Obama: The New Torture President

I've cut President Obama a lot of slack over many things that put "the left" into an uproar. I didn't expect him to be a liberal president. I understand the difficulty of balancing competing interests. But the one thing, the only thing, I expected him to do was to uncategorically reject the Bush legacy of torture. So this, Mr President, is not just wrong. It's evil.:

P.J. Crowley, the state department spokesman, stepped down Sunday after saying publicly that treatment of Wikileaks suspect Pfc. Bradley Manning in military detention has been “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” [...]

The remark by Mr. Crowley last week to a small audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first reported by the blogger Philippa Thomas, was rejected by none other than President Obama at a press conference on Friday. Mr. Obama said that he had been assured the treatment of Private Manning was “appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.”

No Mr. President. It is most certainly not “appropriate" or in the slightest "meeting our basic standards.” I don't care what Manning did wrong. Crowley was only telling the truth. America does not torture. Or at least it didn't until Bush became president. And now you blithely excuse and enable it. There aren't sufficient words in our language to express my disgust and disappointment.

Major meltdown

Well, Petraeus endorsed closing Gitmo and said we need to stop torturing prisoners in an interview this week. Which of course I was happy to pass along to the crew at Detroit News. There's some serious head exploding going on among the far right regs in the comment section. They're working hard to maintain the cognitive dissonance today. Funny.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Torture apologist gets waterboarded - video

TPM finds the video of Mancow's waterboarding. You watch it happen and really, it doesn't look that bad. But he doesn't sound so macho now.



So who will be the next torture apologist to try to do better? As Zachary points out, it's useful to remember that Mancow knew they weren't going to hurt him and had medical help standing by in case anything went wrong. Neither was he fully secured to the bench. Imagine what it would be like if you can't move at all and can't ask them to stop as soon as it gets scary.

Update: Jesse Ventura challenges Hannity to be next.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Saving America

Quote of the day:

"Bad jokes and gay marriage are destroying the country but torture will save it." ~ Jon Stewart

Video putting it in context here. [hat tip HBK]

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Who's to blame for torture

Mark Danner had a weighty piece on torture this week that leaves me reassessing my position. I don't really believe that the last time the Bush administration used torture techniques was in 2003, but that aside, it's a good point that the blame for allowing this to happen doesn't rest solely on the Bush White House.

He makes a strong argument for an investigation but against immediate prosecution.

Like most mystiques built on secrecy, the mystique of torture will only disappear once a cold hard light has been shone on it by trustworthy people who can examine all the evidence and speak to the country with authority. We need an investigation that will ruthlessly analyze the controversial and persistent assertions that torture averted attacks and will place alongside them the evidence that it has done great harm to the United States, not only to the country's reputation for following and upholding the law but also to its ability to render justice. In torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his fellows we have created a class of permanent martyrs, unjustly imprisoned in the eyes of the world because they cannot be legitimately tried and punished. We have let torture destroy justice.

Those who break the law should be punished. This includes those who torture no less than those who kill. But prosecutions of those who tortured, if they come before a public investigation, will not end the argument. On the contrary, they will appear to much of the country as yet another partisan turn in the bitter politics of national security, launched to persecute those who only did what was necessary to protect the country. They will encourage those who defend torture to espouse even more bitterly a corrosive counter-narrative according to which only those who torture can be trusted to protect Americans.

I've been thinking the opposite until now. By that I mean, I don't have much faith in government investigations and thought taking it straight to court would be more efficient. But I think he's right that going that route would only solidify the opposition. How to assemble a respected group of investigators however, is another question. I wonder if anyone would be credible to those who believe the only way to keep us safe is to take on the tactics of those we fight against.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Random right wing idiocy

David Broder is an idiot and I would love to know when the WaPo is going to stop posting his specious arguments and inane projections about "what people think." The guy takes a cab ride and thinks talking to the driver makes him the new Margaret Mead.

I've been posting on torture like a madwoman at DetNews for the last couple of days and hear the same sorry excuses for avoiding investigations in the comment section. What is it about judicial investigations that they don't get? The whole point is to establish whether or not there was wrongdoing. And as these excusers were so fond of saying all the years Bush was trampling our civil rights with things like illegal domestic surveillance, if the authorizers of torture did nothing wrong, then they have nothing to worry about. Let them be either convicted or exonerated as established by the rule of law. Isn't that what we were supposed to be protecting when they "went to war" in the first place?

On a different note, a chart is worth 1000 words. These people could be taking boats to the top of the Empire State Building and still be denying there's a problem.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Reclaiming our soul

It's obvious to me that the Villagers' insistence on avoiding any investigation of the torture policy is rooted in a desire to cover up their own complicity in allowing to happen. Krugman nails it in a column today.

For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way. [...]

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.

That's exactly it. As I said at the Detroit News, where I'm doing the bulk of my posts on this, either we stand for the rule of law for everyone, or we stand for nothing.

Update: Krugman posts an addendum to this column. The defining moment.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Bush on torture

I'm getting a late start today because I've decided to move out of town and am starting the house search. I consider moves like this my own private torture. But Mikevotes has the quote of the day on the subject.

"Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere... I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture."

~George W. Bush, June 2003

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Sign against torturers

Today's point and click activism: Petition AG Holder to appoint an special prosecutor to investigate torture. I'm sure you need no further instructions.

Obama releases torture memos, won't prosecute CIA

After much internal wrangling, the Obama administration decided to release the Bush era legal memos that authorized torture of prisoners. Obama indicated he wasn't interested in prosecuting the CIA agents who conducted the torture during interrogations.

I'm okay with that. The agents were relying on legal opinions from the DOJ. Prosecuting them makes as little sense as having scapegoated the guards at Abu Ghraib for following orders from higher-ups. The people who authorized the torture are the ones that should be prosecuted, though I think it's unlikely they will be. Still, it at least exposes the Bush regime's criminality and explodes the myth that the memos could never be released on national security concerns. It's better than nothing.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Tainted by torture

I don't know whether Abu Zubaida is guilty of anything or not. Chances are he's probably not a nice man who wished to do the US harm, but we'll never know for sure because any evidence against him was negated by torture. Worse yet, our government wasted millions chasing down false 'leads' he furnished under duress.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Not only that, "within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida." They knew he wasn't a mastermind so they basically tortured him to get to confess to anything. Interestingly he was the one who fingered Jose Padilla, whom I remind you was not convicted of any terrorism charges in the end. Suddenly the "lost CIA tapes" in that trial make more sense. One suspects they were connected to the torture of Zubaida.

I'd note in passing, that the article is based almost solely on unnamed sources and unidentified court documents. In four pages, there are two attributed quotes. One to his lawyer and one to a former CIA agent. And a quote from a Cheney TV interview where he claimed the tortured confessions had led to dismantling "credible" threats. If that were true, don't you think they would have leaked the thwarted plots to the media at the time?

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Liars and bankers and spooks, oh my!

Some short takes on the morning buzz.

Shorter Santelli: I am not a paid shill for the far right smear machine. Honest.

Felix Salmon: "Rather, the scandal is that AIG could have earned billions of dollars by selling insurance against a meltdown, even as it was wholly incapable of paying out on those policies."

Under coverup: "The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of "high value" al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed yesterday, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees, three sources said."

War powers: "The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants."

Sadly, I think the culprits will never be held accountable for their crimes.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Give the people what they want

The smug blitherati of the Beltway, self-appointed keepers of the conventional Beltway widom, insist daily that they know what Americans think. The polling suggests otherwise. It seems a majority of Americans don't want us to torture, do want to see Gitmo closed, want due process in US courts of law, even for alleged terrorists and think the Bush White House should be at least investigated to determine the extent of their illegal activities.

The only Americans who don't want this are the elite media and staunch Republicans. Shocking. Think it has anything to do with complicity?

Update: Barack gets it. He shut down the secret CIA prisons today.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]

Bush admits his mistakes - Updated with video

Bush held his last presser today. I missed it live but I expect the youtubes will be arriving shortly. Meanwhile, CNN reports Bush admitted to some mistakes. This was the most important one in his mind.

"Clearly putting a 'Mission Accomplished' (banner) on an aircraft carrier was a mistake," Bush said. "It sent the wrong message."

Only because it became the internationally recognized shorthand for epic fail and will likely remain the longest running joke to the end of time. Bush is also sorry for some of the other dumb stuff he said. He didn't elaborate, but 'bring 'em on" springs immediately to mind. Further, in retrospect he thinks he should have squandered his political capital on pushing immigration reform instead of trying to destroy Social Security.

Ignoring Katrina was not a mistake in his mind. He distills it down to how awfully distracting it would have been if he had toured the devastation personally. He's probably right about that, but apparently fails to grasp the difference between making a personal appearance and ignoring it altogether while being photographed at fundraisers strumming the guitar.

Also not a mistake was authorizing torture. In fact, he brags about it.



They, and by they I suppose he means himself, Cheney and their closest sycophants, may believe they tortured a lot of 'actionable intelligence' out of Mr. Mastermind, but the consensus of those who were involved deems the information to have been useless. I'd also think that we'll never be able to hold the man to account because the evidence is tainted by torture. But I don't suppose Bush will ever torture his 'beautiful mind' with that reality.

Update: The YouTubes are beginning to arrive. Here's a good one TPM put together of the highlights. A straight unedited clip on the burdens of office.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]

The universe works in mysterious ways

AG Mukasey collapsed at the podium last night as he was giving a speech to the Federalist Society, just as he was defending the Bush administration's use of torture. [video] The AP is reporting this morning that he's okay and he just fainted. No sign of a stroke or anything serious. Of course, I take no pleasure in his ill health and would wish him a speedy recovery on a humanitarian level but you have to admit the timing of his fainting spell was rather karmic.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Waterboard Thrill Ride

By Libby

One can hardly imagine a more fitting venue than Coney Island for this new attraction meant to appall and inform.

It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam — in this case there’s SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “It don’t Gitmo better!”

If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood drawn low over his face, leans over another figure in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered by a towel and his body strapped down on a tilted surface.

Feed a dollar into a slot, the lights go on, and Black Hood pours water up Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while Orange Jumpsuit convulses against his restraints for 15 seconds. O.K., kids, who wants more cotton candy!

Steve Powers saw the cinderblock room next door to the freak show and thought it would make the perfect torture chamber. He's right. Brilliant concept and the perfect location for the installation. If I lived in New York, I'd pay the buck to see it there rather than wait until it's moved to the big art show at the Park Avenue Armory. [hat tip Jules]

Cast the first stone

By Capt. Fogg

I'm disgusted by violence; I always have been. I'm human enough, none the less, to recognize in myself the urges we inherit from the common ancestor we share with Chimpanzees and yes, I'm quite capable of committing violent acts under the right circumstances, my antipathy notwithstanding. One of those circumstances would be to prevent violence being committed upon others and particularly upon women and children. I'm afraid I would become uncontrollable if forced to witness what Iran plans to do to a group of women for having sex or something close to it in violation of some religious code from the dark minds of the dark ages.

Despite a pledge to hold a moratorium on such crimes against nature, decency and humanity, Iran announced last week that it was going to stone 9 women and one man for adultery.

"The European Union calls on the Iranian government and parliament to abolish, in law and in practice, recourse to cruel and degrading punishment and, in particular the use of stoning, as a method of execution,"

reads a statement from France Thursday, which holds the current EU presidency. Fat chance.

In case the procedure is too vague to depict the horror of watching women and girls buried up to their shoulders be pelted with fist sized stones until they either bleed to death or as the skull fractures, the eyeballs hanging by threads from a pulped face, the brain damage becomes sufficient to cause them to stop breathing, here's a picture. Here's a glimpse into the dark heart of religious madness. Here are the people who worship a merciful God and thereby demonstrate his non-existence. Here are people I would gladly kill regardless of the personal cost.

Look into her eyes and smash her in the face with a brick - go ahead, but just don't let me get my hands around your God fearing neck.


Cross posted from Human Voices

Fisher of men

By Capt. Fogg

The country is all agiggle about the reflection of Dick Cheney's hand in his sunglasses whilst on a Snake River fishing expedition, which if you're drunk or religious looks like anything from a naked woman to "never had sex" Mary.

Hardly anyone gives much of a second thought to further evidence and testimony on the AP wire today that the same hand gave a thumbs up to torturing people to get confessions.

"With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House,"

ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said. But of course the Media is "liberal" and the ACLU is "far left Liberal" and anyone is a Liberal if they're so conservative as to want to preserve and protect the Constitution. Who listens to them? Not us. Why ask the invisible man to damn America - we've done that all by ourselves.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Just call it war

By Capt. Fogg

Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?

Macbeth Act 5, scene 1



Frankly, I'm not as disturbed by the images of torture and mayhem perpetrated by American "warriors" as by some of the public response you can see at Wired.com where Abu Ghraib photos have been published. It's the ones that argue "this is a war and in a war. . ." and the ones that say "but these are Muslims and they would be happy to eat your children, yada, yada" that make me most ashamed to have any association with this self righteous and evil nation. They've made me evil too; Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and their puppet George Bush. I'm part of it because all I do is complain. I don't risk losing my life to end it, nor even my freedom. All I do is blog and go about my life of comfort and safety.

I got a video in my e-mail yesterday. I don't know whether it was staged or real, but it showed some US military personnel walking through an airport while people stood up and applauded. No one could have been thinking of the archive of pictures on view at UnderMars.com They aren't returning from a parade ground, but from hell and a hell the United States of America created with eagerness and enthusiasm and lies.

Men with plastic bags on their heads being beaten, smiling "warriors" posing with corpses, a man's severed penis in a mousetrap, blood and pain and shit; these are things many Americans think "you do in a war" even though you started the war and of course anyone caught up in the grinder is promoted to the ranks of the "terrorists" who bombed New York even though they didn't.

So clap when you see our soldiers; I'm sure nearly all of them are good people, but don't call them warriors. Warriors take scalps, soldiers are responsible for their actions. Warriors represent themselves, soldiers represent us and when there's blood on their hands, it's on our hands too and remember, when John McCain tries to tell you this is noble, this is about protecting your sainted mother, your back yard barbecue and your civil rights - it isn't. It's about water up the nose, the cattle prod up the ass, bloody teeth spilling out like corn from a popper; it's about rape, about shit and piss and blood on the floor being wiped up with the flag we're supposed to worship like some tawdry pagan idol.

It's about millions of homeless innocents, about a lost generation of uneducated children brought up in terror and squalor and hate. It's about people whose crime was fighting for their homes being tortured like John McCain who once was tortured by those whose homes and children he was destroying. It's about evil. It's about me and about you justifying it all by just calling it war.

Cross posted from Human Voices

The Maverick

By Capt. Fogg


You hear the word Maverick tagging along after John McCain fairly often. I suppose he'd like you to understand it as meaning he's independent; belonging to no one, but of course that's not really John McCain and like John, Maverick has more than one meaning. It's also defined as a free range animal, belonging to the first person to brand it and it often seems as if the beast in question is sporting that old GOP brand on its haunches.

No matter how often waterboarding has been used by the United States, and we know it has been, it's torture. We know that as torture it's banned by the Army Field Manual. We know that we hanged Japanese officers for using it during WW II. We know that we don't want such things done to any American captured by an enemy. Administration doubletalk notwithstanding, it's torture and hypothetical scenarios about saving the world from destruction set aside, it elicits bad and unreliable confessions that can be used to further illegitimate agendas.

The Senate passed a bill yesterday that establishes a uniform standard of conduct which implements the Army Manual interrogation guidelines. John McCain, the Maverick, voted against it. I'm sure that like the rest of the Republican herd, he had his reasons.

Cross posted from Human Voices