Ed Morissey, with the predictable tough guy spin:
Are we to believe that the men who killed 3,000 men, women, and children were so sensitive that those threats would leave them psychologically scarred for life — but mass murder didn’t? Will the DoJ now prosecute police officers who blow smoke in subjects’ faces, either inadvertently or deliberately, during interrogations? Isn’t this defining torture down to an absurd level? If anything, it shows that the statutes governing torture are ridiculously vague.
And how many American lives is it worth to prevent this? 10,000? 5,000? Your family’s? Like it or not, those were the stakes in the weeks following 9/11.
Putting aside the fact that there is nothing vague about whether or not it is legal to stage mock executions, these clowns will never figure it out, will they? This is not about the terrorists, it is about us. Decent nations don’t torture, they don’t threaten to rape the children of prisoners, they don’t stage mock executions, they don’t waterboard people 200 times in one month. No matter what the stakes.
And they certainly don’t do those things and get any right to pretend they have some sort of moral authority on the world stage. Period.
Crashman06
Um, also, the people we tortured actually didn’t kill 3,000 men, women, and children. I’m pretty sure we’ve already admitted to torturing a few innocent people. So, there’s that…
robertdsc
And if American soldiers are captured and subjected to such tactics, the fReichtards would have apoplexy.
Unless they’re listening to Ralph Peters. Then abandoning our guys to those things is A-OK.
/can’t sleep
Derelict
No, they never will figure it out. They’re so wrapped up in exceptionalism, reasoning with them is pointless.
Cruel Jest
If they approached the subject rationally, they would instantly lose the argument, if not their lunch. Their worldview depends on keeping this in “hypothetical situation” territory, where they can justify anything. Thus, have they saved America, including those ungrateful hippies.
Hunter Gathers
People who live their lives in a constant state of fear cannot be expected to follow any sort of logic. Cowardice disguised as Toughness.
SoulCatcher
John,
you sound like a wussy.
(end snark).
SGEW
“To be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter–this is what life is, herein lies its task.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in a letter to his brother, December 22, 1849. Written immediately after surviving his own mock execution in Semyonovsky Square. (cf.)
thomas
don’t you know, America can only be saved using the tactics and policies of the totalitarians.
Keith
This comment over there is sadly pretty typical:
“THREATENED with a drill? That was never used beyond a THREAT? Apparently the ‘Good Cop/Bad Cop’ technique is to be questioned now…”
gopher2b
@Crashman06:
The torture defenders constantly ignore this and it drives me bonkers. Of course, you know why they ignore it (“well, they’re muslims so who cares”) but I just want them to say it.
orogeny
they don’t waterboard people
200 times in one month, period.Fixed
Stefan
Decent nations don’t torture, they don’t threaten to rape the children of prisoners, they don’t stage mock executions, they don’t waterboard people 200 times in one month.
And since we did do this, we are not, ipso facto, a decent nation.
Svensker
Also, can anyone explain why we shouldn’t use these “techniques” on suspected serial killers, rapists, nasty thugs, in the U.S.? If the goal is to “protect Americans at all costs”, why not use waterboarding and mock executions on folks here who are suspected of vicious crimes? Doesn’t this make sense?
In order to save America, we had to destroy it. Yeah, that’s a theme I can get behind.
Mnemosyne
I’m guessing that Ed is also perfectly okay with the police breaking into the wrong house and shooting the people inside because there’s a drug house around somewhere so the police are totally justified in doing whatever they want, even if they kill innocent people instead of criminals.
That’s just how an authoritarian thinks.
Pixie
Just because the government labels someone a “terrorist” doesn’t mean they are. Innocent until PROVEN guilty in my book. I love how the torture apologists completely discount the possibility that we are torturing and in some cases, KILLING innocent human beings that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
RSA
I think we’re to believe that the men who killed 3,000 men, women, and children died at the same time. But maybe that’s just reality talking.
Crashman06
@gopher2b: Yeah, that drives me nuts. And the other implicit assumption in Ed’s screed is that torture effective in extracting “ticking timebomb” info from terror suspects. Pretty sure that hasn’t been proven either.
Kennedy
Decent nations don’t torture, they don’t threaten to rape the children of prisoners, they don’t stage mock executions, they don’t waterboard people 200 times in one month.
The really disturbing subtext here is that if the wingnuts think acts like these are negligible and justified, where would they have drawn the line? What kind of indecency would it take for them to recoil in disgust and decide that we had gone too far?
freelancer
OT- But it looks like #dickwhisperer has some company in the Villager WAHmbulance:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/chuck-todd-tells-jeremy-scahill-was-cheap
Brick Oven Bill
It is a good thing for North American moral authority then that we subjugated the Indians. The Indians were a very mean and immoral people. They did worse things than stage mock executions. Take, for instance, the Winnebago.
We have previously discussed how the Illini brought the starving Winnebago food to get them through the winter. And then that the Winnebago ate the 500 Illini food-bearers, not to satisfy their hunger, but to put the spirits of fallen Winnebago warriors at peace.
Then there was also the trade delegation that the Ottawa sent to Wisconsin, who the Winnebago also ate. Eating trade delegations is even more extreme than McCarthyism, in my opinion.
The Winnebago would not celebrate cultures that killed their women and children in a cowardly attack. It would go beyond mock executions. They would surely eat them, probably after slow cooking their screaming bodies over an open flame.
Thus, in the name of North American moral authority, let us give thanks to the European settlers, and their history of relatively humane treatment of prisoners. Europeans fed defeated Indian tribes and provided them with a place to live. Perhaps to commerate moral authority, Obama should re-name the RV company ‘Whitey’.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
And the wingers are sticking their fingers in their ears shouting, “Na, na, na, na, I can’t hear you.” Reality- and its well known left wing bias- are the last thing they want to hear from.
OGB
Totally OT, but I see that CNN is hosting a discussion called “Should bloggers be allowed to remain anonymous?” I’m at work and can’t stream the feed, but I’m curious as to who might or might not allow bloggers to write under pseudonyms. Is there someone suggesting that a special task force be set up to police anonymous bloggers? Is the MSM really that threatened by Publius, DougJ, or random diarist at the GOS?
T. O'Hara
Strange choice of anthropomorphism. Show me a country where nobody is tortured this year, and I’ll show you a very small country. There is a conviction today:
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
People like Ed Morrissey think we should, and they’re pissed off that we don’t. It’s as simple as that.
4tehlulz
@Kennedy: When it affects them personally.
SA2SQ
wasabi gasp
Someone’s taking the liberty.
lilysmom
@Hunter Gathers:
Cowardice disguised as toughness. Dead. Smack. On.
That is who they are.
Robin G.
Am I the only one who sees a lot of homoeroticism in that quote? I think if these guys could just admit to themselves that they want to be Jack Bauer’s bitch, we’d all be a lot better off.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
So the fact that private citizens murder and rape each other all of the time means that we shouldn’t worry when government officials do it?
You’d better start advocating for this guy’s release, then. After all, if it’s perfectly okay for government officials with the CIA to rape children, then he should be released immediately since I’m sure he raped that girl in the line of duty.
Rosali
When we hear about Iran torturing young protestors, we have to just keep walking. There’s nothing we can say at this point.
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
People like Ed Morrissey think we should, and they’re pissed off that we don’t. It’s as simple as that.
Really? Do you have any links for that kind of discussion or “thinking”? I’d be very interested to hear it.
Roger Moore
@Kennedy:
Indecency directed against Real Americans (R). We’re allowed to do anything we feel like, so long as it’s directed against mud people. I guess it would probably be OK if it were directed against lieberuls, too, since they’re all a bunch of dirty traitors anyway.
Mnemosyne
@Kennedy:
Threatening a straight, white American man.
Really, that’s the only thing that would work. You could have the CIA disemboweling people while they’re still alive and eating the raw intestines and people like T. O’Hara would still say they were totally justified because OMG TERROR!.
WereBear
I’ve decided that these kinds of wingers simply have a far more limited view of “humanity” than others do.
Their family and friends and like-minded leaders and people just like them… are human.
Everything else is not.
So they can be blithe about the most hideous atrocities if it means “real people,” like them, can have their stress reduced a notch.
Kirk Spencer
@Brick Oven Bill: Oddly, Bill, the “they did it too, and worse, back then” defense doesn’t work for children, either.
T. O'Hara
Does that follow? Or is it more a case for treating them similarly?
RedKitten
Let’s not forget, though, that to the wingnut mind, every single Iraqi or Afghan who has been detained, tortured or killed was responsible for or involved in 9/11.
Mind you, if that truly WAS the case, then considering the tens of thousands of dead and detained, you’d think the attack would have been a hell of a lot bigger. Maybe Bin Laden needed a few ten thousand people to stuff envelopes, or something.
Ash Can
@OGB: CNN should host a follow-up discussion entitled, “Should Traditional-Media Journalists Be Allowed to Cite Unnamed Sources?”
@T. O’Hara: And your point is…?
Leelee for Obama
Eggs and omelettes, folks. How else could we possibly preserve the wonderfulness that is DEMOCRACY our style except to suspend every single thing that makes our Democracy worth saving? No, they will never, ever, get it.
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
How about the Morrissey quote that John posted?
Morrissey sees nothing wrong with American police torturing suspects in the same way that the CIA is accused of doing.
It’s not hard to find this stuff if you actually read what Morrissey wrote.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
So you agree with me that the CIA employees who tortured people in Iraq and Afghanistan should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?
Kennedy
I seem to have forgotten a cardinal rule in analyzing wingnuts: logic, reason, and conscience need not apply.
T. O'Hara
I should be more panty-twisted about three waterboardings than two torture-murders? Why?
The Grand Panjandrum
John, I think BOB needs a new timeout for that racist shit he just posted. That is beyond offensive.
And you’re right. It’s about us. We were trained to treat our enemies better than we could ever expect to be treated. That was always a given. Sure individuals, or even some units had their bad actors, but it was not systemic. It appears Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld were trying to change that.
Comrade Dread
No, they will never get it.
There remains a disconnect between their competing beliefs that the government is against them and planning on forcing them to conform to some liberal hippie utopian ideal and the idea that they should endow said government with unlimited and unchecked power to declare anyone an enemy combatant and put them in a camp without recourse and subject them to torture.
This disconnect hasn’t inspired thoughtful reflection on why there should be limits on government power. Instead, it has driven them to absurd lunacy in their attempts to prove that the current administration is not legitimate.
Keith G
I am always amazed that the “values voters” seem to have no more values in this area. These were the same folks who protested library books during the 80’s due to alleged situational ethics in books like Jack In the Beanstalk.
But…
That we know of.
/snark
T. O'Hara
It depends on whether this “torture” resembles what happened to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, or is more akin to fraternity hazing. Which is it?
The Grand Panjandrum
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know. Plenty of liberals fall in that category, and I don’t think they would be spared the rod, as it were.
Mnemosyne
In other words, government officials are exactly the same as common criminals, so there’s no point in prosecuting either one for torturing people, right?
With your comparison, you’re either arguing that all torturers should be prosecuted, or you’re arguing that none of them should be. Are you working for the release of Letalvis Cobbins since, after all, he did nothing worse than the CIA did so there was no reason to prosecute him?
MobiusKlein
@T. O’Hara: Do you see the difference between the instruments of the state torturing people under order from the very top, and some individual doing it on their own?
When the President orders it, it’s done in the name of the citizens.
wasabi gasp
@Brick Oven Bill: One half of your “mean Indians” story is about charity.
I get that the meaty half is the part you like, but you gotta eat your broccoli, too.
Morbo
@T. O’Hara: How about 100? I’ll see your straw man and raise it by a factor of 50.
Jackie
@T. O’Hara: Because it was done by you. When your government does this it is done in your name. And done with your money. And done with your reputation.
Mnemosyne
US officials arrested and beat to death a taxi driver in Afghanistan.
But, hey, having the police beat you to death in your cell after several days of torture is what happens in all fraternity hazings, right?
someguy
Considering the slavery and racism on which this country was built, and the disgusting prevalence of rampant bigotry on the right, I’m inclined to classify it as #2, Alex.
MikeJ
I actually heard a Scot interviewed on the radio talking about the release of the Lockerbie bomber. She flat out said the US has no room to sniff at the morals of others after Gitmo. Thanks, George.
kay
I’d call their bluff. Change the law, conservatives. Draft a bill that exempts CIA operatives from criminal liability for any act performed in the course of their duties.
Because that’s what we’re talking about here.
Conservatives need to provide clarity on what illegality is now legal, and who is immunized, or shut the hell up.
Mnemosyne
I think T. O’Hara’s just upset that he didn’t get to watch Dilawar tortured and beaten to death by the CIA. Maybe they should release those tapes so he’ll have some new wank material and leave the rest of us alone.
Oh, no, wait, the CIA destroyed those tapes. Guess you’ll just have to rent Hostel 2 again, though I know you’re wearing out the DVD.
mr_gravity
Mike P
John: A great many of these folks seem to think that we never had any moral authority in the first place (or, rather, that liberals squishy belief in something like “moral authority” is misplaced) so nothing’s been lost.
geg6
Personally, if it was between my family and friends (or even 5,000 or 10,000 other Americans) being killed and maintaining the honor of the country and the Constitution, I’d say take out the family.
But then, I’m one of those unpatriotic DFHs.
Joel
@T. O’Hara: You’re being deliberately obtuse. Cole is referring to the authorities of said nations sanctioning the use of torture, and you know it.
Also: Jurors convicted Letalvis Cobbins of first-degree murder. He’s going to be punished for his crime. Isn’t that the point of the terror prosecutions?
Glad you agree.
Da Bomb
@Keith: It’s funny that was said, because in some ways there are polic officer techniques that should be questioned. Ed and the other idiots out there have some sort of God-complex. They are such hypocrites. They take the phrase “By any means necessary” to whole new level of contrite. @Hunter Gathers: That’s the whole republican party in a nutshell, fear of the unknown, fear of things and people who are different; fear of change…
Calouste
@Mnemosyne:
I’m also guessing that Ed is also perfectly ok with the police confiscating
brown people’shis guns, because there is somewhere someone around with an illegal gun. Right?Comrade Dread
I’m starting to think that most Republicans would have few to no qualms about police departments employing these techniques.
At least until it happens to one of them.
geg6
@Brick Oven Bill:
Yup, BOB. Genocide is always the most humane way to go. I’m sure the Aztecs will agree with you.
Brick Oven Bill
The Grand Panjamdrum;
Before you get on your moral authority soapbox, join me in calling for the Obama Administration to investigate and direct the re-naming of the RV company. Morality is colorblind, and people should be judged by their actions. I am shocked that we celebrate and honor the kind of behavior displayed by the Winnebago.
Mike P
Ah, Pete King is basically calling the Attorney General a traitor for…following the rule of law:
“You’re talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him – but never doing it,” King said. “You have that on the one hand – and on the other you have the [interrogator’s] attempt to prevent thousands of Americans from being killed.”
“When Holder was talking about being ‘shocked’ [before the report’s release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys’ fingers off or something – or that they actually used the power drill,” he said.
Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn’t think the Geneva Convention “applies to terrorists,” and that the line between permitted and outlawed interrogation policies in the Bush years was “a distinction without a difference.”
“Why is it OK to waterboard someone, which causes physical pain, but not threaten someone and not cause pain?” he asked, warning of a “chilling” effect on future CIA behavior.
“You will have thousands of lives that will be lost and the blood will be on Eric Holder’s hands,” he said.
Seriously. Fuck you, Peter King.
colleeniem
@T. O’Hara: As a service member, I sincerely ask that you GFY. You should be appalled because everytime we set a G-D policy of what is and is not torture, there will inevitably be abuses, because how do you police that? And then, what moral highground do we have to protect our service men and women from exactly the same treatment, when they are serving the country in your name?
You disgust me.
Throwin Stones
I’m only commenting to test my theory of being the threadkiller of 8/25/09.
Michael
Jack Bauer needs all the leeway he can get.
4tehlulz
>“You’re talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him – but never doing it
Peter King has committed treason, as he has let the terrorists know that these threats are empty.
ash
Svensker wrote:
“Also, can anyone explain why we shouldn’t use these “techniques” on suspected serial killers, rapists, nasty thugs, in the U.S.?”
It was using this premise the we created a (funny?) animated video. Heck, if it is good for them why not for local law enforcement? EIRUS – Enhanced Interrogations R US.
You can find it at my website if you care to.
Shygetz
This is why you fail. The Native Americans were many peoples, with many disparate cultures. The fact that modern America is morally comparable to a few Stone/Bronze Age societies is not something to be bragging about.
harlana pepper
Give me a fucking break. The only connection b/w 911 and the people we tortured is in this bonehead’s brain. What a stupid fuck.
Svensker
@T. O’Hara:
It depends on whether this “torture” resembles what happened to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, or is more akin to fraternity hazing. Which is it?
Because fraternities frequently scoop people off the street, drug them, hood them, put diapers on them, fly them to a different country, hold them incommunicado for years at a time, while performing “techniques” on them. You must have gone to a very rough college.
Idiot.
wilfred
Saadi tells the story of a King afflicted with a strange malaise. He called together all the physicians of the realm and tried each of their potions and concoctions but nothing worked. A Sufi was in the habit of attending his court, observing the distress of the King. Finally, he intervened and told the king that the only cure, the only way to guarantee his survival, was to take repeated full baths in the blood of slaughtered infants, the only substance pure enough to remove the impurities from his body. The Vizier made the arrangements; babies were torn from their mothers’ breasts while the desperate women wailed outside the palace walls. The tubs were cleaned, the babies readied. The King whose despair had grown even worse turned to the Sufi and said: “This I cannot do, even though it means my death. I reject your cure and order the babies returned to their mothers. Fill the tub with clean water that I make my ablutions before my final prayers.” The Sufi said the prayers were not necessary as the King had finally taken the first step towards his real cure and towards becoming a man worthy of the title Man.
I never fully understood that story until after 9/11.
colleeniem
I miss the edit function…sorry about the lack of spaces, I guess I can’t type when I’m angry.
scav
@geg6: Huh, and here I thought there were all those other groups subjugated to the Aztec and still alive. They may have taken their communion rather literally, but genocide wasn’t a part of it.
T. O'Hara
Wow, if you have all this evidence, why are we even talking about waterboarding? Those guys should definitely be prosecuted.
Rosali
At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, the Iraqis captured 7 American POWs. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others loudly proclaimed that showing their pictures on TV *gasp* was a violation of the Geneva Conventions and that Saddam would be held accountable for the Geneva violations.
The questions are:
1) Were Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz lying or wrong when they made those statements?
2) Do the Geneva Conventions apply to the Iraqis but not to the US?
sugarfree
You know, I think the Bible has a few stories of what happens to people who trade away God for the illusion of safety.
Spoiler: It doesn’t end with everyone going “America! Fuck yeah!”
mr_gravity
Ash Can
Shorter T. O’Hara: “No, John, I never will.”
Stefan
“Why is it OK to waterboard someone, which causes physical pain, but not threaten someone and not cause pain?” he asked, warning of a “chilling” effect on future CIA behavior.
Oooh! Oooh! I know why, I know why, pick me, pick me! Is it because of Subsection (2)(A) and 2(C) of the Federal Torture Statute below?:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113C > § 2340Prev | Next § 2340. Definitions
As used in this chapter—
(1) “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 (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; ….
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002340—-000-.html
Eric U.
underlying these conversations is a presumption that torture works. It doesn’t work, case closed.
I blame TV. I was watching an NCIS the other night and all the person had to do was pull a gun on a guy and he told her everything she wanted to know. This plot device conveniently ignores the fact that the person being tortured often doesn’t know what you want them to tell you. You know they wouldn’t shoot you in the head, how do they get the information if it’s splattered all over the wall. And let’s say they shoot you in the knee, do you tell them the right answer?
T. O'Hara
You mean sometimes people don’t follow the ROE? Should we operate without ROE, then?
Midnight Marauder
@Joel:
@T. O’Hara: You’re being deliberately obtuse.
And just a douche in general, also.
But what’s new there?
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Good, I’m glad we agree. Now if only we can get Republicans to stop screaming about how prosecuting murder by CIA employees will endanger national security so we need to let them all off scott-free, we can get somewhere.
Xanthippas
Weeks, months, years, forever…whatever.
T. O'Hara
Waterboarding worked on KSM. So this proves waterboarding isn’t torture?
SGEW
@Rosali:
1) Yes.
2) Yes.
(too easy)
colleeniem
@T. O’Hara: Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying, you dipshit.
No ROE.
Because ROE are also written in confidence, not to be seen in the light of day, by lawyers who are under the direct supervision of one branch of government.
Your continued false equivalency continues to astound and disgust me.
Morbo
I can’t help but notice a common theme in all of T’s responses… Socrates is rolling in his grave.
T. O'Hara
Murder? Is that what we’re talking about? Because most of the reporting is about things like firing a gun in the next cell.
Keith G
@Brick Oven Bill:
@Brick Oven Bill: Oh Bill. Seems like you are riffing off a selection written by Ward Churchill a few years back. It was silly when he wrote it and your additions are just punk-*ss stupid.
Over 1200 Native tribes covering a vast array of cultural attributes, and yes, ceremonial cannibalism was not uncommon among some of then tribes just like a ritual of sacred cannibalism is not uncommon among Christians.
And as I recall, I do believe, hell lets use the google
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bones-provide-irrefutable-evidence-that-ancient-britons-were-cannibals-692882.html
There. Some whitey values there, what?
Midnight Marauder
@T. O’Hara:
Waterboarding worked on KSM. So this proves waterboarding isn’t torture?
Did you even click the link you posted? Have you read anything at all from the IG Report?
Measuring the effectiveness of EITs, however, is a more subjective process and not without some concern.
Inasmuch as EITs have been used only since August 2002, and they have not all been used with every high value detainee, there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness.
Measuring the overall effectiveness of EITs is challenging for a number of reasons including: (1) the Agency cannot determine with any certainty the totality of the intelligence the detainee actually possesses; (2) each detainee has different fears of and tolerance for EITs; (3) the application of the same EITs by different interrogators may have produced different results.
Not to mention that the plots and al-Qaeda agents KSM gave up after being waterboarded turned out to be much more of the “aspirational” variety than the “imminently dangerous” variety.
So what “worked”, exactly, in your book? Because none of the plots KSM “gave up” turned out to be worth anything.
Midnight Marauder
@T. O’Hara:
And really…The Weekly Standard?
Seriously?
4tehlulz
@Morbo: The sophists, on the other hand, smile in recognition of a fellow traveller.
Midnight Marauder
@T. O’Hara:
Murder? Is that what we’re talking about? Because most of the reporting is about things like firing a gun in the next cell.
That reporting is about one aspect of the much larger issues of the Bush Administration’s torture policy.
Yes, we’re talking about Murder. That’s pretty common when you start a program of standardized war crimes.
Maybe you should read up a bit more on the issue before your lumber out of your Troll Cave yet again.
Stefan
Murder? Is that what we’re talking about?
It is according to noted left-wing hippie and America-hater Gen. Barry McCaffrey:
“We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability/
gocart mozart
B.O.B. is appalled and outraged to learn that Native American tribes had wars with each other 350 years ago. Oh The Humanity !eleventthousand! I bet B.O.B. pissed his pants real hard when he first learned of that fact. To this day he is afraid to set foot in the Mohican Sun Casino. Piss off B.O.B.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
If by “worked” you mean, “We got him to confess to a bunch of completely impossible stuff so we could make him look like a big, scary boogeyman to try and justify ourselves,” then, yes, torturing him worked.
Of course, we’ll never know, because the CIA conveniently erased all of the tapes of his interrogations. What a co-inkydink! I guess we can totally take the CIA’s word for what he said during interrogation, because there’s absolutely no way they could have deliberately erased those tapes out of fear of being prosecuted or anything. I’m sure they did it for our own good and we just need to keep walking.
It’s a good thing that the story that came out yesterday is the only reporting there’s ever been about prisoner torture and murder in Iraq. Otherwise, it would mean that this list of 105 cases being investigated is a real list. Clearly, though, it must be totally fake since the very first and only report we have of prisoner torture and murder came out yesterday.
I’m so glad we have you to tell us these things, T. Tell me, it is hard to live like the guy in Memento, completely unable to remember anything that happened to you the day before? Maybe you need to take better notes for yourself.
Svensker
@wilfred:
I like that story very much.
Wonder how Rush L. would view it?
T. O'Hara
Because telling someone when they can shoot is so much nicer than telling someone when they can waterboard?
4tehlulz
>Murder?
<a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html” Yes, murder.
Stefan
Murder? Is that what we’re talking about?
It also is according to noted subversive organization the United States Department of Defense, which prepares autopsy reports of prisoners who died in US custody. The link below is to a list of autopsy reports obtained through FOIA requests where many of the deaths are clearly classified as “homicides.”
http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/
4tehlulz
Comment ate my link….
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html
“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@T. O’Hara:
I smell spoof.
YellowJournalism
This guy has watched too many cop shows.
gnomedad
@Kennedy:
As far as I can tell, they don’t draw any line. The more brutal, the more “heroic” is anything done in the name of “saving innocent American lives.” We’re good because we’re us.
4tehlulz
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon): Either that or College Republican. I’m going with the latter, myself.
colleeniem
@T. O’Hara: Excuse me, but yes, it is.
Because in an engagement, the other person has a weapon, and is expected to shoot back.
At least, that is what usually happens in war.
But when you are captured, without resource or recourse, the rules of the game change.
That’s the false equivalence, you sadistic fuckwad.
Ed Drone
The right whingers who poo-poo the findings in the released CIA report also conveniently omit the fact that 90% of the document is still redacted, and surely includes much worse than the smoke thing.
When a page reads, “Interrogators brought XXX into [rest of page redacted] until medical personnel arrived,” you know what was left out wasn’t serving him too many crumpets with his tea.
Idiots.
Ed
gwangung
@4tehlulz: Basically, it’s thought is that if you rile the “libs”, you have a win.
Pretty pathetic, really.
Brick Oven Bill
Fair enough Keith. Let us then rename the people’s RV company ‘Mormon’. Or perhaps ‘Branch Davidian’.
T. O'Hara
Why link to “brusselstribunal.org”? The source for most of that is the Church Report, right? And most have already been investigated and prosecuted, right? Are we going to investigate CIA over the 22 detainees killed by insurgent attack at Abu Ghraib? Or do most of those just not have anything to do with the special prosecutor?
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
But, T., you’ve been arguing that the only investigation that’s ever been done is the one that just came out yesterday, so therefore there’s no proof that the CIA or anyone else tortured prisoners. Are you now admitting that crimes were, in fact, committed?
Keith G
@Brick Oven Bill: I always thought of RVs as silly and anachronistic…..so….if a rename was in the works, I suggest BOB.
T. O'Hara
Speaking from vast experience, here?
mr_gravity
Healthcare reform?
p.s. I’m going now .
T. O'Hara
Can’t you read any better than that?
Midnight Marauder
@T. O’Hara:
And most have already been investigated and prosecuted, right?
You have to be kidding, right? You really must live in some kind of bizzaro, alternate universe from the rest of us sane folks. Because, really, who are these people that have been investigated and prosecuted for those prisoners listed in the HEAVILY REDACTED Church Report who were tortured and murdered?
I would certainly love to see some links on that.
colleeniem
@T. O’Hara: Nope.
So you tell me now…how are OLC memos and ROEs exactly the same?
Please use examples.
Brick Oven Bill
As I am highly moral, the name ‘BOB’ is hereby authorized for release to the Obama Administration for RV use. Now we need to work on the Jeep Cherokee.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Can’t you write any better than that? You seem to be arguing that private citizens who torture and kill people should be prosecuted, but government employees who torture and kill people should not be prosecuted. I’ve been trying to figure out your rationale, but since you seemed to be arguing that no US government employees had killed any prisoners based on the report that came out yesterday, it seemed like you were completely unaware of, say, Abu Ghraib and the Church Report.
So what, exactly, is your point? It seems to be that it’s perfectly OK for government employees to torture and kill people in the course of their work, but it’s reprehensible for private citizens to do it in the course of their work (ie robbing someone). If the two things are, in fact, equivalent as you keep claiming, either the government employees need to be prosecuted, or the private citizens should not be prosecuted.
Which is it?
T. O'Hara
If you want names, go to one like that brusselstribunal.org link. Here’s a few they listed:
Sgt. James P. Boland, 377th Military Police Company, charged with dereliction of duty
Pfc. Willie V. Brand, 377th Military Police Company, charged with involuntary manslaughter
CIA contractor David Passaro charged with assault
Pfc. Edward Richmond, 25th Infantry Division, received three years in prison
Capt. Rogelio Maynulet, 1st Armored Division, facing court-martial
Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., Fort Riley, Kan., sentenced to three years
Sgt. Michael P. Williams and Spc. Brent May, from Fort Riley, facing murder charges
T. O'Hara
Somehow I knew that. Makes you wonder. How?
Keith G
@Brick Oven Bill: If you have reason to drive thru Tallahassee, you might want to keep quiet. On second thought…
colleeniem
@T. O’Hara: Guess what? I won’t answer your question until you answer mine. How’s that?
Just try it, jackass. I’d be delighted and humbled if you could.
Bender
Decent nations don’t torture, they don’t threaten to rape the children of prisoners, they don’t stage mock executions, they don’t waterboard people 200 times in one month.
That’s some very black-and-white thinking from the Nuance Brigade! Mistreat one prisoner and you’re an “indecent nation,” regardless of the unprecedentedly-humane way you treated 1000 other human cockroaches bent on killing your family for their god.
If we used that same logic on, say, the Obama Justice Department, we might say that we are currently living in a lawless society where justice is meted out only to enemies of the President, while his henchmen walk free after being caught on video committing crimes!
After all, decent nations don’t let Black Panthers carry billy clubs in front of polling station doors…
Look, we all wish that, instead of being taken as a prisoner, a waste of carbon like Khalid Sheik Mohammed had gotten his head blown off in Pakistan upon his capture. I’m sure the same mistake would not be made again, especially after all the cries of “torture” regarding Gitmo. But given the unfortunate situation, I think that waterboarding a man who doesn’t respect human life is a small price to pay to save innocent people from terrorist attacks.
Or to put it another way: A “decent” nation doesn’t doom innocent, law-abiding people to death because they are overly concerned about the psychological well-being of an evil man who has proved that he does not value human life.
Kennedy
@Brick Oven Bill: Calling for the Obama administration to repudiate/rename the RV company? I am sure that is high on his priority list, given everything else that’s going on. Also.
binzinerator
You are absolutely right, John. But it means this nation is not a decent nation.
One could say the nation was led astray by indecent people. But enough of its members didn’t object to that. Enough are not even now objecting to that. The fact that people like Ed Morrisey can defend the despicable, do it in a public forum and still have an audience, can still go out in public without being shunned is an indictment itself about most people in this country.
Whether they don’t care or they condone it, with varying degrees of rationalization, is immaterial because dammit in the end they agree to it.
And if we acknowledge this nation no longer has any moral authority, what else can we conclude from that? It seems like it weakens every claim we have made in the past for what we do, for what we have. It raises a lot of other questions about how we see ourselves and our place in the world.
Do we have any moral right to use so much of the world’s natural resources? Or to pollute so much of everyone else’s planet? If we didn’t before certainly we have less so now.
Why does such an indecent nation have so much wealth? So much water? So much good farmland? So much food? Isn’t it a sort of collective belief that we were were blessed with these things? Didn’t we think of ourselves as special? How is torturing and threatening to rape children worthy of this belief?
These sick and despicable things utterly demolish the underpinnings of American Exceptionalism.
Or rather, it should.
Instead it seems it has set up our collective psyche for mental illness. Surely our belief in the rightness of America, in our goodness of purpose cannot now be true. Who can support torture and defend those who threaten to rape children and still say this belief is true? It is a false belief, it is obvious for any willing to see. But rather than face that truth we will insist the despicable is justified and the horrifying things are actually something else.
Isn’t it called mental illness when you believe an entire chain of things — thoughts and beliefs — are valid when in fact they are not? I’m not talking about small things, like thinking you’re a great driver and you’re really not, or that you think people think you are funny but they don’t. I mean big world view things, big identity things. People who construct a whole worldview of themselves or their place in it, one that is not based on reality. Such people are delusional. You sometimes see them on the street, talking to imaginary friends, having one-sided conversations, shrieking at imaginary enemies, haranguing people who don’t exist.
I don’t think a nation will do well if it is too far into delusions about what it is. This nation is deluded about its strengths and about its weaknesses. It will end up talking to imaginary friends, having one-sided conversations, shrieking at imaginary enemies, haranguing people who don’t exist.
Our collective psyche was thrown into a crisis by the crimes the Bushies committed. It looks like they created a situation that would cause either a breakdown in our national psyche or a delusion. People like Ed Morissey are insisting on delusion.
Woody
They figgered it out, just fine.
In the ‘real-politik’ universe they create/inhabit, it is NOT a bad thing that an Empire–even/especially in uneasy, ungraceful decline and under at least nominal ‘assault’–have a reputation for bloody-handed ruthlessness among its antagonists.
Midnight Marauder
@T. O’Hara:
Funny. I didn’t see anyone with any fancy office titles on that list.
You know, like Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel or Vice President of the United States of America.
vacuumslayer
You cannot simultaneously believe in torture and American exceptionalism.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Now you’re making another interesting argument: there is no such thing as war crimes. After all, if treating prisoners any way you like is the same thing as shooting at other soldiers during a battle, then war crimes don’t exist.
I have to admit, I’ve never seen someone defend the Bataan Death March as a perfectly normal act of war, but there’s always a first time. It was pretty unfair of the US to execute the guy who did it, don’t you think?
Keith G
@binzinerator: It seems you are making the mistake of focusing on what the bad guys did and not what “a shining city on a hill” should do.
Bender
From the Report, pg 87, re: KSM, after the waterboarding:
“He provided information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists including Sayfullah Paracha and his son Uzair Paracha, businessmen who Khalid Shaykh Muhammad planned to use to smuggle explosives into the United States; Saleh Almari, a sleeper operative in New York; and Majid Khan, an operative who could enter the United States easily and was tasked to research attacks [redacted]. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad’s information also led to the investigation and prosecution of Iyman Faris, the truck driver arrested in early 2003 in Ohio.”
So aside from the arrest and prosecution of bomb smugglers, sleeper operatives, attack-researchers, and the capture and turning of Iyman Feris, who became a useful double-agent against terrorist…
…WHAT HAVE THE BLOODY ROMANS DONE FOR US?
4tehlulz
@Mnemosyne: People walk just as long nowadays to raise money for charities, so what is the big deal?
T. O'Hara
Try this. If a policeman fired a gun in a cell next to a prisoner five years ago, and the authorities decided then not to prosecute, would there be a clamor for them to prosecute now? How important is it? Is this a sort of case where the need for justice is more important than keeping our intelligence agency under wraps? Why?
Again, if we’re talking murders, that’s different. But the reporting so far doesn’t mention any of those cases as being part of the investigation. Does it? In the first review, they did one of those:
Ash Can
You know, if I were a very, very cynical person, I’d say that T. O’Hara and Bender are in cahoots with John. I mean, really, it’s perfect — John says that defenders of torture are unable to grasp the point of this issue, then two defenders of torture show up and demonstrate, precisely, that they are in fact unable to grasp the point of this issue. However, I’m not quite ready to be that cynical, at least in this case. I know that there are people in this world who really do think like O’Hara and Bender, and therefore John has no need to invent them, even for convenient illustration. Their obtuseness is a wonderment, and they can be fun to spar with (until they’re backed into a corner and have nothing left but insults and misinformation), but it’s nothing but sad to see any sense of honor they may ever have had obliterated by fear and loathing like this.
T. O'Hara
Who did they kill?
T. O'Hara
It was rhetorical.
leo
+1
colleeniem
@T. O’Hara: What was rhetorical? I don’t get the rhetoric in trying to identify whether I have actually been in a firefight.
Great answer, by the way.
Norman Rogers
Mr. Cole–
Jonah Goldberg drinks your milkshake:
I’ve long been fascinated with the disconnect between what pundits, politicians and various activist groups complain about and the status of interrogation techniques in the popular culture (here’s a column I did on the subject in 2005). In countless films and TV shows the good guys — not the bad guys — do things to get important information that makes all some [see update] of the harsh methods and allegedly criminal techniques in the IG report seem like an extra scoop of ice cream and a Swedish massage. In NYPD Blue, The Wire, The Unit, 24 and on and on, suspects are beaten, threatened, terrified. In some instances they are simply straight-up tortured. In movies, too, this stuff is commonplace. In Patriot Games, Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In Rules of Engagement, Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk. In Guarding Tess, Nick Cage blows off a wimpy little man’s toes until he talks. In The Untouchables Sean Connery conducts a mock execution.
Now, I know I will get a lot of “it’s just a movie” or “TV shows aren’t real” email from people. At least I have every other time I’ve made this point. So let me concede a point I’ve never disputed while making one these folks don’t seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them. Harrison Ford in the Tom Clancy movies would never torture wholly innocent and underserving victims for the same reasons he wouldn’t beat his kids or hurl racial epithets at black people. But given sufficient time to lay out the context and inform the viewers of the stakes, as well as Ford’s motives, the audience not only understands but applauds his actions. Of course it’s just a movie. But the movie is tapping into and reflecting the popular moral sentiments. Think of these scenes as elaborate hypothetical situations in the debate about torture and interrogation that are acted out and played before focus groups of normal Americans.
If Harrison Ford was an unrepetent racist and anti-Semite in Patriot Games and audience-focus groups still loved him, reasonable people would agree that said something troubling about American audiences.
What’s it like being taken to school by a young man with a steel-trap mind like that? Hurts, don’t it?
Seriously, you cannot have a discussion with my fellow Republicans on this issue. They have become unhinged. I have to go back into hiding and avoid answering my phone for a month now…
GregB
Bender’s use of the term “human cockroaches” says it all.
I have a Rwandan friend who’s parents and family were dubbed cockroaches and then hacked to death by the name callers.
America is rotting beneath our feet and it’s the most overtly pious of us that still believe we’re number one, no matter what the facts say.
I remember growing up, hearing the atrocities committed by the KGB against their own people. Now it is America that is the perpetrator of atrocities. Yes, yes, I know, at least we don’t chop off heads. How wonderful to have the worst of the worst set the bar for bad behavior.
The idiot torture cheerleaders don’t realize that those tactics always come home.
Maybe they should be concerned about the FBI report indicating that they are domestic terrorists.
I am sure they’d be the first to declare after another McVeigh style attack that the gloves should come off against those that fit the profile.
Sick and getting sicker.
Mnemosyne
Good thing no one ever gives out names of everyone they know during torture to make the torture stop, even if the people haven’t done anything. That’s why every person burned as a witch in Europe really was an actual witch.
Makewi
What an absolute load of horseshit. I’m against the use of torture, in general, but to say no matter what the stakes is placing your delicate sensibilities above the safety of others. Maybe we could chip in and buy you a fainting couch.
It’s nice that you want to argue in vague generalities, as you must, because if you actually mention the names of those who were “waterboarded 200 times in one month”, your average American thinks the fucker deserved it, and worse.
You live in a fantasy world.
As it happens, you don’t get to decide who determines moral authority on the world stage.
gocart mozart
Arguing with B.O.B. and T O’Hara is like trying to argue with a dining room table to coin a phrase.
T. O'Hara
Missed that one completely, didn’t you? The point is in response to the argument about rules being dangerous, because they will inevitably be exceeded. In both cases, there are rules for what is allowable. There still are, they just decided to use the namby ones in the Army field manual.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
And yet that’s not what you argued. You claimed that a criminal torturing and murdering two people was the same thing as the government torturing and murdering people. In fact, you implied that it was worse for a private citizen to torture and murder people than it is for the government to do it.
You’re also claiming that this was a one-time incident. It very clearly was not. If the cop in question only did that once, that would be one thing. But if, as it seems to be in many of these cases, that single shot was actually part of a series of increasingly violent threats and not a one-time incident, that’s a completely different story.
It’s pretty funny that you can look at Abu Ghraib and the Church Report and still claim that pretending to execute prisoners was just a one-time incident that didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the torture going on.
muffler
Ideologies require proper images and positive attraction. How do you impress the majority of the good people that your way is better if you are known for breaking your own rules and morals to justify your behavior. These guys made probably the longest string of bad decisions ever. Torture (EIT) does not provide usable information! After over 80 waterboardings the truth (if given) is most likely too late. Cheney’s ticking time bomb scenario is moot. So given the doubt of information, false positives, moral breakdown, bad marketing for democracy and scientific proof for the ineffectiveness – torture is just a image over content sadistic behavior that makes weak people feel safe. The abuses are already being noted and this was supposed to be in an “controlled” environment.
Mnemosyne
So it was immoral for us to execute “war criminals” after WWII because, after all, they were just following the rules that had been set out by their leaders?
Believe it or not, you’re not allowed to commit a war crime with a plea that you were “just following orders.” Even if your rule book says that you can beat a prisoner into unconsciousness.
gocart mozart
Which Bond movie did Sean Connery strip the guy naked, smear feces on him, and threaten him with a German Shepard? Answer me that Jonah?
Mike P
@Makewi:
Yeah, well one way of making sure you don’t have it is by…waterboarding people 200 times a month.
There’s some willful ignorance being shown by supporters of the “fuck ’em all, let’s torture em” school of thought. One big thing is that a not inconsiderate amount of the people in custody have been found to be innocent of doing anything. So the logic must follow that you can have your limbs dislocated, or worse, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And it bothers me to no end that the same people who cheered on Ronald Reagan in his standoff with the “Evil Empire” overlook the fact that part of his argument was constructed around a moral appeal, and that appeal said we’re better than those who oppose us because we believe in things like freedom and due process and the like. But hey, there’s some shifty looking Mooslims over there, so the shining city on the hill rhetoric doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Mnemosyne
You don’t happen to live in Philadelphia, do you?
Hey, why even bother to have trials at all? We’ll just have lynch mobs roam the streets and decide how to punish any criminals they come across. After all, the guy was an accused child molester, so he deserved it, right?
Kelly
Mr. Cole is exactly right, it’s not about them. Engaging in arguments with those who think otherwise is waste of energy.
Would anyone here engage their children in an argument about the rape?
The right has succeeded in opening a thousand anecdotal fronts to create a war of attrition. They have hordes of willfully ignorant to the throw into the maw and eventually, they’ll beat us to death.
Mnemosyne
@Mike P:
Well, these are the same people who argued that you should be arrested for talking back to the cops inside your own home, so I’m not really surprised.
T. O'Hara
It’s funny that you can’t seem to remember what you read.
The reporting on the CIA investigation mentions one case of a gun fired in an adjacent cell, and one brandished firearm and threat with a drill. I haven’t seen the full report, is it out?
tamied
@Makewi: As it happens, you don’t get to decide who determines moral authority on the world stage.
Unfortunately, the world decides that, and there are billions of moral-thinking people out there who know that what we did was torture and was wrong.
The thing that totally breaks my heart is that my government did this, in my name, in the name of the country that I love. Or loved. I don’t feel the same about us any more.
T. O'Hara
What war crime? Are captured Al Qaedans POWs?
Bender
You BJers sound like old women from North Carolina talking about the loss of America’s dignity and honor because “a decent nation doesn’t allow the murders of a million babies!”
Both are totally arbitrary measures of decency married to your pet causes. You guys and the anti-abortion lot are like two sides of the same coin.
Woody
You cannot simultaneously believe in torture and American exceptionalism.
Depends.
If by American exceptionalism, you refer to the (tacit) doctrine that, because of our exceptionalism, NOTHING America does is ever truly evil, that American is “excepted’ from the usual run of human frailties, and then Americans commit torture, i see no conflict there…
Makewi
The 200 times in a month guy, KSM, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. He is responsible for the deaths of 3,000 human beings, and it is and was reasonable to assume he would have knoweldge of things which could prevent others. I do appreciate your attempts to wave shiny objects around as a way to try to distract from that fact.
I can’t even say your hearts are in the right place on that one.
Woody
Or loved. I don’t feel the same about us any more.
I’ve felt that way since 1967. It does not come back, that naive, hopeful faith…
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
So your contention is that this was a single incident? Abu Ghraib was a figment of our collective imagination? No one else in the CIA, ever, did anything similar? Any subsequent pages of this report are going to show that the CIA played pinochle with the prisoners to get them to confess?
You are probably the most naive person I’ve ever run into online, and that’s saying something.
By most rules? Yes. If they’re not, then they’re unlawful combatants. But there are very specific rules that we agreed to under the Geneva Conventions that spell out how to have to treat both POWs and unlawful combatants. That’s why we came up with a brand-new category of “enemy combatants” — so we wouldn’t have to follow the Geneva Conventions and could do whatever we wanted. Which, as it turns out, included torturing and murdering people without even a show trial.
Mike P
@Mnemosyne:
Oh I’m not surprised. It’s actually quite refreshing to see such things admitted in public. It used to be that this would disqualify one from being taken seriously, but at least in re: our political class, that’s sadly not the case any more.
Woody
O’hara, would you settle for “crime against humanity,” instead of “war crime?”
or are citizens resisting the invasion of their country “HUMANS?”
the world awaits…
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
And so we took actions that we knew meant we would never be able to prosecute him for those crimes and would eventually have to either murder him in custody or let him go.
Good job, genius — you ensured that KSM will someday be walking the streets, immune from prosecution, because you wanted your petty little revenge.
Makewi
@Mnemosyne:
Possible future crimes genius, and according to the CIA the information we got from him saved lives. He’ll never walk the streets again. Idiot.
Norman Rogers
What good is it to be safe and alive in a country that can take any person, anywhere, and take them into a hole and torture them? We are not children. The government cannot save us from determined terrorists. I have no problem dying a free man in a free country in a burning plane simply because I’m not afraid of anything…
…except being tortured by my government.
parksideq
@T. O’Hara: Shut up, just shut the fuck up. You are trying to justify crimes against humanity that Michael Vick just got out of federal prison for performing against dogs, for fuck’s sake.
I’m absolutely gobsmacked at the disconnect of it all. If we as a nation are reduced to even a discussion of the merits of war crimes (let alone condoning them), we’re fucked more ways than Jenna Jameson in her prime.
Mike P
@Makewi:
I have no qualms with us getting tough with people who have attacked and killed American citizens, but I part ways with you about the methods in which we extract information from those same people.
How many times do we have to have our own military leaders, generally not a collection of bleeding hearts, tell us that torture almost always leads to poor information before we start to believe that it might not be the best way to get what we want?
I’m not saying these guys need to be posted at the pool at Club Med and I think that’s what’s some people think they’re hearing when folks say that want prisoners treated humanely. Put them in small cells. Interrogate them, but do it within the law. For a country that claims to value the rule of law, that shouldn’t be so hard.
Makewi
@tamied:
Well I guess you should just give up then. This country you have in mind is a fantasy. The funny part is, that it would take no time to get you to admit that if we were to shift the conversation to something like classism or racism or how horrible we are to deny free health care to everyone.
Makewi
@Mike P:
I have no problem with what we did to KSM, and according to the CIA the information we got as a result was useful. I see you are trying to shift it back to vague generalities again. I’m against torture too, so there you go.
Now you will need to move the argument to what the government determined was legal and what wasn’t. Which will lead us, as it must, to things like the Yoo memo.
les
Take it easy on T. Ohara et al–living in terror can do strange things to the mind. And it doesn’t help that somewhere in there they may actually realize that, as to them and the rest of the right wing bedwetters, the terrorists actually won with only a single attack. It’s pathetic, really.
Ash Can
@Makewi:
Of course he does. And so do you. And so do I. And so does everyone else in this thread, in this nation, and in the world. Everyone is his or her own moral arbiter, so the morality of a community defaults to consensus.
John’s principles on this issue are hard and fast, yours are fluid. The fact that there are laws against torture indicate that, at least at the time those laws were passed, the consensus favored the hard-and-fast view. Today, this may no longer be the case. If those guilty of abrogating these laws go free, that would indicate that the consensus is now on the side of fluidity, as you imply. In the meantime, people elsewhere who share the hard-and-fast view have already determined that the USA as a nation has relinquished its position of moral authority because of the moral fluidity our government has exhibited. Who can tell them they’re wrong?
And therein lies the problem inherent in moral fluidity: it makes one unreliable in terms of morality. After all, if your principles are based on a sliding scale, how far is that scale actually going to slide when the chips are down?
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
So, just to be clear, you think that the government should be allowed to capture people, torture them, and lock them up without trial indefinitely? Or is it only the guys who we think might be really, really bad?
That is, of course, assuming you took KSM’s confession at face value. I’m guessing you still believe that Henry Lee Lucas killed 300 people, too.
But, please, keep hugging your teddy bear tight as you tell yourself that the United States only tortured really bad people who deserved it.
Corner Stone
@robertdsc: Your iPhone was talking much smack on an earlier thread. I didn’t know there was an app for that.
Mike P
@Makewi:
I want to make sure I understand your point: you’re against torture, but ok with what was done to KSM (which could be considered torture) because those actions were more or less legalized by the formulations of folks like John Yoo? Is that correct?
T. O'Hara
Isn’t the topic EIT documents released because of a special prosecutor being named to investigate CIA interrogators for actions detailed in the CIA IG report? Were any of them at Abu Ghraib? If so, I haven’t seen any report of it.
T. O'Hara
Really? By most rules yes? Whose rules? Who came up with the term “unlawful combatants”? What Geneva Convention covers them?
Makewi
@Mike P:
As long as we didn’t violate his rights everything is fine. On the scale of things, human life is worth less than ensuring the rights of an admitted mass murderer. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Which one of you is Nero?
Makewi
@Mnemosyne:
Wait, are you now thinking that he won’t be walking the streets again? Or is he innocent? I’m confused.
I gave my teddy bear to KSM.
T. O'Hara
Michael Vick waterboarded dogs? Why? What did they know? I admit that’s all horked up, though.
kay
I just think if you don’t like the laws that govern those in our custody, you have to change the laws.
It goes to Congress and we have a debate on changing the norms.
Ignoring laws when they’re inconvenient, is, well, lawbreaking.
Why are conservatives making this so complicated? This is pretty much bed-rock stuff.
Don’t like? Rewrite! If you can get it through Congress, you’re free and clear.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Wikipedia is your friend. Articles 5 and 42 are the most relevant here:
It’s pretty embarrassing that you would try to have this argument and have no idea what an unlawful combatant is or what the Geneva Conventions are.
Nero
KSM was a piker compared to me.
As for mass murder, fine. Go ahead and punish mass murder.
Who among us would say that KSM should not have been put on trial, given the opportunity to mount a vigorous defense, and then judged based on the evidence against him? If the verdict is death, at the conclusion of a fair trial, hey–by all means, put the bastard to death. Don’t equivocate and try to cover for the failure of a political party to find people who knew how to do the right thing.
The central failure of our policy has been a lack of adherence to what we call the rule of law, and Obama doesn’t get that and he should be ashamed and embarrassed to be wallowing in the same muck as what Dick Cheney wallowed in, quivering and shaking with his ass in the air. The Bushies whiffed on that one. Fear took over. Panic took over. Incompetence and political expediency took over.
Real men don’t panic. Real men apply the law. Whiny-assed titty babies run and hide when things get complicated.
Corner Stone
@4tehlulz:
Holy Shit! Are you saying…Santa?? Fucking Santa tortured this dude?!? SANTA NO!!
He must’ve been a bad boy indeed.
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
What are you advocating? Our only two choices are to let him go or keep him in custody until he dies, which could be 20 years or more in which a lot could change. If a court orders us to let him go, what’s your plan?
Stefan
Really? By most rules yes? Whose rules? Who came up with the term “unlawful combatants”? What Geneva Convention covers them?
Most generally, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Article 3 (the so-called “Common Article 3” bcause it is common to all four Conventions) requires humane treatment for all persons in enemy hands, without any adverse distinction, and specifically prohibits acts such as murder, mutilation, torture, and humiliating and degrading treatment. Article 4 of the Fourth Convention provides that: “Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.”
Stefan
I have no problem with what we did to KSM, and according to the CIA the information we got as a result was useful.
Ah, well, “according to the CIA.” Well, that’s good enough for me. No way would the CIA ever lie, especially with regards to a potentially criminal act that could expose them to prosecution. If the CIA says it, it must be true.
SGEW
Wow, it got real ugly in here.
Makewi
@Mnemosyne:
Ask Obama. I’m pretty sure his plan is to keep him until he dies.
@kay
If you have a lawyer or even a group of them telling you that what you are doing is legal, then no foul, right?
Mnemosyne
@Stefan:
Gosh, if only the CIA still had those videotapes that they erased, they could totally prove that they got valuable information from torture. Gosh darn it, though, someone just happened to totally accidentally erase all of them completely by mistake, so we’ll have to take the CIA’s word that everything they say is true. Come on, would the CIA lie to you?
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
Thank you for admitting I have won the argument. I appreciate it.
Stefan
If you have a lawyer or even a group of them telling you that what you are doing is legal, then no foul, right?
Oh Christ no. Not at all. That’s completely idiotic. If that were the case, every gangster would just keep a lawyer on retainer pumping out memos that the torture/murder of his gangland rivals was perfectly legal.
T. O'Hara
I know an unlawful combatant is not “a brand-new category.” I also know they are not POWs. They are also not protected by the Geneva Conventions, and may be punished “by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful.” It’s pretty embarassing you would try to pretend otherwise.
kay
@Makewi:
No, that’s just silly. Besides, I read one of the memos. Show me the part where you’re permitted to threaten rape. Like slippery Yoo wrote anything that honest. My. Ass. It isn’t in there.
We have a process. If conservatives want to legalize threatening rape, or any number of unique and interesting torture combos you’ve dreamed up, the rest of us are fully justified in asking you to write that into law, put it up, get it passed and see if it survives a court challenge.
I think I have a fairly urgent personal interest in finding out who, exactly, this applies to. The abortion doctor murderer had an ex-wife, and she had some information she didn’t volunteer. Can conservatives torture her to prevent a murder? This is a real question. You need to write a law that reflects your values, please.
Leelee for Obama
And so we’re back to the beginning. Vizini! If the Bush Admin. had gotten the laws changed, we wouldn’t be here. If the Bush Admin. hadn’t had anyone tortured, we wouldn’t be here. If the Bush Admin. hadn’t gotten their lap dogs to write memos making any of this OK, we wouldn’t be here. So, I ask you-how is any of this Obama’s fault? And how would any of us handle it-if that were our job?
Mike P
@Makewi:
Your snark isn’t needed. I’m honestly trying to understand what your point is. I can’t respond to it or you if I’m misunderstanding your point.
If you believe in the principle of the rule of law and you believe it to be inviolable, you must apply it to all equally. You don’t get to change the rules just because some really awful people did some really awful things. I mean, you can, but that means you should change the law. Such things are permitted, so is that what you’re advocating or is it that Yoo’s memos expressly changed the law to make legal what was done to KSM?
Again, I hope KSM rots in prison for the rest of his miserable life. This isn’t about coddling terrorists.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
No, unlawful combatant is not a new term, but we’re not calling the people at Gitmo unlawful combatants. We’re claiming a whole new category called “enemy combatants” which we further claim is not covered by the Geneva Conventions at all so we can make up our own rules on the fly.
That’s how you’re embarrassing yourself — you don’t seem to realize that the US government claims that there’s a difference between “unlawful” combatants and “enemy” combatants and keep conflating the two.
kay
@Stefan:
Isn’t that so silly? “My lawyer said I could!”. This is like a criminal defendant’s dream.
I can’t figure out if they’re naive or stupid.
Stefan
They are also not protected by the Geneva Conventions,
What part of Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that says that (bolding mine) “Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals” are you not able to read?
Vigorous hand-flapping aside, the Fourth Geneva Convention covers everyone — absolutely everyone — who is held by the other side in an armed conflict. This means that al Qaeda prisoners, even though not POWs, are protected by the Fourth Convention, including the protections of Article 3.
Makewi
@Mnemosyne:
You aren’t having an argument. You are trying to convince yourself that you are a good person.
EchoesBunniesRemoteFromWork
If we don’t torture, then the terrorists have already won.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
They knew they couldn’t get the laws changed. They’re still not willing to bring this up as legislation. They’re going to argue it on cable television and op-eds, and beat their opponents over the head in a forum without rules or a judge because this is going nowhere as “law”.
“We do not torture”. Okey-doke, ya liar. Say it again. That’ll make it “true”.
Makewi
@Mike P:
My snark is essential. I’m glad that you hope he rots, because really that’s the most important thing.
I do find it fascinating that so many of you are absolute rule followers. I think you should be proud of yourselves that you are so willing to follow whatever rule is laid out before you. An inspiration to others is what you are.
T. O'Hara
It was ruled inapplicable to unlawful combatants until Hamdan, after which it applied as you say. It was then modified by the detainee treatment act, and again by Boumediene last year.
binzinerator
@Keith G:
I’m not sure I understand you, but what I was trying to point out was 1) what vacuumslayer said in far fewer words just a few comments later:
…and 2) what that might mean for this nation if large number of people continue to insist on both.
I say a nation insisting on both cannot last without becoming delusional about itself (and making terrible decisions while in that state) or having a sort of national nervous breakdown.
I think this is important because the collective belief in something like “a shining city on a hill” has a snowball’s chance of happening if there is a refusal to accept the truth of #1, let alone a refuse to even address it.
I don’t see how something like a shared dream of a shining city on a hill is possible when the majority are so conflicted in their own perception of reality. I’d think it’d be tough to get some national harmony on a vision of the future when so many people are squirming to lie to themselves about the past and present.
One of the most impressive and undoubtedly very painful things the German people did in the postwar years was to address the reality of what they wrought and accept the truth of it. They of course lost any and all moral authority, and even today many nations will not cut them much slack or hesitate to remind them they are in no position to lecture others on moral authority. But they would have had no chance at a new beginning, no chance at redeeming themselves, no chance for a future where beautiful collective dreams could take root — unless the past was faced and the ugly realities acknowledged.
I don’t think I’m making a mistake by focusing on and pointing out what the bad guys did — it has truly and thoroughly fucked us as a nation, inside and out, in ways that manifest themselves in seemingly unconnected things, like how people like Ed Morissey can come out and defend monstrous crimes.
The worst thing is to do what Morissey wants to do. Which is make the monstrous acceptable. He wants to make the problem go away by redefining the conflict. If criminal and monstrous acts aren’t really criminal or monstrous — where’s the rub? Problem solved!
The trouble is, the hill he wants everyone to build on is directly over a landfill, and the shining city that will eventually get built on top will crack and heave as what’s buried underneath decays. What was buried will never go away. It’ll always come bubbling back up to haunt us.
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
Again, thank you for conceding that I have won the argument. I appreciate it.
kay
It came clear to me during the Bush Administration, but it”s still absolutely amazing to me.
Holder is appointing a prosecutor to do an investigation. There will be an investigation. If it is determined that there are charges, that goes to a grand jury, and then we have a trial.
They are just dismissing the validity of this whole process, and it’s OUR process. I mean, these rules were agreed on in advance, a long, long time ago, and we all sort of signed on. It’s not like they should be blindsided or outraged by process, but they ARE.
What gives with that? Do they not buy the basic premise? If so, that’s a problem, I think. We’re quite literally not on the same page. They don’t even have the book open.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
No, it was ruled inapplicable to enemy combatants in Hamdan and Boumediene. Again, the Bush administration (and now, sadly, the Obama administration) has been arguing that there is a difference between unlawful combatants as defined in the Geneva Conventions and enemy combatants. The two cases you cited basically slapped that notion down.
You just keep digging that hole, don’t you?
Makewi
@kay:
This is political theater. No one will be charged, even if there actually was law being broken. You can be outraged if you want to, but you should at least recognize the reality of the situation.
T. O'Hara
Why not? That’s what they are. They are not POWs. Should they be treated like POWs anyway? What message does that send to enemy combatants about compliance with the rules?
I agree they do that, but why is the US government conflation of the terms supposed to embarass me?
kay
@Makewi:
Whatever. I think Holder is the real thing. My kingdom for a clean prosecutor, finally. I thought I was going to have to retain a decent lawyer, during the Gonzales/Mukasey “lost decade”.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign finance chair was just arrested. Holder is no Gonzales. I don’t think he’s political.
My fondest wish is that you and the rest of the numbskulls on the Right who smeared Holder eat crow, and you will.
I saw you and your buddys nasty post yesterday about Holder-Black Panthers.
Holder is a solid lawyer, and you’re a political hack. Black Panthers? Christ. Can’t you do better than that? Sean Hannity time!
Leelee for Obama
@kay: I know that I’d like to believe that they couldn’t have gotten the law changed, but considering the Patriot Act, and the signing statements on the anti-torture legislation that was okee-dokee with an actual victim of torture and a JAG lawyer, I’m not so sure.
What Holder is doing is good and important. But, what do we wind up doing with these guys-life imprisonment across the board because we can’t really try them? I wouldn’t want the job of figuring all this out-and I give Obama and Holder credit for even wanting to touch this mess.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Again, I agree with you, but the Bush and Obama administrations have been arguing in court for 6 years that there is a legal difference between enemy combatants and unlawful combatants so therefore they shouldn’t have to follow the rules covering unlawful combatants.
Because the US government is not conflating the terms. They are claiming that they are two completely different terms. As I said, the legal position of unlawful combatants has been determined for years. Declaring them enemy combatants instead was an attempt to get around those legal protections.
Conflating the two terms makes you look like you don’t understand the difference and think that unlawful combatants (which are covered in the Geneva Conventions) and enemy combatants (which are not) are the same thing. Which then leads you to make silly arguments like claiming that unlawful combatants aren’t covered by the Geneva Conventions even after several of us have quoted you chapter and verse about where the rules that apply to them appear.
Makewi
@kay:
You’re funny. You absolutely want the law to be followed unless it is inconvenient to you. Unless you have no idea what the black panther case is about, in which case perhaps you should educate yourself before you start going off about how this AG is, like so totally different from the other AG’s before him.
Nasty post. As in to complain about the dropping of criminal charges for political reasons. Which sucked under Bush, but is fine now.
Keith G
@binzinerator: Biz, in my running in and out doing chores, I clicked the wrong response link. Sorry for the trouble.
I just read your comments. Good stuff.
Bender
We agree!
Regards,
The Black Panthers Voter Intimidation Squad
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
Uh, you do know that they were there to intimidate people into voting for McCain, right?
kay
@Bender:
I don’t know why you’re so scared if this is “political”.
By the way, you’re number three conservative to repeat today’s Holder talking point. Originality is not a strong point.
As I said, hacks. You needn’t be nervous, though, or present your “legal” defense on every cable television outlet. This is “political theater”. Relax! We’ll just see what turns up.
Makewi
The Black Panther case.
kay
@Makewi:
Bullshit. You’ve been smearing Holder from day one. I watched the confirmation hearings. From the people who hired Gonzales? Please.
You’re conducting this smear campaign on cable television and the internet, just like you’re presenting your torture defense on cable television and the internet. But that isn’t where the verdict is rendered.
You’re in the wrong place.
Makewi
@kay:
Oh, so now I’m legion? I guess it’s either that or you might have to examine some of your carefully crafted defense mechanisms.
What exactly is bullshit. That charges were filed? That left wing civil rights workers said it was blatent? That the charges were dropped by your, oh so not political AG?
How deep does this conspiracy go kay?
T. O'Hara
There is no “unlawful combatants” in the Geneva Conventions, it’s from Quirin.
I think it was just confusion. They named them “unlawful enemy combatants” in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, with the same definition as an “unlawful combatant” from Quirin. Then they had status tribunals to find out if they were “combatants” (meaning they could hold them) but not if they were “unlawful” which the law required. Normally a combatant would be declared “unlawful” when convicted by military commission, but under the MCA, they couldn’t be tried until after they were declared unlawful. It’s still all fouled up.
Stefan
It was ruled inapplicable to unlawful combatants until Hamdan, after which it applied as you say. It was then modified by the detainee treatment act, and again by Boumediene last year.
How odd — you suddenly seem to know a lot about the Geneva Conventions as they apply to non-POW combatants, when upthread you pretended not to be familiar with them. This might lead some to conclude you are being deliberately disingenuous (which is a fancy way of saying you’re lying).
But even with that, you get the facts wrong — it was not “ruled inapplicable…until Hamdan” — there was no ruling, the Bush regime just pretended it didn’t apply when under any clear reading it did.
kay
@Makewi:
There’s nothing there, Makewi. They dismissed a case so that proves Holder is political? That’s a smear. We have a process. Why didn’t the “outraged” conservative House member follow process?
You’re going to try the AG in the Wall Street Journal? What if everyone did what you do?
Do you even know anything at all about Eric Holder? Do you seriously believe Holder, who has been a prosecutor for most of his professional life, is sympathetic to the Black Panthers? Why do you believe that?
You fundamentally do not accept our process. The accusation is enough. That’s not enough. And the conservative House member knows it.
Stefan
There is no “unlawful combatants” in the Geneva Conventions, it’s from Quirin.
The phraseology is not there, but the concept is. The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to everyone held by an enemy in an armed conflict, which includes POWs, civilians, spies, saboteurs, guerillas, etc. The Fourth is specifically intended to cover everyone and therefore does not make a distinction between lawful and unlawful or uniformed versus civilian in its guarantee of a basic minimum standard of protection applicable to all prisoners of whatever status.
kay
@Makewi:
I got it. What you’re afraid of is that process won’t be followed in this instance, and the reason you’re afraid of that is YOU convict without evidence. You’re assuming others will, because YOU do. But that’s not true in the legal arena. That’s just true on cable news. You’re confusing the two.
Makewi
@kay:
Our process is fine. It’s just sad that when we run into a case where Holder = Gonzalez pt 2 – you are unwilling to make the connection because you would rather put politics above the rule of law. Except of course when it comes to the terrorists, for them the rule of law must be absolute.
You should be proud. You have learned to put the party above all other concerns.
I can tell you didn’t even read that article, or if you did, you read it like a good party member would – only focusing on the party aspects and ignoring anything else thats contrary.
Your politics are ruining my country.
binzinerator
@kay:
Neither, kay. This is what banal evil looks like. I’m serious.
Do you really think stupidity explains this kind of thing? Do they really seem so niave to you? They seem neither stupid nor naive to me, yet surely something must explain what seems to be otherwise incomprehensible. Surely it must be one or the other, right? How else can someone advocate such things? It must be out of lack of native intelligence or due to a child-like ignorance of the world.
This is what we end up wondering because people who advocate evil things are so alien to us we are baffled by it. So we look for other, more familiar explanations.
I think it is worth remembering that many of those involved in supporting and advocating war crimes turned out to be, in person, to be in every way unremarkable and ordinary.
When such people talk about torturing other people and doing despicable acts — and advocate and defending the use of such practices because the people being subjected to the torture should be considered subhuman who therefore do not have the same rights as real human beings do, or are deserving of it because of what they are accused of — then please understand, kay, such people are evil, in the same way many others who have been responsible for war crimes have been.
Neither stupid nor naive, just evil in its banal form.
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Uh, no. Not really. Nice try, though. I almost believed you really were that dumb.
Makewi
Wingnuts
Lies!
kay
@Makewi:
I don’t “make connections”. I don’t “make connections” without looking at a single piece of evidence or the freaking statute, which is what you just did. You convicted the AG without reading the statute? Christ. Thank God you people are too selfish to serve on juries.
Here’s the deal. McCain lost the election. Eric Holder is the AG. Conservatives can lobby Holder all they want, in their chosen forum, which is cable television, but you can’t “convict” him, because that isn’t how this works.
Don’t tell me to adopt your fucked up value system, that has all but replaced any adherence to process or law. I’m not making it up as I go along. I BUY the basic premise, unlike you.
kay
@binzinerator:
Torture polls well.
Makewi
@kay:
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division both agree with me that the decision to drop these charges was the wrong one. It’s politics, but because you won or something that makes it ok.
The problem with you is that your “values” are entirely predicated on whose ox is being gored. You are politics incarnate. Congratulations, you literally make the world a worse place.
kay
@Makewi:
I read the article like a lawyer would, nitwit, because you and the rest of the GOP choir are alleging prosecutorial misconduct. There’s nothing in that article but accusations.
When you have something, bring it. It has to be more than “the prosecutor didn’t pursue charges”. You’re going to be very busy if that’s the standard for a media conviction.
kay
@Makewi:
Prosecutors have discretion, and there are lots of reasons. You chose the ONE reason that validates the opinion you came in with. Oh, look! There was discretion used in the Bush Administration, regarding the very issue we’re discussing!
You’re in good company. Half of the Left are convinced Holder is protecting the CIA, and half of the Right think he’s unfairly targeting the CIA. That probably means he got it about right.
By all means, pursue the Black Panther Theory. Do it like Holder did here. Use process.
Makewi
@kay:
The prosecutor dropped charges, under strenuous objections from the civil rights branch within his own department and objections from the US commission on civil rights. Funny how you choose to keep ignoring that.
Probably because you are a political hack.
T. O'Hara
“Enemy combatant” just means somebody on the other side in a war. Of course you can detain them. Obama’s sudden allergy to the term is meaningless. The policy shift was to suddenly treat them as criminals, instead of war criminals, except he’s still okay with shooting Hellfires at them, and they’re still talking about holding tribunals (which makes no sense unless they’re combatants), and some of the charges are still war crimes.
T. O'Hara
Did I? Or did I just ask questions that had uncomfortable answers? Do you sometimes ask questions for which you already know the answers? If not, don’t become a lawyer.
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
Yes, I can’t imagine why the Obama justice department wouldn’t prosecute people working on behalf of John McCain so Republicans could start screaming about the Democrats trying to silence McCain voters. It’s just such a mystery. I guess we’ll just have to wonder.
kay
Where would Eric Holder have met his alleged friend, the Black Panther who was a poll watcher?
When he was, um, general corporate counsel to an international fruit cooperative? Is that where Eric Holder met his friend the Black Panther?
Or before that? Maybe he met his friend the Black Panther when he was an assistant AG. I can completely see how Eric Holder would drop a case at really the highest levels, to help his alleged friend, the Black Panther beat a voter intimidation charge.
If this guy wasn’t a BLACK Panther, would this allegation even have been made? No, because then there wouldn’t be that Eric Holder “connection” that conservatives have made, now would there?
Mnemosyne
@T. O’Hara:
Not while the Bush administration was in office. While they were in office, it was an official term to distinguish enemy combatants from unlawful combatants so they could arrest and hold American citizens without trial.
But, hey, if you want to look stupid by trying to claim that they really mean the same thing, which would mean the Hamdi and Boumediene cases that hinged on the term never existed, be my guest. You sure seem to spend a lot of your time pretending things don’t exist, though.
Mnemosyne
@kay:
Didn’t you know, kay? Those people all know each other. And they talk about Makewi behind his back. He knows it.
Bender
Talking point? Really? You think this requires a talking point? When someone says 2+2=347 (or, “Holder isn’t political”), I would hope that more than three people call you on your transparent bullshit.
Note for the future: On any topic regarding Holder, his most obvious indications of incompetence and outright contempt for rule of law (the Black Panthers and Conyers’ ACORN probe) are going to be raised. Unless and until he rights his grievous wrongs, that is.
Makewi
@Mnemosyne:
You and Kay are insane. Seriously, get some help.
Bender
Close the cap to the paint thinner, dude.
gocart mozart
A BLACK guy with a billy club was standing outside a polling place, was told to move along by the police and did. The U.S.Attorney decided not to make a Federal Case out of it and dropped the charges.
This upsets the people who think it is O.K. to bring guns to Town Hall meetings. Have I got this about right?
kay
@gocart mozart:
I just think it’s hard to believe Eric Holder intervened in a poll watcher case.
Why did he do it again? Some loyalty thing black people have? Wow. Do they ALL know each other? Do you think he’ll intervene in every case involving a black person?
Bender
But the media sure is! No mention @ CNN, Reuters, or AP that this guy was a big Dem who chaired Hillary’s and Kerry’s runs, as well as the DSCC. I’m sure it would’ve been the same for a Republican!
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200908251258DOWJONESDJONLINE000315_FORTUNE5.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE57O4K020090825
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iC3CYATP4ke7JDlA0Hkb9nxXZ9tQD9AA1J5O3
kay
@gocart mozart:
Their slam-dunk evidence is that the Black Panther was a certified poll watcher. That means that he wasn’t a convicted felon and he took the training, like eleven zillion other people, and that’s all it means, but that’s the “slam dunk”.
We must earnestly work towards keeping them off a jury.
Ash Can
@Makewi:
And how, it’s politics. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is comprised of four Republicans appointed by George W. Bush and two Democrats and two independents appointed by Congress. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights division was the DoJ division to which Bradley Schlozman was assigned with the tacit purpose of dismantling it.
While I would have been delighted if wholesale personnel changes had been made as soon as Eric Holder had walked through the door, that’s not the way government agencies work. We all have to live with George W. Bush’s “civil rights” legacy, whether we like it (in your case) or not (mine, kay’s et al.).
binzinerator
@kay:
I don’t understand what you mean. You mean politicians who support torture get better numbers in the polls? That going around defending torture is good for a bump in popularity?
I’d say that would be an example of sociopathic-grade calculated evil.
And it would be about as damning a judgment of the character of this nation as I could imagine.
gocart mozart
In other words, although technically a violation of election law, it was a case they thought was too trivial to waste time and money on. Prosecutorial discretion IMO.
If a teabagger was prosecuted for that we would be hearing about the Obama islamofascistcommiegestapojihad against railmurkins I suppose.
kay
@Bender:
Oh, God, Bender, you’re like my dream. I just finish my big boring lecture on how cable television is different than the legal system and here you come, equating the two. He was ARRESTED Bender. Whether he did a perp walk or not just isn’t relevant to Eric Holder’s prosecutorial integrity.
To review: cable television “conviction” is non-binding. Conviction by Wall Street Journal? Non-binding. Getting arrested? Binding.
gocart mozart
Yes Kay, Holder probably did not know about it because it’s so trivial. The new U.S.A. most likely made the decision. In the old administration it would have been Karl Rove if he thought he could get political mileage out of it. Funny how the charges were first brought under the last administration. They being all anal and shit for the finer points of clean elections and all.
kay
@binzinerator:
I’m sorry, it sounded flip and dismissive and it wasn’t meant that way. Your post was great.
I have noticed over the last 8 years that there are two things Americans don’t care about.
One is civil liberties, and the other is torture. Sad, but true, in my opinion.
I think you could put the Fourth Amendment up to national referendum, exact language, and it would go down in flames. I think if you put torture on the ballot, it would win.
I don’t know when we became such a bizarre combination of “spineless” and “bully”, but we did become that.
Gwangung
A bully IS spineless…they just getthe first hit in…
Makewi
@gocart mozart:
Well voter intimidation is trivial when it’s your guy that wins. So congratulations on following the due process that kay is always on about, which is important in all cases except when you can point to a republican and say cheater.
Brave new world. Totally, totally not like the last administration.
gocart mozart
Give me the name of the guy that was intimidated Makewi. Who was intimidated? It was a relatively trivial, technical violation IMO, unlike say raping, choking, threatening to kill, killing, or stripping naked and smearing a detainee with shit. I guess this is because the latter were all common practices at your frat house. Am I right Makewi?
gocart mozart
. . . and waterboarding. I forgot waterboarding.
Bender
@kay:
Seriously, kay, mix in a proper noun so I can tell what the hell you are ranting about. I seriously can’t figure out what you’re on about. My point was only that the media couldn’t bring themselves to ID this crook as a Big Democrat. I don’t see how your comment is relevant at all.
asiangrrlMN
I really wanted to say something witty, pithy, and snarky, but I cannot. I have read the whole thread, studiously ignoring the crazy three (except as quoted by others), and I am nearly brought to my knees by the pure evilness of this. I agree with binzinerator in that this is the banality of and the slippery slope to evil.
I have never loved this country in the knee-jerk, foam-finger wavin’, USA kinda way, but I NEVER thought we would reach the nadir where we would have to debate whether threatening to rape someone’s mother or kill his children was unacceptable. Not to mention mock executions, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions. The linguistic fracturing of our language that W. and his posse have done in order to justify these monstrosities can be described with no other word than evil.
I do not know how we (as a country) are going to rise up from this Gordian knot, this rotting cesspool that was created in our names.
bago
@4tehlulz: She wrote?
gocart mozart
I want to second what Binzinator said at #234.
Bender
@gocart mozart:
It was a relatively trivial, technical violation IMO
Well, let’s see…
I’m sure that is trivial… IYO. I’m betting YO would’ve been somewhat different if it would’ve been a couple of white supremacists with billy clubs standing in front of the door to your polling place, screaming racial threats. I’m also betting that Holder’s Justice Dept’s opinion (I mean, as much as its “we’re not going to prosecute because shut up that’s why” is an opinion) would’ve also been different.
Norman Rogers
@Bender:
Come on, my friend. You still haven’t gotten over how popular “the Cosby show” was back in the day, have you?