The Torturers and the Secretary (Michael Ledeen)

Pajamasmedia/Faster Please - Ledeen ^ | Aug. 14, 2009 | Michael Ledeen

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By now, most people know that the Iranian regime treats its dissidents with unrestrained barbarity. Even the leading dead tree media have reported anecdotally on the torture of prisoners and the bashing, beating, axing and stabbing of protestors in the streets of the major cities. But it is not easy to get a clear picture of the dimensions of the savagery. It’s hard to get the real numbers on the bloody repression the mullahs have unleashed on their people, and one reason–perhaps the most important one–is that the regime is doing everything in its power to conceal the facts, typically using the same cruel methods that filled the prisons in the first place.

Officially, the regime claims only 37 dead since the demonstrations began on the 12th of June, but about 1800 persons remain unaccounted for. The real figure is very close to five hundred known dead. And, according to reliable sources, the morgues still have a stockpiles of about 400 corpses. Each day three to four corpses are released to relatives.

The release of the cadavers follows a singularly macabre procedure. Close relatives, such as mothers, are ordered to report to a particular prison. Upon arrival they are immediately – and totally unexpectedly – jailed for two days. After these two days they are told that they can be released but that they first have to sign a secrecy pledge about their treatment and a declaration that their loved one had died of “innocent causes,” such as a car crash. The regime uses several other non-torture related death causes, such as brain injury, heart surgery, etc.

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As for Obama, the curtain has fallen over Iran. He’s going to wait, hoping that the regime kills off the leaders of the Green Movement and silences the Iranian people, so that the glorious deal can be consummated.

Excellent article. He goes on to observe that Hillary and Obama had a choice between dishonor and war, and they chose dishonor. However, I don't really think that the choice was war, quite yet; it was between dishonor and merely rocking the boat. What they essentially chose between is dishonor and maintaining our principles, and they chose dishonor and made it clear that they want no changes and that to this end we are willing to give up any show of having principles.

Obama essentially has made it clear that he favors the dictatorship (dictators always stick together, and I expect "the deal" is that he hopes Ahmadinejad will return the favor when he's fully installed himself as the US dictator). Hillary, while occasionally better than Obama on some things, has also been all too happy to surrender any pretense of US principles. They're signaling that we don't do things that way anymore. What is important to us is to preserve the status quo, particularly of dictators, so that Obama, the crypto-Muslim, overt Marxist and Third-World racist, can advance with his own domestic plans.

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