The Dish

The following commitment was made in the 1994 Republican Contract with America:

A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out- of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.

It was the first item. Just decide now whether to laugh or cry. Robert A. George wonders if this is the end of the Republican era.

The new research makes a lot of epidemiological sense. Viruses that kill their hosts very quickly have much less chance to pass on to other hosts. Successful viruses keep their hosts alive and well in order to propagate more successfully. And the HIV strains resistant to medications are also less potent than the wild virus a couple of decades ago. HIV is adapting – and, in many ways, that’s good news. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it isn’t still life-threatening, if untreated. It does mean that many people can be off drugs for longer, that those on drugs can take breaks, and that the entire idea of “Super-AIDS” defies epidemiological experience. (The usual cavet here: everyone is different and I’m talking about averages here.) Still I expect the usual health authorities to keep the hysteria up, because they haven’t been able to develop more reality-based prevention models. I wonder if the NYT will cover this story.

That was quick. Remember that appalling revelation that U.S. soldiers were posting pictures of mutilated corpses of dead Iraqis on a website in order to get free access to amateur porn? It was clearly a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and a horrifying insight into the culture that has been allowed to percolate in the military in Iraq. After this blog and others raised the alarm, there was an investigation. It lasted a few days. It’s done now:

The Army Criminal Investigation Command in Iraq conducted the preliminary inquiry within the past week but closed it after concluding no felony crime had been committed and failing to determine whether U.S. soldiers were responsible for the photos and whether they showed actual war dead, Army officials said.
Col. Joe Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said there currently was no formal investigation into the matter.

Violation of the Geneva Conventions? Who cares? This is the Bush administration. The Geneva Conventions are a dead letter to them. Decisions like this send a further message to the troops. This stuff ain’t no thing. And we wonder why the allegations of abuse and torture keep coming. If the military spent an ounce of the effort they are now deploying to break the will of Ian Fishback on ridding the military of men who violate the Geneva Conventions, we might get somewhere. But just remember who ultimately sets the tone for the military: the Pentagon and the White House. And the message has gotten through loud and clear.

“There was an infamous experiment over 50 years ago where an authority figure in a lab coat instructed volunteers to apply voltage to a test subject seated in another room when that subject answered their questions erroneously. Unbeknownst to the volunteers, the test subject was part of the experiment, and would scream out in mock pain whenever the voltage was applied. Many of the volunteers were in anguish when applying the voltage, but the calm and authoritative demeanor of the test director influenced them to do things they otherwise would find unconscionable.

Many of us teach this test case to our aspiring officers to illustrate how susceptible we all are to the influence of others, especially when those others are respected and influential members in our national security and military command structures. This is why senior leadership must give clear and unambiguous direction and intent; a break in procedure will permeate the command structure if allowed to go unchecked, especially when it appears to be condoned by leadership. This is why we also study individuals such as Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson of My Lai, a man who possessed the moral courage to stand up to his fellow soldiers in order to protect the innocent, and who later experienced the approbation that Fishback is receiving today.

We in the military do teach the ethics, moral responsibility and personal accountability that by all reporting appear to be demonstrated by Captain Fishback today. Obviously teaching these things is far easier than demonstrating them, which makes this instance all the more noteworthy since the intervening support and command structures appear to be aligned against him. We should recognize the great physical and moral courage it takes for Fishback to speak out, as well as the apparent failures of those higher up to act with similar moral courage.”

Fishback is a man of enormous courage and integrity. So are his two fellow soldiers who backed him up, although they were too scared to give their names. I’ve been reliably informed that the military brass have now uncovered their identity and are applying the same pressure to them as they are to Fishback.

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Please keep using your voice to defend Ian Fishback. I didn’t know him personally at West Point, but I can tell you this: he had a reputation as being a very up-right, by-the-book kind of guy. If someone like him is saying torture happened, then it did. A West Pointer like Fishback would rather die than dishonor himself by lying. Besides, what possible motive could he have for doing what he is doing other than the desire to right a wrong? If he is attacked by the DoD political hacks and the generals don’t stick up for him, then I’m afraid whatever scrap of integrity is left in the system is gone. I sent him an encouraging email below – I don’t know if that email address is public or not (making it public might not be smart). Keep drawing attention to his case!”

EMAIL OF THE DAY III: “Looks like we can expect a post at National Review Online’s Corner about every 90 seconds on the Delay indictment for the foreseeable future. But still zero about Fishback and the appalling revelations about the official policy of torture and its systemic pervasiveness, and the heights to which it rises in the administration. Says something about the culture over there, and about the fact that at this point it’s just impossible to defend the administration at all on the torture issue.”

The politburo reporting of the “anti-war” march in Washington last week that Hitch responded to here was by comrade Michael Janovsky of the NYT. A reader alerts me to another moment when Janovsky’s far-left bias affected his reporting. From this blog on November 18, 2002:

“An article on Thursday about comments on the midterm elections made at a political forum by Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s chief political strategist, misstated the question to which he responded, “I’m more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11.” The questioner had asked whether he was concerned about 200,000 people who she said marched in Washington against a war with Iraq – not about concerns that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American-led invasion.” – the New York Times, Saturday. Here’s the original: “The audience included several dozen protesters who held signs critical of various issues, including war against Iraq. But they were largely quiet and respectful. In the question-and-answer session, a woman politely asked Mr. Rove if the administration was concerned over the possibility that 200,000 innocent Iraqis might die in an American-led invasion. Mr. Rove responded, ‘I’m more concerned about the 3,000 who died on 9/11.'” Now this was simple notebook reporting. Was reporter Michael Janovsky there? If he was, how on earth did he hear something that simply wasn’t asked? Some of these Times liberals don’t just have blinders on, they wear ear-plugs.

Quickie question: is there any doubt from his reporting that Janovsky passionately opposes the Iraq war?

Here’s an interesting graph on debt accumulation in the last few decades and the presidents under whose watch it occurs. Here’s an adjusted graph, putting the debt as a percentage of GNP. Draw your own conclusions.

Any bets that James Dobson and Karl Rove vetoed? Any bets why?

I have neither the expertise in Texas electoral law nor the kind of knowledge that a Grand Jury would have to judge the validity of the indictment of Tom DeLay. It looks to me like a money-laundering scheme of sorts to circumvent Texas electoral laws:

The indictment charges that DeLay entered “into an agreement” with Colyandro and Ellis to circumvent the state’s ban on corporate contributions by arranging for the donations to be sent first to an arm of the Republican National Committee in Washington, and then back to Republican candidates in Texas named on a written list prepared in Texas.
According to the indictment, DeLay, Colyandro and Ellis conspired to make a political contribution in violation of the Texas Election Code for the benefit of candidates for the Texas House of Representatives. Colyandro formerly directed the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, known as TRMPAC.

I guess the law is designed to prevent corporate buying of electoral candidates, so you can see why someone like DeLay would want to get around it. Of course, I’m reserving judgment on the ultimate verdict, and DeLay deserves the benefit of being regarded as innocent before being found guilty. But I will say this: there is a clear stench of corruption coming from the Republican power-structure in Washington. It’s been there for a while now. The Abramoff case illustrates it perfectly. With their incoherent big-spending policies already exposing them as conservative frauds, and with each day finding another ethical problem with the GOP leadership, the conditions are ripe for a Democratic come-back in 2006. The only question is whether the Democrats are still too pathetic to take advantage of this.

O’FLANIGAN, TORTURE-ENABLER: Below, you’ll find the role of Timothy E. Flanigan in devising the policies that led to the systematic use of abuse and torture in the U.S. military in Iraq. That alone should bar him from being anywhere near the Justice Department. But he is knee-deep in the Abramoff scandal as well. Surely this is one nomination to which the Senate can calmly say: no.

AVIAN FLU WATCH: National Geographic has now devoted an entire issue to it. Get informed.

This story yesterday in the New York Yimes, hammering a memo once written by John Roberts on libel, is right about everything, except that Roberts didn’t write the memo at all. It makes Stanley and Krugman look almost as accurate as, say, your average blogger.

The torture end-game is approaching – and Rumsfeld and Cheney know it. What is now being done to the hero, Captain Ian Fishback, who braved 17 months of obstruction, threats and intimidation by military brass to keep quiet, is a national disgrace. Fishback has now been sequestered at Fort Bragg under orders restricting his contacts (the pretext is that he is a key witness in a criminal investigation and that he should not be in contact with outsiders while it continues). My sources tell me that he has been subjected to a series of long, arduous interrogations by CID investigators. Predictably, the CID guys are out to find just one thing: they want to know the identities of his two or three NCO corroborators. The CID folks are apparently indifferent to the accounts of wrongdoing – telling him repeatedly not to waste their time with his stories. Fishback knows if he gives their identities up, these folks will also be destroyed – so he’s keeping his silence, so far. The investigators imply that he failed to report abuses, so he may be charged, or that he is peddling falsehoods and will be charged for that. They tell him his career in the Army is over. Meanwhile the peer pressure on him is enormous. I’m reliably told that he has been subjected to an unending stream of threats and acts of intimidation from fellow officers. He is accused of betraying the Army, and betraying his unit by bringing it into disrepute. His motives are challenged. He is accused of siding with the enemy and working for their cause. And it goes on and on. This is not surprising. My email in-tray tells me each day that I am a supporter of Islamo-fascism, a traitor, someone who should be deported and so on, for insisting that legalized torture in the U.S. is one of the most important issues we now face. But I’m a free man and they cannot silence this blog. Fishback, whose courage deserves a medal, is not. They are slowly smearing and breaking him. But I have a feeling we have finally found a man with the integrity, faith and patriotism to stand up to the culture of fear and brutality he is now enduring.

RUMSFELD WANTS HIM BROKEN: Another source informs that the word is around that Rumsfeld has taken a strong interest in this. He is quoted by some as saying “Either break him or destroy him, and do it quickly.” And no doubt about it, that may be just what they are doing. Expect some trumped up charges against Fishback soon, similar to what they did to Muslim Chaplain Captain James Yee, whom they accused of treason with no solid evidence and then, when those charges evaporated, went on to accuse him of adultery. The bottom line, as the NYT reports today, is that the military and the Bush administration are determined to stop any real investigation about how torture and abuse came to be so widespread in the U.S. military. The scapegoating of retarded underlings like Lynndie England is an attempt to deflect real responsibility for the new pro-torture policies that go all the way to the White House. It’s a disgusting cover-up and it rests on breaking the will and resolve of decent servicemen and women brave enough to expose wrong-doing.

THE EVIDENCE IS OVERWHELMING: Anyone with their eyes open knew all this already. But now, the administration is essentially conceding the reality. Here’s the Washington Post editorial today:

How can it be that an officer of the United States armed services, concerned about detainee mistreatment that he has personally witnessed, could struggle in vain for 17 months to learn the standards of humane treatment the military is applying? The answer to this question appears starkly in the written responses to questions from senators by Timothy E. Flanigan, President Bush’s nominee to serve as deputy attorney general: The Bush administration has no standards for humane treatment of detainees. Capt. Fishback is looking for something that doesn’t exist.

Mr. Flanigan was Alberto R. Gonzales’s deputy when the attorney general served as White House counsel during Mr. Bush’s first term, and he was therefore deeply involved in forming policy on matters related to detainees. Like Mr. Gonzales, he has piously repeated the administration’s insistence that it does not engage in torture. Yet, also following the administration’s disgraceful line, he has refused to say that conduct just short of torture — which is banned by treaty and is a stain on American honor — is either illegal or improper when inflicted on foreigners overseas.

Mr. Bush has promised that all detainees will be treated humanely. Yet, when asked how he would define humane treatment, Mr. Flanigan declared that he does “not believe that the term ‘inhumane’ treatment is susceptible to a succinct definition.” Did the White House provide any guidance as to its meaning? “I am not aware of any guidance provided by the White House specifically related to the meaning of humane treatment.”

Mr. Flanigan could not even bring himself to declare particularly barbaric interrogation tactics either legally or morally off-limits. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) asked him about “waterboarding,” mock executions, physical beatings and painful stress positions. Mr. Flanigan responded: “Whether a particular interrogation technique is lawful depends on the facts and circumstances,” and without knowing these, “it would be inappropriate for me to speculate about the legality of the techniques you describe.” And he reiterated that “inhumane” can’t be coherently defined.

All of which is to say that anything short of outright torture goes — or, at least, that nothing is absolutely forbidden.

What more do you need to know? We have administration memos allowing for de facto torture of “enemy combatants” if “military necessity” demands it; we have new, Bush-approved legal definitions of torture that nevertheless allow all the kinds of horrors we have seen at Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, Bagram, Guantanamo, Basra, Camp Mercury and dozens of other sites in the war arena. We have decorated captains testifying at great risk to themselves what has been happening – and we have a clear record of the administration’s attempts to silence and initimidate them. I wonder what is required for this to become the national outrage it should be. A first step must be for the Senate to vote down Flanigan’s pending nomination to be deputy attorney general. We already have a man who signed the torture memo heading the Justice Department. His name is Alberto Gonzales. Yes: a man who has approved torture of people without trial is now in charge of this country’s justice system. The second must be for Rumsfeld to resign immediately. The third must be new legislation forbidding any cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of military prisoners, with clear guidleines as to what is allowed and not allowed (legislation that Cheney is adamantly opposing and threatening to veto). Lastly, we need an independent – non-military – investigation which has access to every civilian and solider involved, with subpoena power and immunity for anyone testifying. If criminal charges be brought against Rumsfeld, so be it. And ultimately, this goes to the Oval Office. Bush has brought the deepest dishonor imaginable on his office. The last president was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in a civil lawsuit. Our current one has legalized torture in the U.S. military, and is thereby responsible for the deaths from torture of scores and the staining of the military’s honor for ever. Which crime is worse?