"I don’t care how uncomfortable or terrifying waterboarding may be to the few who deserve it. It’s non-lethal, doesn’t bruise the skin, break the bones, starve the tummy, or stretch the skeleton — yet it can open sealed lips," – pro-war blogger, Laer, at "Cheat-Seeking Missiles."
Notice how torture is defended as something some terror suspects deserve. And notice no awareness that torture can open sealed lips to give us false information. The point of torture is always torture.
It’s Schadenfreude time for the pundit-haters.
Ambers has a nuanced take on the Dumond case.
The buzz is building in the Granite State. Money quote:
"I’m not just talking about the tinfoil hat people either. People are f*cking pissed at the party!"
But the latest poll shows McCain in second place now, ahead of Giuliani, and Paul still around 8 percent, despite amazing fund-raising success recently. A lot will depend on the Dems, I’d say. If Obama wins Iowa – a big if – many Independents may flock to the Democratic primary to vote for him against Her Majesty, hurting McCain. But Paul’s supporters are total loyalists, unlikely to switch to a Dem. In a wide-open field full of anger, that will matter.
Make your own mind up. Danny, like most Europeans, is incredulous. Huckabee is getting touchier about being asked about it. Too bad. You helped make this party; you can lie in it.
That’s in Rasmussen. And Clinton keeps falling. The GOP race is amazing: a total free-for-all, with almost all of the leaders sliding, Huckabee surging and Paul chugging along menacingly behind.
Jim Manzi follows up his first post explaining the problems with a carbon tax with a second. The skepticism endures:
The idealized carbon tax is an almost perfect example of what Coase famously called “blackboard economics”: abstract economic theory that proceeds by ignoring a detailed knowledge of the actual economic system. You can’t separate the “merits” of a carbon tax from the “politics” unless you want to compare the kind of carbon tax you could create in the imaginary world where you are absolute dictator to the alternative policies that have to be developed in the real, messy world of democratic politics. It is this practical recognition that explains why all those “dumb” politicians are blind to the incredible elegance of this academic creation.
"It was a horrible situation, horrible, I feel awful about it in every way. I wish that there was some way I could go back and reverse the clock and put him back in prison. But nobody, not me, not Jim Guy Tucker, not Bill Clinton, not that parole board, could ever imagine what might have transpired," – Mike Huckabee, addressing the Wayne Dumond case at a press conference yesterday.
The full transcript can be read after the jump. Since this issue may well come into the forefront in the coming days, it’s worth getting Huckabee’s considered response. I found it candid.
Governor Huckabee was asked if he had pressured the parole board to release Dumond.
Governor Huckabee: No. I did not. Let me categorically say that I did not. And it’s really interesting, if people want to really look into that record. Here’s the chronology, and here’s the timeline. I’m going to try to do it as briefly as I can, because it’s been delved into repeatedly, normally during an election year.
In 1992, Bill Clinton was governor; Jim Guy Tucker was Lieutenant Governor. And during Bill Clinton’s governorship, while he was campaigning for president, Jim Guy Tucker signed the papers to commute the sentence of Wayne DuMond to parole eligibility. That’s what made him parole eligible in 1992. He had been convicted of rape in Forest City Arkansas, during time of awaiting trial, he was hogtied and castrated; his testicles were later placed in a jar on the desk of a sherriff.
It was a brutal, amazingly, just, complicated case. There were all kinds of questions about the case. Many stories were written; I am sure you can Google all the way back to the 1980s and get more information than you even want on the case. For reasons Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker would have to answer, not me, the sentence was commuted in 1992.
I was not elected to anything at that time; I was a candidate for the United States Senate. I was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1993; in 1996, Wayne DuMond had requested another commutation for time served because the parole board had not granted parole even though he was parole eligible.
Let me make it clear, governors in Arkansas cannot parole anybody. The parole process is separated from governor; the governor can commute a sentence to make it parole eligible. The actual parole is handled completely separate from the governor. Jim Guy Tucker had been convicted of Whitewater related felonies, he resigned. When I came into office in July, the file of Wayne DuMond was on my desk and was transferred to me having been sat there for several months prior to my coming of office.
That request for commutation to time served awaited me. I originally considered it, indicated even an intention I that might grant it. There was and incredible outcry over that, I ultimately requested to deny it. Primarily for the reason I believed there needed to be some supervision; I was not completely confident that it would be appropriate for him to get out without supervision. He had a unblemished prison record – an exemplary record in terms of getting along as an inmate. He had met all the qualifications for being paroled, including having a job lined up, a sponsor with a church I think in Houston, TX, originally.
I chose ultimately not to pardon him. I made a visit to the parole board early in my tenure as a governor at the request of chairman, because you gotta remember, every member of that parole board had been appointed by Jim Guy Tucker or Bill Clinton. Not one of them appointed by me. I’m a new Republican governor, they’d never seen one. I think they had real concern on how to interrelate or how to relate to me. And what kind of attitude I had in general to crime, attitude, parole, etc. So at their invitation, I went to the meeting; someone brought up this case.
Frankly, it was simply part of a broader discussion; I did not ask them to do anything. I did indicate it was sitting at my desk; and I was giving thought to it. But this was probably in, I’m thinking maybe September or October when that meeting was held; I can’t remember exactly. The parole board, the following year, early 97 approved his parole plan after I had denied the further commutation.
Subsequent to that, he…I can’t remember exactly the timing, he left there, went to MO, unfortunately was later convicted for the murder of one woman and awaiting trial for the murder of another when he died in prison.
It was a horrible situation, horrible, I feel awful about it in every way. I wish that there was some way I could go back and reverse the clock and put him back in prison. But nobody, not me, not Jim Guy Tucker, not Bill Clinton, not that parole board, could ever imagine what might have transpired.
For people to say that I was responsible in getting him out makes a few presumptions – number one, it presumes, I had an influence on Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker in 1992. The second presumption, it assumes I had the amazing persuasive power to go into a board of seven people, all of them appointed by Democratic governors before me and persuade them to do something they didn’t wish to do.
It also assumes that, not only did I have that power, but that only two of them changed story about what happened and they didn’t do so until 6 years later when we were in the middle of an election year. And after, and subsequent to the fact that I had not reappointed them to their $75,000 jobs on the parole board.
Now if you can follow that line and believe that I am solely responsible, then you’ll believe that. But you’ll believe a lot of other things as well. I am deeply sorry, and I mean, awfully, just horrified of what happened to (inaudible). And there is not a single person that will ever bring those women back to their families. But that’s the story, that’s what happened.
And yes it will come up in the presidential campaign. It came up in my governor’s campaign. There will be people who are victims who will probably be brought forth to make statements but, you know, I can’t fix it. I can only tell the truth and let the truth be my judge.
Maybe this isn’t acknowledged enough, but it seems to me that the Founders would for the first time be pleased with how the United States has been adjusting policy and personnel in wartime this past year. I think when historians look back, they will note a few things. The first is that an untrammeled executive branch, high on its own rightness, certain of everything, contemptuous of critics and empowered by understandable public fear … made all the mistakes you’d expect from one-man rule in a permanent "emergency". The half-assed commitment to Afghanistan, the reckless over-reach with Iraq, the embrace of torture as a primary weapon in the war against Islamic terrorism, the loss of critical allies, the collapse of American moral standing, and then apocalyptic rhetoric over Iran: all this was fueled by a president with no impediments, sealed in an ideological cocoon wound more tightly by his re-election, a victory that reinforced all of his worst instincts in the first term, and lost us two critical years in Iraq. The Supreme Court made some effort to rein in the president in 2005 and 2006. But the Republican Congress was AWOL, the press cowed, and the government professionals intimidated. All this only really changed in November 2006 with the country sending the opposition party to run the Congress. It was a classic moment of one branch of American government checking the other – saving the other – and correcting course. The Democrats may not have stopped the war, but they helped shift its course. That, in turn, saved the war in Iraq from becoming a complete disaster. Now it’s merely a rescuable disaster.
It remains an inconvenient truth that those neocons now hailing the surge’s success would not be able to do so if Americans had taken their advice and voted Republican in 2006. Rumsfeld would still be defense secretary and Cheney’s grip on national policy would remain unshakable. But it has been shaken, as a reader points out:
Your suggestion that Robert Gates had a hand in the release of the NIE report highlights something that I’ve thought for along time, namely that the single biggest change in the course of the Iraq War was Gates’ replacement of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. When Rush Limbaugh and others slam the Democrats for failing to keep their campaign promise to end the War, I think they fail to give credit to the Democrats for the course correction the administration had to make at the time of the last election.
Without a vote for the Democrats in 2006, Gates would probably not be at the Pentagon, and Rice would not have been emboldened to shift course on the peace process, and the CIA might not have had the stomach to fight back against Cheney on Iran intelligence. That was the turning point.
And although it was a Democratic victory, it may help salvage something for the Bush administration’s legacy in the Middle East. And that is the deeper point. No single party in our polity can claim credit for all of this. The course adjustment was a function of different entities fighting one another, reacting to events and facts, and thereby forging a more sensible war policy. What no single entity wanted came eventually to pass. It’s shaping up to be a text-book lesson in the virtues of separating powers. Dictatorships cannot do this in wartime, which is why they often lose; neither can unchecked executives in democracies. But it’s a good thing.
The key players will only emerge definitively with the judgment of history. But my roster of those who helped get us back toward a rational war-policy would put Bob Gates and David Petraeus at the top of the list. Mukasey has a chance to do the same kind of thing at Justice. The system that looked rather fragile for a couple of years has begun to assert itself again. It works. And if the president is wise, he’ll allow all this to shift, and take some of the credit. And if the country is wise, they’ll pick a successor who can unite the country around a prudent path forward.
(Photo: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates smiles December 4, 2007 during a tour of the Kabul Military Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. Gates is visiting Afghanistan to evaluate rising violence levels. By Haraz N. Ghanbari-Pool/Getty Images.)
A Lebanon-based journalist finally looks at W. Thomas Smith Jr’s collected oeuvre and is aghast.
