“Which begs the question – what is the point of this list? And why is it so large?”

Because it has fuck all to do with actual security.

The US has become the Soviet Union. The only thing left is for it to go broke paying for its “security.”

We will continue to find the actions of any President “disappointing” so long as we pay more attention to their words than what they actually do.

“This isn’t Minority Report, we don’t lock people up for Pre-crime.”

Locking up people for pre-crimes is where US Liberals and Conservatives share common ground.

Shorter Graham: “Torture the bastards!”

That Bush, et al acted in “good faith” is a tissue of horseshit. Torture is not about information but about power, specifically the power to punish. And in the case of the US after 9/11–as the relevant documents clearly indicate–torture was about expanding the power of the executive branch to the point of allowing it to exist beyond the law. Accomplishing this Fascist goal was the point of engaging in torture (and in that respect, it was hugely successful). Seeking information was the lie used to sell the public.

To say that the players acted in good faith is to undermine the whole importance of the report. It maintains the public lie and hides the real nature and goal of US torture. It is the equivalent to saying the findings don’t matter.

“No reliable hard number is available, just an incomplete number based on newspaper reports and some estimates based on surveys.”

While you are right that there is no hard number available, there is actually quite a lot of data available on Iraqi civilian casualties. Many very good studies have been conducted over the past two decades. A few of them have spent many years collecting, updating and analyzing data. I kept up on these extensively from the start of Gulf War Part I through the mid 2000s, at which time estimates ran from 1 to 2 million deaths (mostly as the result of the sanctions) with reasonable, conservative estimates around 1.25-ish.

I used to have all this info hard copy and on another computer, but it has been years since I have been up on it. However, if you look, it is out there.

I don’t know enough about the ORB or Lancet surveys to have an opinion on them. But the research from groups who actually went out and counted dead bodies and looked at morgue reports are likely more reliable. And certainly don’t pay attention to numbers reported by US newspapers.

“None of those numbers mean a thing to the people that did this.”

Indeed not. But those numbers also don’t mean a thing to a critical mass of US citizens who join or support the military, refuse to stop over-consuming, rationalize torture, vote for the enabling politicians, and are afraid and hateful of anyone not like them. Two decades of murdering and robbing Iraqis does not happen in a vacuum, by unchecked corporate mandate, or by executive fiat.

I suspect that America is not “long gone now.” What we have seen in the Middle East lately is not an abberation, not a declensionist narrative of a once-good nation, but an example of the same violent, exploitive fabric whose threads trace back to Native American genocide and slavery. The US has had a major war, on average, every generation since the French and Indian War. This is who we are and what we do as a nation.

To restate what DW posted earlier: “Kill them all and let god sort the out because this is not a democracy, this is a business.”

In the context of the necessity for the US to maintain a state of perpetual war, its murder and theft in Iraq does not amount to “one of America’s dumbest wars,” but one of its essential ones. High costs and years of violence are not failures or miscalculations. They are the desired conditions. Or do we imagine that the goals and justifications for the war were indeed what the TV has told us they were?

Total Iraqi military and civilian deaths as a direct or indirect (eg. sanctions, bombing grain silos, etc) result of non-stop US violence against that country for the past 22+ years stand at around 1.5 million. Why? In order to maintain an empire, and the hegemony and resource allocation that are essential to it, civilian populations in target countries must be broken.

“Idealists in a hurry are an old story and the source of much human misery.”

Would that be more misery than that caused by authoritarians addicted to control?

“If he really wanted to change the world, the young private could have run for Congress or started a blog.”

In other words, Manning could have set about “changing the world” by refraining from taking action. Indeed. Just what authoritarians insist upon: Passive compliance.

There is a phase after the Kabuki Theater phase? What does that phase look like? I have been watching for decades and have yet to see any other phase. Perhaps I’m not part of the right audience. What channel are you watching?

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22.”

Precisely!

Relatedly, have you read “Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia”? ( http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mass-Apocalyptic-Religion-Utopia/dp/B004KAB63G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1361925298&sr=8-3&keywords=black+mass )

If not, you might like it.

Indeed. It would appear that the legitimate, institutional avenue for citizens to sue the government is for them to pursue the same method their government employs in apprehending “terrorists”: Entrapment.

The War on Terror has always, first and foremost, been about domestic control. And ever since the internet became popular, “Big Government and Big Business” have been hard at work trying to turn it into television, which is to say a medium of passive consumption designed to tell citizens what to think and do. They are succeeding.

The funny part is the invention of the phrase, “online radicalization to violence.” Imagine taking that phrase seriously–even as a ruse to control the population–as if the mere exposure to something online would incite a person to commit a violent act. It is ridiculous idea made bizarre in that it is uttered with a straight face and will be believed by many. The only legitimate, sane response to such delusional ideas is for everyone to point and laugh.

The shorter US government position: “We tortured Manning for months for his own good. And considering what a shit we think he is and the extent to which we would really like to be able to torture him, what we did to him already is damn near inconsequential.”

The US Government tortured Manning for two reasons (the same two reasons they torture anybody). First, they tortured him just to do it, just to punish him, just because they could, as an exercise in abject power. And they enjoyed it as retribution for Manning’s crime of breaking ranks. Second, they torutred him in order to break him, in order to quell disobedience, in order to get his “mind right.”

And when it comes to ownership of this torture in a court of law, these dishonest, cowardly military fucks can’t even face their own dogs.