Nooz

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Here’s some nooz for you, and maybe news, also: This morning’s “urgent issues and innovative solutions” panel here at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference featured an interesting exchange between Thomas “My World Is Flat” Friedman and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.

This is from my notes, and the quotes may not be exact. Musharraf was asked to speak to the situation in Afghanistan. The increasing power of the Taliban, said Musharraf, has a lot to do with the presence of foreign troops; the people of Afghanistan feel antipathy toward foreign troops.

Including U.S. troops, Friedman asked. Yes, said Musharraf.

So, we are part of the solution and part of the problem, said Friedman.

Part of the problem, said Musharaff.

(Scattered applause from audience.)

Jude Nagurney Camwell of Iddybud had the sense to bring a recording device, so she’s got an audio of the whole thing. Maybe one of us can figure out how to post an audio link to selected portions of the program.

Javier Solona, who is Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, inspired another nooz zinger. He was speaking to the work he did to diffuse tensions surrounding the Danish cartoon flap. Of course we respect free speech, he says, but if we are serious about reducing the divides that exist in the world, we need to exercise some responsibility and prudence in the terms we use to talk about Islam

Is one of those terms Islamic fascism? Friedman asked. Solona sort of nodded and shrugged, but I didn’t catch an audible answer.

Did I mention First Lady Laura Bush was there?

The Clinton Global Initiative is, basically, a big whoop-dee-doo conference of heads of state and other big shots of business and religion to address global challenges. There are working sessions in four general areas: (1) energy and climate change; (2) global health; (3) poverty alleviation;and (4) reducing religious and ethnic conflict. I plan to listen in to these from the press room. What makes CGI different from other big whoop-dee-doo conferences is that people are challenged to make specific action commitments, and if they don’t keep their commitments they don’t get to come to next year’s CGI. In this way, people can’t just show up for the free buffets and not think about global challenges until the next conference.

The commitment process is vaguely similar to accepting Jesus at a revival; some people who have made commitments come up to the podium and publicly sign their agreement, then get their picture taken with Big Bill. You can browse commitments here. Last year’s was the first CGI conference, at which 300 commitments worth $2.5 billion were made.

Now, back to the nooz.

The plenary session took place in huge conference room at the Sheraton on the Upper West Side. Some of us bloggers planted ourselves on the edge of the platform built for the television cameras. We had a line of tripods in back of us and a line of very large security guys — Secret Service, maybe — in front of us. You can spot the security guys because they all have plastic coils coming out of their ears and running down the back of their coats. As I couldn’t see much else, I watched the back of the coat in front of me. It was black. Sometimes the security guy would shift his position a bit, and then I could glimpse one of the big screens or even the actual person speaking.

President Clinton spoke first and talked about how CGI is about tackling big global challenges in bite-size pieces. Then Laura Bush spoke about how her husband’s administration wants to build partnerships between governments and business to address poverty. These transactions must be transparent, Mrs. Bush said, and government must invest in their people. Wow sounds like the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, huh? Oh, wait …

Then Steve Chase and Jean Chase and some other guy accepted Jesus and signed their commitments, and we crashed ahead to the above-mentioned panel.

Beside Friedman, Musharraf, and Solona, the panelists were President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and President Alvaro Uribe Velez of Colombia. President Velez emphasized his country’s need for reduction in violent crime and the need for agrarian reform, notably reform that would prevent so many farmers from growing coca. President Johnson-Sirleaf wants to help her people grow beyond subsistence farming and help young people develop the job skills that would attract capital investment in her country.

Musharraf provided most of the morning’s juicy bits. He discussed the difference between al Qaeda and the Taliban, from his perspective — al Qaeda members tend to be foreigners who move into Pakistan, but the Taliban takes root among the local folks. According to Musharraf, Mullah Omar (remember Mullah Omar? I haven’t heard his name in quite a while) still runs the Taliban.

I’m going to come back and add to this in a bit; let me get this much published while the wireless connection is working.

Schlepping

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I’m hanging out at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in the Manhattan Sheraton today, since the Clinton folks offered press credentials and I thought, what the hell. I can go pretend to be a reporter, or something. There are supposed to be other bloggers here beside the group in Harlem last week, most of whom probably couldn’t make it.

So I packed up my laptop and emergency clean shirt, and here I am.

This morning’s big news is that the White House has, apparently, dropped their plans to “clarify” Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Kate Zernike writes for the New York Times:

The new White House position, sent to Capitol Hill on Monday night, set off intensified negotiations between administration officials and a small group of Republican senators. The senators have blocked President Bush’s original proposal for legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques are permissible and to establish trial procedures for terrorism suspects now in United States military custody.

The two sides were said to be exchanging proposals and counterproposals late Tuesday in a showdown that could have substantial ramifications for national security policy and the political climate heading toward Election Day.

The developments suggested that the White House had blinked first in its standoff with the senators, who include John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and John McCain of Arizona. But few details were available, and it was not clear whether a compromise was imminent or whether the White House had shifted its stance significantly.

However,

The senators propose to provide clearer guidelines for interrogators by amending the War Crimes Act to enumerate several “grave breaches” that constitute violations of Common Article 3.

Several issues appeared to remain in flux, among them whether the two sides could agree on language protecting C.I.A. officers from legal action for past interrogations and for any conducted in the future. Beyond the issue of interrogations, the two sides have also been at odds over the rights that should be granted to terrorism suspects during trials, in particular whether they should be able to see all evidence, including classified material, that a jury might use to convict them. [Emphasis added]

See Digby for more commentary.

Depressed As Hell

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Not good. See also Chris Bowers.

Update: Steve Soto:

Gallup is the only pollster that is showing Bush’s approval rating back in the mid-forties, but I am not surprised.

Bush is focusing on his Daddy Protector image because it’s the only selling point he left with anyone, especially the cultists. Bashing the media and Democrats for being against him is Bush’s way to drive up his numbers with the base and get those approval ratings to a safe enough number so that the wingers don’t stay home on Election Day. The president commands all the news cycles, and Democrats lack a single voice of opposition that can get an alternate message into the same news cycle. Neither Harry Reid nor Nancy Pelosi are suited to that task, yet it is critical that both of them designate one member from each house to rebut everything Bush says every day and get the opposing view into the same cycle. Pelosi already made sure that John Murtha responded to Bush’s appearance at the UN today so that his remarks are already being covered side-by-side with Bush’s. Reid needs to find a telegenic designee who can do the same for Senate Democrats right away.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for Democrats to challenge Bush in every news cycle. There needs to be a national Democrat like Murtha and Joe Biden to get the Democratic viewpoint out there every day, and prevent the White House from sweeping bad news bad news from Iraq under the rug every day, like the news that our military needs to send more troops into Iraq, and that drawdown plans are more distant now than they ever have been. Yet for all his rhetoric today at the UN about wanting to reach out to Islamic nations, Bush has still not called for a regional security and economic development summit to stabilize Iraq, and bring its neighbors into the solution and invest in them some responsibility for making it happen. This is something right up Biden’s alley. Democrats need to understand that as the Gallup poll shows, unless voters are reminded of how bad things have gotten in Iraq every day, Bush will be able to convince many likely voters that we were right to invade.

Torturers ‘R’ Us

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I regret I’ve gotten behind in my blogging; I’ve not been feeling entirely well, and now I’m going into a busy week. I haven’t abandoned the “Ten Days After” project (in fact, I’m thinking about expanding it), but it’s going to have to lag behind a bit.

But without further ado, here is a torture news roundup.

My buddy The Talking Dog (the Rottweiler photo is deceptive; he is really a Chesapeake Bay Retriever) has an exclusive interview with Dr. Steven Miles, the author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror. The book is, the Dog says,

… a scathing examination of the failings of members of the medical profession serving in the military with respect to treatment of prisoners held by American forces in the war on terror, demonstrating such abuses as medical personnel participating in coercive interrogations if not outright torture (including using prisoners’ own medical records against them), preparing misleading, if not outright falsifying, medical records including death certificates, and failing to advocate for prisoners being placed in dangerous situations (e.g., such as under weapons fire, or in dangerously unsanitary conditions).

Be sure to read the post for a perspective on the torture issue we’re not getting from media. Also, give the doggie a pat for his fifth blogging anniversary.

Glenn Greenwald explains why pro-torture righties are really un-American, hysterical weenies.

At the Washington Post, Tom Malinowski writes,

President Bush is urging Congress to let the CIA keep using “alternative” interrogation procedures — which include, according to published accounts, forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours, depriving them of sleep and use of the “cold cell,” in which the prisoner is left naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and doused with cold water.

Bush insists that these techniques are not torture — after all, they don’t involve pulling out fingernails or applying electric shocks. He even says that he “would hope” the standards he’s proposing are adopted by other countries. But before he again invites America’s enemies to use such “alternative” methods on captured Americans, he might benefit from knowing a bit of their historical origins and from hearing accounts of those who have experienced them. With that in mind, here are some suggestions for the president’s reading list.

Note that one of the books on the reading list is Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. I remember when Gulag was published, ca. 1973. The American Right waved it in every face and insisted that it was a patriotic duty to read it in order to understand the evils of Communism. One of the torture techniques Solzhenitsyn described was sleep deprivation, which the Right hasn’t decided isn’t torture, after all, although it sounded nasty the way Solzhenitsyn described it.

Oh, wait … torture is only bad when Communists do it. When we do it, it’s fine. I forget.


Paul Krugman:

I’m ashamed that my government does this sort of thing. I’d be ashamed even if I were sure that only genuine terrorists were being tortured — and I’m not. Remember that the Bush administration has imprisoned a number of innocent men at Guantánamo, and in some cases continues to imprison them even though it knows they are innocent.

Is torture a necessary evil in a post-9/11 world? No. People with actual knowledge of intelligence work tell us that reality isn’t like TV dramas, in which the good guys have to torture the bad guy to find out where he planted the ticking time bomb.

What torture produces in practice is misinformation, as its victims, desperate to end the pain, tell interrogators whatever they want to hear. Thus Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — who ABC News says was subjected to both the cold cell and water boarding — told his questioners that Saddam Hussein’s regime had trained members of Al Qaeda in the use of biochemical weapons. This “confession” became a key part of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq — but it was pure invention.

So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?

To show that it can.

Conor Foley, in the UK:

The attorney general was right to warn the US government that it risks international condemnation in its attempts to free its interrogators from the “constraints” of these conventions. He should go further and tell its members that they could also be risking arrest if they visit Britain in the future.

Bob Herbert:

The president seemed about to lose it at times last week. He was fighting with everybody — tenacious reporters frustrated by the absence of straight answers about the treatment of terror suspects; key Republican senators who think it’s crazy for a great country like the U.S. to become a champion of kangaroo courts and the degradation of defendants; even his own former secretary of state, Colin Powell, who worries that the world is coming to “doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”

It seemed that the only people the president wasn’t fighting with were the Democrats, who have gone into a coma, and the yahoos who never had much of a problem with such matters as torture and detention without trial.

As Marvin Gaye once sang, “What’s going on?”

The people at the top are getting scared, that’s what’s going on. The fog of secrecy is lifting, and the Bush administration is frightened to death that it will eventually have to pay a heavy price for the human rights abuses it has ordered or condoned in its so-called war on terror.

At Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria thinks the “American constitutional system is finally working.” I’d say that’s premature. After several paragraphs of unwarranted optimism, Zakaria gets down to business.

The crucial issue, on which former secretary of State Colin Powell and other distinguished military figures have stood up to Bush, is the treatment of prisoners under the Geneva Conventions. Powell explained to me his deep concerns about safeguarding American troops if “we start monkeying around with the common understanding of the Conventions.” The administration claims that it merely wants to provide specific guidelines, but the real aim appears to be to let CIA employees engage in “rough” interrogations without fear of legal sanctions.

Powell and the senators argue that the guidelines are better left as they are—with a kind of calculated ambiguity that deters U.S. interrogators from testing the limits. ” ‘Clarifying’ our treaty obligations will be seen as ‘withdrawing’ from them,” warns Senator Graham, a former staff judge advocate in the Air National Guard. He’s right. No other nation has sought to narrow the Geneva Conventions’ scope by “clarifying” them. Does the United States want to be the first? Why not retain the status quo and then consult with other countries that are also grappling with terror suspects and arrive at a genuinely “common” clarification of the Conventions? If we “clarify” the Conventions to allow, say, waterboarding and other “rough” procedures, what happens to a CIA operative who is captured in a foreign country? Can that country “clarify” the Conventions and torture him? If it does, would the United States have any basis to condemn it and take action under international law?

Editorial, Boston Globe:

IN THE FIGHT over rules for the interrogation and trials of terrorism suspects, there is a split — not so much between Republicans and Democrats or the White House and the Senate, but between leaders like President Bush with no combat experience and those like Colin Powell who know combat and want to maintain the Geneva Conventions as a protection for US troops. Powell prefers the bill before Congress sponsored by Republican Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, all of whom have considerable military experience. Their bill, which the Senate Armed Services Committee approved Thursday, has deep flaws of its own, but it is a better basis for legislation than Bush’s proposal to gut the Geneva Conventions.

James Carroll:

What reservations are expressed have less to do with innate rights of the accused than with possible repercussions when enemies apply such standards to captured US soldiers. Last week, 27 retired military leaders warned Congress, “If degradation, humiliation, physical, and mental brutalization of prisoners is decriminalized” then US soldiers will suffer similarly.

But the fabric of law is spun from a single thread and when the US government deems a few individuals to be less worthy of full protections against the abuse of power , everyone is threatened.

That’s because the procedures of law — the requirement, in this example, that the accused be shown the evidence — protect not only the individual but the system itself. To say that justice must be administered blindly is to forbid favoritism toward the privileged, yes, but it is also to prevent prejudice toward the despised or dangerous.

Justice is measured in every society by how the worst malefactors are treated — the worst not only in culpability, but in capacity for general harm. The best way to combat terrorism is to wrap accused terrorists in the cloth of the law they would rip asunder. More important, to legalize the abuse of a class of prisoners is to prepare for the abuse of all.

ABC News:

Amid a debate between President Bush and bipartisan members of Congress over how harshly to question terror detainees, a former FBI agent said some of the most aggressive interrogation techniques in dispute are rarely effective anyway.

“Generally speaking, those don’t work,” said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent and an ABC News consultant.

Robert Parry:

George W. Bush’s Sept. 15 outburst – threatening to stop interrogating terror suspects if Congress doesn’t let him revise the Geneva Conventions to permit coercive techniques – is part of a pattern of petulance that dates back to even before the 9/11 attacks but has resurfaced as Bush faces new challenges to his authority. …

… At the Sept. 15 news conference, Bush also threatened to stop all interrogation of terrorism suspects if his demands on the Geneva Conventions weren’t met.

“We can debate this issue all we want, but the practical matter is, if our professionals don’t have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward,” Bush said. “The bottom line is – and the American people have got to understand this – that this program won’t go forward; if there is vague standards applied, like those in Common Article III from the Geneva Convention, it’s just not going to go forward.”

He really is acting like a big baby. See also today’s Dan Froomkin.

My Cause Is My Country

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We’re still dealing with the fallout of the meeting with Bill Clinton. Yesterday I provided some links to the Boobapalooza Brawl; here are some more: My buddies Julia of Sisyphus Shrugs and Lindsay B. at Majikthise, as well as Jessica herself, offer opinions. I have nothing more to add.

A more legitimate criticism is that all of the attendees were white. I think it was a major gaffe that Steve Gilliard wasn’t invited, although Steve says he wouldn’t have gone, anyway. “If the choice is loyalty to a politician or loyalty to my supportive, generous and desperate for information readers, that isn’t really much of a choice is it?” he writes. That’s fair, but that was not the choice offered by the meeting. Mr. Clinton neither asked for our loyalty nor said anything particularly surprising or newsworthy in the off-the-record portion of the meeting.

The most controversial things Mr. Clinton said involved mild criticism of some other Democrats (although no one currently running for office) and some nudges at the Right in general. None of this was a big whoop-dee-doo, so why off the record? Because, I suspect, if there’s a massive blowup over somebody’s boobs, for pity’s sake, what would rightie bloggers do with nudges at the Right? Or any mention in any context of Republican politicians? Or suggestions that maybe so-and-so made a mistake when he campaigned on such-and-such an issue? And may I add that Mr. Clinton didn’t say anything that wasn’t extremely mild and tolerant compared to the stuff I say about the same people.

But did he say anything off-the-record that was really blogworthy? That you readers would find fascinating and illuminating?

Not really. Of course, you’ll have to trust me on that.

The overall purpose of the meeting was to open more dialogue between liberal bloggers and the Democratic Party. And when I say dialogue, I mean dialogue. As in a two-way conversation. Clinton praised liberal bloggers — not just the ones in the room — for our ability to respond quickly to the Rightie Media Noise Machine with facts and logic. He’s come to realize that the Democratic Party is nuts to treat us merely as ATM machines and believes the Dems should start listening to what we have to say.

This is all good, I say, for all of us, whether at the meeting or not. This is what many of us have wanted from the Dems for a very long time. We’re all hoping the meeting was only a first step in a process that will involve a far larger group of bloggers in the future.

(And may I also say to those who want to fight about who was invited, and who wasn’t — I choose not to participate, thanks. I’ve got quite enough neuroses of my own to manage without trying to deal with yours, too. So, feel free to snark away, and I will continue to ignore you.)

Christy Hardin Smith says that she checked with Peter Daou, who told her some African American and Latino bloggers were invited but could not come on such short notice. The meeting was thrown together quickly. I had known for about a week that a meeting was being planned, but didn’t know for sure if it was really going to happen (and where, and when) until the day before. I suspect a lot of people had to make a mad dash for the nearest airport to be there, although for me a trip to Harlem takes about 17 minutes on the Metro North Railroad.

There’s one seriously misreported detail I want to correct — I say it was red devil’s food cake (with cream cheese icing), not cherry cake.

On to the main issue: The question of how the Dems and liberal bloggers might work together is problematic. The Right Blogosphere more or less functions as the web auxiliary of the Republican Party. That’s not a model I want to follow. Yet when we — liberal bloggers and Dems — do pull together on an issue (the recent “Path to 9/11” flap being a good example) we’re a whole lot more effective than when we work separately.

As Peter Daou wrote in the first “triangle” essay:

Looking at the political landscape, one proposition seems unambiguous: blog power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment. Forming a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment is an essential step in creating the kind of sea change we’ve seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Simply put, without the participation of the media and the political establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom. This is partly a factor of audience size, but it’s also a matter, frankly, of trust and legitimacy. Despite the astronomical growth of the netroots (see Bowers and Stoller for hard numbers), and the slow and steady encroachment of bloggers on the hallowed turf of Washington’s opinion-makers, it is still the Russerts and Broders and Gergens and Finemans, the WSJ, WaPo and NYT editorial pages, the cable nets, Stewart and Letterman and Leno, and senior elected officials, who play a pivotal role in shaping people’s political views. That is not to say that blogs can’t be the first to draw attention to an issue, as they often do, but the half-life of an online buzz can be measured in days and weeks, and even when a story has enough netroots momentum to float around for months, it will have little effect on the wider public discourse without the other sides of the triangle in place. Witness the Plame case, an obsession of left-leaning bloggers long before the media and the political establishment got on board and turned it into a political liability for Rove and Bush.

The larger question surrounding the meeting is who is using whom? I’ve been amused, but not surprised, at the number of people who assume the meeting was about Hillary Clinton’s alleged presidential ambitions. Let me be clear. First, the Senator’s political career was not discussed at all. Second, most of us in the room have long been on record that we do not want Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential candidate in ’08. I can’t speak for everybody, but no amount of fried chicken is going to change my mind on that.

Of course, some people are still going to interpret either Clintons’ every bleat as part of their campaign to re-take the White House, no matter what I say.

Other complaints can be found in this comment thread at the Guardian “comment is free” blog. Like this guy:

The Usual Suspects were present for the soiree with Clinton because they represent the “left” that constitutes brand-name consumers. They would vote for *anything* labeled ‘Democrat,’ and Clinton knows it.

Yeah, like we all supported Joe Lieberman … oh, wait …

As I wrote in the same comments thread, why is it everyone assumes Bill Clinton is using us? Why can’t it be equally true that we are using him?

Yes, the man is flawed. Yes, he did things as President I think he shouldn’t have done, and I’m not just talking about conduct, but policies, as well. But I if the man offers himself as a tool to enable my agenda, why not take advantage? Access to power, even a tiny bit, doesn’t exactly fall into my lap every day.

If you look back at history, you see that everyone who has ever accomplished anything was flawed. Abraham Lincoln was a racist. Isaac Newton, the father of modern science, messed around with alchemy and astrology. Most of the great men of history, including the historical Buddha, were sexist. Show me somebody who accomplished anything who was without flaw or foible, and I’ll show you someone who paid off his friends to keep their mouths shut.

So to those who claim we bloggers somehow sold out our feminism or liberalism or anything else by meeting with President Clinton, I say: Bite me.

So what is my agenda? As I also wrote in the comments thread, I got into blogging to help restore some sanity to America’s sick political culture, which has become so skewed and twisted we can no longer engage in rational political dialogue, never mind make rational political decisions as a nation.

More than 50 years ago the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that the hard right-wing fringe of American politics was creating “a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.” Folks, they have succeeded.

The Right’s got a big chunk of the electorate conditioned to vote against their own self-interests. Mindless repetition of Republican talking points has replaced dialogue. The mainstream news media shuts out true liberalism, and in the heads of most “pundits” the extreme Right is now the “center.” Our political institutions are dysfunctional except as engines to move power and money into the hands of those in control.

In truth, the federal government of the United States of America is no longer functioning as a representative democracy. Congress and the White House are just going through the motions. If we don’t turn this around, pretty soon they won’t even bother to go through the motions.

Restoring enough sanity to my country that it can function as a representative democracy again is my cause. Beyond that, I hope that once people remember what government is supposed to be about they will stop being afraid to use government for progressive ends, such as establishing national health insurance. I want to move the political center back to, you know, the center. I want to see balance and responsibility in news media. But the overall aim is healing the sick political culture so that the government can be a government. What happens after that is, well, what happens after that.

Blogging is a means to that end, as is the Democratic Party and Mr. Clinton. But blogging or Mr. Clinton or the Democrats are not my cause. My cause is my country.

Desperation

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If you missed seeing Countdown last night, there’s a video of the first two segments here. If you’ve already seen the presser, featuring David Gregory’s beautiful moment, you can fast forward the tape to about 5:57 for remarks by Howard Fineman. I transcribed just a snip:

Fineman: It’s not just John McCain, a known maverick; it’s not just Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham, a known maverick; it’s not even Colin Powell, who is very popular in the country but sort of outside the system right now. The key guy here is Senator John Warner, the Republican of Virginia, as well as Colin Powell. The thing about Warner is he is the establishment man; he is the very symbol of the Pentagon establishment, the defense establishment, in a way the intelligence establishment over there in northern Virginia, and if HE is taking the side of the rebels on this, the Republican rebels, it’s a very serious division in the party, and one the Democrats ought to sit back and watch.

But the best part begins at 9:43, when Olbermann gets into the legal and ethical implications of President Bush’s proposed “let’s torture!” law. Olbermann interviewed Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law professor at George Washington University. Boldface is added:

Olbermann: … is he [Bush] covering his own backside with this?

Turley: Quite frankly, I think that there is evidence to say he is. You know, the thing that is ticking here in terms of a clock, is the fact that these fourteen guys that were recently transferred, just arrived not that long ago in Gitmo, in Cuba. They are going to be or have been interviewed by the Red Cross. Most people believe that they will reveal that they were subject to waterboarding, where you are held under water until you think that you are going to drown. That is undeniably torture under the international standards. If that occurs in the coming days, the United States and specifically the President will be accused of committing a very serious violation of international law. Torture is one of the top three or four things that the international law is designed to prevent. And so the reason there is this move to try to get legislation as fast as possible is because I think I think this administration senses that there is a lot of trouble coming down this mountain.

Then Olbermann asked how the proposed law would protect Bush legally.

Turley: Well, he would retroactively define what he did not to be a violation. That’s pretty good if you are going to commit a violation of law, to go and get the legislature to retroactively say what you did was not a violation. But remember, the President stands accused of thirty felonies in the NSA controversy; many of us believe he committed felony crimes there. If now he’s going to be accused of intentionally and knowingly ordering serious violations of international law, it’s not going to go well for the United States. We’re already viewed as a rogue nation around the world. But here’s something the President most likely knew about and condoned.

Olbermann read a bit from this Washington Post editorial that explains what the Bush Administration wants:

[WaPo:] It wants authorization for the CIA to hide detainees in overseas prisons where even the International Committee of the Red Cross won’t have access. It wants permission to interrogate those detainees with abusive practices that in the past have included induced hypothermia and “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning. And it wants the right to try such detainees, and perhaps sentence them to death, on the basis of evidence that the defendants cannot see and that may have been extracted during those abusive interrogation sessions.

We might note that WaPo says “it” wants rather than “the President” wants.

The editorial is titled “A Defining Moment for America.” Olbermann asked Turley if this is indeed a defining moment, adding, “If the President gets his way, have we just become what the terrorists want us to become?”

Turley: Well, I’m afraid it would be, but this is really a redefining moment. You know, I always tell people — the president used that term as well — that our defining moment came in 1787, when we defined ourselves in a constitutional document that committed us to the rule of law. And what would happen here, if we embraced torture at the President’s invitation, would be to redefine ourselves, and we would become something that we have long fought against.

[Update: See also Billmon.]

If there is one point I would like to see written in the sky in 100-foot-high letters, it’s this: President Bush and his enablers went down this road not because they are strong, but because they are weak.

On last night’s Hardball — I believe it was last night — Jack Murtha told Chris Matthews that the fight over the proposed “permission to torture” legislation is going on between Administration civilians — the overwhelming majority of whom never served in uniform and have no personal experience with war — and the military. It’s Weenies versus Warriors, in other words, and Bush is the chief Weenie.

Most of the Bushies and the neocons generally are hothouse flowers who were either born into privilege or have been firmly entrenched in the power establishment for many years. They don’t know what real strength is; if you have power and privilege up the wazoo, bullying others around to get your way takes no strength at all. People who are physically and emotionally abusive of others are weak people who can’t control their own fears and impulses.

Bush and his followers think cruelty is “smart” and that people who hesitate to be cruel are weaklings. But time and time again, people with experience at war and intelligence; people who see the bigger picture; say that torture of prisoners and abuse of civilian populations is hurting our cause — assuming our cause is security and peace — more than helping it. I say that the torturers are the weak ones, because their actions are determined more by fear than by reason.

Bush and his followers think they are being “strong” by their cruelties and deceptions, which they hide in the dark, but in fact that is weakness. Strength involves keeping your integrity and being true to your principles no matter what the circumstances.

Indeed, if you toss your principles out the window as soon as they are less than expedient, they were never your principles to begin with.

Too many (although not all) “conservative” bloggers are siding with the torturers here. There’s something I want to say to them and to Captain Ed, in particular. He writes,

We have yet to fight against a wartime enemy that followed the GC with any consistency at all. The Germans routinely violated it even before Hitler began issuing orders to shoot captured pilots, and the massacre at Malmedy only crystallized what had been fairly brutal treatment at the hands of the Nazis for American prisoners (the Luftwaffe was one notable exception). The Japanese treatment of POWs was nothing short of barbaric, both before and after Bataan. The same is true for the North Koreans and the Chinese in the Korean War, and McCain himself is a routine example of the kind of treatment our men suffered at the hands of the Vietnamese.

I have in the past written about an uncle who was a POW of the Japanese from December 8, 1941 to August 1945. It’s true that the treatment of the POWs was cruel and barbaric. My cousin, David Faries, wrote his master’s thesis in military history about my uncle and other U.S. Marines who had been U.S. embassy guards in Peking when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Here’s a quote:

… at the time of the Guadalcanal Invasion in 1942, much of the Japanese populace believed that Americans tortured prisoners. Rumors circulated that the barbarians churned tanks over those Japanese captured in the Solomon Islands. These of course were untrue, but they were widely believed. Japan, unlike the United States, was not bound to treat its prisoners under international law because she failed to ratify the Geneva Convention articles on prisoners of war. Japan claimed, however, she would observe its stipulations.

The Vatican, of all places, broadcast to the world Japan’s kindness to its captives. Prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese occupied territory, the Holy City reported, received ample supplies of soap, cigarettes, and money to purchase other items from their captors. Those who knew the truth but were unable to speak because of their plight meanwhile learned to avoid the wrath of an Ishihara or to “stand fast or move fast” when suddenly face to face with a “menacing bayonet or rifle butt.” Behind the cold wire walked death, hatred, and hunger. [David Oran Faries, “Home Is My Only Destination: William Harold Thomas, North China Marine, 1940-1945” (Master’s Thesis, Department of History, Western Illinois University, August 1985), pp. 69-70.]

In other words, the Japanese falsely believed Japanese prisoners were being treated barbarically by Americans, and they felt this gave them license to treat their American prisoners barbarically.

And now the American Right is following the same ghastly “logic”: They broke the rules first! Why do we have to be the ones who play by the rules? Only weaklings and children think that way.

We have to be the ones who play by the rules because that’s who we are. Or, at least, that’s who we used to be.

Update: Read Robert Kuttner in today’s Boston Globe:

My father was a machine gunner with the Army’s 28th Infantry Division, which was among the first units to march down the Champs-Elysées after the Allied liberation of Paris . In December 1944, having landed at Normandy and fought across France and Belgium, he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, and sent hundreds of miles through northern Germany in an unheated boxcar in the dead of winter to a prison camp at Muhlberg in the east.

My father survived the war not because of the generosity of the Nazis to Jewish soldiers. The Germans must have been tempted to send captured Jewish American soldiers to Auschwitz along with Polish, German, and Dutch Jews and kindred human garbage. But they did not. My father survived because, amazingly, even the Nazis respected the reciprocal agreements on humane treatment of prisoners.

Not every enemy thinks this way, of course, but that doesn’t mean we have to become just like our worst enemies.

Edgy

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I’m feeling out of whack today and need a break from blogging. Too much excitement this week, I guess. I’m just going to suggest a topic for discussion and try to get back into the groove tomorrow.

Earlier this week the President just about bit Matt Lauer’s head off when Lauer asked about “interrogation.” Today, Digby says, Bush got pissed at David Gregory. Crooks & Liars has the video.

Here’s a bit of the transcript:

QUESTION: Thank you very much.

Mr. President, critics of your proposed bill on interrogation rules say there’s another important test. These critics include John McCain, who you’ve mentioned several times this morning.

And that test is this: If a CIA officer, paramilitary or special operations soldier from the United States were captured in Iran or North Korea and they were roughed up and those governments said, “Well, they were interrogated in accordance with our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions,” and then they were put on trial and they were convicted based on secret evidence that they were not able to see, how would you react to that as commander in chief?

BUSH: My reaction is, is that if the nations such as those you name adopted the standards within the Detainee Detention Act, the world would be better. That’s my reaction.

Seems to me the President told Gregory that the world would be a better place if enemies who capture U.S. soldiers could torture them, try them on secret evidence, and execute them.

Is that not what he’s saying? Or do I need to take more aspirin?

Anyway, in both videos Bush seemed right on the edge of blowing a gasket. Digby calls him “angry and petulant.” I would add “wound a little too tight.” As of right now it seems the three Republican renegades — Warner, Graham, and McCain — are not yet budging. If Prince Pissant doesn’t get what he wants, his handlers might want to get him on some meds, fast, or at the next presser he’s going to throw an all-out kicking-and-screaming tantrum.

And wouldn’t that be amusing?

Ten Days After: Day Four

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Previous posts in this series:

Ten Days After: Introduction
Ten Days After: Day One
Ten Days After: Day Two
Ten Days After: Day Three

The contrast between New York Mayor Giuliani’s and the President’s on-air performances was too big even for Mickey Kaus not to miss. Kaus wrote in Slate:

In several appearances each day, New York’s mayor has been informative, accessible, spontaneously human. He answers questions. He’s clearly in control. As Salon’s Joan Walsh notes, Giuliani says what needs to be said, acknowledging the tragedy without being overwhelmed by it, praising the efforts of rescue crews, counseling against anti-Arab vigilantism, sharing credit, avoiding personal grandstanding.

Meanwhile, Bush has appeared for a few moments a day, reading scripts or (as in his visits to the wounded) giving a few rambling impressions. He doesn’t answer questions. On the first day, he sent out an aide, Karen Hughes, to inform the public. She didn’t answer questions either. Even Bush’s friends don’t really dispute the overall verdict on the president. When columnist and former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes that “the great leaders in our time of trauma were the reporters and anchors and producers of the networks and news stations,” the negative implication is clear. If Bush had offered any great leadership, Noonan would have mentioned it.

But on Friday, September 14, George Bush began to turn his performance around. That morning he spoke at a prayer service at the National Cathedral:

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.

And rid the world of evil. Just like that. Y’know, we’ve tolerated this evil thing far too long. It’s time we did something about it.

(Note to future generations of Americans, if there are any: If your leaders ever start to talk about ridding the world of evil, revolt immediately.)

But the speech as a whole was good; it was about unity and national character. Just the right words. The National Cathedral service was attended by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford; former Vice President Al Gore; and a host of senators, representatives, cabinet members and military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Vice President Dick Cheney was at Camp David for security reasons.

After the service the President flew to New York to, finally, visit the Pile. Many people remember that visit as Bush’s finest hour in office — the Bullhorn Moment.

The official White House transcript:

CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. I want you all to know —

Q Can’t hear you.

THE PRESIDENT: I can’t talk any louder. (Laughter.)

I want you all to know that America today — that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. This nation stands with the good people of New York City, and New Jersey and Connecticut, as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.

Q I can’t hear you.

THE PRESIDENT: I can hear you. (Applause.) I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. (Applause.) And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. (Applause.)

CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

THE PRESIDENT: The nation sends its love and compassion to everybody who is here. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud. And may God bless America. (Applause.)

CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

(The President waves small American flag.) (Applause.)

Robert McFadden reported for The New York Times:

Accompanied by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Gov. George E. Pataki and members of New York’s Congressional delegation, the president waded into a rowdily enthusiastic crowd of hard-hatted rescue workers under an overcast late-afternoon sky to shake hands, ask questions and offer thumbs up.

The president had proclaimed a national day of mourning and remembrance, and it was observed in houses of worship and other settings across the country. But it was also observed, apparently spontaneously, in Britain, France, Italy, Israel and other countries closely allied with the United States. In London, traffic halted, classes stopped and people stood silent for three minutes.

Media reaction to the Bullhorn Moment was mostly, but not entirely, positive. On PBS Newshour, Mark Shields suggested that Bush’s finest hour didn’t quite rise up to the level of past presidents’ finest hours:

JIM LEHRER: Mark, how do you feel the President is doing?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, I don’t think the President has seized the moment. He hasn’t made a connection with the people. He hasn’t established a sense of command. I think Tuesday was important because it was the first real crisis of George Bush’s presidency. And whether subsequent events indicate that there was a real threat or whatever, the fact that he didn’t return to the White House, didn’t return to Washington, and he has lacked any sense of eloquence.

David McCullough, the historian, said that great Presidents basically have a great ability to communicate and to speak. Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Reagan, and I was thinking of Reagan in the sense of January 28, 1986, when the “Challenger” went down. Ronald Reagan spoke for the nation. That’s what a President has to do — as they waved good-bye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God. That spoke for everybody at the time. The President hasn’t established the tone.

And the problem for him is that, Paul’s right, as commander in chief, that’s an important part of the job, but the President is also a chaplain, is also a coach, is also someone who has to inspire and explain. I don’t think he has done that and Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of New York, so aptly described by Paula Span in the “Washington Post” as Winston Churchill in a Yankees cap, has filled that role remarkably well. And it stood in contrast.

JIM LEHRER: What about today, Paul’s point about the President’s remarks at the National Cathedral and also to the workers in New York?

MARK SHIELDS: I thought the New York event, I’m glad he went. It just seems he’s a day late each place. I don’t mean to be nit-picking on him, but the New York thing, talking at a moment like that at a place like that through rough a bull sound– what the what do you call it?

PAUL GIGOT: Bullhorn.

JIM LEHRER: Mega horn, whatever, yeah.

MARK SHIELDS: Bullhorn – now, it just didn’t seem appropriate. I thought the National Cathedral service was moving and touching and I thought he did better than he had done at any point up to that point.

In time Mark Shields would find himself in a minority; a great many Americans were inspired by the Bullhorn Moment. The rally ’round the President was underway. But last year, Denis Hamill wrote in the New York Daily News:

I’m amazed that anyone is amazed that it took George W. Bush three days to show up in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

That’s exactly how long it took him to show up at Ground Zero after 9/11.

So it mystifies me that the pundits and the cable gasbags keep telling us that George W. Bush missed his “bullhorn moment” in New Orleans.

No, he didn’t.

Because his bullhorn moment in New York City was just as late and just as disgraceful as his fumbling handling of the Katrina carnage.

I wish I had a bullhorn to shout just how tired I am of hearing about how wonderful George W. Bush’s “bullhorn moment” was.

It will go down as one of the worst moments in American history because when he stood on the smoldering ruins amid the dust of the dead it was through that bullhorn that Bush’s Big Lie was first shouted to the world that the people who knocked down those buildings would soon be hearing from us.

It might have been a fairly good, better-late-than-never moment if all Bush had done was use that bullhorn to launch a war on Al Qaeda. It might have escalated into a great piece of historical stagecraft if we’d just gone into Afghanistan and stayed the course on a noble quest to kill Osama Bin Laden and all his Al Qaeda cowards who murdered our people.

But the words that echoed through Bush’s bullhorn into the smoldering 16 acres of lower Manhattan, the words that resounded across the grieving outer boroughs and the sorrowful suburbs and the stunned globe, were but an orchestrated setup for a grander diabolical scheme.

Because we fast gave up the hunt for Bin Laden for a bait-and-switch war in Iraq that had nothing to do with the rubble upon which Bush stood at Ground Zero shouting bull through his bullhorn.

Via Media Matters — yesterday Fred Barnes reported for the rightie rag Weekly Standard:

WE NOW KNOW WHY the Bush administration hasn’t made the capture of Osama bin Laden a paramount goal of the war on terror. Emphasis on bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism. Here’s how President Bush explained this Tuesday: “This thing about . . . let’s put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work.”

Getting bogged down in Iraq for a zillion years, however, is just the thing.

Rather, Bush says there’s a better way to stay on offense against terrorists. “The way you win the war on terror,” Bush said, “is to find people [who are terrorists] and get them to give you information about what their buddies are fixing to do.” In a speech last week, the president explained how this had worked–starting with the arrest and interrogation of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad–to break up a terrorist operation that was planning post-9/11 attacks on America.

Ah, yes, like the evil Jose Padilla plot. Excellent.

While we’ve mentioned Katrina, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz also compare the federal response to Katrina started and 9/11. I want to correct the implication in the last installment that the federal government hadn’t provided much help to New York in the early days after the attacks. It turns out that the U.S. Department of Health Center for Disease Control showed up and did some good work.–

While the World Trade Center was burning fiercely and about to become a vast cloud of toxic smoke and ash, public health officials were already mobilizing. Within hours, hospitals had readied themselves to receive the injured; hundreds of ambulances were lined up along the West Side Highway awaiting word to race to the scene; the city’s public health department had opened its headquarters to receive hundreds of people stricken by smoke inhalation, heart attacks, or just pure terror; the Department of Health had already begun providing gas masks and other protective equipment to doctors, evacuation personnel, and first responders of all sorts. From bandages and surgical tools to antibiotics and radiation-detection equipment, the federal Centers for Disease Control readied immense plane-loads of emergency supplies, ferrying them up to New York’s LaGuardia Airport aboard some of the few planes allowed to fly in the days after September 11th.

Despite the general panic and the staggering levels of destruction, even seemingly inconsequential or long-range potential health problems were attended to: Restaurants were broken into to empty thousands of pounds of rotting food from electricity-less refrigerators, counters tops, and refrigeration rooms; vermin infestations were averted; puddles were treated to stop mosquitoes from breeding so that West Nile virus would not affect the thousands of police, fire, and other search-and-rescue personnel working at Ground Zero.

However,

It took no time at all for the administration to start systematically undercutting the efforts of experienced health administrators in New York and at the national Centers for Disease Control. By pressing them to return the city to “normal” and feeding them doctored information about dust levels — ignoring scientific uncertainties about the dangers that lingered in the air — the administration lied to support a national policy of denial.

Putting in place a dysfunctional bureaucracy would soon undermine the public’s trust in the whole health system in downtown Manhattan. In the process, it also effectively crippled systems already in existence to protect workers, local residents, and children attending school in the area. As a result, what promised to be an extraordinary example of a government bureaucracy actually working turned into a disaster and later became the de facto model for the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

However, this is getting a bit ahead of the story. We’ll come back to the lies about air quality at another time.

Yay, TEAM!

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Peter Baker wrote in yesterday’s Washington Post:

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a “Third Awakening” of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation’s struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as “a confrontation between good and evil.”

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln’s strongest supporters were religious people “who saw life in terms of good and evil” and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

“A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,” Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. “There was a stark change between the culture of the ’50s and the ’60s — boom — and I think there’s change happening here,” he added. “It seems to me that there’s a Third Awakening.”

It’s my understanding that the business of dividing the Cosmos up into Good and Evil started with Zoroaster, a guy who (probably) lived sometime between the 18th and 6th centuries BCE in that part of the world we now call Iran. The notion that Good and Evil will duke it out in a final Judgment Day battle, plus most popular beliefs about angels and demons, are Zoroastrian in origin, also. Here’s a pretty good article about Zoroastrian influences on right-wing Christianity, from CounterPunch.

The President’s assumption that “religious devotion” somehow depends on accepting Zoroastrian dualities is, IMO, a tad peculiar. It also reveals a deep and vast ignorance of the spectrum of human philosophies, experiences, and practices that might be considered “religious.” But that’s another post.

As near as I can figure, this view of good-evil duality sees Good and Evil as distinctive forces or powers, and people are said to be “good” or “evil” not because of what they do, but because of which side they root for. I say this because of what Bob Herbert wrote in his column today.

The invasion of Iraq marked the beginning of the change in the American character. During the Cuban missile crisis, when the hawks were hot for bombing — or an invasion — Robert Kennedy counseled against a U.S. first strike. That’s not something the U.S. would do, he said.

Fast-forward 40 years or so and not only does the U.S. launch an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a small nation — Iraq — but it does so in response to an attack inside the U.S. that the small nation had nothing to do with.

Who are we?

Why, we’re the Good team! And we had to go to Iraq to get Saddam Hussein, who was a major player with the Evil team. If the invasion, directly or indirectly, ends up causing as much death or suffering as Saddam did, that’s a mere technicality. In BushWorld, actions or consequences don’t have anything to do with who is Good or who is Evil.

Another example: There was a time, I thought, when there was general agreement among Americans that torture was beyond the pale. But when people are frightened enough, nothing is beyond the pale. And we’re in an era in which the highest leaders in the land stoke — rather than attempt to allay — the fears of ordinary citizens. Islamic terrorists are equated with Nazi Germany. We’re told that we’re in a clash of civilizations.

Clearly, Herbert does not understand the nature of Good or Evil. When you’re playing against Evil, rules and principles are for wimps. And appeasers. It’s OK to do terrible things in the name of defeating Evil. What’s not OK is disloyalty to the Good team.

If, as President Bush says, we’re engaged in “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” why isn’t the entire nation mobilizing to meet this dire threat?

That’s an excellent question that I wish someone would press Bush to answer. Another question is, how do you win an ideological struggle by military means? Bush’s rhetoric notwithstanding, World War II was not a struggle between ideologies but among nations. Most people chose sides in that conflict based on loyalty to their nations, not to a belief system. Victory was achieved not by changing peoples’ minds but by compelling the enemy nations to surrender.

The president put us on this path away from the better angels of our nature, and he has shown no inclination to turn back. Lately he has touted legislation to try terror suspects in a way that would make a mockery of the American ideals of justice and fairness. To get a sense of just how far out the administration’s approach has been, consider the comments of Brig. Gen. James Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines. Speaking at a Congressional hearing last week, he said no civilized country denies defendants the right to see the evidence against them. The United States, he said, “should not be the first.”

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative South Carolina Republican who is a former military judge, said, “It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them.”

How weird is it that this possibility could even be considered?

I’ll tell you how weird it is; it’s so weird that the Right Blogosphere isn’t discussing it at all. So far, based on google and technorati searches, I don’t believe anyone’s come up with talking points to support executing someone without producing evidence at trial.

If Bush continues to push this issue, however, team loyalty will inspire expedient frames and phrases eventually. And if the Good Team is doing it, it can’t be Evil.

The character of the U.S. has changed. We’re in danger of being completely ruled by fear. Most Americans have not shared the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very few Americans are aware, as the Center for Constitutional Rights tells us, that of the hundreds of men held by the U.S. in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, many ‘have never been charged and will never be charged because there is no evidence justifying their detention.’

Even fewer care.

We could benefit from looking in a mirror, and absorbing the shock of not recognizing what we’ve become.

On the Right, of course, there’s a hazy faith that if someone’s being held at Guantanamo there must be a good reason. However, I have said before, and I still believe, that someday when the full story of Guantanamo is told, a whole lot of Americans are going to be shocked and sickened and want to know why no one spoke out sooner.

And some of us will say, we did speak out. Why didn’t you listen sooner?