Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Straight-Up Propaganda Torture

After reading this article in the NYT I realized that Cheney had already won the PR war on torture. He's got people debating about whether the information we got was worth the means. Maybe yes, maybe no. Who cares? The important thing to realize is that this torture was never meant to get any information in the first place. According to the article, they were using techniques known by our military not to be effective in getting information. These techniques are known to be effective in getting propaganda confessions. They used these techniques on people who had been off of the battlefield for months -- sometimes years -- and could not possibly have any actionable intelligence.

What was Cheney trying to get them to say? Well, they were very interested at that time in convincing us that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. They may have believed that a "confession" would have helped them in this cause. Why did they fail? Maybe the Army/CIA/etc. aren't as full of toadies as Cheney thought.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

51-Star American Flag



Here is my proposal for a 51-star flag. I think, at this point, the rectangle has been done. It's time for a new shape.