What's going to happen to them? What will their shadowy captors do when they finally decide that these miserable wrecks--held and tortured in secret prisons--were actually innocent, never had any information and were ratted out by a personal enemy, or had the wrong name? What will they do with the "guilty"? The men who spent time at a training camp in Afghanistan but never did anything else? The ones who dreamed unwise dreams of striking a blow at the American superpower and bragged in a coffee shop or a mosque, but never got beyond big talk? What further punishment for thinking or talking or spending a few weeks in Afghanistan will we exact? What more must they pay beyond years in secret captivity, at the mercy of those with no conscience or control, that will settle the score?

It is a testament to the fact that not every American is so thoroughly corrupted as our leadership that some prisoners have been released. If not for the efforts and conscience of a few who still honor the rule of law, I don't doubt that even the innocent would never escape the darkness to tell the world what's been happening in secret.

"Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake," by Dana Priest in the Washington Post, retells the story of Khaled el-Masri, a German national and victim of "erroneous rendition" who has been trying to get us to listen for over a year:

Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said. "She didn't really know. She just had a hunch."

Many aren't as fortunate as Masri:

One way the CIA has dealt with detainees it no longer wants to hold is to transfer them to the custody of the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, where defense authorities decide whether to keep or release them after a review.

About a dozen men have been transferred by the CIA to Guantanamo Bay, according to a Washington Post review of military tribunal testimony and other records. Some CIA officials have argued that the facility has become, as one former senior official put it, "a dumping ground" for CIA mistakes.

Our leaders guard their secrets assiduously, because they understand that in secret, in the darkness that emanates from their souls, they have free rein to unleash the power they've stolen and hoarded. They enjoy wielding that power over men and nations--not to build a better world, but to make men tremble.

Like Hitler did in writing Mein Kampf, our leaders broadcast what they would do when they knew they could exploit our fear. And we accepted it without further question, because we had given ourselves over to fear. Listen to our vice president, five days after the attacks on 9/11, on "Meet the Press":

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm going to be careful here, Tim, because I--clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward. We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world's finest military. They've got a broad range of capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

Oh, we knew what Dick Cheney was saying when he talked about "the dark side." We knew. Or, at least, we thought we knew. And thanks to euphemisms and weasle words, too many Americans and Britons will still defend torture as a legitimate weapon of war, even if it should be used sparingly:

Most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances, according to AP-Ipsos polling.

"I don't think we should go out and string everybody up by their thumbs until somebody talks. But if there is definitely a good reason to get an answer, we should do whatever it takes," said Billy Adams, a retiree from Tomball, Texas.

In America, 61 percent of those surveyed agreed torture is justified at least on rare occasions. Almost nine in 10 in South Korea and just over half in France and Britain felt that way.

And how do Americans feel about "interrogation" prisons on our own shores?

In the poll, about two-thirds of the people living in Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Spain said they would oppose allowing U.S. officials to secretly interrogate terror suspects in their countries. Almost that many in Britain, France, Germany and Italy said they felt the same way. Almost two-thirds in the United States support such interrogations in the U.S. by their own government.

Billy Adams, the comfortable Texas retiree, says "we should do whatever it takes." Perhaps he, like many Americans, is a fan of the spy thriller show "24" on Fox. Ads are popping up for the new season of thrills starting next month and if it's anything like last season, we'll have plenty of opportunity to get the Fox spin on the practical uses of torture. Previous episodes have featured the stoic protagonist, Jack Bauer, doing "whatever it takes" to get the vital information--crushing fingers, shooting kneecaps, electric shock, whatever--in the midst of the proverbial "ticking time bomb" scenario.

Of course, most Americans don't stop to think about that scenario long enough to realize that that is never what torture is about. The ticking bomb is the stuff of fiction, of Hollywood thrillers with absurdly complicated plots that have no relation to reality. Yet that is precisely the scenario that justifies the use of torture in most American minds--"It will save lives!"

The reality of American torture is a gang of licensed thugs grabbing someone on the street or off a line at customs and whisking the suspect away with a hood over his head. Maybe the suspect is a truly bad character, involved in plots. But it's also possible the suspect is a guy that, say, cheated his neighbor by selling him a sick goat and the neighbor decided to exact a little revenge by telling tales. Or maybe he looked like a wanted terrorist. Or had the same name. Or just spoke to the wrong man at the mosque.

The captured suspect is then flown to another country in a small plane under CIA contract and handed over to people who make their livings inflicting pain. The process takes days, weeks, months, years. There is no ticking bomb, just a hapless captive who will say anything and do anything to make the pain stop.

If the suspect does have valuable information--perhaps details on a plot or a terrorist cell--that information will have been either wrung out of him within days or been rendered outdated and useless before long. And if the information was obtained through torture, it is completely unreliable--precisely because we all will say and agree to anything under sufficient pain.

These sordid machinations aren't what Americans are thinking about when they consider torture a legitimate weapon in the misbegotten War on Terror. It's all infused with hazy heroism and Jack Bauer saving the world in the nick of time.

The Guardian, U.K., told the story last August of Benyam Mohammed, 26, who was born in Ethiopia and emigrated as a teenager to London's Notting Hill. He has been held for over two and a half years by the U.S. and is currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. He is accused of training in Afghanistan to set a "dirty bomb" in the U.S., allegedly as an accomplice of Chicagoan Jose Padilla. The Guardian piece claims to be the "first full account of the interrogation and alleged torture endured by so-called ghost detainees held at secret prisons around the world."

According to Mohammed, he was moved to prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan before arriving in Guantanamo, where he was finally appointed a lawyer.

Mohammed's guilt or innocence of involvement in al-Qaeda plots is not the issue here. His treatment at our hands is the issue:

In an statement given to his newly appointed lawyer, Mohammed has given an account of how he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials who he believes were from the FBI and MI6. As well as being beaten and subjected to loud music for long periods, he claims his genitals were sliced with scalpels. [...]

Recruits to some groups connected to al-Qaida are thought to be instructed to make allegations of torture after capture, and most of Mohammed's claims cannot be independently verified. But his description of a prison near Rabat closely resembles the Temara torture centre identified in a report by the US-based Human Rights Watch last October.

Furthermore, this newspaper has obtained flight records showing executive jets operated by the CIA flew in and out of Morocco on July 22 2002 and January 22 2004, the dates he says he was taken to and from the country.

Mohammed's lawyer calls it "outsourcing of torture, plain and simple."

[...] At one point, he says, they gave him a cup of tea and told him to take plenty of sugar because "where you're going you need a lot of sugar".

He says he was flown on what he believes was a US aircraft to Morocco, while shackled, blindfolded and wearing earphones. It was, he says, in a jail near Rabat that his real ordeal began. After a fortnight of questioning and intimidation, his captors tortured him with beatings and noise, on and off, for 18 months. He says his torturers used scalpels to make shallow, inch-long incisions on his chest and genitals.

Throughout, he was accused of being a senior al-Qaida terrorist and accomplice of Padilla. He denies these allegations, though he says that while tortured he would say whatever he thought his captors wanted. He signed a statement about the dirty bomb plot. [...]

After 18 months, he says, he was flown to Afghanistan, escorted by masked US soldiers who were visibly shocked by his condition and took photos of his wounds.

During five months in a darkened cell in Kabul, he says he was kept chained, subjected to loud music, and questioned by Americans. Only after he was moved to Bagram air base was he shown to the Red Cross. Four months later he was flown to Guantánamo.

Perhaps it's all a fiendish web of lies concocted by Benyam Mohammed. After all, he did apparently go to Afghanistan and take training. Who knows what evil plot he might have been hatching? Are we to take the word of a (failed) terrorist-in-training?

Certainly not, says Condi Rice:

"Sometimes these efforts are misunderstood.  I want to help all of you understand the hard choices involved, and some of the responsibilities that go with them. [...]

"In conducting such renditions, it is the policy of the United States, and I presume of any other democracies who use this procedure, to comply with its laws and comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture.  Torture is a term that is defined by law.  We rely on our law to govern our operations.  The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances."

Yes, "torture is a term that is defined by law." If I remember correctly, back in 2002 Alberto Gonzales was instrumental in re-interpreting the legal definition of torture for his masters Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Wasn't there something about "pain short of organ failure, death or permanent psychological damage did not qualify" as torture? True, they recanted in 2004--sort of--when Gonzales required fumigation for his Senate approval hearings to become Attorney General.

No matter, it's only a minor detail--a tiny slip in the curtain of secrecy pulled over nearly everything the Bush administration does. "Torture is this, torture is that..." Tomorrow there could be another secret memo that redefines torture vs. not-torture into anything Dick and Dubya dream in their dark hours.

But surely we believe Condi, and George W. Bush when he says, "We do not torture." For if we don't believe, we might be forced to look into that darkness, to hear what Benyam Mohammed says in the diary compiled by his lawyer. We might be forced to consider the little details that sound, sadly, believable:

They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed ... I was just shocked, I wasn't expecting ... Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn't want to scream because I knew it was coming.

One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. "I told you I was going to teach you who's the man," [one] eventually said.

They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.

Doctor No 1 carried a briefcase. "You're all right, aren't you? But I'm going to say a prayer for you." Doctor No 2 gave me an Alka-Seltzer for the pain. I told him about my penis. "I need to see it. How did this happen?" I told him. He looked like it was just another patient. "Put this cream on it two times a day. Morning and night." He gave me some kind of antibiotic.

I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: "What's the point of this? I've got nothing I can say to them. I've told them everything I possibly could."

"As far as I know, it's just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you'll have these scars and you'll never forget. So you'll always fear doing anything but what the US wants."

Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was "to show Washington it's healing". [...]

They told me that I must plead guilty. I'd have to say I was an al-Qaida operations man, an ideas man. I kept insisting that I had only been in Afghanistan a short while. "We don't care," was all they'd say. [...]

On August 6, I thought I was going to be transferred out of there [the prison]. They came in and cuffed my hands behind my back.

But then three men came in with black masks. It seemed to go on for hours. I was in so much pain I'd fall to my knees. They'd pull me back up and hit me again. They'd kick me in my thighs as I got up. I vomited within the first few punches. I really didn't speak at all though. I didn't have the energy or will to say anything. I just wanted for it to end. After that, there was to be no more first-class treatment. No bathroom. No food for a while.

During September-October 2002, I was taken in a car to another place. The room was bigger, it had its own toilet, and a window which was opaque.

They gave me a toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste. I was allowed to recover from the scalpel for about two weeks, and the guards said nothing about it.

Then they cuffed me and put earphones on my head. They played hip-hop and rock music, very loud. I remember they played Meat Loaf and Aerosmith over and over. A couple of days later they did the same thing. Same music.

For 18 months, there was not one night when I could sleep well. Sometimes I would go 48 hours without sleep. At night, they would bang the metal doors, bang the flap on the door, or just come right in.

They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren't really interrogations, more like training me what to say. The interrogator told me what was going on. "We're going to change your brain," he said.

I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I'd agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They'd come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it. They never spoke to me. Then they'd tip some kind of liquid on me - the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.

Torture is transformative. It changes the practitioner as well as the victim. It's changing our nation's psyche. What was once beyond the pale, the province of dictatorships and the Inquisition, has been assimilated into our universe of acceptable behavior.

As David Neiwert would explain, the ideas of the farthest fringes have been picked up and repeated by certain figures who straddle the gap between extremists and the mainstream establishment. So when Rush Limbaugh characterizes torture as little more than "fraternity hazing," he is acting as a "transmitter" who makes the insane sound sane because it's coming with the imprimatur of a nationally known media personality.

Along with endemic lying and corruption, torture is at the top of the list of social diseases that Bush and the Republicans have unleashed on a susceptible society.

What's going to happen to Mohammed, and all the others in our clutches? If we ever let them go, what will they become?

And what have we become? Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Condi--with our complicity, they are dealing America the death by a thousand cuts.

[Crossposted from The Broad View]

When hard questions are inconvenient or embarrassing to the Bushies, their response is always "this is politics for partisan gain." And the spineless, witless Dems hang their heads in shame for being partisans: Partisans for people, not corporations. Partisans for science, not wishful thinking. Partisans for truth, not lies. Partisans for the have-nots, not the filthy rich.

Politics is life. Politics is the way by which social animals co-exist. Derived from the Greek polis for city-state, politics is described by Fisher Ames (1758-1808), a Massachusetts Representative in the First through Fourth Congresses, in this way:

"Politicks is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom to-day would be folly and perhaps, ruin to-morrow. Politicks is not a science so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men's view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed."

Would that we still had politicians of that calibre, who understood that partisanship on behalf of good sense is not to be despised.

We first saw the consequences of Bushian politics on 9/11, when good sense was not used in response to the growing alarms of an impending attack. We next saw Bush-brand politics destroy the lives of thousands in a war initiated largely for partisan gain.

Now we have Bush Republican politics costing the life of an American city and the death and ruin of its citizens. It is not that Bush is responsible for the storm. But he is, along with his like-minded supporters, responsible for the deliberate, reckless neglect of the warnings by failing to make preparations that would mitigate the consequences of the storm. That was a result of politics.

So yes, this is exactly the time for politics, but of a different kind. This is, indeed, "a time for the nation to come together" -- to demand different politicians and partisanship on the people's behalf. We cannot afford three more years of Bush politics, a politics that have failed us time after time and with deadly consequences.

[Cross-posted from The Broad View]

And into this strides Sony Pictures Entertainment, with dollar signs glittering in their eyes. Specifically, "Passion dollars"--in the addled belief that this film might tap into the same well of cash-carrying religiosity that Mel Gibson uncovered with his "Passion of the Christ." Wow, again.

It's not that Sony isn't dimly aware that they might be caught between a rock and a hard place. They've consulted with various interested Catholic parties for their input on how to "make it not offensive to the Christian audience."

But the plot is, after all, the plot and gross tinkering might turn off the devoted fans of the book. I mean, 36 million copies! That's a whole lotta fans.

It will be very interesting, even instructive, to see how this all turns out. But of one thing we may be sure: Once again, "Hollywood" will be depicted by the wingnuts as that bastion of godless liberality, a den of cultural fifth-columnists, a coven of Jews secretly scheming to undermine God's plan for America.

Hey, it's not personal. It's business. I've gotta see this movie.

[Cross-posted at The Broad View.]

I can't quibble with either choice, although I would slot "Satisfaction" in the "Favorite Road Songs" category. I like to crank that number up to blast levels while driving semi-dangerously--it's got that certain kind of pounding momentum.

[Full disclosure: I was a teenaged Stones fan when they were truly bad boys and the bane of girls' parents everywhere. I made sure to catch their first New York concert at the seedy Academy of Music down on 14th Street, May 29, 1965. It was transcendant. Frenzied fans fell into the orchestra pit in bids to get closer. I wound up down in the first row, and got a come-hither look from Keith Richards. (He was still young and beautiful, not the dissipated skeleton he's become.) Luckily, I had to catch a train afterward or, in my youth and naivete, I might have succumbed to what I later realized was trolling for after-show groupies.]

Anyway, the poll goes on to round out the top five with "Every Breath You Take" (The Police, 1983), "Light My Fire" (The Doors, 1967) and "Three Times a Lady" (The Commodores, 1978). Two big quibbles there! "Every Breath You Take" is the creepiest ode to stalking imaginable. "Three Times a Lady" is completely forgettable pap.

Where the hell is "Summer in the City" (Lovin' Spoonful, 1966)? Any song by The Beach Boys? Theme from "A Summer Place"? "Wipeout" (The Surfaris, 1963)? "In the Summertime" (Mungo Jerry, 1970)?

I guess you have to be of a certain age (like I am) to know that the quintessential summer song will always be "Sealed With A Kiss" (Brian Highland, 1962). It has it all--a lazy, swooning tempo, longing and desire, and the haunting anxiety that all might be changed by summer's end.

I also have fond memories of a summer road trip with some friends while "Afternoon Delight" (Starland Vocal Band, 1976) played in heavy rotation on the radio. It matters not that it's often cited as one of the worst songs of all time. You just had to be there.

I guess that's the essence of a great summer song. It gets woven into our neural nets by attaching itself to a memory, a mood, a feeling. It is the distant echo of our emotions from a certain time and place that has the power to bring us back to that beach, that boardwalk, that summer place.

[Cross-posted at The Broad View.]

What ensued was the attempted cover-up. Military officials quickly issued a press release that stated Maj. Gen. Mowhoush had died of natural causes after he had complained of feeling sick. It was November 26, 2003.

How do we know all this now, 20 months later? Because of the honor and perserverence of one courageous whistle-blower, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Pratt, a National Guard soldier from Utah who had been attached to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and had witnessed these horrors. When his reports were ignored by his superiors in Iraq, he waited until he could tell what he knew to a Utah National Guard officer in Kuwait.

So yes, we know what we are doing to Iraqis, and anyone else unlucky enough to get caught in our nets.

But do we know what we are doing to Americans? To our own young men and women for whom the Army is father, mother and guardian away from home? To our civilians who are asked to support torture and murder as an article of patriotic faith? To the families that must somehow understand and cope with Iraq war veterans who return damaged, brutalized in mind and spirit, far beyond the brutalities of conventional war?

We are becoming a nation of Kurtzes, "gone native," and have found our heart of darkness in the blinding glare of Iraq's desert sun.

[Cross-posted at The Broad View]

Johnson tells us it might have been even worse, P.R.-wise:

Last fall I was told by friends in the counter terror community that the NSC was pushing to change the Global War on Terrorism into the War on Extremism (WOE). The original intent was to eliminate GWOT and replace it with WOE (I realize this sounds like a skit from the Daily Show, but it is the honest to God truth). Apparently someone at the White House realized that WOE would provide endless grist for comedy writers and decided instead to go with GSAVE.

Johnson concludes with this:

At the end of the day this episode is a reminder of why Bin Laden is still at large. We cannot even agree on what to call the fight against Islamic radicals (FAIR is already taken as an acronym). We had WOT, thought about WOE, moved to GSAVE and may go back to WOT. Someone needs to find out WHAT is happening.

Oh Larry, you've got to see the BIG* picture. This isn't merely about catching bad guys. Without inspirational acronyms, how could the Bushies con the American people into stomaching their misrule? The granddaddy of them all, the high noon of hype, is the PATRIOT Act, and what a mighty effort that was! (*Bamboozle Idiot Gulls)

As the 2006 elections approach, I do foresee the muting of GWOT in favor of GSAVE. The problem with GSAVE, though, is that what it gains in projecting a more cuddly brand of imperialism, it loses in focus and testosteronic resolve.

I have a modest proposal for a new rallying acronym: CAVE -- Campaign Against Vicious Extremists.

Frankly, I think it's brilliant. It has that multi-purpose je ne sais quois that can stand the test of time and changing circumstance, with the added benefit of meaning whatever the listener wants it to mean!

"Campaign" makes it safe for surburban moms. "Vicious" tells you that we mean business when it comes to bad guys. But "Extremists" is where this acronym really shines. Why, you can apply that to Osama or Howard Dean, al Qaida or PETA, or just substitute the liberal of your choice!

And when we're forced to withdraw from our disastrous misadventures in Iraq, CAVE can be recycled in new and meaningful ways.

[Cross-posted at The Broad View]

• Order any person or entity to turn over "any tangible things," so long as the FBI specifies that the order is part of an authorized terrorism or intelligence investigation.

Even the July 8 timing of the call seems to cut Bush, Powell, the Africa trip and the State Department report out of the mix, or at least thrusts them firmly into the background.

"We're hooked on oil from the Middle East, which is a national security problem," Bush said in the interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corp. recorded Wednesday at the White House.

ISIKOFF: But the problem that people in the White House, Rove among them, may have is how did they know that Valerie Plame, or Wilson's wife worked at the CIA? What we do know is there was a classified State Department report that said this, that was taken by Secretary of State Powell with him on the trip to Africa that President Bush was then on, and many senior White House aides were on.

That classified State Department report appears to have been -- or may well have been the source for the information that Rove and otheres were then dishing out to reporters. And if that's the case, there still may be -- we don't know yet, but there still may be an instance where classified information was provided to reporters. [emphasis added]

• July 6, 2003: Joseph Wilson's op-ed, debunking the Niger uranium story, appears in the NYTimes.
• July 7 - July 12, 2003: President Bush takes a six-day trip to several African nations.
• July 14, 2003: Novak publishes the column outing Plame.