About fucking time: "US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo and Iraq, Afghanistan: UN source"

- The Economist

NYT has two great stories: one on the surge and the other on one Jack Goldsmith, forher head of the Office of Legal Counsel. He resigned a couple of years ago after withdrawing a couple of memos authorizing the torture of detainees. The usual suspects come up: John Yoo and David Addington, the latter now Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Most chilling moment: When Goldsmith presented his analysis of the Geneva Conventions at the White House, Addington, according to Goldsmith, became livid. “The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,” Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. “You cannot question his decision.” (Addington declined to comment on this and other details concerning him in this article.)

Goldsmith then explained that he agreed with the president’s determination that detainees from Al Qaeda and the Taliban weren’t protected under the Third Geneva Convention, which concerns the treatment of prisoners of war, but that different protections were at issue with the Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns civilians. Addington, Goldsmith says, was not persuaded. (Goldsmith told me that he has checked his recollections of this and other meetings with at least one other participant or with someone to whom he described the meetings soon after.)

Months later, when Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. “If you rule that way,” Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, “the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.”

As for John Ashcroft, who would have thought that his pillar-of-rectitude schtick was the real thing?

Vivid Bill Moyers interview with Goldsmith here, thanks to Andrew Sullivan's site.

Mark Danner on the ICRC report on torture.

Has anyone read/heard more about the claim that waterboarding Al Queda operative KSM prevented a 'Second Wave' attack on the US?

The story apparently first appeared in 2005, but I don't remember it.

just heard that mentioned by.. herridge, is it? defense reporter on fox, just on studio b, that those who wrote the memos are standing behind them. don't know.

been reading the senate report (got through only a third of it last night and not to the worst of it yet.)

froomkin (i agree with this):

Torturing for Propaganda Purposes
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/torture/torturing-for-propaganda-purpo.html

The whole thing is a sad and frustrating clusterfuck, but not ultimately a surprising one. It is interesting watching a lot of formerly blithe fools either double-down on the blitheness or start realizing what they were defending all this time.

well, studio b just had judith miller and some conservative think tanker on to argue about this, and it got pretty heated. shep went on a bit of a tear at the end of the conversation, evidently appalled by what we've done & declaring that the US does not torture. i suppose that video will get posted somewhere soon.

actually i am surprised in the sense that.. i didn't put the pieces together (it never even occurred to me that there might be these pieces): these interrogations may have been partly done for the purpose of linking al qaeda to iraq. when there was no link! the significance of this.. i'm stunned. i will state and have many times that bush/cheney deliberately lied us into an illegal war, but to consider that they tortured detainees to help cook the intelligence that helped them lie us into an illegal war = next level.

like i said though, i haven't finished reading the senate report so i don't know precisely what they say on this point.

full senate report:
http://armed-services.senate.gov/Publications/Detainee%20Report%20Final_April%2022%202009.pdf
(263 page PDF)

mcclatchy:
Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

fuck.

Well, from the few comments I've read and heard about this in the wake of Dick Cheney's request to declassify the other documents, I think this will sadly play out like most political issues. The evidence will be anecdotal, it will be selectively cherry-picked, and any chance at really moving public opinion will be drowned-out by all the noise.

Actually, to be fair, I'm sort of amazed the public mood seems to be against these "enhanced interrogation techniques," so maybe the sustained pressure of progressive critics has had some effect. Also, BushCo came to be seen as incompetent, which I'm sure went a long way toward souring public opinion -- for the moment -- on all things conservative.

goddamn Cheney should be shot in the face what a horrible human being

frankly I'm amazed at how publicly Cheney is wading into this debate - as if he is completely oblivious to the fact that the more digging is done, the more investigations that take place, the more memos that get released, the worse he is going to look, and the more public opinion will turn against Bushco (even moreso than it already has)

Conclusion 19: The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a
few soldiers acting on their own.

NOW we hear this! i recall ppl wondering what got into those crazy appalachian hicks, at the time. graner is a psychopath who belongs in jail, of course, but they didn't come up with that stuff on their own. go up the chain of command and prosecute the people who authorized it, finally.

Rove: Sure, as long as they've released the limits to which America will go to extract this information, let's share the information that was extracted, and saved America from further attacks. We know, for example -- it's already a part of the public record -- that the interrogation of these high-value targets kept them from being able to attack Los Angeles by flying airplanes into the Liberty tower, the tallest building in Los Angeles, which was one of their plans.

But look, let's step back for a minute. What the Obama administration has done in the last several days is very dangerous. What they've essentially said is, If we have policy disagreements with our predecessors, what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run colonels in mirrored sunglasses. And what we're going to do is prosecute, systematically, the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences.

Is that what we've come to in this country? That if we have a change in administration from one party to another, that we then use the tools of the government to go systematically after the policy disagreements that we have with the previous administration? Now that may be fine in some little Latin American country that's run by, you know, the latest junta. It may be the way that they do things in Chicago. But that's not the way we do things here in America.

translation: maybe if I wave the flag hard enough they won't send my ass to jail

There's something almost endearing about his 'if I repeat this loud enough I might believe it' approach.

It may be the way that they do things in Chicago. But that's not the way we do things here in America.

lol, someone tell this guy Chicago is in America

btw I am all for them releasing what information they found; I just think the "we're not some shady Latin American country" rhetoric is maybe a tad on the unbelievably racist side

the mirrored sunglasses is pretty funny/stupid though--wtf is rove thinking

I'm trying to imagine Obama in mirrored sunglasses. I bet he'd loook cool.

CSI: Washington

what we're going to do is we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run colonels in mirrored sunglasses.

wait didn't Rove already do this

y'know seizing power via a contested election, fomenting wars, acting above the law, etc.

public opinion vs Bushco is a nonstarter; people are worried about food and shelter for the rest of 2009.

someone did post the smith/miller/may segment on fox news that i was talking about on the youtubes (it wasn't me.)
this is the blog post by zelikow that miller references..

Boy, Shep is really het up there.

and effing abu ghraib. is my memory bad or did they mostly sweep that shit under the rug, as far as holding anyone up the chain of command accountable? and particularly accountable for what was done, not just that the situation got violent and out of control. i have seymour hersh's book around here somewhere but haven't read it yet.. but just googling now for some background landed me on some academic paper (cultural studies world): Seymour Hersh quoted a senior US political official as saying at the height of the scandal, "We've got some hillbilly kids out of control."

right. this went all the way up to tenet, rumsfeld, and cheney.

i mean, i knew it did. i wasn't in town at the time but i'm from the same region as the soldiers in question, and media from all over the country & the world showed up to try and figure out what was it in the water out there that made these hillbillies do these things. i'm not saying there isn't ignorance and racism out there (and there is nothing in the water, not even fluoride), but this shit was thought up by somebody in the administration.

Chain of Command is a great book

Hersh kinda went off the deep end about Iran tho, I think

"you could tell just by looking at them. . . ." love this:
http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2409648
go l. o'donnell: "tell us what you saw"

two questions about that video though: 1) are nora and lawrence related? 2) does obama always strut like that?

(U) The first ofthe two August 1,2002 OLC memoranda, known to many as the "First
Bybee" memo, presented OLC's narrow interpretation ofwhat constituted torture under U.S.
law. The memo stated that the federal anti-torture statute of 1994 prohibited "only extreme acts"
and that in order to constitute torture, physical pain would have to be equivalent in intensity to
that accompanying "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily
functions or even death. For mental pain to rise to the level oftorture, according to the
memo, it would have to result in "significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g.,
lasting for months or even years. The First Bybee memo also found that the federal antitorture
statute may not be applicable to interrogations ordered by the President ifhe acted
pursuant to his Constitutional commander-in-chief powers. Further, the memo argued that even
if the federal anti-torture statute could be construed to apply to such interrogations, the defenses
of necessity and self-defense could potentially eliminate criminal liability under the statute.
(U) The First Bybee memo also effectively dispensed with the "specific intent"
requirement ofthe federal anti-torture statute by narrowly defining that requirement. The federal
anti-torture statute states that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be "specifically intended
to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." The First Bybee memo stated that in
order "for a defendant to have acted with specific intent, he must expressly intend to achieve the
forbidden act. Under that interpretation, to violate the law, a person must expressly intend to
commit torture and the memo stated that "knowledge alone that a particular result is certain to
occur does not constitute specific intent."

bybee has a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.. NYT called for him to be impeached in an editorial the other day

The great thing with these revelations is that it allows Americans who haven't followed this the chance to connect dots that journalists have drawn for years. If you're looking for a great synthesis, Charlie Savage's Takeover and Barton Gellman's Angler define the theory of the unitary executive and how it led to a pliant Office of Legal Counsel, doubly menaced by the possibility of more attacks on US soil.

so earlier shep was on judge napolitano's fox news show (it's a webcast only, they can say whatever they want) and started *yelling* at him I DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS, WE DO NOT FUCKING TORTURE

duh! i remain stunned that people all over the media are still having this debate with the same stupid BS talking points. scarbs has treated it like a big fucking joke half the time. or rather, people are trying to justify or gloss over what happened by weaseling out of the debate, making jokes about it, picking out little details like they're no thing - oh, that guy was afraid of a caterpillar so we put him in a box with it, that's not torture. it's fucking disgusting. it's also probably a waste of energy to even get angry at these people, save it for the obama administration (inc my favorite person in the world HRC) who might actually DO something to make sure this never happens again.

ok i need a drink. off to meet with some left wing conspirators at an open bar. christ

they better not only have rail gin

it's just one of those days.. everything i thought was horrific and criminal about the prev administration.. it's worse

Dana Rohrabacker is such a cockfarmer - glad Hilz zinged him a little today re: Cheney's torture memos blather

Seymour Hersh quoted a senior US political official as saying at the height of the scandal, "We've got some hillbilly kids out of control."

right. this went all the way up to tenet, rumsfeld, and cheney.

― the shep (shepard smith ha ha) (daria-g), Wednesday, April 22, 2009

So Senior US Political Official OTM

I see what you did there

Foretold back in October: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/19/seymour-hersh-new-yorker-reporter

"You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January (the date of the next president's inauguration)," (Hersh) says, with relish. "(They say:) You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then."

Boy, Shep is really het up there.

He did, but it was all kind of begging-the-question. Both panelists and Smith agreed: Torture is bad, and we shouldn't do it. The key question is whether the techniques that were approved and used under the Bush Admin. -- either (a) in isolation or (b) in combination on a single detainee -- constituted torture. The "guy from the right" kept saying "no," and only Miller engaged his argument, and even then only in a cursory way. I'm not suggesting that Miller or Smith were wrong about their apparent feelings that these techniques constitute torture -- indeed, the BushCo techniques certainly seem like torture to me; I wouldn't want my dad or mom falsely accused of something and facing "walling," "waterboarding" or the "bug box" -- but I want to see that issue debated thoroughly.

Okay, so here's the rebuttal to the original question I asked about waterboarding allegedly foiling the "Second Wave" attack on Los Angeles. Basically, the waterboarded confession couldn't have foiled the plot because -- according to the Bush Admin. itself -- the plot was a dead letter before the Al Qaida agent was even captured.

Not 100% sure that's a completely effective rebuttal, tho. On the one hand, if the "Liberty Tower Plot" is the best torture-apologists have got, it's pretty thin gruel, and it undermines claims about the value of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (especially considering the cost of such techniques on the nation's stature, as a recruiting tool for our enemies, and so forth) evaluated in a vacuum and/or in comparison to more traditional intelligence-gathering methods.

On the other hand, assuming the Al Qaida captive didn't know that the "Second Wave" plot had already been foiled (and that's a pretty dubious assumption, I imagine), I suppose you could argue that waterboarding did eventually force him to disclose a contemplated plot (i.e., not a false confession). To me, what makes this a particularly thin argument is that it appears to have taken a whole lot of waterboarding to ellicit this "confession." The only time I can see these "enhanced interrogation techniques" being even arguably defensible is when there's a known imminent threat -- e.g., airplanes have been hijacked and are over the New York area; we learn that all the components of a dirty bomb have been assembled in a major city on the East Coast and are soon to be used, but we don't know which city is targeted -- and you urgently need intelligence. But if it takes 183 waterboarding sessions to ellicit this intelligence, you'll never get the information fast enough to do frustrate the plot. And that's setting aside the obvious concerns about the quality of information you typically get by using these techniques (see, e.g., the comments of the doctor whose sleep-deprivation study was taken out-of-context in the OLC memos), not to mention the terrible impact on our standing in the world, and the basic immorality of torture.

Anyway, rambling. Apologies. Can't sleep, and trying to read the Senate Armed Services Committee report.

have yall seen 'taxi to the dark side'? am i being a n00b?

It's good -- better than Errol Morris' flick.

I haven't. Thanks, J0rdan. I just added it to my Blockbuster que.

Not to get all Morbius here, but in thinking about whether Americans would judge torture ok if they believed it would materially improve their lives, I remember Lesley Stahl's question to Madeleine Albright about U.S. sanctions against Iraq. She asked Albright, "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price---we think the price is worth it."

This kind of thinking is ingrained in our political class; surely it's just a matter of time before it's ingrained in the populace as a whole (if it isn't already).

The public wouldn't have turned against Enhanced Interrogation Skillz had not Bush's approval ratings descended past Truman levels.

i don't understand what the two things have to do with one another

Alfred's right. It depends on the national mood/circumstances.

If there's another major terrorist attack in the U.S., you can be sure the pendulum will quickly swing the other way.

I guess I'm not sure that the pendulum has swung at all. And maybe that's Alfred's point.

Fair enough. I think it has, to some degree, and whatever swing has happened is very fragile.

Mr. Que, an admittedly clumsy analogy: After 09.11, the public looked to the Bush Admin. as schoolyard protectors. You had an idea they did terrible things, and the protection-money you had to pay them was a heavy burden, but it seemed worth it to keep your enemies at bay.

As soon as BushCo was exposed as being incompetent, bumbling and ineffective, that sense of protection was gone. At that point, the public couldn't help but notice the terrible things that this band of incompetents had done. That's when the public mood soured on torture techniques.

Did the public mood really support torture and then swing against it? I don't recall data on this topic. (Perhaps an ILX poll is in order, I'm sure that would be a blast.)

yeah i don't think the public soured on torture because bush fucked up

if the public automatically supports torture for years after every terrorist attack, why did bush frantically deny that he was torturing anyone?

I think because they had a different view of what constituted torture. They say waterboarding doesn't qualify.

The media shapes these "narratives" too -- eager to look patriotic and capitalize on the sudden popularity of BushCo, the networks contentedly presented Abu Ghraib, "taking the gloves off," and the capture of KSM on the president's terms.

if the public automatically supports torture for years after every terrorist attack, why did bush frantically deny that he was torturing anyone?

Cuz it's illegal.

I mean, that's partly why Andrea Mitchell still says enhanced interrogation techniques or whatever.

Euler: It's a good question. GOOGLE isn't helping me much, since I think the only useful polling data would be to ask the same questions at different points in time (say, each October since 2001), using the same polling techniques.

Still, Glenn Greenwald had an interesting post about this recently. He cites a poll showing that 58% of respondents oppose torture anytime, even in the "ticking time-bomb" scenario. Not sure how reliable the study is.

The American Public has always very clearly stood against torture in any form, which is why we strenuously demanded the "it's not actually torture guize" fig leaf from our administration. You know, so we could sleep at night. Because Americans Don't Do That.

I'm not sure it's as easy to say "the public automatically supports torture." At the risk of making The Public into a monolith, it still feared another attack in 2002 and 2003, and was willing to overlook allegations that surfaced even then.

i don't think the majority of the public is willing to accept torture at all -- for one thing, the whole right-wing argument in favor of waterboarding was "oh, waterboarding's not REALLY torture" not "waterboarding IS torture and thank god because those bastards deserve to be tortured."

has the "ticking time-bomb" scenario ever actually happened?

in Charles Krauthammer's head. Seriously -- in one of the first composition courses I taught in the late nineties, the anthology we used included an op-ed he wrote in 1981 or so defending the right to torture in ticking-time-bomb scenarios.

Krauthammer is the Ironsides of the Military Industrial Complex.

yeah and he probably still supports it, he's a big right winger. so what?

I'm answering J.D.'s question, dude.

I might hate Charles Krauthammer worst of all. He seems even more smug and self-satisfied to me than Sean Hannity.

Some on the right are more vocally celebrating torture lately. But I think we should avoid calling this purely a right-wing phenomenon.

alfred i think he's asking if we've ever tortured someone that has a knowledge of an actual bomb that's about to go off

The Timothy Noah article about the L.A. library tower to which Daniel linked is the only claim made by the government that waterboarding foiled a ticking time bob scenario.

btw this conversation should be had to the soothing sounds of the Jackson 5's "Torture".

i know it's a pretty universally recognized idea -- i was just curious if it's ever been known to happen in all human history, outside of "dirty harry" or whatever.

Why not?

The danger in focusing on the usefulness of torture in ticking bomb cases is that people who are moral utilitarians then argue that torture is moral. And lots of people are utilitarians.

xpost I love that song

a danceable solution to info-based contusion

has the "ticking time-bomb" scenario ever actually happened?

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, April 22, 2009

yes. germany. child abduction.

On September 27 of (2002) a Frankfurt law student kidnapped an eleven-year-old boy named Jakob von Metzler, whose smiling face appeared in a box alongside the story. The kidnapper had covered Jakob's mouth and nose with duct tape, wrapped the boy in plastic, and hidden him in a wooded area near a lake. The police captured the suspect when he tried to pick up ransom money, but the suspect wouldn't reveal where he had left the boy, who the police thought might still be alive. So the deputy police chief of Frankfurt, Wolfgang Daschner, told his subordinates to threaten the suspect with torture. According to the suspect, he was told that a "specialist" was being flown in who would "inflict pain on me of the sort I had never experienced." The suspect promptly told the police where he'd hidden Jakob, who, sadly, was found dead. The newspaper said that Daschner was under fire from Amnesty International, among other groups, for threatening torture.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200310/bowden

Yeah. Well, I'm a parent. Can't say I've given the issue much thought (and what a horrible thought it is FFS), but from the snippet, I side with Daschner, I think.

If you need torture to be ineffective to oppose it, good luck with that.

from the snippet, I side with Daschner, I think

shit, I'm not a parent and I side with Daschner.

but he wasn't trying to extract a false confession, like e.g. "this kidnapping was planned by Al Qaida and executed by agents of Saddam Hussein."

Kerm: Not sure you were directing that to me. FWIW, no: I don't need torture to be ineffective to oppose it.

Nah, not directed at you... I was simultaneously watching Jon Stewart do this "moral/immoral/effective/ineffective quandary" bit on torture on tonight's Daily Show... I not sure what a conclusive argument for it being "ineffective" could even be.

er, that people will say fucking anything if you'll just kindly remove the leg screws

you can't trust anyone these days.

The problem with the ticking time bomb scenario, aside from its wild implausibility, is that it could be used to justify anything. You're not sure which of your half a dozen suspects is actually your man? Torture them all, some of them might even be innocent but hey you'll get the info. Or suppose your suspect is well 'ard and super immune to pain, but a devoted family man. Just torture his baby daughter in front of him till he cracks!

i don't think the majority of the public is willing to accept torture at all -- for one thing, the whole right-wing argument in favor of waterboarding was "oh, waterboarding's not REALLY torture" not "waterboarding IS torture and thank god because those bastards deserve to be tortured."

Ed Rollins is a jackass party hack
"This last week was the best example. The president decided, as he promised in the campaign, that he would ban torture -- a decision I agree with but many don't."

house minority leader accidentally goes off message: "Last week, they released these memos outlining torture techniques. That was clearly a political decision and ignored the advice of their Director of National Intelligence and their CIA director," Boehner said at a press conference in the Capitol.

shep might get suspended over that last clip

Apart from it's bad PR aspect, torture doesn't work. No other argument really need apply. The right really needs to come to terms with their own incompetence and stupidity and the left needs to keep reiterating that it's not that we're a bunch of bleeding-heart pantywaists that we're against torture, it's because we'd rather win in this conflict than turn into disgusting and unchristian savages.

Apart from it's bad PR aspect, torture doesn't work. No other argument really need apply.

yup - this is well studied and has been verified over and over. As with the death penalty, the utilitarian argument trumps all.

I'm all for going after Pelosi, Bob Graham, Dennis Hastert, and whoever else was in the Congressional leadership was at the time.

That's for sure. And it would be quite revelatory.

At the risk of sounding like Rush L, the Pelosi-Harman fracas is hilarious. Now the public's learning how compliant their elected officials were in the Bush administration's malfeasance.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/cheney-succeeding-in-shifting-torture-debate/

sargent has been on point.. really upsetting & wondering if this is indeed where the media is going to go

This is precisely what Cheney and other Bushies want the debate to be about: Whether torture has stopped terror attacks, as opposed to whether it’s moral, or detrimental to America’s global image, or a boon to Al Qaeda recruitment, or whether the architects of the policy broke the law and should be prosecuted.

Strikes me more as a give-em-enough-rope move.

yep - me too

yeah i'd read that in the reverse: it was basically assumed for years that the rough treatment was necessary and yielded results. now more and more ppl are openly calling it torture and its uselessness (apart from its immorality) is becoming more widely accepted. cheney has to crawl out in front of a camera to make his case over and over again, doesn't look good for him

ne more time: Cheney and the Bushies have mounted a relentless campaign to shift this debate that shows no signs of abating. Whatever the downside of Cheney’s re-emergence for the GOP, it may be working. Where’s the push-back on this from the White House, or at least its allies in Congress and elsewhere?

yeah, or... it may not be working

Cheney and Bushies apparently totally oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of the country hates/actively distrusts Cheney

given the fractured state of national discourse and the parallel universe of fox news/talk radio/hotairpajamasredstate, we're never going to get to a full national consensus against torture. we are never going to win completely, even if ppl get prosecuted the political question will never be settled. the best we can hope for is to shift the mainstream center (yeah ugh i know) against it, which i think might have already happened. the wingnuts will fight uphill for a while and accept it as fact that good men who did the hard thing for their country got railroaded by tranzi faggots or whatever, but they'll move on to other lies when their own audience gets bored.

yeah, i just never misunderestimate the ability of the right wing to drive the debate off the cliff. sen. mccaskill had some pretty tough words today on 'morning joe' about congressional investigation but i didn't know how to parse all of it, b/c she also emphasized that whole 'looking forward' thing, but refused to close any doors (investigation/prosecution)

I'm sure Obama administration is looking forward...to Cheney or similar losing his shit eventually. Totally laughing my ass off at Hillary dissing him in front of Congressional panel yesterday; ladies and gents, meet the bad cop. The guy in the WH is the good cop. This is working out very well for both of them and I'm glad that the media are finally starting to tilt at this. The amount of GOP clusterfuckage going on is amazing.

GOP types are going to go shrill on 'oh look, culpable Dems' on their favoured talking point regurgitation stations; am just waiting for the Gordian knot of nosense sentiments made by people who approve of torture techniques who nevertheless want to see Nancy Pelosi burned at the stake by any means necessary.

the whole GOP thrust is the traditional Dems = "weak" argument (see Rollins link above) and I'm not sure how well it will work barring an actual terrorist attack or clear military setback. People are more worried about being unemployed right now.

Hilz zing was classic

I didn't see the whole panel but there were a lot of hilLOLzings that morning. She's going to really enjoy serving it cold to some of these people.

I would be interested in seeing some polling about how GOP attack machine re: Obama's national security "weakness" is playing - esp given the pirate-ass-kicking thing (I'm inclined to guess that most people do not really care about Hugo Chavez handshake and are down with banning torture etc.)

She also clashed on abortion with New Jersey Republican Chris Smith, defending her support for family planning and contraception on the international stage.

Smith questioned how Clinton could accept an award honoring Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, a group Smith said had "killed over 305,000 children by abortion in the U.S. and millions more worldwide."

Replied Clinton: "I deeply respect your passionate views" but "we obviously have a profound disagreement." And, she added, "We are now an administration that will protect the rights of women, including reproductive health care."

Translation: eat a bag of dicks you evil sow

Chris Sow is a woman?

er Chris Smith?

er, swine...

http://nazret.com/blog/media/blogs/new/chris_smith.jpg

re: polling, xpost: i don't know of any polling offhand on those specifics. pollster.com has some trends that mostly seem favorable to obama, esp. right direction/wrong track. looks like fivethirtyeight isn't doing much right now, i wish he were on the case.
http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/issue-rdwt.php

i pay a disproportionate amount of attention to the GOP attack machine compared to most people, what it seems like to me is.. the sheer level of hysteria is astonishing & so out of whack compared to what's actually been done. obama didn't even change anything re: tax policy yet and they're already screeching about socialism. i mean, if/when he does actually try to push something through re: universal health care, i can't even imagine what they'll say.

heads will explode, hopefully

i don't know. these are for the most part profoundly stupid people.

i pay a disproportionate amount of attention to the GOP attack machine compared to most people, what it seems like to me is.. the sheer level of hysteria is astonishing & so out of whack compared to what's actually been done. obama didn't even change anything re: tax policy yet and they're already screeching about socialism. i mean, if/when he does actually try to push something through re: universal health care, i can't even imagine what they'll say.

i was just thinking about this, too. the intensity and insanity of the opposition doesn't seem just out of joint with reality to me, but also really... energy intensive. how can they keep this up? that level of rabidness seems unsustainable to me outside a small slice of america

Well, if they shout at each other at the top of their voices they'll be convinced everyone is shouting with them too. Poor souls.

being rabid is what america is all about!

Incredible:

It seemed almost incredible when Justice Department legal memos revealed last week that top lawyers in the U.S. government approved the use of insects to fan the fears of detainees in the war on terror. But in the Senate Armed Services Committee report released last night, we now have a second bug sighting. On page 46, a military psychiatrist named Maj. Paul Burney explains that he attended a training session on interrogations in the fall of 2002, during which the military experts taught them how to exploit captives’ phobias in order to terrify them into confessing. Among the fears Burney specifically recalls? “Fear of spiders.” He recalled that his teachers described how in the SERE program “they would try to find out what their (captives’) fears were before they came, so that they would try to use those against them, whether it was fear of spiders, the dark, whatever.”

The lesson was far from academic. Burney was tutored in the use of prisoner phobias in September of 2002—a month after Jay Bybee, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, issued his now-famous memo.

So what's off-limits? If you know a detainee has an acute fear of bugs, is it okay to confine him in a small box and dump 1,000 ants in it? How about 500 spiders? Is it okay to stuff some of the bugs in or around a detainee's mouth, to more successfully play off the detainee's phobia? How about doing all that after keeping the detainee awake for 10 straight days?

F----g A, these "enhanced techniques." I'm with Sheppard Smith.

Daniel, your earlier comment that you would approve torture if it were your child being threatened with death...why would anything be off-limits to you? Maybe the answer is: Maj. Paul Burney believed that the US would be attacked otherwise. On what grounds can you argue against him?

torture is morally wrong and there's no proof that it leads to good information

the main point should be that if your (or my) child is being threatened with death, TORTURE IS NOT GOING TO HELP, because it is not a reliable tactic.

I think torture is morally repulsive and I don't care whether it works or not.

I am torturing your children by stealing their candy and teasing them about it. Also you will never them.

find them

Marissa in SF

I agree, that it doesn't work is just icing on the torture cake.

NO CANDY AT THIS RESIDENCE

I think if we start torturing you Suzy we might learn where the candy is. Maybe you hid it in this torture cake.

studies show torturing people to find out where the candy is doesn't work and only leads to more cake

Letting Them Eat Cake: An Extraordinary Rendition

Daniel, your earlier comment that you would approve torture if it were your child being threatened with death...why would anything be off-limits to you? Maybe the answer is: Maj. Paul Burney believed that the US would be attacked otherwise. On what grounds can you argue against him?

Well, maybe. But circumstances matter. I highly doubt that Maj. Burney was facing a "ticking time-bomb" scenario. Indeed, I'm almost sure of it, because if he was, the Bush Admin. would have certainly leaked that information to bolster its case for torture techniques. Instead, all we've got is the specious "Liberty Tower" scenario. Also, it's increasingly apparent that these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used routinely, and just to pry information from detainees -- not in the "ticking time-bomb" situation (and often used to help bolster a political agenda of the Bush Admin., e.g., establish a link between Iraq and Al Queda).

The child-abduction scenario set forth above is a very unusual case, I don't think it is useful to use it to generalize beyond that almost unique situation. Holdings in legal cases are often confined to their particularized facts for this very reason. That may not be a satisfactory answer for you. If it isn't, I understand. I'm not trying to be beligerent/a dick about it. It isn't an easy question, and I don't take it lightly. But my feeling hasn't changed.

Re-reading my post makes me think it wasn't especially coherent. But you raise an important point, and I think you deserve an answer. Maybe a better answer than I'm capable of giving.

Circumstances matter, but how we perceive circumstances is (at least partly) up to us. So while maybe shouldn't have judged his situation as a ticking bomb, he might have anyway. Lots of threats, even at a far distance, can come to seem to us to be ticking-bomb-like. From the outside it's just paranoia but from the inside it doesn't seem that way. So I think if you're willing to allow torture in ticking-bomb-situations, you can be convinced, or even convince yourself, that a situation is a ticking-bomb-situation, when you shouldn't.

doubtless, part of the reason for the bugs was, once information on the whole program finally got leaked, every idiot apologist for this stuff can cherrypick that out and go "what, we put him in a box with a caterpillar? and that's torture?" like it's no big thing. the same way abu ghraib was a frat prank

TPM:

House Minority Leader John Boehner's spokesman Michael Steel, explaining away his boss' use of the word "torture" to describe U.S. interrogation practices: "It is clear from the context that Boehner was simply using liberals' verbiage to describe these interrogation techniques. The United States does not torture."

eh sorry for interrupting there, didn't see the whole conversation.

x-post -- "We just torture verbiage."

i guess you could say Boehner made a boner

go "what, we put him in a box with a caterpillar? and that's torture?" like it's no big thing. the same way abu ghraib was a frat prank

Or as Nietzsche put it about his heros, the yes-sayers: "[T]hey step back into the innocence of the beast-of-prey conscience, as jubilant monsters, who perhaps walk away from a hideous succession of murder, arson, rape, torture with such high spirits and equanimity that it seems as if they have only played a student prank, convinced that for years to come the poets will again have something to sing and to praise."

This Nietzschean line is implicit in a lot of neo-conservative discourse, I'd love to see them pick up the Nietzschean gauntlet more explicitly.

Wait wait wait, how does torture not work? It doesn't always lead to reliable information, but neither does any other form of interrogation. It can lead to false confessions, and your better interrogators are aware of that and probably plan accordingly. There are numerous other instances where you can torture a guy and then go check out the information he's giving you. So it's clearly effective in certain cases.

neither does any other form of interrogation

ok what

Euler: Yeah, I see that. But it also isn't acceptable to simply let people -- especially officials -- be govered by those impulses. The situation is objectively different when (a) we're just rooting around for information about possible terrorits plots vs. (b) two dirty bombs are known to be in South Florida, one just exploded in downtown Miami, the group posessing them is a single cell and we've captured a detainee with obvious close ties to the leadership of that cell, we've received a warning that the other bomb will be detonated within the hour, etc., etc., etc. (add your own parade of horribles). The challenge is where and how you draw the lines. And I'd draw them in such a way that these "enhanced techniques" were almost never used (because, as others have pointed out, the "ticking time-bomb" situation is exceptionally rare).

(xp)

There are numerous other instances where you can torture a guy and then go check out the information he's giving you.

when the "going out and checking" part is taking up all your time and resources, maybe using methods that don't create a shitload of false leads is a better idea?

"oh we had to go chase down all the bullshit this guy said to make you stop beating and shackling and freezing him, no biggie. another day at the office!"

when you expand the definition of 'interrogation' to 'what interrogators actually do' rather than keeping the narrow 'bright light in your face, brutalize, and extort you' definition then yes, there are plenty of methods interrogators use to gather reliable information

goole OTM

there is a huge amount of research literature on torture, generally concluding that it does not provide better information than standard interrogation techniques, and in many cases yields worse/wrong/conflicting/completely made-up information

ok, Daniel, keeping "exceptionally rare" exceptionally rare is the hard part. And I don't trust, well, anyone, to respect that, power corrupts etc.

pelosi today made a very clear statement that she was NOT informed that waterboarding etc were being used -
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003101913

Pelosi said her recollection was, "They told us they had opinions from the [Justice Department's] Office of Legal Counsel that they could, but not that they were" using so-called enhanced techniques, "and that if and when they were used, they would brief Congress at that time." She said she was never told that such techniques were actually being used.

lynn cheney was on msnbc today defending this stuff i heard, but it was pretty recent so i'm not sure yet exactly what she said.

yeah but that sounds ass-covering malarkey to me - what she's saying is she saw the memos condoning it, and then took Dubya's word for it that the techniques weren't actually being used. how stupid is she

stupid like a fox

Maybe I wasn't parsing some of the earlier posts correctly.. It sounded like some of you meant "torture doesn't ever work," which simply can't be true. I doubt many serious people would deny that many other techniques yield better information in most cases, as Shakey just mentioned. Then the question becomes - what about those other, exceptional cases?

oops, it was liz cheney. some blog must have this video by now right?

i don't know yet re: pelosi. as i heard the situation explained, the few in congress who were briefed, this was held in a briefing room with no staff and was top secret so could not even be discussed with staff or anywhere outside of the room, so it's all going on people's recollections of a conversation that no one could discuss at all after it happened. this was 2002, so i think, at least then, the congress didn't necessarily have that much indication that the administration would do what they did.

no, the question becomes -- why resort to torture at all, which ALWAYS produces more false information than useful information, when there are other methods that provide consistently more reliable information

xpost

"Then the question becomes - what about those other, exceptional cases?"

Why don't we just torture you and figure it all out later?

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602395.html

Charlie K dudn't like the torture

you can't treat it like a zero-sum game - there is no way to guarantee you will get good info out of a subject 100% of the time, no matter what technique you use, torture or otherwise

x-posts

I thought "Charlie K" was "Charles Krauthammer," which made me go whut.

no yeah, let's call him General C Krulak

and the other guy

I was with Alfred, I'm all "Well when did THAT happen?"

Next John Hinderaker would be saying that Norm Coleman is a fool and Michele Bachman should have lost her election.

I just tortured the guy next to me into revealing whether the cafeteria is still open. He lied and said it wasn't.

Meanwhile Andrew Sullivan horrifyingly connects the dots:

That's the famous quote wrested by Ron Suskind from a "senior adviser" to president Bush. We have long thought of it as a coda to the refusal to see reality in the fiasco of the Iraq war (and the failure of the Afghanistan war). But, in retrospect, it might also tell us something about the real point of the torture program. If the CIA were telling Cheney that Zubaydah, for example, had told everything he could know, and Cheney had not secured the informtion linking Saddam to 9/11, torture was an obvious next option. It could "create a reality" that comported with what Cheney already believed as a matter of faith. If you want to "create" such a reality, you can "fix" the intelligence to make the case for war, as we now know happened; but if you want to "create" the original intelligence, you need to torture. Specifically, you need to craft torture techniques designed to procure false confessions. Ta-da! We have SERE, inversely adapted from Communist totalitarian methods for producing propagandistic false confessions.

much as it pains me to say this, sullivan -> OTM

I'm not buying this part of what Sullivan says: "but if you want to "create" the original intelligence, you need to torture." Why couldn't Cheney's people just make it up, without torture? The torture was never going to be made public, so the origin of the intelligence would have been irrelevant.

Uh they did make it up.

has someone posted about how my man hannity's gonna be waterboarded

I think the idea is that it's more credible if you get it straight from the horses' mouth is kind of silly. As if they really cared whether or not the facts fit the theory.

much as it pains me to say this, sullivan -> OTM

He was awful during the run-up to the Iraq war, but he jumped off the BushCo train years ago, and it was precisely because of Abu Ghraib.

yeah (xp), that's why Sullivan's story doesn't connect, as far as I can tell.

has someone posted about how my man hannity's gonna be waterboarded

Waht?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/22/hannity-offers-to-be-wate_n_190354.html

GRODIN: You're for torture.

HANNITY: I am for enhanced interrogation.

GRODIN: You don't believe it's torture. Have you ever been waterboarded?

HANNITY: No, but Ollie North has.

GRODIN: Would you consent to be waterboarded? We can waterboard you?

HANNITY: Sure.

GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?

HANNITY: I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families.

LOL

"Sure, if Ollie North can handle it..."

Ask him:

http://harryallen.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/poar01_hitchens0808.jpg

because intelligence isn't gathered in a vacuum; it has to at least be attributed to a source to have any weight whatsoever. this stuff doesn't happen by fiat; it has to be filtered through the protocols and guidelines of the intelligence agencies. using torture to coerce information that favors your objective is just the method of gaming that system.

xxxposts

how many years will it be until the term waterboard will be used as a marketing device for a sports or energy drink

the torture may not have been made public, but surely the fact there had been a confession would have been? maybe not made public, but recorded for posterity?

xposts what elmo said

btw that's a picture of Hitchens after a day without Marlboro Reds.

Bah. Are they going to waterboard Hannity 183 times in a month?

Wire it up for PPV. That will raise a lot of money for the troops' families.

the term waterboard will be used as a marketing device for a sports or energy drink

steve shasta, professional waterboarder?

if dude's face will mesh well with a sunny d bottle I don't see a problem

it's 2009 and I'm posting about sunny d

You could be posting about Tang.

HANNITY: I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families.

this is hilarious. yeah like the dunk dank at the county fair!

Hannity's Dunk Dank

i'm usually not a fan of josh marshall's 25-word posts but this is otm

Twisted in Knots
from TPM by Josh Marshall
Does it make for a wobbly message to have the entire GOP program based around support for the government doing something which they simultaneously insist the government has never done?

I tried that argument on my dad in 2006 when this first came up an dI nearly drove him crazy.

hannity and his ilk are unrecognizable as thinking, feeling human beings

except in one respect, which is very human: the further into a corner they're painted and the wronger they are, the more confident and condescending they become

Dad: I hate it but it works! Torture works!

Me: But we don't torture. The President said we don't torture.

Dad: No he didn't.

Me: He said we don't torture.

Dad: Stop talking down to me.

hannity makes a pretty compelling argument for torture

it's not wobbly if they say that what we've done isn't 'torture', tho, right? they used enhanced interrogation techniques!

in that yes, it may shame me but i would contribute significant sums to the PAC of his choice to watch him go through a full SERE program

except that after the first ten minutes it would really just be look-away horrifying.

i'm very torn on this issue.

but Ollie North survived!

oh yeah... it's more the blubbering and pleading and degradation that worries me. it would force me to recognize hannity as a human being. and then i would feel bad.

It's possible that torture fucked Ollie's mind enough to lead him into the hinterlands of Iran-Contra batshitdom.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011500267.html
in AG holder's confirmation hearing he declared that waterboarding is torture. so. isn't it the case that he has to prosecute now, given that it was done? i'm just saying, the dem. senator who asked the question (leahy?) opened that door for a reason - something has to happen. (also in this article noting that holder was against "farm(ing) out" CIA interrogations to contractors, which makes me wonder - who precisely would be prosecuted, could they go after personnel who carried it out without going after CIA people themselves, if that's what they want to do.)

We should drive to the DC appeals court and throw wet towels at Jay Bybee.

i haven't been following this with any detail, so forgive me if this is a stupid question:

did we have blackwater-types actually doing interrogations??

Holder appears to be going for a Nuremburg Trial sorta angle (ie, lower echelons "just following orders" = not worthy of prosecution, but guys giving the orders are a different story). And it looks like the White House would prefer to let this effort originate in the House rather than direct it themselves, for obvious reasons.

did we have blackwater-types actually doing interrogations??

I don't doubt it for a second.

ugh

we'll never get a trial, tho

basically, yes:

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/04/23/send-lawyers-waterboards-money-the-ballad-of-james-mitchell/

i assume the question was asked of holder because some contractors did interrogations. i'm curious on this & going to see if the google finds me any more info

Wow so Dick Cheney's daughters argument is that waterboarding cannot be torture because we subject soldiers to waterboarding in torture resistance training!!! That is some stunningly stupid logic.

is that the union-busting lesbo-daughter?

Beats me. I don't keep track of Cheney spawn.

It's Liz Cheney btw.

Wait Mary Cheney is a union buster? I thought she just shilled for Coors?

oh I'm just talkin shit don't pay attention to me

Hello:

The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuse by U.S. personnel during the Bush administration of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At least 44 pictures will be released on May 28 -- making public for the first time images of what the military investigated as abuse that took place at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Defense officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos, but said they are concerned that the release could incite a backlash in the Middle East.

The photos are apparently not as shocking as the photographs from the Abu Ghraib investigation that became a lasting symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But some show military service members intimidating or threatening detainees by pointing weapons at them. Military officers have been court-martialed for threatening detainees at gunpoint.

"This will constitute visual proof that, unlike the Bush administration's claim, the abuse was not confined to Abu Ghraib and was not aberrational," said Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the agreement as part of a long-running legal battle for documents related to Bush-era anti-terror policies.

Via Andrew Sullivan, why I don't like Peggy Noonan:

Noonan then:

"The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial," -- Peggy Noonan, December 21. 1998.

Noonan now:

"It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, ‘Oh, much good will come of that.’ Sometimes in life you want to keep walking… Some of life has to be mysterious." -- Peggy Noonan, April 19, 2009.

SOME OF LIFE HAS TO BE MYSTERIOUS??? ARE YOU SHITTING ME???

I saw that on Sunday morning. If you saw Noonan's expression as she spoke your blood would freeze.

"Just....keep walkin'..." [ghastly smile]

i only heard it on the radio (dc replays them all on cspan all day sunday) and.. god, i habitually listen to those shows & usually can't remember a damn thing anyone said, but that one stuck with me.

jon stewart went after it (last clip here)
http://gawker.com/5220908/daily-shows-most-outrageous-torture-clips

where's my special peggy noonan hate thread.. i don't usually do this kind of thing but

Please help me think of insults for Peggy Noonan

i really apologize for not being that mad at hannity but he really isn't very bright

another alex in nyc classic moment:
I HATE PEGGY NOONAN WITH A FIRE THAT MAKES HIROSHIMA LOOK LIKE A WEENIE ROAST
Hateful, insipid, patronizing, evil syphillitic succubus who probably annoits herself every morning with antiquated vials of Reagan semen samples.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), January 14th, 2005.

holy shit that Noonan thread.

thing is, at that point i'd only seen her on tv one time, for 15 minutes! and if people want to think i'm a hater for that, then ;_;

Just keep walkin', daria.

Oh look: Obama and Senate Democrats are reluctant to hold hearings. Shock!

i'm actually pretty cool with serving it cold

Pray, tell, what exactly is so wrong with being a Peggy Noonan hater? She remains consummately indefensible.

Nothing is wrong with hating Peggy Noonan. She's really hateable.

wanting to nail bill clinton then and wanting to whitewash torture now is sort of unremarkable, sadly... i'm amazed there are quotes of her using the phrase "great nation" in both instances!

The Peggy Noonan blingee on Wonkette always makes me smile.

http://image.blingee.com/images12/content/output/2007/7/6/35835718_2e07cd64.gif

she's (one of) the worst, but i'll always think her little "off-camera" exchange re Palin: "most qualified?! absolutely not, I think they went for this bullshit political narrative, etc etc" was lols & kinda awesome, however unintentional it was. i mean when Noonan is calling out the Right on some real bullshit, you know you've got probs

you know they've got

works either way

"Does torture work?" gets asked a lot. Cynically, yes, if you need a confession worthy of
propping up a story line.

My experience from a terror case, much more recognizable to British readers but which was central in the early days prior to invading Iraq.

I've got a nice argument going at this den of vipers.

more like den of angry puppies, right

http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3389d160530ec6d96b15aa6bfaedff88?s=55&d=http%3A%2F%

lolz "never again"

you are a braver man than I Alfred...

Eh, it's a slow day. Cubans are loud.

hey, how come you were involved in the ricin case, gorge? enjoyed your post, but it wasn't clear why duncan campbell was seeking your input. (sorry if this should be obvious.)

I had been writing up analyses of ricin recipes found on the web and publishing them through GlobalSecurity.Org. So he'd read them and ricin and poison recipes were central to the case. The UK government wished to prove they were exclusive to al Qaeda, thereby proving a link between the accused and those in Afghanistan. But the recipes weren't exclusive. They originated in the US far right in the late Eighties and had been copied around the world, then translated to Arabic. Along the way they picked up minor differences in transcription and things added by individuals translating them. So the recipes seized at Wood Green and Finsbury Park Mosque, all Kamel Bourgass's did not originate in al Qaeda hideouts. They were transcribed from Yahoo servers in Palo Alto.

That's the short version. A longer version and intro to the trial coverage was published back in 2005 here.

Well, at least Ponnuru seems to get it:

Sidestepping the Issue [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Based on my reading, the leading argument against prosecutions is that it would be imprudent, divisive, poisonous, etc., and therefore an abuse of prosecutorial discretion. I don't know if that argument will or should carry the day. It seems to me to be an important but decidedly second-order consideration.

Surely the primary question is whether laws were broken; and if there is serious reason to believe that they were, then shouldn't there be a presumption in favor of investigation? An argument against prosecution that appears to concede that laws may have been broken, or treats the question as an afterthought, seems to me to be unlikely to prevail. The people who strongly oppose investigation and prosecution would be on stronger ground, it seems to me, making the argument that it is simply outlandish and absurd to think that policymakers violated the law. Can that argument be made?

^^^ that's some nabisco shit right there

presupposes some kind of weird fantasy America where the law is actually applied universally

^^ srsly, ponnuru otm... but it has to be a trap, right?

(thanks, gorge. i used to work as a journalist covering an area near wood green, although not on this case. i remember being assured by an mp who had access to police/security services briefings that this was a rock-solid case so i was fascinated to see it unravel so completely. didn't realise about the torture link. the mp is now chair of the joint human rights committee lol.)

Obama, ever the evenhanded manager, now says that he won't stand in the way should someone else bring criminal charges against the previous regime.

Wow. What courage. Is there anything our Father Leader can't equivocate? At least he still speaks better than Bush. (Liberal APPLAUSE sign flashing.) Am I right? Ladies, you know it's true!...

Obama will not face a liberal mutiny, and he knows it. While a few Democrats like Glenn Greenwald are making critical noises against Obama's obfuscation, it remains a minority view. The liberal overreaction to the pitiful teabag demonstrations showed their true, loyal colors. That many of the teabaggers hold fantastic concepts of Obama helps his lib admirers, as it diverts attention away from his actual positions, giving Dem mouthpieces like Janeane Garofalo room to rant about idiot crackers who dare protest a black president, something you won't see Garofalo and kindred ideologues ever do, not with the energy and anger they protested Bush.

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2009/04/president-fix.html

yes, clearly the reason liberal democrats aren't protesting a liberal democratic president "with the energy and anger they protested bush" is because he's black.

He's black?

on the one hand, it's healthy in the long term for the racism of dudes like Perrin to be brought to the surface & exposed

on the other hand, it fucking sucks that his broader point about a Democrat president being as worthy of the same heavy, genuine, deep scrutiny (even suspicion & mistrust) that you'd give a Republican one gets completely buried underneath the racism

i can't "unpack" yr layers of irony dere.

the Obamaniacs are an even bigger clown chorus than i could've imagined in January, btw -- oh, his GRAND SCHEME of bringing the torture kingpins to justice! you ppl make Scientologists look like a CSI team.

I'm not being ironic at all Doc. I know you dig Perrin, and I often do too, but that's straight-up racism here:

giving Dem mouthpieces like Janeane Garofalo room to rant about idiot crackers who dare protest a black president, something you won't see Garofalo and kindred ideologues ever do, not with the energy and anger they protested Bush.

I'm sorry that the guy you generally respected is a racist, but he is.

I agree with you otherwise about people who attempt to discern some grand design in Obama's attempt at Solomon-lite in revealing the torture memos and failing to prosecute the people who tortured.

(there is almost never anything to unpack in what I say. I am pretty transparent.)

i frankly don't think obama is "worthy of the same suspicion and mistrust" as bush was, certainly at the moment.

i prefer my exhortations to "heavy, deep, genuine scrutiny" of democratic politicians when they're not coming from buchananite bloggers who think ron paul is a hero of the republic.

respectfully disagree, other J.D. I like him better, but I don't trust him any further.

How is what Perrin said racist?

You don't trust Obama any more than G.W. Bush, J0hn? I accept it, obv., but I'm surprised.

i'm not sure i see why dude needs to announce a prosecution the day the first memos come to light. the more i hear the hue and cry the more i agree with harry reid. serve that shit cold.

He can't announce a prosecution anyway. That's the province of the Justice Department (which is theoretically an independent arm of the executive branch.)

You don't trust Obama any more than G.W. Bush, J0hn? I accept it, obv., but I'm surprised.

no, of course not. I am genuinely surprised that anybody does. I share more values with him than I do with Bush or any Republican, so naturally I voted enthusiastically for him & celebrated when he won, and throughout the first weeks of his presidency, I had a bunch of "hot damn, this guy shares a lot of my values" moments. but I don't buy into any "long game" ideas. he is a politician; his own political skin is & will remain his highest good; that's as true for third-party candidates as it is for big-two candidates. the common reply to my stance here is "well, how convenient, you get to be 'above it all'" - I don't really know how to reply to that; I think politicians are scoundrels, even the best of them. if I joined their ranks, I'd surely find I had to be one too: to survive, to accomplish even a tiny bit of what I hoped for ideally. I don't deny that. that doesn't change my belief that by the time you get to be in a position of power, your values have changed so greatly that you'll trade pretty much anything to assure the continuance of your own power & success. consequently, I don't trust anybody in a position of power. this is "juvenile," I know. guilty as charged.

In re: prosecution, of course he can't announce anything, but he sets the policy - I don't think anybody can really deny that what he says on the issue will largely determine what happens, so when Rahm Emmanuel says that the president does not believe anybody should be prosecuted, I take that to mean nothing's gonna happen, and I don't think I'm being super chicken little in reading Emmanuel's remarks that way.

I don't trust anyone anywhere who is elected to public office.

It's not juvenile. I agree with Alex, although I do -- at times, at least -- have far more faith in Obama than I do many other politicians I've seen.

I thought Chris Matthews did a good interview of Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex) on this subject:

(On the subject of torture, I mean.) Here's part two of two:

I don't trust anyone anywhere who is elected to public office.

― Alex in SF, Friday, April 24, 2009 9:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, this. i voted for obama, and trust far more than the bush administration, but the moment he took office i went back to being a skeptic. isn't that what you're supposed to do??

I don't trust anyone anywhere.

I don't trust anyone anywhere who is elected to public office.

wait I can't tell if you're being forthright or poking fun at me :(

No I am agreeing with you.

Obama's hands are kind of tied on this rhetorically right now. Going all gung ho on "we must prosecute everyone" is a fool's game for him since all it ends up doing is creating a lot of sound and fury about something which has squat to do with his agenda economically or politically and can only distract from him achieving that agenda. Now if the political environment was different and a large majority of people were super pissed off about this and thirsty for prosecutions, he could be more rhetorically aggressive, but people (for the most part) seem pretty tired of this shit and desirous to forget the last eight years ever happened so thus he's going to do his best to appease their desire and work towards doing whatever he can get done done.

i also agree with you j0hn, fwiw.

I have faith that Obama is not a complete dumbass nor does he appear to want to surround himself with dumbasses (a faith that I did not have in George Bush or his administration). I also have a small amount of faith that his interests align more closely with mine than that of his predecessor. That's the extent of it.

Power perpetuates itself, the rest follows, and John is right. What I expect in terms of 'good' in politics can best be said as a continuous winding out of long term implications in 'America' as place/state of mind -- my yes-too-cute-I-realize way I sum it up is that America is an experiment not guaranteed of success. What I hope for from politicians is at best amelioration and some sense of relative competence, what I hope from the wider political process is something else again. One hundred years ago women didn't have the right to vote in this country, now we're in a place where a small but apparently increasing number of states are allowing for gay and lesbian marriage with all legal rights and recognitions. Stuff like that is the truly long game, however much I wish so much of it was shorter.

I have faith that Obama is not a complete dumbass nor does he appear to want to surround himself with dumbasses (a faith that I did not have in George Bush or his administration). I also have a small amount of faith that his interests align more closely with mine than that of his predecessor. That's the extent of it.

This is pretty much exactly my position, but on any given day I'm likely to view the glass as half-empty.

All that is my feeling too. I guess I see that glass as slightly more than half-full.

Are both your guys glasses the same size?

Mine's a shotglass.

Well there ya go.

http://www.brokenlizard.com/merch/img/item-boot-blank-big.jpg

my half-empty glass would be even more distressing if it were full, given what it's half-full of

Lotta backwash at the bottom of those things.

buchananite bloggers who think ron paul is a hero of the republic.

J.D., you're a motherfucking idiot. Perrin is in no way a Buchananite; he's probably leftier than I am, he used to work for FAIR. He's not a racist either.

If you think Reid is remotely invested in indictments, or anything but staying majority leader, yer deluded.

j0hn u need some new glasses

giving Dem mouthpieces like Janeane Garofalo room to rant about idiot crackers who dare protest a black president, something you won't see Garofalo and kindred ideologues ever do, not with the energy and anger they protested Bush.

Dr. Morbius, I ask with respect & love: this doesn't make you want to holler "bullshit" - the "idiot crackers who dare protest a black president" bit doesn't make you go "hold up there, buckaroo"?

that's what Garofalo said!

Music is soothing:

Damn YouTube links.

At least the space is there.

I see these links as half empty.

not really, J0hn, bcz Perrin (who really thinks teabaggers are "idiot crackers" too, as his posts about his Indiana origins and current Michigan environs often make clear) is just defining the Air America/Drinking Liberally culture's tunnelvision. These are people who really think the Clintons care more about them than NASCAR drivers do.

That Perrin quote sure sounds like racism to me.

Who the fuck cares about Air America or whatever, if you don't like your natural allies, make new ones. Democracy isn't supposed to be monarchy, you shouldn't wait for Obama or any other executive to solve your problems, Morbius. If you want Bush's torture investigated, join with others and make enough of a stink to get noticed, instead of wasting time ragging on the lol media.

He's paraphrasing Garofalo, who's totally racist.

Totally.

FWIW, garofalo on the tea parties: "It’s about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that."

so that might account for perrin's account of what she said. i really have no thoughts about perrin, i don't read him or know who he is.

http://commissiononaccountability.org/

^^ petition co-sponsored by amnesty, human rights watch, etc

As someone who eventually couldn't vote for Obama because of his unequivocal support for the FISA compromise last summer and his we-must-look-forward bullshit spouted before Inauguration Day, I'm elated by the news this week, and as usual disgusted by the chicken shits in Congress who should get hauled up before special prosecutors for abetting this nonsense. For the record, Obama's hesitations this week were rather...dispiriting, to say the least.

I sign all the petitions, including that one.

Doesn't do shit.

holy shit you signed a petition, and it didn't do anything! That does it, democracy is a failure.

Look, I'm giving you a hard time because you've called me out as believing that Obama is our nation's savior, or some bullshit like that. I don't believe that, and from reading your comments on here for a year or so now, I've come to believe that this is projection on your part: because you expect the political changes that you desire in America to come from a savior, you think others do too. You call this cynicism; it looks like laziness to me. Look at the abolitionist movement in the 19C or the civil rights movement in the 20C. Large groups of people put pressure on the elites, and as a result things changed. Because I think Obama can facilitate this way of politics working in our country, I've supported him. Ultimately WE have to do the work, not him. If this is too much to ask for, that means that democracy is too much to ask for.

Frank Rich's column from yesterday's NYT is a pretty devastating indictment.

Jay Bybee was a mormon missionary:

http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202429821962

what is it about missions that either make 19-year-olds come out of the closet or turn them into complete psychopaths.

Two years in cult camp confessing your sins weakly to a young man who is as confused and alone as you are?

weekly

Euler, I respect your idealistic instincts and all, but abolition or civil rights would've had to wait quite a bit longer if Twitter or that frumpy broad on Britain's Got Talent had been around for the Great Unwashed to obsess over.

I'm also too busy looking for June's rent right now, fuck society.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don't think this is the first era in history to have mass distraction.

no just the most extreme, with mass distraction refined to an all-time high. Also folks are dumber.

Dude have you read the Old Testament? It is a parade of idiots, the whole thing. Even Noah, one of the few dudes the lordb decides to save, dies drunk & naked outside his tent for his family to find.

It's also 100% historically true!

shouldn't technological progress and political progress be directly correlated and not inversely

I don't think political progress is linear, but certainly circular.

LIKE AN ANUS

UH, CAPS NOT INTENDED

tech progress = online poker & BluRay

"bread and circuses"

dude this is a little much coming from ilx's biggest movie buff!

a century-old medium whose demise is imminent, sirrah.

I'd be careful who I call the Great Unwashed if I couldn't pay my rent. Just sayin'.

Dude have you read the Old Testament?

The deity in that seems to have the attention span of a 5 year old.

Right-wing radio host gets waterboarded, on video; holds out for about 7 seconds before calling it off and declaring it torture. Not scary to watch, FWIW (very controlled and benign environment). I assume his reaction is genuine.

Former deputy attorney general James Comey's emails released.

Gleen Greenwald schools Chuck Todd on his show today.

Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
[..]
Holder's interest in appointing a prosecutor to mount an investigation reportedly surged after he recently read a still-classified 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general citing extensive problems and abuses in the agency's interrogation program. The bulk of the report is expected to be released this month.

citing nearly all *former* doj and cia officials. I wonder.

U.S. soldier Joshua Tabor waterboards his daughter, 4, because she couldn't recite alphabet
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/08/2010-02-08_us_soldier_joshua_taber_waterboarded_his_daughter_4_because_she_couldnt_recite_a.html

Stancil said Tabor had admitted to using this means of punishment three to four times.

Man, my posts here used to be so long

If there's one thing that is good for a child's memory, it's depriving the brain of oxygen.

apoplectic over here

A long and worthwhile read.

The U.S. government appears still to be siding with people who murder prisoners and cover it up; it is disheartening to hear, to me.

The analysis of the Justice Department report makes for...bracing reading.

omar khadr taking the deal, apparently

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/us/26gitmo.html?ref=charlie_savage

currently reading about this within the context of child soldiers and human rights law. "the deal" is fucking disgusting:

http://media.thestar.topscms.com/acrobat/58/bf/c615afaa4bc7b36425db6ed2f488.pdf

Obama creates indefinite detention system for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military commission trials for detainees there.

The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay's continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy.

lol i cant comprehend how terrible the world is

That is fucked

ACLU director Anthony Romero suggests that, as prosecutions won't occur, pardons for Bush officials may be the best option:

I have come to think that President Obama should issue pardons, after all — because it may be the only way to establish, once and for all, that torture is illegal.

That officials at the highest levels of government authorized and ordered torture is not in dispute. Mr. Bush issued a secret order authorizing the C.I.A. to build secret prisons overseas. The C.I.A. requested authority to torture prisoners in those “black sites.” The National Security Council approved the request. And the Justice Department drafted memos providing the brutal program with a veneer of legality.

My organization and others have spent 13 years arguing for accountability for these crimes. We have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor or the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, or both. But those calls have gone unheeded. And now, many of those responsible for torture can’t be prosecuted because the statute of limitations has run out....

Mr. Obama is not inclined to pursue prosecutions — no matter how great the outrage, at home or abroad, over the disclosures — because of the political fallout. He should therefore take ownership of this decision. He should acknowledge that the country’s most senior officials authorized conduct that violated fundamental laws, and compromised our standing in the world as well as our security. If the choice is between a tacit pardon and a formal one, a formal one is better. An explicit pardon would lay down a marker, signaling to those considering torture in the future that they could be prosecuted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/opinion/pardon-bush-and-those-who-tortured.html

interesting argument

could be countered by "the way the Nixon pardon kept W from obstructing justice"

I wonder, if Obama (or anyone) offered Bush, Cheney, et al. pardons ... would they accept? Is that something they can do? Because to accept would be to admit wrongdoing. But to refuse ... that sort of does too, implicitly.

lol can you actually refuse a pardon?

i beg your pardon
you can't hide out in the Rose Garden

If the choice is between a tacit pardon and a formal one, a formal one is better.

I agree. But I would have wished for broader choices than just those two.

mirrors our elections splendidly

Gerson (WaPo): Some may argue a subtle moral distinction between harshly interrogating a terrorist and blowing his limbs apart. But international human rights groups and legal authorities generally look down on both. The main difference? One is Obama’s favorite program. A few years from now, a new president and new congressional leaders may take a different view.

At the CIA, these concerns are not hypothetical. “I know the Predator program intimately,” a former senior intelligence officer told me. “There have been hundreds and hundreds of Predator shots, the most carefully targeted in the history of warfare, but not 100 percent right. What if the next president, [say] Rand Paul or Elizabeth Warren, comes after people involved in this program?”

I'm not sure this argument makes the point Gerson wants to make lol

"omg if we're afraid we might be held accountable for the horrible illegal things we do, we might think twice about doing horrible illegal things"

"including this horrible illegal thing we're doing which is a total secret by the way don't tell anybody"

At least McCain has *some* integrity:

http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=1a15e343-66b0-473f-b0c1-a58f984db996

he's just covering his ass

he signed off on the torture memo don't forget

of all the garbage in that Gerson piece, one thing he got right (which also applies to McCain): Democrats who approved of enhanced interrogation at the time (such as Feinstein) must now construct an elaborate fantasy world in which they were not knowledgeable and supportive. They postulate a new reality in which they were innocent and deceived — requiring a conspiracy from three former CIA directors, three former deputy directors and hundreds of others.

yes, they're all in the Game

The senator from Sadism who spent an hour on the floor recounting the report also has blood on her hands. as for Gerson:

Some may argue a subtle moral distinction between harshly interrogating a terrorist and blowing his limbs apart.

Yes, this is exactly the binary the report encompasses.

Gerson's piece is a terrible argument for why there shouldn't be prosecutions (or even pardons) but a fairly comprehensive one for why there won't be. The drone program is just as illegal and setting a precedent for holding presidents accountable would not necessarily benefit Obama in the longer term. It's not just the CIA responsible, the army had also been using torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Holding them accountable is even less plausible.

But yes, the point of the drone program is pretty much *well if we can't kidnap and torture them any more, killing them and half their neighbours is the next best thing* so any moralising on Obama's part would be pretty repulsive.

Gerson's piece is a terrible argument for why there shouldn't be prosecutions (or even pardons) but a fairly comprehensive one for why there won't be.

yes exactly

i'm not so such about this meme that torture did not produce any results, mostly bc it's too convenient and secondarily bc what - if it did produce results that would suddenly make it ethical to do? the truth is that the efficacy should be a total non-sequitar, but now you have ppl like jose rodriguez jr who think if they can make the claim that it did work that would alleviate the moral consequences.

not so sure i meant to say

the cheney defense

Agree on the ethical angle. However, if the surveys say approx 75% of Americans believe torture should be used, making the case it doesn't work still has some value.

yeah I don't think Americans would support it if they understood it doesn't actually fucking work

yeah there's no way americans just like the idea of torturing bad guys, americans are notoriously averse to selfrighteous violence

sry uncalled for, grim days

no I know - we love our revenge fantasies, it's why we have the death penalty (which also "doesn't work" in terms of a deterrent etc.)

FOX News devoted six minutes to it, wondered why Jay Rockefeller and Dianne Feinstein aren't to blame either since they knew about this shit in the mid 2000s. That was that.

I don't think Americans support death penalty because they think it's a deterrent -- they support it because it inflicts pain on bad men.

right, which is what I was getting at re: revenge fantasies etc.

if they understood it doesn't actually fucking work

i think people who are ok with torturing are more likely to think, 'well… what if we could MAKE it work???'

even if it worked it wouldn't be OK

also re effectiveness, it's not just torture. the wars don't seem to have been effective in preventing iraq and afghanistan from harboring terrorist organizations. what has been the point of any of this?

$$$$$$$

The United States of America is awesome; we are awesome. We've closed the book on it, and we've stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we're not awesome.

the wars don't seem to have been effective in preventing iraq and afghanistan from harboring terrorist organizations. what has been the point of any of this?

Iraq invasion was never about terrorism. Afghanistan I think legitimately was about a) getting Bin Laden and b) some misguided nation-building. we all know how the latter turned out.

Berkeley prof Michael O'Hare wonders why his institution continues to employ John Yoo: http://www.samefacts.com/2014/12/moral-philosophy/on-doing-bad-things-being-a-bad-person-making-a-living-and-having-a-voice/

In Adam Gopnik's otherwise gripping New Yorker column he writes:

President George W. Bush, whom the report reveals to have given formal permission for the torture but to have been unaware of its extent until 2005—a portrait of a disengaged and incompetent chief executive that will shock even his not easily shocked detractors.

"unaware" b/c he wasn't told for "deniability" purposes

best defense is ignorance/incompetence

Who profited from the iraq war? Defense contractors?

"$$$$" seems like an incomplete analysis for why the war happened. There were many simultaneous causes and I don't know if anyone is sure what the "real" reasons were, even cheney

Two psychologists made $81 million...

https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/12/feinstein3.png

does the report reveal anything that wasn't already suspected in a general sense? will it change anything at all or will anyone be held accountable, even remotely? feel like the answer to both of these questions is no, sadly

I gotta say, in the catalog of horrors I read yesterday, this was the worst.

Who profited from the iraq war?

google is pretty forthcoming: contractors reap http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f435f04-8c05-11e2-b001-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3LW8BLmBi38bn, top 10 companies who profited

huh, should be "contractors reap $138bn"

it's such a huge influx of money I wonder what those companies would have done without the war

President George W. Bush, whom the report reveals to have given formal permission for the torture but to have been unaware of its extent until 2005—a portrait of a disengaged and incompetent chief executive that will shock even his not easily shocked detractors.

"unaware" b/c he wasn't told for "deniability" purposes

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 10, 2014 5:07 PM (40 minutes ago)

reminds me of an anecdote about the church committee hearings in the '70s, where some cia official was asked if the president had been aware of the attempts on fidel castro, and he answered "you don't want to embarrass the president of the united states by talking about something like that."

geroge bush looks like a monkey

Wow -- good on NBC Nightly News, leasing with Andrea Mitchell's report on the psychologists paid almost a hundred million for devising the torture practices.

*leading

I don't know if anyone is sure what the "real" reasons were

oedipus complex

that, plus a desire for (a) active american military occupation/hegemony and (b) a republican majority for a generation.

and $$$$$$

that too

All senior U.S. officials and CIA agents who authorized or carried out torture like waterboarding as part of former President George W. Bush's national security policy must be prosecuted, top U.N. officials said Wednesday.

It's not clear, however, how human rights officials think these prosecutions will take place, since the Justice Department has declined to prosecute and the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said it's "crystal clear" under international law that the United States, which ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, now has an obligation to ensure accountability.

"In all countries, if someone commits murder, they are prosecuted and jailed. If they commit rape or armed robbery, they are prosecuted and jailed. If they order, enable or commit torture ? recognized as a serious international crime ? they cannot simply be granted impunity because of political expediency," he said.

I don't know if anyone is sure what the "real" reasons were

oedipus complex

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, December 10, 2014 4:42 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it all comes back to freud

if the shoe fits

Can a state 'lash out' at people in the same way an individual can, and is that what's happened here

it's no secret that junior had major daddy issues and i imagine the whole psychodrama about getting the guy who tried to kill his father was a huge animating factor for gwb. i'm not like a big great-man theory of history person but i wonder if anyone else in the WH, even w/ same neocon staff, would've gone to war in iraq.

Cheney would have invaded Iraq in an irregular heartbeat.

xp meant that psychoanalytic theory is at the root of everything in general but realize that's outside the scope of this discussion

the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court.
wtf seriously !?

i think the war in iraq is a good example of leftist blind spots re How Things Happen because i don't think it was a cynical project. oil and contracts and father issues matter but more than anything else (and especially given the i guess the word is carelessness w which the invasion was handled) i think the war was real earnest hubris. the imperial disease. athens in sicily, britain vs the boers. it's about getting the upper hand w the spartans and it's about the gold mines in the transvaal but it's also just about power and the terror that power not grown will shrink. alcibiades: "it is not possible for us to calculate, like housekeepers, exactly how much empire we want to have. the fact is we have reached a stage where we are forced to plan new conquests." in that sense i guess i do think it was an institutional reflex? but one that also depended on devout individuals being busy busy beavers. (behind alci's theorizing he's lusting for personal glory.) trotsky sometimes hints he understands how history is both inevitable and dependent but i never follow him when he explains.

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Thursday, May 23, 2013 3:03 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it wasn't even a success tho from an empire pov - there has been practically no exploitation of iraq in the classic colonial sense, from what i understand china ended up buying most of the resources?

yeah that was my initial point. it wasn't a rational move for anyone except, i guess, the contractors. but they were just opportunists, not the architects of the thing. no way the bush administration pushed this war forward with the sole objective of allowing private companies to profit. they were ideologues.

Ideologues might not exclude doing it for private profit depending on the ideology tho

so, anybody read the whole thing yet?

i.e., we might say that someone going to war for personal profit is 'cynical', but their going to war for personal profit might rather be very sincere indeed xp

if the shoe fits

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 11, 2014 12:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sadly, we never found out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM3Z_Kskl_U

i don't know cardamon. i just don't think the idea that this was about energy resources makes sense, especially in light of the fact that we didn't even secure these resources. if it was about cheney's halliburton stock, why would he need more money? he's been on death's door for two decades now. i think something as seemingly meaningless as pentagon restlessness -- ie, we have this huge military and it's tempting to use it -- make more sense to me than the idea that this was about individuals or businesses pursuing profit.

The Iraq war also (obviously) didn't play out anything like anybody said it was supposed to, and probably not like any of those people secretly hoped it would either. It could very well be that the war is what it looks like: the neocons who wanted it and sold it on false premises also misjudged what they were getting into, figuring it was the 19th century and you could just take over a country, get a puppet government going, and start pumping oil in a week, two weeks tops.

Sully destroys Kathryn Bigelow.

it wasn't even a success tho from an empire pov - there has been practically no exploitation of iraq in the classic colonial sense, from what i understand china ended up buying most of the resources?

totally forget making that post but this would have been my point in citing sicily: imperial failures sold as necessities. have similar feelings about vietnam. there is, not incidentally, glory for alcibiades and profit for bell helicopter, but the real cause seems to be a deeper misunderstanding of a country's place in the world, which then distorts the way the world is seen.

These reasons are all pretty abstract for something that was totally out of the blue and unnecessary. The people driving the ship had reasons - real, very misguided reasons.

Like it was not some great, predictable event driven by larger historical forces, the reasons were personal and ideological and unique to the players involved. No other administration would have pursued iraq.

xps

make more sense to me than the idea that this was about individuals or businesses pursuing profit.

The Bush white House viewed profit in a much, much broader perspective than bankable quarterly profits for corporations, not that this was in any way divorced from their grand vision.

In my opinion Cheney and the neo-cons saw Iraq as a chance to expand US power in ways that made our power more secure from challenge for decades to come, if not for the next century. In their minds, victory in Iraq was simply a matter of employing a sufficient will to win, because the power that such a will would already have at its command would prove to be irresistible. The neocons and Cheney never doubted that their own will to win was unshakeable, no matter what political opposition might arise from among the peons people, thus our victory was all but certain, a done deal before we even arrived in the country.

In their minds, all that remained was to properly envision the rewards of our eventual victory: greatly enhanced economic power based on massive and newly-secure oil reserves placed firmly under the control of western oil companies and backed by US military power, a cowed and pacified middle east (previously sought by less capable administrations through far less visionary means), a world overawed by our success and less likely to challenge any new US initiatives, so that our power could only grow and prosper as a result of the Iraq invasion, like a yeasty mass.

This kind of hubristic thinking is what led to those all-too-telling remarks about the inferiority of the 'reality-based community', that set of unfortunate fools who could only see the facts that lay under their noses, whereas the Bush administration was prescient enough to rise above, into the empyrean of those who have only to reach out and shape history to their liking, as if it were putty in their hands.

it was not some great, predictable event driven by larger historical forces, the reasons were personal and ideological and unique to the players involved

i think it was both but i think literally everything is both

like yes this specific invasion was unique in its detail and in its ideological justification but it is also part of a pattern that goes deeper than its specifics

In their minds, all that remained was to properly envision the rewards of our eventual victory: greatly enhanced economic power based on massive and newly-secure oil reserves placed firmly under the control of western oil companies and backed by US military power, a cowed and pacified middle east (previously sought by less capable administrations through far less visionary means), a world overawed by our success and less likely to challenge any new US initiatives, so that our power could only grow and prosper as a result of the Iraq invasion, like a yeasty mass.

otm i think, and this vision--an indefinite, even infinite period of hegemony, secured or ensured by this or that, not-coincidentally aligning perfectly with everything the hegemon genuinely believes to be Good for the world + its people, not-coincidentally bringing great satisfaction and glory to certain of the hegemon's key actors--has not been unique to dick and don is all

Achieving it by invading iraq, specifically, very much was, is the thing

the neocons who wanted it and sold it on false premises also misjudged what they were getting into, figuring it was the 19th century and you could just take over a country, get a puppet government going, and start pumping oil in a week, two weeks tops.

Still surprised at US ever thinking it can cruise through a war, even with its massive military/tech resources. Have they won a war since vs Spain in the 1890s? WW1 and WW2 kinda, but only by coming in years after everyone else (and having made $$ out of it beforehand). Korea was a shitty draw, Cuba a loss, Vietnam a loss, Iraq 1.0 hardly a win, and Afghanistan and Iraq 2.0 spectacular fails.

Dude we liberated that foot locker in grenada

the point wasn't to cruise through a war but to line the pockets of defense companies by paying for more massive military/tech resources

the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court.
wtf seriously !?

I find the degree to which the US is misunderestimated by members of our community distressing.

aimless otm. the us views itself as a benevolent power, no matter how much violence it spreads throughout the globe. for cheney and bush, a unipolar world -- indefinite hegemony -- was a net good not just for the us, but for all nations. this goal would involve controlling energy resources but it is more complicated than just "$$$$" implies. not to disparage anyone on this thread, but other people elsewhere, when they bring up "profits", seem to literally think this was about cheney trying to line his own pockets or something. and this is just too simplistic to help us make sense of what was going on.

nobody said that, it's more like

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2007/08/31/great-iraq-swindle-how-bush-allowed-army-profit-contractors-invade-us-treasury

The Bush administration's lack of interest in recovering stolen funds is one of the great scandals of the war. The White House has failed to litigate a single case against a contractor under the False Claims Act and has not sued anybody for breach of contract.

etc etc etc

it seems necessary to keep bringing this up because you seem weirdly focused on discounting the financial motivation

oh wait I missed your qualifier there, agreed that it does get simplified

yeah no one's saying bush and his people weren't corrupt. they helped their people profit from this, and their entanglement with private contractors definitely added motivation. i just think if we are going to ask ourselves why we tortured people in guantanamo bay (with no beneficial result) we should also look more broadly about why these wars began in the first place, and why they are continuing. it involves coming to terms with obama's drone program. who are they targeting? what is the benefit?

the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court.
wtf seriously !?

I find the degree to which the US is misunderestimated by members of our community distressing.

Yep. Bill Clinton was strongly in favour of the International Criminal Court up until the point it was made clear that the members of the Security Council would not get a veto on prosecutions (which would have meant, for example, Russia being able to block prosecutions of Serbian criminals if they'd wanted to and the U.S. being able to block action against any of its citizens)). The position has always been 'the ICC is a great idea, as long as it can't hold Americans accountable'.

Other countries can potentially still seek to prosecute US citizens in the ICC but the U.S. would not cooperate and has signed a number of bilateral treaties (often with the threat of removing aid) that preclude either the country in question supporting action against US citizens or vice versa.

Prosecuting torture on its own isn't easy within the ICC structure and the assumption would normally be that the U.S. has an obligation to seek prosecution domestically first. However, its worth bearing in mind that some of these activities took place in countries like Poland which are signatories.

Aside from all that, torture is 100% illegal anyway and recognised as a crime of universal jurisdiction. The UK could indict CIA agents in its own criminal courts if it wanted to (spoiler alert: it won't). If I was a CIA agent, though, I wouldn't book a holiday in Spain or Italy any time soon.

Proposal to rename torture Freedom Tickling

the real scandal here is why the current administration refuses to be this transparent about BENGHAZI

i don't think bush's motives for invading iraq are all that hard to fathom -- he was a lifelong underachiever who lucked his way into the biggest job in the world, got handed the highest approval rating in history without actually doing anything, and suddenly saw his chance to be a "great" president (i.e., a wartime president). he was intent on "finishing the job" in iraq from day 1, and apparently told a reporter right before his first election that he felt his father had wasted all the "political capital" earned from the gulf war, and that he wouldn't make the same mistake.

cheney is actually a little harder to fathom because he'd explicitly opposed overthrowing saddam back during the bush sr. era, but he's made no secret of what his career goals are. i think the halliburton stuff was always something of a red herring; cheney sincerely wanted to expand the power of the presidency and promote his vision of a "strong" america.

and, i dunno, that's all you need! a couple of lunatics in the white house at the right time, and a hapless opposition, and you've got your needless war right there.

@tanehisicoates
People think Dick Cheney is saying something un-American, when in fact he is reflecting American heritage and tradition.

It's unamerican to say it out loud

@DennisThePerrin
I'm beginning to think that Cheney's on Obama's payroll. "Woo hoo! Over here! It's all me!"

clearly the guy who advocates torture is secretly on the same side as the guy who banned torture

and apparently told a reporter right before his first election that he felt his father had wasted all the "political capital" earned from the gulf war, and that he wouldn't make the same mistake.

What's the source for this?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade...if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

the guy who banned torture

words, such beautiful things when you're prosecuting no one, detaining ppl w/out charges and blasting away from drones

I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.

Bush proved conclusively that this is a non-sequitor.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2007/10/15/timestopics/topics_reagan_395.jpg

torture and drones are two different things and i'm not sure what purpose it serves to claim otherwise, unless your purpose is to make ppl even more cynical than they already are and care even less than they currently do

hey, J.D., did you finish the Morris bio?

O is too much like Cheney for me to want to claim anything.

plenty of reports that the CIA is still enhanced-interrogating ppl in somalia

the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court.
wtf seriously !?

standard operating procedure.. its also why we didnt sign that agreement with the iraqis to stick around because we demanded immunity.. I think the same is the case in okinawa. probably everywhere else too.

I banned torture too btw

xxxpost: the reagan one? yeah -- could have done without some of the fictional stuff but otherwise loved it.

torture and drones are two different things and i'm not sure what purpose it serves to claim otherwise

This is amoral nonsense. Killing is painful, killing brings grief, infliction of pain and grief is torture. Circling over the heads of whole villages incessantly for weeks on end, as you know they do, is a particularly evil form of psychological torture.

life is torture and all our parents are war criminals

i was referring to the cia's torture program.

fwiw i oppose the drone campaign, but trying to argue that obama didn't really ban torture because he still does other bad stuff or that obama's numerous failings mean that he's no different than cheney is a weird and self-destructive stance for progressives to take.

Oooh, trenchant sarcasm from Mordy. Okey dokey.

Anyway, Obama didn't really ban torture because he keeps saying idiotic stuff about "looking forward not backward". Try to imagine anybody using that argument in any other law and order situation....besides dealing with Wall Street of course. Say, what's the downside for progressives criticizing this stuff again? I forget.

mordy otm

fwiw i oppose the drone campaign, but trying to argue that obama didn't really ban torture because he still does other bad stuff or that obama's numerous failings mean that he's no different than cheney is a weird and self-destructive stance for progressives to take.

idk, arguing that the problem is with the man and not the expression of US power through the office seems like a weird position to take. Torture has still been used by the US army under Obama and the fundamental idea that international law can freely be ignored when US interests dictate is as alive today as it ever has been. I'd take the view that Obama's problem with torture is more logistical than moral - you get to the point, as you have with Guantanamo, where you're stuck with a group of people you can't release and have to keep hold of indefinitely. Killing them and their neighbours remotely is cleaner.

as torturers go, Cheney revels more publicly in getting his hands in the gristle and gore, good enough for you desperate Dems I hope.

The thing to do in election years is talk up the crucial importance of the chief executive while you nag your recalcitrant friends not to let the disaster of a Republican win happen through their irresponsible voting or non-voting, and after the victory spend the rest of the time patiently explaining that the president's hands are tied.

arguing that the problem is with the man and not the expression of US power through the office seems like a weird position to take

;_; you're ruining action figure playtime

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/13/pentagon-blocking-guantanamo-transfer-shaker-aamer

an amazing attitude from the pentagon through all this

More fun with torture revelations: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/09/cia-insider-daniel-jones-senate-torture-investigation

The CIA has stopped defending its torture program but not its personnel. While it has reknit its relationship to the committee, thanks to a GOP leadership that has all but disavowed the torture investigation, it continues to maintain that the torture report is inaccurate. Obama, whose trusted aide John Brennan runs the CIA, kept the report at arm’s length, with his administration declining even to read it.

But the CIA has gone beyond successfully suppressing the report. In a grim echo of Jones’s fears, the agency’s inspector general, Langley recently revealed, destroyed its copy – allegedly an accident. Accountability for torture has been the exclusive province of a committee investigation greeted with antipathy by Obama. While Obama prides himself on ending CIA torture, the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has vowed if elected to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”. Key CIA leaders defending the agency against the committee, including Brennan and former director Michael Morrell, are reportedly seeking to run Langley under Hillary Clinton.

This is the inside story of the Senate investigation into torture and the crisis with the CIA it spurred. It is formed from interviews with critical players in the drama, supported by voluminous internal reports and publicly available documents. Jones agreed to provide new details but would not discuss classified information with the Guardian.