Category Archives: Politics

Politics, War on Terror

WSJ=BS

The Wall Street Journal is full of it:

On current course, U.S. warfighting doctrine will be as tame as a church social … Now comes the latest flap over “torture” techniques during terrorist interrogations, well on their way to becoming little more than a friendly chat.

Wrong. Bzzt. For Chrissake, WSJ, have you even bothered to read the Army Field Manual? And the specific techniques described therein for interrogation? Hardly a friendly chat.

So, according to newspaper reports, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel responded by detailing that slapping, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and so-called stress positions are allowed. Are these torture?

According to any standard of history, according to the standard of the United States up until Bush, according to the treaties we have signed and that, by our Constitution, have the absolute power of law … yes. Hypothermia was a technique specifically used by the Soviet Union to break the zeks in the Gulag. Stress positions as well. Sleep deprivation is well-documented as one of the cruelest tortures known. Victims required constant supervision to keep them from bashing their heads to knock themselves out. People die from sleep deprivation.

What’s really at issue here is whether U.S. officials are going to have even the most basic tools to interrogate America’s enemies.

The basic tools we want allowed are those detailed in the Army Field Manual. Things like “ego up”, which helped us kill Al-Zarqawi.

Techniques perfected by the Soviet union are not “basic tools”. Torture is not a “basic tool”. Water-boarding and stress positions are not “basic tools”. They are the desperate means of barbarians.

What’s at stake here is whether we are going to sacrifice everything we are as a nation because we are scared that bombs might go off somewhere.

Newspaper accounts of the 2005 memos say “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning, is also allowed in the memos, which reflects the CIA’s view that this is especially effective in breaking hard cases rapidly.

The Khmer-Rouge thought so too.

Note also the wording — they “break” the terrorist. When you break someone, they will say anything they think you want to hear. What we need is not “breaking”. What we need is conversion. What we need is a person who freely gives us information, including stuff we wouldn’t think to ask. Al-Zarqawi was killed because of incidental information that came out during a conversation with his interrogators.

As it stands now, the scolds in Congress and the Beltway press have decided to impose their view that no pressure tactics are ever necessary or justified. But if Congress and the press are going to take over the design of the war on terror, how can they justify walking away from any responsibility to make clear what is permissible?

First of all, the Constitution specifically states that Congress makes the “Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”. So they are not “taking over the design of the war on terror”, they’re doing their damned job. Second, the torture opponents have made it very clear what should be permissible — Army Field Manual …. Army Field Manual.

The notion that the U.S. goes around unnecessarily “torturing” people without any rationale whatsoever is so absurd that it is almost never stated explicitly.

Oh, really?. Really?.

Former CIA Director George Tenet has said explicitly that they do work and have saved American lives.

He also said WMDs were a slam dunk. There are thousands of people who will tell you that torture doesn’t work — people who have administered it and people who have received it. One of them is John McCain, who, unlike George Tenet, was actually fucking tortured. For real. And is crippled because of it.

But rather than face these hard issues directly, the scolds fall back on generalities about our “values.”

Those damned values! Next thing you know, we’ll be supporting family values!

Remember when the conservatives were all about the values? Sigh. Good times.

Funny me. I value having the highest moral standards in the world. I value having our soldiers reknowned for their humane treatment of even our most brutal enemies. I value being the shining beacon of civilized behavior for the world.

But that’s just me.

Congress wants the OLC memos made public, but the reason to keep them secret is so enemy combatants can’t use them as a resistance manual.

Wrong again. We know what techniques are being used. We just want it to be officially admitted. And I thought the whole point of torture was that they couldn’t prepare for it. Make up your mind.

Nowhere in this misguided, misinformed, anti-American editorial does the WSJ ever mention the fucking Army Field Manual, which spells out precisely what methods may be used to interrogate. Methods that have proven, through 200 years of American history, amazingly effective in obtaining useful intelligence.

I usually like the WSJ. But like the rest of the Right Wing, they have utterly surrendered to the terrorists. By supporting torture and sacrificing our — yes — values, they’ve given bin Laden everything he ever wanted.

Go to hell. The rest of want to fight the terrorists, not give in to them. We don’t to become what we’ve beheld. We don’t want to shred the Constitution and destory our moral standing. What does it profit a nation to win the War on Terror if they lose their soul?

Update: Sully says it even better:

There are some things worse than avoiding all casualties in warfare. One of those things is abandoning the core meaning of what a country and a civilization stand for. If America does not stand against the torture of individuals seized without due process by an unchecked executive power, then American stands for nothing. In fact, if this standard had applied two centuries ago, America would not exist at all. The president takes an oath not to prevent any American life from being lost in wartime, but to protect and defend the Constitution which is the sole guarantor of such liberty. Churchill upheld that rule, even as London was reduced to rubble and hundreds of thousands of mother’s children were lost. Washington made it a central hallmark of the meaning of his new republic. To destroy the constitution, the rule of law, and habeas corpus and to legalize torture in the false hope of saving lives is the action of those who do not understand freedom and who do not understand America. It is the action of cowards and slaves.

What part of “Live Free Or Die” do these people not understand?

All of it, apparently.

Law and Order, Politics

Yeah, They Were in the Dark

Dammit, I hate being right all the time. A few days ago, in response to the “more black men are in prison than in college” claim, I said:

One things I’ve learned about social scientists. When they present you with answers to the wrong question, it’s because the answer to the right question didn’t fit their agenda.

Well, someone decoded the socio-speak.

According to 2005 Census Bureau statistics, the male African-American population of the United States aged between 18 and 24 numbered 1,896,000. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 106,000 African-Americans in this age group were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005. See table 10 of this report. If you add the numbers in local jail (measured in mid-2006), you arrive at a grand total of 193,000 incarcerated young Black males, or slightly over 10 percent.

According to the same census data, 530,000 of these African-American males, or twenty eight percent, were enrolled in colleges or universities (including two-year-colleges) in 2005. That is five times the number of young black men in federal and state prisons and two and a half times the total number incarcerated. If you expanded the age group to include African-American males up to thirty or thirty five, the college attendees would still outnumber the prisoners.

Again, the incarceration rate is too high. But the hysteria is unwarranted, especially when the solution is fairly obvious:

End the War on Drugs.

Politics, Science and Edumacation, Socialism, Taxes and Spending

Wednesday Night Linkorama

  • You know what I’m always saying about the Law of Unintended Consequences? Here’s an example.. There are agencies out there that will give you an advance loan on your paycheck. But in order to make it economically feasible, they have to charge a small fee which, if extrapolated over a year, works out to an extremely large interest rate. We’re talking 50% or more. Many of the people taking these loans were military personnel. Clark Howard, in particular, used to go off on how evil these loans were, branding the loan companies “unpatriotic”. So Congress outlawed them. And now the soldiers can’t get paycheck loans. Nice.
  • Maryland and Michigan are sending their taxes through the roof. I knew this would happen when O’Mallay was elected. I knew it. Serves you right, Maryland idiots, for rejecting Mike Steele. Enjoy the recession.
  • While I love college football, I hate what it does to academics.

    After the facilities are completed, the meter keeps running. Thanks primarily to the football stadium upgrades, the Longhorn athletic department’s yearly debt service will double over the next year, to about $15 million annually. Utilities — air conditioning, heat, water — and maintenance cost the athletic department another $4.75 million a year — $115,000 just to keep the department’s grass football, softball and soccer fields soft and green.

    Heavily recruited high schoolers expect flashier personal amenities, too, and UT obliges. Following its Rose Bowl victory, the football team was rewarded with a $200,000 renovation of its players lounge, a retreat with four TV projectors (screens drop from the ceiling at the push of a button embedded in a six-foot replica of the UT tower), six flat screen TVs, four X-boxes and three PlayStations.

    Two floors down, the football locker room boasts another new lounge area, with five flat-screen TVs and a three-dimensional, lighted 20-foot Longhorn on the ceiling. Men’s and women’s basketball players can relax in their own private living rooms, each with large TVs, video games and recliners. (New recliners cost $15,020 last year.) The golf teams have a private player lounge at their new clubhouse.

    This is absolutely disgusting. The football team gets is prestige from the University, not vice versa. They should be pouring money back into the school to fund scholarships and reduce tuition.

  • Radiohead is giving the middle finger to the big record companies. Bravo.
    • Politics

    Bond, Baby Bonds

    Hillary is proposing to give every child a $5000 bond at birth. It would be popular, no doubt. And practically the first thing the libs would squeak is, “If we can find $190 billion for a war in Iraq, we can find $20 billion for kids!” Of course, we’re deficit spending out the ying-yang, so we actually can’t find money to spend in Iraq.

    You have to almost admire the brazenness of it. Mrs. Clinton isn’t even pretending this is anything but a wealth transfer. All the “rich” will have money taken from them and it will be given to babies. They’ll probably combine it with the return of the inheritance tax so they can say they’re making “all Americans the heirs of the wealthy”. So the rich don’t get the pleasure of making the babies, just the pleasure of paying for them.

    I shouldn’t beat this particularly straw man, but I can’t resist. I’m in a good mood today, so breaking down liberal stupidity will be fun.

    First, not longer after this is implemented, we will get cries to raise the amount (see SCHIP). After all, doubling it to $10k is only another $20 billion. If we can find money for [insert name of war here], we can find money for America’s kids! We will also get calls to provide money to kids who were born just before the program was implemented.

    Second, will it be in a government-run trust – like the trusts that are going bankrupt all over the nation and consist entirely of little pieces of paper that say, “IOU $6 trillion”? Or will be allowed to invest it in “approved” funds? (And you thought private investment was baaad!) I suspect that what would happen is every kid in America would be issued a piece of paper at birth that is redeemable at age 18 for $10,000 (4% interest, about what bonds are earning).

    Third, no matter how much our politicians twist and turn like a bunch of twisty turny things, the law of unintended consequences will be obeyed. Parents blowing money on themselves instead of setting up college funds; lower and middle income people having babies they can’t afford on the promise of five grand. And what about illegal immigrants? If they download a baby on our soil, do they get $5k? Thank you, Mrs. Clinton. You’ve now created a $5,000 incentive to break the law.

    If Mrs. Clinton makes this a centerpiece of her campaign, and wins, many of these unintended consequences will happen, regardless of whether she implements the program or not. When politicians make huge promises, millions think those promises have been delivered once they are elected. I can still remember after Bush was elected, people being puzzled because their taxes hadn’t been cut.

    What really gets my boxers in a bunch is that I am a new father myself. I thought about the government giving me $5000 to deposit for her future.

    And, to be honest, I felt a little sick.

    I don’t want the government’s stinking money. I want to provide for my own baby (shortly after she was born, I salted some money away in a 529). She inspires me to work harder and be more responsible. One of the great pleasure in life is coming home after work, seeing her asleep in the crib and knowing I’ve done right by her, even if she doesn’t know it.

    With this proposal and the clamor to expand SCHIP, Hillary wants to take that away and make my daughter and every other daddy’s daughter in the country a government-bought dependent. I’m sure Mrs. Clinton fantasizes that every dad, instead of providing for his own daughter, will put put a picture of Hillary above the crib and tell their daughters, “That’s President Clinton! She’s building your future!”

    Get the fuck out of my nursery, bitch. You’re not her father. It’s not your damned job to give her wealth, it’s mine. Confine yourself to keeping the criminals away and the terrorists at bay. Keep the economy humming with benign neglect. But don’t make her your dependent from the Baby Bumbo on.

    Quit offering us money. We don’t need your stinkin’ charity. That goes for all of you up in Washington, Republican and Democrat, Left and Right, conservative and liberal. Raise your own damned kids. And let me raise mine.

    'Culture', Law and Order, Politics

    Monday Morning Linkorama

    Ugh, I was up until 4 am working on proposals. So here is my list of Monday links:

  • So your 9/11 conspiracy theory is gibberish? Sue!
  • More Numbers in the Dark. You know that massive crime wave that’s happening? Um, no. Also that study that says men are happier than women? It might just be a noise spike. Always remember that we get our news from people who flunked math and science.
  • You know Media Matters? The organization that loves plucking quotes from guys like Bill O’Reilly out of context? They’re part of the Clinton/Soros Empire. Now the article is complicated and, frankly, a bit paranoid. But you know that if similar ties existed between George Bush and, say, the Swift Boat Vets (oh, wait they do!), everyone would go nuts. I’m curious … how many liberals has Media Matters gone after?
  • Juan Williams has a more coherent defense of O’Reilly. Now look, I’m not fond of Bill O’Reilly. In fact, I don’t like his show at all. But his Sylvia’s comment is being taken completely out of context. It’s fine when The Daily Show does this. That’s a comedy show. But when news organizations do it? Jesus.

    When I saw the segment on The Daily Show, I knew the quote was being taken out of context. Why am I smarter than people who analyze the news for a living? How can a dippy blogger be more attentive to this sort of thing than people getting paid for it?

  • Dick Nixon was an anti-semite. Big surprise. Of course, FDR did little to stop the Holocaust.
    • 'Culture', Politics, War on Terror

    Early Redacted

    1 Comment

    There’s some controversy brewing over Brian de Palma’s Redacted, a dramatization of the brutal Mahmudiyah Killings (Note that our “evil” military is tossing these assholes in prison for potentially the rest of their lives). The movie won the Silver Lion at Venice and the user ratings at IMDB show something interesting:

    US Voters: 3.4
    Non-US Voters: 8.2

    Now, raise your hand if you are surprised that a film portraying a brutal atrocity by Americans is very popular in Europe. (Put that hand down, Chris!). Europeans loved Loose Change and every other 9/11 conspiracy book/movie. My cat could make an anti-American movie and win, at minimum, the Palme d’Or.

    I’ll wait until the November release to try to decide whether or not to join in the inevitable Right Wing bloviation-fest. But I should note something about the newly certified Great Film-Maker Mr. De Palma.

    Number of Oscar Nominations for Brian de Palma: 0
    Number of Golden Globe Nomination for Brian de Palma: 0
    Number of Razzie Nominations for Brian de Palma: 5

    I’m just sayin’.

    Good thing he made this. Now he’ll get some nominations, even if the film itself is his usual crap. When your best film is The Untouchables and the best thing you’ve done in the last ten years is the lesbian scene in Femme Fatale, I guess it’s time to go political.

    'Culture', Law and Order, Politics

    Fisking Sully

    1 Comment

    What Sullivan says:

    Three times as many black men will spend tonight in a prison cell as in a college dorm room. That number is almost as bad for Hispanics. A quarter of a century ago, the ratio was even.

    What the study actually says:

    The numbers, driven by men, do not include college students who live off campus. Previously released census data show that black and Hispanic college students — commuters and those in dorms — far outnumber black and Hispanic prison inmates.

    Now my reading of this is that blacks and hispanics have moved off campus — much like the rest of the student body. The crowing headline that “three times as many black are in jail as in college” is pure hysterical race-baiting that misses and obfuscates the more important point:

    The data show that big increases in black and Hispanic inmates occurred since 1980.

    Not stated is how big the increases have been for whites. I went to the Census Bureau website but their data is almost deliberately opaque. I couldn’t get a handle on what it actually said and nor find the answer to the real question: Over the last 25 years, how has the incarceration rate changed for blacks, white and hispanics?

    One things I’ve learned about social scientists. When they present you with answers to the wrong question, it’s because the answer to the right question didn’t fit their agenda.

    The real story here is that our prison population has exploded over the last thirty years, primarily because of the War on Drugs. That’s something that affects all of us, not just black people. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. That needs to change. For everone.

    Politics

    Minority Report

    Why do the Republicans just ignore minorities? The stranglehold the Dems have over the non-white vote is their basic pillar of strength. Many of these pople might vote conservative if the GOP reached out to them. But every election, we hear “they won’t vote for us anyway so why bother”. But that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you refuse to address black audiences, or speak at black colleges or go on spanish-language television, it’s a massive slap in the face to the fastest growing segment of our population.

    Reaching out to minority audiences is an investment in the political future of the Party. It may not pay off today, but it will sometime.

    The GOP is quickly going down a rathole chasing the ever-shrinking homophobic white Christian vote. Given the demographic trends, this is nothing but a drawn-out suicide. It is a perfect emobidment of the “win today, screw the future” attitude the Party has taken under the “leadership” of W.

    We can’t afford for the sane party to go down in flames like this. God, I wish we had elected McCain in 2000.

    Law and Order, Politics

    AG

    The latest attorney general nominee strikes me as a reason to hope. He’s not the rockhead lackey that The Little Legal Creep was, but seems a capable judge and attorney.

    You have to wonder what goes on in the Bush mind. He follows up an excellent SCOTUS nomination (Roberts) with one of the worst nominations in history (Harriet Myers). He puts Gonzalez in charge at Justice and Brown in charge of FEMA, but taps Condi Rice and Colin Powell to head the State Department. His nominees are either great or terrible. WTF?!

    The great news is that nominating someone like Mukasey indicate the Rice faction is winning the internecine White House war. I predict that they will call for the closure of Gitmo within six months.

    And Mitt Romney will say he favored closing it all along.