Category: The Dish

… I am Persian. Some incorrect thoughts on the difference between Iranians and Arabs:

Jim Hoagland asks all the right questions. But the evidence suggests cautious optimism.

"You can’t go over to CNN. I mean, that’s the devil over there. You can’t. You know. You’re a religious guy. You can’t go into the pagan throne over there," – Bill O’Reilly, to Tony Snow.

He writes:

Can someone tell me what controversial procedures have been used at Guantanamo Bay?

We actually have a log of what was done to Qhatani. Steven Miles’s book is one of the most powerful and detailed. From my review in Time last year:

In one of the few actual logs we have of a high-level interrogation, that of Mohammed al-Qhatani (first reported in TIME), doctors were present during the long process of constant sleep deprivation over 55 days, and they induced hypothermia and the use of threatening dogs, among other techniques. According to Miles, Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani — while he was strapped to a chair — and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in the hospital. They then returned him to his interrogators. Elsewhere in Guantanamo, one prisoner had a gunshot wound that was left to fester during three days of interrogation before treatment, and two others were denied antibiotics for wounds.

Sleep deprivation over 55 days, induced hypothermia, dietary manipulation, medical manipulation, and long-time standing were methods employed by Stalin. I assume Cliff is not denying that torture occurred in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Or do we have to call some of Stalin’s techniques "enhanced interrogation" now?

It’s in the Iowa base as well, it seems.

Clinton accused the man of being a plant who had been sent to ask the question, to which he took exception, saying the question was a result of his own research.

"I apologize," Clinton said, explaining that she had been asked the very same question in three other places.

The crowd applauded when the senator ended the back and forth by saying the two had a disagreement and offering to put Rolph in touch with her staff, who could provide him with the text of the legislation, which she suggested he had misunderstood.

That last is the real kicker. If you’re not part of the VRWC, you are guilty of "misunderstanding". Every now and again, you get a glimpse of the real arrogance and condescension of Clinton, now wrapped in layer upon layer upon layer of focus group fakery and polished niceness. I’m not buying it. She is what she always was. But the artifice is now even more professional.

San Ramon, California, 5.35 pm.

I am often accused of hysteria by the Bush-blogs on the question of torture. I hope they will read this moving account of a recent attempt to organize reunions of those in the Greatest Generation who were ordered in World War II to interrogate Nazi prisoners of war for vital intelligence. They wil not mention it, because the only defense now viable for what we have discovered is silence. As befitting their generation, the World War II interrogators kept their word and divulged nothing for decades about what they did or did not do to get information from their captives. But their silence is being broken in outrage at what the Bush-Cheney administration has done to American honor in its adoption of torture as a central plank of government policy. Here’s what Americans do with respect to captured enemy combatants:

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army’s Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The current Republican party supports the torture techniques once honed by the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge and the Gestapo’s and Tenet’s "enhanced interrogation". Yesterday’s heroes were made of different stuff:

"We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark.

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Of course not. They are Americans.

A reader writes:

Sorry, Andrew, you’re wrong on this one.  Bush was right about the wild card, and the sportswriters who think that the current baseball system is a good thing are just mistaken.  No point in running through the arguments — since I don’t think you care very much! — but while baseball did in fact have a somewhat difficult problem to solve, the solution that Bush voted against wasn’t the right one.

In fact, Bush on baseball turns out to be an interesting subject.  I’m a political scientist and a fairly serious baseball fan, so I have pretty good qualifications on this one, and I can tell you that every time I’ve heard Bush talking about baseball he sounds not only well informed, but quite intelligent.  My conclusion?  He’s not at all a dumb guy; he’s just not interested in government and public affairs.  I think he’s interested in the political junkie side of electoral politics, but I just don’t think that, you know, the world is particularly interesting to him.

Bring up nepotism with Hillary and the knees jerk in unison. A reader emails:

"Hillary Rodham Clinton has become a potential president because she is famous for being a wife (and a wronged wife at that)."

And is there any chance George W would have risen to anything more than a district sales manager at a photocopy company if his Daddy hadn’t been president?

None. And your point is that Dubya has proven that nepotism and dynasticism don’t matter? It is a delicious moment: Democrats using George W. Bush’s privilege to defend Clinton’s. Hey: it’s one royal family versus another.

A reader ponders:

What I can’t figure out is why there is no organized opposition to Bush among Republicans.  You’d think that self-preservation would motivate some of them to do something. But I see no evidence of any such effort. I can only conclude that they would rather switch than fight. It’s easier to become an independent or even a Democrat than try to fight the stranglehold that Bush, the neocons and the religious kooks have on the party these days. The only solution I see if for Republicans to lose as badly as possible next year. Then, maybe, they will wake up.

The cult of the Decider still has enormous power, I think. And it’s largely because it’s rooted in religious faith in the party’s base, not rational judgment. The elites know this is where the power lies, the none of them has the bond with the Christianist voters like Bush has, and so are completely intimidated in taking him on in the primaries. And maybe thereafter.