Month: September 2008

A reader writes:

I am a trained Army-Interrogator (Human Intelligence Collector, MOS 35M).  When Sen. McCain talked about torture Friday night, that was a really important moment that I don’t think is getting enough play so far in the reaction. It’s not just because he articulated the rules that we must act by – at least those of us in the Department of Defense (not CIA obviously) – but because he clearly separated himself from the Bush-Cheney axis.

That’s extremely important for our community.

For obvious reasons, politics aside, McCain is an icon in our community for what he went through in Vietnam. It’s been extremely uncomfortable having him implicitly come down on the side of torture. To have him state explicitly that we cannot torture, I though was a genuine, powerful and extremely important moment.

I agree. I am angry that McCain betrayed the intelligence community and all of us by signing onto CIA torture in 2006. I stuck with him after that because I felt he was essential to the vital struggle to return the US to the community of civilized nations. But with his disgusting, reckless campaign since July, he lost me for good. Nonetheless, the issue of torture is so paramount and so core to the meaning and integrity of America that his stand – even now – against it deserves praise and support.

Notice too how the military and intelligence professionals have been in agony over this president’s war crimes. They long for an American worthy of that name to become president again. They deserve better – as do the troops.

They need a translator in a pinch. She can do that!

Alan Jacobs thoughtfully counters Joe Carter.

Above is the US population in rice: one grain = one person. It’s from a new show in Birmingham, which uses 112 tonnes of rice altogether. More here.

Pethokoukis predicts he or she will have been against the bailout:

Newt Gingrich said voting for the bailout will break against candidates in 2010 and beyond when voters see how destructive it is to the economy. And that’s the thing. While the bailout, if Paulson and Bernanke are to be believed, may prevent a financial meltdown, it will not by itself return America to prosperity. The labor market is clearly weakening, and is the last thing to turn around once an economy does regain momentum. So there’s a good chance that a perturbed public, currently down on the bailout, will view it as an expensive flop by the time the midterm elections roll around. They will hold its supporters accountable.

Reihan is fed up:

I’m really tired of Barack Obama and John McCain. Seriously. No more. I was telling my persuasive conservative friend the other day that I really wish this election pitted Vladimir Putin against Alvaro Uribe. Because let me tell you: I’m for Uribe all the way. Uribe ’08!

Given that we’re in a state of national emergency, I see no reason not to suspend the constitutional provisions that would keep a sitting foreign head of state from becoming president. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I am fully confident that Uribe would swiftly crush the rebellion in the northern two-thirds of the United States. This “Canadian government,” headquartered in Ottawa, even prints its own currency in open defiance of our sovereign rights! My understanding is that rebel leader Subcommandante Stephen Harper is interested in “warm relations” with his “neighbors to the south,” to which I say: eat tank tread, rebel scum.

Ralph Nader has now adopted Mike Gravel’s media strategy.

Fallows’s final assessment:

When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.

I’m with Jim. I have a feeling this was it. Fallows continues:

In each of those cases, a fresh, new candidate (although chronologically older in Reagan’s case) had been gathering momentum at a time of general dissatisfaction with the "four more years" option of sticking with the incumbent party. The question was whether the challenger could stand as an equal with the more experienced, tested, and familiar figure. In each of those cases, the challenger passed the test — not necessarily by "winning" the debate, either on logical points or in immediate audience or polling reactions, but by subtly reassuring doubters on the basic issue of whether he was a plausible occupant of the White House and commander in chief.

I think that’s how this debate will be seen.

Coates has a beaut of a post on Palin.

Dulwich, England, 7 am.