The Dish

A fascinating, detailed, insider account of the rise and rise of the new leader of the British Tory party, David Cameron.

Here’s an interesting case. In the Iraq court-room yesterday, a woman described being tortured by Saddam’s thugs in Abu Ghraib, back when he controlled it. Her account of torture is as follows:

“They forced me to take off my clothes,” said the woman, referred to only as Witness A by the court. “They kept my legs up. They handcuffed me and started beating me with cables. It wasn’t just one guard, it was many guards.” …
“I agree that things in Abu Ghraib were, until recently, bad, but did they use dogs on you? Did they take photographs?” asked one defense attorney, attempting to raise the issue of U.S. prisoner abuse at the prison.
“No,” she replied.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s definition of torture, this woman wasn’t subjected to “anything close” to torture. Repeated beatings are specifically not torture, as argued by AEI legal scholar, John Yoo, who helped craft Bush administration policies. The woman was not water-boarded, she was not shackled in stress positions, she was not subjected to hypothermia, she was not sexually abused and she was not threatened by dogs. She did not, in other words, come even close to being tortured, according to the Wall Street Journal. Do they still abide by their position? Does vice-president Cheney agree that she was merely subjected to “coercive interrogation techniques”?

By the way, my response to Charles Krauthammer’s argument for legalizing torture by the United States will appear in this week’s New Republic. I’ll link as soon as it’s posted.

Rick Perlstein, the excellent historian of the Goldwater campaign, talks about the difference between conservatives and Republicans. He quotes liberal blogger, Digby, with the following remark: “‘Conservative’ is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives’ good graces. Until they aren’t. At which point they are liberals.” I think that just about sums up our current situation. The party of Goldwater has become the party of Watergate. Money quote:

[C]onsider a group called the House Republican Caucus. They hold their controversial votes in the middle of the night: 2:54 am, 1:56 am, 2:39 am, 5:55 am on a Saturday morning. Or, for a vote on school vouchers in the D.C. public school system during primary season, during an out-of-town presidential debate.
Is this allergy to transparency a constitutive part of conservatism? A friend of mine suggests an answer, imagining Hillary Clinton reading conservative con law professor John Yoo’s assertion that “in the exercise of his plenary power to use military force, the President’s decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable”: ‘President Hillary thanks you.'”

And when these ‘conservatives’ have removed all checks from public spending, when they have validated detention of American citizens without trial, when they have endorsed torturing military detainees, when they have tried to write discrimination into the Constitution, and passed laws to govern individual right-to-death cases, where will they turn when their opponents regain power? When you have forsaken almost every principle you once had, what will protect you from the full force of government power in the hands of your enemies? Ah, then, there will be a reckoning. But not until. They’re enjoying power far too much right now to change anything.

To see the image of two men saying “I Do” projected onto the House of Commons is a pretty exhilarating moment for me, as you might imagine. When I left Britain twenty-one years ago, there was no question that America led the way in equal rights for gays. No longer. What’s remarkable about the British approach is their complete pragmatism. Legally, the relationships are called “civil partnerships.” Colloquially, everyone calls them what they are: civil marriages. I love the symbolism of Elton John marrying in the same civic space and by the same civil authority as the Prince of Wales. Here’s more on a remarkable day in my homeland. I’m particularly moved that the first man to marry his beloved will be someone terminally ill. “We are extremely happy and feel a great sense of achievement,” the man said at his hospice after the ceremony. That’s how much it matters to be accorded basic human dignity. I remember my attendance at a commitment ceremony (with no legal force) over a decade ago for an ex-boyfriend of mine in the advanced stages of AIDS. It meant so much to assert his humanity before he lost his life. In Britain, where “Virtually Normal” was published a decade ago, I faced derision from some in the gay community at the time for arguing that marriage was the central front in the battle for gay equality. It never occurred to me to believe that within ten years, we would have won. If I had stayed there, I’d be a fully equal citizen by now. Which prompts an interesting question: how many American immigrants in the past have actually had to give up liberty in order to come to this country? Welcome to the future.

“You don’t talk about torture in the morning and then say in the afternoon: ‘Democratise yourself’,” – a “senior European diplomat,” commenting to the Financial Times on Condi Rice’s visit to Europe.

Should we feel sorry for Condi Rice? She wasn’t exactly the architect of the torture policies of the current administration, but she sure hasn’t stopped them. And now, after hurriedly closing secret torture sites in Eastern Europe, she has to greet the fact that America’s natural allies – such as Poland or Britain – have been profoundly alienated. Listen to my old friend Radek Sikorski, now defense minister for Poland, and as pro-American a man you will ever find, squirming his way through a non-denial denial:

Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told ABC Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross today: “My president has said there is no truth in these reports.”

Ross asked: “Do you know otherwise, sir, are you aware of these sites being shut down in the last few weeks, operating on a base under your direct control?”

Sikorski answered, “I think this is as much as I can tell you about this.”

Maybe Radek can tell his wife, the Washington Post columnist, Anne Applebaum, who documented the Soviet gulag. Then listen to Condi herself:

“The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have had to adapt,” Rice said.

Hmmmm.

THE TORTURED ELEVEN: Do we torture captured terrorists? Nah. Not according to John “Milosevic-was-a-wimp” Yoo’s definition, that limits it to treatment threatening imminent death or major organ failure. We just subject them to “the harshest interrogation techniques in the CIA’s secret arsenal, the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers and first reported by ABC News on Nov. 18.” Those include “waterboarding,” an offence that before Donald Rumsfeld became defense secretary, was subject to court-martial if a soldier were found committing it, and that violates basic Geneva protections even for captured terrorists. Do we send these prisoners to countries where we know they will be tortured? Money quote:

These same sources also tell ABC News that U.S. intelligence also ships some “unlawful combatants” to countries that use interrogation techniques harsher than any authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. They say that Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Egypt were among the nations used in order to extract confessions quickly using techniques harsher than those authorized for use by U.S. intelligence officers. These prisoners were not necessarily citizens of those nations.

11 out of 12 suspects were, however, “waterboarded” by Americans. The issue of torture is now building to a real fever pitch in Europe. Check out this latest typical report in the London Times, again not a paper hostile to the U.S. The damage this policy is doing to the alliance is incalculable. The whole idea that this country liberated Poland from totalitarianism only to practise secret torture on its territory would be beyond belief, until only recently. The Washington Post gets it right again. The only way to win this war is to abandon the illegal and immmoral detention policies rammed through the system by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. As for Condi, she has rebuilt our alliances rather successfully so far. Surely she must see that until the McCain amendment passes, her good work will have been in vain.

A reader emails:

Thanks for highlighting Kevin Drum’s comments, which I found cogent and illuminating, even though I maintain my opposition to the war in Iraq (as I have since the invasion). I’ve been following your mood swings on the war with both a mixture of admiration and annoyance. On my good days I share your optimism and faith that our fine military can somehow transcend the morass the Pentagon has put them in, but I confess I roll my eyes on the occasions when you swoon over one of Bush’s chest-thumping “stay-the-course” speeches, such as on Chris Matthews’s show yesterday morning.

But I think I speak for millions of my fellow Americans when I say that we are fervently anti-war not because we’re some cartoonish Sheehan-style peaceniks but because the war in Iraq has failed utterly to protect us from terrorism here. Indeed, it may very well lead to another 9/11, as our distracted policy makers have neglected even the most basic and urgent of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, such as increased inspections of cargo containers, better intelligence gathering on possible sleeper cells and terrorist plots, etc. The confusion over our recent subway scare here in New York should give everyone pause, as Mayor Bloomberg and Ray Kelly implied that the Feds’ dismissal of the intelligence was complacent at best, and incompetent at worst.

On “Meet the Press” yesterday, those sage heads of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, struck a completely different tone to your optimism. As Kean and Hamilton emphasized, almost to the point of shouting at Tim Russert, our government has done virtually nothing to implement the Commission’s meticulous suggestions, making a future catastrophic attack on U.S. soil a near certainty — not if, but when, as both men noted. “Heaven help us,” Kean said and he’s right. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t commented on Kean and Hamilton today.

After all, aren’t all the young lives lost and billions of taxpayer dollars spent in Iraq supposed to be an insurance policy against another 9/11-style attack? I lived through the horror of that day — the images of fire and smoke and falling bodies are seared forever into my memory. I’d like some war hawk to tell me unequivocally that our involvement in Iraq will spare our country another terrifying day like that one.

Until then, I mourn the losses in Iraq and pray for smarter, more competent ideas on national security to emerge.

It appears that the 9/11 Commission agrees with him.

A dissent.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: A reader nails it:

Now I may be HIV-poz (since ’98) and you may be HIV-poz and it takes nerves of steel to cope with it. And I am bearing up fairly well, thank you. So are you. I resent the condescension inherent in the “Let’s pretend-we-have-AIDS” crowd. These are often the same celebrity clowns who knock the big pharmaceutical companies who have kept me alive and healthy. Knowing what I know now, if I didn’t have HIV, I’d be the first one to exclaim “I don’t have HIV!” But I do. And I take literally no comfort in knowing Will Smith earns free publicity and good will for saying he feels sorry for me.

Can you imagine how much money was spent on that idiotic ad insert in the NYT? If you want evidence for why the AIDS establishment often seems so out of it, this kind of p.r. nonsense is Exhibit A.

“A year ago, I asked [Irving] Kristol after a lecture whether he believed in God or not. He got a twinkle in his eye and responded, ‘I don’t believe in God, I have faith in God.’ Well, faith, as it says in Hebrews 11:1, ‘is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ But at the recent AEI lecture, journalist Ben Wattenberg asked him the same thing. Kristol responded that ‘that is a stupid question,’ and crisply restated his belief that religion is essential for maintaining social discipline. A much younger (and perhaps less circumspect) Kristol asserted in a 1949 essay that in order to prevent the social disarray that would occur if ordinary people lost their religious faith, ‘it would indeed become the duty of the wise publicly to defend and support religion.'” – Ronald Bailey, Reason. (Hat tip: Derb).

Re-reading the theocons for my book on conservatism, I have been struck by how, in recent years, they have come to a consensus that in order for their political-theological project to be coherent, they may have to undermine Darwin and evolution. This political Pope may help provide cover. You cannot restore Aquinas as the central figure for the West’s understanding of its own politics without dethroning Darwin. For the neocons, this will present a real challenge: to say things they know are untrue in order to promote a political reordering that they approve of. Some will balk, like Krauthammer. But others will find a way to be tactically silent, or worse. Power is at stake.

THE MILITARY VERSUS TORTURE: The internal revolt against the Cheney-Rumsfeld policy gains momentum. Honor is not dead in the American military and CIA. Far from it. It is just dead in the White House.

A TWOFER: Among Republican and conservative blog-readers, I’ve won two prizes. An Honorable Mention for “Most Annoying Left-Of-Center Blogger” (ahead of Juan Cole!); and a clear win for “Most Annoying Right-Of-Center Blogger.” Shucks. I do what I can.

They’re still useless.