Dirty baker's dozen

Salon summarizes the case for some domestic high-value detainees. No, not a case for torturing them, only the case for detaining them.

Depends what definition 'meets' meets

The Pentagon says Guantánamo meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. This may well be true - now - but there's a short limit how far I'm willing to take on faith a self-assessment, particularly with the brass so heavily salted with holdover Bushists.

What I'd really like to see is a self-assessment that shows enough honesty to admit that for many years during Duhbya and Darth's rule (with Rummy raining snowflake memos down on the Pentagon), the way Guantánamo was run openly flouted Geneva.

That would be a start to recovering the traditional credibility of the military, which it had painstakingly rebuilt since Vietnam, only to fritter it all away on Iraq and torture.

Well, duh

News flash: Don Rumsfeld responsible for prisoner abuses. Abuse and torture of prisoners, both the ones who are bad people and those who are not, was American policy, not some accident or excess. It came from the top. Rumsfeld had a definitive role approving each iota of policy, but of course "taking the gloves off" came from Cheney via his dauphin, Duhbya.

Savagery

The Mumbai terrorists tortured their victims, especially the Israelis.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Yes, these animals are (were, actually) vile, nasty, bigoted, vicious war criminals. It's hard to feel bad about the response of Indian security forces:

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said ..., "Their faces were beyond recognition."

There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye."

It's a sad and mirthless irony that the Islamist terrorists were defaced like the Buddhas at Bamiyan and many other ancient statues.

Savagery begat more savagery in Mumbai. Nor are our hands clean.

In Afghanistan, we did not pick out civilians for torture the way the Islamists in Mumbai did. What we did, however, was to outsource that to our surrogates on the ground, and they chose whoever they wanted for internment at Bagram or Guantánamo. But, other than by hopeless and indefinite confinement, we (probably) didn't torture the low value sources. We can be so proud that we picked our torture victims for cause, rather than randomly - or racistly (right, no anti-Muslim bigotry here!).

Then again, at Abu Ghraib, we tortured widely, including some who were obviously guilty of nothing more than petty crime. Including some for whom no guilt could be established to even a low standard. The Bushist myth is that this torture was not a matter of policy, but it's clear from the spread of techniques that the violated policy was the policy against photography. A few bad apples, my ass. But that's our rationalization.

Of course, at Guantánamo, Don Rumsfeld specifically approved escalating tortures to be used against individual prisoners. But at least he unleashed them narrowly.

Those who required more torture than that we outsourced again, bagging them and tagging them for rendition. We didn't know for sure what would happen to them. Of course, we're such innocents of the evil men can devise to break other men that we can't be held accountable for that. Which is why we had to render them to the torturers.

Our claims of national virtue in the Bushist age are very small and hang by very thin reeds of rationalization. In other more dangerous times, this was not always so. I'm not urging that all these acts have moral equivalence, but they're much closer to each other than I'm used to having to own up to.

Human beings are capable of savagery, not just some of us, but most, maybe all. I believe that I am, too. Deep inside there's a place of pain and fear that overrides sweet reason and sympathy and the morals we've been taught. That's why we have laws. Had.

That's why the least Obama can do is close Guantánamo.

Choose your poison

For all those bleating sheep who pulled the wool over their own eyes and refused to believe the obvious fact that torture was (and, thanks to the likes of John McCain, still is) the policy of the Bushists, there are two choices:

1. Admit that fact, or
2. Deny it until you've been waterboarded, and then admit it.

I recommend option 1.

For this, George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld received the Medal of Freedom. An all-expenses-paid trip to the Hague in a barely heated cargo hold would have been more appropriate.

Conscience-free

Duhbya can sleep at night because he lacks any conscience. He can't find any humanity in his enemies. They aren't people. He doesn't just despise them, he thoroughly hates them. He is, like so many others, a Christian in name only.

Duhbya and Darth Cheney and David Addington and John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld have loosed on our enemies torture. That word is its due and the least we can offer to describe waterboarding. Christopher Hitchens may be easily despised in other venues, but this is how he puts it:

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning...

Many times before we have described this as torture, as we were learning it from Communist enemies practicing it on us in Korea and Vietnam. At the time, we universally abhorred it. Now many Americans defend it as a necessity, the failed Nuremberg defense, a defense we never accepted when the Chinese did it any more than when the Nazis did.

We said it was a war crime, a crime against humanity. It still is.

Just trying to help

Despite all the paper trail and all the centralization of authority and all the urgings from the White House and the Cabinet to "take the gloves off," some naifs still found it plausible that the desire to torture prisoners came from below. Rummy was just trying to help with their desperate pleas for guidance; he didn't really want to torture.

Rumsfeld is a man who modeled military strategy on the successes of the Wehrmacht (note: no, I'm not calling him a Nazi). Blitzkrieg, centralized command and control, shock and awe. He was not a Secretary who fostered improvisation (other than planning for security post-campaign). He was not shy about slapping down anyone who had the temerity to disagree with him.

If some colonel had written him from Guantánamo demanding guidance on torture and Rummy didn't want it, could anyone in the world believe he'd meekly go along? Bullshit.

Torture was the considered policy of the Bushists from very early on. It was obvious to anyone strong enough to notice that the emperor wasn't even wearing a fig leaf, much less new clothes.

Office of military propaganda

Despite continually sniffing the air for bullshit, even I didn't have my bullshit detector turned up high enough. Sure, I was skeptical of uniformed military analysts, mostly just for their personal and institutional loyalties. I didn't expect to find bias consciously cultivated by the Pentagon through selection, access, and conflicts of interest.

By early 2002, detailed planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.

Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

So, they set out to create the perception, and goddamn the reality. They ran the government like a business, and that meant they needed referenceable accounts, no matter what sweeteners they needed to get those references.

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. [Torie] Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. [Brent] Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”

It seems as if the New York Times is finally asking how they got so snookered by the Bushist propaganda during the rush to war. It's a belated but good start.

Update: Fine phrasing at Whiskeyfire:

[I]f you want a war and know perfectly well you can't convince anyone that it's a good idea unless you're dishonest about it, you probably should rethink your belligerence.

Our grandchildren's money

Unsigned editorials are seldom useful, but this one is an exception. It's really a news analysis and should have run on the front page, but still, it contains a strong fact basis that everyone should be aware of.

In the run-up to the war, President Bush's top economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, said it might cost as much as $200 billion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the actual amount would be just $50 billion to $60 billion, calling Lindsey's projection "baloney," much as Rumsfeld had belittled General Eric Shinseki's estimate that it would take several hundred thousand US troops to fight the war successfully.

Both Lindsey and Rumsfeld were far from the mark. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University's Linda Bilmes have just published "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict," and they consider that figure a conservative estimate.

$3 trillion! It's a debt that our grandchildren will find hard to pay off.

Update: From Linda Bilmes, more detail.

More judicial bullshit

Try to wrap your head around this "logic":

"Criminal conduct is not per se outside the scope of employment," a requirement for bringing a claim under the Alien Tort Statute, said the decision by appeals Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush.

The four men challenged the methods Rumsfeld and the military officers used, but the former detainees don't allege that the defendants "acted as rogue officials or employees who implemented a policy of torture for reasons unrelated to the gathering of intelligence," the court said.

"Therefore, the alleged tortious conduct was incidental to the defendants' legitimate employment duties," the ruling added.

Three Bush-appointed judges say it's o.k. to commit crimes as part of their "legitimate" duties that they couldn't commit if they were rogue officials.

The law in the hands of Bushists really is an ass.

Bushist facts

There is no real controversy about whether waterboarding is torture. It is now when Americans do it, and it was when the Nazis, the communist Chinese, the Viet Cong, and the Soviets did it. It even was during the Inquisition, but the New York Times still says:

To the already fierce controversy over whether the Bush administration authorized torture has been added the specter of a cover-up.

Duhbya and Rummy (with Darth Cheney in the dark shadows) authorized waterboarding, among other tortures. There's no doubt about it. They had everyone ask mother-may-I from Rummy. They even had Gonzo and John Yoo write down their transparently bullshit rationales that add up to two giggle-provoking assertions newer before imagined to be plausible in American law:

1. The President can do whatever he wants, especially in wartime, but really anytime.
2. Every restraint of law, domestic or international, is quaint - after all, al Qaeda is so much more scary than the Soviets and their ICBMs that we should all wet ourselves.

The rest of the story is such good work that the sentence I quote above was probably added by a chickenshit editor.

Missing the point

Robin Wright, in the Washington Post, recounts some of Rummy's most flamboyant memos and draws conclusions about his "brusque management style". Uh, Robin, the real story is Rumsfeld's thoroughgoing full-of-shitness, delusion, and willful detachment from reality.

Silence is assent

I'll be interested to read this whole article sometime outside working hours, but the first page is replete with what's wrong with our political culture.

An elite insider (from Harvard no less) resigns in protest but doesn't say anything in public that could actually raise the issues he supposedly cares about.

After leaving the Office of Legal Counsel, Goldsmith was uncertain about what, if anything, he should say publicly about his resignation. His silence came to be widely misinterpreted.

Whose fault was that? Instead, he waits four years and then publishes a book that whitewashes his own role in the finlandization of Congress.

As an insider, he feared international accountability for the Bushists:

While at the Pentagon, Goldsmith wrote a memo for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning that prosecutors from the International Criminal Court might indict American officials for their actions in the war on terror. Goldsmith described this threat as “the judicialization of international politics.”

Yeah, just like Nuremberg. Look, it's pretty simple, Goldsmith: Those memos you "fought against" were put into practice by the Gonzo, Rummy, and Duhbya at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the black sites, and no doubt many other locations. You had a moral obligation to speak out against this, and you didn't.

But, in elite circles, all that matters is personality and manners:

When I asked whether he thought Gonzales should have resigned and whether Addington should follow, he demurred. “I was friends with Gonzales and feel very sorry for him,” he said. “We got along really well. I admired and respected Addington, even when I thought his judgment was crazy. They thought they were doing the right thing.”

They couldn't possibly be war criminals. I like them!

Feh.

Today's comments

On Philosoraptor:

As I watch Gonzales (until my own retching distracts me), I see a man supremely confident of his safety and position. He knows Duhbya has his back personally.

Rummy may have been arrogant, but he didn't have this same confidence, even though he was a Cheney man. Maybe being a Cheneyite made Rummy know that he was disposable at some level. Scooter Libby surely knows that.

I don't think Duhbya would initiate a plan to scooterize his own wounds by sacrificing Gonzo. Rove might, however, and no matter what Gonzo might think as a loyal courtier, Rove is the only indispensable staffer in the White House.

Inertia is a more likely reason for Gonzo's thumb in Congress's eye. The Bushists are so used to giving everyone the finger they can't stop.

Impeaching Gonzales would make impeachment of Duhbya and Darth more likely, not less. Get a little momentum going, turn over more rocks, and find the inevitable dirty dealings, and there will be more popular pressure for a real remedy.

Will it be enough? I only hope so.

Torture is the policy of the Bush Administration

Vanity Fair (by way of Altercation)...

It's good to have details piling up from several sources, but the fact of torture as policy from the top has been obvious for close to four years simply from the public statements of Rummy, Darth, Duhbya, Gonzo, and John Yoo. And, of course, the nasty bastard Antonin Scalia is prepared to rule in favor of anything that looks like Jack Bauer.

None of the Bushist willingness to phony up transparent legalistic justifications changes the Nuremburg precedent that all of these guys (except Scalia, dammit), not to mention Mitchell and Jessen, can be prosecuted as war criminals.

Justice delayed

A friend writes:

I started the new Congressional term thinking, why bother with impeachment. Now I feel that since Congress isn't doing anything else, at least let's tarnish Bush's image a bit. Is it too late to impeach Reagan for Iran Contra? Conducting a war explicitly banned by Congress was the ultimate act of an imperial president.

I think there was once an impeachment after the fact, though I doubt the defendant was dead at the time, which would run pretty hard against our tradition. Since Ken Lay’s Enron convictions were on appeal when he died, they were vacated by the court after his death. I find that a little extreme, but there it is.

Impeachment is necessary. Unfortunately, it’s probably also impossible. I agreed with Nancy Pelosi that it should be off the table, though I didn’t think it should be entirely out of the kitchen. I hoped instead that investigations would bring a popular groundswell that would put it back on the agenda. Every time the Bushists stonewall – which is really all they have left – make them do it in a way that exposes their brazen criminality.

Then try Duhbya, Darth, Rummy, and Gonzo et al for war crimes (torture, mainly) after they leave office. (Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.)

Gonzo and Duhbya in a rowboat

Torture and the death penalty are in the same boat. And Alberto Gonzales is rowing Duhbya around in both of them. (What an ugly twist on The Life of Pi!)

Certainly, there are convicts who deserve death, for whom even death may be too good. There are also easily imagined scenarios where torture is obviously and overwhelmingly utilitarian and thus has a claim to morality and even obligation.

Alan Dershowitz has argued that we need torture warrants and a legal review process to approve them sparingly and justly. I look at our attempts to administer the death penalty justly and fairly (and I'm just not relying on the banality of evil seen in Gonzo and Duhbya), and I don't have great confidence in the usefulness of a legalism that permits torture.

In fact, the central problem of torture under the Bushists is that they made it the policy of their regime. They didn't just wink at it or tolerate a few excesses; they wrote memos justifying it legalistically (note: not legally) even while, for public consumption, they claimed that 'torture' meant only 'maiming or killing', which allowed them to make the Orwellian claim that they were not, oh no, torturing. And they promoted successful practitioners from Gitmo to Iraq.

In extremis, torture may be permissible, but it's not permissible to legalize it. Those who are closest to the need must take the risk if they think it is worth it, and we must have the right to second guess them and even punish them if we disagree. That's the harsh reality. (24, by the way, even agrees, or it did in Day 4 anyway; I found Day 6 unwatchable.)

A good analogy is how we handle cannibalism. We don't legalize it and define the circumstances when it is appropriate (Alive!, say). We recognize that it is illegal or at least immoral but accept a necessity defense. So it should be with torture.

Not every act-utilitarian moral act is subject to rendering into rule-utilitarian law.

The precedent punishment for torture in pursuit of war, particularly war of choice, is the death penalty. Reason forces me to acknowledge that both Gonzo and Duhbya are eligible for prosecution, along with Rummy and Darth Cheney, among many others.

It was for reasons such as this that the Republicans during the Clinton years refused to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague. When out of office, the Bushists also might want to consider not travelling to Belgium, for example, to avoid its almost American sense of its own jurisdiction. No ex post facto problem there!

If these alleged war criminals are ever duly convicted convicted, I'd be satisfied with them receiving the same punishment as Rudolf Hess. Hell, I'd be ecstatic.

(Originally a comment on Philosoraptor.)

Bklsnarg

Bklsnarg has been the policy of the Bush Administration. The fact that bklsnarg includes all the elements formerly pertaining to the word 'torture' does not mean that U.S. policy allows torture, since that definition has now been changed.

We'd let you read the new definition, but it's top secret eyes only, so we would have to imprison or shoot you if we did let you read it. You wouldn't want that, now would you? No? Thank you for your democratic consent to the policy, which conforms to all the laws of the land, except for those we don't have to obey, which really is all of them in time of war. And the war could last forever, and its battlefield is everywhere.

But of course we're fighting for your freedom.

Originally posted here on Philosoraptor, and there's more to boot.

Don't trigger the trap

"War on terror? We're talking about Iraq. And in Iraq, the Administration's incompetence, top to bottom, has failed to win the peace we all want. Instead, it has left our brave men and women bleeding there every day."

And, "The American people now know that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, even if Pres. Bush and Sec. Rumsfeld can't admit it."

Originally a comment on DailyKos.