Discussion: New York Times To Finally Call Torture Torture

Discussion for article #226139

Conservatives were also aghast when President Obama called rain water “wet”. The New York Times noted that the term is under dispute from Teabagging governors dealing with climate change induced drought in their states, and so have started calling it “fun drops from the sky” in order to avoid enraging critics.

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Will this new policy apply to the NYPD?

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The change at the Times may irk the same conservatives who pilloried
President Obama for comments he made at a press conference last week.

So, when are these unmentionable conservatives not “irked” [wildy crazed and indignant??] about stuff written in the NYT, or for that matter just about anything that doesn’t fit into their limited worldview?

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How timely. /snark>

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Baquet wrote that Times reporters pushed the paper to “recalibrate its language” after the landscape of the debate changed.

So he was “Baquet’d” into a corner.

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We tried Japanese officers for war crimes and sent them to prison for twenty years for waterboarding people, but in Bill Keller’s mind, whether waterboarding was “torture” was an unresolved legal question because Bush staffed the OLC with “say anything” sociopaths. But now, a decade later, when any possibility of consequences in terms of lost access or harsh criticism by conservative media that might cause the NYT’s many, many right wing readers to cancel their subscriptions, they’ll make this call. Cowardly swine.

I came to mock, but I found out I’m still deeply angry and disgusted by this. Must have been being forced to think about Judith Miller, the wanton, gleeful way the Cheney Administration wiped its ass with American moral authority, painfully rebuilt from its Vietnam era nadir and the fact that John Yoo got a professorship at Berkeley rather than an orange smock with a number on it that triggered it.

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Liz Cheney. Calling Liz Cheney. To the Sunday talk shows, stat! The NY Times needs to be called “disgusting” for tarnishing your Daddy’s reputation (again) and all those patriots who tortured “folks” in the name of freedom.

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It only took the NY Times 20 “Friedman Units” to finally come to this conclusion.

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Torture by any other name is …

dick’n’dub speak courtesy of DavidAddington, JohnWu, and Fredo, JarJarBush’s Ball-less chihuahua.

HeckuvaJob, guys!

this issue was not just linguistic but legal and had not yet been resolved by a court

By that standard, you can still say someone was murdered even if you refer to an alleged murderer.

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That which we call “enhanced interrogation” … by any other name …
… would still be an act of inhumanity that is contrary to the very tenets of Americana that we hold so dear.

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It should piss everybody off still.
Our country will have lost any ability to reclaim a moral high-ground–
if and until Bush administration personnel are tried in The Hague.
That may have seemed a pipe-dream even recently.

Changing the public’s perception-- by finally and publicly beginning to use the term ‘torture’–
is the first step in a process of introducing prosecution publicly as well.

It may even be posthumous for some number of the cadre of murderers and torturers.
History will claim its’ due eventually.

jw1

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They are not irked when it brings down a Democratic Senator.

or they say the sun is just crying …and its all Obama’s fault

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How very brave of them! Now that Cheney/Bush are no longer in the white house and Judy Miller is gone from the scene!!

Attention Journalists of the Inner and Outer Parties

By order of the Inner Party, the word “torture” may now be used in describing acts of torture. This usage may continue until further notice, and applies even to patriotic acts of torture sponsored by members emeritus of the Inner Party. Feel free to point out that this is yet another demonstration of the glories of Murka’s free press. Do not hesitate, friends.

As you know, active members of the Inner Party cannot commit torture.

Do not fail in your duties, fellow Journalists.

Please note that the Inner Party does not and will never recognize war criminals as war criminals if they have been in the Inner Party. This is a definitional matter that may not be challenged, even by Pundits of the Highest Ranks.

Do not fail in your duties, fellow Journalists.

That is all. God Bless The People of Murka.

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Two things were tortured:

  1. A number of CIA detainees

  2. The NYT’s logic in trying to defend the point of view that there was ever any real uncertainty about techniques widely and historically defined as torture that became ‘not torture’ under the Bush administration, and to explain what has recently changed to prompt their new approach

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““recalibrate its language” after the landscape of the debate changed.” In other words, Obama called it torture so they can now finally call torture, “torture” without upsetting the very politicians they are trying to gain favor with to get coverage of.

Sigh. our press is just awful.

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We tortured some folks, but oddly, no folks who tortured have been prosecuted.

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