A busy week means light posting. Not that there isn’t a lot to talk about.
Bush is trying to ‘clarify’ how far he can hurt people before it’s classified as torture. Reminds me of the eternal question of my youth, “How far can you go with a girl and still be considered ‘morally clean’?” But I never asked anyone that question because they’d know I was trying to get away with as much as I could. Heh heh. And Bush is the same. He’d love to go ‘all the way’, but then he’d be in trouble. And you don’t respect the person you’re torturing the next day. I guess the answer is “Listen to your heart, and if you feel good about it, then that means it’s true.”
Never mind. I’m running a Quiz Night tomorrow, and here are some easy questions to whet your appetite.
1) What is the 2nd highest mountain in the world?
2) What was the name of Napoleon’s first wife?
3) How many strings are there on a ukulele?
4) Which ocean is named after a mythical city?
5) Who was the first man to orbit the earth?
6) How long before other countries decide to try some fair-play torture on Americans?
Oh, sorry.
22 September 2006 at 8:25 pm
It appears you can go pretty far.
The authorization of harsh interrogation methods which Mora had seen was no aberration. Almost immediately after September 11th, the Administration had decided that protecting the country required extraordinary measures, including the exercise of executive powers exceeding domestic and international norms. In January, 2002, Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel (he is now the Attorney General), sent a memo to President Bush arguing for a “new paradigm” of interrogation, declaring that the war on terror “renders obsolete” the “strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners” required by the Geneva conventions, which were ratified by the United States in 1955. That August, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which acts as an in-house law firm for the executive branch, issued a memo secretly authorizing the C.I.A. to inflict pain and suffering on detainees during interrogations, up to the level caused by “organ failure.” This document, now widely known as the Torture Memo, which Addington helped to draft, also advised that, under the doctrine of “necessity,” the President could supersede national and international laws prohibiting torture. (The document was leaked to the press in 2004, after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
Sad.
24 September 2006 at 3:30 am
Answers, using nothing but my good old World Book 1972 set:
1) K2
2) Joséphine de Beauharnais
3) 4 strings
4) Atlantic Ocean
5) Yuri Gagarin
6) Hmmmmm…
Are they all right?
Seeing as you are a linguist, you are hereby invited to join the (parenthesis conspiracy). Here is the website:
http://patrick.wattle.id.au/cameron/brackets/
Help brackets of all kinds dominate!