Shred Everything
By At least that’s what Tony Blankley recommended in an editorial that inexplicably appeared on NPR the other night. I heard it while I was out running errands and completely forgot about until reading about the Stonewaller General this morning.
Like nearly everything I’ve ever heard or read from Blankley, the NPR commentary was free-verse madness. He began by arguing that because the torture video would eventually have been leaked to Al Jazeera and YouTube, it was entirely appropriate for CIA employees to obliterate the evidence. After all, Blankley continued, those images of “actual waterboarding” would have constituted a “catastrophic propaganda defeat” for the US at precisely the moment it needs to “win the hearts and minds” of “currently non-violent Muslims.” And since it’s apparently better to avoid propaganda defeats than to adhere to the law — never mind that lawlessness itself is nothing if not detrimental to the nation’s image abroad — Blankley can’t understand why any of this should be controversial.
What has happened to common sense? The lawyers and the hearings will, I suppose, sort out whether the CIA was permitted to destroy that incubus of disaster. But whoever did it is owed a debt of gratitude. He or she applied common sense for our common defense. And rather than jockeying for yet another round of short-term Washington political advantage, it is time — and well past time — for everyone in Washington to start doing what that CIA employee did: Think and act for the country. Forget the battle for your power in Washington, and start fighting the battle for our survival in the world.
Yes, what this country really needs is one, two, a thousand Oliver Norths to spindle unpleasant information. Blankley doesn’t recommend a specific role for the press in this matter, but one assumes they’re to keep their pieholes closed until the “currently non-violent Muslims” assure us that they don’t mind if we keep bombing their countries.
Well, it’s a good thing we live in a nation that protects the rights of whistleblow–oh, fuck…