[NYTr] THE MEDIA AND THE LATEST 'TORTURE' REVELATIONS

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Media Info/Editor & Publisher - Oct 7, 2007
http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003654922

THE MEDIA AND THE LATEST 'TORTURE' REVELATIONS

By Greg Mitchell

The latest "torture"  revelations from The New York Times this
week seemed to shock many in the media, which also says a lot.
That the U.S.  has been torturing prisoners has been known for
years, producing only measured outrage from most editorialists
and pundits. Now how will they respond?

  (October 06, 2007)  -- Those who recall the indignity of President 
Richard Nixon having to declare, in response to a question from the
press, "I am not a crook," must have winced yesterday when President
George W. Bush, also talking to the press, was forced to avow, "This
government does not torture people."

That the questions had to be asked speaks volumes in itself. That the 
answers from both presidents were thoroughly unconvincing says just as 
much.

Or perhaps Bush was only suggesting that our military and our private 
contractors may torture people but "this government" does not.

In a dead giveaway, he added, "We stick to U.S.  law and our
international obligations."  This reference to "international
obligations"  rather than "international law" was a veiled admission
that we have been violating the Geneva accords.

The latest "torture"  revelations from The New York Times this week
seemed to shock many in the media, which also says a lot. That the
U.S.  has been torturing prisoners has been known for years, producing
only measured outrage from editorialists and pundits.

Even in the news pages, reporters and editors have rarely used the 
'torture" word, caving to the administration's insistence that these
were merely "enhanced interrogation"  measures (a term which could also
have applied to, say, the time-honored cutting off of fingers).

If you want to believe that torture is justified in the war on terror, 
fine -- but just call it what it is. Don't make jokes about it, like
David Brooks did on the PBS NewsHour last night, when he said listening
to Fred Thompson on the stump might violate the Geneva Conventions.

Perhaps the most amazing statement of the week came from White House 
spokeswoman Dana Perino at a press briefing on Thursday, when she
observed that six years after the 9/11 attacks "we are still having a
debate to talk about how we should make sure that we treat people, and
that we don't torture them.  That is quite a testament to this
country."  So it's a good thing that the country still has to debate
whether or not we torture people?

The Times article that blew this wide open held this key paragraph:
"Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on `combined effects' over
the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was
leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House.

Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal 
reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would
all be `ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it."

So far the "shame"  has not emerged from many editorial pages but
perhaps that will change this weekend.  For now we have a pair
blistering blog critiques from two of the most popular members of that
breed, one long seen as on the right and the other on the left.

Andrew Sullivan, who now blogs for The Atlantic, and a onetime
Bush-backer and war supporter, heads his latest posting with a photo of
the president and the title: "War Criminal."

Referring at least partly to the media, Sullivan declares, "A couple of 
things need to be stressed, because I've learned the hard way that 
intelligent people simply refuse to absorb what is staring them in the 
face, when what is staring them in the face is so staggering." What
does he mean?  He quotes from the Times story: "Never in history had
the United States authorized such tactics."

He closes with this: "There is no doubt - no doubt at all - that these 
tactics are torture and subject to prosecution as war crimes. We know
this because the law is very clear, when you don't have war criminals
like AEI's John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power.
  ...We have war criminals in the White House. What are we going to do 
about it?"

Over at Salon.com, meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald focuses more on the muted 
press reaction over the past couple of years: "All of the solemn
'debates' and hand-wringing and anti-torture laws that were passed have
changed very little, because the administration knows that there is no
political will ever to enforce any of that. They know that the
political and media institutions intended to impose checks on their
behavior will never take any meaningful stand against what they do, no
matter how blatantly extreme or illegal."

He then quotes a recent posting by media critic and New York University 
professor Jay Rosen suggesting that the media's acquiescence to the 
administration's lawbreaking is due to their inability to comprehend
just how extreme it all has been.

Rosen wrote:

 	"The most important of these is that journalists and their
methods were overwhelmed by what the Bush White House did -- by its
radicalism. There is simply nothing in the Beltway journalist's rule
book about what to do, how to act, when a group of people comes to
power willing to go as far as this group has in expanding executive
power, eluding oversight, steamrolling critics (even when they are
allies)  politicizing the government, re-working the Constitution,
rolling back the press, making secrecy and opacity standard operating
procedure, and repealing the very principle of empiricism in matters of
state. "The press tends to behave because it does not know how to act,
in the sense of striking out in a new direction when confronted with a
new fact pattern."

Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer, concurs:

 	"One does not expect an administration to imprison U.S.
citizens with no process, or to proclaim explicitly the right to break
the law, or to systematically adopt policies of torture. For that
reason, it is not surprising that it would take some time for the
reaction to catch up to the full extent of the wrongdoing."

But then he adds:

 	"But we are now way past the point where that excuse is
plausible. Anyone paying even minimal attention is well aware of
exactly how radical and corrupt and lawless this administration is. We
all know what has happened to our standing in the world, to our
national character and our core political values, as a result of the
previously unthinkable policies the Bush administration has
relentlessly pursued.  Ignorance or incredulity can no longer explain
our acquiescence. Accommodating and protecting the lawbreaking of high
Bush officials is widely seen by our Beltway elite as a duty of
bipartisanship, a hallmark of Seriousness. "It isn't surprising or
particularly revealing that there were not immediate consequences for
these revelations. Our political system, by design, works slowly and
methodically. The Founders purposely imposed significant hurdles to
undertaking the most significant steps (such as criminal investigations
of high Executive officials or impeachment) precisely to ensure that
such actions were taken deliberatively, not impetuously.  It took
two-and-a-half years for the much simpler Watergate scandal to lead to
what would have been the impeachment of Richard Nixon. The failure to
impose immediate or even rapid consequences, while frustrating to many,
would not really be a cause for legitimate complaint. "But when it
comes to Bush's extremism and lawbreaking, we're not imposing
consequences slowly. We're not imposing consequences at all. Quite the
contrary, we're moving in the opposite direction -- when we're not
affirmatively endorsing and providing protection for that conduct,
we're choosing not to know about it, or simply allowing it to fester.
And the more that happens, the less that behavior becomes the exclusive
province of the Bush administration and the more it becomes our
country's defining behavior. "This could still all be reversed....The
Congress could aggressively investigate.  Criminal prosecutions could
be commenced.  Our opinion-making elite could sound the alarm. New laws
could be passed, reversing the prior endorsements and imposing new
restrictions, along with the will to enforce those laws. We still have
the ability to vindicate the rule of law and enforce our basic
constitutional framework. "But does anyone actually believe any of that
will be the result of these new revelations?"