Mary Jo White found a visit to Guantanamo “enormously satisfying” (cc photo: SEC)
In a new piece, Time magazine (4/3/14) is trying to show that Securities & Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White will be tough on crooked bankers. But the example that the piece leads off with as evidence of this is downright bizarre: White supports force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners.
Time reporter Massimo Calabresi cheers White for being tough but not partisan–he notes that “she has also lifted barriers on businesses, to the dismay of some liberals.” But it’s the opening paragraph that really stands out.
Calabresi writes:
There is a room at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay where hunger-striking Al-Qaeda suspects are strapped to chairs and force-fed through tubes in their noses. Mary Jo White is one of the few outsiders to have seen this in operation, watching as more than a dozen inmates had their meals administered to them. White went to the prison at the behest of President Barack Obama in 2009 to report on conditions there. Rather than confirm allegations of torture from human-rights groups and the UN, she concluded that the force-feedings were humane. And what was her general impression of Gitmo? Sitting in her sprawling, light-filled office overlooking the US Capitol, White sounds like a prosecutor. “It was enormously satisfying to see how well run the facility was,” she says.
So while human rights groups and international observers all condemn the force-feeding of prisoners–many of whom are being held in legal limbo without charge or trial–White says things are just fine.
White says it’s “humane” to force-feed Guantanamo prisoners like these; the UN calls it “torture” (cc photo: Shane T. McCoy/US Navy)
This is evidence of…what, exactly? That this shows she’ll make a good government regulator? More plausibly, it shows that she is ready and willing to adopt the official line–which is certainly not that big banks need to be held accountable when they commit crimes (Extra!, 1/14).
White also once wrote that she didn’t think waterboarding was illegal. (Read a refutation from Human Rights First–11/15/07.) Would that also bolster her get-tough credentials?
The piece closes by coming back to Guantanamo, asking White about what it’s going to take to be a good SEC chair:
When asked that very question, White says she wants to be able to say she “did a good job and was a strong leader of a strong agency.” You get the idea that anyone looking for more on what that means can start with the inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
Mary Jo White says our torture prison is well-run, and that, for Time, is a sign she’ll do a good job.
I’m tempted to laugh
But you really can’t do that
And wretch at the same time.
Maybe she’ll waterboard Jamie Dimon!
Sunday dinner by force feeding — Obama-Bush family values.
Now White can force-feed sweet deals to Wall Street.
Perhaps we need to run Ms White through an “enhanced Interview” where you don’t glass of water, you get a water board, and meal through a tube.
Mary Jo White is just one more example of an American who has no moral compass, where the “other” can be treated with the utmost cruelty as long as the “facilities” are clean. Guantanamo, home of the living dead; so many (innocent) lives destroyed. It’s a tragedy.
I wish the that facility was open to our press.We the people need to see hear and smell what is being done in our name
” “It was enormously satisfying to see how well run the facility was,” she says. ” So, why can’t we see too?
I didn’t know anything about her. I hope one day she doesn’t head the labor department and the administer “the new employee lunch” program. I suspect elites will swill the martinis, while workers push levers while being fed!
I saw her opinion on water boarding. She seems to promote torture. Lets pick up some wall streeters “and see what they know”
This is just too insane not to make fun of, so——bankers will be tied to their desks until all the tax payer monies have been repaid to everyone. In order to make this a truly GREEN program, the liquified food will be composed of destroyed dollars, as they do contain hemp—-so maybe the bankers will enjoy it? Or is that hemp the cat nip kind of hemp…oh well, liquified bills would be filling. perhaps the smell of bills would be intoxcitcating and the bankers wouldn’t mind. since so many live and breathe for money, Perhaps this would be the correct treatment for that addiction ?
Although, it is sad and insane to be the nation with all the war toys who still has to resort to old fashioned ancient tortures; I’m surprised that the munitions makers let the government do this what with all the agent oragne and depleted uranium that the government could spend money on instead. Mary Jo, you seem scarier than Thatcher.
Anyoe who sanctions what the United States is doing at Guantanamo is irresponsible. Mary Jo White is clearly unfit to hold public office.