On Christians, atheists, and torture

By Frank Moraes 

I have this tendency to be most critical of the groups that I'm part of. You see this a lot in terms of my thinking about the Democratic Party. But I dare say you see it most of all with my thinking about atheists. And there is a lot to dislike about the modern atheist movement. I am an atheist in the Arthur Schopenhauer tradition. Much of modern atheism is intellectually vacuous. But as popular movements go, it is still pretty good. There isn't likely to be a mass movement that I have any less criticism of.

Probably the best aspect of modern atheism is that there is a strong current of humanism in it. I think it is the case that people like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are admired despite being torture proponents, not because of it. What's more, I don't so much see myself as part of the atheist community in the sense that I read atheist blogs and go to atheist conventions. I see myself as a member of the growing numbers of people who just aren't religious. And by and large, this is a mighty fine group.

I found the recent release of the torture report as upsetting as it was unsurprising. So I was somewhat pleased to read Steve Benen's "This Week in God" today. Its focus was on a new Washington Post/ABC News poll on attitudes about torture. It confirms the results of a 2009 poll by Pew. As you've probably heard, Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of torture. Of those polled, 59% were just peachy with what the CIA did; only 31% had a problem with it. Obviously, that was not what pleased me.

This poll subdivided people by their religious affiliations. So Benen put together the following graph that sums up the main categories:

Benen pointed out that people with "no religion" were pretty much the only group in the report that were against torture. I wish the numbers were better than they are, but they are far better than average. And the major Christian groups are all worse than average. It's disgusting, but again, unsurprising. It goes along with my primary complaint against modern American Christians: their religion is all culture and no theology. The one thing they absolutely believe is that people like them are "good" and people not like them (e.g., Muslims) are "bad." Thus they don't really care. After all, it's not like anyone is suggesting burning the evildoers alive. (Not that they would be against that either.)

As much as I'm pleased that we non-believers demonstrate more humanity than average, this information is profoundly disturbing. We are, after all, an almost 80% Christian country. And the only takeaway from that is that Christianity is "right" and that Christians are oppressed whenever someone says "Happy holidays!" to them. We live in a sad world.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

American torture: Gul Rahmân and Dick Cheney

By Infidel753 

I don't actually know who Gul Rahmân was, and neither do most Americans, which is unfortunate. One salient fact about him is known, however -- he was not a terrorist. Nevertheless, due to an error, he was apparently arrested on suspicion of being one. He later died under torture in CIA custody.

Take a moment to let that sink in. An innocent man died under torture, torture inflicted by Americans, as part of a program officially sanctioned by the American government at the time.

The horror of the situation goes beyond that, however.  Here is part of an interview with Dick Cheney, in which the case came up: 

CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you, what do you say to Gul Rahman, what do you say to Sulaiman Abdula, what do you say to Khalid al-Masri? All three of these folks were detained, they had these interrogation techniques used on them. They eventually were found to be innocent. They were released, no apologies, nothing. What do we owe them? 

DICK CHENEY: Well -- 

CHUCK TODD: I mean, let me go to Gul Rahman. He was chained to the wall of his cell, doused with water, froze to death in C.I.A. custody. And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity. 

DICK CHENEY: -- right. But the problem I had is with the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield. Of the 600 and some people who were released out of Guantanamo, 30% roughly ended up back on the battlefield. Today we're very concerned about ISIS. Terrible new terrorist organization. It is headed by named Baghdadi. Baghdadi was in the custody of the U.S. military in Iraq in Camp Bucca. He was let go and now he's out leading the terror attack against the United States. I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent. 

CHUCK TODD: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released. 

DICK CHENEY: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are -- 

CHUCK TODD: Well, I'm asking you. 

DICK CHENEY: -- you going to know? 

CHUCK TODD: Is that too high? You're okay with that margin for error? 

DICK CHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.

And there you have it. Leave aside the consensus, among most who understand the issue, that torture almost never produces reliable or useful information. Cheney has "no problem" with using torture even though a quarter of the victims were innocent, even though at least one innocent person (and I certainly don't believe he was the only one) died under torture. This is a former Vice President of the United States, but the words coming out of his mouth sound better suited to Lenin or Himmler.

Cheney justifies the use of torture on the basis of the 9/11 attack, which was indeed a horrific atrocity. The problem is that almost every regime we have ever condemned for using torture could advance a comparable argument. North Vietnam, for example, lost a lot more than 3,000 innocent civilians to American bombing during the war in which it tortured John McCain. There are certain lines which a civilized state doesn't cross, even under that kind of provocation. Such standards are what distinguish us from a communist dictatorship or a fascist gangster-state.

Or used to.

McCain, the only Republican to really distinguish himself honorably in the wake of the torture report's release, understands this. The many members of his party who continue to defend the program and attack its detractors do not.

And this means that I owe some people an apology. In the past I've been very critical of bloggers who compared the Republican party to the Nazis. I believed that they were weakening a strong case against the Republicans by making an absurdly overblown comparison. Yes, there is much evil in the Republican Party, but comparing them to the Nazis was going much too far, offensively so.

Those bloggers were right. I was wrong. Not that the Republicans are guilty of everything the Nazis were guilty of, of course, but if a politician of Cheney's stature can defend torture, even torture of the innocent, and if a broad range of political figures from the party can continue to support that position, then yes, they are straying onto the same ideological turf.

These people have no idea what they've done. This program, and the continued defense of it by a major part of our political establishment, have done damage to our country's moral authority and global standing that can probably never be repaired.

A lot of ordinary Americans don't yet understand it either. As commenter Tommykey observed in response to last weekend's link round-up over at my blog: 

Of course, my Facebook feed was filled with people posting pictures of the Twin Tower burning with captions like "Waterboarding is fine with me" or some variations of approval for torture juxtaposed with a picture of 9/11, as if that automatically justifies it.

And, of course, from Pakistan to Morocco there are probably millions of people reading the revelations of the torture report and thinking, "Terrorist attacks on the United States are fine with me -- now."

(Cross-posted at Infidel753.)

Obama's bad bet on Republicans

By Frank Moraes

Last weekend, Jane Mayer wrote about "Torture and the Truth." I know that many people are thinking, "Torture! Again?! That's so last week!" Actually, this article is not about torture. But the truth of the matter is that, for me, torture will never be so last whatever. It's not that I ever thought that the United States was lily white, but I was appalled when Cheney started talking about the "dark side" and people began to discuss when torture might be okay. From grammar school on, I always thought that the willingness to torture was the prime thing that separated the "good guys" from the "bad guys." So I'm never getting over this. But that's not what I'm going to discuss here.

In Mayer's article, she discussed how Obama blew the response to this issue. By leaving it for so long to be dealt with by the Senate, he allowed it to become just another partisan issue. She quoted political science professor Darius Rejali: "It's becoming a lot like the death penalty." (I find this terrifying; I really do think that the Republicans have devolved into nothing short of fascism.) But it isn't like the issue was off the table. Mayer explained that in early 2009, pretty much all of Obama's advisers were in favor of "the formation of an independent commission." It wasn't done. "Obama, however, said that he didn't want to seem to be taking punitive measures against his predecessor, apparently because he still hoped to reach bipartisan agreement on issues such as closing Guantánamo."

I recently quoted Garry Wills's "The Problem With Obama." In it, Wills said that Obama is so keen to maintain continuity that he often (usually?) does the wrong thing. I think that is at work here. But there is a political aspect here as well — one that gets to the heart of why Obama was exactly the wrong president for this period. He was so eager to placate to stop people from attacking him as a foreign radical. And what he got for that was absolutely nothing. And that will continue going forward.

Can anyone doubt that if Ted Cruz is elected president in 2016 he will prosecute the previous administration for any actual scandal that turns up? The Republicans — almost twenty years ago when they were a hell of lot more reasonable than they are now — impeached a president because he lied about an affair with an intern. I'm not even convinced that if the Republicans control all of Washington in 2017 they won't continue on with their Benghazi and IRS fake scandal-mongering.

As I mention a whole lot around here, I'm not that ideological. I'm a pragmatist. That's why I gave the Democrats a pass on the CRomnibus. But there is a huge difference between knowing what is possible and pretending that you live in a world of fairies and elves where you can have all the candy you want. And that was certainly the world that Obama used to live in. And to a significant, but reduced, degree, I think he still does.

Politics is about power. Smart power. It isn't about rubbing your opponent's nose in his defeat. In fact, providing face-saving concessions to your enemies is a big part of correcting wielding power. (This is something that the United States is famously bad at internationally.) But it is not about cajoling. All Obama's efforts to entice and prove that he is a moderate (by our far-right-skewing system) have only hurt his efforts to get things done. If he had called for a single-payer health-care system, he would have been called a socialist. So he didn't call for a single-payer health-care system, and he was called a socialist.

Well played, Mr. President!

Afterword

For the record, I know that the reason we couldn't have a single-payer health-care system is because of all those Blue Dog Democrats — like Obama himself! I should point out, however, that the vast majority of those conservative Democrats were swept out of office in 2010, so I don't really know what they thought they were buying. And that was as predictable as anything in politics. Conservative Democrats get elected in nominally red districts. Outside of a wave, Democrats won't get elected there, so they are sure to lose the next time. So they might as well stand up for liberal policy.

(This is assuming that they believe in liberal policy. And I have to admit that I just don't know anymore.)

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Even some conservatives think Sarah Palin is an extraordinary idiot (not least for her gleeful torture enthusiasm)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So, yes, Sarah Palin, clamoring for attention, said that -- if I may paraphrase -- she's a gleeful torture enthusiast. And, yes, her gleeful torture enthusiasm went over really well with the retrograde morons who attended the NRA gunfest in Indianapolis. And, also, gleeful torture enthusiasm is alive and well on the right, and throughout the Republican Party, where human degradation thrives at its core and in its policies.

But there are exceptions.

Yes, some conservatives don't much care for Palin (actually, quite a few of them), and some even had the nerve to come out ferociously against her gleeful torture enthusiasm. For example:

Rod Dreher, The American Conservative:

Man, the 12 minute speech Sarah Palin gave to the NRA convention is awful. It's just witless, red-meat blathering, delivered in that nasal whine of hers that makes it sound like she's chewing wads of tinfoil. For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life. Palin invoked it to celebrate torture. Even if you don't believe that waterboarding is torture, surely you agree that it should not be compared to baptism, and that such a comparison should be laughed at. What does it say about the character of a person that they could make that joking comparison, and that so many people would cheer for it. Nothing good — and nothing that does honor to the cause of Jesus Christ.

Well, that's an overly religious view of the matter -- torture is torture regardless of what Christianity has to say about it (and the long history of brutality in the name Christianity means it has next to no credibility). So how about this:

Patrick Brennan, National Review:

Torture — waterboarding being something reasonable people may consider to constitute it — is and should be a question of grave moral consequence for Christians, and is for any Catholic familiar with the Catechism. Palin wasn’t even just jokingly comparing a serious violation of human dignity into one of the most important transcendental recognitions of it – she was mounting an expansive defense of something near torture, on the grounds that our prisoners ”would obviously have information on plots,” and therefore ought to, apparently, be subjected to a horrible practice not as a morally necessary last resort but a habit of quotidian intimidation. There’s a word for that kind of practice: barbaric. The Greeks used to use it to describe the other guys.

Well, okay, that's a Christian response as well, but, better. Yes, here's a conservative calling torture "a serious violation of human dignity" and Palin a barbarian. And that's awfully refreshing.

Sure, this is just a small minority view on the right. Generally, Republicans fall all over themselves espousing their pro-torture bona fides, pandering to the baser of the base instincts of the party base but also presenting such brutality as good in and of itself. But at least there's a bit of debate among conservatives over torture and at least some conservatives express something other than the violent bloodlust that coursed its way through Palin and her audience.

Bradley Manning to be found guilty today

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The show trial of Bradley Manning, the courageous whistleblower whose leaks documented U.S. military crimes and other misdeed and who for revealing the truth has been tortured in custody, is almost at an end:

After spending three years in custody, the man accused of the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history will learn Tuesday whether he has been found guilty of aiding the enemy.

A verdict from the judge in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning will be announced at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to a spokeswoman for the military district of Washington.

If found guilty on the aiding the enemy charge, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison. He has pleaded guilty to nearly a dozen lesser charges that carry a sentence of up to 20 years behind bars.

The aiding the enemy charge is ridiculous, just as the persecution of Bradley is outrageous, but it shouldn't come as a surprise if he's found guilty -- it's what the government wants, because it wants at all costs to prevent any more of the truth from getting out, and obviously this trial is an effort to send a message to anyone else who might want to follow Manning's lead.

But even if for whatever reason he gets off on that charge, there's hardly any doubt he'll get the max, or close to it, for the rest -- again, because a message must be sent, because the country's crimes are, apparently, top secret. Isn't this also why the government wants to make an example of Snowden as well?

In America, after all, you're only really free if you play by the very narrow, government-determined rules of the national security state.

According to #BradleyManning trial, U.S. govt says anyone who exposes its criminal and otherwise reprehensible activities is a traitor.
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) July 25, 2013

Obama had better have that pardon ready for #BradleyManning. Because this gross injustice is on him too. (He won't.)
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) July 25, 2013

Forgiving torture

By Frank Moraes 

I am often reminded that I'm not a very nice person. Most recently, this came to mind because Jonathan Bernstein wrote at PostPartisan, "How Do We Keep from Torturing Again?" This is coming off the Constitution Project report stating unequivocally that after 9/11, the United States, as a matter of government policy, tortured people in our custody. As I reported in an update to that story, Andrew Sullivan has called for a truth commission or something similar to address this unacceptable behavior.

Bernstein said much the same thing, but with a political scientist's eye: the only way we can prevent future episodes of government torture is to admit what we did. We can't be a nation where one party is against torture and the other is for it. In fact, that is exactly what we now have for reasons that should be clear to readers of this site. But this gets to the point about my not being a nice person. Bernstein wrote:

I've argued -- against many torture opponents -- that a Truth Commission, combined with blanket pardons and generous expressions of understanding for those who were responsible, as odious as what they did was, is actually the best way to proceed.

I think he is right, and yet I have trouble offering those generous expressions of understanding. But it isn't because I'm not forgiving -- I am very forgiving. It is just that I remain resentful as long as the wrongdoer does not admit his error. I think most people are like this.

Read more »

America tortured after 9/11

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Frank Moraes 

MJWS:

I highly recommend reading the report, or at least as much of it as you can, particularly the "Statement of the Task Force" and "Findings and Recommendations" -- that will take you just to page 25. Much of the rest is an extraordinarily detailed account of detainee treatment. The statement includes this:

The events examined in this report are unprecedented in U.S. history. In the course of the nation's many previous conflicts, there is little doubt that some U.S. personnel committed brutal acts against captives, as have armies and governments throughout history.

But there is no evidence there had ever before been the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.

In other words, what happened was historically awful. Which makes it even more unacceptable, and unjust, that the enablers, architects, and practitioners of America's massive post-9/11 torture regime have yet to be held to account for their crimes.

**********

FM:

It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture. That's not what I say; that's according to the nonpartisan, independent review conducted by The Constitution Project and released, as a 577-page report, yesterday.

I understand that a group with a name like "The Constitution Project" sounds like it's filled with a bunch of libertarian and pacifists who are outside the political mainstream. But that isn't really the case. It is a think tank that tries to bring the left and right of the political spectrum together to agree on constitutional matters. And the eleven members of panel were well represented by the two major parties. What's more, as Scott Shane of The New York Times explained, "[i]t is the most ambitious independent attempt to date to assess the detention and interrogation programs."

What is most significant about the report is that it is so unequivocal. When Dianne Feinstein et al, wrote their letter criticizing the film Zero Dark Thirty, they were careful never to use the word "torture." This is because, according the United States government, we never tortured anyone. Of course, this is just a semantic game: you say "torture," I say "enhanced interrogation techniques"; let's call the whole thing off?

Read more »

Torture worse than torture disclosure

By Frank Moraes 

Does irony still exist in the United States? I doubt it. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has been given two and a half years for leaking classified information. In the end, all of his charges were reduced to giving the name of one covert operative to a reporter. (Why does that sound familiar?) But in reality, Kiriakou has been prosecuted for leaking the information that the CIA was engaged in torture.

Let's see now, this prosecution follows how many indictments of people for engaging in torture? Oh, that's right: none! Because it is totally okay in the United States to torture anyone we claim is an "evil doer" but it is treasonous to tell anyone we are doing it. Hell, with all our military capacity, we don't have to be good, we can just enforce the appearance of good.

To top matters off, it's always good to know that we have a whole bunch of evil idiotic assholes passing judgement on all of us. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema was none too happy with the sentence. She thought it was way too light. And if that wasn't enough to establish her evil-stupid credentials, she said, "This is not a case of a whistleblower. This is a case of a man who betrayed a solemn trust."[1] Yeah, like trashing the Constitution and allowing free reign of the surveillance state.

Fuck the United States of America! Long may the elites rape it! 
__________

[1] Note that "man who betrayed a solemn trust" is more or less the definition of a whistleblower as seen from the inside.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Parody trailer: Zero Dark Thirty

By Frank Moraes

Ed. note: As I haven't seen the movie yet, I'm withholding comment, particularly with respect to its treatment of torture.

But it seems to me that the filmmakers, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, want to have it both ways, claiming it's both a historical document that tells the inside story of the hunt for bin Laden and a somewhat fictionalized account of what happened.

In most cases, this would be fine. Cinematic depictions of true stories always include dramatization. But in this case we're dealing with the issue of torture as well. Bigelow and Boal say that the depiction of torture doesn't amount to an endorsement. They're just showing the way it was. But was it? There is good reason to believe, based on all that we know of what happened, that the facts differ from what is presented in the film, that torture did not in fact lead to the acquisition of useful intelligence. This is why commentators like Glenn Greenwald and leading political figures like John McCain have been so critical of the film: because of its dishonesty, because it is wrong.

Again, normally this wouldn't matter much. There's always some looseness with the facts in historical films. But how are we supposed to have a meaningful discussion about what happened, about torture, based on what's presented in this film, if what's depicted in the film is wrong?

-- MJWS

**********

While making dinner recently, I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show. A commercial came on for the film Zero Dark Thirty, which readers of my site will know is a torture apologia that looks like a typical Hollywood action film. It has been attacked by three senators as being "grossly inaccurate."
The commercial had scenes from the movie with periodic quotes from all the idiot critics who are heaping praise on the film. I thought, what if instead we had quotes from the knowledgeable political commentators who have attacked the the film? So I did it, and here it is:


I'm more proud of this than any of the videos I have done, which doesn't say that much. But this came out exactly the way I envisioned. If you like it, give me a thumbs up over on YouTube.

Senate letter condemning Zero Dark Thirty

By Frank Moraes 

A remarkable thing happened yesterday. Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin, and John McCain sent a letter to Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. It was regarding the portrayal of torture in the new film, Zero Dark Thirty. Feinstein does it as the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

It is a most reasonable, if direct, letter. They point out that they understand that writers make things up to tell a more dramatic story. Their concern is with the opening of the film which displays on the screen, "Based on first-hand accounts of actual events." They call for the producers to make clear that torture was not helpful in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Read more »

A vote for Romney is a vote for torture

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, Romney, who channels Dick Cheney on this one, wants to return America to the barbarism and brutality of the George W. Bush years, embracing a policy that every civilized country has rejected -- including America under Barack Obama.

From the Times:

In one of his first acts, President Obama issued an executive order restricting interrogators to a list of nonabusive tactics approved in the Army Field Manual. Even as he embraced a hawkish approach to other counterterrorism issues — like drone strikes, military commissions, indefinite detention and the Patriot Act — Mr. Obama has stuck to that strict no-torture policy.

By contrast, Mr. Romney's advisers have privately urged him to "rescind and replace President Obama's executive order" and permit secret "enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives," according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum.

While the memo is a policy proposal drafted by Mr. Romney's advisers in September 2011, and not a final decision by him, its detailed analysis dovetails with his rare and limited public comments about interrogation.

"We'll use enhanced interrogation techniques which go beyond those that are in the military handbook right now," he said at a news conference in Charleston, S.C., in December. 

Remember this when you vote.

We still need to hold President Obama accountable on civil liberties

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm a proud Democrat and enthusiastic supporter of President Obama, but that doesn't mean I can't and won't be critical of president and party when they fall short of the progressive liberal principles I hold dear.

Indeed, I have been strongly critical of President Obama on a variety of matters over the past several years, not the least of which has been his disappointing record on civil liberties. Here, for example, is what I wrote in September of last year:

While I would argue that he has done a lot of good thus far in office, this remains the major blot on his record.

Actually, I'd call it a disgrace.

It may be that there have been political rationales behind these policies, including refusing to prosecute the war criminals of his predecessor's administration. Perhaps Obama and his advisors thought he needed to look tough so as to shake off the perception of inexperience and intellectual arrogance (as if Cheney wasn't an arrogant prick). Perhaps they calculated that any sign of weakness, or even perceived weakness, on national security would leave him vulnerable to Republican attacks and weaken his re-election chances.

Whatever.

The point is that these decisions were made and, ultimately, Obama must be held accountable for them -- and for driving a wedge between his presidency and his liberal-progressive base, the millions of people who bought into his promise of change we can believe in and expected if not revolutionary change at least something other than the brutality of the Bush-Cheney years.

In so many ways, in most ways, Obama has been a positive force for change -- think of health-care reform, marriage equality, the "DREAM" and dignity of undocumented Americans, and the country's improved international standing after eight years of Bush-Cheney warmongering. And while he has, to be fair, been an improvement of sorts on civil liberties, the simple fact is that he has kept a great deal of the Bush-Cheney national security state in place, and that continues to tarnish his presidency.

I concluded, "[o]ne can only hope that a second-term Obama would face greater and more sustained pressure to expand individual rights after this period of 9/11-inspired authoritarianism."

One can continue to hope, but the pressure will indeed have to come from outside. As Adam Serwer writes at Mother Jones:

In 2008, Democrats were eager to draw a contrast with what they then portrayed as Republican excesses in the fight against Al Qaeda. Since then, the Obama administration has in many cases continued the national security policies of its predecessor—and the Democratic Party's 2012 platform highlights this reversal, abandoning much of the substance and all of the bombast of the 2008 platform...

The distance between the 2008 and 2012 platform shows just how hard it has been, and starkly illustrates the extent to which the Democratic Party has given up on its 2008 promises to roll back the national security state that emerged and expanded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The platform does state that "practices must always be in line with our Constitution, preserve our people's privacy and civil liberties, and withstand the checks and balances that have served us so well," and, yes, the president did "[ban] torture without exception in his first week in office." That's hardly insignificant, but it's also not nearly enough -- as Serwer notes, there's still the Patriot Act, there's still Guantanamo Bay, there's still indefinite detention, and there's still racial profiling, on all of which the platform is silent.

Don't get me wrong. The choice in November remains crystal clear. And for all that Obama has done, or not done, in the area of civil liberties, there's no doubt that Romney would be far, far worse -- and that the Republicans are far, far worse than the Democrats.

And right now, just two months out, we have to focus on that choice, to make the distinction between the two options as clear as possible to voters. It's not about the lesser of two evils, it's about hope and opportunity on one side and privilege and brutality on the other -- and, yes, it's about accepting but not necessarily approving certain imperfections on the side we support.

To be sure, we need to remain critical. Party and president are important, but so too is principle -- and civil liberties are still under assault. And on this front the platform is hugely disappointing.

A win in November would mean four more years to hold President Obama accountable and to demand that our principles, core American values, trump the Bush-Cheney authoritarianism that remains. That's still our best hope for meaningful change.

By far.

Vote Bachmann off the island

By Nicholas Wilbur

Michele Bachmann needs help.

She needs a grammar tutor, a history lesson, and maybe some diversity sensitivity training. But more than anything else, she needs a tour guide who can lead her to the exit doors of this Republican presidential race.

She's a bigoted, right-wing, anti-government evangelical extremist, and her campaign, despite the early guidance of Ed Rollins, still has yet to recognize the inherent philosophical conflict of having a candidate who boasts, simultaneously but without irony, of being a Constitutionalist and a stalwart Creationist.

She's running as a Tea Party candidate despite the Tea Party's embarrassing approval rating, and though she benefits from the same mocking media attention that made Sarah Palin a national icon, the majority of Americans can't take her seriously, as her five percent polling numbers very clearly demonstrate.

We pay attention, Democrats at least, not because we're concerned, patriotic, and open-minded Americans and she's a viable candidate whose opinions elevate the foreign and domestic policy debates of this presidential election, but because, at heart, we're all blood-thirsty sadists who cackle in response to her gaffes and cheer like stoned frat kids at a football game whenever she steps forward claiming to represent the Republican Party.

It's not just her falsifications that are despicable, it's the desperation in her shrieking voice whenever she's on stage attempting to debate with domestic policy wonks like Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, or true evangelicals like Rick Santorum, or foreign relations geeks like Jon Huntsman. She's out of her league, and everybody but Bachmann knows it.

It's time for the GOP field to start shedding its third-string candidates, and for that five percent of Republicans who consistently tell pollsters that Bachmann is their favorite presidential contender, the straw that ought to break their backs came on November 12 during the CBS News/National Journal debate on foreign policy.

In response to a question asking whether or not she would allow the use of torture if she were miraculously elected commander in chief, Bachmann responded with an unequivocal "Yes."

"If I was president, I would use waterboarding because it was effective," she said. "Barack Obama is using the ACLU to run the CIA. We have no CIA interrogation anymore. It's as though Obama has decided to lose the War on Terror."

I'm not one so quickly to forgive those who shamelessly butcher the English language, but in this instance her usage of the past-tense conjugation "was" where she should have used a past tense subjective "were" in conjunction with the future-tense auxiliary "would" is secondary to the grave offenses and utter falsehoods of this statement.

The entire response is bullshit.

1) Waterboarding isn't effective, and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest otherwise.

2) The crack on the ACLU is commonplace among Republicans but not necessarily logical. The GOP's criticism and skepticism of the ACLU is akin to McCarthyism, and yet no conservative would ever acknowledge the utter hypocrisy of demagoguing an organization that represents Americans whose civil liberties, as guaranteed in the Constitution, have been violated. As a factual statement, this is absurd.

3) Remember the big media blitz following President Obama's executive order banning all guns of every kind in every city in America? Really? You missed it? It was front-page news in every paper in the country! It ran as a split banner story next to the other big news item of the year – the story about how the United States has stopped interrogating prisoners of war. It was a good article. Look it up on Google by typing "CIA ends interrogation."

4) On this one, Bachmann has a point. If Barack Obama's decision to end the United States's egregious violation of international law by discontinuing the Bush Administration's uses of "cruel and unusual punishment" isn't proof that Obama has "decided to lose the War on Terror," then the sky isn't blue and the earth is a one-dimensional triangle. Never mind that Obama killed Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. Never mind that he facilitated the emancipation of the Libyan people from a murderous dictator. The fact that Obama has given an emphatic thumbs down to waterboarding is evidence that he's a secret Muslim spy who's aiding future terrorist attacks on American soil.

Stupid people barking anti-government bromides are entertaining in the short term, but when it comes time to elect a president, or a vice president, intelligence matters. Michele Bachmann has none.

She's more than a slow-motion car accident. She's an eccentric, talent-devoid sideshow performer competing for the lead role in the psychobabble routine in an already overcrowded and unpopular Republican presidential political circus.

Being on the Intelligence Committee obviously doesn't require intelligence, because if it did Bachmann would know that practically drowning prisoners of war is significantly less effective in extracting useful information than promising virgins in heaven. And being a mother of 28 – which Bachmann has made the core of her candidacy – obviously isn't seen by the majority of Americans as a prerequisite for being the leader of the free world, as public opinion polls made clear a week after Bachmann won the Ames, Iowa straw poll and (very, very) briefly spurred national speculation of her possible-but-never-realized frontrunner potential.

There's a reason she's polling near the bottom of the pack, but there's no reason for her to continue this crusade. She should drop out of the race and go back to doing what good evangelical conservative Constitutionalist Creationist bigots do when they're not vying for the presidency – introducing obsolete bills in Congress reaffirming the dollar as the official U.S. currency, spreading conspiracies about how Sharia law might one day "usurp" the U.S. Constitution, and helping her husband cure gay people of their affliction.

Bachmann is an embarrassment to all who have ever taken pride in calling themselves Republican. It's time she gets voted off the island, and it's past time the voters in the sixth congressional district of Minnesota get a grammar tutor, a history lesson, and some diversity sensitivity training so they can vote this pock mark on the American government out of office.

The world would be a better place.

 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Santorum says McCain doesn't get torture

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Really, Rick Santorum? You don't think John McCain knows what torture is all about?

I get that you're a torture enthusiast like so many in your party, but are you really that much of a fucking idiot?

Dick Cheney, torturer-in-chief, emerges from his evil lair to advocate torture

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Dick Cheney thinks it's an "outrage" that the Obama Administration continues to investigate those who used torture in their interrogations of terror suspects:

Though it's unclear what role so-called enhanced interrogation played in finding bin Laden, Cheney told "Fox News Sunday" the techniques probably "contributed" and suggested the circumstances make the Justice probe all the more unsettling.

"It's unfortunate," Cheney said. "These men deserve to be decorated. They don't deserve to be prosecuted."

That's right, Cheney thinks the torturers are heros. That pretty tells you everything you need to know about him.

And he wants waterboarding back:

"It was a good program. It was a legal program. It was not torture," Cheney said. "If it were my call, I'd have that program ready to go."

Cheney said that with those techniques taken "off the table," it's not clear whether there's a reliable interrogation program that could be used if another high-value detainee with crucial information is captured.

Ah, but it was torture. Every decent human being knows that. (The Nazis certainly used it as torture.) And it was understood to be torture until Bush and Cheney and their minions needed to defend its use, and until the media obliged in advancing the Bush-Cheney lie.

And, in this case, it appears that torture didn't actually lead to Osama bin Laden's killing:

More and more evidence suggests a key piece of intelligence -- the first link in the chain of information that led U.S. intelligence officials to Osama bin Laden -- wasn't tortured out of its source. And, indeed, that torture actually failed to produce it.

"To the best of our knowledge, based on a look, none of it came as a result of harsh interrogation practices," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a wide-ranging press conference.

Moreover, Feinstein added, nothing about the sequence of events that culminated in Sunday's raid vindicates the Bush-era techniques, nor their use of black sites -- secret prisons, operated by the CIA.

"Absolutely not, I do not," Feinstein said. "I happen to know a good deal about how those interrogations were conducted, and in my view nothing justifies the kind of procedures that were used."

What Cheney is doing is what he and his ilk did when he was in office, stirring up fear to justify torture, and to try to secure public support for it, and essentially anything else he wanted to do as part of his "war on terror," from invading Iraq to building an authoritarian national security state at home, with the power of the Executive Branch threatening the very foundations of American democracy.

The use of torture has left a black mark on America. It is mirrored in Cheney's soul.

Torture and the truth in Obama's America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There's a lot to like, I suppose, about Obama's America, or, at least, about Obama's high-falutin' (and idealistic, if not delusional) rhetoric about America. It would seem to be a better place, than, say, Bush's America.

But not by much.

Sure, Obama deserves much of the credit for health-care reform (even if he didn't ever push for a public option and, on this as on pretty much every other issue, gave in to Republican demands without much of a fight and certainly without ever using his bully pulpit to achieve more progressive ends) and for pulling the economy back from the brink of utter catastrophe and for improving the country's standing around the world, but otherwise, as we look back over his first two-plus years, he has extended Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, protected Wall Street from being held accountable for the financial meltdown, and, much to his and the country's discredit, continued Bush's anti-democratic and illiberal national security state.

On this last point, here's yet another shameful case in point, via Glenn Greenwald:

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention as "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid," forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. [Yesterday], CNN report[ed], Crowley... "abruptly resigned" under "pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case." In other words, he was forced to "resign" -- i.e., fired.

So, in Barack Obama's administration, it's perfectly acceptable to abuse an American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from exercising in his cell, punitively imposing "suicide watch" restrictions on him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade. But speaking out against that abuse is a firing offense...

Of course, it's also the case in Barack Obama's world that those who instituted a worldwide torture and illegal eavesdropping regime are entitled to full-scale presidential immunity, while powerless individuals who blow the whistle on high-level wrongdoing and illegality are subjected to the most aggressive campaign of prosecution and persecution the country has ever seen. So protecting those who are abusing Manning, while firing Crowley for condemning the abuse, is perfectly consistent with the President's sense of justice.

As always, here's the problem? What's the alternative? This, but even worse, under Republican rule.

And so we who abhor what is going on -- the government's authority to invade privacy, among other things, under the Patriot Act; the treatment of Bradley Manning; Gitmo remaining open with detainees kept indefinitely and subjected to military "trials"; etc. -- end up backing Obama (and his Democratic enablers) just because the other side is worse. Which is hardly much of an endorsement of the president.

That's my pragmatism speaking. Ultimately, the choice is clear.

But that doesn't make this any better.

Whatever good it will do, if any at all, we must keep up the pressure on Obama and expose the injustices that are being committed under his rule, injustices for which he himself must be held accountable.

Glenn Greenwald and the "climate of fear"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Much of the political world has been talking about the Arizona shooting the past few days, but there remains a larger and more troubling development, namely, the U.S. government's manufacturing of a "climate of fear" that allows it to advance its interests both at home and abroad.

I highly recommend this essential post from Glenn Greenwald. Key passage:

So much of what the U.S. Government has done over the last decade has been devoted to creating and strengthening this climate of fear. Attacking Iraq under the terrorizing banner of "shock and awe"; disappearing people to secret prisons; abducting them and shipping them to what Newsweek's Jonathan Alter (when advocating this) euphemistically called "our less squeamish allies"; throwing them in cages for years without charges, dressed in orange jumpsuits and shackles; creating a worldwide torture regime; spying on Americans without warrants and asserting the power to arrest them on U.S. soil without charges: all of this had one overarching objective. It was designed to create a climate of repression and intimidation by signaling to the world -- and its own citizens -- that the U.S. was unconstrained by law, by conventions, by morality, or by anything else:  the government would do whatever it wanted to anyone it wanted, and those thinking about opposing the U.S. in any way, through means legitimate or illegitimate, should (and would) thus think twice, at least.

That a large percentage of those brutalized by this system turned out to be innocent -- knowingly innocent --  is a feature, not a bug:  that one can end up being subjected to these lawless horrors despite doing nothing wrong only intensifies the fear and makes it more effective. The power being asserted is not merely unlimited and tyrannical, but arbitrary. And now, the Obama administration's citizen-aimed, due-process-free assassination program, its orgies of drone attacks, its defense of radically broad interpretations of "material support" criminal statutes, and its disturbing targeting of American anti-war activists with subpoenas and armed police raids are all part of the same tactic. Those contemplating meaningful opposition to American action are meant to be frightened. The anguished, helpless cries of 18-year-old American Gulet Mohamed, after a week of being disappeared and brutalized by America's close ally, serves an important purpose.

Make sure to read the whole thing. You'll notice that Greenwald is not engaging in demagoguery and is not using violent rhetoric to whip his readers up into a mouth-frothing frenzy. He is simply doing what the media are not, which is reporting on what is actually going on in the world, including what the government is doing, and encouraging people to educate themselves and to demand that their democratically-elected government not engage in undemocratic and illiberal practices that violate America's purported principles and ideals:

There has been much talk over the last several days, in the wake of the Arizona shooting, about attempts by some citizens to instill physical fear in elected officials. That's a worthwhile and necessary topic, but the fear that government officials are attempting to instill in law-abiding, dissenting citizens is far more substantial and sustained, and deserves much more attention than it has received.

Indeed.

Free Bradley Manning!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Glenn Greenwald, from a must-read post:

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

In other words, Manning is being tortured. (Read the whole post.) And for what?

For revealing the truth.

We should all, those of us who care about liberty and freedom and oppose authoritarian government (which a government that detains anyone in this manner and on such grounds certainly is), should be outraged -- and should demand not just his human treatment but his release.

"They said I could"

By Mustang Bobby

I've pretty much stayed out of the details of George W. Bush's memoirs as he goes around the country on his book tour (including Miami), but this snippet caught my attention.

Former President George W. Bush was asked during an interview last night why he believes waterboarding is legal.

"Because the lawyer said it was," Bush said. "He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer, but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do."

Aside from the fact that waterboarding is not legal -- it's torture and we prosecuted people as war criminals for doing it during World War II -- even if it was, just because the lawyers said it was okay doesn't make it right. It's pretty clear that the Bush administration went out and lawyer-shopped until they found folks like John Yoo who could come up with a justification for committing war crimes in the name of fighting terrorism and couching it in the Nixonian idea that when the president does it, it's not illegal. That's the excuse of a dictatorship.

Mr. Bush seems very proud of his ability to make decisions quickly and not stew over them once he's made them.  He -- and his minions -- seem to think that's an asset and they look down their noses at people like Barack Obama who actually consider all sides and consequences of a situation. They call it "decisiveness" (the former president might call it "decisioning"). But leadership isn't about that; it's about doing the right thing, not just the legal thing. And Mr. Bush, who can't help but sound somewhat adolescent in his invoking of "they said I could," comes across less as a leader of a nation but as a vindictive and intemperate thug who isn't above committing a war crime.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Waterboarding is torture except when the U.S. government says it isn't and The New York Times and other major newspapers obediently stop calling it torture

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm a day late getting to this -- thanks, Canada Day! -- but an extremely important study was released the other day showing that the mainstream media, including large outlets like The New York Times, essentially caved in to the government, that is, to the Bush-Cheney administration, when it came to reporting on waterboarding as torture:

Is waterboarding torture? If you picked up a major U.S. newspaper before 2004, the answer would likely be yes, according to a new Harvard University study.

But in the post-9/11 world, when the practice of immobilizing and virtually drowning detainees became a politically charged issue, that straightforward definition grew murky. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, examined coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and found a noticeable shift in language concerning waterboarding.

"From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture," the study noted. But the study found that things changed in the years when "war on terror" became part of the American lexicon.

The New York Times defined waterboarding as torture, or effectively implied that it was, 81.5 percent of the time in articles until 2004, the study found. But during 2002-2008 — when the George W. Bush White House made a concerted effort to normalize harsh interrogation methods for use on terror detainees — the Times "called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles." That’s 1.4 percent of the time.

The study also noted a disparity in how newspapers defined waterboarding when the United States employed the practice versus its use by other nations — in the latter instance, newspapers more readily called the practice torture.

So much, it would seem, for journalistic independence and integrity -- to the extent that the media had much left anyway. Given how the media establishment operates, after all, this is hardly all that surprising.

Andrew Sullivan is justifiably furious: 

But it is not an opinion that waterboarding is torture; it is a fact, recognized by everyone on the planet as such - and by the NYT in its news pages as such - for centuries. What we have here is an admission that the NYT did change its own established position to accommodate the Cheneyite right.

So their journalism is dictated by whatever any government says. In any dispute, their view is not: what is true? But: how can we preserve our access to the political right and not lose pro-torture readers? If you want a locus classicus for why the legacy media has collapsed, look no further.

*****

This is not editing. It is surrender. It is not journalism; it is acquiescence to propaganda. It strikes me as much more egregious a failing than, say, the Jayson Blair scandal. Because it reaches to the very top, was a conscious decision and reveals the empty moral center in the most important newspaper in the country.

When historians look back and try to understand how the US came to be a country that legitimizes torture, the New York Times will be seen to have played an important role in euphemizing it, enabling it, and entrenching it. The evidence shows conclusively that there is not a shred of argument behind the dramatic shift in 2002 - just plain cowardice.

In my view, the people who made that decision should resign. They have revealed that they are nothing but straws in the wind - in a time when moral clarity and courage were most needed.

Extremely well put. And I agree.

For more, see Steve Benen and, of course, Glenn Greenwald, who had a fantastic post on Wednesday responding to the study. As he correctly points out, such "compliant behavior makes overtly state-controlled media unnecessary."

It's great, and essential to any liberal democracy, to have freedom of the press. But what if the press doesn't want to be free?