The Anti-Conspiracy Theory Conspiracy

I always find it funny when die-hard conspiracy theorists moan and groan about how stupid people are for believing conspiracy theories [CTs] that don’t happen to fit the favored CTs’ favored group-think. You know the type. “Our CT is the real truth, your CT is just crazy.”

Blogosphere case in point for best illustration of this phenomenon is Daily Kos, a progressive political site dedicated to electing Democrats, damning Republicans, and spreading the ridiculous idea that all things that might be conspiracies cannot actually BE conspiracies because that would mean the participants in those conspiracies know what’s real, agree amongst themselves to pretend that reality is not real, and are able to keep the reality out of the press and public sphere of knowledge. No one, apparently and according to the Kos powers that be, knows that much about anything.

Of course, that site is the biggest promulgator of the idea that the Bush administration plotted to start a war in Iraq by telling lies to the American public, which is a conspiracy (and not particularly theoretical, given that it actually did happen). And that the whole justification of torture of prisoners that began in 2002 (before said justifications were drafted by the lawyers tasked with justifying) was about gaining false confessions of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Which would be a conspiracy, even though such things do not exist.

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Senate’s Secret Torture Investigation

…will it prevent a public accounting?

While both houses of the U.S. Congress are busily debating whether or not possible investigations of the Bush administration’s policies on the torture of prisoners and detainees in its wars on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan should be held at all, and if held whether or not they should be public, California Senator Diane Feinstein has managed to forestall the public possibility for a year. Democrat Feinstein and Republican Kit Bond of Missouri as chair and co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee announced on March 5 a Committee review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

The probe is designed to discover new information about the origins of the programs as well as to scrutinize their operations. The five specified areas of investigation include:

• The creation, operation and maintenance of the CIA interrogation program.

• How detainees were assessed as to who possessed information valuable enough to require “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

• Whether the Intelligence Committee, Office of Legal Counsel and other responsible offices of government received accurate information from the CIA about its detention and interrogation programs.

• Whether the programs were implemented in compliance with guidance issued by the pertinent government offices.

• Whether information gained through the programs was valuable enough to justify the programs themselves.

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