Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I wish I could be sanguine about Mukasey’s testimony that you highlight, but it seems more artful than committal.  Mukasey never alleges–or even implies–that the United States practices torture.  What he offers is an avowal that we don’t torture–without a definition of the term.  He denounces the Bybee memo as faulty but doesn’t address whether the memos or policies that replaced it were valid.  When asked about information obtained by waterboarding, Mukasaey claimed "I don’t know what’s involved in waterboarding"–which is either implausible or, if true, inexcusable.  He adds that he’d be "uncomfortable" with any evidence that was "coerced" without saying whether waterboarding would amount to coercion. Yes, he talks about the horrors of Nazi camps and how we came to understand the importance of not duplicating such horrors, but he never suggests that that’s what’s happened  In fact, all he’s doing is setting an incredibly low bar.

I hope I’m not being naive. I’ll go over the testimony again.

An interesting discussion about the relative performances of al-Jazeera and the Washington Post during the Iraq war. Money quote:

I asked both Mirazi and Wright to reflect on their media’s coverage of Iraq.  Mirazi largely rejected criticisms of al-Jazeera and the Arab media in 2003 and beyond:  given how horribly Iraq turned out, if anything the Arab media wasn’t critical enough of US invasion. He did say, however, that the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, should have been more of a moment of self-criticism for the Arab media:  how could it have been so mistaken in its reporting of the balance of forces and the military situation? Beyond that, however, he didn’t seem to think that the Arab media had a lot of accounting to make for its performance in Iraq.  The biggest problem, he argued repeatedly, had to do with the continuing domination and ownership of the media by Arab regimes – as long as terrible, undemocratic governments controlled the Arab media, directly or indirectly, there would be harsh limits on its ability to really progress.

Wright admitted that the media performed poorly in the runup to the Iraq war, but offered the defense that at that time it was hard to challenge the official narrative….   She argued that the press would not likely repeat its mistakes in the face of a campaign for war on Iran….

But after that appropriately self-critical opening, Wright surprised me by offering a chillingly persuasive argument about how the rationale for war with Iran had shifted from the nuclear program to its role in Iraq…

"Once a voice of restraint and reason, Sullivan now specializes in shrill panic: mercurial ranting full of operatic arguments, steeped in bad faith, aimed at people he once praised (including yours truly). There are many theories about what "happened" to Sullivan. They vary wildly in charity. But it’s fair to say that for many conservatives, Sullivan has become the intellectual equivalent of a write-off… Which is why most conservatives won’t buy, or read, his book," – Jonah Goldberg, National Review.

"Sullivan wants very badly to be described as a conservative, but he is no more a conservative than I am a Russian," – Hugh Hewitt.

You can buy the book Hewitt and Goldberg lambasted here.

Or what JFK, Gore "I’m not gay" Vidal and Tennessee "Who am I kidding?" Williams have in common.

Niall Ferguson dissects Barry Posen’s big-think essay on reimagining American foreign policy after Iraq:

Posen has proceeded from relatively familiar premises (the limits of American “hyperpower”) to some quite fantastic policy recommendations, which are perhaps best summed up as a cross between isolationism and humanitarianism. Only slightly less fantastic than his vision of an American military retreat from the Middle East, Europe and East Asia is Posen’s notion that it could be sold to the American electorate—just six years after they were the targets of the single largest terrorist attack in history—in the language of self-effacement. Coming from a man who wants to restart mainstream debate on American grand strategy, that is pretty rich.

Fukuyama is more impressed. It’s a rich series of points and counterpoints.

A reader writes:

It struck me the other day that Alan Keyes is running for president, and we’ve heard next to nothing from him since he announced that he was running. I did a little digging and found that it’s not for lack of effort on his part. The two main factors that have contributed to his ‘silence’ are:

1) He has been denied the right to participate in the major GOP debates thus far.  How cowardly on the part of the GOP.  The only one he has been invited to so far was the one held in Baltimore a few weeks back. None of the major candidates even showed up (Ron Paul was the best known of the group).

2) The media hasn’t reported on his campaign at all!  Fox spent weeks talking about Obama’s lapel jewelry, but has done next to nothing on Keyes (a Republican). Even your blog has been very Keyes-lite.

I’m not supporting him for president, but having Alan Keyes not only in this race, but a vocal part of it, can only have great results for not only the party, but the nation.  He doesn’t have a prayer to win, but his ability to sink into the stupidity. We need an intellectual rottweiler to thin out the pack, so lets let Keyes loose.

Get him on Colbert!

TPM summarizes part of the testimony of the nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, thus:

The Bybee memo is "worse than a sin, it’s a mistake," Mukasey said. He referenced the photographs taken by U.S. troops who liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945 to document the "barbarism" the U.S. opposed. "They didn’t do that so we could duplicate what we oppose."

"Duplicate what we opposed"? Nazi concentration camps? Does that remind you of anyone?

In a Senate floor speech Tuesday, [Senator Dick] Durbin cited an FBI report describing Guantanamo Bay prisoners chained to the floor in the fetal position without food or water and sometimes in extreme temperatures.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control," he said, "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

Is it not clear that Mukasey’s and Durbin’s point is exactly the same? And do you recall, as I do, the phenomenal blog-storm and Fox News conniption and outrage from every other pro-torture platform on the web? Here’s a classic Reynolds-Steyn post ridiculing and scorning those who were concerned about what was going on at Gitmo. Let’s see if Reynolds or Steyn will lambaste the incoming attorney-general on the same grounds, shall we? Or will their double standards reveal their partisan hackery again?

What does it say that a leading Republican can boast of support from an institution that has a deep history of racism and religious bigotry? And what does it say of a Mormon to cater to a man who once denigrated Mormonism? Bainbridge asks the question. The answer is that Romney is putting power before decency, as Bush did before him in South Carolina. That’s something to remember about a candidate. I had a conniption about Bush’s catering to BJU bigotry in 2000 and then swiftly forgot about it. I didn’t see it as the harbinger that it was: of a GOP rooted in religious prejudice, racial fears, and sexual panic. I’ve learned my lesson.

The World Bank says something smart:

Rich countries are largely rich because of the skills of their populations and the quality of the institutions supporting economic activity.

And poor countries don’t get richer because of our foreign aid. 

The photo above is made up of parts of dissected fish. It’s by British photo-artist, Michael England, who is interviewed by Ping Mag here. Money quote:

Why are you so into dissection and rebuilding things? Any special experience in your childhood…?

Dissection isn’t my only approach; I approach some work straighter than others. I came from a typographic and photographic background. As regards what has influenced the whole rebuilding thing, I guess, this would be LEGO: I spent years as a child rebuilding LEGO into what I wanted as opposed to following the instructions. I never really did any work on frogs or other creatures when I was young. I dont want to sound like some graphic Frankenstein nor morbid in anyway I really appreciate life, especially its beauty. Although i am not a vegetarian, I don’t kill anything other than fly’s and mosquito’s.

Did you discover anything special through your production process?

When working in dissection mode, I think what I have discovered is that the most mundane elements offer real beauty when seen in detail, which is usually not noticed with the naked eye. In the rebuilding process you find that form is infinite and the context of the subject can be completely altered into something visually new. It can change conceptually as well.