[Newspoetry] Meet me at the Wailing Wall, noon today, and everyday after.

[DL Emerick]

I admit

I do not watch ABC News, FOX News or Limbaugh,

or even some of the extremist right-ring media, 

which has amateurs like me,

but also quite unlike me, for my knee-jerks when hit,

by karate-chopping bloggers like them -

and when I say me, I don't mean me, personally,

but me, generally, the me you or I should be.

 

So,  the NYT today reports on an ABC story,

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28abc.html --

One that floated out in late 2007,

Where Ross interviews Kiriakou:

TORTURE WORKS SWIFTLY, EFFECTIVELY.

I KNOW THIS, I AM AN INFORMED CIA OFFICER.

WE TORTURED (WATERBOARDED) AZ;

HE CRACKED IN 25 .. 35 SECONDS.

 

Ross got many journalistic kudos for story;

Kiriakou got big ABC "consulting" job (after suitable interval),

Then was hired by Senate Intelligence Committee,

Where he still works.

 

Limbaugh, Hannity, Goldberg, the right-wing generally -

They all believed Kiriakou, swallowed the big lie,

And regurgitated it, endlessly -

In part because they hate the idea of having to be nice to anyone,

But especially they hate the ideas of loving your enemies,

Or of praying for those who hurt you.

 

Now, truth is coming out slowly -

The CIA denies that Kiriakou was authorized to speak,

that K may have told unauthorized state secrets,

that K had no actual, direct connection with torturers,

but was only reading summaries, at his CIA desk in DC -

and, more critically, AZ was not tortured just once,

for a few seconds, but repeatedly, at least 83 times,

 

Actionable intelligence wasn't swiftly, easily obtained,

Despite the claim that future plots or attacks were foiled -

A claim we can't yet evaluate on evidence available -

But which, so responsible intelligence veterans say,

We need not evaluate because any such information

Could be gotten more swiftly and effectively without torture,

And without all the lies the tortured most particularly will tell,

For a tortured soul will confess to deeds never done,

As easily as he will divulge secrets he never knew.

Even so, torture is also counterproductive in armed conflicts:

For the facts of your inhumanity will aid your foe in recruiting

Far more than information accidentally gained through torture -

So the 1 plot you foil will be offset by the 10 you fomented. 

 

Now, Kiriakou says he'd have done anything to prevent future attacks,

Because he loved his country and was angered by 9/11.

 

That all may be true, but he was, in every way wrong.

 

Also, anger, love and hate do not justify loss of humanity -

Indeed, the ability to be human is only that:

Never let yourself be blind to your own wrongdoing --

You have the ability to accept restraints on what you would do -

For otherwise there is no difference between terrorists and us,

Between gangster thugs and the US Government -

Which principle I repeatedly chronicle here at the NPA,

To ever shrinking circles of readers in vanishing points.

 

 

As for Obama -

He was wrong to immunize CIA field operatives from prosecution;

The principles of international conventions, laws, treaties are firm:

No person may participate in criminal acts against other humans -

There is no "I was just following orders" defense -

That is the integrity of the law - that it applies to all people.

 

Still, there are the problems of Kiriakou and, I'd add, Ross.

Kiriakou should be prosecuted for promoting the practices of torture,

Not as a policy action, but as a practice in which he was complicit,

And from which, he personally has profited, too -

And Ross should be stripped of his awards and fired ---

A corrupt and dishonest journalist - 

in a case of criminal policies by the government -

deserves no forum, anywhere -

but will always have one,

as Limbaugh or Hannity prove - 

as long as there are people driven by hate of their fellow man -

for such the prevalence of such hate alone provides

a complete and systematic account of the political dynamic

of the surface skin of the right-wing

(ignoring the heart of gold that animates its mind and body -

A heart that seeks only after gold and its golden god).

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