One of the eeriest aspects of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror has been the inversion of previously held assumptions about the meaning of the West. We fought a war to end torture; we then occupied Saddam’s own torture prison and tortured people there. We fought a war to bring democracy to the Middle East and to show Arabs and Muslims how superior it is as a system; we then spawned chaos, civil war and genocide to brand democracy as a nightmare for an entire generation of Muslims and Arabs. But I recall one moment when I felt most secure about our rationale for the war: we liberated a prison full of children who had been targeted by the monster, Saddam. If ending a regime that jailed children was not right, what was?

Except now we know that the U.S. has itself detained, imprisoned and interrogated children. The young sons of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed were detained, and used as a lever in the torturing him. We don’t know what was done to them, but one fellow prisoner has claimed that they were mistreated. We do know that KSM was told they were detained, a flagrant violation of international and domestic law. The CIA reassured us four years ago that it would not harm the kids (who were nine and seven when captured):

"We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children," said one official, "but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."

But, of course, we don’t know what happened to them if they were released, what they said, if anything, and how their detention was used against KSM. Ron Suskind did some reporting:

At the darkest moment we threatened grievous injury to his children if he did not cooperate. His response was quite clear: "That’s fine. You can do what you want to my children, and they will find a better place with Allah."

The CIA conceded:

"His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."

We do know that, in principle, the Bush administration is prepared to torture the children of terrorists, because the chief architect of their detention policy, AEI’s resident war-criminal John Yoo, was quite explicit:

"Cassel: If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty

Cassel: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo…

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that…"

Michael van der Galien is trying to find out what happened to them. I tend to think that even Bush’s CIA would not abuse children, apart from imprisoning them for the crimes of their father. But I have learned the bad way that Bush and Cheney cannot be trusted with the humane tradition of American warfare. These children belong, like many others, in the black hole of the Bush-Cheney torture and detention regime, beyond the reach of the law, treaties or civilization. Just as Cheney likes it.

Good news from the green front:

At a Brazilian ethanol conference June 4-5, Brazilian government-funded researchers said they have perfected a method of producing cellulosic ethanol that drastically reduces the cost of processing. At this point, the assertion – and many other similarly optimistic claims made at the conference – is unconfirmed. But should it prove true, the world could well be peeking over the horizon at a massive geopolitical, not to mention economic, shift.

Details here.

An instant classic from CNN, in which a pubescent boy behaves exactly as a pubescent boy should – except he’s on cable.

 

Spelling Bee Winner

Posted Jun 05, 2007

A reader comments:

A wonderful speech, but hard to ignore the "hypocrite" label when contrasting those words with the advice Clinton gave to Kerry in 2004 to focus on the "one tenth of one percent" by demonizing gays and supporting a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Or the fact that he signed DOMA into law. Or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Plenty can talk the talk (and Clinton is a master), but I’d like to see the walk. 

Picky, picky. My reader needs to be sent to HRC re-education camp, in order to erase something called memory of the 1990s.

A reader writes:

Absolutely right Andrew. I am an occasional listener to talk radio on my drive to work and I have been listening in on the anger of conservative talks show hosts (Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity) and, oh my God, their callers. It’s unbelievable. You would think that these people, who are here because the primarily Republican business owners wanted and used cheap labor, would be treated with more sympathy. Or that their desperate attmepts to arrive in the land of the free and the brave would elicit at least some measure of admiration for their determination to seek a better life. In one actual sense these "illegals" are the cream of the crop – those, evolutionarily speaking, who are adapting as best possible to their environment. Yet, the hate spewed against them on radio was so intense I literally gagged.

I agree with you: if Hispanics were listening in on these shows, they are hardly likely to vote Republican for years to come. It wasn’t just about illegals, it was about what kind of illegals these were.

If you don’t see this, you need to think for one second how this stuff sounds to someone who isn’t a member of the majority in this country.

(Photo: David McNew/Getty.)

Gosh, I swear it will be fabulous. Promise. Swell, even. He’s celebrating his dad’s super leads in New Hampshire and Iowa after his amazing successes in the debates. Aren’t you excited? Gee-willikers, I know I am.

A 11 9 point lead over Rudy? (I can’t add.)

Kuwait City, Kuwait, 1 pm.

A reader writes:

Obama said:

"… by taking mutual responsibility for each other as a society, and also by asking for some more individual responsibility to strengthen our families."

It’s a lovely soundbite. But the problem is not that society doesn’t take enough responsibility, but that the division of responsibility between society and the individual has lost all balance. And you don’t fix a balance problem by adding weight to both sides.

Senator Obama talks like this because he wants more spending and social responsibility and so offers a trade: we’ll look for more individual responsibility if you take more social responsibility. It’s lot like Bush, who got the idea from Clinton. But his basic motivation leads to statements like this:

"We need to start supporting parents with young children. "

What’s with the "start"? I thought that with welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, head start, public education, public housing, etc, we "started" supporting parents a long time ago. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for all of that – but it’s a bit much to say we haven’t yet "started"  with the support.

I don’t want politicians talking about individual responsibility as a marketing strategy for their constituencies’ interests. I want them talking about it because they understand it’s the source of the problem. Anyone who is talking about equal additional increments of social and individual responsibility is marketing, not solving.

The attempt to dragoon the Democrats into Christianist politics is celebrated here by Jim Wallis. But check out the comments. Most are mad as hell. I don’t think the religious left has appreciated how much of the current Democratic popularity is bound up with a secular revolt against Christianism (and that secular revolt includes many people of faith). Re-tooling Christianism for the left is not an answer. It compounds the problem. If the Democratic leadership continues to pander to the religious left, I suspect their party will split more deeply than the GOP.