More on the "National Security State"

From Digby, who starts off with the horrific story of a Mr. Bashmilah, a small businessman originally from Yemen who ran an import/export business in Indonesia, detained on a trip to visit his mother and eventually turned over to the CIA. That story's bad enough. Digby's commentary is what leapt out at me, though:

Our government officials showed us that they are hysterical panic artists who cannot be trusted to keep their wits about them during a crisis. They proved they will revert to superstition and primitivism when they are afraid. They are openly admitting it this week with all the excuses about how we need to understand the "atmosphere of [f]ear" they were living with in the aftermath of 9/11 and how the panic and hysteria of the moment led to all these "mistakes."

These are supposed to be professionals, people whose jobs it is to stay calm when the public is frightened. They are supposed to have the cool heads and the experience and training to keep it together in these situations. They are not supposed to be running around in circles, unable to figure out the difference between the enemy and some random guy who had a new passport. They were supposed to already know what countless studies dating back decades (centuries!) have shown: that torture doesn't work. They were supposed to be good at this.

Do I really need to say more? Except to opine that maybe someone should hang Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld upside down for three weeks.

OK, one more point: I'm willing to allow that the Dubyah administration was being run by a bunch of sadistic frat boys. The fact that the CIA, NSA, and allied agencies (and see this post for a run-down on that whole situation) are still not accountable under Obama is even worse: it's a calculated policy, because Obama is nothing if not calculating.

Read the whole post. It's guaranteed to ruin your day.

The Torture Report (Update)

Before I start, TPM has the executive summary of the report. I don't know if I'm going to read the whole thing -- from the bits and snippets I've seen, the activities it describes are disgusting to any civilized person, and I frankly don't know if I could handle it.

I really don't know what else to say, except to state categorically that torture is wrong, no matter what Bill O'Reilly says:

On a personal note, I know scores of Americans who lost loved ones on 9/11. I've watched their children grow up without mothers and fathers. If I were president, I would [have] authorized waterboarding and other severe interrogation methods of high ranking captured terrorists.

It is morally correct to protect innocent lives from barbarians.

We are a nation of laws, but we are in a brutal ongoing war. Americans need to be protected.

Never mind that torture is not very effective. Notice the bait-and-switch: yes, it's morally correct to protect the innocent (although in terms of this particular "brutal ongoing war," who are the innocents?), but you don't need to torture anyone -- much less other innocent people -- to do that. To conflate the two is duplicitous, to say the least. (And note this is coming from the very Catholic Bill O'Reilly, after the Church has unequivocally condemned torture as immoral.)

And lest you think he's alone in this, read this bit on the reaction of the terminally stupid Andrea Tantaros at Fox (where else?).

"The Bush administration did what the American public wanted, and that was do whatever it takes to keep us safe. These terror tactics have been stopped because as a country we decided we are better than this," she said. "It’s not about democracy now. No, no. It’s about politics."

If the Bush administration gave us what we wanted, that would be the first time in history that an administration has been that responsive to the people's wishes. And no, Ms. Tantaros, it's not about politics, it's about accountability, and making sure it doesn't happen again (although I have vanishingly small hope of that).

Digby and her fellows at Hullabaloo have a history of how we got there in a series of posts today, starting off with a telling comment about the reaction on Fox:

Notice they're not saying it wasn't torture anymore. They are mounting a full-throated defense of torture as a virtuous tactic.

And the CIA lied about it. Read points Four and Five of this report from TPM. It's even worse than that: here's a timeline of the whole thing, beginning in 2002, that shows a pattern of deception and obstruction on the part of the CIA.

Yeah, I know -- another link dump. Click through or don't, but if you want any sort of clear idea of what a mess we've gotten ourselves into, do it.

Update: I was looking for this story this morning and couldn't remember where I had seen it. It's Sen. Jay Rockefeller's remarks on the report. Read it.

The Torture Club

Interesting article in Slate on a recent decision in Padilla vs. Yoo that may finally give us, as the citizens whose names have been blackened by the previous administration, some relief.

In 2002, Justice Department lawyer John Yoo wrote a memo recommending that Jose Padilla, arrested in Chicago in the wake of 9/11 and held on suspicion of plotting a dirty-bomb attack, be classified as an enemy combatant. Yoo also wrote memos arguing that American law does not prevent the president from ordering such enemy combatants tortured. This January, after enduring years of abuse in prison, Padilla sued Yoo for violating his constitutional rights.

And a week ago, Judge Jeffrey White ruled that Padilla's allegations were plausible enough to justify denying Yoo's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. White was appointed by George W. Bush the year Yoo was writing his memos.

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, the calls to "move forward" and "not dwell on the past" on the issue of torture, Guantanamo, rendition, and the like are just a way to keep the Bush administration jackasses off the hook. And it doesn't do Obama's credit any good in this quarter for him to be acceding to this bullshit. (I did wonder how much he was going to love unlimited presidential power once he was in the Oval Office. I guess we're starting to get the idea.)

(As an aside, I also have to wonder what kind of wars are going on over at DoJ, staffed at this point with a strong contingent of Bush loyalists who got moved into civil service jobs from their political appointments once Bush finally figured out that he would not be serving a third term.)

This is sort of disgusting, but no more than I'd expect of the Supreme Court as presently constituted:

In order to hold high-ranking government officials liable, plaintiffs need strong evidence that the officials personally authorized the conduct. Just last month, the Supreme Court made it a lot harder to get that evidence: It dismissed the lawsuit brought by Javaid Iqbal, who was rounded up in New York after 9/11 along with thousands of other Muslims, against John Ashcroft. The court held that Iqbal hadn't provided enough preliminary evidence to justify "subjecting high ranking Government officials ... to the burdens of discovery." That's right—he didn't have enough evidence to go get the evidence he needs to prove his claims.

Maybe Judge White's decision will help to circumvent that kind of crap -- this Court is no friend to American citizens at all.

Torture Note: Better Late Than Never

This is interesting. I won't comment on the lateness of it -- the two commenters so far (as of this posting), as well as the reporter, have done that.

But what I find interesting is that Land refers solely to our founding documents, and not any teachings of Christ. I'm not sure what that means.

(There doesn't seem to be a link anywhere to Land's full statement -- otherwise, as you know full well, I would have included it -- so my comment about the content of Land's remarks has to be taken as provisional, although I'm sure if Land had made any reference to the basic beliefs of Christianity, it would have been reported.)

Bits

Don't have the focus for my usual penetrating, incisive post today, but I keep running across things:

Via Booman, this (quoting Byron York):

The accusations of racism seem to come from a single sentence in the piece: "But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are." I wrote my post because of the striking numbers in the New York Times poll. Those numbers raise a question: What if a president were wildly popular with one group, and only middlingly popular with another group and yet was often portrayed as being hugely popular with the whole group?

Aside from the Alice-in-Wonderland quality of the whole statement, it's obvious that York doesn't get why he is being called a racist: he is so blind to it, in fact, that he doesn't see how nonsensical his original statement was. I'm not going to harp on the "racist" aspect of it, but the semantics: I guess my point is, looking at the highlighted text, this is empty noise: if the numbers are reporting a certain degree of popularity, then that's the degree of popularity, by definition.

Baca!

Orrin Hatch (R-Guantanamo) is against empathy.

Hatch found fault with a 2005 floor statement by then-Senator Obama on the requisite qualities of a Supreme Court justice. Obama said that a justice's "deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy" come into play in deciding some cases.

"The real debate is about whether judges may decide cases based on empathy at all, not the groups for which they have empathy," Hatch wrote.

It gets worse:

Hatch raised concerns initially that Obama was using “buzz words” for a liberal activist justice by suggesting he wanted someone who had “empathy” for the country’s problems. But Obama told Hatch “that was not what he meant, and I take him at his word ... and that he assured me that he would not be picking a radical or an extremist for the court that he was very pragmatic in his approach and that he would pick somebody who would abide by the rule of law.”

First off, like Hatch or any other Republican has any concept at all of the rule of law. Right. Second, "empathy" translates to "extremism." WTF?

I seem to remember hearing that the ideal was justice with mercy.

In spite of pressure to drop the matter, Spanish Judge Garzon has decided to pursue a war crimes invstigation against Bush administration officials:

In a ruling in Madrid today, Judge Baltasar Garzón has announced that an inquiry into the Bush administration's torture policy makers now will proceed into a formal criminal investigation. The ruling came as a jolt following the recommendation of Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido against proceeding with a criminal inquiry, reported in The Daily Beast on April 16.

Good. At least someone's doing what needs to be done.

You Have to Wonder: The Obligatory Torture Post

After reading about people like this -- the most successful interrogators in WWII who never even raised their voices against their subjects -- what kind of sickos did we have in the White House for the past eight years? And I mean sickos.

John Cole got the info from Sullivan (which somehow I missed), but runs with it:

Via two posts from Sullivan, I have learned that the two most successful interrogators and spybusters from WWII, one German and one British, never harmed an inmate.

No German won as many intelligence coups as Hanns Scharff. Scharff worked for the Luftwaffe interrogating allied pilots and bomber crews, so successfully that the U.S. military taught his methods decades later.

Colonel Robin “tin eye” Stephens was a “bristling, xenophobic martinet” who ran a famously successful counterinelligence operation for MI5 out of a basement in London.

Neither of them ever harmed a subject, committed to physical violence against them, no degradation -- the sort of thing that became routine during the Bush administration just wasn't on their list of working methods.

Look, it's common knowledge -- since the heyday of the Inquisition -- that the only information you get from torture is whatever the victim thinks you want to hear. Everyone knows that, everyone knew it going in, so what's the fascination with hurting people who can't defend themselves? (I won't go into the latest poll that shows that regular church-goers think torture is OK: there's this whole thing in Christianity about physical torment that I think is kind of sick to begin with. There's also the fact that there's only a twelve-point spread, which I find appalling in itself -- what have we become?*) I suppose from a frat boy who thinks blowing up frogs with firecrackers is funny, that's maybe par for the course.

So now, of course, the Republicans -- and certain Democrats -- don't want to turn this stinking muck heap because it will be "divisive." This from a bunch of jokers who live on divisiveness -- they don't have any other strategy. (The Democrats, of course, are just trying to cover their asses -- they're as culpable as anyone on the right side of the aisle on this.)

Listen up, boys and girls: you punish war criminals. You investigate and you try them and you punish them. Calls to "move forward" are merely demands that we validate this status quo -- we'll torture people if we feel like it -- as acceptable behavior for America, and I ain't buying it.

* Update: A little amplification on this: My own opinions of Christianity and its focus on death and mortification of the flesh to the side, I've noticed several posts citing this poll, all dwelling on the fact that the more conservative and observant the respondent, the more likely they were to condone torture, but no one seems to have mentioned the fact that the spread is not so wide.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

"Only" 42%? ONLY? In total, half the people in this country think that torture is often or sometimes justified. Only a quarter think it is never justified. And this is somehow OK?

What the hell have we done to ourselves?

The Rule of Law

It's nice to know that, even if our own government is afraid of it, someone, somewhere, still believes in it:

One of America’s NATO allies—which supported the Bush Administration’s war on terror by committing its troops to the struggle–has now opened formal criminal inquiries looking into the Bush team’s legacy of torture. The action parallels a criminal probe into allegations of torture involving the American CIA that was opened this week in the United Kingdom.

Spain’s national newspapers, El País and Público reported that the Spanish national security court has opened a criminal probe focusing on Bush Administration lawyers who pioneered the descent into torture at the prison in Guantánamo. The criminal complaint can be examined here. Público identifies the targets as University of California law professor John Yoo, former Department of Defense general counsel William J. Haynes II (now a lawyer working for Chevron), former vice presidential chief-of-staff David Addington, former attorney general and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, now a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith.

This means that these men are subject to arrest and extradition in 24 countries, automatically. The cherry on top:

Judge Baltasar Garzón is involved in the investigation, according to the El País report. Garzón is Europe’s best known counterterrorism magistrate, responsible for hundreds of cases targeting the activities of ETA and related Basque terrorist organizations. He also spearheaded the successful investigation of Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organizations operating in the Maghreb region, including Spanish enclaves in Morocco. But Garzón is best known for his prosecution of a criminal investigation against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet that resulted in the issuance of an arrest warrant for Pinochet while he was visiting England.

Impeccable credentials, I'd say.

More on the implications of this from Andrew Sullivan.

Sadly, my first reaction is: why is Obama sitting on his hands? (Yeah, I know, but still. . . .)

Torture

Check out this post from D-Day. It's long, but pretty thorough, with good analysis.

If this administration doesn't wind up being the most reviled in American history, there is something seriously wrong with historians.

Smoking Guns and the Comfort of the Bourgeoisie

From tristero at Hullabaloo, commenting on this piece by Errol Morris at HuffPo:

By the end of 2003, it was a de facto concentration camp in the middle of the Sunni triangle with close to 10,000 prisoners. There was systematic and horrendous abuse. Constant mortar attacks putting both guards and prisoners at risk. Thousands of prisoners rounded up in sweeps and kept indefinitely in outdoor "tent cities;" repeated rioting because of food shortages and squalid conditions; illegal renditions to Jordan; kidnapping, hostage-taking; children behind bars; torture, water-boarding - even murder. We put the bad apples in prison, isn't it now time to deal with the real criminals?

Meanwhile, the military has been engaged in a giant cover up that has continued until the present day. Even the cover up has been covered up. The New York Times could faithfully report on the destruction of the Zubaydah interrogation tapes, two of them, but hundreds, if not thousands of interrogation tapes were destroyed at Abu Ghraib in January 2004. Colonel Thomas Pappas, the head of the prison, in a signed written statement declared an "amnesty period" in January 2004. Soldiers were asked to destroy whatever photographs or files they had. Hard drives were erased and e-mails purged. No one seems to know about it or care. Certainly, few officials in the military or the government cared about what really happened; they cared about damage control. . . .

While I was working on Standard Operating Procedure, many people asked about "the smoking gun." "Have you found the smoking gun? Have you found the smoking gun? -- presumably linking the abuses to the upper levels of the Defense Department and to the White House?" The question puzzles me. There are smoking guns everywhere but people don't see them, refuse to see them or pretend they don't exist. How many torture memos does an administration have to promulgate before the public gets the idea they are promulgating torture? Bush has recently admitted that he was present at these meetings and approved "harsh interrogation techniques." And yet this has scarcely been a news story. Well-documented attempts to subvert the Constitution, abrogation of the Geneva Conventions and simple human decency. What does it take?

We are surrounded by smoking guns on all sides. Crimes have been committed; we have ample evidence of them. But there can be no justice if there is a failure to stand up for it, if we fail to demand it. Here's the flip side of the torture memos. John Yoo can argue that the President can do anything. Let him do what he pleases, but does that mean he can't be held responsible for the things he has ordered or the things done in his name?

Tristero follows up:

God doesn't have to damn America, Reverend Wright. America is damning itself. It is simply unconscionable that this country not only permits the president to torture whomever he chooses to, but that this country's ruling class feels they are too politically weak to stand up and shout, "No!" as our Constitution gets shredded into tiny, blood-stained pieces.

That's something that has puzzled me: much more than the question of how people can shrug their shoulders and vote for the perpetrators again, how can anyone -- and there have been legions -- defend these people and their actions?

And this is just the tip, the visible part, of the iceberg: we have a Supreme Court that has proven its hostility to Americans and has no compunctions about overturning two generations of civil rights law (see the "Massive Plot" post below), a Congress that is so far from being partisan that it is non-functional (there were, once upon a time, Democrats in there somewhere), and an administration that regards the law as something that other people have to pay attention to.

Is it any wonder that I get pissed off?

The Legacy

I've pretty much avoided the torture discourse, simply because to me it's a no-brainer: It's wrong on every level. Period. Maybe I should be writing about it more, just to keep it in front of you, but it disgusts me as much as the fact-free anti-gay right (and, come to think of it, it's a lot of the same people), and you know what I think. However, Digby and her colleagues keep bringing it up, bless their hearts, and you can do a lot worse than note this post which is largely a reprise of a post from 2005:

Today, [Jason Vest] has written a piece on torture for the National Journal that is fascinating because he's spoken to old guard CIA who have had some experience with this stuff in the past. They all agree that the moral dimension is huge, but there are good practical reasons for not doing it as well. These range from the difficulty in getting allies to cooperate because of their distaste for such methods to the fact that the information is unreliable.

But the thing I found most interesting is the observation that it does something quite horrible to the perpetrators as well as the victims:

"If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it," he said. "One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, 'Why didn't you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?' They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn't even bother to ask questions." Ultimately, he said -- echoing Gerber's comments -- "torture becomes an end unto itself. . . ."

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo --- you didn't question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it's wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it's immoral --- and, more shockingly, whether it's a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

The submerged part of the Bush Legacy: not only do we have former soldiers wandering around with mental conditions that mostly aren't even acknowledged, much less treated, but we now have a whole generation of torturers who are in the same boat, in a country that has come to see something that civilized societies regard as completely immoral as business as usual.

Thanks, George. Heckuva job.

The Yoo Memo Link Dump

I haven't really mentioned this phenomenon, but for some fascinating discussions on the memos and their repercussions, see Balkinization, particularly posts by Jack Balkin (and an interesting one here, on alternatives to war crimes trials), Marty Lederman (of value for its link to discussions at Convictions), another by Lederman and one by Scott Horton, both around issues of academic freedom, tenure, and calls for Yoo's dismissal from the law school at UC Berkeley.

For some scathing and cogent commentaries, see Glenn Greenwald, here, on the dangers of scapegoating John Yoo, and here, here (scroll down to item 9), and here, on who also bears responsibility for this whole mess.

And no discussion is complete without a segment of What Digby Said, and we'll throw in a brief spot on What Tristero Said as well.

I know -- it's not really fair of me to dump on you like this, but these are all well worth reading if you're going to have a clear understanding of some of the real issues around Yoo, torture, and how it was implemented and justified (however ineptly).

As for my thoughts, in light of the latest revelations (which, frankly, come as no surprise, nor does Bush's offhand "I approved it"), I can only repeat what I've been saying for 18 months or so (which is when I started a thread at EA Forums on torture as American policy -- which is still going): it's disgusting, it's immoral, and it's un-American.

And, in purely pragmatic terms, torture doesn't work, at least not if you're after hard information that's actually of some use. We've known that for 400 years. Well, most of us have. I guess the self-absorbed frat boy must have missed that lecture.

So I don't really need to say it again.

The More Things Change. . . .

From Dan Eggen at WaPo:

The exchange followed a letter earlier in the day from Mukasey that rebuffed congressional demands for details about the joint Justice-CIA inquiry into the tapes' destruction and rejected calls for the appointment of an independent prosecutor. Mukasey said that providing the information to Congress would make it appear that the department is "subject to political influence."

He's joking, right? Everyone knows DoJ is subject to political influence. That's why so many of Bush's top hacks had to leave -- somebody blabbed about their practice of hiring only loyal Bush Republicans for non-political jobs. That's one of the reasons that Gonzo lost his job.

As Barbara O'Brien puts it at Mahablog: "So stonewalling Congress makes them look all principled and aboveboard?"

Uh -- did we expect any different from Mukasey?

And just exactly what to we expect the DoJ/CIA internal investigation to find? Yeah, I think you're probably right.

Related: See this from Salon. I suppose it's only a matter of time until detainees are considered evidence that can be disposed of. Considering that the only evidence we have that any of this is working is the repeated assertions of a known liar . . . well, do I really have to say anything?

The Criminal Government

From NYT:

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

What amazes me is the blatant admission of lawlessness here. I guess the assumption is that the American people have become so blase about criminal acitivity in the administration that it's OK to admit it -- no one will do anything about it, and if they do, the president will pardon the wrongdoers.

This is a scary article. A really scary article.

And of course, the apologists for immorality in government are out in full force, and just as arrogant as we might assume. Here's Andrew Sullivan on Charles Krauthammer's appearance on Fox News:

I just listened to Charles say that the torture of terror suspects in 2002 was justified because the United States was flying blind and had no knowledge of what al Qaeda was planning. He won't say "torture", of course, although the law is clear that it is torture. (He and Fox News keep referring to the notion of "harsh interrogation techniques". I think they realized that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" was a little too close to the Gestapo's euphemism for comfort.) And he then Gitmomarkwilsongetty said that destroying the tapes was justified because you don't want them coming up on YouTube, do you? So there you have it: the government has a right to torture when it feels like it and the right to destroy the evidence because it would incriminate them and hurt the image of the United States. Again, I keep pinching myself that I am actually hearing these things on the television.

Hot Air blames John McCain:

This, essentially, is the result of Sen. John McCain’s announced policy of keeping interrogation techniques like waterboarding illegal, but knowing full well that it will be used in extreme circumstances, and that when it is used the agents who used it will find themselves in legal jeopardy no matter what the outcome of the interrogation was. It’s the politics of passing the buck.

This post is staggering, and probably does as much as anything else to reveal the complete lack of moral grounding on the right. (I had to think about linking to it, but decided that you deserve easy access just to see the kind of gutter these people live in.) Andrew Sullivan, in his post on the Hot Air piece opines that the president will have some explaining to do. No -- no one will put his feet to the fire on this. Congress doesn't have the balls, and he owns the Supreme Court.

And keep in mind that destruction of evidence is a consistent pattern in this administration. Scott Horton pulls some threads together:

The CIA leadership and other senior administration officials are fully cognizant of the fact that the use of a number of specific practices which these tapes almost certainly document, to-wit: waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, psychotropic drugs and sleep deprivation in excess of two days, are serious crimes under American law and the law of almost all nations. Consequently, those who have used them and those who have authorized their use will almost certainly ultimately face criminal prosecution at some point in the future. The Administration’s attempts to immunize the perpetrators have failed. Any purported grant of a pardon by President Bush will be legally ineffective, because Bush himself is a collaborator in the scheme. And there is no statute of limitations. Therefore the prospect of prosecution is hardly far-fetched. It is a virtual certainty. So the evidence is being destroyed precisely because it would be used as evidence of criminal acts in a prosecution of administration figures and those acting under their direction. Therefore, this is a conscious, calculated obstruction of justice.

The role of Congress in this is appalling, including those Democrats who had knowledge of the existence of these tapes and the intention to destroy them. Jay Rockefeller knew that they had been destroyed in 2006 and kept his mouth shut. Jane Harman urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes -- and otherwise kept her mouth shut. Why should we place any trust in these people?

And here's Marty Lederman's commentary, including the letter from Mike Hayden to CIA personnel on taping interrogations. The whole thing rings hollow, and even if his concerns are justified, the real damage is that he has absolutely no credibility. In the context of this administration's history and its politicization of every deparment of the government, the whole thing reads as a smokescreen.

I suppose we're lucky we have a government left at all..

Torture, With Some Thoughts on Ideology

I've not said much about the Bush torture regime, except to note that you can't really expect better from a man who thinks it's fun to feed firecrackers to frogs. I skimmed over this post by Sebastian Holsclaw at Obsidian Wings yesterday (trying madly to catch up) and then Andrew Sullivan highlighted it today.

One thing that strikes me is that there is common ground between the left and the right on certain issues. Torture should be a no-brainer for any thoughtful citizen, and the idea that we have to parse the definition of torture is one of the signal defeats of civilization by the wing-nut right. Distrust of government is, perhaps, a conservative position. My own feeling is that it should be an American position. This bit reflects my own thinking precisely:

The hypothetical has nothing to do with the discussion of whether or not we (the United States) ought to be torturing people. One of the key things that conservatives ought to remember (and which we notice all the time in liberal proposals) is that INTENTIONS DO NOT EQUAL OUTCOMES. The government is horribly incompetent at all sorts of things and we ought not abandon that insight when analyzing proposals of people who allege that they are our allies (the idea that Bush is a conservative ally is something I'd like to argue about on another day--but my short answer is that he isn't).

As with limitations on free speech, I don't trust the government to be able to fairly and nimbly navigate the rules that would be necessary to make certain that it only used a legal right to torture when it was the right choice. Sadly this is no longer a hypothetical question. In actual practice, we find that Bush's administration has tortured men who not only didn't know anything about what they were being tortured about, but weren't even affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Let me say that again. Bush's administration has tortured men who were factually innocent.

The hypothetical posed is, of course, loaded in favor of the "yes" answer -- yes it was worth it, but only because the questioner has set up the question so that no other answer is possible. Life doesn't set up questions like that, and as Sebastian points out quite clearly, we cannot rely on the judgment of one man -- a man whose judgment is plainly open to question -- to determine whether torture is "worth it." And anyone who thinks that one man is actually making that decision on a case-by-case basis is dreaming. The reality is even worse: that one man, who has little, if any moral sense, has authorized underlings to make the decision to torture "suspects" as a matter of national policy.

Got that? Torture is official American policy.

Sullivan, in a later post comments on the enthusiasm of the right for torture -- just listen to anything Rudy Giuliani has to say on the question. This is a matter of terminology again -- which are the true "conservatives"? This is one reason I will no longer admit to "conservative" positions. I do have them -- almost libertarian, in some areas, but the labeling is such that I won't put myself in the same boat as Giuliani, Bush, Romney, Dobson, Sheldon, the pope -- that whole bunch of self-serving cheap politicians who routinely play to the lowest common denominator with a script developed from misrepresentations and outright lies.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more I find myself approaching questions of ideology -- political philosophy -- from the same mindset that I use for moral questions: it's nothing so simple as a set of tribal taboos handed down from generation to generation. It's a matter of basic principles (hence the "first causes" of this blog's subtitle) applied as consistently as possible to real issues in daily life.

I may even elaborate on that as time goes by.

Tasering

It's become obvious that the police and airport security are not fit to have weapons like tasers available to them. I've just read too many reports like this one. Airport security is probably worse, since they're not as well-trained and not as effectively screened -- sort of a domestic Blackwater.

The Torture President

I haven't had a chance to read this story yet, ironically enough, since I work at this paper. And Andrew Sullivan beat me to the link.

Nuts.

Construction Time Again

No, this is not another post about Depeche Mode, but the title seems appropriate:

From Bob Geiger, a list of the first 10 Democratic priorities:

1. Ethics reform, to clean up Congress so the government can get back to serving the American people.

2. Raising the minimum wage, to give millions of American families an opportunity to achieve the American Dream.

3. Medicare Prescription Drug program reform, to save seniors, the disabled, and American taxpayers money.

4. Acting on the 9/11 Commission Recommendations, to fully secure our ports and borders and ensure that our first responders have the resources they need to keep America safe.

5. Funding stem cell research, to open the promise of life-saving cures and treatments.

6. Energy reform, to address global warming and put America on a path to energy independence.

7. Easing the financial burden of college tuition, to increase accessibility for hardworking students and their families.

8. Strengthening and rebuilding America's military, to ensure the American people get the real security they deserve.

9. Comprehensive immigration reform, to fix America's broken immigration system.

10. Pay-as-you-go legislation, so that Congress has to cover its costs just like American families do.

I don't think anyone will argue that these aren't important. I think they're important. Lots of people think they're important. But one thing I don't think anyone has actually said, even though it's in the subtext: They're all things that haven't been done in six years. They could have been done. They're not new things. But they weren't.

What has been done? We took a pass on Darfur, we created a civil war in Iraq, a failed state in Afghanistan, we lost a major American city, we've allowed the abrogation of the Bill of Rights, the erosion of Americans' earning power . . . well. The list doesn't get better.

Maybe now it will.

Update:

Speaking of things that haven't been done:




It's time. It's past time.

The Obligatory Post on Saddam Hussein

My man-on-the-street reaction: old news. In the public perception, he was dead two years ago. And, all things considered, it doesn't matter:

But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster — and therefore didn't make much difference.

"Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30, of Columbus, Ohio. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam."

As for the trial and all of it, I think I do consider that Greg Djerejian has the right of it:

But it is clear as day that this judicial process, not least the rush to execution, positively reeked of victor's justice. This is not to say the trial could not have been even worse, as genuine attempts by some in the USG were made to assist the Iraqi authorities in putting together a credible tribunal. But, like the rest of the Iraq War, it was mostly a fiasco (see here for detail regarding some of the many shortcomings in the process).

To be sure, an international war crimes tribunal sitting in the Hague, or a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission, either would have been far better than the process we witnessed--particularly given the critical imperative of forging better national reconciliation among Iraq's different ethnic groups and sects. And, yes, as David Kurtz points out, we cannot help sensing in the motley gaggle of hooded hangmen (pictured above) a revanchist, vigilante-style justice that gives the lie to the impartiality of the entire process.

Above all, however, what saddens me in all this was that Saddam was not methodically tried and convicted while alive, not only for the murder of the males of one hapless Shi'a villlage on the outskirts of Baghdad, but for the entire gamut of his despicable crimes--his brutal campaign of genocide in Kurdistan, his massacres of thousands upon thousands of Marsh Arabs, his command decisions during the long Iran-Iraq war, and more. Could we not have tried him in the Hague, even if it lasted past Bush's Presidency, say, on the whole panoply of crimes he was rightly accused of, with witnesses, prosecution and defense teams better protected, rather than under a state of seige, with fewer grave shortcomings in standards of judicial procedure, and above all, with a better sense that justice had been pursued deliberately rather than in a vengeful (however understandable) rush to execution?

I don't necessarily agree with the "motley crew" idea -- I think that's very much a Western pundit take on the circumstances, which, after all, are taking place in a non-Western context. There are good reasons for the hoods, as there have always been but probably even more so in this case, and I'm sorry they're not wearing official uniforms, but we should remember that, along with the styles of Western dress, we've also exported some of the modes of Western informality.

I think no matter where the trial were held, or under what forms, there would be a certain element that would label it "revenge." As it happened, it's just that much easier for anyone who wants to to make that assumption.

As for Djerejian's plaintive cry for a more thorough, far-reaching, and careful trial, "even if it lasted past Bush's Presidency," surely that was the whole point: so far, this is the high point of the Bush presidency, the trial and executiion of a minor dictator for crimes that were, in the sum total of his activities while in power, also relatively minor. Update: Apparently Josh Marshall feels the same way about it:

Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

Jane Hamsher has some insights on the whole greasy-dirty feel of this episode. (I can't condemn it on the basis of disapproving the death penalty, which I do, because I can't take something like the death penalty as an abstraction. Sometimes, when it gets down to cases, there's just nothing else you can do if you are going to make the correct statement. As it stands, it's just another botch disguised as victory by the incompetents in charge.)

Of course, one has to wonder about the motivation for the timing of the execution:

"His execution on the day of Eid ... is an insult to all Muslims," said Jordanian pilgrim Nidal Mohammad Salah. "What happened is not good because as a head of state, he should not be executed."

The Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, marks biblical patriarch Abraham's willingness to kill his son for God. Muslim countries often pardon criminals to mark the feast, and prisoners are rarely executed at that time.

Speaking of the Bush presidency, Glenn Greenwald draws the necessary, if somewhat obvious, connection. From the president's statement:

Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial -- the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.

Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule. It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people's determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.

If Alan Moore were writing for The Onion, you might get something close to this.

Take a look at this post by Barbara O'Brien at C&L as well. Food for thought.

Presumption of Guilt

Here's the NYT story on the detention of Donald Vance, who was not only a U.S. citizen, but was working for the FBI tracking abuses.

Expand this treatment to several thousand people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and several secret prisons scattered around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and gauge the reaction you get from some of our own citizens. The presumption too often is that they must be guilty of something, else they wouldn't have been detained. I've run into it myself in discussion groups -- the automatic assumptoin that all of these people are dangerous terrorists, when the fact point to the conclusion that most of them have been innocent. No suspicion that our own military and intelligence services are incompetent or abusive, or that the administration has given a green light to behavior that we have traditionally condemend in the strongest possible terms. "They're all terrorists."

We have had since our founding a basic principle of law in this country: the accused is innocent until proven guilty. There have always been some who presume guilt, but they've been marginalized. Now they're catered to.

Bush deserves to burn in a Christanist hell for doing that.

Words Fail Me

Anyone who can not only condone something like this but order it deserves our deepest contempt. All you America-hating rightwingers take note: this is an American citizen picked up in Chicago on trumped-up charges that have since disappeared, held incommunicado for three and a half years, and destroyed for nothing. This is what happens to "enemy combatants," so designated by that pissy queen in the White House. (Sorry, boys and girls, but you don't have to be gay to be a queen.)

The bitterest part is that we -- the American people and the American press -- let him get away with it. There's even a few sickos who think it's OK.

See this commentary by Glenn Greenwald:

[W]hy isn't this most patent violation of our country's core principles, whereby our fellow citizens are being imprisoned and tortured by our government with no charges, prompting genuine anger?

This is the reason why. Over the last five years, the media (with some notable and noble exceptions) essentially embraced the central premise of the Bush administration -- that in order for us to be protected, we must place our faith in the Leader and know that he is doing Good, because he wants to protect us. . . .

The Bush administration was able to invade Iraq, imprison and torture people (including U.S. citizens), and repeatedly and openly break the law not because the Howard Kurtz's of our country failed in their duty as journalists (although they did, profoundly). It goes beyond that. They affirmatively believed in those things -- and in many cases, still do -- every bit as much as the President and his government did, and they worked in harmonious concert with the administration to do as much, if not more, to enable it.

How many names must we have on the list before people begin to notice? The Brandon Mayfield debacle cost us $2 million. Can you imagine what the bill for Jose Padilla is going to be?

If this administration isn't impeached, then there's no hope for the country. This is just vile.