Category: The Dish

Prime minister Blair and George W. Bush are good friends for a reason. they both have contempt for the messy process of constitutional democracy, while, of course, urging it on every Muslim in the Middle East. An old friend, Danny Finkelstein, explains what’s going on.

The Concerned Women for America are now publishing articles by writers whose primary identification is with Christian Reconstructionists. The writer is clearly a follower of R.J. Rushdoony, a central figure in Reconstructionism. He backs anti-blasphemy laws. Reconstructionists are people who want to abandon the Constitution and institute Old Testament Biblical law – stoning adulterers, executing homosexuals, etc. We’re often told that the religious right are not theocrats. But CWFA is a mainstream part of the religious right. And if the reconstructionists are not theocrats, who on earth is?

Many are now discussing more paranoid theories as to what happened in a shooting accident in Texas. The most persuasive of these is that Cheney had had a few when shooting and kept the press and cops at bay while he sobered up. I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, but in general, I favor the Occam’s Razor explanation. You don’t need alcohol to explain his behavior. Dick Cheney’s behavior in this incident is exactly the same as his behavior elsewhere. He thinks he’s answerable to no one. He doesn’t just disagree with his critics; he has complete contempt for them. The reason he didn’t contact the police or perform routine notification of the press is that he’s Dick Cheney. Why should he deign to tell anyone? It’s his private life; and he has a war to run, detainees to order tortured, phones to tap, laws to break. And he may well believe he is doing all this for the good – because we face a dangerous enemy and only he, in his mind, has the capacity to stop it. This afternoon, he will give Brit Hume an audience. The Prince-Regent will not deign to be interviewed by a journalist not actually a daily spinner for the administration, let alone subject himself to a press conference, where he might be forced to answer real questions. And this set-up, in which an arrogant, unreachable, all-powerful vice-president determines critical policy decisions (most of which have proved nothing less than calamitous), is a troubling one in a democracy. What Cheney represents is the democratic danger of the vice-presidency becoming much more powerful than it was ever designed to be. And in Cheney, it has found a man eager to press the limits.

On Monday, Mike Crowley asked:

How long before the Drudge Report links to an old story about some Democrat’s forgotten hunting accident? ("FLASH: DEMOCRATIC SENATOR ACCIDENTALLY SHOT COLLEAGUE IN 1999.") The over-under is 10 a.m. tomorrow. (I say "under"….)

Wrong! It wasn’t till this morning that Drudge ran:

FLASHBACK: Dem Leader Reid Hid Stroke News For 3 days…

Do better next time, Mike. You too, Matt.

Here is graphic evidence of what the new Bush-Cheney standards of conduct toward military detainees has led to. Video here. This is still a fraction of the images that are still tied up in legal wrangles. The biggest news to me is six corpses. I thought there was only one at Abu Ghraib (though many more elsewhere, killed during "interrogation"). But given the fact that no truly independent study has been conducted into the Pentagon’s policies under Bush, we still only have limited understanding of what went on. These images should tear at the heart of everyone who cares about America, the West, and the honor of the vast majority of soldiers in the military, men and women ordered to implement policies that violate the most basic ethical rules and up-end decades of American decency. Just remember what this president has said: "We do not torture." That blood you see below will be explained away. More scapegoating of low-level grunts will occur. "We do not torture." Who are you going to believe? The president or your lying eyes?

Speaking of Abu Ghraib … in Gitmo, one source is responsible for the case against at least thirty other alleged "enemy combatants." That source is one Mohamed al-Kahtani, a man who was a very legitimate suspect, and fully merited detainment. But notice how the other names were confirmed:

"On August 8, 2002, Detainee 063 [al-Kahtani] was moved into an ‘isolation facility,’ where he stayed for the next 160 days, his cell continually flooded with light, his only human contact with interrogators and guards. He was questioned for 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 out of 54 straight days; he was threatened with a menacing dog; he was forced to wear a bra while thong panties were placed upon his head; he was leashed and ordered to perform dog tricks; he was stripped naked in front of women; he was taunted that his sister and mother were whores and that he was gay…

[At that point, the FBI concluded that he] "evidenc[ed] behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to nonexistent people, reporting hearing voices, cowering in a corner of his cell covered with a sheet for hours on end.)"

Either the man was mentally unstable before he was "interrogated" or the interrogation made him insane. In fact, who on earth could go through what he did and stay sane? At least thirty other people lie in prison indefinitely because of this unhinged man’s testimony. In many Gitmo cases, "a U.S. officer told the National Journal he looked at the men’s files and it showed no evidence they had been in Afghanistan at the time." Check out this transcript for one of the tribunal hearings, published by Eric Umansky. It’s not unusual. According to the Journal, Cmdr. James Crisfield, a Navy judge advocate general and the legal adviser to the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, said the following about the testimony deemed kosher by the military: "The evidence considered persuasive by the tribunal is made up almost entirely of hearsay evidence recorded by unidentified individuals with no firsthand knowledge of the events they describe." Just an update on why the Gitmo issue is not going away. And why it shouldn’t.

Their offense? They provided information to their readers, critical to understanding a major global story. That’ll teach them to commit journalism.

Here’s a new and good test for those who have defended freedom of the press in the West against Muslim sensitivities. Now that some extra Abu Ghraib pictures have been released, will they publish them? Or will that offend too many Bush supporters?

Troubling testimony on the Hill yesterday. We have widespread evidence of detainee abuse and widespread lack of any real accountability. Now we have alleged punishment of witnesses to war crimes:

Spec. Samuel Provance, also dressed in Army green, said he was demoted and humiliated after telling a general investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal that senior officers had covered up the full extent of abuse during interrogations of detainees at the U.S. military prison in Iraq.

"Young soldiers were scapegoated while superiors misrepresented what had happened and tried to misdirect attention away from what was really going on," Provance said. "I considered all of this conduct to be dishonorable and inconsistent with the traditions of the Army. I was ashamed and embarrassed to be associated with it."…

Provance made a new allegation about the Abu Ghraib controversy, saying that U.S. forces had captured the 16-year-old son of an Iraqi general under Saddam Hussein, Hamid Zabar, to pressure the general into providing information.

"I was extremely uncomfortable about the way General Zabar had been treated, but particularly the fact that his son had been captured and used in this way," Provance said. "It struck me as morally reprehensible, and I could not understand why our command was doing it."…

Asked what his current military duties are, the former computer specialist replied," The only thing I’ve been doing since being demoted is picking up trash and pulling guard duty."

The soldier’s testimony fits the pattern, however, as revealed in the various government and international inquiries. In this war, the U.S. has clearly used threats against family members to coerce testimony from detainees.

A reader fills me in:

"After your post, I took a quick look around at the Texas criminal code.  Here is the section concerning negligent homicide:

‘Sec. 19.05.Criminally Negligent Homicide. 
(a) A person commits an offense if he causes the death of an individual by criminal negligence.

(b) An offense under this section is a state jail felony.
  "Criminal negligence" is defined in Sec. 6.03(d) thusly:

A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor’s standpoint.’

From my reading of the statute, a person would be criminally negligent only where their conduct was grossly negligent under the circumstances. It isn’t a subjective standard, so it doesn’t matter whether Cheney knew that what he was doing was particularly dangerous. It would be enough if a reasonable person would realize that his actions would create a substantial risk of harm. Given the facts that we have heard concerning the White House so far, Mr. Cheney’s conduct would probably not amount to criminal negligence. But without more facts, who knows? At this point, I would think that Texas officials should be investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting, to find out what actually occurred. I can understand, though, why Mr. Cheney has clammed up till this point. How many public statements would you like to make if you knew they could be introduced as evidence against you in a possible criminal trial?"

Thanks for the info.