Clinton’s Dissembling Ineptness

A reader writes:

The most telling line in that item about Shaheen’s shot at Obama was this one:

Shaheen said Obama’s candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions.

It’s not Obama’s drug use that the Clinton people attacked – it’s his candor. Even though they’ve retracted the attack, that choice of emphasis tells you something about their political instincts. When you make mistakes, don’t admit them. If there’s something embarrassing in your past, deny and obfuscate. Just like kindergartengate, this sort of attack could hurt Clinton more than Obama, precisely because of her distinctive weaknesses.

The supposedly fearsome Clinton attack machine may be this primary’s most overhyped commodity. Their attacks are oddly prone to backfire, and it’s all because of who Clinton is. Now imagine that kind of botched attack in the heat of a general election. And if their attack machine is inherently flawed… what are Clinton’s strengths again?

She’s the wife of the last president. Er, that’s it.

“Breaking Late”

This February 2007 column from the Chicago Sun-Times looks very prescient today:

You "experts" assume that just because viable, credible black candidates end up winning Obamatimsloanafpgetty overwhelming majorities of black votes that polls currently showing Hillary Clinton leading Obama among African Americans are somehow important.

Wrong again.

In Illinois, at least, large numbers of black voters tend to take their time making up their minds. In political parlance, they ”break late.”

Ten months before the March 2004 U.S. Senate primary (about where we are now before the Iowa caucuses), Obama’s own polls showed him winning just 34 percent of the black vote. About a month before the primary, African-American voters began ”breaking” in large numbers to his candidacy. As they began focusing on the campaign, black voters saw he was viable, liked his message and a significant percentage finally realized he was African American. He ended up winning just about all their votes.

Rich Miller blogs Illinois politics here.

None Dare Call It Torture

Check out this NYT piece I read this morning. It’s about the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, hypothermia and other well-documented torture techniques throughout the centuries, all clearly outside the Geneva Conventions, and all universally recognized and prosecuted as torture in the past. And what do you find? Scott Shane uses the following terms:

"harsh treatment"
"tough interrogation methods"
"coercive techniques"

The only use of the word "torture" is when detailing critics’ assertions or a specific legal accusation. Everywhere else, the NYT wimps out. Then there is this passage:

The deaths of several prisoners who had been questioned by C.I.A. officers or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — but outside the detention program for high-level Qaeda prisoners — have been referred to the Justice Department. Only one C.I.A. contractor, David A. Passaro, has been prosecuted, receiving an eight-year sentence for beating an Afghan man who later died. Still, investigations can impose a high price no matter how they end. “It’s not just the fear of going to jail,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “It’s the enormous expense of hiring lawyers. It’s seeing your reputation destroyed. It’s losing your career.”

Again: "beating an Afghan man who later died." Here is the reality:

According to the prosecutors, Wali, while chained to the floor and wall of a cell, was tortured and beaten by Passaro on the arms, wrists, knees and abdomen using a metal flashlight, closed fist and shod foot. Passaro also, on at least one occasion, kicked Wali in the groin." According to Reuters, prosecutors also claimed Passaro kicked Wali so hard that the detainee was lifted off the ground and probably fractured his pelvis, making it impossible for him to urinate.

Here we have a case in which a CIA contractor tortured a man to death – and the sympathy is supposed to be primarily for those who may have to deal with legal bills!

There is in the reporting of the torture scandal in the MSM a total failure of nerve.

It is not a disputable opinion that waterboarding is torture. There is no debate here. There aren’t two sides to the issue. That waterboarding is torture is a legal, empirical, historical fact. There are many legitimate and legal methods of interrogation, and all can and should be debated. But torture isn’t one of them. And the cowardice in refusing to use plain English to state the truth is part of what enables torture to endure. Look at the headline of the piece:

C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods

Now imagine if the headline had told the truth:

C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Torture

Wouldn’t that help raise awareness? This is the same MSM cowardice that refuses to say in clear reporting when a candidate is simply telling an untruth; or that passes on rumors without clearly saying they are lies. Many in the press have done an amazing job in bringing the war crimes of the Bush administration to light. But too many are also critical in keeping them hidden. The New York Times is not alone. But Bill Keller needs to tell his reporters: torture is torture, and no euphemism will suffice. It’s the president’s job to cover his behind; it’s not the press’s.   

African-Americans And Clinton’s Obama Drug Smear

Obamaclintonbrendansmialowskigetty

A reader writes:

The second generation story emerging from yesterday’s Billy Shaheen story is that African Americans are up in arms over the insinuation that Obama will be asked if he was a drug dealer.  On African American radio stations, callers were correctly observing that not even the most in-your-face reporters asked Al Gore or George W Bush if he actually sold drugs as opposed to using them.  Why is a black candidate who admitted to youthful drug use expected to answer such questions?  I truly think Hillary needs to fire Shaheen to repair the potential rift, and not just make him apologize, which is what they’ve done.  This story really could cause the first serious black flight from Hillary.

That hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes a great deal of sense. For Clinton to be targeting a black man for confessed past drug-use, while white politicians who dissemble (ahem) get a free pass, could be terrible for the Clinton black vote. Hence her sudden apology.

(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)

The Clinton Unraveling

"There are two people who have come up with this strategy — one Hillary Clinton and one Mark Penn. Mark wanted to run her, basically, for re-election, and we are seeing what happened," – a top Clinton aide, leaking to Newsday.

Meanwhile, the Clinton camp is in classic passive-aggressive mode. After a surrogate goes after Obama’s previous drug use, we get this:

Kathleen Strand, a spokeswoman for Clinton in New Hampshire, moved quickly to distance the campaign from Shaheen’s comments, saying they "were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way." Shaheen did not return phone calls seeking comment, but later apologized in a one-sentence statement issued by the campaign.

More wild smears of Obama here. One word: panic.

Restoring Habeas

Julian Sanchez on Boumediene vs Bush. Money quote:

Traditionally, courts have used territory as a bright line to determine the status of prisoners: If you were picked up on American soil, you had habeas rights; if not, not. This made a certain amount of sense in traditional war; it makes much less in an ill-defined "War on Terror" that, to hear the administration tell it, makes the whole of the planet a battlefield. Here, hewing to a strict territorial rule has the perverse consequence that the Algerian Six would enjoy more rights, on the government’s theory, if they had illegally infiltrated the United States like the Nazi saboteurs whose fate was considered in Ex parte Quirin (1941). The government’s circular logic here seems better suited to a Monty Python sketch than a court of law: Throw the old lady in the pond, and if she floats, she’s a witch! She might drown, you say? Why are you so worried about what happens to witches?