Category: Old Dish

The former general and secretary of state strongly backs the McCain Amendment banning abuse and torture of detainees:

KING: We’re back with General Powell, touching a few bases. We hope to have him on quite a bit to talk about a lot of his endeavors.

You publicly broke with the administration earlier this year, supporting Senate amendment 1977, the treatment of detainees. How is that coming along, by the way?

POWELL: Well, I wrote a letter supporting Senator McCain’s amendment. And the day the letter hit, the Senate voted on it and they passed that amendment 90-9. And I think that’s a pretty strong statement on the part of the Senate. And I hope the House responds accordingly.

All that amendment asks for is for American soldiers to follow the Army Field Manual. The field manual contains our doctrine and the way we’re supposed to behave. It’s our doctrine.

(CROSSTALK) POWELL: I have no idea why they would be against it, but the president is against it and the administration is against it because they think it will constrain them in some ways with respect to, I guess, interrogation of detainees.

But we have such a problem in this regard that I think it’s important that the Congress take a stand on this. Congress, under the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, is the body that makes laws and regulations governing the armed forces. They’re not telling the administration what to put in this field manual.

They’re saying, if it’s a field manual and it’s guidance to the troops, what’s wrong with the United States Congress also endorsing that? And so I hope that the amendment does pass either in the defense authorization or the appropriation bill.

Did you hear that, Senators Allard and Inhofe?

“Earlier this year, I received notice that my dues for the District of Columbia Bar were delinquent and as a result my ability to practice law in D.C. had been suspended. I immediately sent the dues in to remedy the delinquency. The nonpayment was not intentioned, and I corrected the situation upon receiving the letter.” – Harriet Miers. Ryan Lizza removes the “details-oriented” qualification from the list.

I cannot say I’m surprised. Bruce Bartlett is an actual fiscal conservative. He has principles. His loyalty is to his ideas, not to the conservative intelligentsia’s think-tank welfare-state. If I were him, I’d be delighted to be fired for dissent. It’s good publicity for his book; and a sign of his integrity. Memo to Bruce: get a blog. The pressure for herd mentality is less intense when you’re in pajamas in the home office; and you don’t have to hide your contempt for the sell-outs and suck-ups who walk by your office every day.

REYNOLDS NAILS IT: I think Instapundit gets to the core of the Miers problem here:

Despite charges of cronyism, Ms. Miers is not simply the president’s crony, but his lawyer — formerly his personal attorney, and now his presidential attorney. This has already given rise to paranoid theories from the left to the effect that Mr. Bush is trying to protect himself from prosecution growing out of the Plame affair or the Iraq war. These theories are unlikely, not least because Ms. Miers’s current position would probably disqualify her from hearing precisely those kinds of cases. And even if she were not disqualified, there might be doubts about her objectivity that would undermine the court’s reputation.

What if Clinton had appointed David Boies to the court? More to the point: I’m not sure the worries from the paranoid left are entirely misplaced. From all I hear, Miers was hardly unaware of the decision to torture detainees and certainly knows a huge amount about the decision by the White House to upend decades of clarity on the matter. Putting her on the court is one way of keeping her – and what she knows – beyond public scrutiny.

Here’s a touching piece that cuts to the core of why abortion is, in my view, morally wrong. Money quote:

In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.
Margaret’s old pediatrician tells me that years ago he used to have a steady stream of patients with Down syndrome. Not anymore. Where did they go, I wonder. On the west side of L.A., they aren’t being born anymore, he says.

We have real debates about sex-selection abortion; if we ever find a gay gene, you can be sure much of the next generation of homosexuals will be aborted; but today, the silent abortion of countless potential human beings who have Down Syndrome is barely discussed. It should be. Note that I’m not saying here that all abortion should be illegal. I’d vote for a law that kept it legal in the first trimester to protect a woman’s ownership of her own body and for pragmatic reasons; and I think majorities in most states would agree, if allowed a vote. But it is always wrong. How can it not be?

Here’s Senator Inhofe’s explanation of his vote to keep torture as an option for the U.S. military:

I understand your concerns and I want to make it unequivocally clear that I do not condone torture. I believe that torture is abhorrent, inexcusable, and unbecoming of a great nation such as ours. Furthermore, torturing captured enemy combatants has proven to produce intelligence that is unreliable. I believe that our soldiers should have the highest standards reasonably allowed and uphold the values that we all, as Americans, share. If any soldier does not measure up to these standards, they should be dismissed from service and anybody who tortures captives should be fully prosecuted.

I voted against Senator McCain’s amendment to the FY 2006 Department of Defense Appropriations because I believe that the amendment is a mistake. Senator McCain’s amendment would put into code our interrogation tactics. We learned from Al-Qaeda training manuals, that Al-Qaeda had learned about our interrogation tactics and were training their terrorists about how to defeat them. This makes the interrogator’s job of obtaining useful and reliable intelligence from captured terrorists much more difficult because the greatest aid to an interrogator is the fear of the unknown. This is why I believe that we should keep our interrogation tactics classified so that other groups are not able to copy what Al-Qaeda did.

Er, Senator, the Army Field Manual 34 – 52, which McCain wants to codify in law, is already public. The amendment only makes clear what is already banned and in the public domain. Nothing classified is revealed. The amendment would allow the Pentagon to improvise within these clear guidelines, and the DoD could also classify certain sections if it wanted to. But, yes, enemy combatants would know that the U.S. won’t abuse, degrade or torture them if captured. They would know that America is better than Saddam or any other Arab dictatorship. Does Inhofe have a problem with that?

“I think it’s past time for there to be a changing of the guard in black leadership in America. People like Farrakhan, Sharpton and Jackson are no better than hustlers, bigots, and crooks. There are hundreds of black leaders who believe in improving the lives of black Americans, and America in general, but the media keeps giving time to the Axis of Irrelevancy.” – Oliver Willis. I thought there had been a change in black leadership. Don’t Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and Condi Rice count?

MAGGIE ON VOLOKH: Maggie Gallagher is guest-blogging about civil marriage and procreation at Volokh. Her posts start here. Dale Carpenter will follow her.

THE INSIDE STORY: Jeremy Greenstock was Britain’s U.N. ambassador during the run-up to the Iraq war. He knows a lot, which is presumably why his book has been suppressed by the British government. Somehow, I think we will find out more and more about what really went on in the coming months and years. I’m still very reluctant to believe that there was conscious pre-meditated deception by Blair or Bush on the subject of Saddam’s alleged WMD arsenal. I think they were very cautious, as any democratic leader after 9/11 should have been. Misreading intelligence is not the same as deliberate distortion. But censoring memoirs of very respected public servants is not exactly going to increase public confidence, is it?

“Dear Captain Fishback,
Keep your head up, sir, and know that here’s one former airborne troop who would be proud to throw you a salute any day.
I have been ashamed of the craven conduct of those now in command of my Army and their dishonorable support and concealment of the unlawful and disgraceful conduct you are fighting to stop. I hope that the SecDef and those on down the chain of command who have shielded the troops who have broken the laws of war and the officers’ responsible for the actions of these troops are merely stupid. If they aren’t, then they will be called upon to explain themselves after the misbehavior they have encouraged has handed Osama and our jihadist enemies their greatest propaganda victory.
If we are to win our fight against Islamic terrorism it will be the actions of honorable warriors such as you, sir, that will lead us to victory. Don’t give in, don’t regret what you have done. For one thing, you have helped restore this soldier’s faith in the willingness of an Army officer to give fully of himself for Duty, Honor and Country.
All The Way, Sir!”

I’m still forwarding emails of support to Ian Fishback, who tried for months and months to get clear guidance from his superiors about treatment of military detainees, and whose letter to Senator McCain helped shift momentum to pass an amendment to codify the existing ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of any prisoners. President Bush and especially vice-president Cheney are determined to prevent the amendment from becoming law. Senator McCain is hanging tough. If you want to send a message of support to Fishback, you still can: supportfishback@aol.com.

The Onion’s on the case. And their Washington reporting is top-notch as well. (This item is just for JPod. Love you, blue eyes.)

These voting numbers are eerily close to the days of Saddam. You might expect overwhelming majorities in favor of the new charter in Shiite and Kurdish provinces, but this still looks fishy. Again: we need to wait to see the full vote count before we can say anything more. But it does look as if Sunni Arab participation was meaningful in the three provinces where Sunni Arabs predominate; and the process can therefore continue. That in itself is a victory of sorts. In how many Arab countries can we speak of anything similarly constitutional or democratic? But rumors of fraud will not exactly lower support for the insurgency, which is a key element in undermining it. Let’s hope that the re-checked results are credible. And that the extremely tough work the troops are doing over there – especially restraining violence during the vote itself – will soon reap more rewards.

“Guantanamo Bay people were implanted in the [Abu Ghraib] prison around October, and they showed up and changed everything. Things got more harsh,” – a source “with intimate knowledge of the events at Abu Ghraib” on Frontline tomorrow night. Then there’s this self-serving but accurate quote from Army Reserve Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was disciplined for allowing the abuse to continue: “They can do whatever they want; they could make it appear any way they want – I will not be silenced. I will continue to ask how they can continue to blame seven rogue soldiers on the nightshift when there is a preponderance of information right now, hard information from a variety of sources, that says otherwise.” Eventually, we’ll find out the truth.