Sen. Graham compares torture at Gitmo to McCain’s long, boring talks about birds

In speaking to David Kirkpatrick for a piece in the New York Times’ ongoing (and going, and going. . .) series “The Long Run,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) contributes to the ever-growing list of leading Republicans’ attempts to dismiss the illegal abuse of detainees at Guatanamo Bay as little more than a mild discomfort or a puckish hazing ritual.

[McCain] likes trading jokes about colleagues with a small group of friends that includes Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. . . . Entertaining guests at his property in Sedona, Ariz., [McCain] invariably drags them for long walks to indulge his passion for bird watching. “If you took all the people at Gitmo, put them in the cabin for the weekend and made them listen to John talk about the birds, they would all spill their guts.” Mr. Graham said.

I will agree with Lindsey Graham on one point: listening to John McCain speak is unfailingly tedious—however. . .

While some former detainees have commented on the intense boredom experienced during their long incarcerations, it is often the least of their complaints. The ritualized torture that makes up what Bush Administration officials call “enhanced interrogation”—reverse-engineered from a decades-old report about resisting Communist Chinese “brainwashing” techniques—includes the use of stress positions, intense heat and cold, sleep deprivation, routine beatings, and controlled drowning, commonly referred to as “waterboarding.”

The Times’ Kirkpatrick lets Sen. Graham’s comment stand without counterpoint or comment. From the context and structure of the paragraph, I can only assume that Republican Presidential candidate McCain—once a victim of torture himself—shares his colleague’s humorous take on detainee abuse (oh, right, we already know that he does). And perhaps the news division of the New York Times does, too.

To date, none of the torture techniques used by American interrogators have produced a single piece of information that could stand up in US court as permissible evidence. If Senators Graham and McCain believe that they have a better method for extracting vital facts that could convict terrorists or protect Americans, then perhaps they should push for legislation to replace the torture sanctioned by the 2006 Military Commissions Act (a bill the supposedly anti-torture McCain helped pass*) with personal appearances by Arizona’s most famous avian aficionado. In fact, I’m sure Bush’s new BFF McCain could pull some strings, dispense with the legislation, and get the President to let him bring his “passion” to Gitmo posthaste.

The security of the nation may depend on it. . . only time will tell. It appears likely that the Times will not.



*This sentence, which appears toward the end of the Times article, not withstanding:

In 2005 and 2006, for example, he spearheaded battles to prod the administration to sign laws banning the use of torture on military detainees.

That one-liner, presented as a matter of fact, is not really accurate in-and-of itself, and it is most certainly incomplete. Though Senator McCain did initially speak in favor of a so-called “torture ban” in 2006, he eventually accepted a much-watered-down “compromise.” When President Bush then issued a signing statement for the MCA that essentially reiterated the administration’s assertion that it could continue to treat prisoners however it saw fit, regardless of the language of the law, McCain remained eerily silent.

The Times also completely fails to continue the McCain/torture narrative into this election cycle. In February, McCain voted against a Democratic effort to apply Army Field Manual strictures to interrogations conducted by the CIA.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

“Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Torture

I’m mixing my movie metaphors, I’m afraid. The headline is a reference to Dr. Strangelove, but an article in today’s New York Times is more reminiscent of The Manchurian Candidate.

Well, part of it, anyway.

The part where the Chinese commandant brainwashes Americans such as Laurence Harvey (never mind that accent) and Frank Sinatra.

I don’t know if Richard Condon had seen the article titled Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War which was published two years before his novel The Manchurian Candidate came out in 1959, but I could not read the Times article without flashing on the 1962 film.

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The chart was part of collection of documents made public a couple of weeks ago at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, but the connection to the Chinese version was not realized till an independent interrogation expert pointed it out to the New York Times. This chart, mind you, was taken verbatim from the Chinese version as published a half-century ago—only the title at the top was changed before the thing was brought down to Guantanamo to train interrogators there.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Is it historical amnesia, or is it willful ignorance? I gotta ask, because this is hardly the first piece of evidence we’ve had that the Bush Administration adopted a policy of torturing detainees using techniques repeatedly proven to be ineffective, and, most likely, counterproductive. Techniques that were also known to be in direct conflict with standing American policy and the Geneva Conventions. Techniques that were repeatedly labeled as torture and/or “brainwashing” by the US government throughout the previous six decades.

And, perhaps it is not only the administration apparatchiks who have pretended that they know nothing.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

Every American—and apparently Senator Levin—would be shocked, shocked, to discover that there is torture going on in American-run establishments.

Would be shocked? Who is going to make sure that they are shocked, Senator? Who is going to shout it from the highest hill? Who is going to cut off funding to the prisons and programs that practice these cruel and inhuman techniques? Who is going to hold the perpetrators and their bosses accountable for this historical amnesia? Who is going to overturn the now thoroughly discredited Military Commissions Act? Who is going to restore Habeas rights so that more about the sub-human practices inside the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld gulag system can come to light?

I’m sorry, I’m being a little rhetorical. Perhaps I’m overacting a bit. Just imagine I’m Sinatra in high dudgeon, rendered in Black and White (lord knows I do sometimes).

The bottom line here is that the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” were never about keeping America safe—there was far too much evidence in the public and classified record that demonstrated just how counterproductive this torture was and is. Maybe it was about an executive power grab, maybe it was done out of cowardice, panic, or shear vindictiveness, but let no one claim it was done to gain the advantage in the War on Terror™—that just isn’t credible.

As fans of the book or movie know, things in The Manchurian Candidate don’t end well. The “brainwashing” is exposed, there is a psychotic break or two, much Oedipal drama, and a great deal of blood is spilled. After seven-and-a-half years of torture, bloodshed, and Oedipal drama, is it really so shocking to discover another disgusting misuse of executive authority? And, is it really too much to ask that someone in the loyal opposition takes to heart Laurence Harvey’s final words? (No, nut-o-sphere, not his final deeds—just his words.)

You couldn't have stopped them, the Army couldn't have stopped them. So I had to.

(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

A friend writes. . . .

You know, I never really sat down and wrote a full-on endorsement of my preferred presidential candidate, John Edwards. OK, that’s not exactly true—I sat down to write one many times, but each time, I got bogged down with either too much table-setting about the Bush years, or too much wonkery about the Edwards plan, or too much hair-splitting about the large amount that I do like about John, and the small amount that I don’t. The months went by, and then I got wrapped up in the minutia of the race, and then got wrapped up in the campaign itself, and finally just got so frustrated with the establishment media’s lousy treatment of Edwards and the issues he cares about that I thought, “What’s the point?”

So, now probably seems like an odd time to lay out my case for an Edwards candidacy, what with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary already in the rear-view mirror, and the official narrative having even further marginalized the campaign and the candidate I support. Even I will admit that it will take a monumental effort to overcome the (largely manufactured) momentum of the other two big fish in this race.

That’s right, it’s a fish race, not a horserace. So throw out your racing form and put on your mask and wetsuit, as we dive into a tributary of my psyche and examine a tiny bit of my. . . oh, you know what, this is the worst metaphor I think I’ve ever tried to construct—so let’s move on. . . .

So, you’re still here. Good. On the evening of the New Hampshire primaries, I got an e-mail from a friend out west that read like this:

I'm leaning towards Obama but had been supporting Edwards. Please let me know your thoughts on him. The one thing I noted is that in a poll of all the candidates on a variety of issues that he is against capital punishment (not Edwards or, obviously, Hillary). I know this isn't that crucial for a president, but I'm so tired of every Democrat having to support a sick, barbaric institution jettisoned by the rest of the "civilized" world.

Also, didn't Edwards run much more conservative in 2004. I.E. is he pulling a reverse-Romney?

I’m with my friend on the death penalty, but, as he admits, it’s not the most important issue for a federal leader (though I would welcome a loud, presidential condemnation of the death penalty). The death penalty is one of a handful of issues on which I probably differ with John Edwards, but there are so many issues—big, systemic issues—on which I think that Edwards has the best positions in the race. Yesterday, when I replied to my friend, I mentioned but a few of them.

Here’s what I wrote (with few tiny edits for the sake of clarity). It’s rough, it’s spur of the moment and top-of-mind, but it is from the heart. When I finished, I thought, well, you know, why not put it out there—it’s at least half as good as some of the endorsements I’ve read in the papers, even if it is a little rough and wonky. And, anyway, I want to be on record: I have for quite some time endorsed, and still even now—in fact, even more so now—endorse John Edwards for president. Make of it what you will:

Wow, I can't believe that rightwing attack line has legs in the thinking world. . . that's disturbing.

No, JRE is not pulling a Romney. I didn't support Edwards in '04 because he voted “aye” on the AUMF; in 2005, he apologized for that vote and called for withdrawal and a renewed diplomatic effort in the region—and he did this in an OpEd published in the Washington Post. I don’t like that he voted for the war in 2002, but I respect and appreciate that he had the courage to admit that he actually learned something from his mistake. Imagine: a president that learns. Wow.

As for his economic populism, it has always been there. He has refined some of his ideas and strengthened some of his rhetoric after four more years of Bushenomics, but he is essentially the very same populist he was back in ’04. You’ll remember that the theme then was “The Two Americas”—well, now, it’s “Building One America.” It’s almost disappointingly unimaginative in its sameness; not a reverse at all.

You can check out Edwards’s entire platform in an 80-page book that he put out. You can download a PDF from his website. It’s called “Plan to Build One America.” I’ve read the whole thing—do I agree with every page? No, of course not. I would say that I buy into about 75% of it. (Neither HRC or BHO have anything this detailed to compare and contrast, by the way.)

Yeah, there’s the mostly meaningless “tough on crime” positions—and you are right to be tired of those—and there is also some serious fence-sitting when it comes to gun control (which really annoys me). . . and there are other things that are a bit heavy on the ideological gymnastics, but, you know, it’s the price of running a national campaign in a country with a cash-strapped education system and an electronic media controlled by only four companies.

But on some really big issues, Edwards is way out in front of Obama and Clinton. He was first out of the box with a plan for truly universal healthcare, and his plan is much better than the one that BHO came out with five months later (HRC was third to the table, and her plan is almost an exact copy of the Edwards plan). No, it’s not single payer—which I would prefer—but JRE actually says that his plan is a step toward single payer; the other two haven’t and wouldn’t say that.

(I guess we should say that for the sake of argument, Dennis Kucinich is for single payer, and DK is the bestest and leftest on a lot of my issues, but DK won’t be elected president, and I’m not actually sure that I would want him to be, despite what he stands for—but that’s another conversation.)

How about Iraq? Edwards will instantly withdraw 40 – 50,000 troops, and will have all combat troops out within ten months. He will end combat operations. He has sworn there will be no permanent bases. He has called for the big US private corporations to get out, to be replaced with regional concerns. He wants no private paramilitary forces there operating outside the law. He advocates a broad diplomatic push, which includes talking to the Syrians and Iranians, as well as other regional powers, the EU, the Russians, and, importantly, the Chinese. It’s actually a complex plan—imagine that!

In fact, many of JRE’s proposals actually require more than a nice one-liner—which is mighty refreshing, even if it is not the best of strategies for the soundbite-driven nature of our news coverage.

Like immigration—which is really an issue manufactured by the Republicans and their press surrogates, but it’s out there, so you gotta have an answer—John’s answer says a) sure, secure our borders, but a fence is “silly” (his word), b) the permanent guest-worker program is a bad idea, c) you have to have a path to citizenship, and d) you can’t begin to talk about stopping illegal immigration without talking about world trade and global economics. Edwards wants to abandon NAFTA and CAFTA, wants to spend more money to aid emerging economies, and wants to set baseline job safety and environmental standards for our trading partners.

Edwards also wants the cost of lost US jobs figured into the equations when we evaluate trade deals.

Edwards is the only frontrunner that has said unequivocally that we will build no new nuclear power plants, ever, and wants to phase out federal subsidies for nuclear power. He also opposes building coal-fired plants until there is a truly effective carbon-sequestration technology. He is also against liquid coal.

Obama, by contrast, comes from the state with the largest number of nuclear power plants, and Illinois is one of the country’s leading coal producers. Right before the Iowa caucuses, BHO was asked directly about his position on nuclear power and liquid coal. He gave the most namby-pamby non-answer, tried to talk the question to death, but eventually left everyone with the answer that he would not rule out either fuel source as “part of the mix.”

Social security? Edwards advocates raising the cap on eligible income and has ruled out privatization schemes. Obama has a complicated donut approach to eligible income that seems to me to be a bit of a shell game. He has also signaled that he is open to a private investment option—which you and I know would destroy the system—as well as the Republican privatization scheme.

Clinton also has not ruled out privatization.

On letting the Bush tax cuts expire: Edwards wants to return to the higher rate on incomes over $200,000. The other two have said they would set the bar at $250,000.

I could go on and on. . . if you have a specific question, just ask.

You know that I have longstanding problems with HRC and her triangulating ways, but she has moved to the left in the last week to the point where she is almost parroting JRE’s speeches word for word. Do I trust her to lead from that new, more left-leaning place—no, not in the least—but I find it interesting that she chose to shoot for the Democratic base to shore up her support.

Obama, on the other hand, has shown a disturbing proclivity to adopt Republican frames when he seeks to criticize his opponents. On social security, on healthcare, on torts (he has openly attacked trial lawyers). His politics of hope, when push comes to shove, looks a lot like the cynical politics of “centrist caution and status quo bias” (to borrow a phrase from Ezra Klein).

Indeed, Obama has disappointed me a bunch in this campaign. He is tentative, always second to the table on proposals (if he comes to the table at all), and often extremely incremental. John Edwards has gone after BHO on this, and I think it’s a fair attack, even if it’s really just about style. You can’t nice the Republicans and their corporate allies to death. These guys don’t take “no” for an answer.

Edwards is a hard-bargaining lawyer by trade, and he knows that you don’t walk into a negotiation saying, “we want $150 million, but we’ll settle for ten.” Or some such—you get my drift.

You have to stake out a position in this race—and “I’m going to convene a meeting” is not a position when it comes to the big economic problems we face as a country.

Indeed, one of the things I care most about is how the presidential candidate will affect the other races on the ballot. Will he or she lead from out in front, energize voters, pull the dialogue leftward? Will the prez nominee expend political capital to campaign for other Democrats so that we can have a working majority in both houses of Congress? This stuff, to me, is as important as the name of the presidential nominee.

I will also point out that in a head-to-head race with any of the leading Republicans, Edwards, and only Edwards, beats all of them by margins bigger than the poll’s MOE.

Now, I know that the first two states have made it a hard road for Edwards—but it is not an impossible road (though worse than the vote counts is the media blackout on his campaign—it is so infuriating). Even if Edwards is not the frontrunner, he continues to pull this campaign to the progressive left. So, I would still urge you to stick with Edwards.

That’s my SHORT answer on the matter.

I don’t know if I mentioned to you that I was up in New Hampshire volunteering for Edwards, so I have had a lot of time to think and a lot of experience now explaining the differences. It’s a good exercise; makes you think about why you really like a guy. I like the Edwards campaign because it is about concrete policies to help working people. I probably like him more now than I did two months ago. Unfortunately, because of my in the weeds (or is it “reeds?”) experience, I like Obama a lot less.

My name is [guy2k], and I approve this message.

There you have it. Not my most eloquent post, but it puts some stuff on the table. Did I hit the right notes? Did I make any factual errors? Please let me know (kindly, please—you catch more flied with honey, after all) in a comment. I’m always up for a discussion; not so much for a pie fight.

. . . .

Do not adjust your set: This post is indeed in orange in recognition of the sixth anniversary of the day men and boys were first shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Since then, over 700 prisoners have been detained, abused, and deprived of some of our most deeply held and basic rights. In six years, not a single “terrorist” held at Guantanamo has been convicted, in fact, not a single trial—if you can call the star chamber process established by the Bush administration a “trial”—not a single trial has been completed. Hundreds are still being held—with no recourse, no habeas rights, and no way to disprove any of the charges against them. In fact, many are not even told what those charges are. In the words of the ACLU’s Caroline Fredrickson, “After six years of holding these individuals without charge, Guantanamo Bay can be viewed as nothing short of an American dungeon.”

Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would close the detention facility and restore due process rights to those being held at Guantanamo. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced S. 1469, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act of 2007. The bill requires the president to close the facility within 120 days of enactment - during which time detainees would be charged and sent to either the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, KS, or transferred to another country that will not torture or abuse them.

"Senator Harkin worked diligently to craft legislation that properly shuts down Guantanamo Bay and ends the indefinite detention of those being held. This is a major step in restoring the American image as a beacon of freedom in the world," said Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the ACLU. "Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama have all spoken forcefully about shutting down the detention facility during their presidential campaigns but none have yet signed on to Senator Harkin’s legislation. Talk on the campaign trail comes easy, but signing on to the legislation would be a real commitment to shutting Guantanamo Bay."

Please use this unfortunate anniversary as an opportunity to call your senators and ask them to support Senator Harkin’s bill, S.1469. The Capitol Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121, or you can find more information about contacting your senators at Congress.org.

Thank you.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

Once Weren’t Warriors

I suspect that Kelly Anne Moore and I wouldn’t see exactly eye-to-eye on every issue. . . I mean, I don’t really know, I don’t know her, but. . . Ms. Moore served as chief of the Violent Crimes and Terrorism Section in the Brooklyn US attorney’s office from 2002 to 2006, and that term of service has me wondering if she came in with Bush appointee Roslyn Mauskopf, the USA for that Brooklyn office. Mauskopf was a protégé of former New York Governor George Pataki and a favorite of former New York Senator Al D’Amato who was viewed as unqualified for her post when her nomination was put forward back in 2002. Her current case against the “JFK bomb plot” “suspects” does nothing to convince me otherwise. Mauskopf is one of those US attorneys that Paul Krugman warned us about a while back—you know, one of the ones that weren’t fired by AG AG and his band of partisan White House brothers.

But I digress. . . .

Kelly Anne Moore, who worked under Mauskopf, has penned an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times that—whatever our other differences may or may not be—basically says what I’ve been saying for what is fast approaching six years: treat suspected terrorists as criminals, and try them in US criminal court.

The United States does not need a new and untested detention system for terrorists. The existing federal system has a proven track record of dealing with complex prosecutions.

Moore has personal experience, successfully prosecuting two Yemeni’s in 2005 for funneling money to Al Qaeda and Hamas, and seeing them put away for a long, long time. She argues that this case was as complex as any of those that might arise from a criminal prosecution of those detained at Guantanamo Bay, and gives plenty of examples. Moore also gives examples of other terrorist cases that have been successfully prosecuted in US courts, such as Ramzi Yousef, organizer of the 1993 WTC bombing.

Moore’s Times piece also explains the way in which many of the purported problems with prosecution in open court need not be the insurmountable roadblocks that the Bush/Cheney Administration make them out to be. But what interested and provoked me most of all was this paragraph:

Those who commit terrorist acts should be tried as the criminals they are, instead of the “warriors” they claim to be. If the Guantánamo detainees were prosecuted in federal courts instead of being designated as “combatants,” most by now would be serving prison time as convicted terrorists, instead of being celebrated as victims or freedom fighters.

To the first sentence, I say, right on! I have been arguing for as long as I remember that you don’t make “war on terror,” you investigate and prosecute people and organizations responsible for terrorist acts. By trying alleged terrorists in open court, you not only get to show the world what a bunch of crooks and creeps the suspects are, you get to demonstrate that America is a nation of principles and laws, unafraid to confront its enemies on a level playing field.

But notice that I said “alleged terrorists.” This is where I see a little daylight between Kelly Anne Moore and myself. You see, while Moore assumes that most of the Guantanamo detainees would be convicted as terrorists, I have serious doubts.

I don’t think I am going out on a limb to say that many still imprisoned at Camp Delta (we’re still calling it that, right?) likely never did much of anything you or I would call “terrorist.” At their very worst, many were soldiers of a sort, fighting for a disorganized alliance of pro-Taliban or anti-American forces. That would make them prisoners of war, and not detainees, or even criminals.

But others in detention were likely not even that. There are plenty of stories of afghani warlords rounding up prisoners for pay. Then there are the cases of political or tribal retribution, or flat out mistaken identities. And what of those that were just kidnapped by the US or its surrogates?

Whether there is enough evidence to convict any detainees such as those is an open question—and that still ignores the elephant in the room. One of the main reasons—I am certain—that the administration now resists trying these detainees in open court is because if they did, it would become more than obvious that these people were tortured. Moore does not really acknowledge this “roadblock” to openness in her Op-Ed.

Indeed, the former prosecutor is quick to hold up the recent conviction of Jose Padilla—as have many others—as an example of how a potential terrorist was convicted in federal court. However, while Moore mentions that Padilla was denied access to legal counsel for over three years while in military detention, she fails to point out that the jury that convicted Padilla never learned that fact.

Nor was Padilla’s jury allowed to hear that he was initially picked up on completely different grounds—he was supposed to be the “dirty bomber,” after all—but when the government couldn’t come up with enough evidence on that count, they quickly built a case around completely different activities for an entirely separate charge.

Most legal experts report that it was not surprising that Jose Padilla was convicted, given what the jury was allowed to know—implying or stating outright that had these other facts been present in the courtroom, a different outcome was at least a possibility.

Moore, while rightfully taking the Bush/Cheney Administration to task for this glaring failure in its “war on terror,” still seems to assume that most of those taken prisoner by the administration are terrorists. I cannot be so certain.

Still, I am certain that in the end, Moore gets it right:

Many people around the world have come to question America’s commitment to the rule of law. There are few places in the world where that principle is more hallowed than in the United States federal courts. The best course of action now, in dealing with terrorism suspects, is to use these courts — the keystone of American jurisprudence — and show the world that America can protect itself while it respects the rule of law.

I would add to her course of action that the US should also close Guantanamo, restore Habeas rights, and recommit to handling prisoners as detailed in the Geneva Conventions, but if we were to begin with hearings in open court, for all detainees, I have some faith that rest would follow.

If Kelly Anne Moore and I can agree on that—and I suspect that we can—then she and I can join forces to fight the real enemies of freedom.

In Republican America, it’s Always “Giuliani Time”

Call me a wild-eyed optimist (you wouldn’t be the first), but I am salivating at the chance to see any of these whack-jobs try to run away from this garbage in the general election.

The whack-jobs to which I refer are the angry white men who are running for the Republican presidential nomination, and the garbage is their, well, dare I dignify them with the label “ideas”?

Let’s look at some of the comments from Tuesday night’s Republican softball game debate regarding torture. Moderator Britt Hume pitched some absurd scenario about a multi-city nuclear attack by terrorists, and then asked candidates about whether they would endorse “enhanced interrogations techniques,” including “waterboarding.” Rudy Giuliani had this to say:

GIULIANI: In the hypothetical that you gave me, which assumes that we know there is going to be another attack and these people know about it, I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they can think of. Shouldn’t be torture, but every method they can think of.

HUME: Water boarding?

GIULIANI: I would say every method they could think of, and I would support them in doing that because I have seen — [applause] — I have seen what can happen when you make a mistake about this and I don’t want to see another 3,000 people dead in New York or any place else.

And, the mouth-foaming xenophobes’ favorite fringe candidate, US Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO—yes, some folks actually elected this guy) thought that since he was on FOX, he’d plug 24:

I just say that it’s almost unbelievable to listen to this in a way. We are talking about it in such a theoretical fashion. You say that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we are wondering about whether waterboarding would a bad thing to do? I’m look[ing] for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you. [applause] There is nothing — if you are talking about — I mean, we are the last best hope of Western Civilization. So all of the theories that go behind our activities, subsequent to these nuclear attacks going off in the United States, they go out the window. When we go under, western civilization goes under. So you better take that into account and you better do every single thing you can as President of the United States to make sure, number one, it doesn’t happen, that’s right. But, number two, you better respond in a way that makes them fearful of you, because, otherwise, you guarantee something like this will happen.

Indeed. It’s the “don’t mess with America because it’s ruled by a crazy SOB and there’s no telling what he might do” theory of deterrence. (Hey, it’s worked so far, uh, yeah, well. . . moving on—)

But, really, why even pretend to be a city on a hill when you’ve got a prison on an island? Which brings us to Guantanamo, and Mitt Romney’s modest proposal:

I am glad [detainees] are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.

So, wait, you want to give the detainees more room, or lock their lawyers up with them, or maybe you just want to signal that on inauguration day 2009, it will be “round up the usual suspects” squared?

Really folks, is there a serious man or woman out there—one who is not drawing an administration paycheck, anyway—that thinks Guantanamo has been a net plus in the “war on terror?” Well, at least I have a new nickname for Romney: Mitt “double Git” Romney.

Also, note that the partisan Republican crowd in South Carolina Tuesday, applauded after Giuliani and Tancredo praised torture. Those are the politically involved people who will be picking their party’s standard-bearer!

The torture that routinely goes on at Guantanamo, or at various secret sites in other countries, has seriously tarnished America’s reputation and undermined its authority throughout the world. Along with Abu Ghraib, these examples of US juris(im)prudence are the best recruiting tools a terrorist could have. The policy, and the false bravado that accompanies it, also puts American servicemen and women in greater danger of being tortured themselves. (Don’t just believe me, Colin Powell said it, too.)

Two-thirds of Americans think the US should abide by international treaties and change the way it treats detainees as prescribed by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Even more think we should allow international courts to monitor our compliance with international treaties—even a majority of Republicans think so! So what country are these Republicans running to be president of?

If a Democratic nominee gets to face off against one of these guys in a debate this fall, and a question about torture or Gitmo comes up, I just hope that the Democrat takes the time to pause, look quizzically at the angry white man across the stage, and say something like, “I’m sorry, I’m just taking a moment to absorb your clueless, venal, soulless, lack of humanity.”

And if the Republican nominee happens to be America’s Sadist Mayor Sadist, I hope our candidate has the gumption and spark to say, “America can’t afford another Giuliani time.”


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)