Remembering Hillary

We have no excuse if Hillary Clinton becomes president. We know what and who she is. In this respect, Elizabeth Kolbert’s review of the new Hillary books is well worth a read. This passage highlights two central aspects of her political character that will not change if she becomes president. Nothing will ever be more important to Hillary Clinton than Hillary Clinton. And her combination of self-righteousness and paranoia is a toxic one. The healthcare fiasco revealed the worst of it, particularly her early decision to warn Senators not to oppose her will:

At a retreat for Democratic senators in the spring of 1993, Clinton was asked whether it was realistic to pursue such an ambitious health-care program, given her husband’s many other legislative initiatives. She responded that the Administration was prepared to "demonize" those who opposed the task force’s recommendations. "That was it for me in terms of Hillary Clinton," Senator Bill Bradley, of New Jersey, told Bernstein. "You don’t tell members of the Senate you are going to demonize them. It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy."

Few have put it better.

Same-Gender Schooling

It’s always been a good idea, especially for boys. Once derided, it’s now experiencing a come-back, with brain research backing it up:

The educators, citing emerging brain research, say that the two sexes learn differently and that schools are more geared to girls than to their ants-in-the-pants counterparts. But they are adopting strategies to help boys succeed, from playing multiplication baseball to handing out stress balls and setting up boys-only schools.

"The public schools teach to girls. You have to be able to follow the rules and color in the lines," said Livermore parent Missy Davis, who moved her son, Collin, to the private, all-boys Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland after he struggled in coed public and parochial settings. "Boys get labeled immature and disrupting. (Teachers) don’t know how to utilize the energy."

The only way to ensure gender equality is to base it on a firm grasp of gender difference. In today’s educational world, a blank slate theory about human nature leads to boys’ being short-changed.

Oh Dear

I feel about Ron Paul the way Mike Kinsley used to feel about Bill Clinton in 1991: "love him; don’t tell me any more about him." With the internets, alas, you can’t get away with much blissful ignorance any more. So with Paul, you get the advantage of a man apparently immune to peer pressure and … the drawback of a man apparently immune to peer pressure. And he has just gotten a round to a subject that truly gets him going: he wants to abolish the federal reserve.

What Did Rumsfeld Know?

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The Pentagon top brass were given details and photographs from Abu Ghraib early on in an official investigation that began in January 2004. Yet on May 6, 2004, the Rumsfeld inner circle greeted the general who had provided them with the evidence months before thus:

"Here … comes … that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!" Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, "I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting." In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. "Could you tell us what happened?" Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, "Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, "I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet."

What is the official Pentagon line about Rumsfeld’s alleged ignorance of the evidence months after he was given it? According to this spokesman in the NYT yesterday:

Lawrence Di Rita, a former top aide to Mr. Rumsfeld, said Mr. Rumsfeld had not viewed the photographs because he had been advised by lawyers that doing so "could materially affect the ongoing criminal investigation." He said Mr. Rumsfeld finally looked at the pictures the day before his Congressional testimony, the same day he was briefed by General Taguba.

So you’re secretary of defense and have been informed that your troops have grotesquely violated the Geneva Conventions – on tape and JPGs – and you decide you don’t want to look into it for months because you don’t want to jeopardize the investigation? Are we really supposed to believe this? Now look at who Sy Hersh’s source is: not an anonymous leaker, but a general of impeccable integrity and credibility whom the Pentagon had itself relied on to do the investigation. It doesn’t get more damning than this.

The obvious explanation, of course, is much, much more plausible than Rumsfeld’s ludicrous grandstanding. It is that Rumsfeld knew what he had authorized – and knew the consequences.

He had already revoked some of the torture techniques he had personally authorized and monitored at Gitmo; he understood the import of Abu Ghraib instantly; his first instinct was to cover it up; and when he realized that was impossible, his second impulse was to start acting as if he had never heard of any of this, and to maintain deniability by not looking at the Taguba report until the day before he was due to face the Congress. Our two choices are, as they have long been: incompetent or criminal? I’d say: both.

The most plausible inference is obviously that he covered his tracks and feigned ignorance and did not look at the photographs to create a record of complete deniability. The incompetence comes from ordering torture at Abu Ghraib and not realizing that evidence of it would spread and disseminate through new media that Rumsfeld probably wasn’t that familiar with. Rumsfeld then gambled on the public not wanting know as much as he wanted to cover it up. Hence his major concern in that meeting with Taguba: not preventing and exposing appalling war crimes on his own watch – but finding a way to persecute the guy whose duty it was to investigate  it. Then, of course, the bluster of a liar caught in the web of his own crime:

"Here I am," Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, "just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this." As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, "He’s looking at me. It was a statement."

You bet it was a statement. Rumsfeld is not dumb. he knew and knows the consequences of what he approved. He is a war criminal, subject to prosecution. And so the big lie – "we do not torture" – had to be followed by another big lie – "we never knew".

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

“The Honesty Of Being A Woman”

Just being one? I was unaware that merely acquiring a gender imbued one with a moral virtue. But then I’ve never quite walked in the shoes of Ms Maya Angelou, have I?  I’m not quite sure what to say about this testimonial in favor of comrade-sister Clinton: "I know her as a woman." But if you think Senator Clinton is best known for her honesty and for being comfortable in her own skin, then Angelou’s words will speak to you. If you’re Christopher Hitchens and you watch this, you’ll just throw up. I nearly did.

Cheer Up, Lefties!

Ross sees the current world lucidly enough:

The right had the left on the ropes for a long time, but for now, at least, it’s the other way around. Public opinion is going liberalism’s way on everything from gay marriage to taxes to health care to poverty to global warming, and the Iraq War has temporarily undone conservatism’s long-running advantage on foreign policy. There’s more money flowing into liberal coffers than ever before; the left is well ahead of the right in internet organizing; the rising generation is having its political views forged in the crucible of the Bush years, with predictable consequences – and for once, the right-wing coalition’s intellectual contradictions are more pronounced than liberalism’s divisions.

Quote for the Day

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"There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this…

From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service. And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable," – General Antonio Taguba, tasked by the military to investigate Abu Ghraib without looking up the chain of command and subsequently fired anyway.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)