Torture

George Bush has made me sick a lot over many of his actions but there is nothing he's done that has upset me more than his ordering torture in my name. I am ashamed, mad, scared. Another blog set out the basic attempts to justify the use of torture are:

1. The Euphemism Gambit. The Torture Apologist has no better friend than the scare quote. Take any outrage against human dignity, stick it in scare quotes, and voila! You've suddenly announced that both the victim and the protestor against the outrage are faintly ridiculous bed-wetters we can all snicker at. So you write, for instance, "Some Defeatocrats who care more about terrorists than about the 3000 people we lost on 9/11 whine that waterboarding is "torture", but I think blah blah blah, etc." Also useful to the Euphemist is the Orwellian multi-syllabic word. Don't call it "strappado" or "the cold cell". That makes people think of the Spanish Inquisition or the terrifying basement of Stalin's Lubyanka. Call it "enhanced interrogation" (NOT "Verschärfte Vernehmung" even thought that means "enhanced interrogation"). That upbeat yet bland phrase makes people think "Our interrogation scientists in their clean white lab coats are making wonderful breakthroughs in the science of Keeping Us Safe!"

Case in point: Michelle Malkin

2. The "Appeal to the Extremely Hypothetical Extreme Situation" gambit (the Ticking Time Bomb, for instance).

Case in point: Alan Dershowitz

3. The "Pretend It's Impossible to Ever Know What Torture Is" gambit. This is done by saying, "Oh. I oppose torture, but could you please define for me *precisely* what torture is in a way that can never ever ever create the slightest semantic confusion in a forum of 2000 internet readers who are bound and determined to look for loopholes? I promise I am totally sincere!" In short, you pretend to be baffled about how to define torture for ever, reject all attempted definitions, refuse to offer your own, and then shrug that, much as you'd like to obey the Church, there's simply no way to know what torture is, so it's best to just maintain the status quo (which just happens to be that the Bush Administration can order the torture of anybody it deems an illegal combatant).

Perfect example: Michael Mukasey and here's a good YouTube
...

5. The "Human Rights are Only for *Legally Recognized* Human Beings" feint. This is a favorite for people who fancy themselves masters of international law. The argument is basically the same as Catholics for a Free Choice. Point to some loophole in human law and use it to trump the law of God. The Catholics for a Free Choice person says "I can't see where a fetus is a human being in the image and likeness of God in US law, so let's kill it!" The torture advocate says, "I can't see where an illegal combatant is a human being in the image and likeness of God in international *or* US law, so let's torture it!"

As defined by George Bush himself. Cheney and Rumsfeld also concur.

6. The "We Can Kill People in Wartime, So Why Can't We Torture Them Too?" maneuver. The key is to will yourself to be too stupid to recognize the difference between shooting somebody in combat and mowing helpless prisoners down with a machine gun. Once an enemy becomes a prisoner, you can't shoot him anymore because he possesses certain rights as a human being in the image of God. For the same reason, you can't torture him.

Tom Stephens wrote extensively about this

7. The "These Bastards Deserve Whatever They Get!" shout. While cathartic, what this line of emoting fails to attend to is that we have now departed the last shred of sanity in justifying torture and made clear that the purpose of torture is not "gathering intelligence" (it is notoriously bad for that) but working out our vengeance against and hatred of the enemy. That is one of the reasons the Church opposes it: it degrades us. The victim suffers the pains of this life, but we endanger our own souls with the everlasting pains of hell. In addition, it overlooks the fact that some of the people we have tortured did not, in fact, "deserve" it. 80% of the victims at Abu Ghraib had not been charged with anything. Maher Arar: perfectly innocent. Abdallah Higazy: innocent. Dilawar: innocent. So the result is very often that you lose your soul and get *nothing* in return. Or else you get bad intel like the "confessions" of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that sent us off on wild goose chases (confessions extracted after threatening to torture his *children*, by the way).

We saw Mitt Romney support this during the Republican YouTube debate
...

10. Also popular is the "So you're saying we should give the terrorists a kiss and a glass of warm milk and tuck them in at night!" This is a favorite straw man approach from people suffering from the bipolar notion that the only alternative to war crimes is delusional happy face pollyanna unreality. Such people forget that this is not the first war we've ever fought and that we do have a long experience of treating prisoners humanely without torturing them.

We know this because Cheney told us that the detainees are being treated better than they would be by any other government on the face of the earth.

11. This amnesia also accounts for another favorite rhetorical trope: The "9/11 Changed Everything" cry of Generation Narcissus. Being a Generation that fancies itself the summit of all human history, it is a generation that tends to talk as Never Before Have We Faced Such Evil. Therefore, war crimes are okay because it not like we're fighting pantywaists like Nazis and Communists. We are the grand exception to the general rule against war crimes because our enemies are uniquely, extra-special super-duper evil. Ours is a high and lonely destiny, etc. blah blah.

Again from VP Cheney
...

I'm sick of this. We have GOT to stop torturing and atone!

Yep. It's the Blogger's Fault

Helen Thomas asked NBC White House correspondent David Gregory what was responsible for the polarization, Gregory answered:

I think it’s because of the internet largely. The polarized atmosphere in the internet and blogs and whatnot have been a major contributor to that.

Richard Powers has a great response to Gregory:

Yes, of course, it was the bloggers who polarized the US body politic.

The bloggers spent $50 million plus on Ken Starr's rogue investigation, which was coordinated with the work of the privately funded, reich-wing "Arkansas Project."

The bloggers shackled Susan McDougal and sent her to jail.

The bloggers impeached a popular President at a time of peace and economic prosperity over testimony in a civil suit involving sexual intercourse.

The bloggers issued that voluminous report on Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, and posted it on the WWW.

The bloggers ignored accurate US intelligence on Al Qaeda pre-9/11, leading to the slaughter of thousands of innocents at the WTC, and the bloggers distorted accurate US intelligence on Iraq post-9/11, leading to the deaths of thousands of US military personnel, and the maiming of tens of thousands more.

The bloggers swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, morphed Max Cleland's face into Osama bin Laden's in 2002 TV ads, and smeared John McCain in South Carolina in 2000.

The bloggers gutted the surplus, and took the leash of the federal deficit.

In 2000, the bloggers stopped the counting of the ballots ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, and installed the man who lost, as the counting, finished later by researchers, would confirm.

In 2004, the bloggers made sure there weren't enough voting machines in the poorest and blackest districts of Ohio.

The bloggers caged voters. The bloggers purged voters from the rolls.

The bloggers intimidated voters.

The bloggers jammed the phones of the Democratic Party on election day 2002 in New Hampshire.

Yes, it was the bloggers who wasted seven years the planet could not afford to waste clinging to denial and disinformation about the nature, causes and implications of global warming.

The bloggers prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on false charges.

The bloggers fired eight US Attorneys for pursuing Bush-Cheney associates and not pursuing Bush-Cheney adversaries. The bloggers made Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights optional.

The bloggers established a Gulag system, instituted torture and rendition, and started disappearing people. The bloggers stayed on vacation while New Orleans drowned.

The bloggers blocked federal funding for stem cell research.

The bloggers tried to make certain that the brain-dead Terri Schiavo would be kept on a feeding tube indefinitely.

The bloggers betrayed US secret agent Valerie Plame, and then made certain that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby -- the man who was convicted of obstructing Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation -- would not spend a single day in prison.

Yes, of course, the bloggers have polarized us all.

The sad fact is that if the David Gregorys of the US mainstream news media had fulfilled their special responsibilities as the "fourth estate," which are articulated in both the US Constitution and the writings of the Founders, most us who have served as citizen journalists and commentators would never have gone into blogging.

Blogging is really simply the pamphleteering of our age.

If Tom Paine were alive today, he would, of course, be a blogger.

But this time there is no need for a revolution, only for the restoration of the democratic institutions that were won in the revolution, including a press free of both governments and corporations.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we only need one I.F. Stone; because, in large part, the US mainstream news media still did its job, at least on some stories concerning egregious wrongs, e.g., Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. But now, after decades of media consolidation, we need an Internet-based Information Rebellion, and that is what we have delivered.

What David Gregory is really saying is that he and those who write his checks are scared of the future. And they should be. They are on the wrong side of the digital barricades, and the wrong side of US history.

New York Times Editorial

The NY Times had a good editorial this morning on the capitulation of the Democratic Senate and Congress.

The Democrats, however, also deserve a large measure of blame. They did almost nothing while they were in the minority to demand better nominees than Mr. Bush was sending up. And now that they have attained the majority, they are not doing any better.

On Thursday, the Senate voted by 53 to 40 to confirm Mr. Mukasey even though he would not answer a simple question: does he think waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning used to extract information from a prisoner, is torture and therefore illegal?

Democrats offer excuses for their sorry record, starting with their razor-thin majority. But it is often said that any vote in the Senate requires more than 60 votes — enough to overcome a filibuster. So why did Mr. Mukasey get by with only 53 votes? Given the success the Republicans have had in blocking action when the Democrats cannot muster 60 votes, the main culprit appears to be the Democratic leadership, which seems uninterested in or incapable of standing up to Mr. Bush.

Glenn Greenwald asked the same question earlier this week.

I'm more and more disappointed and Congressman Smith's performance yesterday really put the icing on it for me.

Throw the bums out!

Gonzales Resigns!!

I guess he needs to spend more time with his family or something. Bush blamed the Dems for dragging his name through the mud. I say: "You're welcome!"

Dragging his name through the mud couldn't have happen if he hadn't begged for us to do it. He was given extraordinary opportunities to come clean. He should spend the next several months practicing this word: "oops" and purge the words "I can't recall" from his vocabulary.

I'm sorry he wasn't successful. He has an compelling personal story. Too bad he hitched his star to the wrong person.

Why Are We Footdragging and Where Are Our Heroes?

Just to refresh our memories -- a blast from the past -- when a Congressperson was a hero and spoke for the people:

Barbara Jordan's speech on The Articles of Impeachment delivered July 25, 1974.

Voter Rights Are The Real Reason

The dirty secret behind the US Attorney firings is election manipulation.

Since 2005, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee.

The replacement of the U.S. attorneys and the so-called voter-fraud campaign indicates that the Bush administration is using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

Bush said he's heard complaints from Republicans about some U.S. attorneys' "lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases," and administration e-mails have shown that Rove and other White House officials were involved in the dismissals and in selecting a Rove aide to replace one of the U.S. attorneys.

Last April, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in ten of them since 2005: here in Washington, but also in Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. Surprise, surprise.

Rove thanked the audience for "all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected." He added, "A lot in American politics is up for grabs."

The Justice Department's civil rights division supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor, minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Bradley Schlozman, who was the civil rights division's deputy chief, agreed in 2005 to reverse the career staff's recommendations to challenge a Georgia law that would have required voters to pay $20 for photo IDs and in some cases travel as far as 30 miles to obtain the ID card. A federal judge threw out the Georgia law, calling it an unconstitutional, Jim Crow-era poll tax.

Former voting rights section chief Joseph Rich, in testimony to a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing this week, described the gutting of the voting rights enforcement division. He said that 20 of the 35 attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left their jobs since April 2005 and a staff of 26 civil rights analysts who reviewed state laws for discrimination has been slashed to 10.

During the tenure of Alex Acosta, who served as the division chief from the fall of 2003 until he was named interim U.S. attorney in Miami in the summer of 2005, the department didn't file a single suit protecting the votes of African-Americans. In a similar time period, the Clinton administration filed six such cases. The Justice Department has only tried 35 Title VII employment discrimination cases since 2001, in contrast to the 92 cases brought during the Clinton administration. The Housing and Civil Enforcement section's cases dropped from 53 in 2001 to 31 in 2006, he added, with a 60% dip in the number of race-related cases.

During this week's House judiciary subcommittee hearing, we heard testimony recounting lapses in the division's enforcement. A Citizens Commission on Civil Rights report found that "the enforcement record of the voting section during the Bush administration indicates this traditional priority has been downgraded significantly, if not effectively ignored."

Congressman Jerry Nadler, D-NY, stated, "The more stringent requirements you put on voting in order to get rid of alleged voter fraud, the more you're cutting down on legitimate people voting."

Bush administration officials have said that no single reason led to the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys. But two of those ousted have a different viewpoint:

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico has said he thought that "the
voter fraud issue was the foundation" for his firing and complaints about his
failure to pursue Democrats was "the icing on the cake."

John McKay, the
ousted U.S. attorney for western Washington State, looked into allegations of
voter fraud against Democrats during our governor's race in 2004. He said that
later, when top Bush aides interviewed him for a federal judgeship, he was asked
to respond to criticism of his inquiry in which no charges were brought. He
didn't get the judgeship.

Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney in Arkansas who was fired, said he had "serious doubts" that any U.S. attorney was failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud.

"What they're responding to is party chairmen and activists who from the beginning of time go around paranoid that the other party is stealing the election," Cummins said. "It sounds like to me that they were merely responding to a lot of general carping from the party, who had higher expectations once the Republican appointees filled these posts that there would be a lot of voting fraud investigations. Their expectations were unrealistic."

Tim Griffin, Cummins replacement, was a Rove protégé and a former Republican National Committee research director. He was accused of being part of an attempt to wipe likely Democratic voters off the rolls in Florida in 2004 if they were homeless or military personnel.

Our voter rights are the real underlying cause of the USA purge. They won't need the Supreme Court next time.

UPDATE 3-26:

Brad Blog has a great post on this same subject.

UPDATE 3-30:

LA Times has a great piece written by Joseph Rich on this topic. Rich was formerly the cielf of the voting section of the the Justice Department's civil rights division. He reports from his personal experience that voter suppression is the real agenda.

Chris Vance Admits He Contacted AG McKay on Governor's Race

According to the Seattle Times Washington Sate GOP Chair Chris Vance acknowledged that he had contacted AG John McKay about the status of the investigation into the governor's race in 2004.

"I said 'You know, John, we're getting a lot of complaints from activists about this,' " Vance said.

"[McKay] said, 'Stop right there, I can't talk about this. If we are doing any kind of investigation or not, I can't comment,' " Vance recalled, "so I dropped it

."

But here's the money quote:

"Republican activists were furious because they felt that you had a Republican secretary of state [Sam Reed], a Republican county prosecutor in Norm Maleng and a Republican U.S. attorney, but still they saw the governorship slipping away, and they were just angry," Vance said.

All those loyal Republicans and they couldn't figure out a way to steal an election without coercing an Federal Attorney General at the Justice Department. Poor Chris!

Congressman Smith Call For Investigation of Doc Hastings

Lookie here:

Dem Rep: Hastings Should "Absolutely" Be Investigated
By Paul Kiel - March 10, 2007, 12:03 PM
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), speaking on a Washington NPR affiliate, KUOW, said yesterday that he "absolutely" supports an ethics investigation of Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), the ranking member of the House ethics committee. "I think that whole situation is just incredibly troubling," he said, "the line was clearly crossed."

Smith was referring, of course, to Hastings' former chief of staff Ed Cassidy's call to then-U.S. Attorney John McKay shortly after the 2004 election. McKay testifed last Tuesday that he was "concerned and dismayed" by the call, during which Cassidy asked him whether his office was investigating allegations of Democratic voter fraud in the gubernatorial election, which the Democrat had very narrowly won.

Good job!!