Month: July 2008

Not just using former Soviet camps in Eastern Europe to torture prisoners, but copying Communist Chinese torture techniques from the 1950s:

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

So Reagan’s alleged heir came to follow the moral strictures of Communist totalitarians. And note: the torture methods were designed to elicit false confessions. We have no assurance that the intelligence conjured up by this brutality is anything more than what Dick Cheney wanted it to be. (That’s how he likes his intelligence, of course. Whatever he wants reality to be.)

But one thing is at least clear. The people who committed this form of "enhanced interrogation" knew full well it was torture. And they used that word. It’s a good one. And it means what it says.

Still a hack.

Hitchens starts a book drive.

It’s called "Atlantic Exchange" and it’s a select group of readers who are asked how they interact with the magazine and website through online surveys. If you’re interested, the details are here.

Al Giordano isn’t buying it.

I’m afraid it’s hopelessly muddled. Josh Patashnik does his best here to rebut Ramesh Ponnuru’s assertion that "the only way to square [Obama’s positions on same-sex marriage] would be for Obama to say that he opposes same-sex marriage as a religious or moral matter, but supports it as public policy. He is, that is, ‘personally opposed.’" But it’s a strain. Dale Carpenter adds:

Assuming that Obama’s opposition to gay marriage is not simply "personal," but is also a matter of public policy, I find Obama’s current position perplexing. He opposes a referendum that would simply enshrine his purported public-policy view that marriage is between a man and a woman because, he says, it is "discriminatory."

But how is the proposed amendment any more "discriminatory" than his own position? His position is that marriage is between a man and woman; the proposed amendment says that marriage is "between a man and a woman."

I think the only plausible explanation is that Obama supports marriage equality but has decided not to say so for purely political reasons. Even his own ex-church supports it, for goodness’ sake. For the record, this isn’t a new position, tacking to the center. He has long held this incoherent position. And Obama knows what coherence is.

E.M. Forster got to Wall-E’s message a long time ago:

As in WALL-E, “The Machine Stops” is set on a future Earth whose surface has been blasted into inhabitability by waste and pollution. Writing when radio was in its infancy, Forster (best known for his novel A Passage to India) imagined an intermediated hypercivilization in which people connect to one another through electronic screens—a videoconferencing dystopia unnervingly reminiscent of some of today’s social media. While WALL-E’s human population has escaped into space, in Forster’s tale they have created a vast subterranean civilization. In both stories, however, humanity has grown fat and sessile thanks to automated systems that serve their every need. Whisked from screen to screen in automated chairs, they’re unable to interact with the world without electronic mediation. And in both stories, the systems break down.

You gotta love this:

The key difference [between Obama’s and Reagan’s rhetoric] is that invoking scripture in order to justify shrinking government at home and liberating mankind from collectivism abroad is quite different than invoking government to justify an enormous expansion of the state into people’s lives.

"An enormous expansion of the state into people’s lives". What does Jonah think Bush has been doing these past eight years?

Reihan wonders about Obama’s stance on gay rights:

So as of now, Obama has staked out a strongly Sullivanian position, yet my understanding is that he personally opposes same-sex marriage. I’d be eager to know why — does this parallel his trade rhetoric, where things get amplified and overheated in the course of a campaign?

I have yet to figure out why exactly, except as either an amorphous respect for tradition or as a political necessity. Or both.