More on torture and other critical issues criminally silent in DemR’pub-candidate rhetoric
What they won't talk about and why
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
Glenn Greenwald today on Democracy Now’s special “Breaking
with Convention: War, Peace and the Presidency” programming
Look at the policies that incur the most expense, Greenwald
said, policies “that have the most effect on the citizenry ─
[t]he drug war
[t]he primacy of the national
security and
[t]he surveillance state to operate
with total secrecy,
[t]he war on whistleblowers,
[t]he posture of endless [foreign] wars,
[t]he supremacy of Wall Street and
our nation’s oligarchs in shaping policy through their lobbyists and funding ─
Not a scintilla of daylight between the monopoly parties. Critical issues common-positioned, rendered unmentionable.
The issues listed by Greenwald are unmentioned in the 2012 run for the presidency because, he says (and I agree), neither of the two candidates (Democratic or Republican) can
criticize the other because “they essentially have the same position.”
Torture
Critical domestic and international issue
Any talk of torture or the torture cases currently being
covered by some press organizations is “inconceivable” as long as only two
candidates are allowed to be heard, Romney and Obama ─ because these candidates
hold “exactly the same views on the issues.”
The current president and his administration have
consistently shielded former President George W. Bush officials and CIA
officials from any kind of accountability.
Early in his tenure President Obama
said that anyone who complied with the permission slips given by Justice
Department lawyers that legalized torture, who worked within those [permissions
of torture] would be completely shielded from wrongdoing as would be the
lawyers and the officials who ordered techniques of torture.
Last year, the Obama government said they were closing the books on all of those (at least a hundred torture) cases
except two (an Iraqi detainee murdered at Abu Ghraib and an Afghanistan case
where a detainee unclothed froze to death after being beaten and chained to a
floor).
Now, the Obama administration has
announced that even these two cases—clearly murder—will be shielded; thus demonstrating a complete whitewashing for any and all accountability.
While in office, the Obama government “has aggressively
protected the previous administration” and perpetrators from “all forms of
accountability”: exerting pressure and otherwise obstructing justice when Spain
and Germany conducted international investigations of torture cases and when “victims
of the torture regime tried to hold their torturers accountable in a court of
law.”
Greenwald suggests that “the only hope” for discussion of critical
issues facing the nation and related foreign relations is to allow inclusion in
televised presidential candidate debates and give media coverage to at least some
of the third-party candidates so that they will challenge the monopoly candidates
(DemR’pubs) who are wrapped in a conspiracy of silence on deeply critical issues
and their common positions on them.
Sources and notes
“Glenn Greenwald
on the Justice Dept.’s Rejection of CIA Torture
Prosecutions After 3-Year Probe,” August 31, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/31/glenn_greenwald_on_the_justice_depts
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