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When I heard what Michelle Obama said, I thought uh-oh, classic DiKinsleyan gaffe: She said something true but unflattering, and thus a total no-no for someone in her position; that's why they call it impolitic. I also assumed she was talking about race, though that might be a total projection, because when I say I've never been prouder of my country, what I mean is that though the sickness of racism has afflicted us from the beginning, we may finally be ready to prove ourselves better than that.
The more scandalous quote, if we took it at all seriously, would be the one from Cindy McCain, about how she has always been and always will be proud of her country. I'm sure she did not mean that Abu Ghraib or water-boarding or cherry-picking intel to justify the wrong war have filled her with pride; and honestly, under her husband, I don't think any of those occasions for shame would have occurred. But, apparently, you can never go wrong saying things that everyone knows not to take too literally. Which may be why Hillary carries on giving victory speeches.
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Reading the story about the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes that Dahlia points to, I couldn't help being struck by an eerie parallel. This story is unfolding a couple of days after the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the latest case about whether the Guantanamo Bay detainees have any right at all to get to federal court. Days after an earlier go-round about Guantanamo at the high court, in 2004, the Abu Ghraib story broke. The timing raised eyebrows because at oral argument, Paul Clement (now solicitor general) had answered "no" to a question from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about whether the government ever engages in torture.
There was no moment like that at argument this week, and the timing of the CIA story seems driven by the New York Times, which says that it told the CIA Wednesday that it was about to report on the tapes' destruction. And yet the parallel is there: This week, the government assured the court that the detainees had more rights than anyone in their situation before. Never mind that we're destroying the evidence of how we've treated them. Just don't look behind the curtain.
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