Month: May 2005

Here’s the money quote from the president’s spokesman:

[O]ur military goes out of their way to handle the Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And so now I think it’s incumbent and — incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies and practices are in that part of the world, because it’s in that region where this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so that’s all I’m saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing that. That’s all I’m saying.

Does McClellan really want the press to report more widely on what has been going on at Guantanamo Bay? Does he really want more stories about forced nakedness, female interrogators using panties and fake menstrual blood, and many reports from former inmates about deliberate misuse of the Koran? Well, let it rip, I say. The press’s response should not be to whine about the Bush administration pestering them. It should be call McClellan’s bluff. Demand far greater access to inmates at Gitmo. Demand that former interrogators be allowed to speak freely to the media. Ask for interviews with CIA interrogators at Gitmo and in Afghanistan. Get military permission to debrief Muslim military chaplain, James Yee. Run long, detailed stories debriefing released Gitmo detainees and try to confirm or debunk their allegations of abuse. Pull together all the reports of abuse of religion in U.S. facilities and explain the full context for readers. And when the administration and Pentagon resist such efforts for deeper exploration of “policies and practices,” refer to McClellan’s briefing. The administration has now opened the door for a fuller exploration of their policies and actual practices regarding detainees. Let’s walk in and see what’s in there, shall we?

This one is on Glenn Reynolds’ comparative coverage of the Newsweek error and the original Abu Ghraib revelations:

Like yourself, I was particularly struck by the suggestion made by Instapundit that Newsweek’s error was “the press’s Abu Ghraib”. Initially, I interpreted the parity as one of moral fault: the idiotic idea that similar consequences make similar crimes. But in considering its relation to the surrounding arguments – i.e. Reynolds’ not-so-subtle premonitions about the future of free speech – I arrived at a more cynical interpretation: namely, that it ultimately didn’t matter whether the reports of torture were true or not (since we now know that Muslims will riot and hate us either way) and so just as Newsweek shouldn’t have reported its story, the original Abu Ghraib story should have been likewise silenced. This also fits with Reynolds’ recent musings that other documentation may also be fake, thus calling into question the legitimacy of the entire torture story.
To evaluate these two interpretations, I went back to the week in May ’04 when the torture story broke, and took a random sample (as a social scientist, such are my habits) of Instapundit’s posts/updates to compare his reaction to that of the Newsweek scandal. The Newsweek story was the subject of 22 of the 40 posts/updates, all of which expressed admonishment. In contrast, the sample of 40 posts from the Abu Ghraib weeks contained only 2 expressing admonishment of the abuse (and even there, it is qualified), while the 12 other posts/updates on the abuse scandal either: A) Attempted to minimize its moral and practical significance, or B) Tried to discredit the evidence as fake or exaggerated by anti-troop, liberal media bias.
In other words, Reynolds’ treatment of the real torture story was almost indistinguishable from his treatment of the fake torture story. For Reynolds, a false report of torture represents the same, basic problem as its demonstrable, photographic truth: namely, the subordination of the media’s liberal agenda to that of the U.S. in wartime. This, it seems to me, is the real implication of the notion of “the press’s Abu Ghraib”: the tendency to view The News, not by the criteria of empirical validity, but by the patriotism and political pragmatism of its consequences.

I think the emailer is being too kind. Instapundit’s coverage suggests that he believes that the erroneously-sourced Newsweek story is actually more offensive and important than what happened at Abu Ghraib. A more direct expression of an even more hardline position is given by LaShawn Barber:

Let me clear up one thing. Whether Americans flushed the Koran down the toilet is irrelevant. Newsweek should not have reported it, even if true.

Now there’s a new standard.

Today is the first anniversary of the full civil liberation of gay citizens in one state in the United States. I’m celebrating. I do not believe for a second that we are going to lose this battle, because I deeply believe in the truth and justice of the cause of equality, and I believe that, in America, that cause always wins in the end. Setbacks are inevitable. But the progress we have made is astonishing by any historical standard:

Above all, we have changed consciousness. In civil rights movements, that’s what matters and that’s what endures. People forget that two decades ago, homosexuality meant simply sex for most Americans – and unsavory sex at that. Or it meant counter-cultural revolution. Or left-wing victim politics. By fighting the marriage fight, we changed the terms of that debate. We co-opted the language of our enemies – the language of family, love, responsibility, commitment. We did this not simply because it helps us win over the middle of American politics. But because it’s actually reflective of the reality of many of our lives … The next generation will grow up – gay and straight – fully aware of the existence of marriage as an option for gay couples, even if that option is in another state or another country. That will deeply and subtly change social expectations for gay men and women; it will alter sex and dating; it will counter some of the homophobia and low self-esteem that strangles some gay youth. It will tell the next generation of homosexuals: you have a future. That future is one of love and commitment and social integration. It is not assured. But it is conceivable.

Time to thank all those people – gay and especially straight – who have had the courage to support us, and to see that, in America, equality, fairness and human dignity is everyone’s business.

Europeans agree with Americans, it seems.

EVANGELICALS AND TORTURE: Not everyone is gung-ho. The position of the religious right in this developing story is going to be fascinating.

This emailer has a good point:

“The White House’s spinning of the Newsweek error is a huge miscalculation. It worked with Rathergate, which involved non-existent 30-year old documents related to a tired, worn out story. The White House got the last word because the Bush National Guard story was toast. Does Karl Rove really believe this is the last word on Islam-and-Interrogation?
Rove is daring every media organization in the US to make prisoner abuse a Page 1 story again. What is he thinking? Stories of Koran-abuse are coming – and the harder the White House spins, the worse they’ll look when they arrive. For the life of me, I can’t understand why Rove didn’t just let the story die. The media had nearly convinced itself that prisoner abuse stories don’t matter, but Rove has just lit a flame under journalists everywhere.”

The White House’s high profile attack on Newsweek – and the reliable media pouncing on the story – is a good strategy if the underlying story is untrue and will not be verified by future reporting. But if the story is true – and no one has denied it – then it will surely come out. Worse, it will raise the whole issue of the abuse of Islam in the treatment of prisoners, which goes far beyond merely one alleged incident of a toilet flush. This may not be close to torture, but it sure does violate the Geneva Conventions; more importantly, it’s explosive in terms of alienating Muslims we need and winning the broader war.

JOURNALISM AND PATRIOTISM: One thing that really struck me when reading through all the reports of detainee abuse was the consistency of anti-Islamic rhetoric and tactics. Captain James Yee, originally and unsuccessfully framed by the military as a spy, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo. He doubtless has stories to tell. So will others – unless the military gets to them. Did a hunger strike take place at Gitmo because of issues related to treatment of the Koran? Karl Rove has just made that a much bigger story than it ever would have been otherwise. The bigger point here is that highlighting these abuses is not, pace Glenn, reflective of a loyalty to journalism rather than to America. It is precisely a belief in America, in her proud traditions of fair treatment of prisoners, that motivates many of us to expose these horrors. And it is out of a desire to win this war of ideas, especially among moderate Muslims, that many of us want to stop the kind of insanity that prevailed at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and many other military facilities across the globe. Many Muslims already believe the Koran-flushing story and are being accused (not without reason) of paranoia. But what if this time – or at other times – their paranoia is justified? The consequences of the Bush administration’s new, half-baked policies on interrogation are only beginning to be felt. And they threaten our entire position in this war. That’s why some of us won’t stint in exposing these issues. We’re in this war to win it; not to engage in dumb, unnecessary self-inflicted wounds.

HERE’S THE PROBLEM FOR BUSH: Susan Hu over at Daily Kos is on the case. Here’s an important piece of reporting:

I took the extra step today of contacting an attorney that is representing over ten Guantánamo detainees. He works for a prominent, private, Washington, D.C. law firm, and has visited Guantánamo four times since late last year. All of his clients share the same nationality and, partly for this reason, all of his clients have been kept in complete isolation from each other.

Seeing his clients is not easy. First of all, it requires a week’s stay in barracks to meet with all his clients for a sufficient amount of time. The barracks are located on the other side of the base from the camps, and the two and half-hour transit time involves a bus and a ferry.

He must prepare, in advance, a list of which clients he wishes to see, and in what order. Once, he was told that the guards could not locate one of his clients.

He meets with his clients one-by-one, never in groups. The detainees have had no contact with each other, and no opportunity to collaborate on false allegations of abuse.

I asked him, “Have you heard any accounts of Qur’anic desecration?”

He replied, “Yes, two detainees told me completely independently that they had witnessed a Qur’an being thrown in the toilet. Another told me that he had witnessed a Qur’an being stomped on. And another told me he had witnessed a Qur’an being urinated on.”

He continued, “Most disturbances, like hunger strikes, have been over religious issues, like non-Muslims handling the Koran.” I asked how the guards were supposed to supply Qur’ans to the detainees without handling them? He told me that the Muslim chaplains could provide this service, but there were fewer and fewer chaplains available.

Are all these detainees lying? Hasn’t the White House now challenged the entire news media to find out what the allegations are and whether they have merit? If these stories are true, will the media have “blood on its hands” for reporting them? Or is the real responsibility to be found among those officials who constructed the policies that made such abuses possible?

“[D]ump the hyperbole and call Abu Ghraib what it was: rank felony abuse, not deadly torture.” – May 15, 8pm.
“Yes, prisoners have died at Abu Ghraib – that place is hideous, like Ralph Peters I think we should have blown it up in May 2003- but I don’t see any murder charges on the list… There is this: “Manadel al-Jamadi, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Nov. 4, 2003. Died during interrogation. Several Navy SEALs charged; and two CIA personnel under investigation.” That’s suspicious. Is there an update on this particular investigation?” – May 16, 8.34 pm. To recap:

On Nov. 4, 2003, Manadel al-Jamadi was found dead in the showers of Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Al-Jamadi was a detainee who, according to a Navy SEAL testifying in a military court a year later, had probably been beaten by interrogators the night before.

Perhaps you could argue that beating someone in the head until they are dead and then celebrating that death does not constitute “deadly torture.” I’d prefer not to start making those kinds of distinctions. I’ll leave that to Alberto Gonzales. One of the most sickening pictures we have been allowed to see of Abu Ghraib was of Sabrina Harman, smiling and giving a thumbs up next to the battered face of al-Jamadi’s corpse. Here’s a pic of Graner, grinning over the quarry. This morning, Harman was found guilty of six different charges of prisoner abuse.

I wrote yesterday that “Newsweek bears complete responsibility for any errors it has made; and, depending on what we now find, should not be let off the hook.” Retracting a story whose single anonymous source has now said he can’t be sure is the right thing to do. Continuing to report on the question is the other right thing to do. This is not about a minor issue to do with a president’s long-forgotten National Guard service. It is a huge issue with great ramifications for the war on terror. It gets to a very important question: Are we undermining our cause by unnecessary and inflammatory tactics in detainee treatment? And that is where the responsibility of the Bush administration comes in. No one in the administration has flatly denied that desecration of the Koran has taken place at Guantanamo. There are credible reports that mistreatment of the book led to a hunger strike among inmates; and many other such instances of interrogative abuse of Islam reported in official military and Congressional reports. Now that Newsweek has accepted its responsibility, the White House has to accept theirs’: did such a toilet-flushing occur? And if we had not decreed that the Geneva Conventions need not apply to all our terrorist detainees, would this even be a question in the first place?

The great gift that the New York Times gives the world is free access to its articles, opinion-journalists, and stories. In September, that will no longer be the case. They are putting up a $50 toll-booth to “the work of Op-Ed columnists and some of the best known voices from the news side of The Times and The International Herald Tribune (IHT).” They’ll be charging for the privilege of reading MoDo and Krugman and Brooks. I can understand the economics of this, as newspaper circulation declines. But I wonder if, in the long run, this is a wise move on their part. By sectioning off their op-ed columnists and best writers, they are cutting them off from the life-blood of today’s political debate: the free blogosphere. Inevitably, fewer people will link to them; fewer will read them; their influence will wane faster than it has already. The blog is already becoming a rival to the dated op-ed column format as a means of communicating opinion journalism. My bet is that the NYT’s retrogressive move will only fasten the decline of op-ed columnists’ influence.

Kos blogger Susan Hu has discovered four other media citations of the allegation that Gitmo interrogators desecrated the Koran: one from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and three from Human Rights Watch. Now we cannot know for sure – yet – if these allegations are real, or propaganda. But we do know for certain that other “techniques” designed to use religion as an interrogative tool have been deployed, including the smearing of fake menstrual blood on detainees’ faces. This religious warfare was also deployed at Abu Ghraib. I wrote in my review of the official records of the torture:

One Muslim inmate was allegedly forced to eat pork, had liquor forced down his throat and told to thank Jesus that he was alive. He recounted in broken English: “They stripped me naked, they asked me, ‘Do you pray to Allah?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said ‘Fuck you’ and ‘Fuck him.'” Later, this inmate recounts: ”Someone else asked me, ‘Do you believe in anything?’ I said to him, ‘I believe in Allah.’ So he said, ‘But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'”

The man cited, Charles Graner, was found guilty of detainee abuse. So we have evidence of the abuse of Islam by U.S. interrogators; we have four citations of the Koran incident; Newsweek has not retracted the story; and more will no doubt come out. One thing worth reiterating: the notion that this obscenity simply couldn’t have happened in the U.S. military (something I believed two years ago) is no longer an operative assumption. We know that incidents like this have happened. And even now, the administration is not denying it outright.

He’s their Bernie Goldberg and he just wrote his confession.

“NOXIOUS BIGOTRY” IN NEBRASKA? Stanley Kurtz takes on the Washington post here on equal marriage rights. He portrays the Nebraska amendment as simply another one “protecting” the traditional definition of civil marriage. The best discussion of the decision I’ve read is, as so often, by Eugene Volokh. The ruling won’t hold. But Kurtz ignores the obvious point of the Post editorial. It is the following:

The Nebraska provision, particularly as interpreted by the state’s attorney general, is so broad as to invalidate any legal recognition of any same-sex relationship. This has implications, the judge notes, not merely for those who would marry but for “roommates, co-tenants, foster parents, and related people who share living arrangements, expenses, custody of children, or ownership of property.” The state attorney general, in fact, interpreted it to prevent any state law allowing gay couples to make organ donation decisions for one another. The constitutional guarantee of equal protection may not require states to recognize same-sex marriage, but it unquestionably prevents a state from arbitrarily targeting gay couples for differential treatment.

So to summarize: there is a law against same-sex marriage in Nebraska; the amendment’s keeping civil marriage rights entirely heterosexual is not under legal dispute at all; the Defense of Marriage Act and all previous legal precedent ensures that Massachusett’s civil marriages will not be recognized in Nebraska. But even this is not enough. By constitutional amendment, same-sex couples are denied all legal protections, including any “civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar same-sex relationship.” It’s revealing that Kurtz seems to support such an amendment, because it belies his claim that he is not interested in persecuting or disenfranchising gay couples, just “protecting civil marriage.” Given the fact that there is not even the slightest chance of same-sex marriage occurring in Nebraska, what is really motivating this sweeping denial of any basic protections for gay couples? Here’s what I mean: preventing them from visiting one another in hospital; making organ donations impossible and joint custody of children illegal; no possibility of sharing health insurance. When a majority singles out a tiny minority that represents no threat to them, bars them from basic legal protections, and denies them the most basic aspects of human dignity, we are no longer talking about the “protection” of marriage. We are talking about another version of Jim Crow. And Kurtz is applauding.