Outsource Takeover

Digby points out that the debate on torture largely exists because the act is farmed out to private corporations that do the dirty deed.

Another reason for going the private route for torture and secret prisons is that's a way to make sure a percentage of the Homeland Security bucks come back home to the politicians that wrangled them in the first place.

The endless war on Terra being the entrepreneurial enterprise it is, no palm along the way is left empty.

Another thing: ever since the second world war intelligence agencies have been using private corporations as fronts, usually staffed with the so-called retired or ex-agents.

This is not a recent occurrence. What started happening with time is that these corporations got so big and pervasive they actually managed to take over both the government and private sector. Believe it, electing a Democrat won't change that. It'll only change the figurehead policies of the people in the spotlight of the camera.

Assuming, of course there is a transfer of titular power. Digby points to this observation by Charles Pierce at Media Matters:

...For the past couple of weeks, they've just gotten blatant about it. The administration of George W. Bush is bound by no law, bound by no precedent, bound not even by the forms of democratic self-government, let alone its actual substance, which is being used as a throw-rug in John Yoo's den these days. They will torture and the Congress can do nothing. Their powers to spy, to search, and to seize are unlimited and Congress is not remotely entitled to know even what those powers are. They can imprison without trial. They can force corporations -- and, indeed, individuals within the government -- to violate the law. They are not subject to treaties. They are not subject to oversight, nor even subpoenas. Read this swill from yesterday. Through his actions, and from the mouths of his minions, George Bush is now claiming fully the powers of a tyrant, by any reasonable definition of the term...

The bad thing about this is that it's not just Dear Leader. It is thousands- maybe hundreds of thousands and indirectly millions- of people that profit from the tyranny. It now permeates to everyone who carries a gun and supports the police state of the war on Terra.