Year: 2005

What the hell? It’s Friday afternoon.

THE GOP VERSUS GAY COUPLES: Here’s a sad sign of the level of animosity toward gay couples now in the mainstream of the Republican party. Governor Ehrlich of Maryland will veto a very modest bill that would allow a few measures to help gay couples to have a modicum of protection in some circumstances:

Among the rights: to be treated as an immediate family member during hospital visits, to make health care decisions for incapacitated partners and to make private visits in nursing homes.

That’s too much for today’s GOP. We are beginning to see that their real issue has nothing to do with civil marriage. Their issue is the existence of gay people – and especially the existence of stable gay couples. They have to attack these relationships at all costs if they are to maintain the stigmatization of homosexuality. Even if they have to pass extreme amendments as in Nebraska and Michigan.

“I remember being so mad that I had trouble speaking,” – Sergeant Yonushonis, who witnessed the death-by-torture of an innocent man by U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan. He had to provide details voluntarily because investigators never approached him. I hope those who have been led to believe that the abuse of detainees occurred only at Abu Ghraib, that they were merely “fraternity high jinx” or represented in some way legitimate ways to procure intelligence, will read this story. I do not believe that Sergeant Yonushonis is “naive” or “excitable.” Or that his “squeamishness” is somehow inappropriate in defending civilization. Recall: this investigation was triggered by two murders. What happened when the abuse didn’t reach the level of murder? And will we ever know?

THE RED CROSS REPORTS: We now know that the International Red Cross compiled records of allegations of mistreatment of the Koran at Gitmo:

Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the Red Cross committee, declined yesterday to discuss the details in the reports of how Koran was handled and would not say whether any reports involved a Koran’s being flushed down a toilet.
He said the committee received “multiple allegations” of abuse of the Koran from the detainees. He said workers for the committee, which monitors the treatment of prisoners of war and works in tandem with the military to ensure that the Geneva Conventions are followed, did not witness any of the reported incidents.
Mr. Schorno said the committee began receiving the accusations in 2002, when the detainees first arrived in Guantánamo, and they continued until mid-2003. The reports were “substantial enough for us to bring to the attention of authorities,” he said, and included information not only from detainees but also from military personnel.
After the Red Cross submitted its reports, he said, complaints from detainees stopped.

Soon, we will find out. Prediction: the smearing of the Red Cross, already underway in places like the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, will intensify.

A CONFEDERATE FLAG?? I just want to point out something in the NYT story:

One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon “the Testosterone Gang.” Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said. Some of the same M.P.’s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him “Timmy,” after a disabled child in the animated television series “South Park.” One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.

Were there any African-American soldiers there? What has happened to discipline and unit cohesion in the armed services?

One of the intellectual gurus behind Bush’s social security plans has withdrawn his support for private accounts. Right now, I’d be happy to have real cuts, Pozen’s means-testing scheme, and voluntary add-on accounts. Bush could claim victory – and he’d be right. It would be a victory to wrestle social security onto a more secure footing. Then maybe we can get to grips with the Medicare nightmare.

GAY MARRIAGE POLLS: A skeptical overview. Bottom line: Gallagher is empirically wrong.

JEFFERSON’S SAUCER: A nice anecdote about Washington and Jefferson sent to me by a reader:

There was a famous dinner meeting between Washington and Jefferson at which they deliberated the need for a bicameral legislature, with Jefferson suggesting the superiority of a one-chamber model. There are many different accounts of the words exchanged, but they are all something like this:

After much discussion around the tea table, Washington turned sharply to Jefferson and said, “You, sir, have just demonstrated the superior excellence of a bi-cameral system by your own hand.” “Oh, how is that?” asked Jefferson. “You have poured your tea from your cup out into the saucer to cool. We want the bi-cameral system to cool things.”

Should we break that saucer now? Do we really want to make the Senate more like the House?

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “The more I read of your blog lately and your dual points about 1) decrying torture and 2) decrying Islamic (and Christian) extremism and supporting the war on terror, the more I think: keep it up.
Why is it that both the Left and the Right have barricaded themselves into these emotionally extreme (and indefensible) positions? They’re either willing to ignore the danger we face in order to score political points, or throw away the very humanitarian values we’re supposedly fighting for. It strikes me as terribly important (and necessary) that there be some voices out there who can argue both the morality of the war as well as the necessity of policing that morality.”

Today, Glenn Reynolds says, rather blandly, that “I’ve long been anti-torture, after all.” Back in March, he wrote the following item:

“EUGENE VOLOKH: ‘I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.’ The notion that civilization equals squeamishness is not supported by history.”

Volokh, who has subsequently conceded some points, was endorsing torture-and-execution by the Iranian government in his original post. Well, he was defending, to be precise, “a slow throttling … preceded by a flogging.” Reynolds seemed to me to endorse Volokh’s position. How else to interpret his last sentence? And he has steadfastly refused to cover evidence that the U.S. has indeed violated the law in condoning torture; and accused those of us who protest the record of going soft in the war, as if trying to prevent huge self-inflicted wounds is somehow going soft. It seems to me that Glenn’s position is the president’s: he’s against torture, except when it happens. Then he refuses to stop or condemn it. And in unguarded moments, he’s a real enthusiast. Or maybe I have this wrong and, like Volokh, Instapundit has changed his mind somewhat.

AGREEING WITH JOSH: Here’s an elegant argument that both decries the Democrats’ tactics against judicial nominees and yet resists the filibuster:

Under current Senate procedures, it takes 60 votes to end a debate and move to a vote. It takes 67 votes to change the procedures. Some conservatives argue that the 60-vote rule to cut off debate, when applied to judicial nominations, violates the Constitution. The “advice and consent” of the Senate, they say, implies that it should only take a majority of the Senate to confirm a judge. The use of the filibuster effectively creates a supermajority requirement, which, on this argument, is unconstitutional. It is, in our view, an implausible argument. The Constitution does not forbid the Senate from setting its own procedures.

That’s exactly Josh Marshall’s point, no? And it’s National Review’s. Oh, wait! (Hat tip, to its credit: NRO).

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Please, get back to either supporting the war on terror or at least writing cogently. I was an interrogator with US Army Intelligence. I may or may not have desecrated the Koran and I would consider it treason for people like you to want to investigate it.”

The targeted critic of Islamism tells the Guardian what Britain has to do to avert the same crisis that now grips the Netherlands: “close all 41 Islamic schools, put a brake on immigration and change article 23. Jaws hit the table.” (Hat tip: Pieter). (Correction: she was referring to Holland, not Britain. My apologies. I mistook the reference to Labour as being Britain’s Labour party.)

It strikes me as a good one:

You can think the filibuster is a terrible idea. And you may think that it should be abolished, as indeed it can be through the rules of the senate. And there are decent arguments to made on that count. But to assert that it is unconstitutional because each judge does not get an up or down vote by the entire senate you have to hold that the United States senate has been in more or less constant violation of the constitution for more than two centuries.

I should add that I think both parties bear blame for the current impasse. But one small point about conservatism. Historically, it has tended to support many measures that prevent governments from doing things, impede legislative efficiency, and generally promote inaction over action. It has now become, in some respects, the opposite.

THE PENNY DROPS: Rich Lowry realizes the danger for the administration in the Gitmo affair. My prediction: this is just the beginning. And what we may find out is not going to be pretty. Here’s one small part of what’s coming:

78. On various occasions, Plaintiffs’ efforts to pray were banned or interrupted. Plaintiffs were never given prayer mats and did not initially receive copies of the Koran. Korans were provided to them after approximately a month. On one occasion, a guard in Plaintiff Ahmed’s cellblock noticed a copy of the Koran on the floor and kicked it. On another occasion, a guard threw a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket. Detainees, including Plaintiffs, were also at times prevented from calling out the call to prayer, with American soldiers either silencing the person who was issuing the prayer call or playing loud music to drown out the call to prayer. This was part of a continuing pattern of disrespect and contempt for Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs and practices.

There’s more:

205. Defendants regularly and systematically engaged in practices specifically aimed at disrupting Plaintiffs’ religious practices. These acts included throwing a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket, prohibiting prayer, deliberately interrupting prayers, playing loud rock music to interrupt prayers, withholding the Koran without reason or as punishment, forcing prisoners to pray with exposed genital areas, withholding prayer mats and confining Plaintiffs under conditions where it was impossible or infeasible for them to exercise their religious rights.

This is from a lawsuit filed by four British former inmates at Gitmo. They were released without being charged. Do we believe them? I don’t know. I sure don’t want to believe them; and I wish that none of this was even faintly relevant in the war on terror. Reading this kind of stuff about American interrogators in a war we must win can only produce anguish and distress, a desire to just move on, a need to ignore. All I can say is that, given what we already know, their charges are, horrifying to say, credible. And the consequences for winning the war of ideas in the Islamic world? Incalculably bad.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “It’s either going to be God’s people out there enjoying the neighborhoods, breathing the air or it’s going to be God’s enemies owning the public square and polluting it. It’s not ever both.” – Christian reconstructionist, Steve Schlissel. I used to think of this guy as a real extremist. But isn’t that quote interchangeable these days with mainstream conservatism? Notice his cooptation of the term “public square,” a phrase deployed in this context by many much more moderate theocons.

Total sense from Applebaum. Compare her reasoned position with the rationalizations and excuses for military abuse made by Instapundit. Money quote from the latter:

I do confess that I think that winning the war is much more important than Abu Ghraib, and that viewing the entire war — and the entire American military — through the prism of Abu Ghraib is as unfair as judging all Muslims by the acts of terrorists.

This sentence is one I can fully agree with. But one has to ask: where has he been for the past year? Accusations – and convictions – of torture and abuse can be found in literally dozens of detainment facilities, across Afghanistan, in Tikrit, Camp Cropper, Basra, Gitmo, and on and on. Thirty six inmates have died under interrogation. No cases of abuse were found in any detention facilities that were not geared toward interrogation. Abu Ghraib is therefore one smidgen of the problem, hyped because of highly selective visuals. Furthermore, I did not describe wrapping someone in the Israeli flag as torture. Glenn should correct the record. I cited it as one instance among many (including torture) in which offending someone’s religious and cultural identity was deployed by U.S. interrogators, as Applebaum and the factual record testifies. Glenn has one sub-clause in his rejoinder that even says: “when Andrew was a champion of the war on terror.” Excuse me? My careful, fully documented criticisms of the U.S. treatment of detainees have been made not because I am anti-war or anti-military. They are because I am pro-war and pro-military. Does Glenn really believe for a second that idiotic tactics like brandishing fake menstrual blood or Stars of David at Muslim inmates are good interrogation practices? Does he think these excrescences have helped gain any useful intelligence in any way? The problem with these abuses is that they are evil and stupid; immoral and counter-productive, as so many experts in interrogation will testify. All of this is the gift to bin Laden that keeps on giving. But it wasn’t Newsweek who gave him the gift. It was this administration. And, indirectly, those who shill for it.

My reference to threats to liberty in acquiescing to government abuse and torture of prisoners had nothing to do with freedom of the press, pace Jonah. It had everything to with a creeping expansion of government power in wartime – and public indifference, aided and abetted by some pundits. When a government commits abuses and the rest of us yawn, or decide it’s irrelevant or justified for other reasons, liberty is indeed lessened. I’ll leave John Podhoretz’s rhetoric for others to judge. But I’d wager I know much less about Joan Crawford, Mae West or Bette Davis than John does.

Do you have a secret? Write it on a postcard and post it here. I couldn’t stop reading them.

Here’s a decent point, correcting me:

In one of your postings today, you said “So we are left to ask whether to believe al Qaeda terrorists, trained to make such accusations, or American Pentagon officials.”
The people released from Guantanamo who have stated that the Qu’ran was abused are not al Qaeda terrorists. If they were, they would still be incarcerated.
In most cases, these people were deemed, after a long period of investigation and interrogation by the American military, to have been mistakenly swept up in a dragnet. Some were humanitarian workers. Some of them were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. If there were any shred of evidence against them, they would not be free. At least I hope not. If they have been set free and are al Qaeda, where is the outrage and what is the rationale?
So, tell me again. Why can’t we believe these people?

Well, if they weren’t al Qaeda supporters before they got into Guantanamo, maybe they are now.