The Dish

The war has begun.

"Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath.

Devotees of multiculturalism and political correctness who do not see how damaging to the fabric of American civilization it is to allow Ellison to choose his own book need only imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler’s "Mein Kampf," the Nazis’ bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison’s right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?" – Dennis Prager, Townhall.com.

TNR’s Eve Fairbanks writes about the leaked Marine memo from Anbar, a memo that has a distinctly different take on Iraq than Mike Fumento’s latest piece from Ramadi.

I don’t know the backstory for Philip Zelikow’s departure from the State Department but it seems to me that those of us who assumed that the election and the demise of Rumsfeld meant a change of course for the Bush administration may be fooling ourselves. Mike Allen’s report on Bush’s tude is here. The president today seemed to argue that the violence in Iraq is caused by al Qaeda. He’s right that this sectarian warfare was part of al Qaeda’s strategy – but it now has a life of its own. It’s troubling he seems unaware of this, or under the impression that Maliki is part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Maybe he is still in denial. And maybe it’s that realization that has prompted Zelikow to throw in the towel.

So there’s a good chance there will be no change in strategy, merely more grind against the insurgents, and a slow breaking of the U.S. military. Iran’s involvement with the Shia militias in Iraq via Hezbollah is grist for Cheney; so is Syria’s acquiescence. And Cheney’s suspicions of dealing with Iran and Syria aren’t nuts. It’s just that we have very few options left. Our leverage over Maliki is weak, and he is beholden to Sadr. We cannot get involved in a civil war; but could we morally abandon Iraqis to systematic secticide and ethnic cleansing, and watch from Kurdistan as the country tears itself apart? Here’s what I do know: There is no guarantee that Bush will not pursue a failed strategy until it fails some more. He’s done it for three years already, and he doesn’t have to face another election. Reality has been too hard for him to grapple with for the past five years. Why are we naive enough to believe he can change now?

(Photo: Brooks Kraft/Corbis.)

I was talking last night with a friend and trying to figure out why many of us are talking past each other on the question of torture. One thought I have is that many people confuse sadism with torture. A superfluity of comic books and bad horror movies leads many people to think of torture as something that must involve elaborate sadism, like pulling out fingernails or putting someone on a rack or drilling in their skull. Some torture is indeed like that – and it is now going on all over Iraq, perpetrated by sectarian death squads. But sadism can exist without torture. Some of the pictures in Abu Ghraib were, it seems to me, examples of sadism, abuse and humiliation – not torture. And torture can exist without sadism.

Torture is indeed aptly described by the term "coercive interrogation." That, of course, is an oxymoron. A genuine interrogation requires consent and interaction between two people; coercion is the act of one person forcing his will on another. For me, and in the law, torture is the use of force to compel an answer to a question. The compulsion can be physical or pscyhological. While it must be severe to qualify as torture, it need not entail the sadism I mention above. Take the simple example of "sleep deprivation," a term that many people simply do not believe is torture. And it doesn’t sound the faintest bit sadistic. We’ve all gone without sleep. But to be forced to go without sleep for weeks on end is to use the body’s physical needs to compel the soul and the psyche to surrender information. That is torture. And Rumsfeld personally ordered it. Menachem Begin was subjected to sleep deprivation as a torture technique in the Soviet Gulag. He describes a torture victim who is

"wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget … Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable it with it."

Maybe this helps bridge some of the gap in understanding between those of us who oppose torture and those who think we are being hyperbolic hysterics. The issue is not sadism. It is compulsion.

A reader writes:

I’m so sorry for not being able to warn you about that. I saw the article and thought, oh dear Andrew, now you’ve gone and pissed off the Mormons. I am one ex-Mormon (BYU graduate, Mormon mission to Paris, France, son of a notorious Mormon charismatic preacher who taught religion at Brigham Young) and living with my gay lover for the last ten years in the shadow of the Salt Lake Temple.

One nice thing for you is that this may be a lesson in empathy – you are getting a tiny glimpse into what it’s like to be raised, indoctrinated and then terrorized by Mormons daily for being gay (just open a copy of the Deseret Morning News if you think I’m kidding). These are conservatives of a very different breed. I love them and I hate them. But nothing ignites their fury more than a mention of garments.  And … despite all my years away from the "fold," I still took an instinctive quick breath in as I saw your article.

Well, I learned my lesson. Which is to note an early pre-South Park Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie. It’s called "Orgazmo" and it has some priceless moments. The IMDB plot summary reads:

Naive young Mormon Joe Young is recruited to act in porn movies.

My favorite piece of dialogue:

Maxxx Orbison: Put your tongue in her mouth, for Christ’s sake!
Joe Young: How would Christ benefit from me putting my tongue in someone’s mouth?

Trey Parker plays Joe Young. Matt Stone plays Dave The Lighting Guy. Fun quotes here. For a fascinating Mormon discussion thread on my bigotry or lack thereof, check this page out. The headline is ironic. Many Mormons have a sense of humor – and perspective. Just not all.

"It’s not true, as some conservatives and administration officials say, that tax cuts raise revenue. (Some conservatives say that nobody makes that false claim, and that’s not true either.) And while you are right to suggest that some of the extra revenue brought in through tax increases would be spent, probably some of it would go to deficit reduction. The question is whether the marginal deficit reduction is worth the marginal cost to economic growth," – Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Online.

"He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas," – Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, University of Notre Dame Press.

Ricky Gervais is its master, although Borat is close behind. In this clip, even David Bowie gangs up on a "chubby little loser." If you’re having a bad day, this might be the tonic you need.

The vice-president’s radical views on the powers of the presidency may well foretell a very bruising couple of years in Washington as the White House battles a Congress of a different party. This analysis is sobering – and helpful in teasing out Cheney’s consistency on this issue – from the 1970s on. Money quote:

"[Congress cannot] place any limits on the president’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response," the Justice Department asserted in a September 2001 memo solicited by the White House. "These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the president alone to make."

The following year, the administration drew up secret legal opinions informing military and CIA interrogators that the president has the power to authorize them to violate laws banning torture.

"In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign against Al Qaeda and its allies, [the anti-torture law] must be construed as not applying to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority," said an August 2002 memo, which was leaked to the media only after the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib came to light.

Then, in December 2005, The New York Times revealed that the administration was wiretapping Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails without warrants, violating the 1978 surveillance law.

Three days later, Cheney sat down with reporters and laid out his belief "in a strong, robust executive authority." Bypassing the warrant law, he asserted, was "consistent with the constitutional authority of the president."