Category: The Dish

Even in a small corner of Baghdad.

Michael Medved is always pleasant when I go on his show, and then every now and again, we get a glimpse of the raging homophobia simmering beneath the surface.

Jon Chait begs to differ with Josh Marshall, and I tend to side with Chait:

To me, Romney’s phoniness is exactly why I’m not terrified of the prospect of him as president. I see him as a competent, moderate-minded manager who has decided his only chance of being elected is to masquerade as a whacko.

The drawback to Romney is also what he has going for him. The Christianists need to be careful. Once he’s gotten out of them what he needs, why do we think Romney would pursue the Christianist position in office? If he wins, it will be despite evangelicals, not because of them. He’s going nowhere in South Carolina. A chameleon can change color back, remember? (Think: the Clintons and the gays.) I’d also bet that if Romney gets through the primaries, and the question isn’t moot by then, he could easily pivot against the war and the surge – much more easily than McCain or Giuliani. Remember: he aims to please. Whomever he needs to. 

For all of you who love the old rogue, a reader has edited his Harvard commencement speech in handy YouTube segments. The first one is here.

An old media-new media dust-up.

Charles Franklin: "Who lost the Iraq funding/veto fight? Both President and Congress."

The report by the the lead investigator for the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, into the secret interrogation and torture sites operated by the CIA these past few years makes for extremely grim reading. For decades, the KGB deployed the classic Gestapo techniques on prisoners; now, under the Bush administration, it is the United States that has adopted the same methods:

Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperature used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down prisoners, the investigators found. Prisoners were also subjected to water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams, the report says.

The report, which runs more than 100 pages, says the prisons were operated exclusively by Americans in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2006. It relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents…

According to the report, suspects were often held for months with no contact except with masked, silent guards who would push meals of cheese, potatoes and bread through hatches.

The defense of the Verschaerfte Vernehmung (which are all war crimes under international law and were subject to the death penalty fifty years ago) is the Giuliani defense:

"Here’s my question. Was the guy a terrorist? ‘Cause if he’s a terrorist, then I figure he got what was coming to him."

Of course, there is no due process to determine who is or who is not a terrorist, and thereby subject to torture. Many detainees aren’t even captured by U.S. soldiers or agents. Only 19 percent of the captives in Gitmo, for example, were actually captured by U.S. forces. Americans’ system of justice has been outsourced to Pakistani bounty-hunters. And then the Gestapo-process takes over. But, hey, if they’re terrorists, they get what’s coming to them, no? That’s exactly the system of justice and warfare the Founders had in mind, isn’t it?

A reader writes:

This vitriol with which conservatives demonize a variety of groups reminded me of a line from the movie "The Good Shepherd," which I saw recently. Joe Pesci’s mobster character asks Matt Damon’s CIA agent: "You know, we Italians have our families and the church, the Irish have the homeland, the Jews their tradition, the niggers their music. What do you guys have?" And Damon responds "We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting." I think that sums up the conservative movement’s attitude towards our society.