Confirmed: The Dark Side

About a month ago, I blogged a bit about Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side. I was convinced by her argument, but one always wonders about them there journalists and their godless liberal agendas....

Enter the U.S. Senate’s Report of the Committee on Armed Services, dated Nov. 20, 2008 – about four months after Mayer’s book was published – which was just put up on the Senate’s website.

I’ll need some time to slog through the 263-page document, but I found this nugget in the Executive Summary. There’s a lot packed into one short paragraph, so savor it:

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee’s inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about.

This is pretty much Mayer's thesis.

Score one for the journalist....

Bumper sticker lulz

I saw a bumper sticker that made me laugh today, so I scraped my memory for others I've found funny. I don't do them, but if I did, all but one of these would have a chance to appear on my car's behind. (Can you guess which one might not make it?)

1. WWJB (Who Would Jesus Bomb?)


2. Eschew Obfuscation.


3. What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?


4. I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.


5. Ignorance is apparently bliss.


6. Sarah Palin 2012: You Betcha!


7. Always remember you are unique, just like everyone else.


8. Visualize whirled peas.


9. That was Zen. This is Tao.