The Dish

An interesting profile of the painter who recorded the water-boarding and other methods of torture by the Khmer Rouge. His painting of a torture session now hangs above an actual water-board in the museum of genocide in Cambodia. No word on whether president Bush wants them to remove the waterboard from the exhibit on the grounds that is isn’t, in his view, either torture or a war crime.

An expert analyzes the leaked Gitmo document that allows for extremely prolonged isolation for prisoners as a tool for interrogators. Torture? In some circumstances, yes.

The omens aren’t too encouraging for the Australian prime minister.

Over $1 trillion so far – and we’re much less safe. Tyler Cowen explains:

Foreign governments, of course, drew the obvious lesson from our debacle — and from our choice of target. The United States invaded hapless Iraq, not nuclear-armed North Korea. To the real rogues, the fall of Baghdad was proof positive that it’s more important than ever to acquire nuclear weapons — and if the last superpower is bogged down in Iraq while its foes slink toward getting the bomb, so much the better. Iran, among others, has taken this lesson to heart. The ironic legacy of the war to end all proliferation will be more proliferation.

The bottom line is clear, Mr. President: The more you worried about the unchecked spread of doomsday weapons, the stronger you thought the case was for war in the first place. But precisely because you had a point about the need to stop nuclear proliferation, you must now realize that the costs of a failed war are far higher than you’ve acknowledged.

Questions linger …

“The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think it is probably not." – Tony Blair, talking to David Aaronovitch. (Hat tip: The Speccie’s Coffee House.)

You know who you are.

Welcome to the high standards in DC government.

In Britain, the debate about detaining terror suspects without charges or trial seems far more rational to me than the American discussion. There is no concern that a commander-in-chief can exercize executive powers to disappear people from the purview of even the Red Cross or torture them, as is sadly the case in the US. There is instead an open debate about the length of time terror suspects can be detained without charges. Right now, it’s 28 days. The Brown government wants more time – 58 days. When you remember that Jose Padilla was detained for years without charges – and turned by "aggressive questioning" into a twitching, incoherent wreck, you can see how far the US has sunk. The Tories, meanwhile, have stuck to defending liberty. Matthew D’Ancona, who’s more sympathetic to more state power, notes that they’ve even begun to persuade people of the need for some restraint:

In most opinion polls to date, voters (as you might expect) have been strongly in favour of longer periods of pre-charge detention for terror suspects. But in a recent focus group in Lancashire, composed of Bs and C1s, the Tories were pleasantly surprised to hear their own libertarian objections to an extension of the 28-day limit being volunteered by participants, unpersuaded by the case that ministers have put forward.

You can always get majorities for rounding up suspects and detaining them if you demonize them enough and whip up enough fear. But responsible conservatism resists this kind of demagoguery and tries to find a sane balance. Every time I’m told that my concern for individual liberty makes me a leftist, it helps to check in with the Tories in Britain. On so many issues – climate change, civil partnerships, and civil liberties – they help reassure me that the conservatism I have long loved is not dead. It has just been eclipsed by the authoritarian tendencies in the new GOP.