The torture issue is a critical litmus test. If you are cool with torture, what atrocity will you not excuse away? Let all people with integrity speak out to the ACLU, to Pres. Obama, and while you are at it, why not check out The Last War Crime movie, where we make the dramatic case for war crimes prosecutions which are only now being delayed by the failure of enough people so far to do what we just said.

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My guest today is progressive activist and frequent OpEdNews contributor, the PEN. Welcome back to OpEdNews, PEN.

JB: Over the last several years, we've covered a wide range of subjects, including saving the bees, net neutrality, the toxic TPP [still being pushed ahead], Citizens United and your various film endeavors. What's on your mind today?

PEN: The big news of course is the long delayed release of the Senate torture report, the summary of that in the first instance, and an issue we've been shouting about for many years now. And the most remarkable new development in response has been the jaw-dropping call by the president of the ACLU to pardon Bush and his fellow torturers, on the argument that this "may be the only way to ensure that the American government never tortures again."

JB: You've got to be kidding, PEN!

PEN: I wish we were. This has got to be hands down the sappiest suggestion we have ever heard. Pardons would send one message and one message only to the would be torturers of the future, full steam ahead and there will be pardons for you too! The ACLU's president's proposal would lockdown guarantee that the American government DOES torture again!

The fact is that while President Obama may have exercised his personal DISCRETION to repudiate torture (as far as we know, and while the drone murders continue), it remains a US policy option for the future. All it would take would be another single terrorist attack of any kind, and any future president could put America right back in the torture business big time in a heartbeat, based on the categorical and elective refusal to prosecute for these war crimes of the relatively recent past. This very day, John Brennan, current CIA director refused to say that they would not do the SAME thing in the future, stating "I defer to the policy makers in future times."

We'd like to emphasize that this is NOT a political decision, nor should it be. John McCain (himself a victim of torture) in particular should be applauded for his courageous words of truth on the Senate floor. And what is most appalling to us is the failure almost across the board of any so-called viable candidates for the next presidential election to speak out on this. What a despicable collection of unmitigated cowards and angle shooters! And by the way, the correct response is in fact that this should not be a political decision, and none of them even have the gonads to say that much.

Some in responding to the release of the Senate torture report have opined that with the Republicans taking over the Senate that nothing can now be done. To prosecute or not prosecute is not a decision for Congress regardless of who is in the majority. This is a decision for the Justice Department. To President Obama's eternal shame he clearly interceded with Holder to derail any such prosecutions, for misguided (to say the least) reasons of political expediency. If he thought going easy on Bush would gain him Republican cooperation in Congress he was a complete chump. And were he to pardon Bush now, it would be one final kick in the teeth to his supporters.

The response of the right wing, gung ho supporters of American torture, has been predictably lame, a mixture of (1) this is old news (as if there were any statute of limitations, and exploiting the Republican's OWN longstanding opposition to the release of the report), (2) they were just following orders (the very defense rejected when Nazis committed virtually identical acts of torture), (3) torture worked (with the only witnesses for that the torturers themselves, which have been systematically debunked), (4) and it was all legal (because the torturers contrived their own tortured legal opinions to justify themselves).

Well, guess what, bank robbing works too. It's a way to get money. But it is no less a crime. No bank robber has ever been acquitted based on the sheer and naked promise that they won't do it again, a promise that we can not even count on here, and would be fools to believe even if there was one.

JB: Do kudos go to outgoing Sen. Mark Udall for releasing the report altogether? I understand there was a lot of pressure on him not to do so.

PEN: The public face out in front of this has been Senator Dianne Feinstein, but this was a whole committee decision, one that we suspect could not have happened come next January, given that the Republicans are taking over this Senate committee as well then.

The question then is what are WE going to do now. The first thing we are inclined to do is pile on the ACLU with action page submissions to call them out on their unprincipled reversal. Their president says his new proposal turns his stomach. That part he got right, it is stomach turning. And the same message needs to go to President Obama, NO pardons.

We produced a whole full length feature dramatic film about all this two years ago, The Last War Crime, and we have encountered nothing but roadblocks and censorship trying to get the word out about our first movie. Cumulus Media Inc., the second largest conglomerate of radio stations in the country, refused to run an ad for the film on their flagship Washington DC news/talk outlet. We filed a federal lawsuit challenging this, and we have an appeal going with still a breath of life in it about that. Viacom (MTV) also refused a paid ad for their Times Square jumbotron, but we felt the best test case was the radio station, which is under FCC regulation.

Anyone who wants a DVD screener copy of The Last War Crime movie now can get one for a contribution of any amount on our page for latest film project, Citizens United, The Movie, which is also now nearly completed.

http://www.citizensunitedthemovie.com

So what's it going to be, folks? Shall we be the United States of Torture from now on? Is torture now as American as apple pie? Will you speak out on this now? Or will you for partisan reasons follow the lead of our president who said he just wanted to look forward when first challenged on this? We ARE looking forward. And we can look forward to nothing but worse torture abuses in the future unless we do the thing of honor now.

It is no secret to us that LOTS of people in this country are perfectly fine with this torture thing. The real shocker is that ANY of them are self-identified progressives. We lose nothing by treating our enemies with civilized respect and decency. This is about who we are, not who they are. But the least we can do is not prove to the world that we are even worse than they tell their followers we are. Not to mention the fact that torture produces nothing but counterproductively bad intelligence, making us decidedly less safe in the process, and the real interrogation professionals all know this to be true.

JB: What's the deal with President Obama? He sounds like a major apologist for the Bush team. At the very least, isn't he worried about how this will look going forward? What a legacy!

PEN: We're going to be blunt about this, and we know that of which we speak, because our resource spearheaded the initiative to make the number one question on President-elect Obama's incoming website whether there would be accountability for war crimes. He had invited people to come to his website to tell him what issues we cared about. Our own participants made that happen. And that is the only reason he was forced to address this at all, and that is where the whole "looking forward not backward" apology came from. So this was a very clear message before even his first day in office that we were dealing with someone who could not be counted on to act on principle.

And then everyone just went silent. The right wing used to argue that people were just Bush haters who objected to this, that it was just a partisan thing. Were they right? Was all the protest and calls for impeachment and everything else ONLY a partisan thing?

God help you, folks, if your tongue is tied now for partisan reasons. God help you, when the Republicans fully take over again, which based on the current breathtaking lack of any principle by their opposition we can hardly rule out.

JB: Is it my imagination or is this just a reworking of the old TBTF [Too Big To Fail] that we saw with our banks and their Wall St. cronies? Only in this case, it's the Bush administration, led by the despicable and totally unapologetic Dick Cheney. Despite everything, nobody's getting prosecuted for what they did to our economy. Fines, maybe, but that's just money. And there's plenty more, billions, out there. The same seems to be true for torture, accountability, principles. Everything is allowed, no one pays a price and all of this unacceptable behavior has been done in our names. AND they didn't even get anything out of it! Torture doesn't work! So, it was idiotic as well as cruel and indefensible. How do we pick ourselves up from here?

PEN: We could tie many more things into this. Yes TBTF, but again, perhaps more precisely too politically motivated. Why is it that unarmed black men can be murdered by police and no grand jury will indict them? What we have in this country is a completely politicized justice system. And we could do multiple additional interviews just developing that.

But the torture issue is a critical litmus test. If you are cool with torture, what atrocity will you not excuse away? Let all people with integrity pick themselves up now and speak out to the ACLU, speak out to President Obama, and while you are at it, why not check out The Last War Crime movie, where we make the dramatic case for war crimes prosecutions which are only now being delayed by the failure of enough people so far to do what we just said.

JB: Speaking of Citizens United, how do the Supreme Court decision and your film project fit in here? Or don't they?

PEN: The right wing launched a multi-decade initiative to stack the benches of our courts with biased corporate favoring reactionary judges, and they have already succeeded in achieving their final goal. The Citizens United decision has opened the door to unlimited corporate campaign donations. The Democratic party had the foolish strategy of trying to out-fundraise billionaires in this last election dollar for dollar, and you see the sad result. There isn't a person we know who was not getting TWENTY emails a day from the DCCC touting the world's most scammy triple (and then quadruple) match pitch. It occurs to us that if they have people standing by ready to multiple match any donations they will in all cases do what the person with the three dollars wants, not what we the little people want.

Though the Democrats DID call for a vote on S.J.Res.19, the proposal with the most congressional support to amend the Constitution to correct for all this, and they all did vote for it in the Senate, it is not clear to us that it was anything more in their own minds than a fundraising ploy. That is, did any Democratic candidate actually RUN on this issue? Did they actually run ads saying, "Elect me because I will vote to amend the Constitution to reverse Citizens United?" The only way the Democrats are going to defeat Republican war chests is to run AGAINST the money, and make that the issue.

As far as the new film project, Citizens United, The Movie, is nearly finished, just wrapping up the last bits of the music score now. Did we mention it stars 7-time Emmy award winning actor Ed Asner? And we are pleased to report that support for this movie, and the underlying issues it raises, is very strong and will certainly be enduring. For the purposes of the movie we have crafted our own upgraded version of S.J.Res.19, incorporating a full repudiation of corporate personhood (adopted from H.J.Res.29), and people can see a clip of the music scored reading of that on our own page.

http://www.citizensunitedthemovie.com

We say let life therefore imitate art. And if we create great art, life will imitate art greatly.

JB: Amen. We always have so much to talk about. Let's leave this here and we'll talk about the other "stuff" next time. Thanks so much for taking the time, PEN.

PEN: Love you, Joan.

JB: It's been a pleasure. Until next time, PEN!

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Newsweek: ACLU Calls on Obama to Pardon Bush Officials for Torture

NY Times: C.I.A. Director Defends Use of Interrogation Tactics, Avoiding Issue of Torture

TruthOut: The Rank, Reeking Horror of Torturing Some Folks

Gail Collins: It's Cruel. It's Useless. It's the C.I.A. - NYTimes.com

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Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.