Future of US depends on torture accountability / Keith Olberman

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stroke : 틀린것
red : 교정
blue : 잘 안들려서 겨우 들은 것

배경색
yellow : 몰랐던 expression 혹은 단어

As promised, a special comment now on the President's revelation of the remainder of this nightmare of Bush administration torture memos. This president has gone where a few before him dared. The dirty laundry, illegal, unamerican, self defeating, self destructive, is out for all to see.

Mr. Obama deserves our praise and our thanks for that. And yet he has gone, but half way, and in this case, in far too many respects, half the distance is worse than standing still.

Today Mr.President, in acknowledging these science fiction-like documents, you said that "This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong view and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."

Mr.President, you're wrong. What you described would be not "spent energy" but catharsis, not "blame laid" but responsibility ascribed. You continued, "Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resit the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future."

Indeed, we must, Mr.President. And the forces of which you speak are the ones lingering with pervasive stanchstench from the previous administration, far more than a criminal stanchstench, sir, and immoral one. One we cannnot let be recreated in this nation. One, President Obama, it is your responsibility to make sure, cannot be recreated.

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Forgive me for quoting from a comment I offered the night before the inauguration. But this goes to the core of the President's commandablecommendable but wholly naive intention here. This country has never moved forward with confidence without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past. In point of fact, every effort to merely draw a line to send in the sand and declare the past dead has served only to keep the past alive and often to strengthen it.

We moved forward with slavery in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And 4 score and 9 years later^[각주:1], we had buried 600,000 of our sons and brothers in a civil war, after that war's ending, we moved forward without the social restructuring and without the protection of the rights of minorities in the South. And a century later, we had not only not resolved anything, but black leaders were still being assassinated in our southern cities.

We moved forward with Germany in the reconstruction of Europe after the first World War. Nobody even arrested the German Kaiser, let alone conducted war crimes trials then, and 19 years later, there was an indescribably more evil Germany and a more heart landingrending second World War.

We moved forward with trusts of the early 1900s. And today, we are at the mercy of corporations which are too big to fail. We moved forward with the Palmer Raids^[각주:2], and got McCarthyism, we moved forward with McCarthyism, and got Water Gate, we moved forward with Water Gate, and junior members of the Ford administration realized how little was ultimately at risk. They grew up to be Paul Wolfowitz^[각주:3] and Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney.

But Mr.President, when you say, "We must come together on behalf of our common future", you are entirely correct. We must focus on getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past. That means prosecuting all those involved in the Bush administration's torture of prisoners, even if results are nominable(?)nominal punishments^[각주:4], or merely new laws. Your only other option is to let this sit and faster set and fester indefinitely. Because sir, someday there will be another Republican president, or even a Democrat, just as blind as Mr.Bush to ethics and this country's moral force. And he will look back to what you did about Mr.Bush, or what you did not do, and he will see precedent, or as Mr.Cheney saw, he will see how not to get caught the next time.

Prosecute, Mr.precedent, even if you'd get not one conviction, you will still have accomplished good for generations unborn. Merely by acting, you will deny a further wrong, that this construction will enter the history books : Torture was legal. It worked. It saved the country. The end. This must not be.

"It is our intention," you said today, "to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

Mr.President, you are making history's easiest, most often made, most dangerous mistake. You're accepting the defence that somebody was just following orders. At the end of his first year in office, Mr.Lincoln tried to contextualize the civil war for those who still wanted to compromise with evils of Secession^[각주:5] and slavery. "The struggle of today," Lincoln wrote, "is not altogether for today, it is for a vast future also." Mr.President, you have now been handed the beginning of that vast future. Use it to protect our children and our distant descendants, from anything like this ever happening again, by showing them that those who did this, were neither unfairly scapegoated, nor absorbed(?)absolved. It is good to say, "We won't do it again." It is not, however, enough.

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draw a line in the sand

: Establishing a limit beyond which things will be unacceptable.
: To draw or declare an artificial boundary and imply that crossing it will cause trouble.
Todd drew a line in the sand by giving his roommate an ultimatum about his sloppiness, he had to start cleaning up after himself or move out.

nominal punishment

: a mild punishment
: syn. token punishment
: syn. slap on the writst.

score

: a group or set of 20.
about a score of years ago.

absolve

: syn. acquit

stench

: an offensive smell or ordor; stink.
: a foul quality
Stench at sewage plant is traced.
the stench of corrupt government.
The Bush and Cheney legacy will linger for a few years but their political stench will follow them all the rest of their days.

secede

: to withdraw formally from an alliance, federation or association, as from a political union, a religious organization, etc.

secession

: an act or instance of seceding.
: (often with initial capital letter) one of the causes of the American Civil War. 미국 남부 11개 주의 연방 탈퇴. 남북전쟁 시작

1. The Declaration of Independence : July 4, 1776
   American Civil War : 1861 - 1865
   The Civil War ended 89years after the Declaration of Independence. [본문으로]
2. The Palmer Raids were a series of controversial raids by the United States Department of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1919 to 1921 on suspected radical leftist citizens and immigrants in the United States, the legality of which is now in question. The raids are named for Alexander Mitchell Palmer, United States Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. - Wikipedia [본문으로]
3. 부시 행정부의 Deputy Secretary of Defense. 도널드 럼스펠드가 국방장관일 동안. [본문으로]
4. mild punishment.
   syn. token punishment, slap on the wrist [본문으로]
5. U.S. History, the withdrawal from the Union of 11 Southern states in the period 1860–61, which brought on the Civil War. [본문으로]