And, no, George W. Bush is not as bad as Pol Pot.

Hmm, I dunno. 

According to a Defense Department source citing internal Pentagon documents, the ICRC team leader told U.S. authorities at Camp Bucca: "You people are no better than and no different than the Nazi concentration camp guards."

Or read this, for example: The failed siege of Fallujah

How is it better than Pol Pot?

...except I would add the observation that this ploy is designed to deflect attention from atrocious crimes. In this particular instance, it is especially important to be clear about moral culpability--who, after all, is morally responsible for the ghastly and completely pointless crimes that took place at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?

Obviously, the direct responsbility  lies on the soldiers who committed the acts and those who ordered or encouraged them to do it. A great degree of culpability must also be reserved for the administration that dragged the country into an immoral and geostrategically disastrous war and whose rather phenomenal incompetence contributed to the moral and political infamy of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. But lets not exculpate these cheerleading conservative pundits who disdain any semblance of law, civilization, and true moral values as a liberal affectation, and who now seek to prove, pathetically, that "we" in fact are better than "them."

Yes, saying that others do worse as way of refusing to consider specific criticism is indeed a form of "noxious rot". Criticism must be responded to in specifics. To take a common example, answering criticisms of Israeli settler colonialism on the land conquered in 1967 with Arafat was corrupt! the PA mistreats journalists! etc is just a way of saying that you think that colonising and ethnically cleansing Arabs is just fine.

Hell, you can't share an apartment with someone who takes this attitude. If the answer to the calmly phrased suggestion that the other person needs to pay their part of the common bills is "But you never do the washing up", it's time to move out. Disaggregation and specific response is the key to any discussion or for that matter relationship.

Tucked at the very end of the AP story is the real problem, beside which all this flushing, etc. is beside the point:

There are about 540 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime.

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

...this reminds me somewhat of those "Which would you rather lose, and arm or a leg?" arguments I got into as a kid.

So, do we know that George W. "Hey, at least he doesn't fling his own feces at other world leaders" Bush knows he's lying? Or is it possible that he actually believes what he's shoveling? What's going on in that beady little head of his?

Also, IIRC, there was a poll of historians and scholarly types taken a year or two ago that ranked GWB *the* worst president in history, behind Nixon, Taft, Andrew Johnson, Buchanan, and other notables. And this was a year or two ago. Think how low his stature must be among this group now.

Of Nixon we may at least say that nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it; his resignation showed him finally capable of shame, and of thoughts of the nation's welfare.
<span class="Apple-style-span">Bush has shown no shame, and no interest in the welfare of anything beyond his own coterie.  He seems to me, manifestly, several degrees worse than Nixon.
But this comparison is a distraction from the real point of MY's post:  the administration's sins in condoning torture cannot be excused by saying that Pol Pot (or anyone else) was worse.</span&gt

There I was, minding my own business, dick in hand, peeing against the side of the Gulag. It was a beautiful afternoon. I watched a fat flotilla of cumulus clouds float across the Cuban sky as my bladder emptied, enjoying that feeling of All being Right with the World that comes with taking a good piss....When suddenly I realized my urine was splashing against an air vent.

"Hmm," I said to myself, "I wonder if the air in this air vent is carrying flecks of my urine and splashing it on one of our guests here at the Gulag?"

Hurriedly zipping up I ran inside, following the twists and turns of the duct til finally I came to the cell where, sure enough, my urine was misting directly into the face of Ahmed, one of our Muslim boarders - or, detainees, as we call them.

"Oh, Ahmed, I'm so sorry," I said, pushing his handcuffed hands along the steel pipe from which his body was hanging, to remove his face from the path of the spray. "I got so caught up in the beauty of the Cuban sky that I didn't realize I was pissing into a circuitous air duct that leads directly to your room!"

"Oh, that is quite all right," said Ahmed calmly, thanking me with his eyes for moving him out of the pee-pee wind. "But would you mind moving my Koran out of the way of that drip? One of our rules about the Koran is that you can't get urine on it. And Infidel pee is, like, the worst."

I looked down and saw the unfortunate book soaking in a widening puddle.

"Oh, Ahmed, I am so sorry!" I said, nudging the Koran out of the urine with my foot so as not to get any pee on me.

"NOT with your foot!" Sputtered Ahmed, his body squirming as if electrodes were attached to his testicles. He calmed down, smiled and said apologetically, "Another one of our rules."

I found a broom handle laying on the floor and used that to push the book instead of my foot.

"Thank you," Ahmed said. "I would offer you tea, but I'm a bit indisposed at the moment." He gestured with his eyes towards the handcuffs.

"Oh, that's all right," I said. "I can't stay anyway. I've got to immediately go report myself to my superior officer so we can get this instance of Koran Abuse documented. We've got our rules, too, you know."

Ahmed gave me a knowing look and off I went.

Needless to say, my superior officer was pretty, well, pissed, when he heard what I'd done.

"Lotta goddamned paperwork," he muttered as he started typing. "You didn't flush the god damned thing down the toilet, did you?"

"Uh, the cells don't have flush toilets, sir," I said.

"Oh yeah, that's right. Good. Good. That's what they really get touchy about, is when we flush the god damned things down the toilet."

I stood there for a minute waiting for my punishment.

"At ease, private," said my superior officer. "What you've done is wrong. But you're just a mentally retarded hillbillly from West Virginia. You can't be expected to be an expert in Comparative Religions. We're gonna have to put you in Time Out for a while to show the Muslim world that we take this shit seriously. But don't worry. You'll be back on duty in no time."

"Thank you, sir," I said, saluting. I turned to leave.

"Private!" Said my superior officer. "One more thing."

"Yes, sir?"

"Next time you gotta take a leak, use the head like everybody else."

Army life is tough. But I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had here for anything.

You could say a few good things about Nixon.

 Try saying three about Bush.  Try saying one.

When Bush drives the urban population of the US out of the cities and into the fields to recommence society at the Year Zero, and causes millions of deaths, then we can compare him to Pol Pot.

you seem to insist on more/less literal events-based comparison, but there other angles, like carrying out mass killings in trying to achieve (as a stated reason, at least) some utopian ideological goals. What's wrong with this sort of parallel?

Anderson, dude, go over and click on My Preferences (why is it always MY preferences? I mean this works great for Matthew and nobody else), and then click on the gray comments box. It will show you comment options.

Set:

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This will restore your fine Yglesias©®-brand comments to Regular Flavor Flat Yglesias©®-brand comments. Don't forget to pick up some fine Ygleasias©®-brand toothpaste and socks on your way out!

Indeed, one might say that the clearest signpost that a truly noxious rot has taken root in our culture is that it even occurs to people to argue in this manner.

Ayup. Then people start desiring an emperor so they don't have to listen to those whiney liberals/conservatives anymore. Then, the decapitations! Just wait for the special Halftime Superbowl Executions! Like in that really bad porny version of Caligula (it actually wasn't so bad - but it didn't make so much sense sans porn, but if you put the porn back in, it isn't very good. So it goes.).

Flushing the Koran tho, is just the floater in the toilet bowl as far as it goes.

Welcome to ein Deutschreich circa 1940!

ash

['The really um, funny part will be when they've got their camps all nicely set up and they're beating prisoners to death for being 'anti-semitic'.']

Peeing on the Koran is minor, to everybody but Muslims. But it made them unhappy. And these guys blamed it on Newsweek, and not the pee-er and not the Muslims (for the most part).

Because, in the end, the war and the torture is simply some low-rent imperial escapade. It's not really about oil or revenge or Osama bin Laden or anything else. It's about achieving Republican supremacy in the United States. And when that's what you believe nothing will ever be allowed to get in your way, certainly not the truth.

ash

['Bah!']

Along similar lines, David Bosco argues persuasively that Gitmo's not as bad as the GULAG

What Bosco leaves out is the stuff about the FBI e-mails about detainees being chained in fetal positions and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. It also fails to mention that many of the prisoners haven't even been charged with crimes. It looks like what's going on at Gitmo is that most prisoners are treated okay, but when they are treated ugly, they are treated really ugly, and it's the treatment of that minority of prisoners that makes the comparison to a gulag spring up.

When Amnesty Int'l uses such ridiculous exagerations, it completely undermines their credibility, except with the already converted. It may increase donations, but will not convince a single person who did not already believe that George Bush is worse than seven Satans plus Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin.

It is also insulting to Cambodians, Jews and the millions murdered by Stalin.

I think the treatment of prisoners in US detention is a shame and a blemish on the US and that it needs to be brought to the attention of Americans who can do somnething about it. That is why I condemn the selfish, publicity mongering pap from AI.

He said, <i>Why can't the left-wing ever tell the truth about this war?</i>

Noted without comment. 

And what grytype said:

How the hell can anyone compare Nixon to Bush? Nixon inherited the Vietnam war; and ended it. Against his will, admittedly. He did go to China, and had some domestic advances (didn't we get rid of the idolatrous gold standard under Nixon?). And what were his other domestic programs? Sorry, senility setting in.

I remember (some of) Richard Nixon. And Bush is no Richard Nixon.

You guys (like Al) have got to be kidding.  Is the point really about whether somebody pissed into the AIR DUCT 'on purpose'?  Or pissed 'on purpose'?  Or....come ON.  Is this the point of Matt's post?  Is the real problem here AI's hyperbole? This is morally squalid, people.
The fairly conservative (and pro-war) Anne Applebaum pointed out what should be obvious:
"..<span class="Apple-style-span">surely the larger point is not the story itself but that it was so eminently plausible, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and everywhere else. And it was plausible precisely because interrogation techniques designed to be offensive to Muslims were used in Iraq and Guantanamo, as administration and military officials have also confirmed."</span&gt
And, BTW, yes the commenting sucks here at the cafe at the moment.  I can't get any HTML tags to work, I can't copy and paste, and because I'm on a mac, I too get all kinds of extra junk.  Any suggestions?  And I agree that rating is pointless here.  And I add my voice to the chorus asking that we be able to read other comments (and the post itself) when we are commenting.

good grief, whoever you are, do you not know anything about Amnesty International? its brave and dangerous work over the years? its willingness to speak truth to power? its low-profile staff? are you, in short, nothing but a propaganda robot?

I detested Nixon when he was president, but although the English language is rich in verbs of hatred such as loathe, despise, and abominate, it does not contain a word that comes close to describing the feeling I have toward Bush. 

On the side of Nixon's ledger, there is an admirable record on the environment; a health care proposal far beyond what Democrats are discussing today; and an acceptance not only of the basics of the New Deal, but of much of the Great society.  Bush has nothing remotely comparable.
 

Anonymous Hero:

Epistemology seems to misunderstand "Judge not lest ye be judged."  It isn't "admonish not," or "criticise not," both of which Paul specifically endorses.  "Judge" in that quote is more final, implies the power to harm, and ultimately is condemned because it assumes the knowledge of another soul that can only belong to God.

I have no dog in this fight, being neither Christian nor anti-Christian, but the verse, Matthew 7:1 reads (New International Version):

Do not judge, or you too will be judged.

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you

Since "in the same way you judge others" clearly refers to human judgment, not divine, in the "final" way "that can only belong to God", as you put it, this is clearly an admonishment to not judge our fellows as we so commonly do. Do you seriously contend that the passage is exhorting us to not exercise divine judgment or is it saying, more reasonably, that we shouldn't exercise our human judgment?

I look forward to your arguing that Matthew 19:24:

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God

doesn't condemn the rich.