president and can use his “You’re fired!!!” lick. Nothing short of a massive defeat in the coming election…a virtual rejection of Trump and of his polices…will even slow him down.
And Pompeo? In the preceding paragraph you label him a “political hack.” That’s just abut right. How do you think a political hack is going to restrain Trump? He feasts on political hacks. Look at what he did to his opponents in the Republican primary for all you need to know about that idea. Pompeo will every day crawl into the Awful Office on his knees, begging not to be thrashed too badly by his master.
Plus Haspel?
You write:
I’m not overly inclined to be fair to torturers, but she was “just following orders” and no one above her in rank was ever held accountable for torturing human beings who were in CIA custody and at their mercy.
And:
Haspel ran a “black site” CIA prison located in Thailand in 2002. The site was codenamed “Cat’s Eye” and held suspected al Qaeda members Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah for a time. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture specifies that during their detention at the site they were waterboarded and interrogated using no-longer-authorized methods. Declassified CIA cables specify that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a month, was sleep deprived, kept in a “large box”, had his head slammed against a wall, and he lost his left eye. Zubaydah was deemed, by the CIA interrogators, to not be in possession of any useful intelligence.
Ye gods man!!! The same intelligence professionals whose “intelligence” regarding Russia you now overwhelmingly support were responsible for human rights violations that defy imagination. How many Abu Zubaydahs do you think there were? Thousands? More?
Haspel was “just following orders!!!??? That’s what the Nazis at Nuremberg said, goddamnit!!! The intelligence “professionals” were all “just following orders,” just the same as they were following orders in the drone wars and the illegal surveillance system set up under Barack Obama, just the same as they are now following orders in the anti-Trump wars.
What I want to know is this:
Exactly who is…and was…giving these orders?
Obama? Bush II? Give me a break. If they were the guilty parties, why are they now luxuriating in post-presidential splendor instead of sitting in a box listening to a litany of their crimes?
And…as usual…the real answer is blowing in the wind. Blowing In the hot air wind of politics as usual.
I received an email from the Sanders people this morning. Here is some of what it said.
I want to tell you about a very exciting trip that I took last weekend to Texas and Arizona. That follows the trip we took several weeks ago to Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan. Of these six states, Trump won five. And, in Illinois, where Trump lost, progressives are taking on the old and moribund Democratic machine.
The very good news is: the political revolution is on the move, not only in progressive states but in conservative areas as well. You have heard me say it a million times. This country will not change if the Democratic Party continues to ignore half the states in this country, including some of the poorest.
We’re not going to transform the politics of the United States by just doing fundraisers with wealthy people in New York and California or starting Super PACs funded by special interests. We have got to take the fight for economic, social, racial and environmental justice to every county in every state in this country.
And the good news is that is exactly what is beginning to happen. This year, there are more candidates than ever on the ballot – in progressive and conservative areas – who support Medicare for all, free tuition at public colleges and universities, a $15 minimum wage, gun safety legislation and our entire progressive agenda.
In many instances, these candidates are fighting against a political establishment that tells them they cannot win running on a progressive agenda, and they are fighting against a financial elite who will spend anything to stop them. We should work as hard as we can to elect those candidates, and I intend to [continue to do so].
–snip—
And here…on this so-called “progressive” blog…I continue to be chastised for saying exactly the same thing.
Think on it.
I know that you know better.
You do too.
AG
