Month: February 2005

What is it good for? My Sunday Times column is up.

ON VALENTINE’S DAY: May I renounce and disown my once dyspeptic essay against romantic love of a few years back, and wish all couples in love or marriage or both the full happiness that intimacy and responsibility can give. And that goes for straight couples and gay ones. And one day, we will not be making invidious distinctions – legal or moral – between the two.

QUOTE OF THE DAY I: “They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn’t smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks … does well in school, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League … goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids.” – Maya Keyes, daughter of Republican activist Alan Keyes, on being cut off from her family for being gay. Maya worked hard for her father’s election campaign, despite disagreements with his politics. Now who exactly is pro-family in this instance?

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “The Daily Mirror is a far-left tabloid whose contributors include America-hating polemicist John Pilger. Its report of Harith’s claims is as ludicrous as it is lurid: ‘A British captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror–and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.'” – James Taranto, March 12, 2004, refusing to believe what we now know was true: interrogators dressed as prostitutes were indeed part of the interrogation techniques at Gitmo, and included acts that were designed to degrade the inmates’ religious faith. I too disbelieved the early reports. I know better now. Does James?

RESISTANCE WITHIN: An account of some JAGs trying to prevent torture at Guantanamo – over-ruled by Pentagon officials.

A brave and moving defense of equal marriage rights from Colbert King. Yes, this is the civil rights struggle of our time. Notice particularly the uncanny resemblances between the arguments against inter-racial marriages in the last century and those against same-sex marriages today.

Yet another harrowing account of a terror detainee tortured in a secret prison by Pakistani and American soldiers. Money quote:

The next night, he said, the Pakistanis took him to an airport where he saw 15 or 20 beefy men wearing masks, black T-shirts and combat boots. From their voices, he said, he knew they were Americans. Mr. Habib started to fight with the Pakistanis, he recalled, and “then the Americans came and started beating me.” They beat him quiet and stripped him naked, he said. Men in black masks came into the room. One had a still camera, the other a video camera. “They make picture of everything in my body,” he said. He said he was handcuffed and shackled and put on a plane. Then, he said, the men put duct tape over his mouth, a bag over his head and goggles over the bag.

There’s more along the same lines that we have seen time and time again, at the hands of American interrogators:

In Afghanistan, he said, female soldiers “touched me in the private areas” while questioning him. “They was swearing at me, ‘you criminal,’ ‘you terrorist,’ ” he said. Interrogators also put a helmet connected to wires on his head, Mr. Habib said. When they did not like his answers, he said he would feel a jolt, and his body would start shaking.
He spent only a week at Bagram before being flown to Guantánamo in May 2002. He arrived sick and faint. “I was really scared,” he said. “I don’t know who I am.”
When his interrogators asked about his treatment in Egypt, he said, he told them about the psychological abuse using his wife and children. Soon, he said, his Guantánamo interrogators were doing the same.Three or four times, he said, when he was taken to an interrogation room, there were pictures doctored to make it appear that his wife was naked next to Osama bin Laden. “I see my wife everywhere, everywhere,” he said.
He said that during one interrogation session, a woman wearing a skirt said to him, “You Muslim people don’t like to see woman,” he said. Then she reached under her skirt, Mr. Habib said, pulling out what he described as a bloody stick. “She threw the blood in my face,” he said.

These are now the values of the United States of America. The president continues to lie about what he is sanctioning and has sanctioned. The least we should demand is an honest public debate: what techniques are now permissible for the CIA and other agencies? Do they constitute torture? What is in the second Bybee memo that explicitly details these approved techniques? Who has approved the use of religious abuse as part of anti-Muslim interrogation practices? We are in a surreal situation where reports of torture come in every day, where the administration denies what is patently true and where the Congress and even the blogosphere is deliberately looking the other way. One final question: how can this president ask Egypt to liberalize while he is depending on its security forces to torture American-captured inmates?

A seminary president is fired for marrying his own daughter. Because she’s gay.

The Charlie Rose section was bumped last night. The email they sent me was wrong. It’ll appear next week.

PRIMARY SOURCES: Don’t miss the torture memos exchanged between William Taft IV and John Yoo now posted on the New Yorker site. You’ll see how the decision to permit torture by U.S. personnel was fiercely resisted in some quarters in the administration. One day, we’ll get the second Bybee memo outlining each torture technique specifically approved.

The NYC blog party was photographed. See Glenn giggle! See Ana gape. See me, er, drunk. And there’s a gallery here. Yeah, I was laughing almost the whole time.

“I don’t support an amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage. I think it’s a matter that should be left to the states. As a conservative, I don’t support constitutional amendments generally unless the cause is clear and evident. The issue here, of course, is that some people think a constitutional amendment is necessary in order to preserve the rights of the states. I happen not to come down on that side of the issue and, indeed, there are many Republicans who do [not]. I think if you looked at our national convention, for example, among the prominent speakers — Gov. Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giuliani — feel the same way. It’s not an issue that sets the Republican Party apart in one great mass. It’s an issue upon which people differ.” – Lynne Cheney, on NPR’s Fresh Air, February 9. Thanks, Mrs Cheney. Thanks.

HEADS UP: The Charlie Rose show on blogging with me, Wonkette, Instapundit and Joe Trippi will air tonight. I thought it was a great conversation. Check it out.

Don’t miss this wonderful little take-down of Jay Bybee’s horrifying 2002 torture memo, essentially defining torture out of existence. Those who seem to believe that no one in the upper reaches of the Bush administration ever wanted to expand the use of torture should read the Bybee memo. Its plain meaning – its obvious intent – was to provide legal justification for cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees. And it worked.

A pretty amazing piece of dialogue at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting where CIA operative and author of “Imperial Hubris,” Michael Scheuer, let rip on Israel’s alleged “clandestine” influence on American politics:

SCHEUER: I always have thought that there’s nothing too dangerous to talk about in America, that there shouldn’t be anything. And it happens that Israel is the one thing that seems to be too dangerous to talk about. And I wrote in my book that I congratulate them. It’s probably the most successful covert action program in the history of man to control–the important political debate in a country of 270 million people is an extraordinary accomplishment. I wish our clandestine service could do as well. The point I would make–the point I try to make basically in the book is we just cannot–we can no longer afford to be seen as the dog that’s led by the tail. I’ve tried to be very clear in saying we have an alliance with the Israelis. We have a moral obligation to try to work through this issue, if we can. But I don’t think we can afford to be led around, or at least appear to be led around by them. And I certainly, as an American, find it unbearable to think there’s something in this country you can’t talk about. That’s really my spiel I guess on that, sir.

LEMANN: Gary?

SCHEUER: It was interesting to see the sheet suggested ways to review “Imperial Hubris” that came out from AIPAC [the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee]. [Laughter]

QUESTIONER: I’m curious–Gary Rosen from Commentary magazine. If you could just elaborate a little bit on the clandestine ways in which Israel and presumably Jews have managed to so control debate over this fundamental foreign policy question.

UNKNOWN: All you have to do is look at this landscape of American politics and see how many people who have raised this issue of the Israeli relationship.

SCHEUER: Well, the clandestine aspect is that, clearly, the ability to influence the Congress–that’s a clandestine activity, a covert activity. You know to some extent, the idea that the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust. I find–I just find the whole debate in the United States unbearably restricted with the inability to factually discuss what goes on between our two countries.

It’s a covert activity to lobby Congress? Or is it only covert when Jews do it?

When the Internet can give you this? Warning: Put down your coffee.