War. War never changes. (Except when it does)

[Büge]

Well they did, but then they took them away.

[Mongrel]

A handy infographic, courtesy of the Economist:

[Esperath]

ISIS comes out as pro-slavery.

[01:53:40] <Esperath> like
[01:53:46] <Esperath> these guys are so cartoonishly evil
[01:53:51] <Esperath> that it has to be a ruse
[01:53:58] <Esperath> to distract us from something much more sinister
[01:54:02] <Esperath> than genocide and slavery.
[01:55:36] <memoryandsorrow> More than?
[01:55:41] <Esperath> yeah.
[01:55:50] <memoryandsorrow> Like
[01:56:02] <memoryandsorrow> baby ducks with C4 attached to them?
[01:56:20] <Esperath> more like baby ducks with baby humans attached to them
[01:56:26] <Esperath> on a conveyor belt
[01:56:29] <Esperath> dropping them into a meat grinder

[Joxam]

Chuck Hagel is out apparently. Despite everyone using the term 'stepping down' word on the street is he was forced out.

[Thad]

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel handed in his resignation on Monday, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and the struggles of his national security team to respond to an onslaught of global crises.

I think it's a little odd to say that a Republican is a "casualty of the collapse of the Democratic majority".

I don't think this is good news. All "no boots on the ground" protestations aside, we're on the verge of going back to war in Iraq.

[Mongrel]

You guys have heard that the CIA Torture report is out now, right? Well, not only does it confirm that 22% of detainees didn't meet the set out criteria for detention (that 22% does not including instances where there was internal conflict regarding whether or not interrogations had any value, by the way), that the CIA lied to the Red Cross, the National Security Council, and the White House, among others, and that they even spied on Congress, it turns out that not only are the CIA horrible, they are also morons (okay that shouldn't really surprise anyone). Apparently they tortured their own informers:



EDIT: Some or all of these actions constitute High Treason as well as High Crimes Against Humanity, don't they? I mean, the former, at the very least, right?

[Thad]

But we can't punish them, because then they might not want to torture people next time.

[Mongrel]

the most fucked up thing in that torture report, by the by, is the revelation that we weren't torturing people because we thought they had information they weren't telling us; we tortured people because we thought they'd already told us everything, but we wanted to make sure.

[Thad]

I don't know, I'd say allowing confessed rapists to handle interrogations ranks pretty high on the "most fucked up thing" list.

(And speaking of lists, yeah I do think it's kind of terrible that RS formatted that piece as a top 10 list, but I guess that's what journalism is now.)

[Brantly B.]

Can't find it right now but there's at least one record of them throwing out complete, accurate and relevant information because they had become so used to extracting nothing but garbage.

If anything positive comes out of this its a precedent for firing anybody who argues for this sort of bullshit simply on grounds of incredible incompetence.

[Mongrel]

There was an exchange elsewhere that ran like this:

Guy I know: In a just world, this would result in a complete housecleaning if not the complete dismantling and redistribution of the agency itself.
Me: In a just world, this would result in the entire Quantico compound being burned to the ground and a number of its principals being hung from the nearest federal monument.

I was accused of being harsh, until I pointed out that mere hanging is actually pretty soft when it comes to High Treason. Because if you don't think lying to and spying on Congress and The White House in wartime, as well as directly subverting your own role (to provide accurate intel) is not High Treason, man, geez, I don't know.

Okay, yes, I was being deliberately hyperbolic to make a point. But... well, the more I think about it, the less I'm sure I was being hyperbolic. I do know I that I honestly don't believe we live in an inherently just world.

[LaserBeing]

In a just world, the entire CIA would have been executed as war criminals decades ago

[Thad]

I feel like I should write to my senator just so I feel like I'm doing fucking SOMETHING.

Ordinarily this would be an exercise in futility, but I DO happen to be represented by the only Republican in the Senate who's likely to want to keep pushing this for reasons of principle and not politics or partisanship.

[Mongrel]

Can I suggest a reasonable solution that ought to satisfy everyone - the people responsible for the CIA program should be waterboarded, sleep deprived, restrained in stress positions, and have their families threatened with murder and rape, until they admit everything that was done. And if they didn't actually do anything wrong, well, I guess we'll get bored eventually, that seems to have been good enough for the CIA so far. It's the only way to get to the truth of what really happened!

*nods*

[Brantly B.]

Surgically induced tetraplegia.

[Mongrel]

NBC Poll: 51% of Americans approve of torture, 28% opposed

"Of course it is an NBC Poll." he told himself, clutching desperately at a straw, any straw, no matter how flimsy.

[Brantly B.]

"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States," former Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. "I'd do it again in a minute."

In which I come to the horrible realization that Dick Cheney may actually have been the stupid one all along.

[Mothra]

Oh, god.

[François]

So maybe he did shoot that guy by accident.

[Thad]

"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States," former Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. "I'd do it again in a minute."

In which I come to the horrible realization that Dick Cheney may actually have been the stupid one all along.

Mark Evanier had a pretty great comment the other day, to the effect that the real point of all this was so that Dick Cheney could feel like a tough guy.