The Dish

I told you it’s serious. And a resignation, in my view, is absolutely appropriate. It was also appropriate after Abu Ghraib, no?

Here’s a video of Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" to her adoring crowd at CPAC. Romney said before her: "I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!" But he did follow it with a remark that I don’t have in my notes, but in my memory, took the edge off the praise. I think he said something along the lines of: "It’s always good to hear from the moderates." Very deft – as was his entire performance. I’m sorry I missed Giuliani. People in the crowd told me that there was stony silence during his entire talk. Some attributed it to respect, others to a lack of enthusiasm. The big passion at CPAC is between Brownback and Romney, with some love for Hunter and Tancredo. That’s the base. It’s a party that wants nothing to do with someone like me. All I heard and saw was loathing: loathing of Muslims, of "illegals," of gays, of liberals, of McCain. The most painful thing for me was the sight of so many young people growing up believing that this is conservatism. I feel like an old-style Democrat in 1968.

"I was going to talk about John Edwards but these days, you have to go into rehab if you say the word ‘faggot,’" – Ann Coulter, cheered to the rafters at CPAC today. No wonder she and Mickey Kaus get along so well.

When you see her in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her. One young conservative male told her he was single and asked for her cell-phone number. Other young Republicans were almost overwhelmed in her presence. "When are you going to get your own show?" one asked, tremulously. Then there’s her insistence on Christianism as the central message for Republicans: "There are more people voting on Christian moral values than on tax cuts." This from an unmarried woman who wears dresses that are close to bikinis on the morning news. Hey, it’s Democrats who are Godless.

Her endorsement of Romney today – "probably the best candidate" – is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a non-starter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, "very, very liberal." One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That’s the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better.

The delay in posting is because I’ve been listening to Mitt Romney and Ann Coulter at the CPAC conference. I’ll post my impressions soon, but here are some pics. Here’s Romney leaving the hotel with his wife, surrounded by raucous cheers by his supporters and a few characters yelling ‘Flip-Flop!’, ‘Flip-Flop.’ Coulter endorsed him, and he praised Coulter.

This has to be the biggest waste of time ever devised in the blogosphere. Which is probably why you’ll click on the link.

A cheerful assessment of the ways to go. Yeah, I know you’re sitting there cheerfully tapping at your computer, planning for the weekend, digesting lunch. But do you realize … well, The Flaming Lips said it best (in one of the best pop songs of the decade):

"The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding, and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections" – Thomas Babington Macaulay on King James II.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

The rightwing blogosphere is almost certainly to the right of most Republican voters, let alone independent voters who are open to the GOP. But I didn’t expect quite this amount of loopiness. Of 63 blogs queried, we get survey results like this:

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)– 84%
No (10) — 16%

Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53)– 84%
No (10) — 16%

Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?

Yes (0) — 0%
No (59) — 100%

The last one strikes me as astonishing. Some skepticism is warranted in climate change science. But the fact that the scientific community overwhelmingly believes that humans are primarily responsible for current climate change and none of the right-wing bloggers does suggests to me another sign of severe conservative meltdown. (Hat tip: Ann.)

A soldier who tortured defenseless detainees for president Bush, vice-president Cheney and defense secretary Rumsfeld tells his story. Tony Lagouranis is a guy who went to St John’s College, a great school for reading great books. He speaks fluent Arabic. He joined the military to learn Arabic and to pay off student loans. We were at peace then. At interrogator school, before Bush authorized torture, he went through the normal procedures:

"We were told, ‘You can’t use any coercive tactics. There can be no negative repercussions for a prisoner who isn’t cooperating with you.’"

At Fort Gordon, after war broke out, and after the president authorized torture for detainees, he began to hear stories of what was now allowed in Afghanistan and Iraq:

"They were talking about using sexual humiliation on these guys, or certain stress positions they had used, or in Afghanistan they would make the guy sit in the snow naked for long periods of time. They said that the detainees that they had were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, which I continued to hear in Iraq too."

You think Lynndie England came up with this by herself? Really? By the time Lagouranis arrived at Abu Ghraib, the scandal had come to light (Rumsfeld knew about it long before the photographs emerged and had done nothing to stop it) and there was reform. Soon after, however, Lagouranis interrogated a prisoner who said he’d been tortured. Lagouranis filed a memo. That memo disappeared. Then assigned to Mosul, he got the hang of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy: his unit used a shipping container as a makeshift torture-cell. Dogs first, something particularly terrifying in Arab culture:

"We had like a signal I would give him to cue the dog to lunge and bark at the prisoner. The prisoner would have blacked-out goggles on so he couldn’t see that the dog was restrained, he couldn’t see that the dog had a muzzle on, he just knew there was a dog in the room with him and that it was a big angry dog.

What usually happened was the prisoner would be terrified the first time the dog became aggressive. But then that effect wore off — he figured out that the dog wasn’t going to attack him. So maybe you’d get the prisoner totally terrified for like five seconds and he would piss his pants, literally. Then after that there was nothing. So it wasn’t effective at all, but the chief warrant officer kept telling us to do this so we did it."

As Orwell pointed out, pretty soon, the point of torture is torture. Still, Lagouranis’s unit was milque-toast compared to the others:

"[T]he treatment they had at our hands was a lot better than they got from the detainee unit. We were getting prisoners who had gotten seriously fucked up. We were getting prisoners from the navy SEALs who were using a lot of the same techniques we were using, except they were a little more harsh. They would actually have the detainee stripped nude, laying on the floor, pouring ice water over his body. They were taking his temperature with a rectal thermometer. We had one guy who had been burned by the navy SEALs. He looked like he had a lighter held up to his legs. One guy’s feet were like huge and black and blue, his toes were obviously all broken, he couldn’t walk."

The most remarkable line in the entire piece is:

"We almost never had evidence on anybody."

The results on these people were intense:

"We went on them hard for almost a month, I think, and these guys were just completely broken down, physically, mentally, by the end of it. One guy walked like a 90-year-old man when he was done. He was an ex-army guy, he was a real healthy young man when he came in, and by the end he was a mess."

Another interrogator confirms Lagouranis’s account and adds:

"I saw barbaric traits begin to seep out of me and other good and respectable people — good Americans who never should have been put in that position to begin with. They have two choices — disobey direct orders or become monsters. It’s a lonely road when everyone else is taking the other one."

Last year, the commander-in-chief who is ultimately responsible for every act committed under his command, passed a bill exculpating him and every other civilian employee of the government from any legal consequences for committing war-crimes. Regular soldiers were not given such immunity. The war criminals who gave the orders get off free, while the grunts they ordered may face prosecution at some point (but not if the Pentagon can cover it up).

Last week, the critical DVD that was made of the last "interrogation" of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla – a piece of evidence central both to U.S intelligence and to the military justice system – mysteriously disappeared from the Pentagon’s library.

One question: When are people going to wake up?