Condescension is the new attitude of the torturers. They tried it in the torture rooms. And now they're trying it in our living rooms.

It goes like this. Your view is just "too simplistic" - leave it to the "experts" who understand all the complexities.

Michael Scheuer has a very active fantasy life.

So does my cat.

Scheuer is someone anti-war types may like because his isolationism makes him sound reasonable. He hated Bush, condemned the Iraq war, and rails against Israel's settlements.

I never liked Scheuer. I saw him on CSPAN giving some Senate testimony, and came away with the impression that he was positively unhinged - he's in Glenn Beck territory.

He gives me the impression of an abused child whose father made the boy call him "Sir" all the time in between tannings. He always looks like he is on the edge of explosion, and his eyes steam with fanatical rage. He calls everybody "Sir", but in a weirdly contemptuous way. After a while, the "Sirs" start to feel like a verbal inhibitory mechanism for suppressing the impulse to shove an ice pick into his interlocutor's forehead.

Wow. The Dersh and Scheuer in tortured harmony. Eew.

MJ, you must be really scared of something.

"But the more I read the guy I see that he just doesn't like Jews, Arabs, liberals or foreigners in general. He is a charmless David Duke. (Pat Buchanan is the charming David Duke)."

He "likes" Americans as far as I can see. He doesn't care as much about what he considers minor collateral damage. You're making him out to be a hater of those groups, but without foundation.

"We all need to be careful of the people we think we admire. Buchanan and Scheuer sometimes seem to make sense. But they are nativists and bigots so their views are worthless under the "consider the source rule." "

Nice fallacy, MJ. :(

You should be careful about whom you admire, too.

Michael Scheuer is an outsider by choice who has nothing but contempt for ALL politicians and politics. In this piece, he employs the same over-the-top hyperbolic crap we're used to hearing from those who support torture in order to skewer Obama as a naif. The uptick in UAV actions in Pakistan hasn't interfered with his judgement for some reason.

It doesn't work and Scheuer shot himself in the foot by going overboard and acting even more maniacal than usual. It was a stupid tactic as he's simply managed to arouse the ire of Obama's supporters and marginalizing himself in the process.

It's too bad in a way because Scheuer brings up uncomfortable questions in other venues that will be completely dismissed as the ravings of a madman. Scheuer indicts the whole political apparatus in answering the National Journal's questions posed about the utility of Truth Commissions and/or investigations:

"...Because I put together the rendition program against al-Qaeda in August, 1995 -- under President Clinton -- and then ran it for 40 months -- during which period all those rendered were taken to Arab prisons under Mr. Clinton's orders -- I can only say that America is far safer today because of the brains and bravery of the CIA officers who successfully executed their orders regarding rendition under both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush. All of the whining to date has been nothing more than a Democratic effort to politically hang Mr. Bush -- which is not a bad idea for his starting of the Iraq war -- and to make sure that the far worse things that happened to those rendered under the direction of that merry pair of felons, Clinton and Berger, are hidden from public view. "

The whole idea of an investigation is predicated on the idea that no one but the White House -- and then only Bush's White House -- had any idea of what was going on. Anyone who knows how covert action works, however, knows that at least the leaders of both parties in Congress, and more often all the members of the two intelligence committees, know what covert actions have been approved by the president before they are executed. The representatives and senators therefore have ample opportunity to register their disapproval with the CIA and the White House before operations begin, and, of course, always have the option of stopping the planned operations by cutting funding.

My guess is that there will be no investigation because they are too many skeletons in the Democratic closet that are too hot to let loose."
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/04/truth-commission-on-torture.php#1321467

I think asking a "ticking bomb" type of question is a very helpful device to challenge your own thinking and check for alternative options and viewpoint.

But of course Scheuer doesn't really mean it that way. As others pointed out he's using it as an emotionally-charged trick to confuse and reframe the argument.

Scheuer and others are giving us the false choice - save lives or take moral high road.

Of course it's a false choice because one doesn't negate or cause the other. Scheuer's options don't really belong in the same equation.

Yes, torture has existed since time immemorial. Yes, torture may have helped get information otherwise not available. But this country, as others, made a DELIBERATE CHOICE, both moral and legal, not to use torture, and in fact made torture a crime.

So the real question Scheuer should be asking is this: should we change our laws and explicitly authorize torture in the (1) hopes it can provide (2) better quality information.

But everyone knows the answer to that question. Framing this any other way, high drama or not, is a ruse.

I think lally makes a great point about the terrible skeletons in the Democratic closet and I think this is something that has to be discussed and made public.

Yes, Clinton's renditions to countries that WE KNEW were going to torture were cowardly and dishonest. And yes we still haven't opened this can of worms (I hope we will!).

But I see no reason to allow Scheuer to use renditions to confuse the issue of torture even further. "Look, he did it too" is not a good reason in my opinion. And excusing bank robbery by arguing abject poverty is not going to cut it in court either.

This country had made a decision not to torture, period.

RE: "Obscene and Fatuous Wash Post Piece On The Joys of Torture"

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis elaborated in Olmstead v. United States (1928): "In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."