A simple Q&A on the history and practice of this barbarism. Anyone who says this is fine with them has absolutely no business being in a position of power.
Category Archives: War on Terror
Monday Linkorama
Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.
To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?
He makes a good case. (Hat Tip: Overlawyered.com, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite all-purpose blogs.)
Friday Nights Linksorama
Failure, to put it bluntly, works. Failure is nature’s way of telling you “Hey, that doesn’t work!” The American economy is vastly strengthened by the fact that companies are allowed to fail–and also by the fact that our crazy culture encourages us to try things that don’t work.
In the first few iterations, this often looks inferior to a centralized system. Look, the critics say, they sat down and planned it all! Compare that to our messy, fragmented market where half the stuff doesn’t work!
It can take a decade or more before the cracks in the planning appear. The planners, it turns out, didn’t foresee that the world would change, and now the giant, planned system can’t cope.
Speak it, sister.
Thursday Morning Linkorama
Deriving star formation histories while writing NSF grants is thirsty work. So you know what that means.
The return of LINKORAMA!
The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.
Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?
Friday Morning Linkorama
Some optimists say that in Army Gen. David Petraeus, Bush has finally found his Gen. Grant. That may or may not be true, but it is beside the point. The problem is that Petraeus has not yet found his President Lincoln.
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip, Lee).
We Don’t Torture
Read these letters from actual military officers who have done and who have endured interrogation (unlike, say, Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney).
We ex-POWs don’t look kindly on sadistic behavior, especially when it degenerates into torture. Kyle is right, it doesn’t do much to get useful info, it only gives the sadist some thrills.
When I read things like this, I am filled with such immense pride in our military. They are far better men than their commander in chief.
Moderates
Remember how there are no Muslim moderates? Well, maybe there are:
In a 29-page letter, representatives of many facets of Muslim life have petitioned their Christian counterparts to help find steps to be taken toward erasing the misunderstandings about each other that often lead to violence.
Scores of Muslim clerics, theologians and academics issued an open letter yesterday to all Christian leaders saying the two religions need to work more closely together, given that they share the basic principles of worshiping one God and loving thy neighbor.
No mention of the Jews, of course…
Saturday Morning Linkorama
Consistency
So let me get this straight. When we site other nations’ legal ruling in support of forbidding the death penalty to minors, it’s bad bad evil evil. But it’s perfectly fine to site a 30 year old ruling from a foreign court in support of torture – even one that the court itself now regrets.
Gotchya.
My problem, you see, is that I tend to think about issues the same way. Issue after issue, I identify my principles, work through the arguments and get an answer. I’m not supposed to do that. I’m just supposed to accept that everything George Bush wants to do is right and find justification — any justification at all — for his positions.
And here I was, going and thinking for myself. Idiot.
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.
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.
Torture Doesn’t Work
Read this account of how Nazis were interrogated during WWII. Prepare for the Right Wing Echosphere to say these guys are senile old gomers who don’t understand the danger we face today.
Early Redacted
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.
Announcement
Lee at Right Thinking from the Left Coast has asked me to be one of four bloggers taking over while he’s in China for a year. My first post, on Iraq, is up.
I will probably be doing a lot of my political blogging over there under the Hal_10000 pseudonym. But I will still post most of my stuff here and virtually all of my sports, news and cultural crap.
Rosh Hoshana Linkorama!
I’m not supposed to think today (not that I do anyway), so I’ll just link to those who do:
There’s a related link from Sully about how geeks have a better perspective on tragedy. Just wait until the Gates money starts pouring into these efforts.
Thoughts on the surge later tonight.