Month: February 2010

Reihan and Chait go another round.

A reader writes:

So I've been catching up on the events of Joe Stack, when I turn to my local paper and come across this. Now, I think these two are idiots, and are probably implicit.  Are they 'domestic terrorists'?

If they caused undue mental anguish to the researchers, sure.  Otherwise, they're vandals.  But that's besides the point.  Here you have two idiots smashing computers and freeing animals described as domestic terrorists several times in the article, while Joe Stack, who does actual damage to a federal building, says "that he ultimately resolved that "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer" is suddenly a pop icon, a hero, or if not that at least 'troubled' or a victim.  They are both on record as wanting to take down the government and claim that violent means are the only ways of doing so.  Plain English used for some, but not others.  Does one need to belong to a group to be defined as a terrorist?  The disparity made me want to punch myself in the face.

Bainbridge calls Ron Paul a "a nutjob that makes Ross Perot look sane":

Here's some of what Ron Paul believes:

• A return to the gold standard, at least in part, even though the evidence is clear that the gold standard made economies highly susceptible to exogenous shocks that destabilized them
• The income tax is Communistic
• Isolationism
• North American free trade will lead to "a fascist elite’s dream come true," even though his goal of kicking out the undocumented population is what would really require a police state
• Withdrawal from UN and NATO
• Elimination of the Federal Reserve
• Admiration for paleolibertarians like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises

I agree with Paul on a few issues, such as abortion and the "war" on drugs, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. America is a center-right country who majority will not embrace a paleo/Capital L Libertarian like Paul no matter what the CPAC folks might think.

Frum also tackles Paul over the gold standard. Tom Schaller thinks Paul is animating extremism on the right:

Five months ago in this space, I speculated that this new conservative movement is fueled to a significant degree by a lot of ginned up former Ron Paul supporters. I mentioned and quoted at length from Dana Goldstein's fanstastic reporting that connected the Tea Party movement to residual Ron Paulites. When is the national media going to finally make these connections? Instead, the kooky, historically revisionist, apocalyptic ideas of Glenn Beck and Ron Paul are treated with equivalency to those of the majority Democratic Party in Washington and–here's the key point–these movement activists and their ideas are often discussed without much mention of their connections to Beck or Paul.

J.P. Green labels Paul supporters racist:

It can be argued that what many conservatives like about Paul is not his racism, but his sledgehammer government-bashing. Nonetheless, the CPAC vote does show that too many of them are either (a.) ignorant of Paul's long association with racist ideas, or (b.) know about it, but don't care. Both options suggest a high tolerance for racism, whether it's caused by ignorance or moral myopia.

Patrick Ruffini defends Paul, in part:

While I won't necessarily be rooting for a Paul 2012 candidacy, I *like* the fact that CPAC was shaken up, for two big reasons. 

First, it shows that Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty are engaging constructively in the conservative movement. In 2007, the Paulites were an oppositional force trying to submarine the GOP's commitment to the war on terror, thus threatening traditional conservatives. Today, libertarians and conservatives have come together against Obama's endless expansion of the State, with Ron Paul supporters supplying creative organizing tactics and boots on the ground. 

This leads into my second reason: in terms of grassroots organization, Paul supporters are some of the best — if not the best — that we have. The iconography of the tea party movement is heavily libertarian (think the Gadsden Flag) and that's no coincidence. If you broke down the organizers and even those in attendance, you'd find more than your fair share of Ron Paul supporters.

A reader writes:

As I hail from Argentina, it struck me that our good friend Ryan's last name is just so ready for parody.  "Sorba" means to sip, slurp, soak up.  Ah, the possibilities.  So if any English language speakers felt like giving Mr. Sorba the Santorum treatment…

Von at Obsidian Wings lets Reynolds have it:

In answer to your question, Professor Reynolds: Yes. If the US Government defaults on its obligations, the US will be forced to run a balanced budget. This because no one will lend a single dime to the US. Kinda like Zimbabwe. Which is not a good thing. (Ask Zimbabwe.) By the way: I don't know what you were hoping for, but I don't think that Bruce Bartlett's response to your "idea" is intemperate. He's pretty much right on. You're suggesting the equivalent of: "If we kill the patient, he'll be cancer free!"…Do you expect a sensitive correction?

Stan Collender, Bruce Bartlett's blog-mate, adds some helpful analysis:

[T]here's no guarantee that spending would be cut as Reynolds is assuming if the U.S. defaulted on its current debt and found itself unable to borrow.  Tax increases would be at least as likely.

From the OPR Report:

"What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? … Is that a power that the president could legally—"

"Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report.

"Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions."

"To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again.

"Sure," said Yoo.

Yoo is not endorsing a massacre in a village. He is merely saying that the president of the United States has the inherent constitutional power to order such a thing in wartime if he so wishes. There is no law and no treaty that can properly prevent the executive branch from ordering such a thing. No domestic or international law.

The picture above is of Lidice, where another executive whose power trumped all law and all treaties in wartime commanded an army that, upon entering the town of Lidice, on June 10, 1942, murdered all 192 men over 16 years of age from the village on the spot. Below is a more recent example in American history of a massacre of a village, My Lai, in Vietnam:

Again, I am not saying that Yoo approves of such a thing, just that he believes that this is what presidential power inherently permits in wartime. If the president had ordered the massacre directly, because he believed it tactically necessary for national security, it would have been totally legal and constitutional – and no crime would have been committed by anyone under his command.

And in the war Yoo is referring to, the war on terror, there is no conceivable end to this power since there is no formal enemy to surrender, and there is no geographical limit to this power, including the United States, where the war on terror exists, where villages of Muslims, accused of being terror suspects, have already been identified. 

Yoo believes the Founders of the United States wanted the presidency to have this kind of power. He believes they threw off a monarchy in order to create a presidency with no legal bounds on it if such a president alone declared a war without end and alone has the power to name its enemies and its location.

Yglesias:

I will say on behalf of Yoo that there’s something a bit odd about the dialectic that led so much opprobrium to attach to him personally. The crux of the matter is that serious violations of domestic and international law were committed thanks to orders given at the highest level. But it would be politically unthinkable to hold the front-line perpetrators of the torture accountable while ignoring the fact that their conduct was specifically authorized by the relevant officials. And it would also be politically unthinkable to put Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. on trial for their lawbreaking. So the idea of John Yoo as the villain began to take shape. And in the end it looks like even he’ll get away. People will make some noise about how maybe he should lose his job at Berkeley, but in the end I’m pretty sure he’ll keep it.

I have never argued that Yoo should be a scapegoat. I believe this responsibility lies with Bush and Cheney first and foremost. But those who twisted the law and constitution of the United States to provide a golden shield for such actions are, as at Nuremberg, legally responsible and accountable.

 

Bmaz at Empty Wheel looks at David Margolis’s conflict of interest:

Time after time the reports of frustration with the OPR process wind up with one name involved: David Margolis. Margolis is not even part of the OPR, yet controls every significant report emanating from the OPR and, by his own admission, has been the sole gatekeeper for any findings of misconduct “since the 1990s”.

If Margolis has ever found misconduct by higher level officials in the department, I cannot find it. Of course that is not surprising in light of the secrecy and lack of transparency testified to by Glen Fine. Secrecy and opaqueness proudly wielded and ordered at the command of – you guessed it – David Margolis, who is concerned that his department’s attorneys not be “humiliated”. Public disclosure and trust is such a quaint thing compared to protecting your own it seems for Mr. Margolis.

(Photos: a stress position authorized by Dick Cheney of a terror suspect never formally charged with any crime and a stress position as authorized by the Peruvian Inquisition. The victims of the Inquisition’s stress positions were not also subject to forced nudity and sexual humiliation. These were added by Cheney and Runsfeld specifically to offend Muslim suspects. For more on the exact parallels in techniques, see here.)

Rob Tisinai illuminates more ghastly provisions in the Uganda bill:

Meanwhile, more gays are being arrested in Malawi. And Doug Ireland has a must-read report on a sudden and terrifying anti-gay pogrom in Kenya:

In the coastal town of Mtwapa in Kenya’s Kilifi district, media hysteria and outrage by clerics over a non-existent gay wedding whipped up mob violence that began on February 12, unleashing a house-to-house witch hunt by anti-gay vigilantes, street attacks targeting gay men, the sacking of an AIDS-fighting medical center, and a widening wave of ultra-homophobic national media coverage.

Many gay men have gone into hiding or fled the area. From Nairobi, the nation’s capital, Denis Nzioka, a prominent 24-year-old gay activist, told Gay City News, “Ever since the outburst of violence in Mtwapa, gay people have had to fear for their lives. Vigilante groups are hunting down gay men, going door to door, and anyone who is overly flamboyant is attacked in the street.”

… A former member of Kenya’s parliament, Omar Masumbuko, was one of several politicians who also addressed the mob. “He said that homosexuality must be stopped and every means used to make that happen,” according to the GALCK-KHRC report. “He told the crowd they should not even bother to bring the homosexuals they find to the police station but should take care of the issue themselves,”

Sodomy and sex “against the order of nature” are crimes in Kenya, punishable by ten years in prison, under a law inherited from the period of British colonial rule, which ended in 1963.

February 12 was punctuated by numerous attacks on gay people. At 8 that morning, before leading the mob attack on the KEMRI clinic, Faridi was joined by police in storming and ransacking the home of a gay man, who was arrested along with a friend who was visiting from abroad. While searching the guest’s luggage, they found jewelry that included some rings. Faridi immediately said that these were the rings for the intended wedding.

In a separate incident, a 23-year-old security guard was descending from a bus heading toward the center of Mtwapa when he was set upon by a mob that threatened him with death and beat him senseless. A female sex worker tried to protect him with her body and yelled at the crowd that they can’t kill people like that and that the man had not done anything, but the mob doused the man with kerosene, preparing to burn him alive. At this point the police arrived, but instead of arresting anyone in the mob, they arrested the man it had attacked. The bloodied, dazed man was incarcerated and denied medical attention.

AP's Ron Fournier writes the following in the Washington Post:

On the Daily Kos Web site, one blogger noted the standing ovation given to "the self-confessed war criminal Dick Cheney." Whatever one might think of Cheney's interrogation policies, the former vice president has never been charged with a war crime, much less confessed to one.

Fournier is right that actual charges have not yet been filed in Cheney's case – although they were in the case of the "Bush Six" – Gonzales, Yoo, Feith, Bybee, Haynes and Addington. Because all these men were acting directly under Cheney's orders, it is only a matter of time, especially after the OPR report, that charges will be filed against Cheney. And a judicial investigation into Cheney's war crimes has been opened by the same judge who charged Pinochet with war crimes:

Judge Baltasar Garzon will probe the "perpetrators, the instigators, the necessary collaborators and accomplices" to crimes of torture… Garzon said that documents declassified by the US administration and carried by US media "have revealed what was previously a suspicion: the existence of an authorised and systematic programme of torture and mistreatment of persons deprived of their freedom" that flouts international conventions.

This points to "the possible existence of concerted actions by the US administration for the execution of a multitude of crimes of torture against persons deprived of their freedom in Guantanamo and other prisons including that of Bagram" in Afghanistan.

Who were the specific targets of that probe?

According to [Philippe Sands'] sources the targets of this investigation include Condoleeza Rice and Richard B. Cheney. What is likely to happen next is for the investigation to proceed; if unappealed, a court date will be set, and the targets will be advised to appear. Garzón may then issue an arrest warrant that will be valid, at least in Spain, but possibly other countries.

As to being a "self-confessed" war criminal, Fournier is simply wrong, On two specific occasions, under the artful questioning of Jon Karl of ABC News, Cheney has indicated he supported waterboarding, which is a war crime according to every single instance in international and domestic law, the Geneva Conventions and the Reagan-signed UN Convention against Torture.