Like I said in the late update, Marty Lederman seems to think the White House walked away with everything on this one. From my very non-legal understanding of things, from what I can tell, we agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, only to violate them.

according to the NYT habeas corpus is being done away with, all CIA will be forgiven as it will be done retroactive, Waterboarding will no longer be allowed, but the secret prisons have not been discussed yet. They are against International Law no matter what we say, as well as what torture we have already done. Spector said on the floor of the Senate yesterday that any attempt to do away with Habeas would have to be Unconstitutional, but Spector is about as reliable as the town drunk left to guard the still. I did a diary earlier at dkos, but the above info is newer. here is the link to my diary.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/21/18559/3374

This is hardly an articulate comment. Let me simply say:

I am sickened and repulsed by what America has come to.

We have a Congress, including the Senate, that acts as a rubber stamp for Bush, that has never seen a Bush proposal that they can't accept, that will, in the end, quietly replace everything they publicly insist be removed from a Bush proposal.  So, I just can't get my mind to go thru the motions of analyzing this particular fluff event.  One thing we can be sure of:  the Bush administration will continue to do whatever they wish, and if that includes torture, transporting US citizens abroad for others to torture, and totally ignoring habeus corpus, then those things will continue to happen.  With our brief attention spans few of us will even remember that we had an agreement not to do those things. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

the White House walked away with everything on this one.

That seems to be right, as far as I can tell. I don't understand everything yet, but this much seems to be clear:

1. The ostensible compromise on the McCain-Graham-Warner side is that they withdrew their objections to the use of secret evidence in detainee trials.

2. Rather than redefine our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions supposedly too vague definitions of cruel, inhumane and degrading, a specific list of prohibited tactics will be laid out in the War Crimes Act (leaving it to the torturer to be more creative). These will constitute 'grave breaches' punishable under the WCA; lesser offenses will be handled within the Executive Branch (but is any offense not in the list lesser? What if it's, um, greater?)

3. No detainees will have habeas corpus rights to challenge their detentions in federal court. Those who have been found to be unlawful combatants will be allowed to appeal this determination in federal courts, but the courts will only have the ability to rule on whether the Combatant Status Review Panel in the case properly followed its own procedures.

This last bit strikes me as pretty radical: all they have to do is effectively stop the review process and everybody left inside will have no recourse to challenge their imprisonment. That pretty well defines a legal black hole.

To be fair the Dems on the committee did offer an amendment to restore habeus corpus rights; it was voted down on party lines.

Digby had this one nailed from the get-go(link):

However, I must say that I'm so jaded about those so-called independent Republicans, particularly Huckelberry and McCain, that I have a strong feeling that this is some sort of Kabuki. Huck, especially, has never once failed to validate my belief that he is a phony little prick, pretending to be a moderating influence when he's really just an egomaniac. (Besides, if there's one member of congress who is subject to Rovemail, it's him. I just don't see him bucking the president on something that's important to him.)

I admit to similar feelings about Lindsay Graham. To paraphrase Shakespeare, it's like a tale told by a closet @$$kisser, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing in the end.

I agree with Devon's analysis here (to the limited extent that I am familiar with the compromise). It looks like Graham-McCain-Warner put more emphasis on maintaining the Geneva Conventions standards, grave offenses of which are now codified into federal criminal law under the War Crimes Act, but compromised on the nature of the tribunals (according to AP, hearsay evidence will be allowed, evidence coerced via torture before the late 2005 rule change banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" is admissible, and detainees cannot bring federal habeas corpus suits - but they do get access to evidence in trials).

Back to the Geneva Conventions, under the bill, the "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions (which will now be listed under the War Crimes Act) are "acts such as torture, rape, biological experiments and cruel and inhuman treatment." But what to make of the "the President has the authority to interpret 'the meaning and application' of the Geneva Conventions" part?

I think the primary purposes of this clause are: 1) to ensure that the bill does not subject US troops/agents to International Criminal Court proceedings, and 2) to appease conservatives who are strongly opposed to the US losing any sovereignty to international law or int'l institutions. Keep in mind that Bush has always seized on this sentiment, using language like his 2004 debate line that the US shouldn't have to take "an international test" before making military decisions.

Overall, I think this compromise has some great elements, including the codification of torture and other grave offenses of the GC into the War Crimes Act. The habeas corpus issue is troubling, and I wonder if that will really meet court standards. And by the way, I do not believe that Lindsey Graham et. al. ever were pushing for federal habeas corpus rights for detainees (no cite here - please correct me if wrong - but I remember him saying he did not think they deserved them), so I don't think that was much of a compromise for them.

Let's just hope the House throws a monkey wrench into this legislation. If not, perhaps some activist judges will. It ain't over yet.

I have no sources so I'm just guessing here -- but the usual m.o. of Bush in a negotiation is to a) stake out a ridiculously radical position, so that the merely extremely radical position will appear moderate b) agree to the extremely radical position as a compromise, but declare victory and leak that eh got everything he wanted, then c) puruse the ridiculously radicaly policy anyway.

I would suspect therefore that the GOP Senators may have been told they'd get the WH to support their goals (really the military brass's goals) on Geneva, that the WH is leaking it got everything except a superficial agreement on Geneva, and unless the Dems win the Senate, we'll have a policy that disregards Geneva anyway.

If the Dems win the Senate, the Republicans will demonstrate an atavistic affinity for the filibuster. Frist's recent threat v/v this issue was a merely a preview.

What deal?

~OGD~

Chris Mackey (a pseudonym) a senior Army interrogator at Kandahar and later, Bagram, details the effectiveness and limitations of legal interrogation in his book, THE INTERROGATORS: INSIDE THE SECRET WAR AGAINST AL QAEDA. Mackey and his colleagues were horrified at the revelations of Abu Ghraib.

Mackey: "The abuses at Abu Ghraib are unforgiveable not just because they were cruel but because they set us back. The more a prisoner hates America, the harder he will be to break. The more a population hates America, the less likely its citizens will be to lead us to a suspect." (p. xxiii)

Mackey: "One of our biggest successes in Afghanistan came when a valuable prisoner decided to cooperate not because he had been abused (he had not been), but precisely because he realized he would not be tortured. He had heard so many horror stories that when he was treated decently, his prior worldview snapped, and suddenly we had an ally." (p. xxiii) [This case is extensively addressed in a chapter of its own.]

Yet another voice from the frontlines that BushCo refuses to hear.

Just as a point of information, the Magna Carta didn't introduce the concept into English law; it merely specified it as one of a series of complaints against King John.

In point of fact, the Magna Carta is really over-rated when cited as the source of this and many other concepts; it had been ignored by the king within months of being forced to sign it.

Also, the Magna Carta in no way did away with judicial torture, much of which was carried out in other venues than royal courts.

He tortured the knaves so judiciously that soon he was the ruler of the Queen's judiciary.

Do you understand the deal

Simple enough:

- Alternative interrogation up to death is allowed along as it is denied.

- Trials will dispense with the usual farce of considering the possibility of innocence.

What's the problem?

Best, Terry

This entire "fight" over the Geneva Convention is a setup for both sides of the issue, all done for the participants to look good to the voters come November. Bush gets to look like the tough big boy he loves so much and this group of three Senators appear as if they are truly looking out after our rights and National image. Both sides win this "bogus battle of the bullies" and nothing really changes. This whole thing is looking as if the President will still get to do what he wants despite the fracas created about our military men and women's safety.

I am very curious to see what this "deal" specifically says and even more curious to see if the Democrats have the collective balls to try to take corrective measures once said details are revealed.

Well I for one would be DELIGHTED if we applied the same standards to "enemy combatants" as we would POWs -- but that's precisely the issue. They are NOT treated as POWs. Bushies spun out of whole cloth some new "classification" of prisoners then made up the means of imprisoning them and trying them under rules laid out by that legal genius, Rumsfeld, leaving out most due process protections recognized under U.S. and customary international law.
Forget U.S. Code of Military Justice and forget the Geneva Conventions (which determine a) how to treat POWs AND if a combatant is NOT a POW, how to determine what they are (see Article V).

This whole think sickens me too.

POWs?

"Ilegal Combatants", isn't that the term * and the neocons came up with to keep from allowing these "terrorist" suspects to have any rights whatsoever and to disallow them the rights POWs have under the Geneva Conventions?

Hard to see how this deal will in any way change business as usual in Bushco's gulags. I'd like to know what Powell and the other military members who objected to the original bill will have to say.

Question for all Americans: Are you a member of the Pro-Torture Party? Congratulations on your nice campaign.

Bush and Company NEED terrorists to attack us before the election. Clearly he's signaling to the world that it's OK to torture any captured American soldier or citizen. (Incidently, America's own illegal and immoral treatment of prisoners is acceptable, too.)

Bush, Cheney and Rove need fresh video of Amercans being tortured and killed, just prior to the election, so they can say, "See it's a dangerous world full of evil terrorists, and only the Pro-Torture Party can fight these Islamofascists in the only manner they understand. We're tough on terrorism -- Democrats are weak."

This all fits together, but it's an absolute shame that it does.

Polly Tics, shall I assume, then, you believe McCain should still be labelled a maverick?

Do you disagree, as Josh Marshall has posed, that this "compromise" amounts to McCain and company essentially allowing torture to continue? 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

 ...it creates an opportunity to challenge the McCain mythos by going out hard and saying he's caved on his principles, and they're shocked that such a maverick turns out to be in it for nothing more than an election-grubbing shill.

McCain has created dozens of similar opportunities that Democrats could have used in the past 6 years!  Have they done so?  Only on blogs, griping away, but not being heard by any but the choir itself.

This morning the daily newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia has as its banner headline--1 inch bold lettering:

Weed ad mislabels man as felon

It seems that ONE of the TWO MZM defense contracters (remember Randy Cunningham?) who got great deals from Weed's opponent (Virgil Goode) got a plea agreement.  One plead guilty to felony charges and the other plead guilty to a misdemeanor.  Weed's ad refers to them both as felons.

Thus the headline.  I never saw a banner headline when the felony was plead, nor when the misdemeanor was plead.  I never saw a headline about Goode's acceptance of "straw" campaign donations.

We have a long way to go.

Jan Knaus

On the habeas-stripping provisions, this occurs to me:

This move is obviously important to Bush, because it undoes the challenge to the unitary executive theory caused by the Supreme Court ruling in Rasul v. Bush in 2004.  But the provision probably won't survive judicial review.  It will set back the progress of detainees who might have some hope of getting sprung - figure that if this goes through, it'll take two to three years before the challenge reaches the SCOTUS.  

Meanwhile, on the left, many have wondered why the Administration would push so hard to concentrate so much power in the hands of the executive branch, when they know full well that this power will someday be in the hands of a President not to their liking.  

Here's a theory: what they're after is a temporary unitary executive doctrine.  Which is to say, they're grabbing as much power as recklessly as they can while they can, knowing that they can make the most of it before it is constricted, around the time the next president gets to town. 

I would rate this comment a 5. Not only am I too sickened and repulsed but I am all but overcome with grief, especially when I remember the days of promise so many years ago.

This "compromise" shows two things. The real danger of having one party in control of all branches of government. One can only image the political pressure on the Republican Senators to playball with the Republican President.

It also demonstrates the need of the Democrats to show some spine and explain the issue to the American people. Obviously Republicans still believe they have the Democrats boxed in. Either they will rollover or be seen as soft on terrorism. Unless Democrats are willing to debate this issue they will lose on this issue, and so will the Country, everytime.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

A Lesson In Republican Doublespeak:

On Tuesday, the Grantville Republican told a Douglas County Chamber of Commerce luncheon that he "voted for torture" and that "we need to get information out of these people the best way we can," the Douglas County Sentinel reported.

He said Wednesday that he should have "put that another way."

"Maybe I shouldn't have said I voted for torture," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I should have said I voted against the anti-torture bill."

I'm going to get accused to flying the "Rove planned the whole thing" flag, but...

One of the issues in the midterm is making the election a referrendum on the president. That will be especially easy to do if Republican congressmen are seen as the president's lapdogs and rubber-stampers.

Here we have a case where a bunch of senators very publically stand up to the president (including a couple who we wouldn't expect this sort of thing from, like Graham), with the Democrats conveniently silent because they interpret the whole thing as a republican meltdown.

The president gets to go on torturing people, and can point to "the agreement" as tacit justification. Republican candidates got a news cycle or two full of "republicans stand up to the president(?)" headlines. Sounds like a good deal.

Granted, it would take a talented puppeteer to pull the whole thing off, and the outcome isn't entirely republican-friendly with the NYT/WaPo reponse... but they certainly didn't have any booming condemnations on CNN this morning. *Shrug*

Thoughts?

Clearly, that is satire. No?

There is something so stupid, so shortsighted, so wrongheaded about this "deal" that you have to wonder why our fellow Americans are willing to endanger our soldiers, our ideals, our constitution, our future and for what? So they can torture people?

Why are these people who are forever pounding the drum of patriotism and love of country so contemptous of the constitution, so cynical and disdainful towards the American people? The very reason men like Madison and Jefferson were so intent upon enumerating our rights was because they knew governments cannot be trusted to respect human bounderies, and that they will continue to encroach and encroach until those rights are gone. How long will it be before they start torturing us because they don't like our beliefs or our politics?

This is the way it starts...

I've got to hand it to the Democrats. The strategy of allowing the Republicans to "thrash out" their differences on the treatment and prosecution of detainees has played out exactly as planned...for the Republicans. Don't let anyone convince you that you can go to the well too often...that is if you are a Republican and your opponent is a fully inept Democratic Party.

Amidst a trend of favorable polling data and a firestorm of speeches by the President to refocus the voting public on their fear of terrorism, the Democrats stood in the background for the past two weeks and watched what the GOP will call the difficult work of creating legislation that preserves our commitment to civil liberties while at the same time providing our determined President with the essential tools needed to pursue those who seek to kill us all.

OK, perhaps I'm being too harsh. There is a possibility that in the past two weeks the Democrats were able to devise their sixth iteration of a campaign slogan and strategy to roll out with less than 50 days to the election. Perhaps they could call it "Fifty States, Fifty Days...But Never Fifty Percent"! It's catchy, it's succinct, and it may well be accurate come November 8th. Arrgghh!

Read more here:

www.thoughttheater.com

This from the BBC ...

Senator McCain said: "There is no doubt that the integrity and the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved."

However, the American Civil Liberties Union saw the agreement quite differently. Caroline Fredrickson, Director of its Washington Legislative Office, commented: "This is a compromise of America's commitment to the rule of law. The proposal would make the core protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions irrelevant and unenforceable.

"In a telling move, during a call with reporters today, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley would not even answer a question about whether waterboarding would be permitted under the agreement."

All one can say is that if they set out intentionally to convince the world that US citizens deserve whatever they get, they could hardly do a better job. I tend to side with the intentional & craven interpretation of their behavior, but, it hardly matters. The effect is still devastating. What is sad is that it is so unlikely the karma will come home to roost on those who have most earned and deserve it.

I think those of us who stand for the UDHR and Geneva need to fly our UN flags. Mine goes out today.

So you failed to pick up my sarcasm. I am saying the same exact thing you are.

The problem I have, aside from the whole, you know, "we're still torturing people" thing, is that DEMS (and so called "Ind.'s," which, as Karl Rove knows, there's really no such thing) will probably come out in droves and support McCain in 08, and there's a good chance he's the next Prez.   

We agree he's not a maverick -- how to convince the voters? That's a particular problem for the Dems in 08. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

I attended a talk by Barack Obama this morning in Bolingbrook IL. I stopped him on his way to his car afterwards and asked if he would filibuster these bills. His response was that they didn't have the votes for a filibuster, and they were going to have to try to add amendments to make it more palatable. His parting words were "that's why they throw all things out just before the election." Unfortunately I only had about 60 seconds for this exchange.

As I was driving home, I became more and more discouraged at the idea that there weren't 41 Democrats with enough principles to stand up to this obscene set of bills. I know they are concerned with negative ads, but I think they are misjudging the landscape on this one. I think this is an issue that needs to be fought on strong principles and that the American people would see through the repubs attempt to smear the Dems on this one. Hell, they're going to get smeared anyhow, why not stand up for something? It reminded me of Clinton's showdown with Gingrich over the budget--Clinton forced the showdown, stood on principle, and turned his presidency around. I think this is an issue we should push right back in their faces.

The trick will be opposing this while not allowing the conservative narrative -- Dems weak on terror -- win out.

We need to shift the public's focus to the question of what kind of country we want to be and on this instance as another example of Republicans failing to live up to their own standards.

Whether the issue is spending or cronyism or the constitution or the principles this country has always stood for in the world, Republicans have proven that they cannot be trusted to uphold the standards they profess to believe in. They will always instead choose the path that is more expedient.

We should then reiterate again why torture is wrong, ineffective in its immediate purpose and detrimental to the overall goals of the war on terror.

You cannot defeat terror by terrorizing.

You cannot defend international law by violating it.

etc.

Someone religious such as Barack Obama should add this point: What profit a nation to live if it should lose its soul? (I may be getting the quote partially wrong)

The main thing is to shift the discussion to what this WOT is now really about: what kind of country we are going to be.

Are there any Democratic leaders who will take up this challenge?

I’m afraid I share your fear about steams of INDependents coming out for McCain in 2008 and that is JUST what he’s going for with this torture pitch. Our only hope is that the Dem’s begin to START fighting the Republicans and STOP being afraid to fight the “real” terror threat. Unless and until the party defines itself out of whole cloth, we will not be able to stop the Republicans who actually DO delineate their ideas, albeit a horrific representation it may be.

So we need to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and hands to phones and call our representatives to tell THEM that it’s time to stand up and fight!

Heck, if the Democrats don’t get their act together and get a real candidate this time around (and I do NOT mean Hillary) we will be stuck with one more Republican President…and worse yet, a Republican Congress.

So sorry, I wasn’t sure if you were trolling for bites or being sarcastic with your first comment.

Why oh why don't Dems use what Bush wants to allow against him!!!

It's simply the art of guerilla war, and that was the Dems are in, a political guerilla war.

Here's my advice.

Get a list of all those the security services have mistakenly arrested and 'questioned' on suspected terrorism.

In this list I would have old people (like the guy arrested in South Africa on the whim of the FBI); a granny who, if who gave money innocently to a charity that was linked to 'terrorism', could be arrested and questioned regarding her 'terrorist' links; etc etc.

Then get actors to play these people, and film those techniques Bush wants to be able to use on these actors.

I'm quite sure that the shock value will move a few people into voting against Bush

Regs, Shaggy

Sorry about the spelling mistakes in my earlier post.

Josh, why don't TMP do it; virally?

Make up an advert from clips you can find on the internet and set it up on YouTube, etc?

Come on, pull you finger out (not out of it's socket, that would be torture ;-) )

Regs, Shaggy

I just hope I don't have to see anymore headlines labelling McCain and Warner as "rebels." How were they rebels? Because they weren't in total lockstop with the White House. It's really sad, and a bit scary, when the smallest amount of political opposition deserves the rebel label.

And the whole McCain is a maverick shtick should stop too. McCain is no maverick and he never was. Paul Wellstone was a maverick. Patrick Moynihan was a maverick. McCain is a right-winger who happens to have a little common sense and some self-respect (although there are photos of him being kissed by Bush).

I hesitate to ask but has there been any polling about the use of torture?

One of the dilemmas in this whole discussion is the perception of the enemy and what that means. Bush, many letter writers to the NY Daily News are willing to let Bin Laden and other users of barbarism as the standard of our behavior. They do it so we should do it too. This is an example of letting the terrorists win. Talk about a debasement of our values. I presumed that peope like Bush did not believe in moral relativism.

I presume most people who participate at the Cafe would oppose torture on any condition. For this we should all be greatful. However, as a political matter the large gap is the way people on the left perceive the Islamic extermists and the danger they pose and the way most Americans do. This puts Democrats in an enormous trap.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

You're certainly not alone in being wrong about purported Dem strategy, LaFollette! Let's just say we need to take away from this two lessons -- lessons we should have taken away years ago, but...

1. The Democrats are now distinguished by being, at best, the least horrible political alternative, and,

2. No one in their right mind should have or ever should again trust John McCain or think, "He's basically a good guy." It's perfectly possible for someone to with a noble past to be a complete self-serving s.o.b. Which I believe McCain to be. The sometime enemy of our enemy is not our friend.

Note to self and others: vote for the future, not for the past.

A "dozen times". Again and again, I'm not disappointed by the WH - they've made their intentions absolutely clear from the get-go. The Onion editorial page nailed it in January, 2001.

The reason that most of my remaining hair ended up on my keyboard and in the sink this morning is McCain's actions. I really thought he took torture seriously.

Going forward - I truly hope some intrepid reporter has the gumption to pin him down with a carefully crafted question: "Thanks to your compromise, can you now categorically state that the United States, or anyone acting on its behalf, at home or abroad, will not torture, abuse, or de-humanize any detainees, POW's, or captees in any way, shape, or form?"

I ain't no lawyer with that thar sophisticated wordplay stuff, but there's got to be a way to make McCain admit that we are now, officially, in the torture business, and that he helped get us there.

Perhaps the few remaining members of Congress who actually oppose torture could convene on the steps of congress. There might be enough of them to play hacky-sack with the one or two reporters that show up.

Now, on to more pressing matters. Is there anything left in the house that I haven't beaten my head against today?

Which is precisely why we have a Constitution. It's supposed to help us through these troubled times.

The Democrats fall so easily into this trap because they don't have the fear factor that the right has. It's much more compelling to say, "We need to torture to stop another 9/11 from happening." That's damn compelling, even I stop and think, well maybe they are right. But then I remember that torturing people is barbaric.

The Democrats' argument is more like, "Well we shouldn't torture because it's wrong. We are selling ourselves down the river and putting our moral basis for fighting terrorism in jeopardy. And we should respect the laws and treaties we have signed into law."

There's no fear. There's no pop. Unfortunately for those of us on the left we bogged down with critical thought and see the world in shades of gray.

I used to think America was a country with principles, but I don't know if that was ever true. Look at what we did to the Native Americans, blacks, and women. Stopping Hitler was a big move that certainly gained us some moral high ground, but that was 60 years ago.

Since WWII we did have a nice victory with our civil rights movement in the 1960s, but I haven't seen much of anything in the last 20 or 30 years that would lead me to believe we are a principled nation.

What did we do for Rwanda or currently in Darfur? What have we done to solve our own problems, such as poverty - which continues to engulf more Americans every year.

Sadly I think America lost its moral compass a long time ago, if it ever had one.

Let's look at the polygraph from a different perspective. Now, as far as "lie detection", there's little question in my mind that it's pseudoscience. There is so little agreement on its use that NSA and CIA use it quite differently in their routine security clearances: NSA near the beginning of the investigation with fairly standard questions, while CIA uses it in the final phase in the hope of clarifying ambiguities.

The DoD polygraph examiners' guide has become public, and there's very much an aspect of it being treated not as a direct source of information, but as another aspect of applying pressure in interrogations. The examiner may lie about results if something remains suspect, and try to get admissions that really aren't dependent on anything done by the polygraph.

I do, however, confess to some question about the use of psychological pressure in interrogations, which certainly can be part of law enforcement interrogations, even with a lawyer present. Connecting with a subject, trying to get them to feel guilty about something they've actually done, and feeling better by confession is not that unreasonable for me. I'm not convinced that humiliation is always wrong, as in challenging someone's courage -- an extreme act in some cultures -- and having them describe what they consider a courageous response, which just happens to be a description of the focus of the interrogation.
There are other psychological plays where I am concerned we may be going too far in the wrong direction. Among the best descriptions I've heard of a police interrogator's job was from one of the DC suburban departments, which had a bad reputation for brutality and had gone to videotaping and reviewing all interrogations. A detective described his role as that of a salesman: selling jail as a better alternative to the present situation.

Sedgwick Tourison's book, Conversations with Victor Charlie: an Interrogator's Story is probably the best text I have seen, and that inclues some military ones not authorized for public release. Tourison also gives an excellent idea how to correlate information from different prisoners, and give the impression of knowing more than he actually does. Is the latter unacceptable pressure? I don't think so.

Tourison also believes in, whenever possible, building rapport with a prisoner. Sometimes, giving them an opportunity to tell their story is very important. I can think of some other interrogators, as well as officers that simply had time with a prisoner, to discuss philosophy, culture, and motivation, and wind up getting things of true strategic value.

Coming back to the original point, the polygraph is almost always used as an intimidating psychological tool. I would happily see it go, but I am concerned that some legitimate psychological techniques may go. No, I don't think those idiots at Abu Ghraib did anything in the way of constructive psychological pressure. Pressure of the right sort may very well involve a certain amount of mutual empathy.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Maybe we never held that high moral ground, which one needs to hold to abdicate it. 

Sure there has been examples of us doing some very bad things as a country.  But we fought a war amongst ourselves to end slavery.  We were at the forefront on the Universal Suffrage movement.  We fought hot and cold wars to stop the likes of Hitler and Stalin and their ideologies.  As grave as those threats were we NEVER "officially" used their tactics to stop them or waged wars of aggression like them or "officially" tortured like them...

I have the pdf file of the NYTimes/CBS poll released yesterday on my desktop today. It's a long one -- 33 pages of questions. One of the questions and responses was as follows:

Do you think it is sometimes justified to use torture to get information from a suspected terrorist, or is torture never justified?

Sometimes 35 Never 56 Depends 5 DK/NA 4

The survey was done between 9/15 and 9/19.

That would say to me that if opponents were to emphasize the cruel truths of the compromise, Republicans would be the losers.

Agree. Hope you will post links?

Joe Conason is saying just now 1) that McCain got the Dems in a box on this, they trusted him, and he has betrayed them, and 2) as more comes out about the content of the bill, McCain will, himself, suffer real damage.

That's true. We did end up fighting a bloody war that ended slaverly. Many Americans fought for the rights of blacks and women. America has many great triumphs over tyranny, at home and abroad.

However, this fascination with torturing people seems new to me. Why are we so fixated on the idea of torturing people? Why is it so important? Would torture have prevented 9/11? Some good police work might have prevented it. Perhaps a president interested in terrorism might have prevented it. But would torture have done anything to prevent 9/11?

Is this torture fetish just a Bush thing? Or is this something that symbolizes America's future?

I don't know what the fascination with torture is.  I agree with the points you make about police work and paying attention to terrorists...

But for me it just isn't about the torture per se...it is about what the torture represents.  It goes hand in hand with the administration's disregard for Habeus Corpus, domestic surveillance, denegration of the international rule of law, lack of governmental accountability in the GWOT and in Iraq, trying to forcably spread democracy through wars of aggression, etc.  It is another radical depature from everything we have tried to stand for as a country. 

I don't know if this represents America's future or is just a temporary psychotic detour we have taken.  I am worried because of the effort to permanantly codify so many of these things as governmental SOP...

Now, as far as "lie detection", there's little question in my mind that it's pseudoscience.

Not a scientist are you?

A scientist, if he is acting as one, is always willing to question anything.

What polygraphs do is measure pretty much those things that we have always used to judge whether someone is telling the truth or not but do it far more precisely. No one would want their daughter to marry a polygrapher but they are quite good at telling whether someone is telling the truth or not. Beat the hell out of cross-examination and the judgment of juries which is little better than witchcraft.

If there was no threat from polygraphs, there would be no reason for civil libertarians to be upset by them and wish to control their use.

But as long as your mind is made up, I suppose it is pointless to try discussion.

Best, Terry

They are Not POWs, they are persons, the government holds as criminal actors, without first securing just convictions against them.

Bush, using illegitimate power, stripped these individuals of their Geneva protections, and in doing so, defined them as criminal combatants. At that point, the due process provisions of the US Constitution lawfully controlls. These persons, who are no longer POWs because of the president's tyrannical act, remain in possession of their natural rights. A lawful state will not abridge these rights without first securing a righteous conviction against them.

This exists beyond the reach of the government, all three branches. It is within the realm of the rights of the people, and they are not negotiable. Cite all the precedent that you want, point out any case of previous government tyranny you are able to find, it changes nothing.

I will yield none of my natural rights to the government. I am not alone, and more will join each day. We will prevail, because to fail in this, is to lose America.

Habeas Corpus can only be done away with if the people acquiesce. This fight is not over, by a very long distance.There will be protestations originating from the right-side. It is a very good time to ignore ideological diffferences. This is beyond the pale.

It is a time of resistance. The government has now stepped well beyond their constitutionally defined barricades.

The lunatic is on the grass.
The lunatic is on the grass.
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.

The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more.

And if the dam breaks open
many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

Brain Damage"
Pink Floyd
Dark Side of the Moon

No problem. It's easy to mistake sarcasm, esp. when you're new and don't know us yet.

And since you have been here for a whole 9 hours so far, let me be the first to welcome you to the Cafe!

(Unless someone else welcomed you already, then, let me be the second.) :-) 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Hoppy, i think you've been around long enough to understand The government has now stepped over the line, into our turf. This cannot be allowed to remain here.

That is so very nice of you to welcome me like that…you actually made me blush. Yes, new around here I be and still do not have the lay of the land as yet, so please do pardon any missteps taken.

I am most impressed by the tenor and depth of conversation around this blog, it truly is a step above most, so I do think you will be “seeing” more of me around here. Thanks for the gracious welcome!

It is NOT acceptable to many JAGs, but remember they have been waging this battle for several years already, and have become greatly fatigued.

Turn up the volume, and let them know we are behind them and supporting them.

They compromised on rights which the people possess, and is not lawfully within their sphere of control.

Compare the tyrannies of two Georges:

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

How many ducks have to be lined up before Americans begin to comprehend?

Darn, a new generation may start to read the Declaration of Independence, again...and learn something from it! Now, if we can just get people to start reading the actual Constitution...

Thank you for the links, they were all very helpful, but especially the one entitled “DISCUSSION: Café Management” TPMCafe CHARTER? By Viviane. I can see now that this one is going to be bookmarked!

I know I will no doubt catch heck for this one, but I only wish other blogs were as civil and thoughtful as you folks are here.

OK, I think I have some reading to do…see you all later!

Thinking back to the beginning of this awful debate, five years ago, I think that you have cut to the core issue here.  The reason habeas is important in this case is the fact that the Bush Administration determined that all Gitmo detainees fail to qualify for POW status, either because they are Al Qaeda, and hence not a soldier, or because they are soldiers of a spurious government, the Taliban, and hence do not have the legal status genuine soldiers do.

The problem is that this leaves them nowhere: they are detained neither under the laws of war nor under civilian criminal law, and so the enjoy, if the government has its way, none of the protections that law affords.  The first habeas cases - which went on to be the plaintiffs in the Rasul ruling - were filed to try to force the Administration back into some legal framework.  Without it, people can just disappear, falling outside the reach of legal protections for basic rights, as if Pinochet were suddenly running the United States.

The protections afforded civil prisoners may not be the best framework for dealing with individuals who are alleged to be combatants.  But there has to be some legal framework - civilian or military.  Regardless of which you think it should be, we ought to be able to come together around this idea, that there are no legal black holes.

So we have our country openly advocating and endorsing coercive interrogation as normal procedure, against the universal repugnance and known ineffectiveness of this practice.

Not the country, just the government.

I can't say I'm at all surprised that BushCo want torture legalised. It's all of a piece with everything else they do. Coercion, violence, theft, intimidation, lies, and smears are just the way these guys do things. It's the only way they know.

They don't do diplomacy. They don't do reason. They don't do morality. They don't do democracy. They don't do religion. They just do extreme and bloody violence.

There's only one tool in their toolbox, and it's a very large hammer. And they use it all the time.

What have these guys ever done that was constructive? They went and hammered Afghanistan, and now it's a bloody corpse. They went and hammered Iraq, and now that's another corpse. They encouraged Israel to hammer Lebanon, and now that place is in ruins as well. What have they achieved? Nothing - except to line the pockets of themselves and their rich friends. They pervert and degrade and destroy everything they touch.

Their values - if 'values' is the appropriate word - are the values of common criminals, or of mafia godfathers. And they use the methods of such men. And they're at present beyond the law, because they are the law. Sooner or later it was bound to happen, despite the best efforts of the founding fathers: that a bunch of criminals would take over the government, loot the world, and loot America. It must be kinda handy to have the 82nd Airborne do your robberies.

But human society can't tolerate such people for long. Real, working human societies need honesty, openness, tolerance, consideration, integrity, reason, and all those kinds of values. If any country or society adopted the values of criminals, it would descend into chaos within days. Which is why criminals get locked up, or executed.

And that's what's going to happen to this bunch of crooks, one way or other. Indeed, it has to happen, because the alternative is the total chaos that they're are relentlessly bringing to pretty much everyone everywhere.

Maybe it'll happen when their world finally simply collapses around them, because they've simply hammered the whole thing to pieces. And then it'll be time for regular, decent, honest people to pick up the pieces, and start putting it all back together. And that won't be easy.

And I'd like to know, when the show's finally over for this bunch of criminals: Where they gonna run to?

This is an urgent question. I'm afraid we know where one group of believers stands.

Seriously, if the Republican campaign plan includes mobilizing right-wing Christian supporters in favor of torture, then at least two things are immediately necessary.

People involved in politics who are opposed to torture must appeal, loudly and clearly, for the active support of conscientious citizens of all faiths.

And Americans of faith must recognize what's being done here, and speak out about whether it is consistent with their morals and ethics.  Since Christian values are being invoked to promote torture, I believe Christian individuals and church leaders bear a special burden here.

Where is Cardinal Egan?   Where are the presiding bishops and leading ministers of other congregations?  At this late date it may be impossible to prepare a coordinated campaign, as the White House and its allies have done.  But it should not be necessary to orchestrate anything.  Americans of conscience must recognize that the time to speak out is now.

P.S. I vaguely recall reading about cases that happened with German Americans during WWI, too, though I don't know much about it. Here's an example of the type of thing which I found with a quick google; I can't vouch for the accuracy of this single story:

The simple, often overlooked fact, that suspected enemy aliens could be denied their right of habeas corpus and arrested by presidential warrant, and not by warrant from a judge or justice of the peace allowed the Justice Department, which is a cabinet level office, to conduct searches and investigations of anyone whom they suspected of being disloyal, even with no real evidence of such activities. One such case involved a German-born conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Karl Muck. Considered German by audiences and the Justice Department, Muck began to be harassed by onlookers to his concerts. Having been cleared of any doing wrong or 'suspicious activity in two Federal investigations, Muck was suddenly arrested on March 25, 1918, and placed in an internment camp and labeled as a "dangerous enemy alien."[15]

BTW, from reading lots of issues of the 1911-1917 magazine The Masses (long ago,) I see a lot of interesting parallels with the pre-U.S. entry-into-WWI period in the big cities in the U.S. vis-a-vis "anarchists" (often of German or Italian heritage) then and "terrorists" now....many stories about dubious arrests and entrapment by law enforcement infiltrating into groups on bombing plots (they called them "agent-provocateurs.") One of the latter I remember in particular was a planned bombing of St. Patrick's Cathedral. An infiltrating agent (from the NYC police force) actually got the targets to be inside the cathedral ready to bomb so that a big showy raid could take place. Of course, The Masses was "the" far left voice, entertaining anarchist, socialist and Marxist thought and commentary, proudly slanted.

I'm sorry. I can't find it in my heart to have compassion for torturers, or to equate what they go through with what their victims suffer. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but there you go. To be honest, even this line of reasoning seems vile and repulsive, too much in the line of apologizing for monsters.

Allow me two observations. First, there have been very few torturers who were not willing and eager in modern times. The reality is that in most cases, soldiers or police officers who had trouble with it, were allowed to simply step away.

Even the Nazi's made it a point that they did not have unwilling mass murderers or butchers. The concentration camp guards their torturers were there because they wanted to be. And if they didn't want to be there, the Nazi's transferred them out, no questions asked and no penalties imposed.

The truth is that those who are torturers are torturers because they want to be. No one is holding a gun to their head, no one is forcing them. They do it because they are allowed to. They do it because they like it. They do it because its their job. They do it because they get gratification out of it, sexual or otherwise.

Indeed, after a while, they tend to glory in it. You think all those photographs taken at Abu Ghraib were taken in shame? Look again at the pictures, the grins, the thumbs up signs. They were having fun. They were having a great time.

One of the remarkable things about Nazi concentration camp guards was how they got into it. There are endless stories, even from guards and other soldiers themselves, of how these men came to glory in their inhumanity, how they bragged and boasted of it, how their cruelty became every more gratuitious and how they competed with each other to be more monstrous.

This also showed up at Abu Ghraib, with the torturers competing with each other, bragging at their ability to terrorize a grown man to the point of involuntary urination.

I'm sorry. These are not ordinary people. Nor is this capacity induced by the act of torturing. Instead, the capacity, the sadism, the evil lay inherent within them awaiting the opportunity to come out.

The particular combination of intellectual and emotional sadism that makes a man a torturer is no different than the sort of sexual kinks that makes a man a pedophile. It is not natural to most people, it is a defect of the personality that exists long before it ever finds a victim.

So you'll excuse me if I find your plea for sympathy for the dehumanizing effects of torture on the torturers themselves to be badly, badly mistaken and offensive.

The Democratic Party no longer knows any position but rolling over.

There is no opposition party, folks, no matter if they win one or both houses of Congress. They might as well call themselves Vichycrats. How many will vote against this legislation?

It didn't require any talent. Rove simply knows that the Democrats are a party of cowards. He has had their number for years and they respond exactly in line with his expectations.

If we really believe the United States is "exceptional" and that we are the leader of the free world and the best hope for humankind -- then why are we hiding in bunkers afraid of a bunch of chickenhawks?

They aren't even the least horrible alternative because they are no alternative. They are the enabling chorus. By their cowardice the DEMOCRATS LEGITIMIZE THE REPUBLICANS.

If Congress passes this abomination aren't they committing an international crime?  Won't all such Congressmen have to hide in this country from now on to avoid arrest for war crimes?  I certainly hope this is the case.  No more political junkets, no visits "to the front", no attendance at international symposiums, no more speakers fees in other nations, etc.  Perhaps this may occur to enough members of Congress that they will at least abstain from voting for this.

And, if worst comes to worst, we will have a nice list for those who will man the guillotines. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Offensive? To what, delicate sensibilities that would rather contemplate the photos from Abu Ghraib? Guess we're in sharp disagreement.

Listen to Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident who spent 12 years imprisoned and tortured:

". . .how can you force your officers and your young people in the CIA to commit acts that will scar them forever? For scarred they will be, take my word for it."

"Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID [cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment] practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers."

Bukovsky wrote this Washington Post piece: Sunday 12/18/2005, p. B01. Josh has a link up for it in the TPM-Memo.

If the reaction of Catholic and mainline Christian leaders to Guantanamo is any indication, I expect they'll have something to say about this.

LMAO--cupcake?? sunshine?? delicious. What's next, "testosterone-challenged"? "PMS-benighted"? "Menopausal"?

Alas, too often the macho card is played, as if it were persuasive. (Haven't we had enough of it with Bush's swagger?)

Polls of the American public are always 'useful', yes..., particularly their positions on minding other people's business, like abortions, feeding tube removal, bombing more countries, or just simply bashing gays, in this case a poll on torturing folks. Then again 35% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive so....? At the point when the US reaps the full 'rewards' of Bush and his failed policies, Americans will find the rest of the world will have no tears for that torturing war mongering country- they got what they deserved.

Has it hit home yet that the bill will likely protect CIA, the military and civilian contractors back to 1997?

Here's the skinny from the NY Times via Muckraker:

The senators agreed to a White House proposal to make the standard on interrogation treatment retroactive to 1997, so C.I.A. and military personnel could not be prosecuted for past treatment under standards the administration considers vague.

And this is Justin Rood's comment on the bill according to Frist's wording:

According to the agreement, if you handled detainees anytime between now and Nov. 26, 1997, and treated them in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions -- but didn't violate any of the no-no's outlined in the "compromise" -- you can't be criminally prosecuted under the War Crimes Act.
Who would benefit? Civilian contractors working the K-9 division at Abu Ghraib, for one. And of course, CIA officers or other civilian employees who engaged in "extreme" interrogation tactics.
It's also likely to be good news for any civilian officials who may have ordered, approved or condoned such treatment during that period.

I am not equating torture victims' anguish with the dehumanizing effects on torturers.

You could have fooled me.

I am suggesting that a U.S. law "blessing" torture dehumanizes US.

Yes indeedy, it do.

Yes, we apparently have different fundamental beliefs about what makes a torturer engage in torture. You, Valdron, seem to think it is a personality defect or at least a personality tendency that can be exploited.

Indeed I do. It is, if you will, not unlike pedophilia, or certain other forms of social or sexual dysfunction which seems rooted in the nature of a personality and is therefore resistant to treatment.

A pedophile is sexually attracted to children as part of his nature. It doesn't change, its not a matter of choice or will. Its what he is. A moral pedophile may spend his entire life sexually attracted to children, but always refusing to act on that attraction. But not for one second does that moral foundation change his nature. He still gets a boner over Jon Benet Ramsay. It is an innate personality trait.

By the same token, most torturers as an innate personality trait, have a bent for it. It might not be the dominant personality trait, it may be something that, like a pedophile, they can set aside or suppress for lack of opportunity and encouragement. But make no mistake, its there.

The evidence suggests that the pathologies which result in or enable torturers are deep rooted. For instance, one of the recurring traits of known serial killers is a history of torturing small animals as children. This is not to say that every child who tortures small animals is a serial killer, but clearly these children express a pathology which can lead them to become serial killers. Any psychologist will tell you that a child who tortures small animals is exhibiting disturbing pathologies which are likely to carry over into adult life. The point is that deviant traits seem to show up very early in life, and in a significant number of cases, seem to carry through to later life.

We don't, unfortunately, have any literature on torturers as a group. They tend to shy away from study or exposure. So its difficult to get more than anecdotal evidence. But there is evidence of certain recurring personality types that are drawn to posts like, and found in positions of prison guards, police officers or military.

This is not to say that police officers, prison guards or military personnel are on the whole, inhuman or inhumane, any more than it would be proper to say that day care workers or teachers are on the whole, pedophiles. Rather, the better thing is to say that certain occupations consistently attract certain personality profiles, and that some of these are not nice.

Indeed, police and military forces find themselves formally or informally on the lookout for certain personality types, and committed to not having those personality types in their ranks.

As I've said, we don't have any literature or statistical evaluation which would profile your basic torturer. But the little that does get out on an anecdotal basis suggests a disturbing pattern not unlike serial killers. On the whole, there is previous evidence of a bent towards sadism, cruelty, depersonalization of others and need for control.

Charles Grainer, America's most famous torturer was a prison guard. This is reminiscent of the tendency of pedophiles to seek out occupations, such as day care workers or teachers, which put them in contact with or give them access to children.

I believe that otherwise moral people will engage in heinous acts given a confluence of psychology and certain social conditions.

Goes without saying. Whipped up into a hysterical frenzy, people are capable of all sorts of demented shit.

Nevertheless, most otherwise moral people are not going to become serial killers or engage in sexual acts with children, no matter what the psychology and social conditions.

Perhaps almost anyone can be, under the right circumstances, be induced into committing an act or acts of torture. Or at least can be induced to tolerate someone else committing such an act.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't real torturers. Guys who live for it, who seek it out, who gravitate naturally into those positions and places.

It strikes me that you confuse the natural flexibility of humans with the existence of evil.

A criminal defense lawyer I once knew said that he dealt with two kinds of people. People who commit criminal acts, and criminals.

You confuse the fact that people can commit evil acts, with the fact that there are for want of a better word evil people. I suspect that you find 'evil' a hopelessly archaic and out of fashion word, the province of some monochromatic fuddy duddy. I wish I had some better and more fashionable term to entertain you with. Nevertheless, its all we got.

You seem to have some notion that torturers are, on the whole, just ordinary people who got the wrong lottery ticket on the job banks and suffer for it. Sorry, the reality is that many or most of these guys are not ordinary people.

They are, for want of a more fashionable word, 'evil.' They have a taste for torture. They go into professions or trades that might gratify that taste. They gravitate towards it. And they enjoy it. Nobody forced them, it isn't any kind of psychosocial pressure that compells them. They just like it.

I'm sure you're familiar with the 1960 Stanley Milgram experiments, yes? Milgram concluded:.... (snippity doo dah)...

As a matter of fact yes, I am familiar with the Milgram experiments. You'll note that, as is common in such social science experiments, Milgram loaded his dice to get the result he was looking for.

In the case of his famous experiment, he explicitly depersonalized both the 'subject' and the 'victim.' The subject never saw the victim, only heard their voice. There was a deliberate effort to depersonalize and dehumanize the victim as much as possible, removing face, body, name and extraneous conversation was part of it. There was also an effort to undermine sympathy by often having scripts which made the 'victim' unpleasant or unapproachable.

The script called for the 'victim' to incur or incite punishment by making 'mistakes' and by becoming increasingly resistant and abusive... at least as often as they begged or objected.

Meanwhile, the 'subject' was placed in a sterile and alien environment, pressing a button in a clean room. Indeed, the degree of remoteness was such that many of the subjects failed to appreciate on emotional levels or indeed in some cases on any level, the connection between their activities and the punishment of the 'victims' or their role in it.

And to make matters worse, there was a controller present or available to attend, whose job was to encourage or incite sadism, to minimize its consequences, to absolve and absorb responsibility.

In short, it was an experiment, many features of which were controlled for, intended to produce the result it got. Well, you know... duh.

The less understood or emphasized finding of the Milgram experiment was that there was still a group of subjects who, despite a series of parameters designed to encourage increasingly punitive behaviour, simply refused. Or whose discomfort grew to the point of refusal as the experiment wore on.

Basically, there were always some lab rats who refused. This is pretty significant. They rigged the game in every possible way to encourage cruel behaviour, but no matter, there were still some who would not play.

"This is perhaps the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process."

And there we speak of the US Congress. Or life. Or the endless confluence of well meaning people who, for one reason or another, clearcut a forest, or ravage a harmless nation, loot a pension fund, or do any of the thousands of things by which people add to the saum total of human misery.

Sometimes, we're a pretty fucked up hopeless bunch.

But nevertheless, in any prison population, you can find a majority just trying to get by, and a small number of murderous vicious badasses.

Evil may be inherent in the human condition, may be a capacity within each of us, and may often be a consequence of well meaning or purposeful acts.

But don't fool yourself that there aren't genuinely and purely evil motherfuckers out there, and that they tend to show up in places where they can do damage, because that's what they like to do.

The Milgram experiment was all about depersonalizing and distancing a person from the reality of another human and the consequences of your act upon those humans.

Torturers aren't like that. They're up close and personal with their victims. They see them, they talk to them, they smell them. They love the power over them and they like hurting them.

So have no pity for them. They're human cancer, and to consider them as anything else is to invite them to metastize.

Yeah, when the going gets tough your principles are out the window, eh Fredo.

So much for 'conservative' America. All those hard core values, and the first loud noise you piss yourselves.

Or are there any principles operating in there, Pedo? Or are you just another fan of Timmy McVeigh and Eric Rudolf.

Somehow, we beat your heroes back in WWII without throwing away those principles. Funny eh. I guess the Nazi's and the Japanese, and for that matter, the Soviets and Chinese in the cold war weren't as tough as Al Quaeda.

Welcome back, boyo. We missed ya.

This whole thread proves what feckless cowards all you libs truly are.

Not ONE of you have condemned the torture perpetrated against Christians and Jews around the world by Islamo-fascists. That's right, Christians and Jews, YOUR OWN PEOPLE!

It's because you are afraid of the Islamo-fascists, and for that reason, you increase their power and embolden them to continue their sick murderous crusade. They feed off fear, not power. The Bush Admin shows power. You peacenik cowards on the Left show fear and appeasement.

Like I've said before, you libs would choose to serve in dhimmitude to them than die. Why not just get your women measured up for their burka now and be ready for them?

Not all Muslims are terrorists, BUT ALL TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIMS!

When are you people going to wake the fuck up?

Hey Dennis, give me a call sometime --- you have my phone number, don't you? Shall I give it to you again, just in case you lost it?

Yes, artappraiser, why not just conveniently sidestep the real threat here and show what a coward you are in the face of Islamo-fascism.

What, you don't think they're a threat? I'll bet you're one of those conspiracy freaks that believes that Bush and the PNAC and the AEI and all the neocons imploded those towers with pre-set detonations, right? It's a Zionist conspiracy, right? All Jews were told not to work at the WTC on 9/11/01, right?

Here on Tremaudan Ave, Dennis, we don't do such things.

ROTFL. But you're not on Tremauden, are ya?

You're down in some slimy basement somewhere, trying to ignore the cockroaches crawling over your body eating your funk sweat and the dried semen off your stretch pants, while behind you, your toothless mother grunts, serving an endless line of clients. And all the while, you wonder why she'll do everyone else, but not you.... LOL.

Oh sorry. Got your psychological reality.

Fred
You keep calling people cowards, Fred. Are you a brave man, Fred? You strike me as the kind of person who screams at people in traffic, with your windows rolled up, and then goes home and kicks the dog. Fuck you, Fred.

Remember, josh, if you're reading this thread you started ... dennis valdron is one of YOUR own.

The way one Republican appartchik put it, President George Bush stood tall and firm after the Supremes ruled against his tribunals and torture methods.  When members of his own party broke with him, this presidential President then "compromised" and brought everyone together in a presidential way.  The Republicans win all way 'round.

I got to wondering about presidential George.  Are we going to have a presidential news conference every Friday from now 'till November?  Or have the last two been to try to keep "42" from upstaging "43"?  Clinton is getting a ton of coverage these days and presidential George is not pleased.  But it's OK so long as no one talks about the disaster that is Iraq. I means who wants to know about calling up more National Guardsmen to send to Iraq.  That could make the local elections a bit messy.

Then I got to wondering about "60 Minutes" telling the story that Richard Armitage told Pervez Mousharaff "to be ready to be bombed back to the Stone Age if he was not willing to cooperate with the U.S. in Iraq.  The best part was presidential George telling the press that this was the first he'd heard that Mousharaff was threatened.  Note, presidential George did not disavow the statement; he just left it and Armitage twisting in the wind. 

Question:  Is this meant to get Colin Powell for saying "we were in danger of losing our moral authority?

Presidential George plays hardball. 

Fred,
You answered my insult [It was an insult, Fred] with an insult, but you didn't answer my question. Are you a brave man, Fred? Are you the opposite of what you keep accusing others of being?

I did learn a new word though, so I guess even this was not totally pointless.

Are you a brave man, Fred? Are you the opposite of what you keep accusing others of being?

Yes, I've been in Israel and have witnessed firsthand the savagery of Islamo-fascists who have pledged to kill all Jews, destroy Israel, and remake the world to 100% Muslim compliance.

Remember that this is their STATED goal which as been reported by the world press. Islamo-fascism is not a neocon invention.

Something tells me that you and all your sick lib pals would gladly and voluntarily submit to Allah rather than die fighting those trying to force you into dhimmitude, right?

of course I'm right, I'm smarter than all of you lib chumps put together because I see the world for what it is, NOT WHAT I THINK IT SHOULD BE LIKE (i.e. the lib view of the world)

To download the actual text of our concern see the link in the comment below, at: http://balkin.blogspot.com/

Text of Current Bush-Senate Compromise Bill Friday, September 22, 2006 JB Here is the latest version of the Military Commission Bill, including all of the compromises agreed to by the Administration and Senators McCain, Graham, and Warner. The worst parts begin on p. 81, eliminating the writ of habeas corpus, denying anyone the right to invoke rights guaranteed by Geneva in judicial actions, prohibiting the use of any foreign sources in construing the meaning of the Geneva Conventions, proclaiming that the President is the authoritative source of the meaning of Geneva with respect to the War Crimes statute, amending the War Crimes statute with language that allows the President to continue to engage in torture-lite (after all, he is now the authoritative source of its meaning), and finally, making all these amendments retroactive to November 26th, 1997 (i.e., well before September 11th, 2001. I wonder what led to this particular change?)

This is a bill that all Americans can truly be ashamed of. And it has been given to us courtesy of our elected leaders, the party of Torture-lite.

Josh posted a link on TPM to Vladimir Bukovsky's commentary on torture in yesterday's WaPo (so did Andrew Sullivan). If you haven't read it yet, please do, and if you already have, consider reading it again, or, better yet, saving it for future reference. It is as compelling an indictment of torture as I've read so far. One point he makes that has been on my mind for a long time during this protracted struggle with the Administration, is the primary purpose and intention of torture, which is not information gathering but oppression.

Ever since the unseemly fight over the 2000 Presidential vote, the m.o. of the Bushies has been fear and intimidation, taken to whatever level necessary to force their way to a win for their side, and their freedom to govern as they please. This is the overarching theme for Bush 43, "you will do it our way, or you will regret you ever went against it." This constant bombardment with shock and awe language and behavior is designed, consciously or not, to subdue and overpower people, to shut down their critical faculties and will to resist. It doesn't matter who it is who opposes them, the threat of "torture" is always held aloft. In a way, it's Texas politics projected on a national scale, but it seeks to go Texas politics one better, by cranking not just on the political opposition but the electorate themselves. Rove succeeds by demoralizing and diminishing adversaries and then ridiculing them for being so, as he puts it, "pantywaist."

Torture isn't about and for our enemies, then, so much as it's about and intended for us. Stalin wrote the book. Read Bukovsky for a synopsis. Finally, lest you think that I am exaggerating or theatricalizing, consider what Bukovsky says about torture's acquiring a life of its own, in the end controlling and dehumanizing both the tortured and the torturer. Which is why it must be stopped, over and over again.

Maybe a continuing Ed Civics Class is in order for the two houses on The Hill?

Partisan concerns are nugatory here. This issue transcends party. It is the Republic's soul, the Dreamtime America, under attack. We must resist.

If not, we are liable to become a Jeffers nightmare:

Ave Caesar
by Robinson Jeffers

No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather--for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists--
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who'll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.

To the sick miscreant who gave my above dose of much-needed reality a zero rating, I contend that the only way you'll ever grasp the reality of Islamo-fascism is if a loved one or close friend meets the same fate as Nick Berg, Danny Perl, et al. That is fact.

I vividly remember in the 1960s how you lib cowards looked at Soviet communism with the same nonchalance. The only entity you can feel comfortable to be at war with is your own country, not foreign cultures or people.

Danny boy, it shows your complete lack of empathy for real victims when you can only answer facts about Islamo-fascism with more gross pornographic ramblings.

It proves what a child you are because you can't understand reality. You and your sick pals here only understand a fantasy world that doesn't exist, where everything is fair, peaceful, and just.

Wake the fuck up, the world is nothing like that and never will be.

Lincoln's Civil War suspension of Habeas Corpus was largely ruled unconstitutional in Post Civil War decisions, most notably:

• Ex parte Milligan 71 U.S. 1 (1866)

Furthermore, the Civil War was a unitque situation, not germane when it is used as general wartime precedent. The War was internal, fought citizen against citizen.

Roosevelt's WWII internment of American Citizens of Japanese descent was widely villified prior to 911.

Anyone claiming to be a conservative, who cites FDR as precedent in a defense of governmental action is engaging in hypocritical extremism, which can also be aptly described, moral relativism.

their feedlot is overflowing,
their abattoir operates nonstop
they should dance with the pig
that brung em to the prom,
and not steal some other's true hog.

Okay, I'll bite. That McVeigh fella sure knew his Q'uran, huh?

This is the reason why some pundits contend that liberalism is a mental disorder.

You can't discern between one loony tune American anarchist like McVeigh and a network of tens of thousands of Islamo-fascists currently organizing and operating around the world killing innocent Christians and Jews.

Again, the reason why is that you are cowards who won't openly condemn a radical medieval culture that could pose a physical threat to your existence.

To the person who said Democrats should oppose the bill out of principle--

If you ain't on Rove's payroll, you should be.

"Unless Democrats are willing to debate this issue they will lose on this issue, and so will the Country, everytime."

No Democrat-- no matter how inspiring he or she may be to you-- is going to convince independents and more consevative Democrats that McCain's bill allows torture, when every TV and radio station in the country will broadcast McCain saying it doesn't and 99% of the people know he himeslf WAS tortured. If you want Democrats to re-take Congress, forget about your high-falutin principles and the arcane minutiae of international law.
They don't cut it on this issue with two-thirds of the electorate.

Bluebell, do not concede, it is not over, and there is an alternative:

• We, the People

• 35% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive

No, 35% of Americans polled using the uncommonly silly question, "Do you believe Elvis is alive", respnded yes.  There is a difference, although it is lost on most persons, especially on professionals in statistical social science fields.  To ask a stupid question is to beg a stupid answer.  This is especially true when the questioner goes out into the public, lamely disguised as one of them, but still reeking elitism's stench permeated with the odor of elephants' death, acquired from long-term residence in ivory towers.

There is no way in the world I would ever answer an assinine poll question such as this one honestly, and this question alone would in all likelyhood cause a great deal of dishonesty on my part, when answering the rest of the poll's queries.

How many situationists does it take to skew a random population sampling? Have methods ever been devised to properly correct for this?

Shorter Sage: "Torture? Oh well..."

This is the essence of the Independent's thinking: anti-torture is now a "high falutin principle."

Anything for a vote, I guess...

Taking your argument to the next logical level, we shouldn't say a peep of this in the 2006 elections. Don't make it an issue. Let's just agree with the Republicans on this one.

Exactly why we lose every time. If there's no difference between the GOPs and the Dems, voters might as well vote GOP. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Please, just drop it so Mr. Dobbs goes away... 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

delete

Disagree. The meaning is not to extract information. The meaning is to saw fear and establish an impression of supremacy versus inferiority that is repeated again and again to reinforce the impression both in the supremacist executors and the nation they represent as well as in the victimized group(s), may they be religiously or politically different, intellectals or homosexuals, or just of another nationality deemed subhuman.

It's a pattern as old as culture and history.

It's not the Democrats that have lost.
It's the nation with its opinion-leaders, church-leaders, writers, intellectuals, dissenters and all followers.

It wouldn't help if the Democratic Party had remained sane, they would then have lost even more seats and influence.

America must find its way back to the quest for Liberty.

I really doubt that anyone's going to be reading this, but I'd like to throw my two cents in on the subject.

First, there's little to choose from in terms of credibility between Pervez Mushareff, Richard Armitage and George W. Bush. All are notorious self serving liars. The days when we could automatically accept the words of an American President or diplomat are long gone.

So, did it happen or not? Don't know. Maybe, probably, but who knows, really.

What is really important is that Mushareff talked about it now, during or immediately prior to a visit to the United States and a meeting with President Bush.

What does that tell you?

Tells you America's in trouble. You don't diss the big bad if you're still afraid of it.

Somehow, for some reason, Mushareff's equations have changed. He's signed a treaty with the Taliban, called off the hunt for Osama Bin, and is all but calling the Bush administration cheap thugs in bad suits. These are not good signs.

Why is this happening? Four possibilities.

First, there's a chance that Bush's coddling up to India, and his acceleration of India's nuclear program and nuclear weapons program has left the Pakistani's so outraged and deeply angry, that they just don't give a rats ass any more. Their alliance with America has produced no benefits and lots of downsides. They're really, really mad at America and they don't much care about showing it. Perhaps suicidally angry... or maybe not.

Second, they may have a perception that America's sun is setting in the region. Iraq is an abyssmal mess, Afghanistan is careening to defeat, the Russians are pushing you out of Central Asia, the Pakistani's just don't think you've got the stones. They see a formerly awesome military power lead by boobs, relentlessly throwing its military and political advantages away. So now they're dissing you? That just means that they've decided you're the village idiots and there's no need to respect you.

Third, maybe they're looking at new friends and new opportunities. Look at it this way, the American alliance produced damned few benefits, and more than a few slaps in the face. The US is getting in bed with their strategic enemy, India... perhaps they're looking at an alliance with India's strategic enemy, China. Or with the Russians, who would desperately love a highway to the Indian ocean. As for that whole Iran thing... well, the Pakistani's haven't had friendly relations with Iran. But Iran does have all that lovely oil which could be an incredible boost to the Pakistani economy, and which could provide revenue transshipping or pipelining to India and even China.

Fourth, it may simply be that Pakistani politics and popular opinion has grown so anti-American that Pervez simply can't afford to support the United States.

Basically, ain't nothing good.

What I am here to do, dear reader, is to let you know that your thinking is cowardly, defeatist, anti-American, anti-Israeli, pro-Muslim, and completely fucked up.

"Discussion and debate" to you is buying into your cowardly lib bullshit and validating it.

GOT THAT?

This from a man whose motto is 'Dhimmitude before Death!'

Or don't you remember your little 'survive at all costs' diatribe, ROTFL.

Seriously Pedo, I'm disappointed. You're obviously not even trying.

What are you coming out with? Whiney self pity, interspersed with brief ejaculations of half-baked snark. Come on, that's just pathetic.

I was excited when you showed up again. I thought 'Hey! Pedo's here! Time for some rock and roll, crash and burn, fun and games, because you know how it is, its all fun and games when someone loses an eye.' But I must say, you've been a crashing disappointment.

Where's the old Pedo? Crazy as a schizophrenic loon, rabid as a sodomized badger. Where's the piss and vinegar, that fighting spirit.

Look at you. It's sad. It's like you accidentally eunucherized yourself. You're barely going through the motions.

Borrrrrring. Bored. What's wrong with you? We had such fun together. And now? Hmph. You've gone all pathetic on me. Really, you've just gone downhill. One of these days you're going to be sitting there telling us all about how Walter Mondale is an exciting guy and affirmative action is near and dear to your heart. That's just sad, Pedo.

I guess what I'm saying is, as gently as I can, that its just not working out. You're not fun any more. You've become trite and dull and repetitive. That's just not good enough.

It was fun, and I and my subscriber list, will always cherish the old Pedo. But really, I think its just time to move on.

I would say you sound like a Nazi as we knew them.

We're in a thread drift here, but a couple of responses, i'll try to keep them brief.

Armitage is a lot of things, many of which i disagree with, but from what is known about his actions in the Fitzgerald investigation into the Plame leak, liar does not seem to be one of his traits. Promoting Armitage to 2nd at State is akin to hiring a bull to be a cashier at a porcelain retailer, he's never been one for real subterfuge, and it could easy be that he was setup by Machiavellians within the RNC who pushed him into the Novak interview by taking advantage of his known trait of loyalty to friends. The New York Times September 2, 2006, article about it said Armitage had never met Novak before, and he'd agreed to the interview at the request of an old friend:

• "Mr. Armitage did not know Mr. Novak, but agreed to meet with the columnist as a favor for a mutual friend, Kenneth M. Duberstein, a White House chief of staff during Ronald Reagan's administration. At the conclusion of a general foreign policy discussion, Mr. Armitage said in reply to a question that Ms. Wilson might have had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Niger."

I have been opposed to the Pakistani kid gloving since right after 911. At the same time, India should have never been given Nuke tech without coming into compliance with non-proliferation treaties. We still could have leveraged an alliance with India into a much more substantive war on al Qaeda, even if no direct action from India had ever been needed.

Here's a bit of a Bush muse in the making: Anyone who really believes that Bush is an idiot is a fool being gamed. My usage should be taken in context. I think Bush is a person with above average intelligence, who learned early the advantages of sandbagging and took it to heart. ("Jeb, we know you got all B's and A's and Dubya got C's and D's, but you need to understand that we expect more of you than we do Dubya...") Bush's never having to face the true repercussions of his wrong acts has only served to reinforce his distortion of slackfullness. Never having had a public confrontation about his long term substance abuse problems, gave him a 2 decades plus education in the art of the lie.

Unfortunately for America, and perhaps the world, I agree with most of what you posted, btw.

Actually, I don't mind that the topic drifts a little. Let's face it, 150 posts going 'wow, torture is bad, and the Democrats blew it again' seems both obvious and redundant. And frankly, I had some hopes when Fred Dobbs showed up but he's proven to be disappointingly dull and halfhearted. So a little new topicality is refreshing.

Dubya really is stupid. The trouble is that there's all sorts of stupid, and all sorts of smart. The idea that intelligence is a single variable that runs from moron to genius is mistaken.

Dubya shows a number of traits which amount to his being stupid. He is, by all accounts, not academically gifted. That's a small thing. But more disturbing is his remarkable incuriousity and indifference to information.

Over and over again, the reports are that he never asks questions when presented with reports and briefs. He displays no interest, shows no curiousity, there's no indication that he is processing the material in anything but the most superficial way. His response to the "Al Quaeda intends to Strike America" memo? "You've covered your ass."

Indeed, reports indicate that he's often reluctant to read his briefs, they're shortened, nuances are abandoned. He makes decisions quickly based on his 'gut', that is, his internal psychological dynamic, rather than reasoned consideration of outside information. And once he makes a decision, he closes entirely. He is intolerant of new information, the decision sticks, and he is determined to wrap reality around that decision.

These are characteristics of a deeply, dangerously stupid man.

Having said that, a badger is also a very stupid animal. But its dangerous as hell, and it knows a few trips.

Never underestimate the utility of having a few cheap tricks, a mean streak and being born with a silver spoon. Intelligence is a valued commodity, but there are substitutes. The world is full of stupid, brutal men who wind up on the top of heaps through luck or viciousness or simple ambition.

To offer just one example. Bush doesn't have to be particularly smart, if the Democrats are craven, cowardly and incompetent.

Think about it. Al Gore and John Kerry? Best you could come up with. Both of them ran spectacularly inept, dull, center-right campaigns where they flip flopped, avoided taking stands, and consistently failed to keep up.

Look at John Kerry... what was his platform, anyone have any idea? He failed to display conviction or even coherence. He surely wasn't fast on his feet, the Swift Boats took him by surprise and did incalculable damage before he got around to reacting. Well, whose fault was that? He presented as an empty suit, his campaign was that he was not George W. Bush, he expected to be elected President for showing up on time, and his approach was that he was going to do what Bush did, except better, but with less conviction. And then after making a big show out of having every vote counted, he couldn't wait to throw the towel in, in Ohio.

The sad fact of the matter is that Bush's success is, as often as not, not the result of any particular brilliance, but the collusion or impotence of his opposition.

Look at the issues that the Democrats consistently rolled over on: Tax cuts, the Iraq War, the PATRIOT Act, Deficits, Homeland Security, Bankruptcy reform, Alito and Roberts, Judicial appointments, No Child Left Behind... This isn't opposition, they were in the boat with him, helping out and selling out their constituents.

Look at the issues that they've been silent on: 9/11. Katrina. Trent Lott. Harriet Miers, and now Torture.

Jesus H. Christ, how smart does Dubya have to be? Half the time the Democrats are in bed with him. Half the time they're AWOL. And their political strategy seems to be to cut their own throats at every opportunity.

A drooling moron could succeed against that.

As for Richard Armitage's integrity, excuse me while I burst out laughing. The rules are simply different for Armitage and his peers.

As to whether the threat was really made, I note that Juan Cole's post of today reproduces correspondance and discussion from September 19, 2001, which suggests that exactly that threat was actually being made, and was fairly commonly known...

What accounts for the alacrity with which Musharraf has moved on this issue? First of all, he appears to have been bluntly threatened. Dawn quotes Pakistani officials as saying, that " 'Pakistan has the option to live in the 21st century or the Stone Age' is roughly how US officials are putting their case." It is astonishing that the US is talking like this behind the scenes, if true, though presumably the blunt language is coming from aides & lower-level bureaucrats.

Also, I'd note that the Bush administration is legendary in its penchant for trash talking.

In any event, I don't really care. The real issue is not what Armitage may or may not have said five years ago, but what Mushareff is saying now.

The fact that he's willing to say it at all suggests that there's been a major sea change.

Time to wake up from the propaganda:
WWII wasn't about stopping Hitler. It was about getting rid of the empire's possible competition from the British, the French and the Germans,
- with the help of the Soviet Union, on the expence of the people in the eastern half of Europe.

Classical Divide and Rule.
Not particularly moral, in my book.

I don't get your point. So are you saying that Hitler wasn't a real threat? And when you refer to "the empire," are you referring to the U.S.? I think Hitler was a real problem that needed to be dealt with.

As Emperor Bush stands naked, next to him cowers McCain with only this lie of a fig leaf covering his so-called straight shooter.

 _____________________________________________________

“I, ..., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

Well, yeah, Hitler was a real problem that needed to be dealt with. But for the first three years of that war the United States sat on the fence. Sure, FDR aided Churchill, but Prescott Bush and many of his class aided Hitler. In the end, America only chose a side because it was pushed off the fence by the Japanese.

In any event, it came a little late. By the time America entered the war, the Battle of Britain was done and Hitler was already in trouble in his Soviet invasion. The end was already beginning, and the writing was on the wall. By the time American forces were ready to move, Hitler was already in retreat and on the defensive.

Statistics show that 8 out of 10 German soldiers were killed by the Russians. Of the remainder, half were killed by the Brits, the Canadians, the Free French, the Yugoslavs, etc. So America was more a free rider in the fight than a critical force.

To be fair, you did take down the Japanes all by yourselves, straight fight, no question. Well, except for that whole China thing where the Kuomintang and Communists fought the Japanese and tied down whole Japanese armies. But let's be serious, there was no Chinese navy. So I'm pretty comfortable giving that one to youse.

I would say you sound like a Nazi as we knew them.

You wouldn't say that to any Islamo-fascists, would you, you fucking coward?

I am not calling for world domination. I'm not calling for the destruction of a race of people, an entire religious denomination, and an entire sovereign country. I am not beheading captives on live TV, or raping and murdering captive school children, am I, like the Islamo-fascists? Of course not.

In response to that, if we, the US, has to rough up some Islamo-fascist captives as revenge, then so be it. Revenge is sweet. Give them a taste of the utter brutality that they dole out. They deserve it and I have no pity for them.

WHAT PART OF "WAR IS HELL" DON'T YOU COWARDLY PEACENIKS UNDERSTAND?

You people have a very fucked way of looking at the world. I will continue to remind you of it as I see fit.

Here's a newsflash for you .... in a time of war, different rules apply. It was certainly that way during WW2. Whatever a country has to do to win should be the priority. Win at all cost and everybody is expected to fall in and help however they can.

Dissent only empowers the enemy, giving them the confidence to press on with their cause, because they know their enemy is divided and seemingly weak.

This weakness, of course, is courtesy of the fifth columnists in the press and you lib scumbags in academe, on blogs, or wherever you may be found.

Personally, I'm all for fighting, but I kind of like winning.  There are strong examples in American history of the fact that adhering to high moral standards in the conduct of war works: troops are more likely to surrender when they don't fear summary execution, and suspects are more likely to turn and provide intelligence when interrogators have built trust.   It may be lost on you, but I think that a pretty good case can be made for the idea that we can prevail over Al Qaeda and their ilk by holding ourselves to higher standards, and that the more we start to act like an al Zarqawi, the less likely it is that we'll prevail.

I agree that Australia was as much a line that the Japanese could not cross as the Phillipines (still trying to rub out the idea of the Japanese invading Puerto Rico).

My questions are less on the military alternatives, however, and more on how much the Japanese could have done to establish their empire, explicitly the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, without triggering (their term) the Pacific War with the US. Your points about Stalin add complexity, including the contigency of Hitler still launching BARBAROSSA.

Within the context of the larger discussion here, if the US might have put up with Japan becoming the East Asian economic empire, it rather diminishes the idea that the US actions in the European Theater of Operations were primarily intended for long-term economic advantage.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I don't especially think that POW status is the way to deal with it, but one way or another, there needs to be some legal framework for this kind of thing.  What happened to Maher Arar is a pretty good indication of why.

That said, I understand that there are individual cases that sometimes of necessity fall outside the law.  If Osama bin Laden were captured (assuming he hasn't just died), I can see the wisdom in preferring he end up at the bottom of a ravine than in a court, kangaroo or otherwise.  

But when you get to the point of opening prisons to hold hundreds of individuals, picked up in the fog of war, you need to have the law in place to deal with it. 

Devon, you are living in dreamland. You are horribly naive. The last time we had "gentelmen's wars" was in the 19th century when officers stood on the hill and watched everything.

You have to equal or exceed your enemy's level of brutality to win. Islamo-fascists only know the most heinous forms of violence and you have to beat them at their own game to defeat them.

Wake the fuck up and see the world for what it is, not for what you hope it COULD be like in your naive, idealistic view.

I believe the chronology suggests that the US could not have been planning for a US dominated economic empire, as distinct from strategic results, in December 1941. If you were arguing for a Pacific empire being planned throughout 1941, I might well agree with you.

My point is primarily that the slogan on WWII as an "ideological" war against a dangerous ideology has become more believed than is easy to comprehend.

And, of course, I admit to have wilfully expressed myself brief, drastic and shrewd rather than precise and academic.
:-)

But the actual declarations of war is not what's the issue, but the United States' actual choice to support, materially and in other ways, both the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.

If one wants to believe in American decission-makers' intentions or not is of course a matter of taste.
To me, it seems hard to believe that there shouldn't have been a conscious attempt to avoid a too strong United Kingdom (or France) after the war. Not that I, personally, think that was a very bad idea. ...only doing this on the expence of the peoples of the eastern half of Europe was nothing to be proud of. Not at all.

I agree totally, Devon. I think Bush used the 14 detainees, made up of major terrorists (no doubt, worthless pieces of shit), as poster children for his torture program. I think it’s more about immunity from war crimes than anything else anyway. But the point I was getting at was that habeas corpus is crucial for suspects (because they are mostly just that- suspects). POWs know why they are held and don’t require habeas. But under this “compromise,” even American citizens can be denied fundamental rights like Habeas corpus and due process. This is not just unconstitutional. It is un-American.

Hell, America's late to pretty much every war. Martial procrastinators, thats what you are.

Hitler threatened to make Germany dominant. Yes, he was a threat. But so was Stalin.

Hitler, or the party he led, was a threat against the people of Germany and even more so against neighboring peoples. But so was Stalin, or the party he led, and the Soviet Union had been a tremendous threat for twenty years already.

The Soviet Union had not been seen as a tremendous threat other than as on a subversive and ideological level. Indeed, its internal turmoil probably reduced the perception of its ability to project power. I'd cite Robert Conquest's The Great Terror, and Pavel Sudoplatov's Special Tasks as good sources. In particular, look at Sudoplatov's account of the assassination of Trotsky, and Conquest's discussion of the purges of the Soviet senior military, starting with Tukachevsky.

Germany was seen as capable of projecting military power, even though its capability, at least for the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, was actually much less than had been believed. No one was seriously concerned, before 1940, that the Soviets could take and hold land, even after Zhukov's victory over the Japanese at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Well, we didn't get bombed again, that much happened.

By the way, since this site is affixed by the lips to Sidney Blumenthal's posterior, check out the NY Times smackdown of Blumenthal's book (reviewed with Lewis Lapham's collected columns, minus one). Lapham-- Gore Vidal without the warmth-- gets the worst of it, and well deserved (he's quite unreadable even when you agree with him), but Blumenthal gets a bloodied nose or two, too.

Which brings up the issue of why people obey. A monolithic theory of power assumes that the power of a government is a relatively fixed quantum. If that were true, however, such power could only be controlled by the voluntary self-restraint of rulers.

I do not accept a lot of the framing of the issues about Bush: undergirding the whine is a set of monolithic premises. Consider the words of French writer Etienne de La Boetie, in speaking of the power of a tyrant:

"He who abuses you so has only two eyes, has but two hands, one body and has naught but what has the least man of the great and infinite number of your cities, except for the advantage you give him to destroy you."

The guy knew he was in a fight with a cheap thug in an expensive suit. He'd heard the stories about McCain's 'black illegitimate baby'. He'd watched the Bush vs Gore fight. He knew what he was facing, and he still went sleepwalking. I'm sorry, but that's as far as it goes.

I got nothing against the guy, and he did do pretty well in the vote. Just not well enough.

If you're happy with how Kerry fought his campaign, all power to you.

I'll just be differing.

Still, I think the concern of the US and UK was that Germany was the most dangerous opponent, even though the situation on the Eastern Front was an open question in December 1941.

But the U.S. weren't forced by some external force to support the Communist Soviet Union that in 1941 had a VERY bad record of not only torturing innocent convicts who then were conveniently executed, but of repeated genocides and acquisition of neighbouring countries (sending their elites either to death or to Siberia).

The U.S. had the choice to let the huge Soviet Union and the strong Third Reich grind down each other's armies while supporting Britain, but no, that wasn't chosen.

The help to the Soviet Union was not necessary for the protection/support of Britain, and was furthermore on the expence of nations and countries attacked, invaded, occupied and threatened by the Soviet Union, starting with Finland in the North.

It can be called "supportive" of Britain but it was support on the expence of the peoples suffering under the Soviet empire - and that was not necessary and neither was it particularly moral. The Soviet Union was in 1941 a known evil, the Third Reich was in 1941 not known for the evil that after the war has been made the alleged driving force for the U.S. effort.

Ergo, the U.S. didn't fight WWII in Europe for ideologcial reasons but for geo-strategic.

I don't see that we use geo-strategical differently, but maybe we do regard princes differently. I do not hold Machiavelli to be an example for democratic nations.

I do most certainly agree that the Ukranian oil was highly important, although I do not have access to sources that actually value them to be MORE important than Scandinavian and French iron-ore (not to mention some other precious metals) - or grain or coal for that matter.

Nickel and iron could have given reason for U.S. support of democratic Finland via Petsamo (and thereby indirectly Norway, Sweden and Denmark and to a lesser degree other nations that were to come under Soviet dominance), but nope, that wasn't the American choice. Instead Communist Russia was supported via Murmansk some 100 miles further to the east.

I have never suggested the US fought in the ETO for ideological reasons,

I think we now have established that you believe it to have been in the best interest of the U.K. to support the Soviet Union, and I think it was in the best interest of America.

certainly not for the welfare of the German or Soviet peopls.

The Soviet mass killings of different kinds were not unknown. Soviet expansionism had in 1941 led to an unfinished invasion of Finland, an invasion of eastern Poland, "influence-expansions" that soon would become annexations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and serious threats against Rumania and Hungary.

I'm going to act, for the moment, as though you're not a troll, and continue this.

You have to equal or exceed your enemy's level of brutality to win.

I think that might be true, for example, in hand-to-hand combat.  But I'd say that if you want to win wars, rather than skirmishes, the key is that you need to equal or exceed your enemy's level of intelligence.  The problem with what you seem to want to do is that it isn't very smart, and against an enemy that isn't going to give you the opportunity to go mano-a-mano, I'm just not convinced that it does much good.  I think that, to win, we need to do two things: play a better propaganda war than the Islamic militants do, and turn their operatives to us (on the latter, see this New Yorker article).  I don't see how operating extra-legal prisons and defending the use of torture is going to do anything but undermine the long struggle on both fronts.

You may find that naive, but I think you are being remarkably shortsighted.  If I should encounter Zawahiri in a barfight, I could use you on my side, but in a protracted, shadowy global struggle, I'd rather not have your mindset developing the strategy. 

So nice when a civilized discussion can emerge from a roundly zeroed comment.  It's kind of like growing good flowers and produce....

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Devon: I note you're too easily impressed by pseudo-academic blather. Howie boy is virtually incapable of answering a question directly without showing off what he knows about subjects not necessary to the discussion. This is about fighting Islamo-fascist savages, not judo and Japan.

I can also tell that Howie boy has never been in any street fights where he won, either. Growing up in Newark, I'm sure he had many opportunities to test his mettle. Something tells me he attempted to first reason and talk in a "civilized" manner to the schwartze who was trying to steal his lunch money, rather than just telling him "you'll have to kill me first to take my money."

Howie boy also has never been in the midst of a battle theater so he really doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. All he knows is what he learned in a book.

You can't learn about life from just reading books. You just have to gather real and direct experiences to really know.

Islamo-fascists have to be fought with a street fighter mentality. They are just like the schwartze thugs I knew from Queens who were always try to steal from the Italian and Jewish and Irish kids fromthe neighborhood.

Might want to rethink the way you stated this. Habeas corpus is Not something that the Senate has lawful contol over extending or rescinding.

I might be wrong about this, but I think that Congress does in fact have this power. Habeas Corpus is codified in a federal statute, and Congress has the power to rescind laws. My recollection is that the Supreme Court rebuked Lincoln in Ex Parte Milligan for overstepping his authority, suspending the writ when Congress was not in session, even though the power to do so lies with the legislative and not the executive branch.

Now, habeas corpus as a human right is another matter - it does seem like something that any believer in democracy should regard as a universal entitlement. But rights only get effectuated - and watered down - when they are made into law.