Category: The Dish

Nis, Serbia, 3.51pm.

An Althouse special.

Scott Horton calls it quits. Blogging is too time-consuming. I’m grateful to Scott for various pioneering efforts, but most especially on the question of torture. He has corralled and led and investigated and goaded and advised and cajoled on the question. And much of his work has been vindicated. More will be. Blogging is indeed a punishing profession – and this recent bout of ill-health on my part hasn’t been much fun. But it can make a difference. And Scott has.

Obama sits down with the Advocate, after some predictable tantrums from Clinton supporters in the gay press. Money quote:

I actually have been much more vocal on gay issues to general audiences than any other presidential candidate probably in history. What I probably haven’t done as much as the press would like is to put out as many specialized interviews. But that has more to do with our focus on general press than it does on … I promise you the African-American press says the same thing.

He’s right. On every gay issue he’s as good as, if not better than, Clinton. And he does not have her and her husband’s long record of betrayal either. This also means a lot:

An area that I’m very interested in is making sure that federal benefits are available to same-sex couples who have a civil union. I think as more states sign civil union bills into law the federal government should be helping to usher in a time when there’s full equality in terms of what that means for federal benefits.

The Clinton forces have been successful in using the McClurkin affair to sow doubt and fear of Obama among gays. And Clinton follows the classic identity politics playbook of target-niching each interest group. Obama has tried to get beyond it, which is a good thing. Raising gay issues in front of black audiences is further than any candidate has ever gone in defending gay equality in history. (Thank Jeremiah Wright’s influence). And if gay voters actually look at Obama’s record, they will be reassured.

More pertinent: look at his age. The sooner this country’s leadership shifts generations, the more equality gay and lesbian people will have.

Roughly my reaction to the plot as well:

(Hat tip: Dan Savage)

ABC News has a remarkable new report out:

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

What you see above is one of the techniques used at Abu Ghraib, one of the mildest forms of "enhanced interrogation". It was approved by these principals – all along the line to waterboarding. If you ever believed that these kinds of tactics were "improvised" by people at the lowest level of the chain of command and managed to "shock" the president and his senior aides, when they were revealed, then you need to read this story:

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department’s own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.

At one meeting in the summer of 2003 — attended by Vice President Cheney, among others — Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.

Now absorb the fact that many of these techniques, including the one above, were explicitly and in detail, approved by the highest officers in the land. Including Condi Rice. She did so even after Abu Ghraib was known about and after Jack Goldsmith had withdrawn the OLC’s "legal" sanction.

Scott Horton, who worked as Hussein’s counsel in 2006, explains the case. Michelle Malkin, who accused Bilal of being a jihadist-collaborator, remains quiet.

A reader writes:

As an atheist reader of yours, please think of eternity in the eyes of James Joyce, from "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Although he’s talking about hell, imagine an eternity in heaven:

"For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun."

We are lucky to be alive, and life is precious because it’s finite.

"We know that government cannot solve all of our problems, and we don’t expect it to. We don’t want our tax dollars wasted on programs that don’t work or perks for special interests that don’t work for us. We understand that we cannot stop every job from going overseas or build a wall around our economy, and we know that we shouldn’t," – Barack Obama, while advocating a tax hike, and a bail-out of reckless mortgage-owners.

At some point, conservatives will realize what a formidable opponent they now have.

A reader writes:

Quoting you:

"At one point last year, I was worried that Petraeus was being used politically. I was wrong. He’s been a magnificent general, in a near-impossible situation. Ditto Crocker. Along with Patrick Fitzgerald, they strike me as among the most impressive public servants of our time."

Petraeus is being used to a degree, but I think, given the situation he’s in, it’s the price he feels he has to pay.  The reality is that no general would be allowed to serve in his position who was willing to speak out, candidly, against the overall strategy.  If you look at what Petraeus has said about the necessary force strength to maintain a counterinsurgency it’s quite clear he’s aware of the deep flaws in the current strategy.  Given all of that though, he is almost certainly the most qualified general to be doing the job right now, and I think he knows that.

Thus he’s put in an untenable position.  Speak out against Bush and hand off command to somebody who may very well be less qualified, or support the administration position and do the best he can for the troops in the field.  While soldiers have many reasons to join the military, it seems that the most consistent reason for them to fight and continue on day to day is for their fellow soldiers.  My sense is that, as a general, Petraeus bites the political bullet in the interests of doing his best to protect the men under his command. 

Nothing can really be changed about the strategy in Iraq until this administration leaves.  Individual generals can speak out against it, but all this does is expedite their retirement.  So Petraeus stays, implements the best tactics for a poor strategy, and does his best to keep the ship afloat until a new administration can move into the White House.  What else is he supposed to do?