The administration argued it was not obligated to preserve the videotapes and told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about them “could potentially complicate the ongoing efforts to arrive at a full factual understanding of the matter.”
Thing is, people bought this shit back in 2002, which is when I first became aware of it. People bought this shit because hey, you never know, and these guys might not be completely full of shit, and despite our long national nightmares with Nixon and Iran-Contra people still kind of figured there was a place where they’d stop. People were dumb, what can I say, and it was a very, very few DFH’s back then who were screaming that our laws weren’t designed to protect the obviously innocent, they were designed to protect us all, and if you don’t think there’s a big fucking difference cover the federal courts for a while. Or, you know, turn on a TV, or, like, read.
Fast-forward a half-decade. It’s been definitively proven this bunch can’t prosecute its way out of a paper bag, that the only thing they’re counting on is being given the benefit of the doubt, and that all we can hope to have happen here is a big wide grin and a “hey, trust us!” And everybody willing to give them the benefit of the doubt is now professing shock and horror, and acting like all this crap started happening in 2005, as if the date of the beginning of the end and the date the New York Times made it okay to talk about the end are the same fucking thing.
I mean it, it drives me wild. The problem with half the crap comes out of these people’s mouths isn’t that it is, on its face, wrong. All the words are true, in that there are circumstances in which this defense could actually hold water. Problem is, we will never, ever, ever be able to give them the benefit of the doubt again, and that’s dangerous. The point of the story about the boy who cried wolf is that the wolf actually shows up in the end.
A.