Comedy and Tragedy

by shep

Let it be recorded that on April 15, 2008, Comedy Central’s Daily Show spent more time on the recently revealed fact that the Vice President of the United States and all of the top cabinet officials of the Bush Administration repeatedly met in secret, in the White House, and conspired to break federal and international law to specify how unconvicted detainees of the United States would be tortured by US government agents, than all of the three major broadcast network news organizations combined, since the story broke four days ago.

Now I understand that one of the jobs of the Court Jester, during Medieval times, was to reveal the criticisms of the day to the King’s Court which could never be spoken by its sycophants. But, in the 21st Century democracy that is the world’s sole superpower, has its once-vaunted network television press completely and shamelessly abdicated its role to inform the public of what serves the public interest to cable comedy faux news shows? The answer is, apparently, yes. Well done, Brian Williams, Charles Gibson and (this says it all, really) Katie Couric. You are a miserable failure to your country.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Now THIS Matters

I hate to say that I'm reluctantly with Atrios on this, and I'll believe it when I see it. But as Matt Stoller notes as he cuts through the zeitgeist of "bitter" primary politics, there are much larger fish to fry.

George Bush has openly admitted that he signed off on torture, along with Condi and the whole senior staff, and yet the media is abuzz with silly arguments about elitism and bitterness and bowling scores. It's just remarkable.

Did I say fry?

I'd say that even in the face of a slew of pardons I expect Bush to issue as he leaves for his new ranch in Paraguay, Obama could find some enterprising young lawyer willing to write an opinion that the Justice Department could hold and indefinitely detain even pardoned war criminals for extradition to the Hague or Berlin or anywhere else that decides the monsters that ripped up our Constitution must be made examples of.

The bonus is that such a memo wouldn't be near the stretch of law and logic that has been standard operating procedure at Justice for the last 7 years.

Obama would ask his AG to "immediately review" potential of crimes in Bush White House

Now we're talking!

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."

Me, I'm in the "throw 'em in the pond and see if they float" camp -- one of the reasons (if not the reason) I liked John Edwards' more pitbullish approach to dealing with the Bush Crime Family. But I'll take what I can get cuz I suspect Hillary has already made her deals and John McCain will probably keep many of the torture principles on retainer. He's already courting Condi Rice for VP (or visa-versa) and she was in on every meeting.

Yeah, I'm bitter.

[Oh, and if Senator Clinton sees or raises Barack's ante on this and says she'll unleash the dogs on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Rice, Yoo, Feith, Wolfowitz, Rove and other assorted co-conspirators, I promise to say nice things about her all day.]


UPDATE: Per Booman's request, take this link to one of the few media stories out there on the depths of depravity within the White House, and make it viral. Spread it around everywhere.

People need to see this and we need to catapult the propaganda, cuz the media won't care about the basic inhumanity of the President of the United States personally authorizing torture let alone the shredding of the Constitution until they do away with the First Amendment, and then it will be too late for them to object.

McSame The Flip-Flopper, Or Just Old And Tired?

Some human rights observers say McCain's latest position is best explained as a symptom of exhaustion at fighting an Administration that has continuously resisted efforts to clearly outlaw practices like waterboarding.

Time's Michael Scherer bends over backwards to put a pleasant spin on the, shall we say, evolving positions Johnny "Ace" McCain has promoted on the United States' policy on torturing prisoners.

McBush

Insisting that "the record shows that McCain has neither changed his position on torture nor taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue," only a "partisan" would claim that he's changed his position on an issue he can rightfully claim superior moral authority than most people alive. The problem is now he's against a Democratic Party anti-torture bill that is remarkably similar to a bill he drafted then stuffed in a drawer in 2005.

McCain is indeed on the same side as the President (and CIA Director Mike Hayden) in opposing further restrictions on the CIA and other agencies use of techniques banned by the Army Field Manual and International Law -- despite the fact that Bush, Cheney and their henchmen at the highest levels met right there in the White House to approve in minute detail what despicably sadistic methods they could get away with on which specific prisoners while trying to figure out how to avoid answering before a war crimes tribunal.

Scherer blogs about it at Swampland, explaining what happened.

One interesting thing I turned up: A 2005 proposal from McCain’s staff that took the same position on applying the Army Field Manual to the CIA that he now opposes in the Senate.

###

The early proposal was never made public. Just a few months later, McCain did go public with legislation that limited just the military (and not the CIA) to the field manual techniques, while making it clear that the CIA still had to abide by international law prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Since then, McCain has been consistent in his position, even though the Bush Administration officially continues to reject his (not to mention most independent experts') interpretation about what constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Never mind the fact just one glance at the sadistic record Bush and Company have on their unique ways of interpreting the law, and that with McCain's support the Military Commissions Act eliminated redress by the prisoners themselves by doing away with habeas corpus review -- but are we really granting the CIA more leeway in this matter because they are our torture experts?

Rank and file soldiers can't be expected to learn to interrogate prisoners with the same effectiveness as trained interrogators; it doesn't make sense to limit specialists in interrogation to general techniques that every soldier is required to assimilate.

Grok that for a second. Let it sink in.

Your tax dollars have been spend teaching people to be experts, specialist even, in the fine art breaking down a human being through threats, fear, intimidation, degradation and assorted approved acts of physical and mental violence go gain a confession or information that is most likely false. And where does one learn these important skills? More importantly, where do these "experts" get the idea that torture works? Watching Fox's 24, of course.

Stay tuned for more exciting Flip-Floppery by Johnny InSane, like his dual positions on fixing the economy, his two competing campaign styles, the different hats his campaign consultants/lobbyists wear while working both sides of the street in international conflicts, violating the very campaign finance law that bears his name, changing his tune on how long we should stay in Iraq .... and on taxes, and on MLK Day, and on .... and on ... and on.

Never Trust a Republican (Part 78)

by shep

Remember when Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey testified that he would resign if the president were to violate the Constitution?

Well, Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Bayh, Carper, Landrieu and Nelson, you’ve been punked again. That is, unless you indended to put the United States of America in the same company as Stalin’s Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

The WoT Prisoners: And Then What?

Kevin Drum:

So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress.

I'm just wondering when some "Patriot" gets it into his noggin that "right" thing to do is to put the Gitmo and Black Site detainees out of their misery.

If we keep them locked up indefinitely, they serve as a continuing embarrassment to the administration and the military/intelligence communities. Letting these alleged terrorists go constitutes inherent risks -- that they'll write best sellers about their experience as well and blow something up. And it's doubtful that any of them can be convicted of anything seeing as so much of the evidence against them was obtained through torture, something courts (real courts anyway) frown upon admitting into evidence.

That is of course all dependent upon what Justice Kennedy does in the Habeas Corpus cases they heard Friday. It's entirely possible that the swing voter on the SCOTUS will decide that acknowledging habeas for detainees is unnecessary, pronouncing in effect that Guantanamo Bay is a law-free zone.

It's outsourcing or burying them, however, if Kennedy sides with the centrists and rejects the Court righties' position that their hand-picked PrezNitWit can do no wrong. (That's right, there are no real liberals on the court. Not since Throrogood Marshal died. Sorry Mrs. Ginsberg.) This becomes a real dilemma for a President Clinton, Obama or Edwards since these guys will no doubt still be locked up a year from now. It's a debate question just waiting to tie one of them in knots:

What do we do with the prisoners after we close Gitmo?

Now, since a convenient "accident" or a tactically expedient bullet are not something anyone is likely to order and leave a paper trail, or an order that can be followed by any Federal officer without dire consequences. They destroyed tapes of torture to avoid prosecution. Outright murder and death-by-torture carry the same penalty -- lethal injection, even if you were "only following orders." I wouldn't risk it, would you?

And no sooner does the question occur, but we find cases on just this problem is making its way up the appellate court ladder.

(AP) - WASHINGTON-A federal appeals court is zeroing in on the problem of Guantanamo Bay in reverse: detainees in U.S. custody who want out but do not want to be sent home.

Ahmed Belbacha is not happy to be at Guantanamo Bay, but neither is he happy about the alternative he says was chosen for him by the U.S. government, Algeria, where Belbacha says he would be tortured.

Belbacha's lawyer, David Remes, asked a three-judge panel to block any plans the Bush administration might have for moving his client into Algerian custody until the Supreme Court decides a case covering all Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

I'm guessing the courts punt on this one. Out of sight, out of mind. These folks are getting shipped, and shipped to truly horrible places. They may get a pro forma extradition hearing, or even a habeas writ. But since they don't have Visas to be here, we'll deport them if they win.

These guys are doomed. Just doomed.

Keith Olbermann, Daniel Levin and Waterboarding

Wednesday: 52 Iraqis Killed, 38 Wounded

Cross Posted at E. Pluribus Unum and KOS-posted too.

It would seem that Radar online is less than impressed with Keith Olbermann's Special Comment Tuesday where he minced no words in accusing President Bush of being a criminal who condoned torture due to the story of former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dan Levin, who was fired after he subjected himself to waterboarding and declared it to be "torture."

The memo Levin wrote is here.

This thing was in response to a directive from POTUS that superseded Gonzo's ridiculous edict that asserted torture was only something that caused "severe" pain which was limited to "excruciating and agonizing" or equivalent to the same pain felt "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Bush threw out the 2002 definition Gonzo gave us that pretty much allowed anything short of 40 lashes and asked for a new definition, which starts with the International Convention Against Torture (CAT) . . .

"The fact remains, however, that the only relevant definition of 'torture' is the definition contained in [the] CAT. . . .")"
***
The CAT defines "torture" so as to require the intentional infliction of "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental."


If it's torture, it's illegal under Federal Criminal Statutes, and specifically the statute in question incorporated the CAT to fulfill our obligations under that treaty. Bush said unambiguously "We do not torture." This memo takes Bush at his word and ignores all that mumbo jumbo about "inherent war powers" as unnecessary in light of his statement.

The statutes in question start here.

That's the "definition" section . . . ["torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering ] --my emphasis. Threats are sufficient, including threats to others, like family members ala Higazy which I wrote about here...

Penalties are in the next section, part 2340(a).

Even attempting Torture is a crime punishable for up to 20 years, and can result in the death penalty if the victim dies. This applies to all offenders who are US nationals or anyone if it takes place within the US. Conspiracy to commit torture does not carry the death penalty, but can result in 20yrs, or life imprisonment if the victim dies.

Okay, that's the preliminaries. The statute, the CAT and Part I of the memo. Part II is looking at parsing this sentence into 4 separate ideas...
"specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering".
1. "severe"
2. "severe physical pain OR suffering"
3. "severe mental pain or suffering"
4. "specifically intended."

I have a feeling the rub will be the last part, so I'm skipping to #4.
The parsing here is whether you intend to commit the act itself that results in the severe pain and suffering, or that you specifically intended the results -- the severe pain and suffering itself.

The courts are inconsistent and ambiguous in the difference, if any, between general intent and specific intent. The idea is whether you intended merely to shoot someone (which may or may not have killed the victim) or did you intend that the victim actually die. Did you intend the act, or the result of the act as well?

Usually this is a distinction without a difference. As a practical matter, when a result is almost certain to occur from an intentional act, the courts allow the inference that the result was intended regardless of the actual desire of the accused -- but this inference can be a question of fact for a jury. Some cases say you need a conscious desire, others only require that the result is reasonably foreseeable.

Interestingly enough, Levin elects not to parse this, holding Bush to his word. (silly boy)

"We do not believe it is useful to try to define the precise meaning of "specific intent" in section 2340. (27) In light of the President's directive that the United States not engage in torture, it would not be appropriate to rely on parsing the specific intent element of the statute to approve as lawful conduct that might otherwise amount to torture."

He notes that if someone had a conscious desire to inflict "severe physical or mental pain and suffering," that would mean they specifically intended to commit torture. BUT, if he acted in good faith, and conducted a reasonable investigation to find out if his actions would result in "severe physical or mental pain and suffering," then he does not meet the specific intent requirement of the statute and any resulting pain and suffering would be unintentional.

There's a lot of gray area between those two scenarios. But that's what juries are for. Also he looks at motive. Torture for a "good reason" still is torture, even for threats to National Security. The last paragraph is looking at a kind of "attempted" torture. The threat is made (even though the perpetrator "really didn't mean it"), and to avoid torture the victim does what the perpetrator demands and isn't touched. That's still criminal under the statute.

I'm reading this and thinking that Higazy should be given his own key to Fort Knox.

Back to the phrase, "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering" he takes apart the word "severe" and decides is just an ordinary english word -- goes to the dictionary: extreme, violent or intense, hard to sustain or endure . . . then the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1984) -- the CAT limits torture as an extreme practice, unusually cruel.

It's a tautology, using comments on "torture" to define "severe" in the definition of torture. But such is legal reasoning,

Torture, being "severe" is more that (get this) ordinary "acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

But this is something carrying the death penalty, not your run of the mill assault. "[T]orture is the gravest form of [cruel, inhuman, or degrading] treatment [or] punishment."

The guy Levin is good, a real lawyer who actually did his homework -- unlike Gonzales who tried to make this distinction by pulling crap out of his ass. The DOJ told the Senate, torture was "barbaric cruelty which lies at the top of the pyramid of human rights misconduct." This of course was when the Reagan administration wanted this to be passed and accepted by as many countries, even the thuggish ones, as possible. Back in the day . . . when the POTUS has a minimal respect for international law.

BECAUSE, while the CAT says one thing, Levin doesn't think that the US statutes "intended to reach only conduct involving 'excruciating and agonizing' pain or suffering."

"Although there is some support for this formulation in the ratification history of the CAT, a proposed express understanding to that effect was "criticized for setting too high a threshold of pain," and was not adopted."

So . . . where's the line? Where is "severe" among . . . "substantial, extreme, intense, excruciating, or agonizing." Here Levin looks at the civil statute (Higazy's friend), the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA). It doesn't so much judge degrees of pain and suffering, but looks to WHY the victim was subject to the conduct.

*** for such purposes as obtaining from that individual or a third person information or a confession *** intimidating or coercing***

Again the word "severe" is used and the Courts have decided that term is "crucial." The conduct proscribed by the [CAT] and the TVPA is sufficiently extreme and outrageous to warrant the universal condemnation.

"The more intense, lasting, or heinous the agony, the more likely it is to be torture."

The case law is summarized on the TVPA in cases where torture was NOT found:
1) where the details of a beating weren't sufficiently provided to give the court enough of an idea of their "severity" including their frequency, duration, the parts of the body at which they were aimed, and the weapons used,
2) Death threats alone did NOT constitute torture.

Torture was found to have occurred in a case where the behavior was more unusual and detailed evidence provided that a course of conduct was torture that included:
1) "severe" beatings of plaintiff,
2) repeated threats of death and electric shock,
3) sleep deprivation,
4) extended shackling to a cot (at times with a towel over his nose and mouth and water poured down his nostrils),
5) seven months of confinement in a "suffocatingly hot" and cramped cell,
6) eight years of solitary or near-solitary confinement.

I get the feeling that any single one of these acts might not be considered torture, but together it's a pattern of behavior that is undoubtedly torture and other examples where not a single act, but a course of extreme conduct was found to be torture.

Under this definition, which seems perfectly sound on it's face without more research, one act of waterboarding won't get you life in prison.

(2) The meaning of "severe physical pain or suffering."

Here Levin distinguishes between pain versus suffering, determining that severe suffering CAN OCCUR WITHOUT PAIN. This is a big difference between Gonzo's definition and Levin. Words mean things: "or suffering" is not supposed to be ignored.

Likewise, physical suffering, even if not painful, is different from mental suffering. BUT, Congress, in ratifying the statute and the diplomats writing the CAT talked about pain AND suffering, even though the statute they passed says pain OR suffering. The debate record shows the Senators used the phrases interchangeably without any apparent difference in meaning.

Levin decides that despite this, words still mean things, and the OR is there for a reason . . . BUT . . . "To constitute such torture, "severe physical suffering" would have to be a condition of some extended duration or persistence as well as intensity."

I think this might be where he can say waterboarding, while not painful, if done persistently, for a long time, again and again possibly, can be "severe physical suffering."

(3) The meaning of "severe mental pain or suffering."

Read "severe" here to mean, "prolonged."

"Mental harm" must be caused by acts falling within one of the four listed acts:
1) threatened or actual infliction of severe physical pain or suffering
2) giving the victim drugs
3) death threat
4) the threat to a 3rd person of one of the above.

This is an "exclusive" list. Meaning there are no other acts that can cause mental harm and still be considered the result of torture but the ones listed. Also, actual mental harm must result, and is not merely presumed every time these acts are committed. Literally, no harm, no foul.

And the severe/prolonged "harm" means there is actual damage, an injury to one's mental state that must last for a reasonable period of time. It can't be instantly gotten over, nor must it be permanent damage.

Here's where I digress again. The purpose of putting someone on the waterboard is to induce panic. There are physical manifestations (suffering) of panic as well as the obvious harm to the psyche. That's it's purpose, that's why you do it -- to alter the victim's mental state so they are more compliant.

I don't know, however, if just doing it to someone whose mental state is altered enough to spill the beans, and when it's over and they calm down they're okay after an hour or two would fit the definition of torture. On the other hand, if they'd been kept in solitary, roughed up a few times, subject to extremes of heat and/or cold, kept in "stress positions" and deprived of sleep or food -- and then were put on the waterboard; there's no doubt they are a torture victim and like Padilla, were probably really messed up in the head by the time they saw the light of day.

Now, remember, simple assault of a prisoner is a war crime. Torture is a war crime that can get you the chair.

OKAY. . . that's the English translation of the Justice Department's interpretation of the torture statute. Waterboarding is mentioned as one part of a continuing pattern of abuse that taken together constituted torture. This doesn't mention anything like the story Keith told of Levin being waterboarded himself, or that he says anywhere in the memo that this act -- ALL BY ITSELF is torture. Do it a lot, however, or as part of a scheme to break someone down systematically over time, it's torture.

Does that help?

These guys misstate the memo, and claim that Levin won't discuss the situation further beyond the memo. (So how did ABC get the story about him subjecting himself to waterboarding?)

It's also assault, a felony, last time I looked, and a war crime. It's a war crime merely to humiliate prisoners.



Although there is wiggle room, for Radar online to suggest that waterboarding is "perfectly legal" is as stupid as saying Levin was actually tortured when he voluntarily had himself waterboarded. Even if it's not torture (done once for 10 seconds, with no threats, no other bad treatment -- yeah right) it is always illegal if it's involuntary, it's assault and battery, and if done to an enemy combatant or others protected under Geneva, it's a war crime notwithstanding it not being worthy of the death penalty.

But note, if someone dies, accidentally, while being waterboarded -- Olbermann is absolutely right and that perpetrator will face the death penalty. UNLESS he acted in good faith, and conducted a reasonable investigation to find out if his actions would result in "severe physical or mental pain and suffering,"

The World IS Round

No longer should there be any "debate" about the following subjects.

Climate change/Global warming is real.

• Mankind significantly contributes to this phenomenon by pumping 70 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere daily.
• It is not too late to do something about climate change to fend off the worst repercussions.

Waterboarding is torture.

• The Bush Administration has engaged in this activity, and others which are considered torture throughout the civilized world.
• High ranking Bush Administrations, including Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Cheney and Bush have known and/or ordered these procedures, well aware that they were indeed torture.
• These administration officials also were well aware that they could be found criminally liable for their involvement in these torture activities under both US and International Law.
• These same administration officials have engaged in a criminal conspiracy to cover-up their felonious activities related to torture.

Warrantless Domestic Surveillance of US residents is illegal and Unconstitutional.

• The NSA and other agencies of the US Government have electronically eavesdropped on US citizens and legal residents within our borders.
• The availability of retroactively obtaining warrants under FISA makes any suggestion that the warrant requirement is too cumbersome ridiculous.
• The telecoms knew they were acting illegally when they bowed to pressure and threats of retribution from the administration to allow the NSA and others access to their customers' private data.
• The administration pursued this illegal and unconstitutional activity well before 9/11/01 while ignoring terrorist threats from abroad.
  

Valerie Plame was "covert."

• Cheney, Rove, Addington and Libby, among others, deliberately exposed her status while being fully aware of said status for no other purpose than retribution against her husband.
• George Bush knew who leaked her name to the press, and why, and did nothing about it except pardon Libby so nothing further could be done to expose the conspiracy.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other high ranking administration officials knew that the chances of Saddam Hussein possessing WMD's was highly remote and provided little or no justification to engage in a war of aggression.

• The administration deliberately "fixed the intelligence around the policy."
• The administration deliberately conflated 9/11 with Iraq, knowing there was no connection whatsoever.
• Secure access to Iraq's oil, and a personal/familial vendetta against Hussein are the only "real" reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place.

The war in Iraq is a disaster.

• Despite the "Surge," and a decrease in the death rate over the last 6 weeks, this year was worse than the year before, and the year before that.
• A marked increase in airstrikes, and ethnic cleansing have contribute to the stark rise in casualties over last year, completion of targeting missions and cleansing of the mixed neighborhoods has contributed to the recent decrease in the rate of killing.
• We have destroyed our reputation throughout the world by our conduct of the war, possibly to an irretrievable degree, no matter what the eventual outcome of the conflict.
• We have severely damaged our ability to form alliances, degraded our military capability, and crippled our intelligence gathering institutions by our conduct of the war.
• There will be tremendous bloodshed if we leave precipitously, and tremendous bloodshed if we stay.
• The Iraqi people will never accept any government, or power structure put in place while under the current US occupation.
  

For these, and so many other reasons, our government is infected with a hoard of felons and war criminals whose daily existence now serves no other purpose than to escape responsibility for their crimes.

There is no "balance" to be fair about these issues. Any so called "journalists" who engage in the petty he said/she said presentation of events that are well settled are looking to fill time, gain ratings, and engaging in the laziest and most disingenuous form of behavior. They are co-conspirators with the mafia fiefdom our republic has now become.

When someone starts talking about the personal loyalty of the ideologically pure being the sine qua non of anyone ever considered for a job with the Bush administration; pay attention, because you may have found that rarest of breeds -- a truth-teller in the media.

Laying It On Thick

Saturday: 2 US Soldiers, 29 Iraqis Killed; 41 Iraqis Wounded
Juan Cole reports one of the Americans killed was female
and observes the minimal British casualties in Basra:
"It turns out, if you don't have troops in a place,
attacks on them fall dramatically."

Larry Johnson doesn't mince words:

"I had always assumed that Jews who survived the Holocaust or the relatives of those who were murdered under the Nazi plan would understand the importance of standing against tyrants and torturers. And for the most part that has been true. But now we are confronted with the spectacle of two prominent Jewish American legislators who are enabling a President who has authorized torture. They have no shame."

(H.T.: Avedon)

Yep, I think that's what was bothering me. Add Lieberman and even Russ Feingold to the list. Lieberman because he sold his soul a couple of years ago. Russ, because he even has to think about this issue.

Unadulterated inhumanity is what once separated us from anything approaching Nazi Germany. When you don't take a stand against something as basic as torture, you lose your humanity.

Leave it to Digby to reach into my brain and send my thought into the intertoobz with so much more alacrity than I could hope to muster.

I think the debate is over, folks. Every time they normalize state sanctioned sadism, from tasering to waterboarding, we are one step closer to fully accepting a police state. That's how they do it. It never happens over night. It happens one taboo at a time.

We are a torture culture, immoral, vulgar and profane. We actually think it's fun. If college boys and reporters can laugh about it, how bad can it be? Thanks Dick and George.

Don't Torture Me, Bro........

Preach Sully, Preach

When Andrew Sullivan goes on a full blown rants, further words are unnecessary.

The stakes in this fight therefore could not be higher: the vote on Mukasey is about the rule of law, the honor of the United States and the security of the West. Mukasey is by all accounts an honorable man. He must know that he is going to work for war criminals whose condition for his appointment is that he not prosecute them for their law-breaking. By acquiescing to this, Mukasey is acquiescing to the elevation of the president above the law. If he does that, he is no better than Gonzales, a man who never hesitated to give his political patrons whatever "legal" sanction they wanted for anything they wanted to do.

A Spine Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Thursday: 64 Iraqis Killed, 28 Wounded

I'll believe it when I see it.

Dems will block Mukasey nomination unless they get an answer from the AG nominee on whether waterboarding is torture.

In a completely unrelated episode, in another wing of the Capitol Building, in what must be an alternate universe...

In a little-noticed speech Tuesday at the Georgetown Law Center, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said telecom immunity would be "grossly irresponsible" until Congress knows what conduct is being immunized.

Clearly a disease has infested some of the Democratic Congressional Leadership. I'm hoping it turns into a fever, but I fear it's just a cold. This will be the way they save face for passing more funding for the damn war.

Higazy

Glancing at the Washington Post's Nation Section, I was pleasantly
surprised that beyond the headline of the day covered by every major
paper -- the California wildfires -- they were reporting on real news
this morning. It's a shame this "news" was stuff I already knew from reading blogs.

Nothing really new here, but the good news is that they didn't blow these stories off. Especially the Higazy case, which is the first time I've come across a court opinion that was yanked and reissued with sections redacted for "national security" reasons. Just because the story is a week old doesn't make it less important, both for the world to know about how the threat of torture or of retribution to one's family is a common practice in the law enforcement community -- even before "9/11 changed everything."

The Post also tips it's the hat to the blogosphere that not only kept the story alive, but preserved the evidence of what the government considers proper information to keep from the public -- which turned out to be more embarassing than any kind of state secret of sources or methods of intelligence gathering.

Oh, and I did learn something from the article. That radio Higazy was suspected of using as a homing beacon for the jets that crashed into the Trade Center Towers belonged to someone else.

Three days later, an airline pilot from Ohio who had stayed one floor below Higazy on Sept. 11 walked into the Millenium Hilton
and asked for his radio. Within two days, Higazy was released, and a
hotel security guard eventually pleaded guilty to making false
statements to FBI agents about the location of the radio.

"What if that pilot had not walked into the Millenium Hotel?" Abady
said. "We know that Mr. Higazy could have spent the rest of his life in
prison."

This case is the poster child of why torture, or even the threat of torture should be left to the pages of a more barbaric time and place. It doesn't work and we lose a bit of our humanity even discussing it's utility. There is no reason whatsoever to see it practiced in the 21st century.

For more background, including the redacted portions of the opinion and links to the original, look at my previous post from Tuesday.

Padila

Fiat justitia, ruat coelum.

"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. -- Roman Maxim"

I really couldn't tell you if Jose Padila got a fair trial. Ultimately my respect for the jury system tips the balance in favor of believing the verdict of guilt was sound.

He may be sentenced to spend the rest of his days in jail, a decision wholly in keeping with the crimes he was found to have committed.

He should be immediately released, with an apology, plane fare, and a huge 7-figure check to deposit in the offshore bank of his choosing.

Why? John Cole answers this well.

Simply put, if they had enough to put him in a box forever, there never, ever was a need to "protect" us from him by torturing him to the point where he no longer is quite human.

Why you're an anti-American, xenophobic bed-wetter with no concept of what it means to live in a "free" country or appreciate the democratic principles America is supposed to stand for if you disagree with John and I? See Maha for enlightenment.

Why the sky is falling?

Even the Romans acted more civilized than how we treated Jose Padila. At least when they tortured someone, they admitted it, and set limits, eventually phasing it out as something only barbarians would commit because, "it forces even the innocent to lie." -- Seneca

England, from which we derived our legal traditions, never saw fit to justify such treatment. If our appellate system has any integrity whatsoever, it will not turn its back on what has always been a cornerstone of Anglo-American justice, the dignity of man.

They must overturn his conviction because ultimately we still stand for the proposition that no matter how despicable, every human being is entitled to be treated with humanity. We do not condone slavery, we do not burn suspected witches, and we do not allow our government to torture people. Period.