Breaking News: Anonymous former officials provide unsubstantiated reports that torture provided unspecified intelligence value

The next time someone complains to you about there being an awful liberal bias in the media, remember this Washington Post article from Saturday, which will certainly do its part to make it appear that the debate over whether torture works is as lively as ever. See, this is how it works - one day, an Inspector General report comes out which says explicitly that no conclusions can be drawn from the available evidence that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" were effective in the cases of Abu Zubayda and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. The report is painstakingly detailed, the result of actual investigative reporting inside the agency, and comes with as clear an authority as one is likely to receive. (It was written under the Bush administration, for those suspicious of trickery.) The day after the report comes out, the people who advocated the policy simply assert that not just that the conclusions of the report are false, but that the report itself says exactly the opposite of what it does. That's enough for the public and the media to consider the matter "unsettled". Then, as a follow-up, the second largest paper in the country reports as front page news that some of the people who could be facing indictments over the subject (but who won't identify themselves in any case) recall that at some unspecified point after torture was perpetrated on the terrorists, they began to talk about all manner of interesting things, saving lives in the process. They even title the piece "How a Detainee Became an Asset". Liberal bias indeed.

First - it's time for serious journalists in this country to stop accommodating the anonymous providing of information. Not only do we not have any idea who the people are, and what relationship to the facts they actually have, but it's a good bet that they're the ones potentially facing indictment in John Durham's upcoming investigations. Does the Post really think it "broke a story" here, when all it looks like they did was write down what other people told them to say? Do they even mention the reason these folks might have to flat out lie?

Second - even if you accept as fact everything that the anonymous officials got the Post to transcribe, what it shows is not that torture worked, but rather that some information was gained after torture. Nothing in the story tells you anything about whether it was the torture that made the difference, whether the information was accurate and comprehensive, whether other methods could have been tried first, or anything of value whatsoever. And yet, the title of the piece makes the conclusion for you - How a Detainee Became an Asset.

Here's the sum total of the argument, from the Post piece:

"What do you think changed KSM's mind?" one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. "Of course it began with that."

Of course. Muckrake on, Washington Post.

In the weekend's other example of crack journalism, Chris Wallace interviewed Dick Cheney himself on the torture investigations, and foreign policy in general, even giving the veep a chance to plug his new book while he's at it. I can't sum this up any better than Andrew Sullivan, who compares Wallace to a teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers.

Later today: What if Cheney's right, and torture does actually work?

Krugman on debt and the deficit

For me, the 2008 election turned for the most part on the general unfitness of the GOP, and more specifically the insistence of John McCain to extend and make permanent the Bush tax cuts, in the face of overwhelming economic evidence that they were bad for the country. My primary concern was the negative impacts of the tax cuts on skyrocketing federal debt, and consequently on the value of the dollar, interest rates, and the threat of inflation. (I mostly left social concerns about rising inequality, falling health care and educational standards, etc. to others, since my general progressiveness was somewhat embroynic.) I still consider public and private debt to be an enormous threat to our way of life in the coming years, which is why I was furious about TARP when it was announced, and why I opposed the auto bailouts. (For the record, the stimulus package is an entirely different story, given the economic recession.)

In any case, given my relatively recent interest in all this, I'm compelled to consider the contrary position of our newest Nobel Laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, who argues that advanced countries (including the US) have survived these kinds of debt-to-GDP ratios in the past, even as he points out that if you are upset about the debt and the deficit, it's Bush you need to be pissed at, not Obama.

In any case, when a guy as smart as Krugman says he's worried that the deficit isn't high enough to get us out of this slump, it makes you wonder. Yes, the debt is real bad, but that's not Obama's fault, and there are good reasons to allow for the possibility that additional deficits aren't the biggest danger.

Notes on the upcoming Torture probes

For those following Eric Holder's decision to investigate the CIA operatives who went beyond the directives of the Bush Justice Department's torture memos, some interesting links:

The Washington Times with a profile of John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed by Holder.

Scott Horton of Harpers on why the Obama administration, after releasing loads of info on what the CIA did, still hasn't released the report from the Office of Professional Responsibility, which focuses on the misconduct of the Justice Department lawyers who provided the arguments that authorized torture.

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate on why an investigation that limits its attention to those who overstepped the Bush team's directives would be a disgrace, betraying those in the Agency who were principled enough to resist illegal orders, and legitimizing the means by which the law was summarily cast aside.

A second reading of the CIA IG report by the Times, laying out the evidence that the interrogation program was controlled down to the last detail not by rogue agents out in the field, but by bureaucrats at the Agency and Justice in Washington.

And finally, just for fun, an interview between Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Politico, where he characterizes the investigations as "bullshit", "disgraceful", and "declaring war on the CIA". For those of you who don't know King, one of his more recent legislative contributions was an amendment to the federal hate crimes bill clarifying the definition of "homosexuals" to explicitly exclude "pedophilia". Being roughly equivalent to clarifying the definition of "vegetables" to explicitly exclude "rat poison", the amendment was defeated, along party lines, as it happens. Naturally, James Dobson characterized this chain of events as "Democrats support the rights of pedophiles."

But I digress...King, like many others, remains content to ignore the facts that a) the "enhanced interrogation techniques" produced no unique intelligence in the war on terror, and in fact resulted in more wild goose chases than actual leads, b) federal law and treaty obligations specifically prohibit the exact techniques authorized by the Bush White House, and they have been prosecuted as crimes by the US government in both peacetime and wartime, c) actions undertaken by the US and the legal acrobatics used to justify them provide a blueprint for our enemies to treat our soldiers in kind in current and future conflicts, and d) Holder, perversely, is still only investigating those who didn't follow the orders of their bosses in Washington. My favorite quote from the Congressman:

"Why is it OK to waterboard someone, which causes physical pain, but not threaten someone and not cause pain?"

Indeed - why is it OK?

Dick Cheney thinks you can't read

Months ago, when the Obama administration released the Yoo/Bybee/Bradbury torture memos, under whose authorization the government engaged in years of conduct theretofore prohibited by all manner of custom and statute, Dick Cheney was shocked and appalled, and accused Obama of selectively releasing information about this program for political gain. He referred specifically to reports that he had seen testifying to the efficacy of the techniques, and the lives saved thanks to their use. This week Cheney got what he wanted - the reports of which Cheney spoke (heavily redacted) have been released, along with the CIA Inspector General's report on the subject. Immediately Cheney took to the airwaves to claim victory, asserting that now the public can see all the good that he and his allies did for the country.

Except, wonder of wonders, the memos don't say that that "Enhanced Interrogation" works, at all. What they do say is that the interrogation program was successful, in that a) terror suspects were not out free to commit acts of terrorism while they were being interrogated (duh) and b) terror suspects gave up critical intelligence while in custody. On the second point, the memos indicate that the efficacy of individual techniques is indeterminate, but they note that a majority of info that turned out to be reliable was given up by the terrorist prior to being tortured. After torture began, it was impossible to tell the lies from the truth without corroboration.

Unlike Cheney, I won't assume that you'll take my word for it. Read the memos - they're heavily blacked-out, but the Vice President isn't saying that the real truth is in the still-classified parts - he's saying he's won the case.

Torture isn't just wrong because it flies in the face of our values, even though it does. It's not just wrong because there are laws that prohibit it, even though there are. It's wrong because it flat out does not work, which means it's dangerous and makes us less safe, regardless of what the Cheney's of the world say. Here's what Ali Soufan, an FBI interrogator who actually did this for a living and actively fought the CIA against the use of these methods, had to say in his testimony (reading the whole thing is recommended) to the Senate some months back:

Authoritative CIA, FBI, and military sources have also questioned the claims made by the advocates of the techniques. For example, in one of the recently released Justice Department memos, the author, Stephen Bradbury, acknowledged a (still classified) internal CIA Inspector General report that had found it "difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks."

In summary, the Informed Interrogation Approach outlined in the Army Field Manual is the most effective, reliable, and speedy approach we have for interrogating terrorists. It is legal and has worked time and again.

It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy's handbook. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that was working and naively replace it with an untested method. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that is based on the cumulative wisdom and successful tradition of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement community, in favor of techniques advocated by contractors with no relevant experience.

The mistake was so costly precisely because the situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood style interrogation methods- that in reality- taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game, and diminishes our moral high ground in a battle that is impossible to win without first capturing the hearts and minds around the world. It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda.

For the last seven years, it was not easy objecting to these methods when they had powerful backers. I stood up then for the same reason I'm willing to take on critics now, because I took an oath swearing to protect this great nation. I could not stand by quietly while our country's safety was endangered and our moral standing damaged.

It's actually amazing that in the United States of American we have to have this conversation, because until Bush and Cheney came along, this was obvious to everyone on the left and the right. Reagan, LBJ, Eisenhower, Churchill - they all knew how bad for national security torture was.

Here's another review of the memos from Tim Noah at Slate. More later today on Eric Holder's announced investigations and the classy responses from the right.

10 Yr deficit projections rise from $7.1T to $9.1T

From Reuters. Ok, so the deficit for this year is actually going down by about $300B, because of bank bailout money that never got paid out (thank God for small favors). And most of the deficit increase this year came from bailout policies initiated by George Bush, and from the stimulus, nearly half of which came in tax cuts. So Obama doesn't quite own this the way Republicans say he does. Not yet.

But these projections spell big trouble. There are only a couple ways to curb federal spending in any real significant way, and they all go through entitlements and defense. So far the President hasn't done a good enough job describing how health care reform was going to cut down on medical costs for both individuals and the federal government. He's dealt away the government's ability to negotiate with the drug companies, and at best he's wavering on the public option, which would introduce competition into markets that are effectively single-sourced at the moment. With this latest news, if September isn't an extremely strong month, rhetorically speaking, the whole thing could just get away from him.

Robert Wright on Evolution and Religion

Before all this civil liberties stuff went to pot, I used to spend a good deal of my time focusing on the evolution/creationism/intelligent design conflict. From time to time it's nice to know the issue isn't dead. Robert Wright, one of my personal favorite science/philosophy writers, has a new book out (The Evolution of God), and also published an op-ed in Times over the weekend. In it he proposes that science and religion aren't quite so far apart as they seem - if scientists can accept the notion of a higher purpose in nature, and if the faithful can allow that nature itself contains the tools and mechanisms to produce what we cavalierly refer to as miraculous, then the rest is just detail.

It's kind of a shame, because I really like Wright, but I believe he's missed the point pretty significantly on this. The people fighting tooth and nail against the concept of an evolved universe and human race aren't struggling to preserve the notion of God as some principled majestic presence, sitting back and watching creation unfold, allowing Himself to be interpreted in whatever way people feel like. That's as controversial to them as atheism. What compels these folks, on the contrary, is a world where Scripture reigns supreme, and where God acts with historical precision to make manifest a very specific Divine Plan. Wright's recipe ain't gonna do it.

That's not to say that truly unifying science and religion is impossible; far from it. But doing so in such a way that doesn't dilute either irrevocably requires a far more sophisticated theology, and as such it can't reasonably accommodate everyone. It requires a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, or more recently, a John Haught. Read Wright, by all means, but read these guys too.

Update - The case of Mohammed Jawad - Released

The teenager I wrote about a month ago, ordered released by a federal judge, finally left US custody this week. The Justice Department had threatened to explore criminal charges in federal court after the military commissions process fell apart due to allegations of torture and prolonged abuse. Evidently nothing materialized (shocker), and the kid's headed home.

Torture Watch: IG report released, Eric Holder announces investigation

Big day today.

The long-awaited CIA Inspector General's report was released by the Obama administration today. Much of it remains classified, and a good part of the balance is old news (particularly after the weekend's leaks). But I would most humbly recommend that everyone read the highlights. Like how people wearing the flag of the United States of America conducted mock executions, threatened detainees with handguns and power drills while they sat bound and naked but for a hood, boasted about raping the mothers and killing the children of suspects. And this was only the stuff that went beyond the guidelines offered by the Bush Justice Department. Standard operating procedure included all kinds of chilling activities, during which several detainees died in custody.

The report makes the claim that the CIA's detention and interrogation program provided valuable guidance in counter-terrorism operations, but basically states that the effectiveness of any of the "enhanced techniques", as they are called, is indeterminate. It doesn't commit one way or the other, so but for the redacted content of the report, the question remains open. But the report is quite clear that many if not most of the individuals involved in the interrogations were cognizant of the legal culpability they were risking, to say nothing of the damage to their own reputations and the Agency's effectiveness.

It is this report, by all accounts, that most motivated Eric Holder to announce that he is conducting a preliminary investigation into the crimes contained therein. He is targeting the officers and agents who tortured detainees (and in some cases killed them) in manners that went beyond the boundaries identified in the Yoo/Bybee/Bradbury Office of Legal Counsel memos. Barack Obama has indicated that this decision belongs to the Attorney General and him alone, as befits the apolitical nature of his responsibility.

The actions Holder is taking are a good first step, and the individuals who have spent years trying to get this report declassified (notably the ACLU) deserve a great deal of credit. But the largest danger here, as I've written before, is that in prosecuting only the violators of the Bush DoJ protocols, the Obama administration is implicitly offering legitimacy to the protocols themselves, and the manner in which they were constructed. To review - US law has stated for decades that "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment, as outlined in the torture statutes, is to be interpreted in roughly the same manner as the guidelines set out in the Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. This implies that if it could be done to a terrorist, it could be done to anyone in government custody, citizen or not. Regardless of what President Obama has made his own policy, the Bush Justice Department gave the CIA rulings that incorporated sleep deprivation, beatings, extended cramped confinement (with and without insects), waterboarding, stress positions, and other "harsh treatment". into the realm of legal treatment, under the theory that unless an action could be proved to cause years of mental suffering, pain approaching that caused by organ failure, or unless the treatment was inflicted solely for the purpose of sadistic pleasure and not real intelligence gathering, the prohibitions couldn't be construed to apply. All indications are that this conclusion was drawn with the full knowledge that it was legally unsound, but the Agency was instructed to proceed nonetheless. The so-far undisclosed report from the Office of Professional Responsibility on the torture memos recommends disciplinary action against the lawyers who wrote them, on the grounds that they were written in bad faith - that is, with the knowledge that they would be used to justify illegal behavior. But in declining to prosecute or even investigate the policy-makers, in deciding to focus on the grunts instead, Holder is effectively saying that there's nothing to hold the government accountable for. Just a difference of opinion, that's all.

What cracks me up about this is hearing the yahoos on TV saying that the tyranny which ends the American experiment will come in the form of a public health insurance plan.

Two more quick items - one, Obama today also affirmed his policy of renditioning terror suspects to foreign countries, except now he promises to make sure they won't be tortured once they get there. Why don't I feel encouraged. Two, Obama also announced the creation of a new team of expert interrogators for high-value detainees, controlled by the White House instead of the CIA. Yeah, that ought to help.

CIA IG REPORT TO BE RELEASED MONDAY

A 2004 report detailing the specifics of what went on in CIA interrogations in the early Bush years is due to be released Monday, by order of a federal judge. In today's Post, an early leak describing how a gun and an electric drill was used to intimidate one detainee with imminent death.

Dershowitz on Scalia and the Death Penalty

This is interesting...Alan Dershowitz is calling out Anton Scalia on his recent ruling that even clear evidence of innocence isn't enough to halt an execution, and specifically how the Justice reconciles that with his Catholicism.

From my point of view,Strictly speaking, any Christian justification for state-sponsored execution is necessarily burdened with a pretty large dollop of irony. I mean, the Gospels aren't long on subtext when it comes to public policy, but the one government action that I'm pretty sure the Authors hoped the readers would frown upon is killing convicted criminals.

Justice Department gets tough on detainee defense lawyers

The Justice Department hasn't yet gotten around to deciding whether to investigate and/or prosecute the torture of detainees in US custody, in the face of clear evidence that even the Spanish Inquisition guidelines laid out by John Yoo were exceeded. They have, however, evidently offered some attention to the defense teams for some of those detainees.

A research company hired by the defense teams is accused of showing photographs of CIA officers to detainees. Presumably this was done in an attempt to compile a list of individuals who interacted with said detainees, especially since the evidence against them was in some cases gathered under illegal circumstances (torture). So far it's unclear, even to those being investigated, exactly what law the defense attorneys supposedly violated by engaging in this activity, but I'm sure Justice is acting totally in good faith. No reason I can think of, after all, to believe the government would be trying to discourage the defense activity of these particular clients.

Bush era disintegration of the week

Early leaks from a forthcoming book by Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security Secretary, indicate that immediately prior to the 2004 election, he felt pressure to increase the terrorism threat level, which he now says he thought might have been politically motivated. He doesn't provide any evidence, other than a gut feel that he had, and of course others who participated have strongly repudiated his accusations that the Bush White House would ever, in a million years, have manipulated the public's fear of terrorism for electoral gain.

So add one more individual to the list of people who have betrayed George Bush's outsized premium on loyalty. At the time, Ridge swore up and down, even offered to take a lie detector test, that the only thing motivating changes in the terror threat level was public safety, and participated in widespread suggestion that anyone who thought otherwise was paranoid, un-American, and only motivated by politics themselves. Now, a book deal having made the difference, he reveals that he himself had the same suspicions. Pathetic. For the record, here is one individual's correlation between official threat levels and President Bush's approval ratings.

But hey, it's all old news now, isn't it? Why dredge up the past? It's all just partisan vindictiveness, right? I mean politically motivated threat level elevation, manipulation of intelligence that leads to war and 4000 Americans dead, the evisceration of the Justice Department for electoral ends, the secret and flagrant collusion of business interests with public policy, extra-judicial surveillance of American citizens, torture of detainees for no discernible benefit...those were all just policy differences, right? I mean, easy for us to say they're wrong now, but at the time, what was a guy like Ridge supposed to do?

It would be great if there were some way to incent politicians to indulge their "suspicions" and adherence to principle while they're in office, and not just after the fact, when the political winds safely change. Like if there were, you know, laws against government actions of this sort that made them punishable offenses. Oh, wait a minute - THERE ARE LAWS.

Must-read long form journalism on health care reform

This month in the Atlantic, a private businessman writes the most compelling piece on health care I've read since the debate started. Basically he argues that the system isn't ripe for reform - the system needs to be blown up. The author makes the case that were it not for our reliance on health insurance to provide all our health care, and on health care to secure our health (as opposed to nutrition, exercise, etc.), both the coverage problem and the cost problem could be brought under control. He lays out just how badly the market is distorted by both public and private insurance. The hook for his story is how his father wound up one of the 100,000 Americans who die each year from faulty medical care, when he contracted an infection during treatment for pneumonia. In a hospital.

For both proponents and detractors of the Democrats' plans, this is worth taking the time on.

What kind of Afghanistan

Human Rights Watch reports that Hamid Karzai has made a deal with fundamentalist factions in Afghanistan to pass a law that "gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands...grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers...requires women to get permission from their husbands to work...[and] effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to a girl who was injured when he raped her."

This runs against the Afghan constitution, so one hopes that ultimately Karzai will be overruled, and that this despicable compromise will be overridden. Otherwise, if this is indeed the shape of things to come, one wonders what all the fuss about democracy and modernization was really about. When asked what success looks like in Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has nothing better to offer than "We'll know it when we see it." You know, like porno. For shame.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

If you have any room left in your summer reading schedule, may I humbly but strongly recommend (as it was recommended to me) Christopher Moore's Lamb. It dares to imagine what it would have been like for the Son of God to have had friends before he had apostles, and challenges the presumption that Jesus's theology and social philosophy just popped into being fully formed on His 30th birthday. Biff is Han Solo to Jesus's Luke Skywalker, the Ron to his Harry; and it's through His relationships that Jesus not only grows into a man, but allows Himself to become truly human as well. The story is both delightfully reverent, and enormously funny in the way that only sincerely reverent religious fiction can be (A Prayer for Owen Meany is the best analogy I can come up with, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about).

I don't read a lot of fiction, but I'm very grateful for the recommendations I got to pick this one up. Dig it the most. Here's a sample:

"You see, Jesus, faking demonic possession is kind of like a mustard seed."
"How is it like a mustard seed?"
"You really don't know, do you? Doesn't seem like a mustard seed at all, does it? There, now you know how the rest of us feel when you liken everything to a mustard seed. Now go with God."

Obama to the Supreme Court: Suppress the photos

Last week, the Obama administration submitted a brief to the Supreme Court arguing that the thousands of photos depicting the widespread and flagrant detainee abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, should be suppressed, lest increased dangers come to troops still serving overseas based on increased anti-American sentiment. From the brief:

The President and the United States military fully
recognize that certain photographs at issue depict reprehensible
conduct by American personnel and warranted
disciplinary action. There are neither justifications
nor excuses for such conduct by members of the military.
But the fact remains that public disclosure of the
photographs could reasonably be expected to endanger
the lives and physical safety of individuals engaged in
the Nation’s military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are other excerpts from this report that describe what some of the pictures show, but I'm not going to transcribe them here. Suffice to say that if you've only seen the Abu Ghraib pictures, you ain't seen nothin'.

Just to review - the President already lost this battle, in appellate court. He's been ordered to release the photos, under the Freedom of Information Act. An appeal to the Supremes is likely to drag this out for months, and maybe that's all Obama's trying to do, is delay things a bit. But regardless, the argument he's making is more than a little obscene, for a couple of reasons.

First, as a matter of law it's a perversion of what FoIA intended to carve out as an exception to the disclosure standard. It allows the government to refuse release of information that is likely to bring harm to an individual - the intent was along the lines of protecting a witness in an organized crime case. Not a vague, posited increase in the threat level to a whole class of people. Accepting this as a new standard would completely eliminate the incentive to release any information that was embarrassing to U.S. interests, all under the banner of 'protecting the troops'.

Second, it's completely unfair if the government is the only party permitted to claim this kind of exemption to FoIA, for itself. Think about it this way - what if the government said, we shouldn't release information about crimes committed by Islamic extremists, because that would increase anti-Muslim sentiment and put Muslim citizens at risk. It's not unreasonable that talking about bad things that Muslims do increases a very real threat to innocent citizens whose only crime is sharing a faith with criminals - and yet that standard for exemption still seems ridiculous. Or how about, we shouldn't release information about crimes committed by African-Americans, because that would increase the ill-effects of white racism? Someone want to explain the difference? Why is it that we would allow the government to claim this exemption for itself, but not for anyone else? Again, the exemptions in FoIA were never intended for this.

Third, and this is really the most important - it's really quite horrible to blame a proposed disclosure of these abuses for increased anti-American sentiment, as opposed to blaming the abuses themselves. The military has a responsibility to address this, and they haven't. Now they want it all to go away, and I can grant the fact that they have a job to do. But we place burdens on those who protect us all the time, and we do that for a reason. Miranda, jury trials, the Bill of Rights - one can make an argument in the abstract that all of these make us less safe. But we've already had those arguments, and the result is codified in law. There are consequences for breaking those laws, otherwise we aren't any better than those we fight. If those consequences are negotiable then so is the whole foundation of the American experiment

I have to offer at this point an unsubstantiated anecdote, which I certify as the God's honest truth, but which I can't back up with a single shred of documentation. If you're inclined to ignore it, no offense taken. A few months ago I was on a plane sitting next to a 19-year-old kid from Nebraska, who just got certified as an army MP, and was getting set to be assigned to a special unit that follows the President everywhere he goes. Based on his specialty, I couldn't resist - I asked him about the torture memos, fully prepared for him to put me in my place, and tell me about the realities of war. He looked at me square in the face and said that if he met me on the battlefield, he wouldn't hesitate for a second before laying me out with a double-tap straight to the chest. But if I was an unarmed prisoner under his guard, then I was entitled under the laws of war to be treated with dignity, free from physical or psychological abuse. Then he told me that from where he sat, recruits weren't being trained in this latter discipline - they weren't being instructed in what the standards were, or even how to recognize an illegal order when they heard one. And to his way of thinking, memos or no memos, that's how things get out of control.

While I'm (mildly) sympathetic to the fact that Obama's health care plans are hanging by a very thin thread, the longer he doesn't deal with this the worse it's going to get. He needs to start by airing the facts.

New evidence in the Binyamin Mohammed case

So now it appears, according to the Guardian, that MI-5 knew that the man later-deemed-innocent-and-released was in Morocco being tortured at the request of the Americans, contrary to what they've been telling the British High Court all this time. And in light of that, the threats that US officials have been making to the British government, to withhold future intelligence in the event evidence of Mohammed's torture is released, now look a bit like collusion between the two governments aimed at bullying the High Court into . So perhaps we're not actually playing games with innocent lives here, we're only bluffing in a hamfisted attempt to manipulate our respective independent judiciaries.

Blech. At least if this turns out to be correct, there's really no reason not to release the evidence. Time will tell.

What Bush's people thought the Justice Department was for

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee released the transcripts from their interviews with Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, along with thousands of pages of White House documents, relating to the fired US attorneys scandal from 2006. It staggers me that these people are out making millions a year on the lecture circuit, and that anyone with a fraction of self-respect still assigns weight to the swill that comes out of their mouths.

Let there no longer be any doubt whatsoever that the Bush White House sought to leverage the United States Department of Justice in their political battles against the opposition party, attempting to initiate dubious criminal proceedings against their opponents on the eves of elections, and retaliating against the career prosecutors who dared deny them with summary termination. Copying from the House press release:

* 2005 White House "Decision" to fire David Iglesias – It has previously been known that New Mexico Republicans pressed for Iglesias to be removed because they did not like his decisions on vote fraud cases. New White House documents show that Rove and his office were involved in this effort no later than May 2005 (months earlier than previously known) - for example, in May and June 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent e-mails to Tim Griffin (also in Rove’s office) asking "what else I can do to move this process forward" and stressing that "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY." In June 2005, Harriet Miers e-mailed that a "decision" had been made to replace Iglesias. At this time, DOJ gave Iglesias top rankings, so this decision was clearly not just the result of the White House following the Department’s lead as Rove and Miers have maintained.1

* Iglesias criticized by Rove aide for not "doing his job on" Democratic Congressional Candidate Patricia Madrid – An October 2006 e-mail chain begun by Representative Heather Wilson criticized David Iglesias for not bringing politically useful public corruption prosecutions in the run up to the 2006 elections. Scott Jennings forwarded Wilson’s email to Karl Rove and complained that Iglesias had been "shy about doing his job on Madrid," Wilson’s opponent in the 2006 Congressional race. Just weeks after this e-mail, Iglesias’ name was placed on the final firing list.2

* An "agitated" Rove pressed Harriet Miers to do something about Iglesias just weeks before Iglesias was placed on the removal list – Karl Rove phoned Harriet Miers during a visit to New Mexico in September 2006 – according to Miers’ testimony, Rove was "agitated" and told her that Iglesias was "a serious problem and he wanted something done about it."3

* Senator Domenici personally asked Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to have Iglesias replaced – In October 2006, Senator Domenici stepped up his campaign to have Iglesias replaced. According to White House phone logs and emails, as well as Rove’s own testimony, Domenici spoke with President Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolten about Iglesias on October 5, 2006, and during October 2006, Domenici or his staff spoke with Karl Rove at least four times.4

* Todd Graves removed in Rove–approved deal with Republican Senator – Kansas City U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was removed as part of a White House–brokered deal with U.S. Senator Kit Bond. In exchange for the administration firing Graves, Senator Bond agreed to lift his hold on an Arkansas judge nominated to the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court. A White House e-mail stated that "Karl is fine" with the proposal.5

* Miers obtained favorable statement on Rick Renzi in violation of DOJ policy – When rumors of the FBI investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi surfaced in October, 2006, one of Rove’s subordinates contacted Harriet Miers, who called Deputy Attorney General McNulty seeking a possible statement that would have "vindicated" Renzi. Even though this was contrary to standard DOJ policy, such a statement was issued several days later.6

Actual material can be found here, if you have the stomach for it. Eric Holder's Justice Department is now reviewing this stuff to determine whether federal crimes were committed, as opposed to, you know, just one more repulsive abuse of executive power.

Alas, ambivalence does not abate

Please, for the love of God, will intelligent people stop claiming that the Democratic health care plan calls for accelerating the death of the elderly and disabled. It doesn't. Obama doesn't. It's a stupid accusation. Enough is enough. The bill proposes to extend Medicare coverage for voluntary, patient-initiated counseling sessions with private physicians regarding options for end-of-life care. That's it. When these sessions aren't covered by insurance, only rich people take them, and for everyone else there are fewer living wills, and less ability for people to make their own choices. It's a nice thing to offer, and it has just as much a chance of helping people to prolong their lives as not. So, really, enough.

When this is the story, it crowds out the real reasons to object to Obama's plan, such as it is. Like, for example, this one. As Tim Noah lays out, evidently in exchange for the pharmaceutical industry's support for the plan and promise to contribute $80B in drug savings and increased coverage, the White House committed not to press Congress to include provisions that allow the government to negotiate better drug prices through Medicare. Estimates vary, but those provisions could have been worth between $150B and $300B over the next ten years. So the $80B offered by the drug companies was a joke - one we'll have no way to monitor or hold them accountable for anyway. Again, here, the industries set the terms, not the voters.

I said it as soon as I entered this fray...it's trivial to extend coverage to all Americans if you don't care about cost. I know the real target here isn't the drug companies, it's the insurance companies, and I kind of get that. But still - public option or no public option, the biggest purchaser of prescription drugs is always going to be the government, and we're not going to negotiate for the best prices? That's crazy town.

It's a good thing the bill ain't written yet - we'll see what September brings. There appears to be at least a tiny chance that Obama and the Congress are planning on walking this back (let the drug companies keep their lousy $80B which we might never see). Robert Reich has a decent article today on what Obama needs to do to bring this home. Step 1 (in no particular order) - marginalize the crazies. Step 2 - start whipping the wet noodles in his own party. Step 3 - get specific about what he wants and justify it to the public.

Or maybe he should just wait until his second term...

Murder and other accustations being leveled at Blackwater

This is explosive stuff. If this gets turned into indictments, expect the U.S. government to wind up indirectly implicated in the misdeeds as well. Erik Prince won't go down alone, you can be sure.

More Greenwald v. Olbermann

Additional developments regarding GE's editorial interference at MSNBC, and the efforts of independent media to expose it. What's somewhat fascinating about this is that Greenwald and Olbermann are both liberals.

What the heck, one more for the road...

This report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research provide some evidence that all the howling about how health care reform is damaging to small business is pretty unfounded. It turns out that compared to the rest of the world, the United States is actually terrible at promoting small business over and above big, conglomerate business, and a plausible reason for that is the current health care system. The costs of coverage represent a gigantic barrier to entry, ultimately stifling entrepreneurship.

Like I said, support it or don't support it - but the idea that the status quo is based on a greater friendliness to free market principles and consumer satisfaction just doesn't hold up.

Yet another brief thought...

This article is fascinating, and very useful if you're starting to wonder if I'm not just a knee-jerk anti-corporatist on this health care thing. I promise, I'm not.

Another brief thought on health care - Cui Bono

I still don't think it's really going to work; I don't see how you can cover more people with higher quality for less money, the way Obama says you can, and I wish there was a higher focus on actual public health and education, and also as some friends have pointed out to me, tort reform. But here's what's sticking in my craw, to put it bluntly - at least someone's trying. This is the first time in a long time that anyone in government has tried to do something that wasn't burdened by some repugnant corporate interest, and it's tragic how difficult that is for this Congress to accept. When health care companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars to members of Congress, they don't do so in service to anything as noble as a free market. They do it to tip the scales against the consumer, and that should be obvious by now. That's why we have no real anti-trust mentality, why consumers are barred from purchasing cheaper drugs from outside the country, why there's still no meaningful regulation barring rescission. Those are things that would make it more difficult for businesses to charge more for their services than it costs to provide them. So it's only logical for those businesses to pay the government to make things easier for them. A dollar of lobbying can be worth ten in subsidies, deregulation, barriers to competition, etc. But please, let's not pretend this is what Adam Smith had in mind - it's the opposite.

I know Obama's bill is set to cost over $1T over the next ten years, and I wish it wasn't, but God only knows what all this other crap is costing us, and it's not a mystery how it happens. Government's sole purpose is not supposed to be protecting corporate interests from the people, but that's what's going on here. So even though the bill's seriously imperfect, I'm lining up against those trying to kill it.

When and if the health care bill fails, feel free to declare victory against the forces of socialism or whatever. Just ask yourself at the end of the day, who gained, and whether they got their money's worth.

Terror plot foiled in Australia

Australian authorities have arrested four men with ties to a Somali terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda, for allegedly planning an suicide assault on a military base on the outskirts of Sydney. The evidence was gathered through seven months of surveillance, and the suspects will be tried in a civilian court on terrorism charges that carry a term of life in prison.

Thank goodness.

In the interest of fairness

Charlie Gasparino writes today cautioning against allowing legitimate criticism of Goldman Sachs to degenerate into mindless conspiracy theory. A useful counterpoint, if only because it permits those who are inclined to focus in on real, verifiable abuses of influence.

The latest in corporate-owned media

As usual, Greenwald does a comprehensive job deconstructing the mess between Keith Olbermann, Bill O'Reilly, and their respective corporate interests. Even the people who are paid to act as the ideological dust-up artists on the left and the right have to stay in line with corporate interests or risk being shut down. It's not about the public's interest, it's not even really about ratings, and it sure as hell isn't about civility. It's about controlling the flow of information. Check it out.

This week in torture reporting

This morning, the Post published an op-ed by CIA Director Leon Panetta, within which the Director more or less implores the public not to support investigations and prosecutions of his staff, for wrongdoings committed during the Bush administration. The director has good cause to be concerned, as it's becoming increasingly clear that AG Eric Holder is set to initiate action against intelligence agents who went beyond the guidance offered by President Bush's lawyers. Panetta's arguments have been made before..."mistakes were made, but only because we were scared", "this is no time for retribution", etc. It won't come as any surprise that I find these arguments unpersuasive, given that they wouldn't hold up as a defense for any other crime anywhere in the American justice system. To me, what's more interesting about the op-ed is what Panetta doesn't say. No where does he claim that the torture he hopes to sweep under the rug garnered any valuable intelligence in the war on terror. Surely he of all people would know whether the public should at least keep an open mind about that, and it would certainly help his case, but still...not a word. Only, "please just let it go." What conclusion should we draw?

Speaking of public opinion, the Economist published an article this week, which includes a poll that shows just how far toward an open acceptance of torture we've moved in this country since 2001. 55% of Americans feel torture should be prohibited absolutely, 45% say some level of torture should be be permissible. This is roughly proportional to the how the population of Egypt responded. The Chinese polled 65-35 against torture. Only the Western Europeans (British, French, and Spanish), polled against torture more than 80%.

What was it, again, that makes Americans consider themselves an exceptional people? Didn't it have something to do with the incorruptibility of our convictions about individual dignity and liberty, and the untrustworthiness of government authority? Are we to share our values with the Egyptians now? What hath al Qaeda wrought, indeed.

The Daily Beast reports today about the increasing threat of homegrown terrorism. Not just any homegrown terrorism, Islamic homegrown terrorism. This is serious stuff, and as I've written before, it is precisely because this threat is so grave that we have to steel ourselves to fight it with resolve and with honor, and with the very best, most effective methods available to us. We simply don't have the room to screw around. The connection between our values and our interests, upon which America has always relied, didn't have to erode, except for a small group of ideologues that we somehow let into the White House, who still haven't been able to produce a single shred of evidence that their approach has gotten any results at all. How tragic that half the country is still abiding their nonsense.

Here's a question...Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Dr. George Tiller in Kansas some months ago, has claimed that he knows of other acts of violence being planned against abortion interests within the United States. Bombings, shootings, etc. What principles, exactly, are stopping federal authorities from strapping Roeder to a table and pouring water down his throat until he gives up every last scrap of information that could be used to protect the public? Isn't the part of us that recoils at that suggestion, the part of us that knows how damaging to us it would be, and how there was no reason to believe it would do any good anyhow...isn't that the best of us?