The Torture Memo and the Flag in the Lapel

Something sickish happened on Wednesday night.

Network news has had a long slide into the vulgar conveyance of rumor. But who, among all who witnessed on TV the drawn-out swindle of the O.J. trial and the Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton impeachment, who that marked the abject surrender of the networks to the propaganda campaign in the run-up to Iraq--who, for all these signs, could have predicted the frivolity of the questions that were asked in Wednesday's Pennsylvania debate by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos?

In a decent society, the relish with which these men in suits trashed an occasion for civic reflection would be taken as an insult to the country. The offenders would be drummed out of their jobs--asked to vacate their "anchor" posts and to seek more appropriate work as tabloid reporters or the hosts of reality encounters. But a lesson of our time is that respectable culture now embraces the bread and circuses. The two have become one.

Early in the debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were asked what assurance they could offer Israelis against a nuclear-armed Iran. Both candidates made pandering replies--Senator Clinton as usual the grosser of the two by several shades of wheedling aggression. A fair answer would have been: "Your question implies that Iran is now in possession of nuclear weapons, or that it soon will be. And yet we have just been told by the National Intelligence Estimate that Iran poses no such threat. To be asking your question with such urgency, you must have a source of information that you consider superior to the National Intelligence Estimate. What is that source?"

But Clinton is anxious to hold the support she still enjoys from a body of Democrats who now threaten to switch to McCain; and Obama is concerned not to alienate the same people if he can avoid it; and so, a question was asked and answered whose apparent subject was a danger from Iran but whose actual subject was the backing of those who make the unconditional support of Israel as blind and morally specialized a test as evangelical Christians make of the outlawing of abortion.

The answers were feeble but the question was false: a lie in itself, disguised as a bold summons to plain speaking.

There were questions about the wearing of the American flags in lapels and the peril or relative safety of Hillary Clinton's debarkation in Bosnia in 1996.

There was not one question about the release of the full text of the torture memo by Professor John Yoo, of the School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. In his memo, Yoo wrote that a president can take whatever actions he thinks necessary in time of war, since war itself renders the despotic acts pursued by a president merely part of the legitimate defense of his country: so they require no check from the Congress or the courts. He was advising President Bush specifically how to navigate among statutes that might have laid torturers open to prosecution (the laws on assault for example). Yet what was in question was not Yoo's right to walk the streets until convicted of a crime, but rather his entitlement to act as a teacher of law to young Americans--a post for which one qualification is a disposition to respect the rule of law and to honor the principle that sets no man above the law.

The story was given an added dimension a few days later when it transpired that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft, and George Tenet had for a time supervised individual interrogations of suspects from a room in the White House, calling, move by move, each stroke of torment and privation. Condoleezza Rice, according to the report from ABC News a week before the debate, was a solid supporter of the torture policy and had told the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it." Ashcroft was the only one of the company to feel that somehow they should not be doing it, that they had gone too far, that "history will not judge this kindly." The president soon after acknowledged that he knew what was happening and approved.

Still another piece of the same story emerged last week when Christopher Edley, Dean of U.C. Berkeley Law School, wrote a public letter in response to demands for the firing of Yoo. A lawyer, said Edley, is not responsible for the actions taken on his advice, even actions he himself defended and urged. "No argument about what he did or didn't facilitate, or about his special obligations as an attorney, makes his conduct morally equivalent to that of his nominal clients, Secretary Rumsfeld, et al., or comparable to the conduct of interrogators distant in time, rank and place. Yes, it does matter that Yoo was an adviser, but President Bush and his national security appointees were the deciders." On this reasoning, only the decider and the executor of wicked acts are responsible for those acts, though the former was following legal advice and the latter following orders; a lawyer, by being a lawyer, is always exonerated; no force should persuade a law school to strip of his status a legal scholar who defines torture out of existence in order to allow the cruel and savage treatment of prisoners.

It is hard to imagine a country with an informed journalistic establishment in which a debate held shortly after all these reports appeared would not contain pertinent questions about the developments which they describe. Yet no such questions were asked by the ABC interviewers: an omission all the more strange in view of the fact that ABC News itself broke the most shocking of the stories. Very likely, in the general election, even with John McCain present and the incitement of his complex and contradictory opinions on torture, the subject will not be explored. It matters too much to be one of the things we talk about.

Some pieces of more prosaic news, also, might have caught the attention of Stephanopoulos and Gibson. On the day of the debate, the New York Times ran a page 1 story concerning an Iraqi regiment's desertion of its post in Sadr City, under the heading "Iraqi Unit Flees Sadr City Post, Despite American's Plea."

The Iraqi company who abandoned their positions that Tuesday night, Michael R. Gordon wrote, did not pause to convey their intent and they did not hesitate.

They ran, or, rather, drove away--that was all. The American soldiers on the scene cursed them for their cowardice. More than one of the major newspapers before now must have had a shot at covering other such desertions; but, for whatever reason, this was the moment when an epitomizing story of a common occurrence broke through. The story can only have shaken every supporter of the Iraq war who had the heart to read it. For it showed that many Iraqis--including those we have supposed our closest allies--consider this to be an American and not an Iraqi war. They would rather save themselves than fight to save the picture of democracy that we have offered them.

In the country we used to be, a moderator of these debates would have asked:
"Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, both of you have expressed reservations about the war (one of you with some consistency), but neither has suggested that a withdrawal from Iraq ought to begin at once and be completed soon. You both seem more wary about how precipitately we may leave than about how long we can afford to stay. Do these recent desertions by Iraqi soldiers alarm you? Suppose five or ten such incidents occur in the next two months: will you reconsider the wisdom of arranging an American departure from Iraq?"

The fact that Americans in high office advised, countenanced, and ordered acts of torture which are crimes under international law, will not go away. The world sees it and wonders and is baffled by the American silence. How can Americans read these stories and not follow up but go on to the next thing?

Again, the pretense that Iran embodies an imminent danger to the United States will not excuse the U.S. in the eyes of the world if the U.S. bombs Iran unprovoked, or assists Israel in bombing Iran. And again, an honest journalistic establishment could hardly ignore the Iraqi defections from a war we say is fought for Iraqi freedom.

Yet George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson were not thinking of such things.

They did not take it that they were hired to mind that shop. When they asked about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and about Bosnia in 1996 and about the flag and the meaning of the words "cling" and "bitter," they were doing what they believed was expected of them by their employers at ABC/Disney.

In war, it is said, the first casualty is truth. But oddly, in this war, the armed forces have done far more than the mainstream media to enlighten our understanding. Extraordinary acts of conscience, over the past several years, have come from General Taguba, General Batiste, Admiral Fallon. It is luminaries of the newsroom like those at ABC and Tim Russert at NBC, and others at the top of a once-admired profession, who have shown the most callous flippancy at a time when this country seems to be changing its character before our eyes.

This trance of banality is deplorable, but it is easy to understand. Whose interest can it serve, they must ask, to raise a fuss about the fact that American leaders appear to have committed criminal acts? It is the truth; but what is truth? We are reaching a point where the truth can be brushed aside as one more opinion.

Comments

[jteschke]

Using the flag lapel as a test is all too reminiscent of fascist regimes' usage of their national symbols. There is a link between tolerance for torture and war crimes and such symbolic issues. The author, as usual, has cut to the chase in a well-written fashion.

[BobHanssen]

Want to see a great picture of a prominent politician wearing a flag lapel pin? Google Larry Craig's mugshot! LOL

[Driver125]

One thing that IS certain...­....the triumph of Tabloid-Style Journalism over all others. Anything with controversy is good...det­ailed and thoughtful analysis is out. Get it first and always emphasize the purulent or sensationalist aspects of any story. What is harder to prove is media bias due to corporate ownership. Until there is some more details (preferably from those who would be in the center of such activities) as to exactly how this might work, this line of reasoning will remain more of a speculative nature. That they have become nearly useless in their traditional roles has become a certainty.

[CindyMax]

Thank you, Mr. Bromwich, for laying bare the imperatives that should have been addressed in the debate. You and other scholars with integrity and a genuine concern for our country's direction should be moderating and writing the questions. The problems facing our country are too grave to entrust to media hacks.

With respect to the furor between Obama and Hillary supporters, come November, either hold your nose and vote for the one you didn't support or lose the Supreme Court for decades. It's time to stop squabbling and look at the big picture.

[PeaceThroughObedience]

I think its pretty obvious how this election will play out. NO reaction to the damning torture memos, but widespread outrage over a mild (and true ) statement taken out of context and repeated ad nauseum by the right-wing corporate -owned media. America, it been nice knowing you. I live here now and am technically a citizen, but I a deeply ashamed of my country. We have somehow turned a corner and I think its too late to do anything about it. Whoever orchestrated the 911 attacks is responsible, and I don't believe that we will ever find out what actually happened on that tragic day. One thing is certain, the media is complicit in all of these ongoing crimes

[Rog49Thomas]

I religiously (but not reverently) watch the US MSM.

This was not a difference of kind but merely a difference of degree.

What passes for serious journalism in this country (and what has passed for quite some time now) has all the intellectual rigor of American Idol.

Empty slogans, sound bites, and ideologica­lly-driven drivel - all to fill up eager empty minds.

[awcbuddy8]

You know, it's funny. You people rip the media for not reporting the "issues"(or letting Obama speak for 30 minutes) yet you have clung to this total non-issue. Nobody cares.

[PrairieDog]

If nobody cares that we have a government that promotes torture, spies on its citizens wholesale, or throws people in jail indefinitely without charge then we deserve to be attacked. Unfortunately, the people who die in such attacks won't be the traitors, war criminals & mass murderers at the top who uexploit our fears to initiate such policies.

[thatsitfortheotherone]

You fail to see the irony in trumpeting "nobody cares."

If nobody really cared about this "non-issue," would you waste the time to post your drivel?

[americanwhocares]

buddy: speak for yourself. I care about the issues deeply.

[WoodyCPM]

So because YOU don't care either because you're a neo-con partisan who supports the war, or because you're just too dumb to understand why these things OUGHT to matter to you...then­, of course NOBODY cares. Right? This is exactly the kind of mindset that led to Wednesday's media exercise in blatant valueless propaganda. It's the same intellectual honesty and mental acuity that leads the press to assume because the people they know in the chattering classes are chattering about nothing, then nothing is what should be chatted about.

[john456]

you are right when you say nobody cares. Nobody cares because the reporters charged with putting these issues in front of the public are responding to the corporate media that directs them not to start any controversy. Unless it is about Brittney Spears or some person without a constituency that, at least initially, will not cause them to lose viewers, readers or advertizers. Fortunately, as they continue this venue they lose the public as it drifts away.

[newshawk14]

I very much liked your article, If we continue down the path of triviality that we seem to be pursuing,
you might as well have an American flag, tattooed on the right cheek of your butt, and mom and dad
tattooed on the other. It will give you a convenient and friendly place, to store your head when it's not
in use

[patriotscholar]

Two things:

About the flag:
http://www.usflag.org/flagetiquette.html

About torture and the constitution:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=239574

http://www.liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=2856

[NelsonR]

Please a reporter, find that women on the ad about, Why Obama doesn't wear an American flag pin. I don't wear one, am I unpatriotic? Anyway catch that women on the street, want to bet, no Pin.

It's total insanity while our Georgie Baby Bush takes America down daily, economically, politically, Socially. One good thought, we are all learning the true meaning of proper English usage.

[caliguy]

I agree with much of what you say. The reality is that a Main Stream Media no longer exists, if it ever existed at all. The convergence of entertainment, news, opinion and advocacy, spear-headed by cheaper-to-produce entertainment shows that emphasize production value over serious analysis (what we used to call journalism) as well as the Internet and the rise of the blog, have created a wealth of information whose validity is difficult to gauge. Conservative economists argue that a free market regulates itself because of competition, but we know that's not always the case (e.g. the mortgage loan crisis). Likewise, the information market now operates under the same assumptions, except that we now see that exposure to "information" no longer equates to being well informed, and increasingly, information is deemed legitimate if the public either enjoys it or agrees with it. The result is arguably a more informed public, but not necessarily a better-informed one.

[sleepless]

Mr. Bromwich,

Can you post a follow up to outline what we can do to demand that corporate tv no longer moderates election events?

The pre swiftboating that happened on ABC has to stop but what do I do? Hint, I don't watch networks.

Thanks for your words. Some of at least feel that we are not the crazy ones on this matter. It was a nightmare.

[gliderguy]

Bravo, bravo, bravo! Please, let's have YOU helm the next debate. Perhaps then we might have a real debate on real issues of relevance. But then again, isn't it just better to promise undying loyalty to Israel?

[CitizenLegislatorCC]

Notice how the entire nation, now, following the lead of the private-interest press and the corporate-­interest-s­erving Congress, worships at the altar of the American presidency? Whether the focus is on the incumbent, or on the competing contenders to replace him, or simply on the 'concept'? What ever happened to "we, the people"? Do Americans now pledge their allegiance and obedience to one man?

Or that - supposedly - we cannot exit Iraq unless and until a PRESIDENT decides, on his own, to do so? Or - supposedly - that we cannot prevent war on Iran if the PRESIDENT decides, on his own, to use our Armed Forces and treasury to attack that nation? [War powers still belong to the Congress ALONE, under our Constitution - pass it on.]

Or that the nation pretends - with Congressional approval and encouragement (Jack Murtha has another Iraq supplemental ready to roll) - to be held hostage to the whims of one man - the president - who, we've learned, secretly considers himself not only above the law, but the law itself?

Didn't happen to notice?

Well, try asking the untouchable criminals in the White House and their Congressional partners in crime who are bound and determined to deny us justice until their pals can make good their happy escape, unscathed by the rule of law.

http://restoreruleoflaw.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07cuomo.html?_r=4&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

If only Empress Pelosi had the conscience or the piety of David Bromwich.

[SemperVeritas]

Let's all remember this ABC/Disney "debate" the next time we are tempted to:

* Watch a Disney movie

* Buy a Disney product

* Pay big bucks to stand in long lines at a Disney theme park

* Watch ABC "News"

* Patronize ABC's sponsors

A dollar donated to any of the above is a dollar in the pocket of the RNC's election treasury.

Disney is perennially one of the big contributors to the Repubs.

Connect the dots, people. Connect the dots.

[HeresJohnny]

Let's not forget ESPN, Semper. Disney is such a Colossus of a media company that its reach extends nearly everywhere. Hannah Montana? Check. History Channel? Check. Club Penguin? Check. Touchstone Pictures? Check. Miramax? Check. Disney is only the second-largest media company in the world. This hatchet job of a 'debate' was disappointing, but not surprising. No surprise that George showed himself to be a hack, but I'm still shaking my head about Charles Gibson. I must admit I didn't see that coming.

[SemperVeritas]

Same here. George has always been a hack for the Clintons, who after all brought him into this rarified universe.

Charlie Gibson was a shock to me. I had no idea that he was so enthusiastically indentured to his corporate masters.

My naivete is eroding, slowly but surely.