The Dish

A reader writes:

No doubt this President has made mistakes and that his administration should be held accountable on election day. I am not even voting for the Republican candidate in my state, because I am disgusted with Bush’s reckless spending and mismanagement of Iraq. But the Freedom video is a disgrace. 

I don’t even know where to start. On a day where Saddam Hussein received the death penalty through democracy and a fair trial, you totally ignore this major victory for Iraqis, yet post that garbage Freedom video instead. It shows a pregnant woman in her third trimester rubbing her baby and shouting "freedom."  What the hell is she saying? That it should be her right to decide whether she has this baby or not, even at that stage in pregnancy? …  It also shows Bush kissing Joe Lieberman, as if to say that Joe Lieberman is responsible for all of Bush’s mistakes. I am proud to say that I am a volunteer with the Lieberman campaign, and consider him one of the few honorable members of Congress. He isn’t afraid to take a stand for something that he believes in, and does so without worrying about the political consequences. Have you turned on him as well? Would you rather Ned Lamont be elected?

Nope. I’m for Lieberman. I posted the video without comment, and I agree with the basic sentiment that we are fighting for freedom tomorrow. But I did find some of the clips distasteful and extreme. As readers know, I embed and link to things I do not agree with all the time.

More data here, showing a Democratic generic lead of 13 points. This lead is the biggest recently reported by the same poll: it was 11 points a week ago and nine two weeks before that. More interesting to me:

Among those saying they will vote for the Democratic House candidate, twice as many say it is because they want a change in leadership (54 percent), while others say it is because they agree with the policies of the Democratic Party (21 percent).

If all the other independents held their noses and voted Democrat, simply to express their view that policy must change in the White House, it could make a huge difference. I’ve never believed personally in abstaining, although it’s obviously anyone’s right. But in this election, I think it’s vital if you’re a true conservative or independent to grit your teeth and vote Democratic. This White House does not respond to measured or reasoned criticism. They need a metaphorical two-by-four in the face.

National Review gets personal:

I hope Ted Haggard does pray for Andrew Sullivan, because it is Sullivan and those on his side of the culture war who do much greater damage to our lives.

Earlier on, the author, David Klinghoffer makes the following argument:

This is why gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage. When the awe in which people once held matrimony is diluted, by treating it as a man-made and thus amendable institution rather than a divinely determined one, heterosexuals find sexual sins of all sorts harder to resist.

It’s an argument. And it is unpersuasive to me. But whether you agree with it or not, notice its logical basis: civil marriage is a "divinely determined one." The laws of this country are divinely determined. This is not close to a theocratic worldview. It is one.

A gaffe from Texas governor Rick Perry.

Some see a tightening of the national Congressional race to a 12 point gap. Not this CNN one:

Democrats hold a 20 percentage-point advantage – 58 percent to 38 percent – over Republicans among likely voters in the survey released Monday morning. The Democratic advantage was 11 percentage points – 53 percent to 42 percent – in a poll a week ago.

No predictions here.

A Fox News reporter undergoes a waterboarding:

It’s important to remember that psychologically, he’s in a very different space than prisoners who have no autonomy, and who are not aware that they can stop this at any time. Even so, his conclusion is inescapable:

"As far as torture goes, at least in this controlled experiment, to me this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism."

It is indeed a pretty efficient torture technique that triggers involuntary extreme panic and fear in order to get information – any information – in order to have it stopped. The legal definition of torture is the infliction of "severe mental or physical pain or suffering" to extract information. The reporter essentially cops to "severe mental suffering" at the very least. I am grateful to Fox for not mincing words. This is torture. That a prisoner can survive it with minimal outward signs of physical harm is one of its benefits for torturers, because they can repeat it endlessly until a human being is still alive but reduced to an empty shell. And that is why the Khmer Rouge used it. And the Soviets. And the Nazis. And George W. Bush.

This is also on the ballot next Tuesday. Do you believe America should torture its military  detainees and terror suspects? Do you believe the president – and the president alone – should  be able to arrest anyone at will, name him or her an "enemy combatant," deny him or her habeas corpus rights, and torture him or her? If you believe he should have that right, vote Republican.

Your vote tomorrow is about more than politics. It is indeed about values, American values.  A vote for the Republicans is a vote for torture. 

Here’s a flyer being distributed by the New York State Republican party:

The Democrats, in other words, want to let a darker-skinned man rape your white wife. You know what? I just found out nothing about Democratic values. But I learned a hell of a lot more about Republican ones.

San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, 4 pm.

A reader writes about servicewoman Alyssa Peterson, whose story can be found here:

When the both of us were in the Defense Language Institute learning Arabic, Alyssa and I talked a lot, sharing the stresses of military training and learning a foreign language in 63 weeks. The most striking things about her were how earnest she was, and how honestly she wrestled with moral issues. She finished training before I did and indeed died in Iraq just before I graduated. 

Of course we heard through the grapevine that it was suicide, but this never sat well with me, given that she was very devout and always cheerful except for when she faced injustice (something that one faces often, in Army training) toward herself or anyone around her.  She was, I felt, too great a soul for her to have killed herself just because her unit’s deployment had been extended as some – especially those who had been discomfited by her honesty – tried to imply.

It is this new story of objection to torture, however, that makes sense to me.  I am glad it has come out.

I am glad too. When you think of American soldiers, remember Pat Tillman and Alyssa Peterson. The flag is still there.

My column on the mid-terms and the choice we face can be read here. Money quote:

America’s founding fathers constructed a system so that if the president would not change a disastrous course, another branch of government could force him. A Democratic Congress would simply put a brake on the Bush express train. It could force the president to start vetoing some spending bills; it could encourage him to appoint moderate justices to the Supreme Court; it could demand an end to torture and a restoration of habeas corpus; it could compel him to be finally accountable for failure in Iraq; and it could investigate some of the many abuses of power that have accumulated during one-party rule.

Whether it does any of these things will be up to the Democratic leadership in both or either House. But that is a good thing too. Especially for the war. The Democrats need to be forced to take responsibility for the war on Islamist terror, to make the hard choices it demands. With a Democratic victory, we may ‚Äî finally ‚Äî have a serious debate about how to do triage in the ravaged country of Iraq, how to grapple with America’s dangerously growing debt, and how to defang the growing menace of Iran. Bush may even have to go back to some of his father’s wise men again, hire a new defense secretary and listen to a military leadership that wants a decent outcome in Iraq.

We may get, in other words, sane conservatism back again. And it may require a big Democratic victory to do it. Given the level of denial in the White House, this is not really an election. It’s more like an intervention. To save Republicanism from Bush, to save Bush from himself, and to save the world from impending crisis.