"There Is Nothing Covered...."

 These are not good times for myth-writers and icon-polishers. Bill Cosby, beloved comedian and TV dad, appears to be a serial rapist. My premium TV channel has been repeatedly running that documentary about cyclist Lance Armstrong’s years of illegal doping. And now, a report that took years to produce concludes that the CIA tortured people to obtain information about possible attacks on U.S. interests. Not entirely news, but the report says it was much more extensive than we thought.

We thought we were the good guys. We’d never do what the Nazis or the Stasi or the Russians would do. Until 9/11. Until it was hard not to.

The debate is still ongoing about whether torture to get information “works,” – whether it coerces people with info to spill it, resulting in the saving of American lives. Actually, I’m open to hearing more about this issue. I don’t think it’s been 100 percent settled yet, though it’s not looking good for the pro-torture folks so far.

But what bothers me most is that in many cases, our CIA people didn’t even have to look the people being tortured in the eye. This is America, we even contracted THAT out, and the private contractors weren’t supervised much of the time. Now, I know many of them may be patriots, but I’m sure they liked being paid. And I’ll be willing to betcha that at least some of them enjoyed their work. Even in the TV world, while you were being tortured, at least you got to deal directly with Jack Bauer, Carrie Mathison or Saul Berenson.

Many of us may have enjoyed seeing Saddam Hussein’s statue being pulled down in the streets of Baghdad in 2003, but how many of our own idols have fallen? Why can’t things be what they seem to be, what we’ve been told for so long that they are?

In the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and nothing hidden that shall not be known.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m suffering from revelation fatigue. I’d like to have a month or two go by when a myth isn’t busted, when my idol is still supported by its feet of clay. Just for a while.

Calling Jack Bauer

There’s a lot of interesting terminology being thrown around about the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect who’s in the hospital. First, there’s “terrorist.” I personally don’t have a problem with that one. But then we have heard calls for this guy to be treated as an “enemy combatant,” which would open the door to long detention without trial and certain interrogation techniques.

That one hasn’t gone anywhere, however, and they gave Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a Miranda warning. But now they say that the bombs these two brothers allegedly used were “weapons of mass destruction.” Really?

The crude bombs, packed with nails and ball bearings, were designed to cause maximum injury, and they did. But are they really WMD? Like chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, whose mythical existence in Iraq caused us to go to war? I wonder. But WMD use brings the death penalty.

The surviving brother, like his deceased sibling, is an American citizen. But he’s also of foreign extraction, and he’s said to be a follower of Islam. Were he a white Christian, I’m wondering if we would be discussing him in quite the same terms.

So when they get around to questioning him, does he have information that would tie him to, say, Al Qaeda training abroad? I would guess most of us profess to be opposed to torture – but then we consider all those bombing victims without an arm or a leg today. And then, we think, well, maybe in this case….

Dick Cheney must be smiling inside right now.