Wrong in a number of ways
Michael Tomasky in the Guardian discusses the strangeness of the Obama-Churchill torture fabrication made during his 100 day celebration (HT: JOM):
the president did make one glaring error. He said, when discussing torture, that he’d read an article recently saying how Churchill, at the height of the blitz, said of Great Britain “we don’t torture.” He may well have read such an article, and Churchill may well have made such a statement. But Britain did torture. Says who? Says the Guardian. I refer you, friends, to The Cage.
The other day I was sitting in the Washington office and my Guardian colleague Chris McGreal came up to me to talk about the subject of torture and the debate over its effectiveness. Chris pointed out to me that in Kensington during the second war, there was a facility known as The Cage inside which Nazi prisoners — chiefly U-boat captains, but others — were routinely tortured.
Then our colleague Richard Adams piped up to say that the Guardian had done a big piece on it a few years back. Indeed it had. Ian Cobain wrote it in 2005. And here it is. You really must read it, it’s terrific stuff. It was on one of the poshest streets in all of London, then and now; it was run by MI19, and specifically by a fellow called Alexander Scotland; it was of course a closely guarded secret; and — most shockingly — it operated until two or three years after the war ended, still mistreating captive Germans.
The book Churchill by Himself, said to be the definitive collection of the man’s quotations, contains two instances of the word torture, and neither of them resembles the Obama quote. The man who ordered the firebombing of Dresden a mere 12 weeks before the end of the war in Europe, killing 25,000 civilians to erode German morale, surely never made the statement that Obama claims.
There is almost nothing to be gained anymore in pointing out the absurdity of many of Obama’s statements, since the media adamantly refuse to observe that the emperor is rather scantily clad. (Note the grandiosity of the President’s comparing himself to Churchill and projecting onto that great man the moral preening of the current administration. It is more than a little disturbing.)
Maybe Obama was just a little confused and thought he was quoting Ward Churchill.
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:11 am
I don’t find it disturbing at all. The sooner this self-promoting incompetent is exposed, the better.
Take one obvious example, the budget deficit. This president makes the spendthrift Bush look like a miser. One way or another, inflation or taxation, this burden will hit every American. The Teleprompter-in-Chief can blame Bush all he likes, Bush is gone. By the next presidential election, no media on earth will be able to hide the obvious. His glibness is in way over his head, and he doesn’t know how to swim.
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 am
Obama has it made as he knows that the MSM worships the ground that he walks on and will never call him out on issues such as this. Hell, they gave him and the rest of his admin. a pass on the NYC photo op. debacle.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:30 am
good stuff from Tigerhawk today.