The Dish

That’s one revelation from the New York Times today:

Mr. Chertoff’s division was asked on several occasions by the intelligence agency whether its officers risked prosecution by using particular techniques. The officials said the C.I.A. wanted as much legal protection as it could obtain while the Justice Department sought to avoid giving unconditional approval.
One technique that C.I.A. officers could use under certain circumstances without fear of prosecution was strapping a subject down and making him experience a feeling of drowning. Other practices that would not present legal problems were those that did not involve the infliction of pain, like tricking a subject into believing he was being questioned by a member of a security service from another country.

More interesting to me is a second Bybee memo that names specific interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration:

The officials said that when the agency asked about specific practices, Mr. Bybee responded with a second memorandum, which is still classified. They said it said many coercive practices were permissible if they met the narrow definition in the first memorandum. The officials said Mr. Chertoff was consulted on the second memorandum, but Ms. Healy of the White House said he had no role in it.

So here’s an obvious opening for the Senate. The public has a right to know which specific “interrogation techniques” its own government is using against detainees; and who approved what. The second memo must be released. But one thing we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt: the CIA did nothing without getting explicit legal sanction from its superiors. Anyone who thinks torture has gone on without such sanction has to grapple with the insistence from the CIA that they have cast-iron legal cover. (Since the 2002 memo has now been rescinded, they might end up in legal trouble anyway. You think their superiors will back them up?) We also know that the Bush administration believes that tying someone to a board and repeatedly submerging him in water so he thinks repeatedly that he is about to drown does not constitute illegal torture. Can some reporter specifically ask Bush whether he approves of his own government’s policy? It seems to me that neither Chertoff nor Gonzales should be approved until we know what was in this second memo. And I have a feeling I know why they haven’t released it – and will do all they can to prevent its contents being known.

Thanks for your emails. Here’s a poll of Americans’ expectations, which is not encouraging for the Bush administration. Here are some of your comments:

Why is there a need to “judge” the success of these elections in terms of quantifiable rates of turn out, or numbers of polling places, or Iraqis who have died in the polling line? In my opinion, these are simply numbers which some politician or some journalist will be able point to and to wait gleefully to say “Ah ha! Further proof of failure.” There will be NO measure of voter turn out that will satisfy those who wish to oppose the Administration. Look at Afghanistan.

But is there a measure of failure that supporters of the administration would take seriously? This struck me as a sane judgment:

It will signify success when more Iraqi’s can vote under less dangerous circumstances in their second election.

Then this piece of skepticism:

Andrew, the “success” of elections in Iraq will be whether the election matters at all. If two weeks from now there is a new “leader” who does not have the police power to back him, he will continue his residence in the highly fortified fortress of the green zone, with no practical control over the population, over laws, the courts etc…. These elections will not be successful… Your mind does not understand tribal culture, culture based on ethnicity and tribal loyalties. Neither does the mind of Bush or Cheney understand this.

On the other hand:

Turnout in U.S. offyear elections runs around 40%. If the element of well-grounded physical fear is thrown in, I’d say 40 % overall is an excellent result. I doubt very much that between fear and antipathy for the regime, three of ten Sunnis will turn out. Nor need they to play the political game: the rules give them a vote over the constitution the new assembly will draft. The real test is whether the newly elected regime will be legitimate. That in in turn reflects whether those who do turn out are roughly representative of those who don’t. By this standard, the regime will be embraced by the better-off Shi’a and the Kurds, but not by Sadr’s people or the Sunni. It adds up, I fear, to a regime that commands little more respect from the sectors of the population who support terrorism than does the present, US-installed, regime.

My revised criteria: 45 percent turnout for Kurds and Shia, 25 percent turnout for the Sunnis, under 200 murdered. No immediate call for U.S. withdrawal. Reasonable?

Just a piece of data on the latest “journalist” to be moonlighting for the federal government. No surprise: he’s a believer in the “ex-gay” movement. Worth a few dollars to keep that sinking balloon afloat.

GLENN’S DEFENSE: He argues that he only covers good news from Iraq because the mainstream media is doing all the rest. But doesn’t that prove my point? He’s deliberately covering only half the story. How that differs from putting fingers in his ears when bad news emerges, I don’t know. Maybe his point is that he is aware of the bad news but deliberately eschews any reference to it on the blog. My criticism of Belmont Club and Powerline is simply that they defend anything and everything done by the Bush administration. I may be wrong here, because I haven’t read their every word. So can anyone point me to a critique of the Bush administration in any way that has appeared on either blog? I’d be happy to be corrected. Even pro-war, pro-Bush writers must have some small criticism occasionally? Just asking … And is there any conservative blog out there that can criticize my work without some poster eventually imputing it to AIDS dementia?

How do we tell if the Iraqi elections are a success? That they happen at all? Surely we should have a higher standard than that. Here are my criteria: over 50 percent turnout among the Shia and Kurds, and over 30 percent turnout for the Sunnis. No massive disruption of voting places; no theft of ballots. Fewer than 500 murdered. Any other suggestions for relevant criteria? Am I asking too much? I’m just thinking out loud. But it makes sense to have some guidelines before Sunday so we don’t just fit what happens to our pre-existing hopes or rationalizations.

A moving visual tribute. Let’s pray that this Sunday, they get the democratic breakthrough they deserve.

Van Gogh’s film gets pulled from the International Film Festival in Rotterdam because of terror threats. More details here.

The accusation this time is that I haven’t been steady in my judgment of what’s going on in Iraq. Well, let me plead guilty. My judgment of a fast-moving, volatile and opaque situation that is largely off-limits to many journalists has indeed varied with events. My principles remain the same: I supported the overthrow of Saddam and hope we can achieve a more democratic polity in his wake. I still do. I sincerely hope the elections succeed. I have a feeling they will be more successful than many realize. Most elections are. I have said this on multiple occasions and written it on my blog. But I don’t know for sure. I’m in DC – almost as isolated a place as Venice, California. And when people I respect, like Burns and Kaplan, emphasize the extreme insecurity in Iraq from the place itself, I’m chastened and worry. Although I hope democracy succeeds, the fact that Iraqis have to face being gunned down in large numbers to vote does not strike me as a great achievement for an occupying power. A blog reflects the changing reality of the times and the variable responses of one human being to that reality. I take my responsibility as someone who supported this war seriously, which is why I have been keen not to ignore warning signs. What would Mickey have me do? I guess I could take the Reynolds line, rarely acknowledge setbacks or failures, link only to good news, stick my fingers in my ears when things go wrong, and mock those who worry. Or I could take the Hersh line that everything has been botched from the very beginning and that Saddam should have been left in power. But what if my best judgment is that the truth may be somewhere in between? Am I supposed not to reflect that in my blog? Besides, I’m not a military commander. I’m a blogger and writer. Does Mickey think the job of a writer is to take a line and stick to it in order to rally morale? If he does, then he can always read Powerline or the Belmont Club. Nothing unpredictable there. Whatever Bush does, they’ll defend it.

Besides, for Mickey to talk about unsteady judgment strikes me as a little rich. Hands up who can now recall whether Mickey was for the war or against it? Was he for Kerry or did he loathe him? Is he for gay marriage or against it? This is a man who cannot write a sentence without fifteen parentheses for qualifications, internal rebuttals, self-questioning, meta-meta-spin, obscure references to people he might once have dissed or who might have dissed him, and even an imaginary editor to subvert his own points even as he makes them. This idiosyncrasy is part of Mickey’s charm and why I have always loved reading him. He’s like Larry David parsing the Washington Monthly. But he takes after me for inconstancy? That’s like being accused by Woody Allen of being neurotic.

You can’t smoke on a ski mountain any more?

“The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that fear provides a power structure for political leaders. Hitler portrayed the Jews as the enemy and used it to instil fear and gain power. George Bush evokes the fear of terrorism and becomes a more powerful leader. The important thing moving forward is to look at history and understand. Only by seeing how such things develop can we be sure such atrocities will not happen again.” British leftist aristocrat, Tony Benn.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Just try to stay sane, Andrew. I long ago realized how the far left had turned language on its head in an Orwellian manner (for example, Noam Chomsky claiming to be an “anarchist”, “human rights activist”, and “democracy advocate”). Well, now the far right has done it. Now, the US needs to use torture to advance the cause of “freedom”, and anyone who thinks that torture is, you know, anathema to everything that America stands for is “anti-American”. Great. I’m going to go re-read “Politics and the English Language” now, before my head explodes.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

“In Iraq, the very centerpiece of the U.S. campaign to export democracy, ‘democratic movements and institutions’ are dying, the result of illiberalism, U.S. neglect, and, above all, sheer physical insecurity. As it grinds into its third year, the war for a liberal Iraq is destroying the dream of a liberal Iraq.” That’s Lawrence Kaplan‘s grim verdict from Baghdad. No doubt he will now be derided as a squishy left-liberal defeatist – but, in fact, Lawrence was one of the most stalwart supporters of the war against Saddam, co-authored a passionate pro-war book with Bill Kristol, and is a card-carrying neoconservative. (He’s also a friend). But he’s not blind; and he’s not dishonest. The failure is in part a failure to get the U.S. bureaucracy to support liberal institutions and groups; but it is also simply a failure of order and security. Democracy was always going to be hard in Iraq. But democracy amod chaos and violence is close to impossible. And we never sent enough troops or conducted a smart enough post-victory occupation plan to maintain order and defeat a fledgling insurgency while we still could. So we are now left to ask ordinary Iraqis to risk their lives in order to leave their homes and vote. Here’s the most heart-breaking passage – an interview with the liberal deputy defense minister, Mashal Sarraf, who cannot even leave his own house, because of the chaos:

“We have to admit the terrorists have won,” he says. “People cannot engage in civil society; the war has stopped progress; liberalism is over for now.” Asked what, if anything, can be done to revive the liberal project, Sarraf replies, “We need an emergency government that does nothing but security. When there is stability, then liberalism will begin to emerge, but only when there is stability.”

I know Paul Wolfowitz has read Hobbes. Did he forget it? CPA adviser Larry Diamond hasn’t: “You can’t have a democratic state unless you have a state, and the fundamental, irreducible condition of a state is that it has a monopoly on the means of violence.” As John Burns has written – again no sympathizer for Saddam or cynic – that simply isn’t the case in Iraq. Our predicament is that you cannot have democracy without order and you cannot have a new order without democracy. Do I want the elections to succeed? Of course I do. Only those blinded by partisanship or cynicism wouldn’t. Maybe a democratic miracle can occur. But at this point it would be exactly that: a miracle. So pray, will you?

ANOTHER ONE? Salon finds another conservative columnist financially enmeshed with the Bush administration. More Gallagher-level misdemeanor than Williams-level felony. Michelle Malkin comments.

HERSH UNPLUGGED: A stream of consciousness from the anti-war reporter. Here’s Max Boot’s take-down.