Concupiscence

There are things that I refuse to discuss, points that I won't argue.  I am not afraid of the discussion or fear losing the argument;  No, it is that I am right and too bothered by the physical impact of anger at other peoples' stupidity.  You know, high blood pressure, headaches, ice picks in the eyeballs, boiling water on the legs, twitchy fingers.

Shoot.  I have been double dare challenged to use the word "concupiscence" in a way that does not jar, that flows, that does not cause the eye to blink as if jabbed by a pointy index finger. It just doesn't fall into my text with the ease of a dead oak leaf, not if I am referencing -- primarily -- abortion.

My partner, Fred, has been warned not to broach the topic with me.  In exchange, I will occasionally throw him a bone and discuss why even such-and-such serial murderer, undeniably imbued with the spore of Ultimate Evil, does not "deserve" the death penalty.  I let Fred litter me with all his best shots... Anything, just to keep him from bringing up abortion. You should probably know that I served as an Amnesty International Death Penalty Regional Coordinator.  By "coordinator," of course, I mean "coordinator of abolitionist activity." I once had an oddly constrained conversation with a very intelligent Southern Belle who, I realized, halfway through, thought that I actually organized executions in my spare time.  She was so polite!

I suppose I could have worked "concupiscence" into that last paragraph easily enough -- but not, I think, well enough.  That an ultimately evil serial killer might list "concupiscence" among his attributes, well... yawn. Très passé, tellement démodé! Also, not bloody likely.  I was a French professor, if you haven't figured that out from my nonchalant, pointed frenchifying.

I had two abortions as a young woman.

Why this statement obliges me to give the rest of my conceptual obstetric history is a mystery. It's not like you are my gynecologist or that I still believe my gravida/para/abortus numbers define me.  The urge to balance my abortion stats with live births and miscarriages is evidence of my cultural gender role training. I would rather bite off my tongue right now than give in to that urge;  I would rather starve than to salivate at the sound of that bell.

I remember every detail of the first abortion.  Remembrances are as imbued with value judgments as any constructed story, just as they are less subject to critical interrogations, which is why memory is such a great vehicle for argument. "What, you dare dispute my recollections?"

Until today, though, I had forgotten the primum movens to the event of my first abortion:  the long distance telephone operator.   The mustard yellow rotary phone, one of those that hang on the kitchen wall, with long, curly cords so that you can pace the linoleum or the pine of the dining room, in which is reflected Nana's cut-glass vase, the mirrored facets colored by tulips cultivated in raised garden beds by my stepmom.  Maybe I am the only woman idiotic enough to ask for directory assistance to locate an abortion clinic. I surely was a limited edition in those days, when there was only one such clinic within a large swath of my region, and when everyone in that region knew its name.  Everyone but me, the pregnant girl.

I had within arm's reach an independently published student newspaper, and surely there was an ad for abortion services in it, with a phone number. Bolded.  In red italics.  Surely I could have ferreted out the name of the place, a name which bore no reference to its most famous function.   Still, I did what I'd been trained to do when I needed help: I dialed the Operator. They weren't particularly chatty, didn't exactly exude warmth, and usually opened with "What city?"   I didn't know what city, of course, though I had a general idea.  First, though, I had to rid myself of the compulsion to tell her where I was and what phone number I was calling from by telling her where I was and what phone number I was calling from. (To this day, I imagine her as Lily Tomlin, snorting and asking callers: "Is this the party to whom I am speaking?")

I requested the name, phone number, and address of the closest abortion clinic.  Who knows, maybe I asked for one that had Saturday hours and served post-procedure brunch.   A great line for this story would be "and she didn't miss a beat," but, of course, she did.  Several beats. There was, in fact, a moment of dead air that seemed a small eternity.  Long enough for me to trap my free hand in the curly phone cord, make a mental note to wash the filthy phone, long enough to free my fingers to hold the pencil so that I could write the name, address, and phone number of the abortion clinic in my otherwise empty brand new steno book. In spite of a student apartment full of notebooks, I had carefully selected a thin, urine yellow Field Notes Brand steno book.

The operator, my Lily Tomlin, came through with the precise information and I dutifully filled the first three lines of that first slightly green page.  After her carefully enunciated announcement, she said, "Would you like me to connect you, free of charge?"  Back in those days, they made that offer at the end of every Directory Assistance call, probably with some reference built in to AT&T or one of the Bells.

I sometimes wonder how long I'd have stayed in my warm cocoon fugue state had she not made that perfunctory query.  What if I had said "No, thank you, ma'am" instead of "Sure... I guess"?   It was long distance, turns out, so she probably then thanked me for "using AT&T," the only option in a day of only options.

The receptionist at the clinic was amateurish by comparison, or sadistic -- her questions pokes of hot, electrified wire.  I wanted to ask her not to talk so loud. Not to talk at all. She didn't thank me for anything, not even for calling, for choosing her clinic, for granting my patronage.  She questioned my assessment of the pregnancy (there might have been a sneer in her voice).  I said 9 weeks; she said, "We'll see."  I said I'd come alone; she said, "Then we won't perform the procedure."  She repeated the cost and the litany of Ways to Lose An Appointment.  There was no question of partial payments, down payments, or credit cards, and once you arrived, you could not leave. You'd better not have had breakfast, not even a cup of black but aromatic coffee.  Cold cash, and something about Rh factor that I did not understand. No reference to a PDF comparison chart of abortion techniques, no offer of RU486, no mention of nitrous oxide or pain. Something mumblemumble involving group counseling, a video, something about cramping, orange juice, and pads.

She never once used the word "abortion."

By the end of our conversation, after I had hung up the phone and pried the pencil from my hand until about an hour ago, today, the directory assistance telephone operator was absent from the recollected proceedings of My First Abortion.

 ***** *****

white tulips in cut glass vase by john williams

"Un vase pour mes tulipes.
Avec l'arrivée du Printemps, les premières tulipes sortent de terre.
Le problème avec les tulipes, c'est qu'une fois mise dans un vase classique,
elles tombent et le bouquet n'est plus très esthétique."

***** *****

In the interim, I've been a staunch supporter of reproductive choice for women.  I have endured many attacks on that position. Some assumed discomfiture at having my equally ardent stance as a death penalty abolitionist gleefully unveiled as if it were some counter-argument to reproductive rights.  What sometimes made me laugh was the certitude that I'd be surprised by the juxtaposition of my own beliefs. (Where is it written that I shall not be discordant?)

But as I said at the outset, I don't argue any longer.  I just don't engage. All women should have unfettered, uncomplicated, and affordable access to pregnancy planning services and to termination of pregnancy. The death penalty should be universally abolished, along with its godchildren, torture and illegal detention.

Most abortion discussions iterate nuance upon nuances. In the case of rape.  In the case of incest.  In the case of an 8 year old, of the suburban wife and mother of three, the guilty, the innocent, the retarded, the pro, the juvenile offender. In the case of a black man. In the case of the gay man, the lesbian. These iterations only promote logical fallacies and bring me back to high blood pressure, headaches, ice picks in the eyeballs, boiling water on the legs, and twitchy fingers.

What brought me to this topic, then, given my insistence against such arguments, iterations, and the inescapable onset of nystagmus and delirium tremens caused by their mere mention?

The iPhone 5, of course.  More specifically, it was a tweet about the Siri feature:  "#Siri permet d'acheter des armes mais pas de trouver une clinique pour avorter." Remember that I'm a French prof?  You can trust my translations, at least ones the length of a tweet.  This one reads, pretty much: "Siri tells you the closest place to buy a gun but can't locate an abortion clinic."

Apple's ads for Siri pitch its worth this way: "Siri on iPhone lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it."

Siri talks the way I talk, understands what I say, knows what I mean, and talks back.

A high-tech pregnant me in search of an abortion today would be more lost than that younger one armed with her steno book. The thoroughly modern me still has but one shot at escaping pregnancy's fugue-inducing wily ways, whether or not I've a back-talking phone. It's true. Remember, I can reference memories of other pregnancies to bolster my assertions of the first.  The window of time during which a pregnant me is capable of making any decision of import is as small and fluid as a pin hole in wet plaster. Once gone, I am but a murky, fluid-logged vessel, a moist, damp incubator.

So I can easily imagine Siri's opinionated, automated voice standing in for the authority of that blessed flesh-and-blood telephone operator of my youth.

Megan Carpentier ran a piece in The Raw Story titled "10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion" when the Siri feature first debuted:

"Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won’t direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she’ll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women’s Health Center, an anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania...Ask in New York City, and Siri will tell you 'I didn't find any abortion clinics.' "

Carpentier lists unsettling juxtapositions, like desperate pregnant women with no help in finding reproductive services versus Siri's able assistance locating Viagra and places to score pot.  Are you in the nation's capital, in dire need of a blow job?  Siri knows where to go!  While at the Charming Cherries Escort Service, you can also have that hamster removed from your rectum, in situ or on-site.  All you have to do is call.

My only regret today stems from failing to incorporate "concupiscence" into this bit of light writing. I suppose there's always tomorrow.



© 2015 L. Ryan

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Dr. King's notes on Ecclesiastes 1:9
Courtesy of The King Center

REPOST from August 31, 2009.

January 4, 2015 Introduction:

Many people react as if the "recent" report(s) reclassifying as torture the Bush-era "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" came out of an unforeseen overhead vista of cerulean blue -- that overlapping and sly sky blue. Perhaps from those interwebs' "cloud" storage devices about which I hear such rumors?

A redacted, unclassified version from the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is available HERE. This short version addresses the years 2001 to 2006, and represents "an executive summary" of the key findings. The complete edition, still classified, was adopted by the SSCI in 2012. The CIA response to the SSCI document, delivered in memorandum form on June 27, 2013, was released in a redacted, unclassified version in early December 2014, and can be found HERE.

Where does the political and media "shock" come from, and the straight faces from which the surprise and awe are delivered?

I don't know.  You've only to have followed the work of the ACLU and the individual FOIA requests of hundreds of reputable organizations and individuals over the years -- and beyond the neatly forgiving endpoint of 2006. The ACLU Torture Database documents their efforts to obtain documentation and is the basis of their document, "U.S. Torture Program: A Blueprint for Accountability," which can be downloaded HERE.

Maybe you recall President Obama's quiet statement from August 2009, summarized this way in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday.

Perhaps my skepticism of the tardy, off-Broadway response by the public, the pols, and the Fourth Estate last month can be forgiven if my bouts of hypertension and re-postings of Buckeye Surgeon's blogging on torture and the clear knowledge of it within the Executive Branch of our Esteemed Estate o'er in the United States of America are taken into account. Such interrogation techniques are unheard of in our present home in Tête de Hergé, though I wonder sometimes at the bovine revelations emanating from the Animal Husbandry Division of Marlinspike Hall's Miniature Genetic Project. (Yes, I am something of a Dr. Doolittle.)

I like one of the comments to a related ACLU article on Torture, American Style, left several years ago:

Simple solution.Water board members of the Bush Administration, until they tell us the truth.
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." -- Abraham Lincoln

And, of course, should you, like me, feel that the top of your head may explode any day now (Hey, Congress reconvenes tomorrow!) -- there is always the pointless and yet temporarily invigorating method made popular by the movie Network:

In the oppressive spirit of "[w]hat has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.," then, we republish "Pourri, Pot," and hope you are not terribly jarred by the redundant hodgepodge of cats and Dick Cheney.  Close your eyes and pretend it's August 31, 2009.

*************************************************************************

POURRI, POT

Pot pourri (rotten pot). Fitting that the name for a beautifully arranged bowl yielding questionable scents derives from the Spanish designation for olla podrida -- pork&beans. True, the Spanish being Spanish,said pork&beans stew is subject to the rarefying whims of the creative cook, a clay pot, and a long cooking time, and becomes a satisfying culinary hodgepodge.

I learned from reading the entry for potpourri in Wikipedia that,
"(when mixed, you need to enclose the mixture in a bottle or jar,and let it
sit for a few weeks. Towards the middle of the weeks, the soon to be potpourri
may smell rotten. If you wait a little while longer, it will start to smell
better, so don't get discouraged or disappointed." (I particularly relish, and
appreciate, the encouragement to fend off the ravages of clinical depression.)

Yes, indeed. Words to live by, words with which to guide your children: If you wait a little longer, it will start to smell better...

So many unimaginative people of my generation... uh-oh, incoming, incoming! Flying lyrics, flying lyrics!

People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
-- The Who, "My Generation"

As I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, the more anemic among us are humming "Teach Your Children," and feeling oh-so-competent. And organic. You know what I mean -- don't you? Look around you -- aren't there a few competent/organic types lurking in your shadows, obnoxiously humming:

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.
-- CSNY, "Teach Your Children"

The men ye shall know by their thin ponytails and receding hairlines. (The women ye shall spot by their insistent middle-of-the-hair part -- a style best reserved for those few of perfect face.)

Pot pourri. Potpourri.

Sadly, we have actual odor issues going on this morning. Fred decided to change cat litter brands -- again -- and I believe there is some sort of intestinal rebellion in the works. He wants to "go green," an impulse we all applaud, in public, but occasionally regret, in private.

I want to be as eco-friendly as possible. Really, I do. Thus far in our kitty greening, we've done recycled paper litter, corn litter, and alfalfa litter. At the moment, I believe we're using a combination of compressed sawdust and alfalfa. [One of the eternal questions: Why are simpler, less-processed products more expensive than standard commercial stuff? Shouldn't the cost of production be lower?] And as often as possible in our upkeep of Captain Haddock's ancestral home, we try to use products original to its construction -- the reason we have two-pound cans of clean sheep tallow tucked in various nooks and crannies, plus a stash of sustainably harvested local wood in [our replica of] the Knoppenburg Manor* Stables.

And should the good Captain Haddock ever depart Bongi-country and approve our plans for expansion, we've opted to employ straw bale in our framing and pneumatically impacted stabilized earth (PISE) -- or rammed earth* -- in the construction of our walls.

* Rammed earth, also known as taipa[1], pisé de terre or simply pisé, is a
technique used in the building of walls using the raw materials of mud, chalk,
lime and gravel. It is an ancient building method that has seen a revival in
recent years as people seek more sustainable building materials and natural
building methods. Because of the nature of the materials used it is
incombustible, thermally insulating and very strong and hardwearing. It also has
the added advantage of being a very low cost and simple way to construct
walls.

Ha! Dobby just came by to give the computer a good sniff.

Dobby is sometimes known as The Nose. Small, pink, and often quivering, his nose misses nothing. He insists on sniffing certain things -- and we participate... because we're weird. For instance, my water bottle. One of the ways in which I supported Hillary Clinton during her bid for the presidency came through the purchase of this 32-ounce water bottle, appropriately festooned with her name and a hint of the American flag. I drink probably 100+ ounces of water a day, so this monster bottle is never far away. I also have a Hillary tee that is totally irksome. I cannot prove it, but I believe it is a factory reject. An ounce too heavy, a few stitches awry.

In the beginning, Dobby was just fascinated with the movement of the water inside the dark blue cylinder, and I would turn it sideways to make "waves." He would slap them with his paws. Then he became curious about what was inside, about whatever it was that drew me so often to the bottle. So I would hold the open bottle in front of his small, pink, and quivering nose, and he would begin the serious task of sniffing.

I am a clean person. Good hygiene, and all that. Almost spotless house. I floss. But Dobby? Dobby is absolutely scrupulous about cleanliness. Dobby is Mr. Clean. Mr. CleanCat. When he encounters something off in his environment, the cat stands and delivers -- loud, obnoxious vocalizations.

No one may rest until all is well in DobbyLand.

I offer The Dobster whiffs from the Hillary Bottle about three times a day. He plants his front paws, approaches the opening with The Nose, and takes about three good sniffs. All is well, I drink the water, and we rewind.

Yesterday, at the first Hillary Bottle offering, he blink-blink-blinked and recoiled in obvious horror. As there had been a break in the water main down the road from Marlinspike Hall, I thought: "Aha! I'm like a miner with a canary. Thanks to Dobby, I've been saved from sure poisoning."

I rinsed it out, and added fresh filtered water. A few hours later, now confident in the quality of my water, I offered the little idiot another whiff. He looked at me in abject terror, then turned and ran, vocalizing a banshee's keening wail.

Everyone's a critic.

Even though the human consensus was that the bottle was clean and that Dobby was touched in the head -- after I scrubbed the Hillary Bottle inside and out with an old toothbrush and ick-smelling lemon detergent, Dobby once again was happy to offer his schnoz.

Pot pourri. Potpourri.

"Maybe I could interest you in a hot cup of shut-the-fuck-up..." (Jon Stewart, 3.18.09)

Oops! Sorry! I didn't mean to write that out loud, much less carefully attribute it by author and date of original production.

I was just sitting here, cozy in the chiaroscuro of pre-dawn, waiting for those rosy fingers, Homer's trope, contemplating Dick Cheney's latest pronouncements.

Obama's decision to authorize Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation "serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security." He went on to call it an "outrageous political act that will do great damage, long-term."

"I just think it's an outrageous precedent to set, to have this kind of, I think, intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration," Cheney said in an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday," during which he was peppered with pre-determined, softball-type queries, dotingly, lovingly pitched by Chris Wallace.

A politicized Justice Department? An Attorney General, under the thumb? There's a name that keeps nibbling at my crumbling memory... Who was it? Something guttural... G-g-g-g?

Gonzales?

Oh, and I really want to hear how Cheney and Bush kept us "safe" (for eight years, Cheney qualifies, and even that is wrong). There was that tiny glitch on September 11, 2001 -- and then, Cheney likes to pretend, nothing! Absolute safety, brought to us by virtue of EITs, enhanced interrogation techniques -- some of which qualifies as torture.

John McCain, who perhaps has the most informed opinion on the matter, said this of Cheney's remarks during his appearance on Face the Nation:

"I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said the Arizona Republican. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq... I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members."

There ought to be a Hallmark card. I bet that Chris Wallace has that covered, that and the Whitman Sampler. Andrew Sullivan has a slight opinion about his journalist colleague, though he expresses it in tepid, half-hearted fashion. That's what they're known for at The Atlantic:

When future historians ask how the United States came not only to practice torture but to celebrate it and treat torturers as heroes, a special place in hell among the journalists who embraced and justified it should be reserved for Chris Wallace.

I find it outfrigging outrageous that we continually have to deal with this frustrated little man that is Cheney.




*Knoppenburg Manor is, in fact, for sale. Sad that one of its key selling points is that this area of Belgium has "remained free from the threat of terrorist attacks." Our stable replica is a lovely place in which to relax, chat, contemplate -- at least on warm days. Built some time in the 16th century, the Manor Knoppenburg's charm is in its simplicity and functionality. Make a bid!

I love Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick and it turns out that Ochoa is not the only turd in town...

Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick has pretty much dedicated his life to bettering the lives of people with CRPS / RSD, and having scoped out some of his other interests, he's kind of into bettering life on the planet, in general.

After many years in Anesthesiology and Pain Management at USF in Tampa, he established there the world's only RSD / CRPS Treatment Center and Research Institute.  If I had some bucks, I'd have been there when the doors opened.

[One of the majorly sucky things about CRPS / RSD 's most effective doctors and treatments?  You have to be monied to have access to them.  Oh, I'm sorry.  That's a universal truth!  I try to expunge the obvious from my posts, but it was a long night...]

I'm also not blind to the down side of such fervor as his, but I prefer it to torpor, and I definitely prefer it to doctors practicing CYA medicine or suffering terribly from Dr. God complexes.  I see him as the obvious antithesis to my archenemy Jose Ochoa, known on this blog simply, eloquently, as The Turd.

Anyway, here is a new Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick video meant to expose, inform, and help:



Part 2 cannot be embedded, but here is the link to it:  Part II: Do doctors torture patients with CRPS?
Part 3 cannot be embedded, either:  Part III: Do Doctors Torture Patients?

From the Buckeye Surgeon: American Exceptionalism Needs a New Heart

Jeffrey Parks MD, also known as blogger Buckeye Surgeon, has posted some wonderfully clear pieces about Dick Cheney. 

I appreciate clarity. 

And I am with him on this sentiment, as well:

 

Former Vice President (and still war criminal) Dick Cheney may soon place himself on the list for a heart transplant, according to this WSJ article. Usually heart transplants are restricted to those patients younger than 70 (Cheney turns 70 next week). I say, let the old bastard get on the list, on the condition that he submits to being waterboarded as a live, pay per view event on HBO. He doesn't have to get the full KSM treatment (i.e. 187 waterboardings). Just once is good enough for me.

KSM = Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

You can enjoy more of the Buckeye Surgeon's analysis of Dick Cheney's general son-of-a-bitchedness by clicking HERE.

For some excellent additional background, read Andy Worthington's December 2008 piece, The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney.

As in Judo: Apoplexy Justice

When I am reduced to burps and gurgles over some antic by Dick Cheney or by the way torture citations are lightly glossed, tossed, and reseasoned before being plated and served up as homegrown and fresh from the garden...?

And when the subterranean amoral violence that diminishes us as both a nation and a species is explained away by that particular cavernous Talking DeathHead?

When the two are intertwined by the tendrils of justification (national defense, intelligence, terror:terror:terror) then I am simply apopleptic* and can only thrash about, trying to find my voice.

Thank goodness, then, for Buckeye Surgeon and his posts on torture, and his refusal to let Cheney off the hook.

I officially became a fan of the Buckeye Surgeon last May, when he published the post: Baudrillard and the Hyperrealism of the Parathyroidectomy

This is going to be a bizarre post; I'm just warning you.

I've been reading from Jean Baudrillard recently. Baudrillard is a post modernist French thinker/philosopher who writes about the preponderance of images, signs and representations in our technologically-driven, post modern lives. A lot of what he writes is almost deliberately obscure and esoteric. You find yourself re-reading entire chapters two or three times because nothing makes sense and you get pissed off thinking hey I'm not a moron, I have advanced degreees why is this guy being so intentionally obtuse? I sort of hate Baudrillard, actually, for that reason. But he does have some interesting takes on the nature of reality that are rather illuminating.

I believe the exact wording of my thought at the time was... chouette! [True, I had to put aside the whole Forget Foucault (Oublier Foucault) nonsense... which was submitted to Foucault, himself, for publication in Semiotext(e) and to which Foucault, himself, never replied. Which is to say, don't miss Sylvère Lotringer's interview, Forget Baudrillard. In short, what must be acknowledged is the impossibility of participating in a field of study or in its criticism, without complicity.] Buckeye Surgeon plays on the subject/object shenanigans chez Baudrillard, and, oddly enough, chez super-specialized endocrine surgeons, as well. Actually, not odd at all, given consumerism à la Baudrillard. Hyperreality and this consumerism mark the Baudrillard of the 70s, the on-again, off-again marxist "thinker" in evolution as provocateur.

There are precious few medical bloggers who could pull that off, and even fewer that one would want to. I found myself wanting to hear Baudrillard on Abu Ghraib (war porn), among other things, through the filter of this particular midwestern general surgeon.

So recently, when he decided to beg all questions, in To blog or not to be, I was bummed, and responded snarkily.

I know, I know. [Like Frank Drackman -- which is a phrase I never ever thought I'd write -- I have a framed Master's of My Domain upon the office wall...]

I am so happy he continues to blog, even happier to know that he does so with his young daughter in mind.

Who else is going to keep that upstart, Atul Gawande, in check?

* At those moments, I am at such a remove from the inane boggle-headed chirping about how "il faut cultiver notre jardin" that I am, to overestimate myself, dangerous. I nod along with Jean-Luc and pump my cold, purple fist at his "Je me contenterai d'ajouter qu'il y a aussi sans doute un peu de malice chez Voltaire..."


“As in judo, the best answer to an adversary maneuver is not to retreat, but to go along with it, turning it to one’s own advantage, as a resting point for the next phase.”

— Michel Foucault

A thousand words worth: Torture and Yoo

In the hoity-toity world of literary criticism, there is a term used to designate something sorta opposite to "cooptation." Not quite an antonym, it is difficult to pin its wiggly self to the stiff black stock paper upon which we display our dead insect pests.

Under glass.

To void a term.
To empty a term.
To suck a freaking term dry.

The thing is slimy, too, so we sometimes add vacuum suction to the volume of air (really mites, mosquito dander, one frizzy and split multicolored human hair, two hydrogen atoms, at least, and oxygen).

We hope to desiccate; We hope to be exceedingly tedious; Death to the term!

Sure, first we tried other things, less drastic, less noticeable -- but those wacky words! They remained in use.

Neonate. Nigger. Necromancer. Nazi. (And that's just *part* of the N-words. Must I follow my fellows and begin with A for Aborigines or go backward with a start at Zygote? Thanks, I didn't think so!)

Before bed last night, I did some wholesome reading over at this psychotic café of aborted thought. Of course, yes, it was a bad idea. Slap an X for Xenophobe on that sucker!

Actually, had it not been time to sleep -- wayyyyy past time to sleep -- I might have had a qualified appreciation for the site. My area of purported expertise is precisely in the relationship between image and word. So what if I am supposed to stay in the confines of eighteenth century French literature? Diderot got to walk right out of the frames and pages of his Salons... Why can't I?

I arrived at PsyWarrior's place via a search for a photograph. I was thinking about the impact that PBS made with its decision to air photos of United States casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. By the way, to make a study of it, this is a well thought out place to begin -- Media Literacy: Images of War. As even the term death is voided by some kind of human immunological protective response, the war of words continues, but illustrated. We are marvelously still concerned about what is polite, what is couth, and how-shall-we-hold-our-teacups, must-i-really-curtsy-to-the-queen?

Bill Moyers even got to wondering whether respect is something that we really ought to owe, and, of course, if so -- to whom is the debt, and what is the currency?

I discovered that I do not have it in me to research the nag, nag, nag in my head. As I began to explain above -- I landed at PsyWarrior in the course of searching for visual impact. I wanted a picture of Iraqi war dead, civilian and military -- something along the lines of the poster-like spread that many newspapers published of victims after the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- those nine long years ago.

Google search led me to a poster published on Herbert A. Friedman's blog on the history, means, and uses of psychological warfare. He claims that it was created by an antiwar group -- but that it was coopted by Iraqi propagandists who used it in ad campaigns against the United States.

[Aside: Man-O-Man, another term in the process of being vacated, voided? "American." I try to be aware of my wrong usages, and the Jeux-O do help to drive the point -- but jeez, what are we supposed to call citizens of the United States? What? "Citizens of the United States"? Cute, very cute. Too many characters. That would mean death to my 140-limit tweets. And uscit sounds too much like ocelot, God forbid I be the Author of Confusion.]

Okay, so he's just another asshole, retired. However, knowing something of military men, I presume him honorable, in some technical chapter-and-verse Rules of Engagement kind of way.

But I cannot find another source for the poster he published! It's driving moi batty. If you find it, would you please let me know? He requires that *his* permission be granted to reproduce the thing... and I am just not dressed for going out. I need to wash my hands first.

As usual, it matters -- how one gets from Point A to Point B. We'd like to stake a claim for linearity, and for that line to go from vague and uninformed to perfect intelligibility, for logic as wielded by philosophers.

But words, and pictures, are tricksters.




1885 illustration from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, captioned "Misto' Bradish's nigger"



















After a steaming mug of coffee and a piece of whole wheat toast, I settled down to work a bit this morning, satisfied and sated, both.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue. I had a lot to do. If you're already humming "I read the news today, oh boy..." -- well, you must be one of My Beloved (but your demographics are safe with me!)

Report Faults 2 Authors of Bush Terror Memos
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 19, 2010

WASHINGTON — After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct.

The report, rejecting harsher sanctions recommended by Justice Department ethics lawyers, brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.

The ethics lawyers, in the Office of Professional Responsibility, concluded that two department lawyers involved in analyzing and justifying waterboarding and other interrogation tactics — Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John C. Yoo, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley — had demonstrated “professional misconduct.” It said the lawyers had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws on torture. That report was among the documents made public Friday.

But David Margolis, a career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion in a report of his own released Friday. He said the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers’ actions, had given short shrift to the national climate of urgency in which Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo acted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Among the difficulties in assessing these memos now over seven years after their issuance is that the context is lost,” Mr. Margolis said.

Indeed, the documents released Friday provide new details about the atmosphere in which Mr. Yoo and the Justice Department prepared their initial findings in August 2002, shortly after the capture of Abu Zubaydah, suspected of being an operative for Al Qaeda.

The report quotes Patrick Philbin, a senior Justice Department lawyer involved in the review, as saying that because of the urgency of the situation, he had advised Mr. Bybee to sign the memorandum, despite what he saw as Mr. Yoo’s aggressive and problematic interpretation of the president’s broad commander-in-chief powers in trumping international and domestic law.

Mr. Philbin said that “given the situation and the time pressures, and they are telling us this has to be signed tonight — this was like 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock at night on the day it was signed — my conclusion” was that it was permissible for Mr. Bybee to sign the memorandum. “They” apparently referred to White House officials....

It has taken a couple of years, but I no longer react to Mr. Yoo's name by leaping, cursing, or baking bread. True, I do pause to wonder about the direction in which my alma mater has gone. And, yeah, okay, I do quickly search out succor here, and sweeten my memory with this, and cheer on the SF Bay Area Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

But the fact, as they say, remains.

Yoo is still a professor in good standing. But now, by golly, I've planted so many asterisks after his name that he barely registers anymore on The Outrage Meter.

I've never made poppy seed bagels before, wish me luck!

{she pirouettes figures eight, nine, and ten -- into the kitchen -- toes taut, responsive, screaming damn:damn:damn}

Yoo, who?

Gall and Other Humors

There are certain touchstone issues, certain basics, to which one cannot fail to bring full passion. To not do so is to betray oneself.

Ooooh, I get all in a lather when reflexive pronouns are bandied about, willy-nilly. They are so... personal.

I hope to surround myself, even when just reading, just cooking, merely blogging, with dedicated people.

Especially those with whom I agree.

(Occasionally, I welcome spirited debate but let's face it, this is my blog, where I come for comfort and to avoid the everlovin' Ah! je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir, La Bonne et Belle Bianca's witless tune from Gounod's Faust. You won't believe this: Charlotte Church has recorded The Jewel Song! The Castafiore is grief-stricken, and off her feed, too. She has even lowered the volume a bit when not performing.)



The Castafiore won't admit it but it absolutely galls her. A fourteen year old fillette, what was she, raised in zeee barn, this bairn? Tellement sectuallleee précoce, it is the embodiment of my **embarras!

For the first time *ever* since I have known Bianca, she is singing a new tune:

Une jeune fillette
De noble coeur
Plaisante et joliette
De grand’ valeur,
Outre son greon
l’a vendu’ nonette,
Cela point ne luy haicte
Dont vit en grand’ douleur.

This new song seems to please her.

Lately, then, Our Irrepressible Diva seems to school me daily in bile, and in bitterness of spirit. But we all manage to live lovingly and peaceably, because her poor sores are so raw, her acrid sniping so transparent of her childlike disappointment. Without this sort of base and basic honesty, she would not be so great or so sought out.

[I'm not supposed to tell, but she is going to be offered a movie role! Fred, The Felines and I have barely been able to suppress our excitement. Her agent is finalizing the terms, and the big announcement will come down next Thursday. I'm baking a cake. You can even follow the progress of this blockbuster on Twitter!]

You probably have figured out by now that, in this blog, you will rarely be spared the intricacies of inspiration's flow. As improbable as it sounds, the primordial goo (and, yes, woo, too) that brought us to this point is the mix of Castafiore's shameful resentments, the eternal story of Faust (all those devilish deals), etymology, coincidence, and favorite bloggers.

Also -- the steady drip:drip:drip of water torture happening somewhere, right now, because of the explicit endorsement by nasty, leering, little men like Dick Cheney.

Buckeye is a less cynical student of politics than I am. And he works to keep his spirit generous, the most important of spiritual attributes. I think he has been generous to Dick Cheney, even as he accretes a daunting Cheney Series. That kind of accretion is a slow and steady progress of layer-upon-layer, careful, natural, thin alluvion that, over time, adds acreage from piles of moss, peat, dirt, runoff, and molecules of manure.

Cheney doesn't shock me anymore -- although it is increasingly clear that Cheney would love to attach me to some highly charged wires, if he had the chance and only enough water to tweak the juice being applied to my pierced and bloody nipples.

But I have a modicum of hope for my soul, because Cheney does still enrage me.

Not to sound the tragic hero, but the world and its politicians have so disappointed that I feel, regretably, unshockable. What remains for me is snide disapproval, and given a prurient interest in abnormal psychology, a wish to get at the roots of Cheney's unabashed *gall*.

We must give it the good pronunciation, I think, to mark each Cheney moment: not the International Phonetic Alphabet Pronunciation [ŭn'ə-bāsht'] but a more shakespearian meter -- [ŭn'ə-bāsh'-ɛd]. What is the value in striving to maintain a common international standard, something to which one might appeal for guidance, with guileless faith in the centuries of work and evaluation, all the dedicated generations of testing, trying, judging?

What?
Oh.
Oops.

I was talking about the IPA. What were you thinking about?

Charles Hodgson hosts a daily podcast called "Word of the Day." On 29 December 2006, the word was gall.

That was the day Saddam was executed "with fear in his face"; That was the day that Mike Dunford of the Zoology Department at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and a regular contributor to The Pandas Thumb published his *quote* of the day , from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather:

"Thank you. Now . . . tell me . . ."

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN"T SAVED HIM?

"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"

NO.

"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."

THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.

She turned on him.

"It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!"

THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.

Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"

A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.

They walked in silence for a moment.

"Ah," said Susan dully. "Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that."

I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need . . . fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little -"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So that we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME

RIGHTNESS
IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point-"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

She tried to assemble her thoughts.

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME THAT'S RIGHT.

Yes, but people don't think about that," said Susan. "Somewhere there was a bed. . ."

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A . . . A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

"Talent?"

OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IN INSIDE YOUR HEADS.

"You make us sound mad," said Susan. A nice warm bed...

NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death.

Creepy, no? Alignment of planets? God having His Fun? Serendipity? Some kind of Astral Nudge?

Anyway, enough of this silly present time! Backward we shall go, as a Nation and as a dilettante at etymologies.

The podictionary word for today is gall: It takes a lot of gall to submit an invoice to your lawyer for the time you sat in his waiting room. The meaning of this sense of the word gall is boldness or effrontery. The sense comes from the bitterness involved in such bold moves since the gall bladder contains a bitter yellow fluid.

The fluid is named gall because it is yellow and the root of its name goes back to Indo-European and was also the source of the name for that yellow metal we all covet so much, gold. But funnily enough there are two other types of gall. If something galls you, it means it gives you pain. In this case the word gall evolves from an Old English word for the places on a horse where a saddle or harness has rubbed the skin raw. A swollen knob on a tree is also called a gall and this is from Old French.

There is some suspicion that the swollen knob gall and the open sore gall might have the same roots, but maybe not. Gall the bitter yellow fluid is also known as bile and it is important in our digestive system. It would have been important to treat the galls on your horses if you expected to get much work out of them. But what kind of importance could the galls of trees have? In fact, for the purposes of English etymology tree galls had a fair amount of importance, particularly the galls of oak trees. What would happen you see is that a little wasp would come along and drill a hole into the bark of an oak tree and plant her eggs in there for safekeeping.

The tree did not like this, not one little bit. And so the tree grew a knob around the wasp eggs to protect itself. But when the monks and scholars of 1000 years ago saw one of these oak galls, they knew that inside was a little store of acid produced by the tree. They happily crushed the oak gall and used water or vinegar to draw out the acid, then added gums to make the mixture a little less runny, and then added their favorite mixture of rust and soot and other things to give the liquid whatever color they wanted. The result was something they called encaustum in Latin, we’d call it ink, but the word ink didn’t come into use until Middle English.

It was the acid from the oak gall that gave the ink the power to etch its way into the surface of the velum on which they wanted to write. The velum was made from animal skins, mostly sheep and it’s because these ancient scribes took the time to use such high quality methods and materials that we can still read today what they wrote way back then. If they had used paper it would have crumbled to dust or blacked with oxidization long before now. Encasutum is related to caustic and both words go back to a Greek for burn. So even though these different types of gall seem to come from different etymological sources, they all have a sting to them.

Don't you just love words?

It helps me to have etymologies in mind, and in this case, I am searching out something of the effect an old Army nurse -- reminiscent of a bitter prune -- once explained to me, back in those halcion Candy Striper days: She said that she, like many other good nurses surrounded by whiny young men newly separated from their Mothers, tended to give their young buttocks an unexpected and sharp slap just before plunging in the needle through which a good dose of penicillen was administer to cure their... whatever. There was a rationale to this intentional infliction of pain. The first pain took their attention away from the second one. Occasionally, a thick grab of booty flesh was converted into a mean twisty pinch. Those, I twice saw draw blood and the 18 year olds cried big wet tears.

After a few weeks on the wards, I saw that what had been perceived as sadistic and cruel (I mean, these were essentially healthy and wonderfully formed derrières. Innocent cheeks, as it were.) The greater purpose had escaped me. I've never been swift on the uptake.

I have fought hard, here where you cannot see or know me, to put some distance between Dick Cheney and his ugly words on Valentine's Day and the strict definitions and trusty origins of the WordWeapons I toss about.

Because, as Obama (and, okay, maybe someone else before him) said, "Words matter." Certainly, we have witnessed the staying power of the S-Word, or rather its depletion by the fanatical right.

But when shit remains shit instead of transforming into rich dark loam? Sometimes all you've got left to escape it are fancy tricks of dictionaries and serendipitous allusions.

Unless you are Buckeye Surgeon, and then you manage to voice your outrage, all the while still trying to understand. That is wayyyyy more than I am willing to do for DickWad Cheney.

Buckeye likes to ease into things with a mild video presentation:



I'm sorry, but I'm still sort of reeling from the fact that Cheney actually went on national television and admitted he was a "big supporter of waterboarding". And he didn't even use one of the Orwellian euphemisms (enhanced interrogation techniques); he actually said the word waterboarding. Now waterboarding is illegal according to US law, international law, the ICRC, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc etc. And he had the smug audacity to go on the air and brandish his unabashed support for an illegal, inhuman practice that ought not to be condoned under any circumstances. Why would he do that?

Because Dick Cheney is a ruthless, arrogant son of a bitch who thinks he can do whatever he wants. It kills him to have to silently bear the world's moral condemnation. He wants to say he tortured. He wants the world to know how "tough" he was. He wants the "liberals" and the "soft underbelly of the American left" to know how he sat on that wall and defended America and made the hard choices that the likes of Obama in their "faggoty white uniforms" would never or could never do themselves. Baring his teeth, shaking his fist like he did on Sunday--- it's like he was just daring someone to challenge his right to call a Code Red. He truly sees himself as some sort of martyred patriot.

But you're nothing more than a common criminal, Dick. None of us are impressed with your bluster. Your time will come.





**embarras: a river in E Illinois, flowing S and SE to the Wabash River. 185 mi.
(298 km) long.

Also, Embarrass.

Go read something!

A huge factor in having little to nothing to say? Not reading, and then not discussing what I have not read.

And quality matters.

When I read crap -- such as The Tweets of Stupid People or the intimate machinations of pulp media -- it's not so much that I, in turn, produce crap, but that I fall silent. There is nothing much worth repeating, rehashing, reposting, retweeting, reiterating in any way. The original iteration was failure enough.

I set out to defeat this tendency today. I grabbed some old New Yorkers, read some online articles, including George Packer's Stop the World, and Twitter: A Conversation (as the day went on, I got better with my chronologies!).

Allowing Twitter to stand in for all technology-driven communication, anyone concerned about Twitter, reading, and writing wonders along with Packer:

My question is whether Twitter and its accomplices will yield to some kind of reaction, a backlash, like, say, the reaction against urban sprawl or suburban sprawl. Back then, they sounded like reactionaries who said development is not a good in itself, we need to think about how we’re developing, and maybe there should be some limits on development.
Read more: here.

I moved on to Rolling Stone, thinking to work fast and hard at developing my hep attitudes and contemporary smarts in musical culture. My Darling Brother-Unit, Professor Grader Boob is coming here for Spring Break, after all, and we wants to be up to snuff, we does.

On that front, however, I have not just simple suspicions, but sneaking ones, as well. Grader Boob went and took on a course load of SEVEN classes, which does not bode well for his free time, or for things such as sleep and personal hygiene. His water bed having finally dried up, he has yet to purchase a new bed, and is therefore sleeping on the floor, and then daring to complain about back pain. (I thought the floor would be much better for him than the nightly tsunami that was his water bed, but it seems I am wrong.) So we are luring him onward to The Manor, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs) with promises of luxurious bedding, sponge baths administered by our healthy young Swedish neighbor, Helga, and culinary delights of which he has heretofore only dreamed...

Still. SEVEN classes. Maybe I will forgo the cooking of delights, and offer to bring my red pen out of retirement.

Mais je divague... I confess to rereading the 2008 article on John McCain, "The Make Believe Maverick," trying to look at old information in a new light. Not much resulted from that effort except brief muttering and foaming at the mouth. I am sure I have a pill for that but am equally sure that I cannot afford to fill the prescription.

It brought me back to the temper tantrum mode I was in after watching "my Sunday shows" yesterday. I was screaming at the television even though Rachel Maddow ably took dipshit Rep. Aaron Schock to school. I broke. The young whippersnapper had The Technique down Pat (I loved that old joke!). Hell's Bells, go here and read about it, watch the netcast, hoot and holler in your own space, time, and way.

In the meantime, here are two short clips of her training regime for gently slapping Lying Republicans on the snout:




She continues to spank the boy...




We tend to confuse real political conversations with the carefully orchestrated repetition of lies prevalent among the righteous right wing (as well as among the more knee-jerky of the left). Nothing maddens me more. As I age, the certainty that the electorate is full of Stupid People -- most are kind and use the more amenable term sheep -- has become set in stone. The Stupid People are easy targets for this type of bullshit.

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. got my ill-fated fist pump (I deliver one per show): "We are in the majority; We have an obligation to govern." I am not a fan of his, in particular, as he is quite the slick trickster and incestuous love-child of Wall Street, but that phrasing summed up my feelings well. As I slowly but surely head to my grave, I could give a Royal Hoot about bipartisanship.

The ever present Dick Cheney also participated in this plot to rob me of functional vocal cords. He is Beyond Scary and it would not be an overstatement were I to say that I wish he would... oh, well, you know. I don't need Halliburton Enforcers and Blackwater Ninjas showing up at my door.

I wasn't surprised to find that one of my favorite bloggers, Buckeye Surgeon, has kept his finger on the pulse (see how deftly I worked in that smooth medical reference?) of the torture issue, and Cheney, torture's greatest advocate, with his post Unabashed Torturer. It is perhaps the shortest and most emotive of what is beginning to be a regular Cheney Series. Poor Buckeye Surgeon sometimes fails to convey with clarity and can get lost in his words. Like here: "Dick Cheney is a criminal." I wish he would pick an opinion and stick with it!

To sample Buckeye's burgeoning Cheney Series, go here.

Ya, so from the McCain article to this little medical blog, my political muscles have been been working hard. It's like tossing perfectly dry split kindling onto the beginnings of a mighty bonfire -- I may well burn up, go up in smoke before the conversations are ever made meaningful, but at least I kept myself in the game.

I CAN'T HELP IT! THE TUBE IS SET TO LES JEUX-O and Bode got his bronze on! I don't think I've ever divulged my love affair with an Olympic Downhiller. Have I? Oh, so much to read, so much to say, so much to do!

See? Tear yourself away from the soaps and Twitter and Dr. Phil -- go read something. Start a freaking conversation.

"What Torture Never Told Us"

By ALI H. SOUFAN
Published: September 5, 2009

PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the report, the latter “is a more subjective process and not without concern.” And the information in the two memos reinforces this differentiation.

They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.

Soon after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in 2003, according to the 2005 memo, he “elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.” The memo speculates that he may have assumed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fellow member of Al Qaeda who had been captured in 2002, had already divulged the plan. The same motivation — the assumption that another detainee had already talked — is offered to explain why Mr. Mohammed provided details about the Hambali-Southeast Asia Qaeda network.

Mr. Mohammed must have likewise assumed that his interrogators already had the details about Al Qaeda’s organizational structure that he gave them. When I testified in the trial of Salim Hamdan, who had been Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, I provided many unclassified details about Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, none of which came from Mr. Mohammed.

Some of the information that is cited in the memos — the revelation that Mr. Mohammed had been the mastermind of 9/11, for example, and the uncovering of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber — was gained from another terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, by “informed interrogation,” conducted by an F.B.I. colleague and me. The arrest of Walid bin Attash, one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted messengers, which was also cited in the 2005 C.I.A. memo, was thanks to a quick-witted foreign law enforcement officer, and had nothing to do with harsh interrogation of anyone. The examples go on and on. [....]

The author of this NYT op-ed piece served as an F.B.I. special agent from 1997 to 2005.

Rendition to Continue

This marks the first major disappointment I've experienced in President Obama's performance. The second major disappointment is in the works -- I expected something vastly different from him as part of the national conversation (or rabid ranting) on healthcare reform. (I expected him to carry out his mandate and not to pander to numbnut extremists.)

What has me upset? In short:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday.

Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse.

“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture,” said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.

Ms. Singh cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cable despite assurances against torture.

This is so far from acceptable that I'm almost speechless at the audacity. Almost.

The United States of America needs to be as transparent as possible in its treatment of *all* criminal suspects in order to reestablish some of the trust that the Bush administration allowed to erode so egregiously. There can be no more claims that the one hand knows not what the other has done.

I'm inflexible on this issue, having been a thoughtful adherent to the views of Amnesty International for several decades now. It's amazing how easy it is to distinguish between right and wrong when the "rules" of the game are straightforward and fixed. (That's not to say that policy review should not be a constant, ongoing endeavor. Scrutiny should be welcomed.)

I stand with AI in the belief -- in the knowledge -- that "torture and ill-treatment are wrong, always and everywhere..."; That only accountability for US counter-terrorism human rights violations will allow us to really counter terror with justice.

It was a "pushmi-pullyu" moment when I first saw this headline about the continuation of renditions, for it was published just below a related article: U.S. Shifts, Giving Detainee Names to the Red Cross.

WASHINGTON — In a reversal of Pentagon policy, the military for the first time is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan run by United States Special Operations forces, according to three military officials.

The change begins to lift the veil from the American government’s most secretive remaining overseas prisons by allowing the Red Cross to track the custody of dozens of the most dangerous suspected terrorists and foreign fighters plucked off the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a major advance for the organization in its long fight to gain more information about these detainees. The military had previously insisted that disclosing any details about detainees at the secretive camps could tip off other militants and jeopardize counterterrorism missions.

Both sides of the mouth, speaking at once? The eternal one-step forward, one-step back, the illusion of progress?

I would like to be able to extend to the Obama administration a measure of my trust -- and say that opening this population to the scrutiny and protection of the Red Cross should bolster my faith that future renditions will, of course, be free from torture and ill-treatment.

Sadly, I cannot extend that trust.

On a lighter note, look at the consternation and then the relief on this child's face at the National Spelling Bee -- as he contemplates numbnut.

,

48 Minutes Ago OR The Tip of the Iceberg

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project

By SCOTT SHANE 48 minutes ago

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.

The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”

In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

Okay, so I threw in "torture" as a tag.

Call it habit.

Pelosi's Tell

Nancy Pelosi, like everyone, has a tell: her left eyelid twitches when she's weaving her particular tangled webs.

I'd love to point out that the matter hardly matters, but the matter matters. It's the transparency thing, the consistency thing.

I don't doubt that, as a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee back in 2002-3, she regularly encountered much top secret information swirling round regarding terrorism intel and attended meetings during which she was briefed on torture policy. I don't doubt that trying to juggle what should be public now versus what we thought needed secrecy then -- is no easy task.

I'd love to say it is a simple matter of telling the truth, but it is not. In our favorite version of the world, of course, it would be. Still, the question she is being asked -- did she know about the use of waterboarding? -- shouldn't require the invention of yet more revisionist history. While not simple, it's not complicated either.

I support President Obama, and, as an extension, the Democratic Party, in large part because he seems to "get" that the U.S. citizenry has been treated like mental midgets for a long time, and that it is time to exercise all those little grey cells atrophied by studied disuse.

In other words: I can handle the details, even without a spin. I can figure out how information flows, and how its flow is sometimes impeded by extraordinary circumstances. But it is up to me and my various moral codes to decide what Pelosi's apparent knowledge of the actual use of waterboarding requires of her.

It does not require the twitching of an eye.

A small part of me is glad that she is such a terrible liar.

UPDATE: 14 May 2009

Under fire from Republicans for what she knew about harsh questioning of terror detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday acknowledged that she had learned in 2003 that the C.I.A. had subjected suspects to waterboarding, but she asserted that the agency had misled Congress about its techniques.

At a tense press conference, Ms. Pelosi said for the first time that a staff member alerted her in February 2003 that top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of tough interrogation methods on terror suspects.

But she said the fact that she did not speak out at the time due to secrecy rules did not make her complicit in any abuse of detainees. She accused the C.I.A. and Bush administration of lying to Congress about what was actually transpiring with the detainees.

“I am saying that the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same time the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction,” Ms. Pelosi said.

Ms. Pelosi said she was told at that briefing that waterboarding, one of the most controversial of the harsh techniques employed, was not being used.

The C.I.A., reacting to Ms. Pelosi’s remarks, said that agency records declassified last week and cited by congressional Republicans show that Ms. Pelosi had taken part in a September 2002 briefing on interrogation techniques was “true to the language in the Agency’s records.”

A tempest in a teapot, but only if, in her transparency, she can refrain from shrill tits and grating tats.