Ponnuru Attacks!

Oh, joy. He hasn’t read the book, of course. But, according to him, it can only be two things: "daft or dishonest". The insults these theocons are throwing my way is a sign of their real fear that the book Tcscover_6 exposes them for what they are: deeply alien to conservatism in its old, sane sense, theocratic hijackers of a great tradition of moderation and doubt. in the third chapter of the book, for example, "The Theoconservative Project," I carefully take every theocon argument about abortion, end-of-life issues and heterosexual sex and try to argue that they are completely incoherent on their own terms. I think it devastates the arguments of Ponnuru’s mentor, Robert George. But make your own mind up. You can buy it here and here. I welcome all intelligent arguments against my position, and when the book club reading periods ends after the election, I hope to address the toughest with as much candor as I can.

Yes, I haven’t read Ponnuru’s book either. A book that describes anyone who disagrees with it as "The Party of Death" excludes itself from reasonable discussion. But I restricted myself to criticizing its Coulteresque title (and its front cover Coulter blurb) – designed to persuade no-one but to rally and sell to the fanatical base (the Rove technique applied to intellectual discourse) – and to a couple of emails from people who had read the book.

But I’m thrilled they’re angry. They wouldn’t be if they didn’t know this book exposes them in ways few yet have. I’m not on the left. I’ve spent twenty-five years on the right. I know who these people are. And how far they have drifted from the principles they once might have held. And, along with growing numbers of real conservatives, I have no interest in going along with it any longer.

Where the Right Went Wrong

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Tonight at 8 pm on CNN, as part of their superb series on broken government, Jeff Greenfield tackles the inflamatory debate on the right, to which my book seems to have provided some gasoline. I’m one of the interviewees, along with fellow heretic Bruce Bartlett. By the way, if you are interested in a book that Hugh Hewitt regards as a mess and as a threat to his version of Christianist Republicanism, you can buy it here or here and make up your own mind.

If the book can prompt the usually level-headed David Brooks to contradict himself in order to criticize it and has sent Hugh Hewitt into conniptions, it might just be on to something about what has gone wrong with American conservativsm.

Later the same night (11 pm Eastern, !0 Central), I’ll be on live on Bill Maher’s show, HBO’s Real Time, on a panel with Harry Belafonte and Christie Todd Whitman. Special guests: Harold Ford Jr and Arianna Huffington. You want fun? I’d watch.

The Vice President For Torture Ctd

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Yesterday, Cheney gave every impression that using Khmer Rouge interrogation techniques was a "no-brainer" to him. Any sane person reading that transcript can see what he’s saying. But Tony Snow, who is more and more becoming a character from "Animal Farm" every day, now says this:

"Let me give you the no brainers here. No brainer No. 1 is that we don’t torture. No brainer No. 2: We don’t break the law – our own or international law. No brainer No. 3: the vice president doesn’t give away questioning techniques. No. 4, the administration does believe in legal questioning techniques of known killers whose questioning can, in fact, be used to save American lives."

Lies; lies, and more lies. At the heart of this election is whether the American people should support people who have contempt for the most basic of American liberties, who have suspended habeas corpus for the indefinite future and who think it is a "no-brainer", in this respect, to adopt the moral interrogation standards of the Khmer Rouge.

This should not be a partisan issue or even a political issue. It is a civic responsibility. Vote Democrat or abstain.

Torture and the Casus Belli

The cancer apparently helped begin this disaster as well:

Iban al Shakh al Libby was apparently taken to Cairo, [former FBI agent Jack] Clonan told the BBC, after being captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

"He (Libby) claims he was tortured in jail and that would be routine in Egyptian prisons," Grey said. "What he claimed most significantly was a connection between … Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification … for invading Iraq," he told the broadcaster.

Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003, weeks before a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under Saddam Hussein had provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative", whom Grey alleges is Libby.

"At the time, the caveats to say this intelligence was extracted under torture were not provided," Grey said.

This cancer, so beloved of this torture-friendly administration, helped generate the untruths that so many of us then believed as a reason to go to war. And in turn, it led to more torture, which the vice-president regards as a "no-brainer". In fact, it merely proves that the vice-president has no brain, when it comes to matters of intelligence-gathering.