corrente

The WhiteWash House is now in full stonewall mode on the torture memoes it commissioned, and is now working the cover story hard: Doing the usual managed relesae of "all" (ha) the documents, which in this case turn out to be full of loopholes ("military necessity"). The amazing thing will be, as usual, that Bush will think his maneuvers to shirk responsibility are subtle and secretive, when in fact they are amazingly clumsy and obvious. Oh well. Nobody ever went broke—even the blogosphere—by underestimating the crassness of the Bush administration.

Here at Corrente, we've argued that although torture will probably not be shown to have been ordered through the official chain of command (that would be the cover story, right), it is extremely likely that it was ordered (and managed, and concealed) by an apparatus we've called The Fog Machine. Kinda like discovering a new, hitherto unseen planet, by looking at the motion of the planets we know, eh? After all, we know these guys (good former Trots all) set up back channels whenever the official ones get in the way (exhibit 1: The Office of Feith-based intelligence).

And we've also argued that the orders for torture were conveyed through "nods and winks"—much as the orders for the Final Solution were conveyed to Hitler's willing executioners. (There. I've used the H word.) The lack of a clear chain of command, the removal of military insignias, the confusion between contractors, the military, and "other agencies", is by design: The chaos enables the operation of the Stanford Effect, where people given power over others surrender their scruples.

But where do the "nods and winks" come from? Bush himself, of course, and also Rumsfeld. But I think we've been ignoring the biggest torture meme propagator of all: Rush Limbaugh:

[Limbaugh called the torture] "a brilliant maneuver" and compared it to a college fraternity prank: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation," he said.

[Limbaugh] excused the actions of our soldiers this way: "You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?"

One full hour of "The Rush Limbaugh Show" is broadcast [by AFRTS] every weekday directly to our soldiers in Iraq and around the world — to nearly 1 million U.S. troops in more than 175 countries and U.S. territories. Moreover, it is the only hourlong partisan political talk show broadcast daily to the troops.

AFRTS provides stateside radio and television programming, 'a touch of home' to U.S. service men and women.

Why should American taxpayers pay for the broadcasting of such inexcusable views to U.S. troops? Why, at a combustible moment like this one, would we be funneling Limbaugh's trivializations to our men and women at the front? Does Limbaugh's pro-torture propaganda really qualify as "a touch of home"?

Limbaugh's comments, and their tacit endorsement by the U.S. government, send a message to U.S. servicemen and servicewomen that torture is not a subject to be taken seriously and that these are actions that can be excused. Nothing could be more wrong than that.
(via LA Times)

Another piece of the For Machine puzzle falls into place. The genius of the Bush administratior has been to privatize the "nods and winks" process.

Limbaugh's willing torturers....