A huge bombshell landed in our laps this week and no one really noticed. That explosive contained the rationale for George Bush and his henchmen to torture anyone they want. Anyone. John Yoo at the Department of Justice had an 81 page memo crafted and is now declassified. Why would the Administration want to open up this part of their book for people to see how they've been on a crusade for an Executive branch that makes Congress look like a whimpering puppy? Perhaps it was because they knew the media would be unable to digest it in their endless 24 hour cycle of ratings-grabbing insanity.
From The Huffington Post:
On cable news, mentions of the memo's declassifications were few, brief, and undetailed. CNN's Headline News noted that the story was "one of the most popular stories at cnn.com," but apparently, that's not enough to warrant a lengthier report. MSNBC featured a brief mention on Morning Joe, and a near-noontime mention that was three sentences long and followed by a lengthy report on the hospitalization of an American Idol performer.
Only Fox News took the matter to the level of discussion, but even then, the report was largely short-sighted and full of equivocations and unsubstantiated claims. The major takeaway was that the memo noted that "constitutional protections do not apply to foreign prisoners being held outside the United States" and that interrogation "becomes torture when severe pain and suffering cause permanent or irreversible damage...death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant bodily function." (As you'll see below, the full ramifications of the memo were far more vast.)
Later in the day, Fox added, "Numerous presidents have ordered the capture and questioning of enemy combatants during virtually every major conflict in the nation's history. Recognizing this authority, congress has never attempted to restrain or interfere with the president's authority on this score." This sort of implies that if an action was taken in the past, it imbues a "rightness."
Along the way, Fox salted the coverage with equivocations. "A number of major Republicans and Democrats said this is a terrible mistake." None were named, and the wisdom of their position was unexplored. "Some constitutional scholars say the 81-page legal opinion must be placed in historical context...[it should be viewed as] a period piece." That's a classic "some say" assertion that again suggests that "history" trumps a moral foundation or factual evidence that indicates torture is ineffective. Finally, Fox lets Kit Bond have the last word, and it's a stupefyingly inane one: "Some are more interested in recycling old news and scoring political points with the ACLU."
It is amusing, if not sad, that Fox News went the farthest with this. Perhaps they knew that no one else would pay too much attention to it. That would give them ample opportunity to spin this the way the Administration would want. That Bush is right to torture people if it serves a "higher purpose," even if we do not know what that purpose is, despite all the facts to the contrary that torturing prisoners does interrogators absolutely no good at all.
What the media did with this story, both actively and passively, shows that they are not doing their jobs at protecting the freedoms of the American people. The fourth estate was meant to be a stop gap when the three branches of our government were not working to the best of their ability. Unfortunately now, that fourth estate is either in bed with the Executive branch, or in the other room playing video games while King Bush gets to do as he pleases.
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