Last night, the Obama administration released Bush-era torture memos. The documents detail slamming heads against walls, sleep deprivation, keeping people in a cramped box and -- in the case of insectophobic Abu Zubaida -- putting insects in the box with him. The memos detail these methods and argue that none of them constitutes physical or mental torture. Anyone who believes that exploiting someone's phobias isn't mental torture needs to do themselves a favor -- go ahead and Google rats, 1984, "room 101." It's odd that something that's not really torture would wind up being what is probably the most famous literary example of psychological torture.Obama says he won't prosecute CIA employees for torture, but doesn't say he won't prosecute the people who authorized it. You kind of get the feeling that he's not handling that political hot potato until he absolutely has to. And who can blame him? No matter what he says on that issue, many, many people will be very, very unhappy.
But first, someone has to say something. When the news came out last night, The Altantic's Andrew Sullivan had an interesting observation:
No mention of the torture memos appears right now on the Drudge Report (which provides news of a prank at Dominos pizza), Instapundit (which mentions the new DVD for the Lord of The Rings trilogy), Pajamas Media, or Michelle Malkin. They are reacting to the evidence of war crimes committed by the president of the United States the way they did at the time the crimes were committed.
The key word here is "react." That's all they do. The wingnut blogosphere is almost entirely reactionary. There was no reaction because there were no lefty arguments to counter yet. Right wing pundits may not realize it, but their game is all big D. Even when they go on the offensive, it's in defense of something. That's the problem with being a reactionary, you're always playing defense... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
