Month: May 2009

Lawrence Wilkerson has a must-read on what he now believes is the real reason Cheney was so insistent on torturing prisoners – he needed proof of an al Qaeda-Saddam connection to justify the war he had already decided to wage. This really is the explosive charge, because it reveals the real danger of torture in the hands of big government: it means our leaders can manufacture facts to justify anything. It gives them the crucial weapon they need to, as Ron Suskind's famous source explained, "create reality":

What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods.

The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)

My immediate shock that Obama would be willing to suppress evidence of prisoner abuse, torture and even murder – stunningly widespread in the Bush-led military – somewhat distracted me from the politics of this. That is often a mistake with Obama who both takes his own responsibilities as commander-in-chief seriously and always appears to be playing a longer game than his opponents.

But this is a blog, written in real time, so allow me some secondary thoughts after a night to sleep on it. In the cold light of morning, it doesn't seem quite so offensive. In fact, the rope-a-dope this time might be on us.

The critical point of releasing the photos is that they will help break through to the American public just how endemic the abuse and torture of prisoners under Bush was. It was everywhere, in every field of combat, committed by every part of the armed services, and in identical fashion: no blood no foul, along the lines of the torture and abuse techniques specifically authorized by Bush. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld sent a very clear message that spread throughout the entire military and CIA: terrorists are beneath even baseline Geneva protections, any prisoner might be a terrorist, so do to them what you will. Rewards will go to those who secure "intelligence" regardless of how it's gotten. Freeze them, beat them, starve them, shackle them, heat them, strip them, destroy them. As an email sent to all military interrogators in Iraq put it, "The gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees. Col. Boltz"—Colonel Steven Boltz, the deputy MI commander in Iraq—"has made it clear that we want these individuals broken."

And so they broke them. The point of the photos is not to demonstrate more gore; it is to have a fresh opening to explain to Americans just how widespread this was, and also to remind them that this led to the deaths of scores. But against this important public interest, the president has another duty – to his soldiers in the line of fire. These soldiers deserve a chance to do their astonishingly difficult job without inflaming those who might be inspired to kill and attack them. I see no reason to suspect that Obama is not genuine about this question, and it's a fair factor to consider. More importantly, he has not said that suppressing the photos at this time means suppressing them for ever, and has not indicated that he will prevent justice being done. In fact, his statement said the opposite.

The pro-torture right will say this call is obvious. It isn't. It's very hard. When you have inherited a policy of war crimes, and you are still fighting a war, balancing accountability with responsibility is tough. I think, having made our point, we should cut the man some slack on this. What matters is holding those who destroyed America's moral standing responsible. That is a struggle for patriots to engage, a Truth Commission to study, and the attorney-general to pursue, while allowing the president to do his job as commander-in-chief. 

I will note this too about the politics. If Obama wants to get the truth out, and does not want to be slimed as a partisan avenger (the propaganda line from the Rovians), it helps him to have symbolic spats with those of us who believe we have no choice but to confront the war crimes of the last administration. This has long been his mojo: give symbolic gifts to your opponents while retaining the core issue. These gestures – Rick Warren dinner with Bill Kristol, summits with Cantor – help insulate him from being drawn into them kind of partisan fight the Rove right likes to fight. In this rope, in other words, the anti-torture movement is the current dope.

Fine. Rope-A-Dope us. But let us not let the responsible parties get away with torture, abuse and murder. And let us play a smart and relentless long game as well.

(Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty.)

Posner looks at possible post-recession fiscal pain:

The government has created a great deal of money, and borrowed a great deal of money, to finance the bailouts and the stimulus package and increase the amount of money in circulation (to help push down interest rates). If when demand rises the banks lend their $800-plus billion in excess reserves, the ratio of money in circulation to the output of goods and services is likely to rise–and this will mean inflation.

The ratio will rise further if the government decides to finance some of the huge additional debt that it is incurring as a result of its anti-depression expenditures by increasing the money supply, that is, by inflation, which is a form of taxation–taxation of cash balances. A low rate of inflation is manageable and does little economic harm, but a high rate is very harmful, and can be broken usually only at the cost of a sharp recession (consequent upon a sharp rise in interest rates in order to reduce the amount of lending and hence the amount of money in circulation). And the recession might (as in 1937) disrupt a recovery from the depression. These costs have to balanced against the benefits of the anti-depression programs; unfortunately only guesses are possible.

Why does one find the resilience of male horniness, and near-comic sexual objectification of the female form oddly comforting? This may be the first work of sculpture made by modern humans still extant. It was worn as a pendant. And it quite obviously turned someone on.

Nat Hentoff takes a stand. Its futile at this point, I fear. The identity-industrial complex demands these laws and any opposition to them is portrayed as anti-minority (or in the case of those applying to gender, anti-everyone). On the gay issue, there's a map after the jump showing which states already have such laws on the books. The vast majority of gays are already protected. But that wouldn't give HRC a fund-raising tool.

     State has hate crimes laws but do not recognize sexual orientation or gender identity as a basis for bias.      Sexual orientation is a protected class for the purpose of data collection about hate crimes.      Sexual orientation is a protected class for the purpose of hate crime legislation.      Sexual orientation and gender identity is a protected class for the purpose of hate crime legislation.

Matt Steinglass wants both cap and trade and a carbon tax. He makes his case for C&T:

The carbon tax reduces carbon emissions by making it more expensive to burn fossil fuels. But it does nothing about all these other sources of greenhouse-causing emissions. Only cap and trade does.

Cap and trade systems do this by creating tradable carbon credits. Under the Kyoto Protocols’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), greenhouse-emissions-reducing projects like forest preservation can submit their projects for stringent review by UNFCCC-licensed assessors. If their projects pass review, they are granted certified carbon credits measured in an equivalent reduction of CO2. Ongoing projects are granted permanent credits, subject to periodic review; projects which reduce a fixed amount of CO2 are granted credits which expire after a period of time. The tradable credits are worth money on the European carbon emissions credit exchange and other trading floors, where they are purchased by coal-fired electric plants and other carbon emitters. There are currently 1431 certified CDM projects, which reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 220 million tons of CO2 per year — about 5% of the total annual emissions of the European Union. These projects owe their existence to the European CEC exchange; a US cap-and-trade system would create many more of them. Thus cap-and-trade encourages reduction of greenhouse emissions in all sorts of ways that wouldn’t happen with only a carbon tax.

Dan Savage corrects me:

Obama has acknowledged the breakthroughs in civil rights for gay Americans! He told a joke about it at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this weekend. (You were there, Andrew, didn’t you catch it?) Barack Obama condescended to use marriage equality as a punch line; he made, essentially, a Chuck & Larry joke about two straight dudes—Obama and Axelrod—running off to Iowa to “make it official” with the queers and their “partners.” And that’s hilarious, you see, because Obama and Axelrod aren’t actually homos! So they don’t need to go to Iowa to make it official! They can get married—to women—in all fifty states! HA!

The more I think about the joke Obama told at the WHCD the more ticked off I get.

We’re witnessing rapid and historic progress in the fight for gay equality and Barack Obama, who campaigned on our issues and described himself as a “fierce advocate” of gay and lesbian equality, hasn’t acknowledged the breakthroughs in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in a setting or a with comments that are in any way equal to the significance of this historic moment. The best he can do—all he’s willing to do—is toss off an Adam-Sandler-level joke.

So here’s what I would’ve said if I’d been prepared for the question: Our lives, our families, and our rights are not a joke, Mr. President. The discrimination faced by gay people—whether coupled and single—is distressingly real and persists even for same-sex couples in Iowa and other states where gay marriage is legal. Stop fucking around and start delivering on your campaign promises to us, to our families, and to our children.

Ron Brownstein detects a generational wipe-out:

He represents the country they live in. Rush Limbaugh doesn't.

Max Borders has a new agenda for the GOP. It's a marked improvement from the current GOP boilerplate.

Nate Silver wonders about the party intelligence gap:

I think it's real. It's never been that easy being an intellectual on the right. I spent most of my college and grad school years in mortal combat. But the degeneracy of the Republican party today makes every thinking person I know wince. It doesn't debunk conservative ideas about the failures of government solutions, the wisdom of markets, the necessity for sound money and balanced budgets, or the need for prudence in foreign policy. But the association with these debt-ridden, torture-loving, big government authoritarians is awful. And people are only human. What serious thinker wants to support the party of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck?