Category: The Dish

In Pakistan the Islamists are putting professional shavers out of business.

Can he? Will he? The Republican crowd roars. This is the result they want:

Did I actually read this this morning?

One person who has read early drafts of the book said Mr. Tenet defended himself by carefully parsing the ‘slam dunk’ comment: he said he was not telling Mr. Bush that there was rock-solid evidence that Mr. Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, only that the president could make a ‘slam dunk’ case to the American public about these weapons programs.

So the case for Saddam’s WMDs was not a "slam dunk". But the ability to foster enough fear and panic among Americans to persuade them to go to war on the basis of the WMD intelligence was a "slam dunk." Or at least that’s a plausible inference. If that’s true, then the betrayal of faith is even deeper than we imagined.

Mussourie, India, 10.04 am, from a reader’s desk.

This EU report, from the Financial Times, foretells more gloom than my post last night might indicate. Quite how advanced Iran is on nukes is, of course, the salient question. And no one seems to know for sure. Which sounds uncomfortably familiar.

One Republican reader thinks it’s now the likeliest scenario:

I was speaking with a Republican political operative in Sarasota some two months ago. This was after the drubbing we took in November. We had been watching Rudy’s polling throughout 2005 and 2006. What you and other moderates never understood is where the rank and file of the Republican Party has been going, so concentrated were you on the bogeyman that you had constructed around "Christianism". He and I agreed that not only is Rudy the favorite to get the nomination, but Rudy will probably win the presidency.

The three Big Dogs throughout 2005 were Rice, McCain, and Rudy. Once Condi had made it clear that she wasn’t going forward (at least as a Presidential candidate), Mitt Romney was able to move up to the top tier. Romney has tried to corral the "conservative" wing that was supposed to coalesce around the Washington Beltway’s conservative candidate, George Allen. However, the flips and flops outlined by you as well as those conservatives not posting on the Corner appear to have damaged Romney in the short term. McCain is not trusted by the base.

You’ve overblown the power of the "Christianists". You’ll see this when Rudy walks away with South Carolina and gets the support of guys like Haley Barbour and Jeb Bush (who is already, silently, in Rudy’s corner). "Christianists" don’t win elections; Republicans do. That’s what the polling is saying – people in our party are recovering a more Republican identity and embracing the idea of a larger tent. All that was needed was for the exclusionary wing to play themselves out …

Remember, the Jim Webbs in the Democratic Party’s leadership cadre are few and very far between. When you admit that to yourself, Andrew, you might begin to understand why Rudy will not only be the Republican nominee, but the next President, as well.

Americans don’t vote for defeat, and don’t vote for failure. Bush was punished because he was seen to be FAILING (you watch the polling turn around if Petraeus starts succeeding in Iraq). They will vote for the candidate who can bring them victory and peace. When you get that, you will get the next campaign.

Liberals don’t get this; and that is why they are not prepared to govern a nation at war. Rudy is. The rank and file know this in their bones.

Actually, this was the core argument of my column last Sunday. My major fear with Giuliani is civil liberties. He hasn’t met one he wouldn’t get rid of. And I doubt the mayor who backed the NYPD in the Diallo case is going to stop torture. But from the perspective of saving Republicanism from the abyss of Christianism, Rudy is definitely the candidate to watch. McCain is fading, I’m afraid. Rudy is just beginning.

(Photo: David Paul Morris/Getty.)

The adoption of torture as an authorized interrogation technique by the United States was innovated by president Bush, vice-president Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and officials in the Justice Department and Pentagon in the wake of 9/11. It has been documented in hundreds of cases in every theater of war, and authorized by presidential directive, waiving the Geneva Conventions if "military necessity" demands it. Last September, Karl Rove made a strategic decision to use the torture issue as a last, desperate campaign tactic – to see if he could out-Bauer the Democrats. Jane Mayer’s latest contribution to reporting the shift of America from a law-abiding country to a torturing nation is this piece on the hit television show, "24." It’s a very effective drama and pure fantasy for pro-torture conservatives. Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham has even confessed to finding scenes of brutal interrogations therapeutic:

[Joel] Surnow, [the creator of "24"] once appeared as a guest on Ingraham’s show; she told him that, while she was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, "it was soothing to see Jack Bauer torture these terrorists, and I felt better." Surnow joked, "We love to torture terrorists — it’s good for you!"

Mayer helps show how Charles Krauthammer’s near-non-existent "ticking clock" scenario has been popularized by "24" in such a way as to normalize torture in the public consciousness. In five seasons of "24", there have been sixty-seven torture scenes, and all of them are portrayed as effective, productive, and justified. Military cadets, weaned on ’24", now tend to see nothing wrong with it. Soldiers in the field have internalized the show’s ethics. One witness to this is Tony Lagouranis, a former army interrogator in Iraq. He tells Mayer that some soldiers in Iraq just replicated the "24" scenes in real life – even though torture is still nominally illegal under American law for the regular military (the Bush administration has created a special CIA torture unit to do the job instead).

Lagouranis is a good witness for what has actually been happening in the war:

"In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence," Lagouranis told me. "I worked with someone who used waterboarding … I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened." Some people, he said, "gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information."

Yep: these are American soldiers he’s talking about, not Serbian thugs. What’s truly disturbing is how enthusiastic the Republican establishment is about this adoption of torture as the American way. The Heritage Foundation had a symposium celebrating the show, organized by Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence. Michael Chertoff endorsed "24", despite its endorsement of law-breaking by government officials. Then we discover this:

The same day as the Heritage Foundation event, a private luncheon was held in the Wardrobe Room of the White House for Surnow and several others from the show. (The event was not publicized.) Among the attendees were Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff; Tony Snow, the White House spokesman; Mary Cheney, the Vice-President’s daughter; and Lynn Cheney, the Vice-President’s wife, who, Surnow said, is "an extreme ’24’ fan." After the meal, Surnow recalled, he and his colleagues spent more than an hour visiting with Rove in his office.

It all begins to make more sense now, doesn’t it?

(Photo: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, under U.S. supervision.)

A reader writes:

You may not believe this, but your quote from Lincoln moved me (completely unexpected, sitting at my desk during a normal workday) close to tears. Writing 150 years ago, Lincoln hit upon the primal cause of the whole sorry tragedy of our past four years: we turned our president into a king, and we allowed him to act as kings do, waging useless wars with our children and our treasure for their own self-aggrandizement.

Lincoln, of course, knew his scripture, and when he wrote those words undoubtedly had this verse in mind: (I Samuel 8:10-18 )

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

I’ve always rejected arguments that our ancestors were somehow wiser than us. But reading Lincoln’s words reminds me that, in a few key cases, some of our ancestors were indeed wiser than anyone alive today.

Another reader notes:

Lincoln had it right of course (as usual). But this country did go to war against Mexico anyway, and it was a highly popular war, while Lincoln’s career suffered almost terminally for opposing it.

A new skirmish on the Christianist right.

A conservative reader writes:

Let’s see, in Guliani. we’ve apparently got a guy who on one hand is on the wrong side of some social issues, but on the other hand, is strong on the WOT-related issue. But what about everything else?

What about Tax Reform, fiscal (budgetary and entitlement) reform, education reform (vouchers, etc.), health care reform (and no, not the one-size-fits-all nonsense that Uncle Teddy dreams about)? What about the damn near $3-T federal behemoth that grows seemingly unabated via nonsensical expenditures like agricultural subsidies, etc?

I would hope that at some point we’ll find out where Rudy stands on those issues. I suspect he’s both a forceful proponent of wholesale reform in all necessary areas and relentless and articulate enough to browbeat the establishment into aquiescence. If that pans out, those who have blinders on now as they focus on either end of the existing bipolar discussion will open their eyes all the way.

The two great advantages Giuliani has are a) national security and b) management skills. In one, he echoes Bush’s post-9/11 strength; in the other he is an antidote to how Bush lost that strength. It’s win-win for many on the right, I think. He may still implode, but the potential is real.