Mike Prysner: Yeah, well, military records are pretty hard to get. You can FOIA request government documents, but military documents are quite a bit harder and the military can deny you for no reason. It’s a little harder to get documents from them. The Navy documents on Ron DeSantis that were obtained through FOIA by Florida press, they were heavily redacted also. They had information, but most of it was blacked out, so there was a lot that was not there.
I think the reason it’s easy to obscure is, one of the big reasons is mainstream media doesn’t actually care about these things. The thing is, DeSantis just wanted to talk about his military experience enough to be able to check the box, to say, I’m a veteran too. It’s like politicians who were former officers in the military, that’s a stepping stone for political careers. And so to be able to get your cool guy photo in Iraq holding the gun, the one that Pete Buttigieg shares, it’s like you get that photo, you get to say in a debate, I’m a veteran, and then that’s pretty much it. No one really cares to look into it that much.
It is interesting because torture was once a big political issue in this country. People can recall that Obama rose through the Democratic primary and then won the presidential election on the firmest stance against torture and on closing Guantanamo Bay. In fact, the 2008 election, Obama and McCain were both dueling about who was more anti-torture. And so it was a massive political issue because it was such a big scandal. It has, I think, ceased to be a scandal. I mean, Obama, once he was elected, he of course did not close Guantanamo, but he did implement bans on certain forms of torture like waterboarding and things like that. I think there is an acceptance among the establishment that, well, the political crisis there is over, the international scandal is over, and it’s time to move on.
Mike Prysner: Yeah, well, military records are pretty hard to get. You can FOIA request government documents, but military documents are quite a bit harder and the military can deny you for no reason. It’s a little harder to get documents from them. The Navy documents on Ron DeSantis that were obtained through FOIA by Florida press, they were heavily redacted also. They had information, but most of it was blacked out, so there was a lot that was not there.
I think the reason it’s easy to obscure is, one of the big reasons is mainstream media doesn’t actually care about these things. The thing is, DeSantis just wanted to talk about his military experience enough to be able to check the box, to say, I’m a veteran too. It’s like politicians who were former officers in the military, that’s a stepping stone for political careers. And so to be able to get your cool guy photo in Iraq holding the gun, the one that Pete Buttigieg shares, it’s like you get that photo, you get to say in a debate, I’m a veteran, and then that’s pretty much it. No one really cares to look into it that much.
It is interesting because torture was once a big political issue in this country. People can recall that Obama rose through the Democratic primary and then won the presidential election on the firmest stance against torture and on closing Guantanamo Bay. In fact, the 2008 election, Obama and McCain were both dueling about who was more anti-torture. And so it was a massive political issue because it was such a big scandal. It has, I think, ceased to be a scandal. I mean, Obama, once he was elected, he of course did not close Guantanamo, but he did implement bans on certain forms of torture like waterboarding and things like that. I think there is an acceptance among the establishment that, well, the political crisis there is over, the international scandal is over, and it’s time to move on.