Month: July 2005

More information on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new president of Iran and a theocratic criminal of epic proportions.

Another case for the miraculous work of profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies.

It’s extremely frustrating that the New Yorker hasn’t made Jane Mayer’s superb reporting on the use of medical doctors to facilitate and monitor abuse of detainees at Gitmo avilable online. But the detail and scope and meticulousness of the piece make it must-reading for those concerned about what is going on in U.S. military detention centers across the world. Gitmo, however disturbing its methods, is almost certainly the best run and least abusive of such centers. Mayer’s key point is that the military has redeployed its own training for resistance to enemy torture into a blue-print for inflicting torture on “illegal combatants” at Gitmo and elsewhere. The cooperation of military doctors, monitoring exactly how far a detainee can be physically and psychologically pushed until he dies, is about as unethical a process as can be imagined. But it’s yet another one of George W. Bush’s innovations in American warfare. What I also found fascinating was Mayer’s account of some of the techniques U.S. troops are trained to withstand – a program known as SERE: “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.” One of them was trashing of the Bible, as a way to unsettle and destabilize the psyches of prisoners. Sound familiar? One graduate recalled:

“One of the most memorable parts of the camp experience was when one of the camp leaders trashed a Bible on the ground, kicking it around etc. It was a crushing blow, even though this was just a school… [T]he Bible trashing happened when this guy had us all in the courtyard sitting for one of his speeches. They were tempting us with a big pot of soup that was boiling – we were all starving from a few days of chow deprivation. He brought out the Bible and started going off on it verbally – how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around. It was definitely the climax of his speech…”

Gee, I wonder why there was an alleged mass suicide attempt by Muslim prisoners at Gitmo in August 2003 to protest systematic abuse of the Koran in interrogation techniques. One such incident, denied by the Pentagon, was one in which the text was “allegedly wrapped inside an Israeli flag and stomped on.” I wonder where on earth one American trainer of prison guards gave an affidavit where s/he informed an interrogator at Abu Ghraib: “I told him of a story of an interrogator using and Pride and Ego Down approach. The interrogator took a copy of the Koran and threw it on the ground and stepped on the Koran, which resulted in a detainee riot.” I guess that since the Koran is treated with the utmost respect at Gitmo, all these things are simply invented by enemy propaganda and stab-in-the-back lefties. Just a few bad apples – with meticulous, and completely coincidental, legal cover from the White House memos.

It’s July Fourth, a day to reaffirm life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My NPR essay can be read here.

Just walking through Provincetown this glorious afternoon, I came across a small house festooned with flags. The pic here is just of a flower box on the picket fence. As I was leaving, a woman came home and thanked me for photographing her house. We talked briefly. Her son has been in Iraq, and is now stateside training more soldiers for their tour of duty before returning himself. He was home last July Fourth; and his mom told me that yesterday as the ferry came in, she momentarily hoped he might be on it. He wasn’t.

Here’s to all like him, serving us right now, enabling the freedom we celebrate, the flags we fly.

A summary of his record on abortion and affirmative action. I doubt Bush will nominate someone the hard right will go nuts over and who would raise the entire question of government-sanctioned torture again. But it’s worth looking at the paper trail.

The always-valuable Jeffrey Rosen summarizes the post-O’Connor options.

Marty Lederman assesses what the O’Connor vacancy means for various rulings. There are more detailed ramifications for specific cases and issues examined here. The Rehnquist question, of course, remains hanging in the air. I’d bookmark these blogs, if I were you.

His statement was a good one, I thought. And this passage was worth noting:

As well, I will continue to consult, as will my advisers, with members of the United States Senate. The nation deserves, and I will select, a Supreme Court Justice that Americans can be proud of. The nation also deserves a dignified process of confirmation in the United States Senate, characterized by fair treatment, a fair hearing and a fair vote. I will choose a nominee in a timely manner so that the hearing and the vote can be completed before the new Supreme Court term begins.

This is a critical moment for the president, a moment when he can reach back to a political center he has recently eschewed during a war in which a bitter and divisive internal fight should be avoided, if at all possible. I’m hoping for a reasonable and not overly ideological choice. What I’m expecting is another matter.

VIRUS UPDATE: Got new data this week about my virus. You may recall that I went back on meds because my viral load, after three years of stability at around 20,000 copies per mililiter of my blood, went to 60,000 and then 140,000. After ten days of medication, it came down to 1,500. By now, it should be zero. The drugs are amazing and I barely notice them at all any more the side effects are so minor. I guess I should add that these not atypical results show that although basic scientific research must be funded by government, the “evil” pharmaceutical companies are, in fact, among the most beneficent organizations in the history of mankind and their research in the last couple of decades will one day be recognized as the revolution it truly is. Yes, they’re motivated by profits. Duh. That’s the genius of capitalism – to harness human improvement to the always-reliable yoke of human greed. Long may those companies prosper. I owe them literally my life.

Molly Ivins proves why the left still doesn’t get it:

Since my name is Molly Ivins and I speak for myself, I’ll tell you exactly why I opposed invading Iraq: because I thought it would be bad for this country, our country, my country. I opposed the invasion out of patriotism, and that is the reason I continue to oppose it today–I think it is bad for us. I think we have created more terrorists than we faced to start with and that our good name has been sullied all over the world. I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did.

My italics. Look, Ivins is perfectly within her rights to have opposed the war and to maintain her opposition. I don’t doubt her patriotism for a second in this. But the last phrase is so jarring, so flagrantly, empirically wrong, so lacking in any understanding of the reality of Saddam’s decades of war and butchery that it beggars belief. She has to run a correction.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Symbols like the ones the Supreme Court haggled about give the impression that Christianity and the government are somehow in cahoots with each other. That’s a dangerous impression, and a false one. It’s a small step from the idea that the government endorses Christianity to an idea that is much worse: that Christianity endorses the government. Christians are the big losers in that transaction. Western Europe is filled with Christian symbols — Christian Democrats are a leading political party in several countries — but almost entirely devoid of Christians. Christianity does not thrive when political parties take its name and capitol lawns showcase its precepts. On the contrary, it thrives when it stays as far from those things as possible.
The government thrives, too. Religious conservatives and secular liberals should be able to agree on this much: teaching good morals is not a job for the Texas legislature or the Kentucky courts — or any legislature or court. Making just laws is hard enough, and our government isn’t so good at that. Teaching virtue is incomparably harder. Personally, I’d rather they stuck to the laws.” – William J. Stuntz, in TCS. I feel like cheering from the rafters. I’ve long believed that the most committed Christians are secularists as well. They know that government-engineered faith is fatal to real religion; and that faith that needs government is a pale image of what it should be. All this panic about the “naked public square” is a sign of fear among evangelicals, not faith.

TELLING THE TRUTH: Chris Crain tackles those stuck in the past and unreality on HIV prevention among gay men.