1 Boring Old Man

The judge sentence Madoff to 150 years in prison for his white collar crime. What do you think the punishment should be for Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Bradbury and the others for their terrible crimes against humanity? The media still doesn’t seem to want to shine a spotlight on the repulsive treatment of prisoners we are holding in the war on terror. We all know what awful things terrorist did on 911 and some of us were directly affected by 911 but there is no excuse for pouring gasoline on the fire and making all of us less safe with their actions in the excuse of making us safer (which we now know was a lie). To Torture people to get them to tell us things that weren’t true and then take us to war for all the wrong reasons and kill many thousands of innocent people (including our wonderful young men and woman in the service) is disgusting.

joyhollywood

Bernie [and Ruth] were financial terrorists of the first order.They stepped over the line of human decency in a way that staggered us all. Unlike the financial terrorists like Joseph Casano at A.I.G., or Ken Lay at Enron, Madoff robbed the people he knew – his friends. And they were pissed! Left to their own devices, I expect that some of those nice old rich people he swindled would have been pleased to "waterboard" Bernie personally looking for their money [even knowing that he’d already spent it]. But it’s even bigger than Bernie’s personal crimes. He’s a symbol for the greedy jerks that impersonally raped our economy with their credit default swaps and mortgage backed securities – walking away rich while the rest of us look at our dwindling financial resources wondering what hit us. We can all feel some of the burning hatred that the Madoff victims feel.

There’s no sentence long enough for Bernie Madoff, we think. His long sentence means he can’t go to a minimum security, white collar prison. He’s got to do "hard time" with our street thugs. Good! we think – maybe they’ll show him a thing or two. And we’re outraged that his wife gets $2.5 million to keep. Let her be a bag lady! we think. It would serve her right.

It’s in all of us – the Talion Law ["an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth"]. Any parent knows that civil-ization is an acquired skill, and we all know that it can be over-ridden by any number of things. So we have Laws about what you can and what you can’t do. In fact, as much as it is still debated, laws that protect the guilty are a defining piece of our kind of civil-ization. We’re just not going to turn Bernie Madoff over to his victims to lynch, or torture. We’ll give him some bad days where he has to face them in court. The victims get their "day in court." We’ll put him in a small room for the rest of his life. But we’ve learned that turning him over to a mob may make some people feel good, but it ultimately leads to a corrupt society beyond our recognition – as in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Charles Manson’s "family,"  Timothy McVeigh’s bomb. So, we have Laws, and Courts, and Oversight, and Transparency. And it’s because there’s something about human beings that can heave our precious civilization right out the window in a second if we don’t watch it.

What does this have to do with The Dark Side? It’s obvious, but I want to say it anyway. The 9/11 attack on New York was beyond us all. We still don’t talk about it directly. It’s rarely shown on our television sets. It was too horrible to keep in the front of our minds for very long. In Jane Mayer’s book, at one point, she reports an interview where one of our interrogator’s mentions his behavior might have had something to do with his anger about 9/11. At that point, Mayer comments that this is one of the rare moments where anger about 9/11 was even mentioned in her  interviews. Somewhere inside, we all felt it. We wanted revenge – how could we have felt otherwise? And I expect that David Addington and Dick Cheney felt it too. I believe that they were counting on our anger and vengfulness when they set up their torture program. They thought we would go along with their casting our laws to the wind, because we felt the same mob hatred of the Terrorists that they did – and we wouldn’t mind brutalizing the ones we captured. It’s what Cheney keeps saying. "You have to remember what it was like" … in 2001 after it happened [as if any of us could ever forget].

Some of the Native American tribes had something called the "Blood Oath." If the Creeks raided a Cherokee Village and killed thirteen in the process, the Cherokee would kill thirteen Creeks – any thirteen they could find. Women, children, old people – it didn’t matter. The Talion Law was a "life for a life" in their version. And that’s what we did at GTMO. We viciously attacked the underlings because we couldn’t get at the leaders. Reading this book is agonizing, because of what we "civilized" Americans did. The authors of these programs had us do it in secret. It was a flop as an intelligence gathering move both because it was based on false premises and because the detainees didn’t know what Cheney and Addington wanted them to know. But over and above that, it was a corruption of our Rule of Law, a terrible betrayal and a mammoth mistake.

A very bright Scottish Psychoanalyst [Ronald Fairbairn] made a simple observation back in the middle of the 20th century – these simplified characters are in our minds even if we haven’t seen a scary action movie. They’re in our dreams. They are, in fact, the stuff of dream life. And more, they are the characters in the delusions of people with extreme mental illness – evil characters motivated by nothing more complicated that just being bad. It’s what they do.

But it’s easy to confirm such things. Just think about the scowling guy that cuts you off in traffic while talking on his cell phone. You don’t think, "I wonder what has that poor fellow so upset. Has he just been told that his beloved mother was raced to the hospital?" No. You think, "That asshole!" – a simplification of what might be a perfectly fine human being.

We just saw an example of this phenomenon in recent weeks. The terrible, evil Iranians turned out to be blue jeaned people just like us, longing to be free. Two years ago, Cheney and Bolton almost convinced us that they were monsters in need of a good bombing. Well, we saw that wasn’t true [in spades]. They even twitter.

Which brings me near my point. We simplify people in our minds into good and bad objects. They’re easier to deal with that way. And one of the things one can do when that happens is force people to have an actual encounter with real people. I live in a heavily Republican, mostly white, Religious Right  leaning part of the world. Most of the people here are lovely folks – no demons. I like to think that having some Democrat lefties around with Obama stickers on our cars helps them not simplify and discount people like us [I’m pretty sure it works].

Now to my real point. I’m reading The Dark Side about the techniques used at Guantanamo, some thought up by psychologists, and I’m not only appalled by the barbarism and illegality of it all. It was absolutely doomed from the start – just plain stupid. Those Arab fighters had been given a picture of Americans as the "Great Satan." Had our interrogators acted in a humane and gentlemanly way, it would have undone the whole mystique of their mindset. That was proven over and over by the FBI Agents who used "conventional" techniques.

But Obama’s in trouble with homosexuality. I don’t doubt for a second that he’s fully supportive of rights for gay people. It’s hard to imagine otherwise. But he’s stammering with how to proceed. For example, DOMA [the Defense Of Marriage Act], which is clearly one ridiculous piece of legislation. But in order to get it passed, its advocates had to agree to something they didn’t want – it is only about the term "marriage," not about equal rights for domestic partners. So, for its supporters, it upholds their version of the sanctity of marriage as a guy/gal thing. For Gay people, it feels like a disavowal  of their personhood [which it is], a continuation of second-class-ness or less-than-ness [which it also is]. But in truth, it’s a silly piece of drivel that has to do with the dictionary. What the hell is the government doing getting involved with the dictionary in the first place?

Then there’s DADT [Don’t Ask, Don’t tell]. In some ways, it’s even more absurd. There’s a way you could hear it that would be progressive – "Sexual Orientation has nothing to do with the right to die as a soldier." That’s absolutely true. But, of course, that’s not how it’s interpreted. It actually means, "If you are Gay, and in the military, and you talk about being Gay, you have to leave." That’s absolutely nuts [though if they had such a rule during our last really bad war, we’d have had regiments of Klingers in a New York minute]. But seriously, DADT is as silly as DOMA.

It feels more like a confusing "case" than a news story. Growing up with a father who was a cardiac surgeon, but who had the whole family sleep in one room to save air conditioning? Pulling burned toast out of the garbage? Frequently evading his security detail?. Making that speech where he justifies the lie to the reporter on the previous morning, then complains about the "bubble" of public life [so get out of public life already], then gets around to telling us he’s having an affair. It started innocently, he says. He seems to want us, Jenny, his constituency to understand his side of things – see, he’s in love. He calls up the story of Biblical King David as his role model – with Bathsheba? He wants to stay in office, like King David? He wants to use the Governorship of South Carolina to work through his whatever-it-is [which he apparently sees as taking the high road].

In the end, it always comes down to individuals – like, for example, Osama bin Laden. In the books [Angler and The Dark Side], it’s very clear that David Addington, Dick Cheney, and the walk-on, John Yoo, also determined the fate of thousands of people in multiple countries – many of whom never heard of them either, just like most of us knew nothing of Osama bin Laden. It’s also obvious that their driven, idiosyncratic thinking also came, not just from the facts before them, but from events long past that molded their individual and collective mind-sets.

• Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison
• The “Suicide” Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: Why The Media Silence?
• New Revelations About The Torture and Alleged Suicide Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi

I suppose it all goes back to a corollary of Joseph Wilson’s original challenge, "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." As it turns out, that wasn’t the only fictional intelligence. The Saddam Hussein/Osama bin Laden connections may have been worse. The intelligence wasn’t just twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat, it was manufactured to create an Iraqi threat by torturing thes detainees until they’d confirm anything.

• Rafid Ahmed Alwan: An Iraqi defector known as "Curveball" never interrogated by our intelligence community. He was the "source" for the mobile biological weapons fantasy reported by Colin Powell to the U.N.
   
• Rocco Martino: An Italian forger never interrogated by our intelligence community. He was the author of the Niger forgeries. He was the "source" for the Iraqi WMD fantasy reported by President Bush in his State of the Union message.
   
• Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: A Lybian who was tortured in Egypt until he made up stories about al Qaeda being trained in Iraq to keep from being killed. He was the "source" for the Iraq training of al Qaeda fiction reported by Colin Powell to the U.N.
   

The report found that Major Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

Why wasn’t al-Libi returned with the other overseas prisoners? Why was he instead in a prison in Lybia? Who made those decisions? Did he really commit suicide, or was he disposed of like the C.I.A. torture tapes? Will we ever know the answers to these questions?

As indelible as those pictures of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and the day of horror in New York; and as thoroughly etched on our collective psyche as the image of Osama bin Laden; the likes of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and Abu Zubaydah will persist in the history books with equal footing. The legacy of Viet Nam is the My Lai Massacre in 1968, and we will remember Bush’s War on Terror by the pictures from Abu Ghraib, from our Extrordinary Renditions, and from John Yoo’s Torture Memos.

Naked ex-mayor arrested at campsite
Gainesville’s Musselwhite denies causing earlier trouble
By Alexis Stevens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 26, 2009

A former mayor found sitting naked and holding a beer at a Rabun County campsite told police he wasn’t the same naked man seen walking around earlier. Mark Musselwhite, 43, said he was hot and had been in the creek, according to a Georgia Department of Natural Resources incident report. He apparently didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. Musselwhite, of Gainesville, was arrested last weekend after being confronted by state DNR authorities. He was charged with public indecency.

“He told me he was the ex-mayor of the city Gainesville and he was a very political person,” DNR Ranger Brandon Walls wrote in the report.

Walls and a deputy sheriff went to the campsite Saturday evening after a complaint of a man walking naked in Earls Ford Road, according to the report. Musselwhite appeared to be intoxicated, and several alcoholic beverages were at the campsite, Walls said. Walls said he had spoken to Musselwhite earlier in the day regarding an ATV the former mayor was driving…

“I said the complainant had specifically said his campsite, and the fact that he was still nude made me think it was him,” Walls wrote. Musselwhite denied that he was the nude man identified in the complaint. An unidentified female was also at the campsite.

We’ve listened patiently for more years than necessary to the moralizing of the modern Christian Family Values set. As in the centuries before, they’ve told us that there is a way things should be. For example, adolescents shouldn’t be having sex with each other. In fact, if we make birth control methods available to them, they might be tempted, so we’ll have none of that. Instead, we’ll get them all counseled about abstinence and the Christian Family Values rules, [maybe they could sign some pledges], and that ought to take care of any problems.

SC 1st lady told gov to stop affair
By BRUCE SMITH
Associated Press
June 27, 2009

SULLIVANS ISLAND, S.C. – When South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford disappeared, his wife hoped he was really hiking on the Appalachian Trail as his staff had claimed. Like the rest of America, she was stunned to find out he had dared to go to Argentina to see his mistress, a trip she told him not to take. "He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her," Jenny Sanford said in a strong, steady voice as she sat in her oceanfront living room Friday. "I was hoping he was on the Appalachian Trail. But I was not worried about his safety. I was hoping he was doing some real soul searching somewhere and devastated to find out it was Argentina. It’s tragic"…

In her first extended comments on the affair, Sanford recalled how her husband repeatedly sought permission to visit his lover in the months after she discovered his infidelity. "I said absolutely not. It’s one thing to forgive adultery; it’s another thing to condone it," she told The Associated Press during a 20-minute interview at the coastal home where she sought refuge with their four sons.

The Sanfords had separated about two weeks ago. She said her husband told the family he wanted some time away to work on writing a book and clear his head. The first lady said, "I had every hope he was not going to see her." "You would think that a father who didn’t have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit," she said…

Sanford said she discovered her husband’s affair early this year after coming across a copy of a letter to the mistress in one of his files in the official governor’s mansion. He had asked her to find some financial information, she said, not an unusual request considering her heavy involvement in his career…

She felt "shocked and obviously deeply hurt. I didn’t think he had it in him," she said. "It’s hard to find out your husband is not who you thought he was." The first lady said she confronted her husband immediately, and he agreed to end the affair. She said she wasn’t sure Friday whether he had done so.

"I guess that’s what we will have to see. I believe he has," she said. "But he was down there for five days. I saw him yesterday and he is not staying here. We’ll just see what kind of spirit of reconciliation he has himself."

The governor declined to discuss details of the letter and how he handled it with his wife. "This goes into the personal zone," Gov. Sanford said Friday. "I’d simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process"…

"When I found out in January, we both indicated a willingness to continue working on the marriage, but there’s not room for three people in a marriage," she said. "I’ve done everything in my power possibly to keep him from going to see her and to really make sure she was off the table, including asking him to leave."

About an hour after Jenny Sanford talked of her pain and feelings of betrayal, her husband brushed aside any suggestion he might immediately resign, citing the Bible and the story of King David — who continued to lead after sleeping with another man’s wife, Bathsheba, having the husband slain, then marrying the widow. "What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily — fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there," Sanford told members of his cabinet in a session called so he could apologize to them in person and tell them the business of government must continue…

QUESTION: Did you break off the relationship?

SANFORD: The — no, it was interesting in how this thing has gone down, John. I think (inaudible) way more detail than you’ll ever want… I met this person a little over eight years ago. Again, very innocently. And struck up a conversation, and I want to go back to the bubble of politics. This is not justifying, because again what I did was wrong, period, end of story.

…This person at the time was separated, and we ended up in this incredibly serious conversation about why she ought to get back with her husband for the sake of her two boys; that not only was it part of God’s law, but ultimately those two boys would be better off for it.

And we had this incredibly earnest conversation and at the end of it, I said, “Could I get your e-mail?” We swapped e-mails, whatever. And it began just on a very casual basis — “Hey, I’ve got this issue that’s come up with my life,” or vice versa, “What do you think?” … And we developed a remarkable friendship over those eight years. And then, as I said, about a year ago, it sparked into something more than that.

I have seen her three times since then, during that whole sparking thing. And it was discovered… five months ago. And at that point, we went into serious overdrive in trying to say “where do you go from here,” and that’s where the Cubby Culbertsons and the others of the world began to help with, you know, how do you get all this right? How do you — again — be honest?

SANFORD: And so, it had been back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And the one thing that you really find is that you absolutely want resolution. And so, oddly enough, I spent the last five days, and I was crying in Argentina so I could repeat it when I came back here, in saying, you know, while, indeed, from a heart level, there was something real. It was a place based on the fiduciary relationship I had to the people of South Carolina, based on my boys, based on my wife, based on where I was in life, based on where she was in life, and places I couldn’t go and she couldn’t go.

And that is a, I suspect, a continual process, all through life, of getting one’s heart right in life.

And so, I would never stand before you as one who just says, “Yo, I’m completely right with regard to my heart on all things.” But what I would say is I’m committed to trying to get my heart right, because the one thing that Cubby and all the others have told me, is that the odyssey that we’re all on in life is with regard to heart. Not what I want or what you want, but, in other words, indeed, this larger notion of truly trying to put other people first. And I suspect, if I’d really put this other person first, I wouldn’t have jeopardized her life, as I have. I certainly wouldn’t have done it to my wife. I wouldn’t have done it to my boys. I wouldn’t have done it to the Tom Davis’ of the world. This was selfishness on my part. And for that, I’m most apologetic.”