The Dish

One simple assertion by National Review’s Deroy Murdock in viewing waterboarding as a source of pride for the United States is that several specific plots to kill Americans were foiled as a result of it. But we have no firm evidence of this, except the words of those who authorized the torture. We cannot know for sure, of course, because so much is classified. And the nuances of what was learned through good intelligence gathering and decent interrogation, what was discovered through torture and what specifically was prevented as a result require the closest of examination before we can say anything categorically. We do know that many of the plots revealed by KSM under torture turned out to be baseless – and wasted precious resources. And we know that in the cases cited by the president, the evidence is extremely murky. Greg Djerejian examines a few of the president’s outlandish claims.

It remains the case that even if you buy the self-serving argument of the president, none of these cases represent the ticking time-bomb scenario so beloved of Alan Dershowitz. None. And that is precisely the point of this canard: not to accept, as everyone does, that in the one-in-a-million case of an imminent nuclear attack, a president may decide to do what he needs to do before subjecting himself to legal punishment or pardon; but to find a way to make torture a routine part of American government and national security. This is what Bush and Cheney have done and want to continue doing. And that is the basis of the argument we need to have.

This must be tentatively good news from Iraq, no? Money quote:

The pending release of the Iranians may reflect American approval of some signs that Iran is cooperating with the United States’ demand that it stanch the flow of materials into Iraq used to make deadly roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or E.F.P.’s.

Admiral Smith said that the E.F.P. components found recently during raids “do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made,” suggesting that Iran has limited trafficking of the weapon parts across the border after promising to do so.

American commanders have stopped short of declaring that Iran has in fact complied with the United States’ demands, and Admiral Smith on Tuesday described the plan to release nine Iranian prisoners not as a diplomatic reward, but rather as the perfunctory end to a criminal investigation.

Any sign that some elements in Tehran are prepared to cooperate on security in Iraq is surely a good thing. I don’t know why they’re doing this. Fear of Cheney? Fear of chaos next door? Fear of the Iranian people? It’s also encouraging that Turkey seems to be easing off its threats of incursion into northern Iraq. This NYT piece suggests that economic growth and cross-border investment is restraining belligerence between the Kurds and the Turks. This was ultimately key to calming the Irish conflict. Know hope.

An evangelical vents:

How did we get to the point where such a question needs to be asked of an attorney general? Who allowed our country to succumb to such fear and moral cowardice that we parse the meaning and definition of "torture?"

I blame myself, and implicate my fellow Christians. We have remained silent and treated an issue once considered unthinkable–the acceptability of torture–like a concept worthy of honest debate. But there is no room for debate: torture is immoral and should be clearly and forcefully denounced. We continue to shame ourselves and our Creator by refusing to speak out against such outrages to human dignity.

The silence of many (but not all) Christians these past few years is just one of the prices of being coopted by political power. But many have spoken out. Their witness is necessary when the government practices something that is, by any Christian calculus, inherently and inescapably not just wrong – but evil.

"Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud," – Deroy Murdock, National Review.

Have you noticed that the pro-torture right has gone from saying that torture is abhorrent to saying that torture isn’t occurring to saying that torture is not torture to now saying that torture is "something of which every American should be proud". And why not indeed? The Cheney logic is impregnable: the president is not bound by the law or the Geneva Conventions; torture reveals information that allows the government to seize individuals who might at some point commit terror attacks; the president’s job is to prevent terror attacks. Torture is thereby a good. Alas, the American constitution clearly does not say that the president is above the law; the Geneva Conventions do apply to all captives in wartime and the bar on mistreatment far less than torture is clear; the only source we have for the fact that these terror suspects were terrorists is the government that uses torture against them; torture itself has no way of determining what is true or what is false and was designed in the first place to produce false confessions. And the president’s first job is to uphold the Constitution.

Then, of course, there is the question of morality. But if you follow Murdock’s reasoning that torture saves lives, and your moral rubric is entirely utilitarian, then torture itself is obviously an active moral good. I have no idea why more "conservatives" don’t aggressively propose expanding it. And here’s a prediction: after the next terror attack, they will.

He has an appeal Clinton will never match:

Political organizing for Democrats in red states like Nebraska can often feel a bit like leading AA meetings. But that hasn’t deterred more than 300 Nebraskans from forming a dozen groups for Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and they aren’t the only ones. On Monday, the Obama campaign announced that over 300 Iowa and New Hampshire Republicans had decided to cross party lines to support Obama. At Obama events in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virginia and Georgia, a good 20% of audiences routinely raise their hands when emcees ask for Republicans in the crowd. A "Republicans for Obama" website has 11 state chapters with 146 members. An August University of Iowa even found Obama running third in the state among Republican candidates, behind Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani but ahead of both Fred Thompson and John McCain. And a national Gallup poll this month also found that nearly as many Republicans like Obama — 39% — than the 43% that dislike him, compared with the 78% of Republicans who held an unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton.

A stunning online video from NASA.

It’s a fair piece, if obviously tilted toward Romney and against Obama. This much is very clear, though, and I’ve been struck by it myself. I can’t find anyone who is Obama’s peer who dislikes him. In fact, the legions of Republicans and conservatives who positively love the guy is almost unnerving. Money quote:

In my previous professional life, I had reason to be in contact with dozens of Barack Obama’s classmates at Harvard Law School. When he entered the presidential race, I dusted off my Rolodex and began making some calls to get the off-the-record skinny on the Democrats’ potential savior. The results surprised me. Regardless of his classmates’ politics, they all said pretty much the same thing. They adored him. The only thing that varied was the intensity with which they adored him. Some spoke like they were eager to bear his children. And those were the guys. Others merely professed a profound fondness and respect for their former classmate.

Even more interesting was what wasn’t said. In dozens of conversations, not a single person said anything negative about him, and some were hardly the senator’s political fellow travelers. Also noteworthy is that virtually everyone seemed to know Obama. Usually people who have such a high profile on law school campuses have their detractors. Obama apparently didn’t.

But Dean thinks Obama’s campaigning has fallen flat, and compares him unfavorably to Romney. For my part, I hear only good things about Romney’s character, and I don’t disbelieve them. There’s something extremely nice about Romney – and in this, he is not atypical of many Mormons I have come across. But the idea that Romney has been planning what he wants to say in this race for years is silly.

Romney’s politics have been completely retooled these past five years to cater to the Christianist base. He has changed political identity far more completely than Obama. Romney has also failed in any real way to generate donor enthusiasm, certainly compared with Obama, and has nothing like the online support. He has largely bought his own lead in Iowa and new Hampshire through personal funding of ad buys. His campaign performances have been lack-luster, and his occasional utterances moronic. The idea that an intelligent response to the detainee issue is to "double Gitmo" is silly. Romney’s description of his foreign policy is a third-grader’s, compared with Obama. A man who has no grasp of the different challenges of Wahhabist terror and Shiite Tehran is still in need of training. He panders so blatantly and wildly he sometimes says things that are worthy of a total fool. But like Obama, he is not indecent and not nasty. Which is to say he is much better than Giuliani, even though my views on the social issues are closer to Giuliani than to Romney (as of November 2007).

I wouldn’t be terrified for the future of the Constitution if he became president. I would if Rudy were on control.

A striking survey from Europe:

A study of more than 5,000 youngsters in Switzerland has found those who smoked marijuana do as well or better in some areas as those who don’t, researchers said Monday.

But the same was not true for those who used both tobacco and marijuana, who tended to be heavier users of the drug, said the report from Dr. J.C. Suris and colleagues at the University of Lausanne.

The study did not confirm the hypothesis that those who abstained from marijuana and tobacco functioned better overall, the authors said.

In fact, those who used only marijuana were "more socially driven … significantly more likely to practice sports and they have a better relationship with their peers" than abstainers, it said.

I should add I don’t support the legal use of marijuana by teenagers. I’d be happy to keep it illegal for the under-age, as with cigarettes. But it does not surprise me that moderate use of the drug has no correlation with personal, social or academic failure.

Derb spots the big difference: there is none. Which is why today’s incarnation of National Review is so often unrecognizable from the spirit and political philosophy that founded it.