’08/12 Election

Cartoon courtesy of Zot Media

Here’s more evidence, if much more were needed, that the Democrats, and most specifically the Clintons, are not the good guys. The cavalry is not coming – or at least not in the shape of Hillary and Bill.

Torture like Jack Bauer’s would be OK, Bill Clinton says
BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Monday, October 1st 2007, 4:00 AM
WASHINGTON – What the nation needs is some good Jack Bauer agents, says Bill Clinton.

Bill and Hillary Clinton apparently no longer think torture has a place in U.S. policy, but Bubba sure hopes a “24”-style cowboy steps up if someone ever nabs a terrorist who knows a bomb is about to blow.

Triangulating, much?

Should Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination and the next presidential election (if it’s not suspended due to a ‘national emergency’ in the meantime and if it’s not fixed if it does happen) her Presidency’ll just be more of the same: like Gordon Brown has post-Tony Blair (who?), Clinton’ll quite happily accept the unitary executive theory and to assume the powers of the previous autocrat in office once elected.

Just as SuperGordo has she’ll dress those autocratic powers in touchyfeely, management inspirospeak: but underneath the shiny smile and friendly suits will be the same old corporate tool, willing to shade any moral issue to advance their career and their sponsors’ interests.

“If you’re the Jack Bauer person, you’ll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences,” Bill Clinton said yesterday.

In Fox’s hit show “24,” actor Kiefer Sutherland’s character Jack Bauer is regularly confronted with the ticking-time bomb scenario – and makes his own rules about how to save the country.

Pointing to the show, Clinton argued on NBC’s “Meet the Press” it was better that way because any law that approved torture could be abused.

“If you have any kind of a formal exception, people just drive a truck through it, and they’ll say, ‘Well, I thought it was covered by the exception,'” Clinton said.

“When Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better,” he said.

Torture is a substantive issue and the US news media doesn’t do subtantive, it does Jack Bauer. And hey, what does torture matter when Bill had his lollipop licked in the sacred Oval Office and Hillary cackles?

But even allowing for rightwing media spin, this isn’t the kind of moral sophistry the world needs in its leaders just now. Torture is brutal, inhuman and illegal; it’s not a finessable issue.

To see the frontrunning Democratic candidate’s partner, a former lawyer and president himself who’s well aware of torture’s illegality (which makes his words all the more reprehensible) using torture as a triangulation point and vote-grabber, is the clearest illustration there is that the leadership of the Democratic party, as it stands, is as morally corrupt – if not ethically worse because of their mealy-mouthed hypocrisy – as the Republican government they seek to replace.

Mr. Clinton was anonymously quoted earlier this week by Tim Russert during the Democratic debate on MSNBC. In that instance, Mr. Russert read a quote that suggested it was appropriate to use torture on a captured terrorist if it was known he or she had knowledge of an impending terrorist attack. Mrs. Clinton ended up opposing that view, before Mr. Russert told her it was her husband who had said it.

Mr. Obama’s campaign was clearly pleased at having unearthed this example of Mr. Clinton in 1992 arguing against Mr. Clinton in 2007. Within moments of him delivering the remark here, the Obama campaign sent out a press release, complete with a link to the video of Mr. Clinton speaking on, you guessed it, You Tube.

Leaving morals aside (something Democrats seem to be able to do with ease), in purely campaigning terms it is very clever indeed of Barack Obama to use torture as a wedge against Clinton media double-teaming. That’s the downside of the Clintons ‘twofer’ strategy: they’re saying “Look at us, we have history, we have experience, you’ll get 2 for 1” – but it’s also their weakest point: their history is their political underbelly. Norman Hsu could yet be Hillary’s undoing – Clinton/Hsu corruption is an issue being loaded into the Republican projection cannon as I type.

If the Clintons are subjected to barrage of rightwing corruption allegations they have only themselves to blame: again and again the Clintons have shown that they are willing to do anything, say anything, just as long as it picks up a few more votes. Granted they are not quite as corrupt as most Republicans but that will hardly matter – the Republican-embedded media knows damned well the best defence is a good offence. For once the target deserves it.