Category: The Dish

A lefty internationalist wants North Korea to launch their missile. Why? Money quote:

Moreover, this New York Times article indicates that the United States is conducting secret talks with the North Korean regime, attempting to dissuade them. One can only hope that talk of "incentives," similar to the six-party talks, is markedly absent from the current discussion. After all, one knows what those ‘incentives’ are: money, mostly, and possibly a peace treaty. Both of these options are undesirable where a holocaust state such as North Korea is concerned.
As this goes to press ‚Äì , er, . . .’server,’ it’s just approaching 9:00 pm here on the Korean peninsula. It’s been about 24 hours since the North Korean regime loaded their Tapedong-2 missile with fuel, meaning that only about 24 more hours of shelf-life remain. So, come on ‘Dear Leader’ Kim, just try it.
Keep it up, sir, and the UN may finally finish the job that it started in the early 1950s.

I wonder of there wasn’t a possibility of a real right-left alliance in America against tyrannies with WMDs after 9/11, if a president had been able to unite the country and the world. I guess we’ll never know. And I take my responsibility for not being cautious enough before the Iraq war.

There’s an engrossing debate beginning between Richard Posner and Geoffrey Stone at the University of Chicago Law School’s blog. Check it out.

It’s a simple picture of a woman on a bus. But she’s wearing no headdress or veil and a Western haircut in Iran. It’s just one of several photos you can find here of the resistance to the theocratic tyranny in Tehran over the past year. The MSM does not provide enough glimpses into the struggle of Iranians against their dictators. We need to remember that we still have allies and friends in the Muslim world. And we must stand by, help finance and support them.

The truth is: none of us really knows. So much of this war is kept from the people on whose behalf it is waged. Some of that is justified. Too much of it isn’t. And the way in which this administration has bungled the detention and imprisonment of suspected and proven terrorists in the war could almost have been designed to erode any trust in them or the system they have constructed. The accumulated evidence certainly doesn’t lead one to feel reassured. Here’s a list of interrogation techniques reliably documented at U.S. detention centers in Guantanamo or Afghanistan, compiled by medical ethicist, Stephen Miles, in a forthcoming book, "Oath Betrayed." His sources are 35,000 pages of FOIAed government documents or credible witness testimony:

Beating; punching with fists; use of truncheons; kicking; slamming against walls; stretching or suspension (to tear ligaments or muscles to cause asphyxia); external electric shocks; forcing prisoners to abase and to urinate on themselves; forced masturbation; forced renunciation of religion; false confessions or accusations; applying urine and feces to prisoners; making verbal threats to a prisoner and his family; denigration of a prisoner’s religion; force-feeding; induced hypothermia and exposure to extreme heat; dietary manipulation; use of sedatives; extreme sleep deprivation; mock executions; water immersion; "water-boarding"; obstruction of the prisoner’s airway; chest compression; thermal burning; rape; dog bites; sexual abuse; forcing a prisoner to watch the abuse or torture of a loved one.

These practices failed in one respect for well over 100 documented human beings. They died.

The Washington Post got it right yesterday:

This political and administrative mess stems directly from Mr. Bush’s decision in the weeks after Sept. 11 to take extraordinary measures against terrorism through the assertion of presidential power, rather than through legislation, court action or diplomacy. His intent was to exclude Congress, the courts and other governments from influencing or even monitoring how foreign detainees were treated. Senior officials, led by Vice President Cheney, argued that this policy would give the administration the flexibility it needed to fight the war effectively. Instead it has done the opposite: Mr. Bush’s policies have deeply tarnished U.S. prestige abroad, inhibited cooperation with allies and prevented justice for al-Qaeda.

The trouble is: the architects of this policy – Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales – are still in power, and unable or unwilling to reverse course and face a real accounting. And so we stagger on, with secrecy lending credibility to the worst possibilities, with abuse documented in every field of conflict, and with the international moral standing of the United States at its lowest ebb since Vietnam. There are two wars right now, it seems to me: one is against Islamist terror; and the other is to protect the constitution and the Geneva Conventions from those who would bypass them to protect us. Both wars are vital; and in some ways, as defenses of our civilization, are the same.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

A reader writes:

I just wanted to tell you that while I was riding the A train in Manhattan the other day I overheard the following conversation between two elderly women:

#1: Did you see Larry King the other night with those priests talking about gays?
#2: Yes I did, what a bunch of silliness. This is what the church is worried about?
#1: Insane, I know. I mean I pray to God that my grandson meets the right boy and settles down.
#2: He’s adorable! He’ll have no problem.
#1: But the way the church preaches, you’d think they want him to be lonely. That British guy certainly put them in their place.

It was here that I could no longer remain silent and chimed in that I was heartened to hear them talk of the lunacy of the church’s position, especially coming from people of their generation. They laughed and elderly lady #2 said: "I remember a quote they taught us in Sunday School. Jesus Christ said "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven". What are the Bush’s and Cheney’s worth? Millions. Why don’t we hear about this "sin"? Why doesn’t Larry King have shows dedicated to the sin of wealth?"

I had reached my stop and thanked them for making my day. I just thought I’d pass this along to the "British guy".

The whole family went to the strangest and funnest black tie dinner and dance in Washington last night. It’s called the "Bark Ball" and it’s a fundraiser for the Washington Humane Society, an astonishing group that rescues thousands of animals each year in the district from abuse or neglect (you can donate here). The guests bring their pooches, and the ballroom was a blur of wagging tails, lopsided bowties, and chewed sequins. This photo is of an elderly beagle, Salome, guarded by a young guest at our table, with his attention focused temporarily elsewhere.

Glenn Reynolds suddenly goes all "librul" on us:

The FBI should understand the importance of distinguishing between terrorists and non-terrorists.

And yet barely a peep from Instapundit for three years over dozens of Guantanamo prisoners (and many more in other secret CIA prisons) whose guilt rests on the flimsiest of hearsay and/or evidence procured by torture. Go figure.

Retired Major General John Batiste commanded the Army’s First Infantry Division, both in Iraq and in Kosovo. He knows who is accountable for the avoidable mayhem in Iraq:

The secretary of defense got the war in Iraq terribly wrong, and he did not set the conditions for success. He rejected the existence of the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty, and sent America to war with insufficient resources to accomplish the mission. Remember that he alone is responsible for what happens or fails to happen in the Department of Defense…

I am a two-time combat veteran in Iraq with many years of experience in peace enforcement operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. My only motivation in speaking out is our great country, our incredible military and their terrific families. I left the military after 31 years of service despite a promising career and promotion in order to speak out, to turn the lights on in a very dark room. I am honor bound to continue to do so. I have been a lifelong Republican.

America went to war in Iraq with the secretary of defense’s plan. He ignored the U.S. Central Command’s deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build his plan, which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency.

Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and grow to where it is today. Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and the decision to stand down the Iraqi security forces.

Three words. You know what they are.

A reader writes:

I was delighted by your inclusion of a Burke reference. Whenever I read about the President’s signing statements, torture policy, phone-tapping, etc in the name of protecting us from terrorism, I always think of this quote made soon after the British East India Company gained formal control over Eastern India:

"I am certain that every means, effectual to preserve India from oppression, is a guard to preserve the British constitution from its worst corruption." – 1783

Burke was a quasi-anti-imperialist. He supported the British Empire, but unlike J S Mill, sought to rule distant lands according to the same liberal political principles used at home, to create a true empire of liberty and equal rights. To do otherwise would threaten a return of unrestrained government power from the imperial periphery to the metropole.
Somehow I doubt Burke will be on Bush’s summer reading list. But as long as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan it should at least be on ours.

Hobbes, Burke, Oakeshott: three pillars of conservatism who reveal how unconservative this presidency truly is.

There are signs of growing influence for the secretary of state. In my view, not a moment too soon. My Times of London column is now posted.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Reuters/Meet The Press.)