He’s not buying it:
The critical thing about the much-bruited surge is that it, too, belongs in the all-important realm of the symbolic. A few thousand extra troops in Baghdad and in Anbar are of scant use in themselves, unless they in some way represent a commitment to stick to Iraq no matter what. And if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki’s surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it.
That’s the conclusion of the government’s own study into "coercive interrogation techniques" deployed by the Bush administration, and approved by president Bush and defense secretary Rumsfeld. There’s no evidence it works, and considerable evidence that it is actually helping us lose the war on terror. Read the full Intelligence Science Board report (PDF) here. Money quote:
"There is little systematic knowledge available to tell us ‘what works’ in interrogation," wrote Robert Coulam, a research professor at the Simmons School for Health Studies in Boston. Coulam also wrote that interrogation practices that offend ethical concerns and "skirt the rule of law" may be narrowly useful, if at all, because such practices could undermine the legitimacy of government action and support for the fight against terrorism…
The new study finds that there may be no value to coercive techniques.
"The scientific community has never established that coercive interrogation methods are an effective means of obtaining reliable intelligence information," wrote Col. Steven M. Kleinman, who has served as the Pentagon’s senior intelligence officer for special survival training.
Kleinman wrote that intelligence gathered with coercion is sometimes inaccurate or false, noting that isolation, a tactic U.S. officials have used regularly, causes "profound emotional, psychological, and physical discomfort" and can "significantly and negatively impact the ability of the source to recall information accurately."
But the point of torture is torture. Ask the president who authorized it.
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 11 am.
Here’s my take on how a civil war in Iraq need not be the end of the world, if we handle it right. Money quote:
Wars are not just about guns and military action. They are also about ideas and ideology. Long wars, especially, are won by those who gain control of the narrative. The West won the cold war when it became understood globally as a battle between totalitarianism and freedom. Defining the conflict that way helped a great deal towards winning it, and in retrospect the Helsinki accords which publicly endorsed that narrative were the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union.
Similarly, redefining the war on terror as essentially the product of ancient feuds within Islam immediately shifts the argument onto terrain favorable to the West. For the first time in five years, it takes the narrative out of Bin Laden’s hands.
With Greg’s latest update (scroll down to the end), you realize that the 17,500 troop Baghdad surge advocates are much less interested in whether this can work – even on their own terms – than in political positioning in America.
Heather Mac Donald continues her path:
I attended a New York cocktail party in 2003, for example, where a prominent columnist said to the group standing around him: "We all know that what makes Republicans superior to Democrats is their religious faith." This sentiment has been repeated in print ad nauseam, along with its twin: "We all know that morality is not possible without religion." I didn’t then have the courage to point out to the prominent columnist that quite a few conservatives and Republicans of the highest standing had no religious faith, without apparent injury to their principles or their behavior…
I need not rehearse here how Bush’s invocation of the divine gift of freedom overlooks the Bible, the persistence throughout history of hierarchical societies that have little use for personal autonomy, and the unique, centuries-long struggle in the West to create the institutions of limited government that underwrite our Western idea of freedom. Suffice it to say, the predictable outcome of the Iraq invasion did not convince me that religious belief was a particularly trustworthy ground for political action.
Ahem.
Gyllenhall pays tribute to his "unique fan base." And he’s not even lip-syncing.
No, that’s not a misprint.
Matt Stoller trumpets his own movement in this piece at TPM, and he has harsh words for the online right:
The right-wing blogs don’t organize, don’t innovate, and reflect the larger structure that was put into place over the last thirty years by right-wing organizers who made their bones in the 1970s. As a result, there is no right-wing Moveon, no right-wing Actblue, or Free Culture movement. They have no new ideas, whereas our ideas are expanding into social systems that generate new streams of revenue, information, or just get lots of organizers to a bar to drink and network.
The reduction of political conversation and discourse to the demands of political power and activist organization is inevitable. But don’t blame me if I stand aside.
USA Today adds its voice to the chorus decrying the appalling comments of Charles "Cully" Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. Money quote:
Since its opening in 2002, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has become a symbol of un-America behavior, fueling cries for its closure, including from close ally Britain. Reports from the United Nations and others allege treatment tantamount to torture at the prison camp.
If the department’s point man on detainees thinks the best use of his time and pulpit is stirring up resentment for detainee lawyers, he has a seriously skewed view of reality. America has huge problems at Guantanamo Bay. The presence of pro bono lawyers trying to ensure justice for detainees is not one of them.
He should be fired, if the deep damage that this administration has already done to the rule of law in America is not to be compounded.
The Dish 