Bush vs Geneva

This president is still determined to remove the United States from baseline protections of the Geneva protections. John Yoo is unrepentant:

"This draft shows that the executive branch doesn’t think the Supreme Court got the questions on the Geneva Conventions right in Hamdan."

What the administration thinks, of course, is irrelevant. The court has ruled that Article 3 applies. If it applies, the following would be impermissible:

The bill would also bar ‘statements obtained by the use of torture’ from being introduced as evidence, but evidence obtained during interrogations where coercion was used would be admissible unless a military judge found it ‘unreliable.’

So we’re back to Yoophemisms. ‘Torture" versus "coercive interrogation techniques." The standards of Article 3 clearly bar all of it. And so you see this president asking the Congress to withdraw from Geneva. That’s what this means. And we have to make sure the American public understands that.

The Glibness of Rumsfeld

His detachment from his own responsibility is breathtaking. The glibness with which he describes tha mass slaughter of innocents in a country whose security he is responsible for is astonishing. Check this transcript out. Money quote:

Q:  Is the country closer to a civil war?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don’t know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries, this is really quite different. There is – there is a good deal of violence in Baghdad and two or three other provinces, and yet in 14 other provinces there’s very little violence or numbers of incidents. So it’s a – it’s a highly concentrated thing. It clearly is being stimulated by people who would like to have what could be characterized as a civil war and win it, but I’m not going to be the one to decide if, when or at all.

His relevance to allowing this to happen is as overwhelming as his irrelevance is today. He’s treating one of the biggest military fiascoes in recent history as something to debate at night, the way one would discuss the merits of an interesting movie. Greg Djerejian comments here. The man is a disgrace.

Washington’s Court Says No

It’s the procreation argument again (PDF file). I need time to read the decision and I’m on a deadline. On a more positive front, Democratic gubernatorial front-runner in New York, Eliot Spitzer, said the following in a rambunctious debate last night:

"I think same sex marriage should be legal. I will propose a bill to permit that to be the case in the state of New York."

And so the courts begin to retreat and the legislative process gains ground. Recall that the most populous state in the country has already passed marriage equality in its legislature. In some ways, a court pause before a looming legislative triumph may be good news.

“Phase II”

That’s the euphemism du jour:

Mr. Hadley, the national security adviser, said the failure of the initial plan [to secure Baghdad] forced the administration to move to what he called ‘Phase II.’ But other officials said there was no Phase II in the previous plan. ‘This is more like Plan B,’ said one of Mr. Hadley’s associates, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss internal policy matters. ‘Six weeks ago, we were talking about pulling American troops back from the city streets, not putting more of them out there.’

The good news is that someone in the White House, for a change, seems more concerned with doing what is necessary for a minimal brake on the civil war rather than more domestic spin. I was also glad to hear the president describe the security situation in Baghdad as "terrible." It’s better than denial.