Can You Do ANYTHING While Black?

Digby has the latest taser horror story. It starts out like this...police see a black man riding a bicycle without a headlight.

It ends with a DOA at the hospital.

Digby sums up perfectly:

I think tasers are unconstitutional, authoritarian torture weapons that have no place in a civilized society. No government should have the power to electrocute citizens and cause them great pain -- even briefly -- in order to make them comply on nothing more than a policeman's whim.

(I haven't had the chance to weigh in on the bullshit new law in Arizona, but this is very likely to be the type of unintended consequence that could result in unnecessary, aggressive policing of the populace there.)

A Parent's Sacrifice

Many of the people screaming about the (Obama) government's failure to connect the dots regarding the Underpants Bomber love to use, as Exhibit A, the fact that the bomber's father reported his son to U.S. authorities as a radical and potential threat.

"How does that not get a guy on a No-Fly List" they wail, while sitting in their soggy diapers that leak.

What they are missing and no one else seems to be pointing out is what Adam Serwer at TAPPED makes clear:

I doubt many parents would come forward with concerns that their children are being radicalized if they think the United States is going to stick them in a secret prison somewhere and waterboard them. On the contrary, the realistic fear that people apprehended by American authorities might be tortured could help create the kind of toxic relationship with counterterrorism units that we see between urban communities and the police in the U.S., which would contribute to radicalization, rather than mitigate it.

Yeah, that Nigerian father made a selfless and brave decision and turned his son in to the authorities—but how difficult has the Cheney Torture Regime made that decision for parents, families, neighbors or any other informant in a position to share intelliginece? How many people have kept silent because we have now become a known torturer?

Eric at Obsidian Wings expands:

Intelligence and law enforcement are the most effective means of countererrorism, and in connection therewith, cooperation from the underlying population is invaluable.

However, in order to maximize on that cooperation, the United States must maintain the moral high ground, and stick to its principles. It must warrant sympathy, and command respect if it wants to convince citizens to turn-in would be criminals in their midst - an uncomfortable deed under any circumstances. But a United States that tortures, abandons due process, profiles Muslims indiscriminately and pursues a wildly belligerent foreign policy will have the opposite effect.

Another reason why torture fails to gather intelligence or keep anyone safe.

UPDATE: Fareed Zakaria has an excellent post up on reacting to terrorism and also mentions this detrimental effect of torture.

"Pinch-hitting for Jon Stewart..."

Since the Daily Show is on hiatus, this will have to do...


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Via John Cole, who is right—it so accurately nails the current media discourse, you don't know whether to laugh or weep.

Moral Kombat

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An excellent job by Stewart of holding up the "break all the rules/by any means necessary" mentality that led to torture and the destruction of the rule of law as well as our standing in the world—and showing what a crock of shit that is when the one compromise the U.S. wouldn't make is allowing a gay man to translate the torture sessions.

Money line: "Waterboarding may make the prisoner talk—but it ain't gonna make him talk English."

[h/t: Sully]

Reading Assignment: The Wrong Man

This three-year-old article from Esquire has new relevance since Obama's picked a new General to run the war in Afganistan.

More than one person has pointed out that Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's hands are not clean when it comes to torture, and the suspicion by some is that Obama reversed position on releasing the photos of torture camps precisely for that reason.

It's merely a passing reference in this article, but if McChrystal had any role whatsoever in what the article details, Obama made a seriously bad decision.

Read the whole thing: Acts of Conscience

[h/t Booman]

UPDATE: Links on McChrystal—Sullivan,

Torture(d) Logic

"You lose it here and you're in a world of hurt."



I'd buy pay-per-view of Jesse wiping the studio with Sean Hannity

--

STRAW MEN AND FALSE CHOICES
Matt Taibbi...

...this is not a question of taking different sides in a war; this is two groups of Americans having a disagreement about how best to deal with a foreign enemy both of these groups of Americans despise, fear and revile equally. My group, the anti-torture group, believes that what should make us superior to terrorists is respect for law and due process and civilization, and that when we give in and use these tactics, we forfeit that superiority and actually confer a kind of victory to the al Qaedas of the world, people who should never be allowed any kind of victory in any arena. We furthermore think that the war on terror doesn’t get won with force alone, that it’s a conflict that ultimately has to be won politically, by winning a propaganda battle against these assholes, and we can’t win that battle so easily if people in the Middle East see us openly embrace these tactics.

--

CREEPING CULPABILITY
An excellent point from Matthew Schmitz at plumblines:

We cannot tiptoe around the fact that our government engaged in profoundly evil acts in the name of American citizens. No matter how vehemently we disagree with the actions of the torturers, the fact remains that they were done in the name of the American people. It is true, of course, that “we” the citizens of the United States are not morally culpable for what our elected representatives and their subordinates did. But we are politically responsible. If we fail to pursue justice and punish the malefactors, we start to share in the blame for the actions they performed.

Much as Obama becomes a part of the cover-up for failing to prosecute, it will trickle down to us too, if we don't force the politicians to do the right thing—or drive their asses out of office if they don't, we all start to own it.

Of course the problem is this: next election we'll be faced with choosing between a party that gives lip service to the rule of law, yet doesn't enforce it, versus a party openly threatening to operate a torture regime if they regain power.

--

IOKIYAR
Eric Martin at Obsidian Wings compiles a list of old quotes from some prominent people regarding America and torture. These same words uttered today would be cast as those of a naive idealist or a pacifist weakling...yet it was the public position of these "tough guys"—until they were exposed.

Screw Yoo

Even more evidence of the "Liberal Media"...

The Philadelphia Inquirer has hired John Yoo as a monthly columnist.

Being a war criminal sure has its benefits, it seems.

The paper's lame excuse that they are trying to diversify viewpoints and counter a reputation of being too liberal is a crock of shit. Trust me—there is no one on the payroll far enough to the left to balance Yoo. I'm sure any "liberal" columnists that get columns are typical, shallow-end syndicated hacks—and as such, at or just slightly left of center.

The right-wing noise machine has so effectively worked the refs that the paper feels pressed to run out and hire a guy so far to the right that he's off the chart.

Yet another example of how presenting two sides of an argument—without regard for the truth, honesty or accuracy—is what passes for "journalism" these days.

--Sidebar: If you think that news is depressing enough, spend a little time in the comment thread. The volume of comments supporting Yoo and the paper is astonishing and completely disheartening.

Quote of the Day

Who said this?

"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."

Conservative hero, Republican demi-god and greatest and Most-protective President Ever spineless pussy, America-hater, enemy enabler, U.N. bootlick and closet Muslim, Ronald Reagan, from his signing statement ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984.

[via Sullivan]

Bombs Away

Shep Smith has seemingly strayed from the dark side of late, and here he lets loose on two FOX News clowns "debating" torture.



Awesome.

Policy Shift or Strategy?

Either way, it's good news. Tapper:

President Holds Open Door For Prosecutions
President Obama suggested today that it remained a possibility that the Justice Department might bring charges against officials of the Bush administration who devised harsh interrogation policies that some see as torture.

He also suggested that if there is any sort of investigation into these past policies and practices, he would be more inclined to support an independent commission outside the typical congressional hearing process.

[...] in clear change from language he and members of his administration have used in the past, the president said that "with respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that."

This is very good news. It also lends some credence to the theory that Obama was playing chess by releasing the memos only after a court ordered response to FOIA request "forced him" to, using that to gin up public outrage, and THEN assign any investigations / inquiries / truth commissions to other, more neutral parties...

For that to happen, pressure must still be applied constantly to Obama, Holder and also to Congress.

[via Benen]

If This is "Looking Forward," Then I Don't Like What I See

The initial statements by Obama regarding the reluctance or refusal to prosecute those parties involved in the Bush Torture Regime seemed to refer specifically only to the CIA officers who, one could argue, were told what they were doing was both necessary and legal. As Hilzoy says...

I'm uneasy about prosecuting people who rely on the OLC, which they ought to be able to rely on. (I think that relying on legal interpretations offered by the people charged with interpreting the law for the executive branch is very different from "just following orders.")

I don't agree with that completely, and think that's far too lenient. I think those officers should be removed from their posts and forced to testify against those who devised this illegal system. They might not go to jail, but they don't get to walk away clean and they will serve some function.

Further consideration, in no small part to Smitty's comment, leads me to make a sort of Faustian bargain to sacrifice the smaller fry for the bigger fish: If fully exposing this whole affair and nailing Bybee, Yoo, Addington, Bradbury—and, yes, Bush and Cheney—means granting immunity down the chain, I can live with that.

What I cannot accept is this [from today's White House press briefing]:

Q: So I understand, you're saying that people in the CIA who followed through in what they were told was legal, they should not be prosecuted. But why not the Bush administration lawyers who, in the eyes of a lot of your supporters on the left, twisted the law -- why are they not being held accountable?

MR. GIBBS: The President is focused on looking forward, that's why.

Fuck that. That is effectively stamping "APPROVED" on what has happened. It is setting precedent, and it is making clear that people in power are above the law. That cannot stand.

I'll let the better writer take it from here...

You know what? I'm focused on looking forward too. And as I gaze into my crystal ball, I see a world in which members of the executive branch take it for granted that they can do whatever they want with impunity. Why not break the law? Why not eavesdrop on Americans? Why not torture people? Why not detain citizens indefinitely without charges? Heck, why not impose martial law and make yourself dictator for life? There is nothing to stop the people who make these decisions. They have nothing to fear. Because once they've made them, their actions are back there, in the past that no one ever wants to look at.

[...] I do not want a world in which members of my government can break the law with impunity. I do not want a world in which some people are above the law. In a perfect world, we would not need to prosecute people to achieve these results. But the past eight years have shown us that we don't live in that world."

What He Said...

Just back from our road trip, and I've yet to catch up on everything that happened while I was away, but I was aware of the impending release (or not) of more Bush "torture memos." As I said the other day, I am believe the memos should be released with the minimum (if any) redaction.

Obama released them in full—withholding only CIA agent's identities—that is to be commended. But, what the memos reveal—still not having had a chance to read them myself—is so abhorrent that their release accompanied by a statement that nothing will be done about it is almost worse than covering the whole thing up...

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UPDATE: Dahlia has more.

UPDATE 2: A good, but flawed, piece by Andrew Sullivan. He is too soft on the operatives that performed and oversaw these activities while directing his ire at the Bush higher-ups, and of course he stupidly asserts "everyone" got sucked down the 9/11 wormhole, but his point at the end about an Obama long-term strategy here is worth considering. Yes, it might be grasping, but it does seem logical that the release of these documents is designed specifically to generate the heat to force an investigation. Let's hope.

UPDATE 3: Kevin Drum makes his case for supporting Obama's non-prosecution stance. He makes some good points, but they only go so far: 1. This has always been a top-down concern for me—throwing a couple low-level agents under the bus a la Lynndie England is not what I'm after—it's Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Cheney, etc. I want against a wall. 2. "Following orders" is a fucking cop-out. Nobody involved in this sordid affair was in any doubt about it's legality—these memos are pure after-the-fact CYA documents. Agents need to be fired, supervising "doctors" stripped of medical licenses, lawyers disbarred—all of that at a minimum.

Reading Assignment

Former Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson responds to Cheney's softball/talking points "interview" on CNN.

First, Wilkerson again explains how badly the Bush Administration failed in it's "interrogations" and how illegal they were...

The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.

Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot.

[...] Simply stated, even for those two dozen or so of the detainees who might well be hardcore terrorists, there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand. Falling back on "sources and methods" and "intelligence secrets" became the Bush administration's modus operandi to camouflage this grievous failing.

Then he calls Cheney out for crawling out of his lair to revise history, fear-monger and sabotage and smear Obama...

Recently, in an attempt to mask some of these failings and to exacerbate and make even more difficult the challenge to the new Obama administration, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview from his home in McLean, Virginia. The interview was almost mystifying in its twisted logic and terrifying in its fear-mongering.

As to twisted logic: "Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo (sic) during the Bush administration...have gone back into the business of being terrorists." So, the fact that the Bush administration was so incompetent that it released 61 terrorists, is a valid criticism of the Obama administration? Or was this supposed to be an indication of what percentage of the still-detained men would likely turn to terrorism if released in future? Or was this a revelation that men kept in detention such as those at GITMO--even innocent men--would become terrorists if released because of the harsh treatment meted out to them at GITMO? Seven years in jail as an innocent man might do that for me. Hard to tell.

As for the fear-mongering: "When we get people who are more interested in reading the rights to an Al Qaeda (sic) terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. Who in the Obama administration has insisted on reading any al-Qa'ida terrorist his rights? More to the point, who in that administration is not interested in protecting the United States--a clear implication of Cheney's remarks.

Evil personified. Richard Cheney deserves to have a fucking bag thrown over his head, abduction, swift "rendition" to Iraq to dropped off in Sadr City, where he can try to "interview" his way out of his inevitable horrible death.

UPDATE: Wilkerson's not off the hook with me, but I don't have time for that right now.

Obama Accessorizes

The other bullshit thing that happened on Obama's watch this last week is actually more fundamentally wrong than botching up the stimulus—Obama's DoJ argued before a Federal Judge that Bush's "State Secrets" defense in a rendition case be upheld.

Glenn Greenwald poured out a 13,000-word column I just couldn't find the front door to. And with Greenwald, he's been known to get a little shrill and idealistic on some things...But today I found a great, concise, and brutal assessment of what just happened...

You Cover It Up, You Own It
That's assuming the secret should rightfully be kept in the first place. Nobody doubts that there are legitimate state secrets -- but the Bushies, and now apparently the Obama/Holder DOJ, thought that anything that makes the U.S. government look bad should be a state secret. The theory is that disclosing government crime or misconduct would embarrass the government in the eyes of the world, and whatever embarrasses the government in the eyes of the world harms national security. This misbegotten theory holds that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant, it's the source of hideous wasting disease. Government wrongdoing must be concealed because, well, it's government wrongdoing.

The state secrets privilege, used to cover up wrongdoing rather than to protect legitimate national security secrets, is an all-out assault on public accountability and, ultimately, on democracy. By now, it's well-known that the state secrets privilege was born in original sin. The 1953 case in which the Supreme Court established it, United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), turned out, when documents were declassified nearly half a century later, to be a cover-up of gross negligence under a false assertion that the documents contained national security information.

Andrew Sullivan is right to observe here that "with each decision to cover for their predecessors, the Obamaites become retroactively complicit in [their deeds]." Retroactive complicity is an important, and underexamined, moral category. People cover up for others for many reasons, not all of them bad. But the longer and more involved the cover-up becomes, the more deeply implicated you get -- not only in the cover-up, but in the original misdeeds that you're concealing as well. Little by little, you come to own the deeds yourself. Or they own you. It's time to throw away the Ring, Frodo, before it hooks you and enslaves you.

I have to hope that this is just a punt on the first case so the Administration can reassess going forward. After all, that column is from Marty Lederman's old blog, Balkinization. LEderman is a longtime outspoken critic of pretty much everything about the Bush Administration—from torture to executive privilege, and one would assume, bullshit "State Secrets" claims. Marty Lederman is not teaching law or blogging anymore because he now sits at John Woo's old desk working for Obama' Office of Legal Council.

Tim F [h/t] at Balloon Juice put it thusly:

Marty Lederman must be shitting a two story colonial townhouse right now. I have to assume that Lederman and other principled hires at the DoJ will either ensure that decisions like this do not happen again or else he will resign.

Let's hope so. There is 8 years of crooked bullshit to dig through, and I'm not asking for everything to be back in order in four weeks, but this was indeed a disappointing decision, and warrants keeping an eye on.

(Un)Reality TV

Kevin Drum watched "24" last night, and comes away concerned...

...it's obvious that the show is going to deal head on with the subject of torture this season. Episode 1 opens with Jack testifying before a Senate committee about his past transgressions, which he wearily but defiantly confesses to, and then rolls through two hours of FBI agents wondering "how far he'll go" — because, you see, Jack's exploits with the dark arts are apparently the thing of legend in the hallways of the Bureau.

Is there any way for this end other than badly? After all, here in the blogosphere we opponents of torture like to argue that we don't live in the world of 24, guys. And we don't. But Jack Bauer, needless to say, does live in the world of 24. And in that world, there are well-heeled terrorists around every corner, ticking time bombs aplenty, and torture routinely saves thousands of lives. What are the odds that it won't do so again this season — except this time after lots of talk about the rule of law blah blah liberals blah blah it's your call blah blah?

It's clear the FOX has decided to have a fictional "debate" about torture in a widely viewed arena here—though I suspect only a fraction of the show's original season viewers have stuck with it. Bauer will be unashamedly portrayed as a hero subjected to second-guessing by a chamber of desk jockey pussies in D.C. You can be sure that any Congressman (or likely a faux-Pelosi Congresswoman) who questions Bauer in a hearing will be portrayed in the weakest pansy-ass liberal light possible. I can pretty much see this scenario working out with Jack getting to channel Col. Jessup, "You NEED ME on that wall!"—except without the plot twist that nails Jessup in the film.

My position has always been this: Torture needs to be illegal. Period. No allowances for "ticking time bombs" and "24-scenarios." And penalties need to be extremely harsh—the same as a kidnapper who tortured or killed a victim-harsh. If it is left in the toolbox for interrogators under ANY circumstance it will be reached for all the time. There needs to be the utmost deterrence for anyone involved in a potential decision.

Conjure up your worst Jack Bauer scenario...a nuclear bomb about to destroy L.A., and Jack needs to get those codes. Assuming torture works (which it doesn't), any Agent Bauer would need to gamble his own potential jail time versus saving millions of lives. If someone in that scenario actually believed they and everyone in a 20-mile radius would die, and there was no other course available, they'd sacrifice themselves for the cause, so to speak—"I'll spend the rest of my life in jail for this, but otherwise ten million people are dead in five minutes—I can live with that." But short of that, the knowledge they will rot in a cell would bring them (or an authorizing superior) up short.

If in retrospect, it somehow demonstrably worked, its likely they would be pardoned before any jury had a chance to (not) convict them.

Even that involves hypotheticals that have never occurred and likely never will, and no one in there right mind would think otherwise. Oh, wait...

"Scalia responded with a defense of Agent Bauer, arguing that law enforcement officials deserve latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia reportedly said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” He then posed a series of questions to his fellow judges: “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?”

“I don’t think so,” Scalia reportedly answered himself. “So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Asshat. Even "Jack Bauer" himself doesn't believe it...

“You torture someone and they’ll basically tell you exactly what you want to hear, whether it’s true or not, if you put someone in enough pain,” Sutherland said last year.