Begun in January 2004 by a founder who began blogging in 2002, American Street provides a broad cross section of progressive political news, opinion and humor from members all over the country. Plus naked photos of celebrity platypi.
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What bothers me about the torture debate in the blogosphere is how thoroughly eager those in favor of torture harsh interrogation tactics used against accused terrorists are willing to define this deviant behavior down. Witness this comment in this post at Oxblog:
Toture [sic] is that which causes permanent physical damage. Anything else is just hazing.
Our enemies are making a deliberate attempt to lower the definition of torture for the benefit of terrorists.
It is not moral to refuse to waterboard someone and let innocent people die because we are unwilling to get answers to questions using a method that causes no physical harm.
How does this person "know" that this doesn’t cause physical harm? Because David Horowitz says so! (The Oxbloggers, to their credit, have been squarely against parsing the definition of torture.) So let’s so see who also waterboards. Courtesy of Marc Cooper, David Corn points out that this was one of the methods used by the Khmer Rouge. One would expect thinking people to find that horrifying.
Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, this will be one of my longest posts. Here is Vann Nath, an artist and former prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, and his drawings of various Khmer Rouge tortures (one of his pictures appears without credit in the Corn post, presumably through no fault of Mr. Corn).
So, let’s play Find the Waterboard! Not here; not here; not here; not here; not here; not here. Hmm, those Khmer Rouge had a wide variety of nasty, didn’t they? I don’t think I am going to rank "waterboarding" at the top of the list offered by Vann Nath.
So Maguire doesn’t believe that waterboarding is such a horrible thing because the Khmer Rouge had a wide variety of torture methods. This is what passes for intelligent commentary on the pro-torture right.
What assists the absolute conversion of absolute pain in the fiction of absolute power is an obsessive, self-conscious display of agency. On the simplest level, the agent displayed is the weapon. Testimony given by torture victims from many different countries almost inevitably includes descriptions of the weapons with which they were about to be hurt: prisoners of the Greek Junta (1967-71), for example, were made to contemplate a wall arrangement of whips, canes, clubs and rods, were made to examine the size of the torturer’s fist and the monogrammed ring which "he wore and which made his blows more painful," or were compelled to look at a bull’s pizzle [the penis bone] coated with the dried blood of a fellow prisoner . . .
Torture is in its largest outlines the invariable and simultaneous occurrence of three phenomena which, if isolated into separate and sequential steps would occur in the following order. First, pain is inflicted on a person in ever-intensifying ways. Second, the pain, continually amplified within the person’s body, is also amplified in the sense that it is objectified, made visible to those outside the person’s body. Third, the objectified pain is denied as pain, and read as power, a translation made possible by the obsessive mediation of agency.
In other words, torture is a bald-faced attempt to assert power: over individuals, over nations, over groups, over enemies perceived, imagined and real. For those with fevered imaginations fueled with no more knowledge of interrogating than 24 episodes they believe it works. For those who have actually interrogated people for a living, they know it doesn’t.
Don’t you dare diss Kip Hawley! He’s head of the Transportation Security Administration, and he’s awfully touchy, you see. His minions also take it personally when you say unkind things about him.
P.S. Kip Hawley is an idiot. Spread the word. Let’s see that phrase spread all across the blogosphere.
Let us bring our wares to the unenlightened, once again. Surely, they will forgive the Boy-King and his vulgar admissions of the trade that should not be publicly uttered. The end will justify the mean, even the meanest oaf that has graced our throne.
Once they’ve acquired the products of our enlightenment - the Craftsman tools and Nike footwrappings, the McDonald’s cowpatties, the Suave shampoos, the songs of Lee Greenwood that escaped Austin’s City Limits while the guards were drunk on raisin wines cultivated in dank cells - they will understand and be ennobled by all the beauties of The Renaissance, from Old Rome and the New, Improved.
The slowest natives will be heralded at comedy symposiums. They’ll be the dark stuff squeezing ‘tween the toes of pachyderms, who never forget the game. The faster natives, the Challabis and Malikis and al-Sadrs, et al, shall be the heralds of Mesopotamia’s fresh dawning lights, inviting their countryman to the Midway where the promise of fruit beckons.
The weeping mothers on their soil and our own will soon enough be bought off with fine china and non-stick silicon bakeware. And those without heart for the game will be reduced to poetry mumbled in the dark and shouted by madmen in the thoroughfare, from shopping carts.
Freedom shall be the mantra of both victor and victim soon enough. The pyramid of economics will rise again from these dark but intermediate days. It’s foreordained by The Christ but not the whole wheat original. The bleached Saviour, with the germ extracted, has a more enlightened hue.
And once Babylon has demonstrated its readiness to turn our tricks for the highest bidder, it’ll be off to Persia soon enough where fresh meat awaits.
[a huge hat tip to Mark Woods, for reminding me of the Kipling/Twain dialogue and for directing readers to the war photos gallery. Lacking permalinks, his entries will disappear in the ether if this source is not searched in a timely manner.]
Signing statement, given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign, and the year of our Lord 1215.
John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting.
We have today signed into law the Articles of the Barons granting to all free men of our Kingdom, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out therein, except insofar as those may be rendered inoperative in accordance with the exceptions noted hereinafter.
Taxation
Section 12 of the Articles says that “No ’scutage’ or ‘aid’ may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent, unless it is for the ransom of our person, to make our eldest son a knight, and (once) to marry our eldest daughter.” Inasmuch as our esteemed consort Isabella of Angoulême is our junior by a full score of years and may therefore bear more than our present four offspring, should our eldest surviving daughter at the time of her marriage be one of a pair of hypothetical future twins, we shall construe the parenthetical “once” to apply equally to each and therefore to entitle each to a separate and equal marriage, and permit us to compel “aid” for both.
Confiscation
In following Sections 30 and 31, which state that “No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or carts for transport from any free man, without his consent”, and “Neither we nor any royal official will take wood for our castle, or for any other purpose, without the consent of the owner”, we shall implement these provisions in a manner consistent with our constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch, requiring that decisions on provisioning of transportation and refueling of law enforcement officers in the execution of the laws are a part of the executive power vested in us, and accordingly, we shall construe these articles as advisory rather than mandatory.
Secret Evidence
Section 38’s proposal that “In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it”, to the extent that the charges made relate to access to classified national security information, we shall construe this provision in a manner consistent with our exclusive constitutional authority, as head of the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief, to classify and control access to national security information.
Trial By Jury
In regard to Section 39’s suggestion that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land”, we shall construe the provision in a manner which is consistent with our nation’s traditional constitutional commitment to us of responsibility for conducting and protecting the security of our beloved homeland against all foes, foreign and domestic, and shall consider these provisions only advisory in cases of those determined to be enemy combatants or supporters thereof or apologists therefor, especially rumor-mongering free-lance town criers or wandering scribes.
Still, most Americans forget that a fence like that has two purposes. One, of course, is nominally keeping Mexicans out even as we will also soon begin construction on the NAFTA superhighway (that will speed entry of goods, services, and presumably people, from the Far East via Mexico) literally right up the middle of the United States. Well, that should satisfy some of the nativists, and it might even slow down the flow of illegals for a while.
I forget. Was the GOP responsible for winning peace in Iraq, or was it their fine economic performance that we’re supposed to cheer?
I gotta admit, dropping gas prices 60 cents/gal in a month at the start of campaign season was quite an achievement. The biggest, fastest drop since the war began three and a half years ago. Is that all the GOP has left, trying to buy back the voters they’ve lost?
Is America a limp-wristed nancy-boy flouncing about pretentiously, flaunting its taut buttocks to wolf-whistling admirers? Or is it an oiled, muscle-bound weightlifter, laughing heartily and speaking appreciatively of the women it comes in contact with, always with sexual innuendo, occasionally accompanied by a stolen and unwelcome grope?
It’s certainly no longer a puritannical virgin preserving some quaint definition of virtue, nor a shy couple having quiet sex in the missionary position with bedroom doors locked, seeking solely procreation to uphold some Godly decree, as dictated by ancient scribes trying to put the kibosh on everything fun.
Before it’s over, Lady Liberty will appear for a lap dance, wearing only a G-string, while haughty elected gasbags toss stinkbombs at partisan rivals, making clumsy, irrelevant comparisons of sexual practices that have nothing at all to do with the exploitation of children.
Still, I welcome such a discussion in the bully pulpits of the most pretentious halls of depravity we have in this land, the twin cesspools of superstition and depravity masquerading as places of disciplined reason and discourse: Congress and the White House. The pompous guardians of morality will be loosing their mini-thunderbolts, with all of the maturity of grade-schoolers discussing pee-pees and poo-poos.
The world will get to mock once again the childish concepts of morality that revolve around sex in our country, a land that tosses its weight around the globe in a manner consistent with all previous empires. We leave hundreds of thousands of corpses in our wake, and millions of war refugees, while retaining the right to preach about the superiority of our values, which permit every sin known to history, but recoil at the concept that penises and vaginas yearn for arousal.
Step right up, ladies and gents, the Hypocrisy Circus is back in town. Before it’s over, if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself pickpocketed by some mouth-breathing, lecherous gargoyle of a clown.
The only advance warning you need to recognize that you’re about to get fleeced will occur when the Bearded Lady and the Moral Dwarf pronounce the entire show is the fault of one William Jefferson Clinton, before whom, no sex outside of God’s blessing ever existed.
Let’s pause for a bit of Congress interruptus
The actual ethical matter before us is much simpler than that. The rights and wrongs that we should be addressing are these:
1) It is wrong for adults to express their sexual desires to minors, to titillate or chase them, verbally or physically.
2) In addition to being ethically wrong, such behaviors are illegal.
3) Illegal actions warrant prosecution.
4) In any workplace, including government offices, personnel supervision systems exist to rein in illegal and inappropriate actions. If the people providing that oversight become aware of such actions by any person in that workplace, it is essential that they respond with disciplinary actions and extra oversight of the offender, to be certain that all others in that workplace remain protected.
That’s the gist of it. That’s all that’s necessary to be explored. And at first glance, it appears that Mark Foley engaged in illegal behavior that likely warrants prosecution, and that the House leaders long aware of Foley’s prior inappropriate behavior failed to act responsibly to assure that Foley’s pool of possible victims - underage Congressional pages - were protected from Foley’s further advances.
If you believe Congress is capable of confining itself to the key particulars in this matter, then hand me a dollar and I’ll sell you three chances to win a stuffed elephant for your sweetie. You look like a winner, so step right up!
The outrage is unanimous
In a rare display of unity, the House voted 410-0, to investigate Foley. This, the same badly divided House that just the day before established the fresh moral precedent to grant the President the right to practice torture on unconvicted detainees. The legal and logical basis for that vote was rooted in unproven theories and unconstitutional denials of legal recourse and judicial oversight.
Moral values, for the majority in this Republican Congress, have nothing to do with established Constitutional law nor global standards of civil justice. Lifetime incarceration and execution are permissible against anyone who might be labelled an enemy by the President. Cybersex with teenagers is not permissible and warrants universal condemnation.
Clearly, the best defense Foley has is to claim he was trying to uncover Comgressional pages he thought were members of terrorist cells.
[Foley] said he was shocked by the newspaper article about the naked camps that have been going on in his home state since 1993.
Foley suggested the camps force kids to fixate on nudity during their impressionable, formative years. Normal teen sexual urges can become inflamed by the nakedness around them, he said.
“It’s putting matches a little too close to gasoline,” he said.
After meeting with officials of one nudist summer camp for children, near Tampa, Foley said he wanted to see the camp adopt stricter background checks for employees and tighter security to keep out “creepy old guys,” otherwise known as COGs.
Iain Murray, who makes a “living” sucking from the teat of of the fossil fuel industry at CEI, proves, yet again, that there are no limits to his capacity to distort the evidence relative to global warming issues.
Over at at America’s Shittiest Website™, Murray turns his talent for lying to the federal CAFE standards for vehicle fleet fuel efficiency:
On the subject of whether or not killing people is good if it reduces emissions – that seems to be the enviros’ position when it comes to fuel economy standards. The NAS found that the introduction of CAFÉ [sic] standards raised the road accident death rate by 2000 fatalities a year because of reduced vehicle size. Over 30 years, that’s one heck of a toll. Yet the enviros want enforced fuel economy which means lighter cars and more dead bodies.
There is, of course, a reason why Murray doesn’t link to the NAS study that he cites other than the impact that a few seconds typing in the hyperlink would have on his ratio of snack food ingestion to written output. Simply put, the NAS study doesn’t say what Murray claims.
Although the NAS study indicates that initial efforts to meet CAFE standards by downsizing vehicles increased vehicle fatalities, it pointed out that new technologies permitted increased efficiencies through methods other than downsizing:
In the period since 1975, manufacturers have made considerable improvements in the basic efficiency of engines, drive trains, and vehicle aerodynamics. . . . By 1985, light-duty vehicles had improved enough to meet CAFE standards. Thereafter, technology improvements were concentrated principally on performance and other vehicle attributes (including improved occupant protection). . . . Technologies exist that, if applied to passenger cars and light-duty trucks would significantly reduce fuel consumption within 15 years.
Methods cited by the NAS study that would improve efficiency without downsizing included direct-injection lean burning gasoline and ignition-compression (diesel) engines as well as hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles. These alternate technologies led the report to conclude that the government needs to enforce fuel efficiency standards beyond those levels that a free market would naturally attain.
To paraphrase a wingnut chestnut: CAFE standards don’t kill people, people who lie about CAFE standards kill people.
He appears to be a pedophile - though it’s not clear if he’s ever gone past suggestive come-ons online to offline direct contact of a sexual nature with minors. But since he advocated and helped pass legislation against internet sexual predators of minors, he may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He was a DeLay-recruited lieutenant, serving as Deputy Whip for the GOP House of Reprobates Representatives, with ties to tainted lobbyists that helped end the careers of the bribe-taking Duke Cunningham, and Tom DeLay. Will ‘Deputy Whip’ become a juicy double entendre now, for this fresh addition to the GOP’s culture of corruption?
In 2003, he was campaigning for the US Senate when rumors arose about him being gay. He denied that, but dropped his campaign four months later.
He denied the current emails were inappropriate (he said he was just being ‘friendly’ and accused his opponent of trying to smear him). Until other minors came forth to detail his lewder emails to them.
“The e-mails in question were a response to a handwritten thank-you letter from a former page,” said Jason Kello, Foley’s spokesman. “There have not been any allegations made by anyone except by Tim Mahoney and the Democrats who are attempting to misrepresent a series of innocent communications to prop up a failing political campaign.”
But, according to several former congressional pages, the congressman used the Internet to engage in sexually explicit exchanges.
They say he used the screen name Maf54 on these messages provided to ABC News.
Maf54: You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.
Another message:
Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.
And this one:
Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.
The language gets much more graphic, too graphic to be broadcast, and at one point the congressman appears to be describing Internet sex.
Federal authorities say such messages could result in Foley’s prosecution, under some of the same laws he helped to enact.
“Adds up to soliciting underage children for sex,” said Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent and now an ABC News consultant. “And what it amounts to is serious both state and federal violations that could potentially get you a number of years.”
Yet the thing that the GOP would capitalize on in their campaign appeals to religious conservatives is the fact that he’s gay. His gayness would, if revealed, get him discharged from service in the US military. If he was a translator of Arabic in an intelligence agency - a major need where our staffing falls short in the fight against terrorists - he’d also be fired. Several gay translators already have been, despite that severe shortage.
The fact that his funding lobbyists may have corrupted him, that he’s a proven liar, that he supports the right to torture non-convicted suspects? Those aren’t matters of significance to rightist ‘values’ voters. His being gay is the sin they’d reject him for and that would also exclude him from defense of our country. That’s why I can’t trust the judgment of rightists who claim this is the agenda of Jesus, who never mentioned being gay as a bar to salvation.
In the current campaign for his Congressional seat, his name will appear on the ballot, but any votes for him will count for the Republican who will replace him. The guy likely to replace him on the ballot will be State Rep. Joe Negron in the solid Republican district.
But the Democratic challenger, Tim Mahoney, had closed the gap to 13 points, and Foley was under 50% support. Will enough voters write-in Negron’s name or vote for Foley, sufficient to keep Mahoney out?
After all, Mahoney is a former Republican who switched parties because he could no longer support what the GOP had done to itself or the country.
But if you’re a Democrat from that district, don’t let Mahoney’s past worry you. His positions are sufficiently progressive on key issues that he passes easily my progressive filtering process. I’ve seen very few progressive candidates with such well-defined positions on so many key issues, in fact.
It’s ironic what Mahoney credited Foley for as his one sole strength, before today’s news:
I support his efforts to protect children from predators. I do not know of any other legislation that Mark has been responsible for in his 12 years in Congress.
1. He failed to fight for his constituents by making sure that gasoline, health and homeowners insurance costs were under control. As the member of Florida’s delegation to have received the greatest amount of money from the insurance industry, Mark will not disclose his earmarks since becoming Deputy Whip.
2. As Deputy Whip and a member of Ways and Means he failed to protect his constituents by allowing FEMA to be stripped out of the Cabinet and as a result his District has failed to recover from 2004 hurricanes, let alone 2005. He failed to fund port and border security. He failed to keep America focused on the War on Terror by finishing the job with Bin Laden. He failed his constituents with his continued support for the War in Iraq and by not utilizing his leadership position to demand that the President have a workable plan to win the peace.
3. He failed his constituents by not fighting for the funding of the Everglades restoration so that the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers would be healthy. As the 16th District encompasses the Kissimmee, Lake Okeechobee and both the St Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, one would think that Mark, as a Deputy Whip and a member of Ways and Means with the support of the President, his brother the Governor and a Republican controlled State House and Senate, we would have had funding years ago.
You can check out Mahoney more at his campaign site. I STRONGLY encourage to kick $20 to $1000 his way RIGHT NOW, to give him another boost at this critical juncture.
Now excuse me. I have to go seek divine answers why so many Republicans talk about values and the protection of our kids, but continue to fail our children. Foley could have been found out a year ago if the GOP leadership cared about the kids. Now we’ll all have to wonder how many kids were damaged by their incredible lack of concern.
Forget the politics. This is just sad, and should make every decent person angry.
When Barney heard the President say, “I will not withdraw from Iraq,
even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me,” he
whispered to Flat Stanley, “Don’t tell George, but I wouldn’t support
him even if he was falling face first into a steaming pile of dogshit!”
While vigorously denying he had threatened
to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age,
Richard Armitage got so agitated he
shoved his left index finger up his nose and
into his brain.
Add to them Sherrod Brown (OH), and that leaves too few Democratic candidates to win back the Senate.
What? You doubt our little blog can kill their chances? Of course we can’t. But it doesn’t matter.
Even if the official count in November tallies just 49 Republicans, it STILL won’t be a Democratic Senate. Because these three are DINOs, not Democrats. Or more correctly, AINOs: Americans In Name Only. What good is a Senate by any party if it won’t defend freedom, justice and support our troops?
The Senate’s a lost cause. But we still have a chance to win back the House and numerous governorships. Let’s support real Americans and real Democrats there.
These are the Democrats who voted to pardon Bush and company, to support torture in my name, and to endanger American troops:
Robert Andrews, John Barrow, Melissa Bean, Sanford Bishop, Dan Boren, Leonard Boswell, Allen Boyd, Sherrod Brown, Ben Chandler, Bud Cramer, Henry Cuellar, Lincoln Davis, Artur Davis, Chet Edwards, Bob Etheridge, Harold Ford, Bart Gordon, Stephanie Herseth, Brian Higgins, Tim Holden, Jim Marshall, Jim Matheson, Mike McIntyre, Charles Melancon, Michael Michaud, Dennis Moore, Collin Peterson, Earl Pomeroy, Mike Ross, John Salazar, David Scott, John Spratt, John Tanner, Gene Taylor.
I’m removing several from my sidebar list of endorsements. Though they’re in close races, I no longer support them. They’ve sold out the country.
The four removed ones: Melissa Bean (IL-8), Leonard Boswell (IA-3), Sherrod Brown (OH-Senate), and Chet Edwards (TX-17).
I hope Democratic voters will abandon them for abandoning basic American principles: we don’t torture, we stand for justice and no man is above the law. It’s a stretch to call George Bush a man, I realize. But no coward is above the law, either.
And since the Republiconvicts opposing them support torture, too, I encourage voters in their districts and state to write-in the name: Marquis de Sade.
That’s how the world can recognize the voice of principled Americans who weigh in against the unAmerican, pro-torture candidates.
The Great Grey Liar, blissfully ignoring its own role as cheerleader for the War To End All Domestic Opposition, finally denounced the pending nullification of the Constitution and almost a millenium of common law, much too late to affect what they reported as news:
The Senate today rejected an amendment to a bill creating a new system for interrogating and trying terror suspects that would have guaranteed such suspects access to the courts to challenge their imprisonment. The vote was 51 to 48 against the amendment… The bill’s ultimate passage was assured on Wednesday when Democrats agreed to forgo a filibuster in return for consideration of the amendment. …White House spokesman Tony Snow said today that President Bush will emphasize Democratic opposition to the bill in campaign appearances.
So the caving in to not appear “obstructionist” didn’t do a bit of good, did it? They are still going to damn us all as traitors anyway.
Before the session began this morning, President Bush traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican Senators and urge passage of the bill. “The American people need to know that we’re working together to win this war on terror,” he said. “Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people from further attack. And we cannot be able to tell the American people we’re doing our full job unless we have the tools to do so.”
To which the best comment was made by Tacitus in his Ab excessu divi Augusti almost two thousand years ago, about a speech by the Emperor Tiberius:
haec atque talia, quamquam cum adsensu audita ab iis quibus omnia principum, honesta atque inhonesta, laudare mos est, plures per silentium aut occultum murmur excepere
…or, as it is translated (a little loosely) by Michael Grant
This sort of argument was applauded by those who habitually applaud emperors, right or wrong. But the majority received it in silence or with suppressed mutters.
It is entirely proper that the Senate is surrendering our freedom today, because this is the anniversary of the Continental Congress signing its own death warrant in 1787, by sending the illegally proposed new Constitution to the states for ratification. The fact that the Philadelphia convention and the Congress itself had no authority to do this didn’t stop them, just like that now-ratified document’s clear prohibitions of things today’s legislation authorizes didn’t stop their successors from the same abdication today.
But despair not. Athenae at First Draft still raises a light in the darkness that everyone needs to read all of. Here’s part:
Earlier this week I cited an article by Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff, “What Went Wrong,” from Newsweek, May 27, 2002. The Hirsh-Isikoff and other news stories that appeared in late spring of 2002 revealed that the Bush Administration had received copious warnings about the September 11 attacks and had failed to act on them.
Much of what would later be found by the September 11 commission was in these articles. We saw Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke explicitly warn the incoming Bush Administration that they must give the threat of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden the highest priority. We learned that the Bush State Department and National Security Council decided to put al Qaeda low on their priority list, in spite of the warnings. We learned that the Bushies didn’t bother to use unarmed drones, as had the Clinton security team, to gather intelligence in the critical summer of 2001. We learned that President Bush had been given an explicit warning of a terrorist attack involving hijacked airplanes on August 6, 2001 (although it would take the 9/11 commission to pry the title of the warning, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,” out of Condi Rice). We learned that the Bush team had not followed up on this warning. Read the rest of this entry »
Call the orthopedist! The number of broken arms from politicians in Congress trying to pat themselves so vigorously on their own backs is simply astounding. Who are all these weenies without backbone who just waved through this vast assault on the Constitution?
Is there a doctor in the House or in the Senate who can do some triage on the body politic? The bruising is severe.
Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.
How low can the high and mighty go? A lack of backbone allows our current lawmakers to sneak under the lowest bar possible. Democrats are now expected to cower as a bill that allows detention of anyone on the president’s order gets jammed up our collective asses.
All the tools are out.Look for Democrats to be hammered if they don’t approve of the President hammering all our rights to bits as he seeks the tools he needs for the Great War on Terror Everything TM .
“It is outrageous that House Democrats, at the urging of their leaders, continue to oppose giving President Bush the tools he needs to protect our country,” said House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
Somebody wake us from the nightmare. We must be dreaming, right? Our elected officials are there to protect we the people. They wouldn’t use a last minute, pre-election moment of hysteria to jam a terrible law down our collective throats, would they? Damn.
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.
They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The struggle for decency and the rule of law continues. In the heat a sense of humor almost evaporates. A sense of outrage remains. Who knew Congress could so easily surgically remove its conscience?
Jack Cafferty of CNN elevated a key part of the detainee legislation to broader public light: the pardon it contains for Bush himself and all the other political principals and higher ups who likely broke the law by authorizing the use of terror.
He concluded by asking viewers to respond to the question: “Should Congress pass a bill giving retroactive immunity to President Bush for possible war crimes?”
I emailed the following response to him:
In response to your question, Congress should not pass this bill. The reasons are many; most require historical understanding, but some go to elementary American values.
1) We’ve gone through two world wars, fought the Nazis in the last one, plus a 44 year long Cold War against the USSR that included wars against Korea and Vietnam, (and with Communist Chinese troops directly, in Korea). Compared to Al Qaida, each of these enemies were superior in manpower, superior in weaponry, and several possessed WMDs that included gas, bioweapons and, in the case of the USSR, enough nukes to destroy all human life on the globe with less than 30 minutes warning. Torture was not necessary to defeat these foes. In fact, these foes were guilty of torture and part of our world leadership in countering these threats was the belief that our moral leadership set us apart in our treatment of war prisoners.
That’s not to say that torture did not occur. It did and in Vietnam, in particular, thousands died from it. What set it apart was that political leaders distanced themselves from it. What they knew has never been revealed. They may have known some was occurring, but not what, nor how much. They may have deliberately avoided the details, to remain clear of certain culpability. But from Eisenhower on, it’s likely they had an inkling that the CIA practiced it and they certainly knew, from LBJ on, that they were teaching it at the School of Americas.
Congress tried to investigate such practices in four major investigations that occurred from 1970 to 1988, only partially succeeding.
We can’t move forward on this topic by hiding that still from a public largely oblivious to that. The narrow distinction that it was never officially sanctioned publicly is still an important distinction to make.
2) This administration’s history in the matter is also important. For one thing, at the close of the Cold War, certain efforts were made to discontinue these CIA practices. As yet, no evidence has emerged to indicate the last administration sanctioned its use. More evidence exists that they shut down the practice during Clinton’s first term.
Additionally, a war crimes bill was passed in 1996 that permitted prosecution of government officials for complicity in torture due to the efforts of a US serviceman, so a cessation of its use occurred for five years, prior to 9-11.
When Abu Ghraib came to light, the Bush administration tried to pass it off as the work of a few bad apples at the bottom of the barrel, and some US troops were convicted for their participation. Over time, it’s come to light that the methodology had CIA footprints all over the practices and Bush’s legal adviser - now the Attorney General - advised him to issue a finding that detainees were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. By following that advice, he was expanding presidential powers under the legal theory that wartime presidents could do anything they wished, in the name of security.
The Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld rejected that argument, which left numerous administration officials at risk of prosecution under a law that was passed without controversy nine years previously.
So the Bush administration has since changed its tune on the matter to make the claim that the Geneva Accords were too vague, that no one had actually committed torture violations, but that the less-than-torture techniques had been effective in stopping major terror attacks.
Which led to the bill in the process of approval today.
3) As you rightly noted, the language hidden in the midst of the bill is a major part of it that has been given too little publicity. The spin that this is a national security debate or a campaign tactic Republicans are using (again) to claim Democrats are soft on terrorists are DELIBERATELY designed to help conceal the principal aim of this bill, which is to protect politicians and CIA officials, top to bottom, from prosecution for war crimes, retroactively.
4) Why is it wrong to pass this bill?
a) all the claims that torture occasionally works have been made by politicians and people who authorized or engaged in torture. I think it’s safe to assume that, just by the law of averages, over all the years prior to 1996 and post-9/11, some information has been gained that was useful. But absolutely zero concrete evidence exists that the useful evidence caused a single battle to be won or a major attack to be thwarted. All the evidence we have is hearsay from people culpable for the actual torture that occurred.
b) And based on that, after repeated efforts to cover up the processes of authorization and use of torture, this bill not only pardons all parties to that, but it grants the top authorizer - the President - continued wartime powers to pass judgment on detainee treatment, prosecution, potential lifelong detentions without due process, and which processes will be defined as torture and which ones won’t. If the President was certain his actions were legal, why the coverup? And where else is there precedent of a guy in violation of the law according to the highest court in the land, who has clearly participated in a coverup, then provided the power to grant himself a pardon plus the power to continue actions that torture experts worldwide consider to be torture?
c) It’s that repeated expansion of presidential power - countering the judicial check and balance on his power - that is one of the two biggest wrongs in the bill. It may prove to be unconstitutional again, when the next challenge reaches the Supreme Court. But by then, Bush may be out of office and the public clamor to seek justice may be gone, so the injustice may stand unprosecuted.
d) Finally, the other major wrong is that it gives publicly official sanction of torture for the first time in US history. Whatever moral edge we could use to promote democracy and justice in the world will officially be gone. It will further make it clear that an American royalty DOES exist that has extralegal powers above any check and balance Constitutionally proscribed.
We’ve already seen some evidence of what that can provoke in our enemies, as most of the videotaped torture of Americans and Westerners in Iraq, and the abuses of their corpses, occurred in direct response to the Abu Ghraib exposure.
Further, by absolving all the higher-ups, while continuing prosecutions and incarcerations of front line troops, can not only be demoralizing to our troops but it can promote insubordination if they start refusing orders out of fear that they may be exposing themselves to legal risk that their superiors won’t share. That’s a major disservice to the people in this conflict who already have taken the overwhelming share of risks and consequences of a war fought for reasons that remain hidden to most.
Do we really want this? A repudiation of Constitutional law, the Geneva Accords, other laws and treaties broadly accepted nationally and globally as humane and civil standards, combined with a self pardon, a free hand in a dubious practice that has no proven positive, and a slap in the face of our troops?
I’ve found nothing logical nor ethical to consent to any part of that.
I appreciate you raising such a key point and granting it public light.
-Kevin Hayden
Eugene, Oregon
Some may quibble with my contention that torture was not necessary to defeat the USSR or some of the other previous and superior enemies. But if you wish to do so, please put up the evidence, something more than hearsay issued by torturers, their authorizers and politicians.
I’d argue the torture used taught by our CIA to Savak created the major popular casus belli for the Shah’s overthrow and resulted in an extremist government that has been a principle sponsor of anti-US sentiment and terror attacks for the past 27 years. Other anti-US movements found their origins in similar instances of repressive governments and militaries and guerrilla movements that were trained in terror by our CIA.
There’s more to support that contention than the contention that terror uses have contributed to our security. (I’ll let the New York Times and Echidne fill in the rest of the blanks.)
Delving further into US history, when General Sherman decided to burn everything in his path, punishing Southern civilians for the express purpose of demoralizing them and their men fighting that war, he was branded as a terrorist who committed all sorts of tortures. Whether he did or not can be debated by historians, but one essential fact is clear: because Southerners believed he was guilty of murder, rape and other barbarities, he’s hated to this day, 141 years after that war.
Is that the kind of permanent hatred we wish to spawn worldwide by accepting official government approval of torture?
But wait, there’s a bit more:
I also wish to thank the YouTube poster who uses the apropos name of ChurchCommittee to put up videos in recent weeks that have been one of the most impressive YouTube collections I’ve seen to date.
I encorage every viewer (yeah, YOU!) to always rate the videos ChurchCommittee puts up. Positive ratings will broaden the audience significantly.
Here’s the latest fresh example. After viewing it, click through it to the YouTube page, to rate it, as well.
Finally, though I’m pleased the vast majority of Democrats voted against the bill, I meant it when I said I woul;d not support Dems who supported it. I’ve not seen the entire list but I regretfully note that one very liberal Senate candidate, Sherrod Brown, voted in favor.
If he loses, I seriously doubt Democrats will gain a Senate majority. I accept that. This bill, to me, is a bigger threat to our nation than losing that potential. There remains plenty of House races to win that, even if a few get dropped from my sidebar or subsequently lose.
I don’t buy the claim that my ‘purity’ on this point loses a larger battle. Some legislation permits room for compromise. Sanctioning a bill with all the flaws of this one grants no room at all to principled people, progressive, moderate or conservative.
Crooks And Liars with Jack Cafferty’s take on Bush’s comment about the violence in Iraq; “I like to tell people, when the final history is written on Iraq,it will look like just a comma.”
There’s few places over the span of a legislative career where a measure so defining of the nation gains consideration. If the majority of Democrats do not stand up and define themselves as real Americans, I’ll no longer define myself as a Democrat.
I work for vertebrates. I’ll slam on the brakes and jam it into reverse for Jellycrats.
The best summing up of what’s at stake in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, for those caught up in it as well as for the soul and spirit of the United States, comes from a professor of law at the University of Toledo, Benjamin Davis, who biopsies the thing at the Pitt Law School site, The Jurist. Not only does he point out the specific roads to hell down which the law takes us, he explains the overarching affect it will ultimately have:
The compromise drafters appear to be decoupling these military commissions from international law, from domestic courts-martial, from other types of traditional military commissions, from any other law. These alien unlawful enemy combatants, these human beings, are in fact being decoupled from “all the laws but one,” in the words of President Lincoln. The power of this effort should not beunderestimated because as the lone superpower, the act does no less than push out to the world a state practice that would bring us back to pre-Geneva Convention standards for these people, worthy of only “special process”.
From this view, these individuals have committed such heinous crimes that their process and punishment should be in a carefully controlled hermetically sealed environment that should not contaminate any other procedures that might impact more “deserving” characters…
In the 18 sections below I examine the provisions that struck me that - taken as a whole - give us the outline (if we wish to look) of this “special process”. We must remember that this special process is being created using all the ordinary words we have seen before. That is in one sense the genius of this effort. By carefully pulling together points strewn in many places including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, words that are familiar are able to create a unfamiliar “special process”.
For this special process, this group of human beings is segregated from the rest of mankind. They are segregated and by that segregation they are declared a different type of human being. Based on the responses of Republicans and Democrats, the American Congress, the President and by extension all the American people are willing to have these people declared as different. Moreover, the United States Government is willing to have these rules applied to aliens and in that sense is making a statement to all countries who might seek to invoke diplomatic protection for these non-Americans. Those countries must now consider (”are you with us or against us?”) whether their countrymen are truly a different type of human being such that they will acquiesce in the American determination of segregation. Read the rest of this entry »
So Lott’s pissed about hearings that provide testimony from military generals:
Lott and other Republicans are upset that Democrats have gone outside the committee process to highlight the Iraq war before the November election.
“They’re abusing the system,” Lott said.
The use of committee rooms could be moot, as Democrats plan to take future hearings on the road.
They declined yesterday to name the cities in which they plan to hold field hearings before and after the November election, but aides said they would not be staged in states where Republican and Democratic candidates are locked in tight battles because they hope not to alienate potential witnesses who may be wary of being used as political pawns.
“We want generals to come and give real testimony and not feel like they’re part of a partisan [operation],” a senior Democratic aide said.
It’s good to hear our military leaders fighting for our nation’s security while setting aside the politics.
Forget the political sniping that his words will always bring. He’s absolutely right and though I wasn’t an enthusiast of his Presidency, I’m thrilled he’s providing leadership in a time when the White House is offering none.
Last week on the NBC Nightly News, General Barry McCaffrey, now retired, said of the current state of the US military, “I think, arguably, it’s the worst readiness condition the US Army has faced since the end of Vietnam.” This isn’t a big surprise when we consider the facts that many soldiers are already into their third combat tour, frequent deployments have cut training time at home in half, and two thirds of all Army combat units are rated not ready for combat.
The fact that 60% of National Guard soldiers have already reached their limit for overseas combat is most likely not going to slow down the Cheney administration’s lust for more war. Most likely, they’ll just have Rummy change the Pentagon’s policy that currently limits Guard combat tours to two out of every five years.
This change was apparently already expected by Lieutenant General Steven Blum, of the National Guard, who told NBC, “If you think the National Guard’s busy today, I think we’re going to look back and say ‘these were the good old days’ in about three years.” A comment to which General McCaffrey responded: “More is being asked of them, particularly the National Guard and reserve components, than they signed up to do. And in the near-term, we think it’s going to unravel.”
That “near-term” seemed to be about 72 hours away from McCaffrey’s comments. On Monday, the Army announced that because it is stretched so thin by the occupation of Iraq, it is once again extending the combat tours of thousands of soldiers beyond their promised 12-month tours. It’s the second time since August (i.e., last month) that this has occurred. The 1st Brigade Armored Division, which is having its tour extended, just happens to be located in the province of Al-Anbar, which the military has long since lost control of. Between 3,500 and 4,000 soldiers are affected by this decision.
The move prompted defense analyst Loren Thompson to tell reporters: “The Army is coming to the end of its rope in Iraq. It simply does not have enough active-duty military personnel to sustain the current level of effort.”
There’s more there, including the assessments of a frontline soldier in Iraq who says the war is lost.
I see that Chris Allbritton ended his Middle East blogging on Sept 1, and Kevin Sites has taken a well-earned break from their and other hot sites around the globe. Kevin’s recounting of some of that deserves a read.
Both our soldiers and our independent journalists have earned a break. Yet it’s our troops who remain, granted no rest, and precisely because of the fall political campaign, our President won’t change that till after the election. Which is the worst use of our armed forces of all: political.
I’ve said it for years: complete withdrawal is the only course ahead. There are no wins to be had, just the option of reducing losses, ours and Iraq’s. To all who call this ‘cut-and-run’, I denounce you as the country’s real traitors, because your ‘lie-and-make-others-die’ strategy is morally bankrupt cowardice and/or outright stupidity. You got your illegal war, you helped many exploit it for monetary or political gain, you turned the world against us and boosted the number of terrorists, you promoted the mismanagement of the occupation, you damaged military readiness, you’ve destroyed countless lives, you advocated and continue to advocate torture, you’ve avoided responsibility and repercussions, you divided the country that was united in September 2001, you’ve lied and continue to cover up the truth, and even now, when so much truth has reached the light of day, you won’t give our troops their rest and their safety, because of an election 6 weeks away.
You are a disgrace to our country and to humanity. Your cut and run bullshit continues a cut and bleed reality, and you don’t care. More innocent people have died because of your words and deeds than all the Americans killed by terrorists in the past century. You, too, are America’s enemies.
Jude Nagurney Camwell reports on a Texas legislator who feels a compulsion to attack a retired politician running for no office. Our troops are engaged in a costly war that’s hurt them, our government’s caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, middle class American jobs have been outsourced by the millions and the minimum wage hasn’t been increased in a decade. And Senator John Cornyn is playing the politics of blame, while evading who’s to blame for the actual problems our nation’s facing, RIGHT NOW.
His only strategy beyond playing politics is to stay the one course that’s proven to be the worst, steadily, for three and a half years, for longer than it took us to defeat Germany in World War II.
The money quote:
Senator Cornyn stated that terrorists “don’t respect” weakness or a cut and run attitude. Who gives a damn what these murderers respect? Why would we be after their respect? Is that what this war’s about? Get Aretha Franklin to sing about it if all we want is respect.
Running a foreign policy based on what our enemies think will work for them is reactive, not proactive. And let’s remember that most of those he glibly calls our enemies have no desire to attack America at all. They attack any occupying troops in THEIR country. Which is the right of citizens to do in any country.
If we brought half our troops home and put the other half in Afghanistan in hot pursuit of the terrorists who attacked our country and plan to do so again, that hardly emboldens terrorists.
Cornyn, bereft of any ideas of benefit to the US, lacking any plan that protects this country, is wasting his space in the US Senate, where the public sends people to serve their interests. It’s time he does something that fits his skills, like taking a minimum wage job at a fastfood Chain of Fools.
Iain Murray, who makes a “living” sucking from the teat of of the fossil fuel industry at CEI, proves, yet again, that there are no limits to his capacity to distort the evidence relative to global warming issues. 
For this special process, this group of human beings is segregated from the rest of mankind. They are segregated and by that segregation they are declared a different type of human being. Based on the responses of Republicans and Democrats, the American Congress, the President and by extension all the American people are willing to have these people declared as different. Moreover, the United States Government is willing to have these rules applied to aliens and in that sense is making a statement to all countries who might seek to invoke diplomatic protection for these non-Americans. Those countries must now consider (”are you with us or against us?”) whether their countrymen are truly a different type of human being such that they will acquiesce in the American determination of segregation. 
