Month: April 2009

When America Executed Waterboarders For War Crimes

Paul Begala gets his facts straight:

After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."

Now, waterboarders, according to John McCain's former spokesman, are American heroes.

Reagan On Torture Prosecutions

From his signing statement ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984:

“The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

My italics. Reagan was admant about prosecuting torture, but also prosecuting inhuman treatment that some might claim was not full-on torture. Now go read National Review or The Weekly Standard. And look what has happened to conservatism in America.

The Cannabis Closet: Addiction, Ctd.

A reader writes:

Thanks for posting the full spectrum of effects that marijuana has on users. What's interesting is that even the addiction stories defuse the devil weed myth, because it turns out that marijuana is just another substance that affects different people differently. Just like alcohol, sugar, caffeine, tobacco or painkillers, marijuana can be used in moderation by people who are able to use it that way, and can be used in excess to cover up troubling emotional issues or perceived inadequacies by people who are prone to addiction. The idea that eradicating the drugs will solve the drug problem is the lie at the root of the War on Drugs. Drug addiction is never about the drug, it's about people coming to grips with the pain of existence. Legalizing marijuana will help to bring this into the light and enable addicts to seek and receive help without the fear of arrest or criminal record.

Bad Positioning

Christopher Orr finds Palin's current maneuvers very odd:

The obvious, obvious play for her was to move to the center to reassure moderates that she wasn't her far-right caricature and reestablish some of the different-kind-of-Republican glow that once attracted reformist conservatives such as Reihan. Instead, she's been performing partisan panders so acrobatic they'd embarrass Mitt Romney–who, unlike Palin, actually needs to build credibility on the right. Whoever is advising her these days–assuming she's taking anyone's advice at all–is hammering early nails into the coffin of her future prospects.

What Torture Proponents Have To Prove

Sullivan583

A.L. lays it all out:

…even if we were starting from a blank slate and we could simply ignore the fact that techniques like waterboarding are proscribed by numerous laws and treaties, to make a policy case for the use of such techniques, you would have to do much more than establish that they occasionally have produced actionable intelligence. Among other things, you would have to prove that 1) such information could not have been extracted using other means, 2) that the misinformation produced by such methods doesn't overwhelm the accurate information to the point of rending the whole exercise pointless, 3) that the strategic costs of using such techniques (international outrage, increased radicalization of the Muslim world, increased danger to U.S. troops, etc.) don't outweigh the benefits, and 4) the value of the information produced is worth the tradeoff of never being able to use that information (or the fruits thereof) in court and severely jeopardizing any hope of ever convicting that individual in any constitutionally compliant legal proceeding.

The View From Your Recession

A reader writes:

I am a 26-year old college graduate currently working as an assistant English teacher in Tottori, Japan.  My job mostly consists of entertaining junior high school students, for which I get paid almost 40k a year. Even though the recession has hit Japan pretty hard, it hasn’t affected us too much out here in “inaka” (the countryside.)  I have it far better out here in Japan than many of my friends back home in the States.

Health insurance is mandatory for Japanese residents, thus they have a national health insurance option for those who are unemployed.  I’m on the “social health insurance” program, because I’m technically a civil servant.  Despite being a bit pricey, about $300 a month for me, I’ve never had to worry about my personal health since I arrived here.  Last year I had a 39 degree fever (over 102 degrees Fahrenheit) and the doctor’s visit and medications cost me about $60.  I was in the waiting room for less than fifteen minutes.  For what we pay, the quality of health care that my friends and I have received has been outstanding.

So it surprised most of them when I decided to come home in August and not re-contract for another year.  Even though I absolutely love my job, and common sense tells me that I’d be a complete idiot to give all this up, I feel like I need to get on with my life.  I want to go to grad school and get my masters degree, and I want to be there for my family, whom I’ve missed terribly for the past two years.  I also have a wonderful boyfriend who’s been more patient and flexible than I could have hoped for.

I have to admit, I’m almost scared shitless about coming back to the U.S, from what I’ve heard on the news and from people back home.  One of my little brother’s friends from high school recently hanged himself after losing a number of jobs and moving from couch to couch for the past couple of months.

Nonetheless, I’m going to be optimistic.  I’m healthy, I have no debt whatsoever, and I’ve managed to save a decent amount of money.  I have it much better now than my mother did when she was my age.  She came to the U.S. by herself from communist Romania, unable to speak English and with barely any money.  Today she has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Chicago, and is now very comfortably retired in a house that is completely paid off.  We really do live in a great country.  If she can pull it off, I don’t see why any of us can’t.