Newshoggers Archive: Torture is a secret

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Torture is a secret

By Dave Anderson:

We can not talk about torture because then everyone would know that the US government tortures, despite that being part of the public record and a badge of 'seriousness' for significant elements of the US political elite.

Wow! Time for the states secret doctrine to have a serious review as the secret is often either blindingly obvious or just a means of shunting aside a discussion that is politically painful but necessary.

The US Court of Appeals has said that torturers (alleged of course) can not be sued because to talk about torture committed by agents, employees or contractors of the US government is a state secret. But everyone knows that there has been a systemic torture regime in place, that is not a secret. Accountability is the secret sauce that prevents or at least minimizes torture:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that former prisoners of the
C.I.A. could not sue over their alleged torture in overseas prisons
because such a lawsuit might expose secret government information.

The sharply divided ruling was a major victory for the Obama
administration�s efforts to advance a sweeping view of executive
secrecy powers. It strengthens the White House�s hand as it has pushed
an array of assertive counterterrorism policies, while raising
an opportunity for the Supreme Court to rule for the first time in
decades on the scope of the president�s power to restrict litigation
that could reveal state secrets.

To invoke President Bush's false trope that Bin Laden and Al Quaeda hated us for our freedoms, then they have to be laughing in Quetta and Peshwar tonight as those freedoms are constricted.

1 comment:

mparkerSeptember 9, 2010 at 3:12 PM
I don't believe there is such a place as hell but more and more I think there should be.
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