I owe Colin Powell an apology but yahoo news owes me and the rest of its readers an apology as well.
Last night I read this account of General Powell's appearance on Larry King live on yahoo news. This particular part of the article made it seem as if Powell was totally blaming Henry Louis Gates for his arrest.
Powell, interviewed by CNN's Larry King, criticized the way Gates dealt with Sgt. James Crowley, a white officer who responded to reports of a possible break-in by arresting the black professor at his home on a charge of disorderly conduct. The charge was soon dropped.
Gates "might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer, and that might have been the end of it," said Powell, one of the nation's most prominent African Americans.
"I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal," he said.
snip
But, he said, "when you are faced with an officer trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child.
"You don't argue with a police officer," Powell said.
Now the thing of it is, Colin Powell did say those things. But conspicuously absent from the write up was what Powell had to say about the arrest itself. So lets roll the tape.
So even if he felt like Professor Gates handled it wrong, he STILL felt that he shouldn't have been arrested. He even goes as far as to say that "adult supervision" should have taken over. So while the yahoo news article gives you the impression that General Powell was saying the arrest was all Gates' fault, thats not really what he said.
For my part I apologize for overreacting and calling Powell a "sellout mofo".
As much as it has irritated the hell out of me to see Liz Cheney all over my Tee Vee over the past few months spewing invective at President Obama and lying through her teeth to try to keep her dad from going to jail, one of the more amusing side notes has been how many so called "pundits" have rushed to say that she would be some kind of viable political candidate in the future. Nothing about her appearances had suggested that this was the case, in point of fact she has been fact checked so mercilessly as to lead most rational Democrats to HOPE she tries to run for office so she can be publicly humiliated and we can get some measure of retribution for all of the hijinks she is pulling now. But I guess because she is a Republican and she can string a sentence or 50 together without taking a breath this meme persisted and indeed started to gain momentum with the Villagers.
Now for someone like Liz Cheney they are caught in a conundrum. On the one hand she has an almost unquenchable thirst for publicisty now and she wants to be out there as much as they will have her so she can continue her low risk high reward campaign against President Obama. But on the other hand she is also batshit crazy and she as well as her handlers have to know that sooner or later the more she talks the higher the likely hood that some of that crazy is going to slip out. This makes for an interesting balancing act.
Having already noticed this dichotomy it wasn't all that surprising to me last night when reports started trickling out about an appearance that Liz Cheney made on the Larry King Show where she defended the "birthers". Here is how Salon.com's Joan Walsh put it:
After King showed video of the crazy birther who disrupted a meeting with poor GOP Rep. Mike Castle, demanding he acknowledge Obama was born in Kenya (that's one birther claim); and after Carville denounced them as a "poor, pathetic" fringe group, King gave Cheney a chance to distance herself from them. But Cheney demurred, telling King the Birther movement exists because "People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas."
The rarely shocked Carville seemed briefly speechless, and even King, not known to be the most combative interviewer, tried a second time to get an honest reaction from Cheney -- which I read as expecting her to separate herself from the crazies. But Cheney repeated her talking point about Obama inadequately defending the nation overseas. Unbelievable.
At the time of that post Walsh did not have a video of the interaction and so I had to rely just on her words. But even just with her characterization to go on I figured this was going to be bad. For one she had finally run up on someone who was way out of her league. What had been so irritating to me about Liz Cheney wasn't just that she was all over cable news, but that she was almost always paired with someone sympathetic to her or at the least someone who was not very confrontational. Because of this she was allowed to say whatever the hell she wanted to without much if any pushback or fact checking on the spot. But you had to know that James Carville wasn't going to go for that.
She also has a bad habit of filibustering with long ass diatribes so that the other party doesn't have time to respond and when they do respond she loves to try to talk over them. Again that wasn't likely to happen with Carville either. I have to believe that she didn't know she would be paired up with him or she wouldn't have shown up. Having finally seen the video, if she ever really had any electoral ambitions its likely that she will forever wish she never did show up.
At first I was a little ticked that I couldn't find the video anywhere but CNN and of course their video is pretty long. But the truth is I think its good to watch her whole appearance unfold as time goes on. Carville is masterful as usual not allowing her to talk over him and by the end of her time on the show Larry King himself is constantly admonishing her about interrupting. Not only that Carville kept pointing out her filibustering that by the end of her appearance Larry King was making note of it too. All in all it was a case study in how any opponent of hers can make her look like an ass and incompetent all at the same time. Oh she brings the same sloganeering as usualy but it falls completely flat when Carville challenges her with fact.
In the end her ridiculous "birther" comments are just the cherry on top, especially when Carville calls her and her party out for encouraginig those whackjobs.
If she ever decides to put her name on the dotted line to run for elected office you can expect more of that kind of EPIC FAIL.
Tom Ricks posted a letter sent to Charles Krauthammer in response to his pro torture argument in the Washington Post. The important thing about this letter is that its from a member of the military.
Mr. Krauthammer,
I don't usually make a point of responding to the talking-head proselytizers in my Sunday paper but your column prompted me to do so.
I'll make this simple. There are NO circumstances under which torture is acceptable. Jack Bauer's "24" makes for great TV but even in a ticking timebomb situation such behavior is inappropriate and illegal. Torture is counter to our moral code, a violation of the Geneva and Hague conventions to which we subscribe and perhaps least understood, but most significantly, counterproductive and ineffective. Nothing else really needs to be said, but if you want more details read on.
snip
So you must wonder, by what authority is this letter writer speaking? Well, as a Lieutenant Colonel and Combat Arms Battalion Commander in the Army I am responsible for the welfare, training, good order, and discipline of my soldiers. I am responsible for everything they do or fail to do. I am also responsible to follow and issue only those orders that are legal, ethical and moral. Torture of another human being is illegal, unethical and immoral, and I would be duty bound to disobey any such order...just as PFC Lynndie England and SPC Charles Graner (and their many counterparts, senior officers and NCOs at Abu Ghraib) should have done...just as any of my soldiers should disobey should I give such an order. We all have the lessons of Nuremburg to rely upon anytime such questions come to mind; "I was just following orders" is never justification for committing crimes against other human beings.
Before deploying to Iraq last year, I explained these things to my troopers. It is difficult to explain to young (practically) kids, with little experience, and poor knowledge of the world...but if you are caring and committed, and repeat yourself often enough they learn and understand. I told them the most important thing they needed to take away from all their preparations was that while it would be terrible to lose one of them or have one of them seriously physically injured, it would be worse to have them come home physically well and mentally broken because they had somehow lost their humanity. Torture destroys our humanity, and any equivocation (feel free to exercise the Kantian absolutist vs utilitarian argument to your heart's content) on the matter is just bullshit...
Strong stuff I must say.
In a similar vein former Governor of Minnesota and former Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura recently went on Larry King Live and had this to say about Dick Cheney.
VENTURA: No, I live in Mexico now, Larry. So I do a lot of reading. I don't watch much TV. This year's reading, I covered Bush's life. I covered Guantanamo and a few other subjects. And I'm very disturbed about it.
I'm bothered over Guantanamo because it seems we have created our own Hanoi Hilton. We can live with that? I have a problem. I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.
KING: You were a Navy SEAL.
VENTURA: That's right. I was water boarded, so I know -- at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence -- every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.
KING: What was it like?
VENTURA: It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you -- I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.
KING: Even though you know it's not going to happen -- even though before it, you know you're not going to drown.
VENTURA: You don't know it. If it's -- if it's done wrong, you certainly could drown. You could swallow your tongue. You could do a whole bunch of stuff. If it's it done wrong or -- it's torture, Larry. It's torture.
[.....]
KING: A lot of things to go into, Jesse. What do you make of the Cheney/Limbaugh --
VENTURA: I don't have a lot of respect for Dick Cheney. Here's a guy who got five deferments from the Vietnam War. Clearly, he's a coward. He wouldn't go when it was his time to go. And now he is a chicken hawk. Now he is this big tough guy who wants this hardcore policy. And he's the guy that sanctioned all this torture by calling it enhanced interrogation.
KING: Do you think Rush Limbaugh's a better Republican than Colin Powell?
VENTURA: No, not at all. In fact, if you compare the two, let's look at Colin Powell, who's a war hero, who strapped it on for his country, and didn't run and hide.
KING: Twice.
VENTURA: And then you look at Dick Cheney who ran and hid. I have no respect for Dick Cheney. I have tremendous respect for General Powell.
I think its safe to say that many of the people who have actually and or are actually putting their lives on the line for this country do not support the pro torture crowd.
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