I Just Can't Make This S#$% Up

Does he not know how truly awful his credibility is?

President's Statement on United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

On United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Someone please tell him that charity begins at home and to practice what he preaches.

Comments

[The Heretik]

Bush's statement made me sick in my gut.
Sometimes it seems we live in a twilight time.

when words fail
i must remember shadow is
but the absence of light

[Andrew]

Bush probably cares little about those for whom his credibility is so low; why should he? Does anyone think that sheepish pleading to his critics for trust would be reciprocated? Of course not; the scoffing and derision is of equal intensity on both sides of the political spectrum. Those of us who give the President the benefit of the doubt are mortified that some people give greater credence to some of the wilder accusations made by those who were captured, but like the weather, it's something you just have to live with. One cannot simply wish away the wide chasm of distrust that divides our body politic and taints how we all perceive passing events. All that we (and Bush) can do is make occasional plaintive appeals to calm reflection, and hope someone listens with an open mind. Most reasonable people see the abuses of detainees by U.S. forces as isolated cases, not as systematic results of official policy. As long as proper, impartial investigations are carried out, away from the glaring limelight of media feeding frenzies, there is no reason to raise doubts about our government's commitment to human rights.

[Randy Paul]

Oh please. As you write this, there are warrants out throughout Europe for 13 CIA agents for kidnapping a man in Italy and sending him to Egypt (where torture is widespread) to be "interrogated." Rendering of suspects continues in violation of American law.

Most reasonable people see the abuses of detainees by U.S. forces as isolated cases, not as systematic results of official policy.

This would have credibility if not for this:.

• Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller has been implicated in the abuses at both Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. He actually ordered Abu Ghraib personnel to "soften up" the prisoners. He was made an assistant chief of staff.

• Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast had knowledge of the abuses in 2003 as the head of military intelligence in Iraq and was accused of pressuring the interrogators. She was given a new position as the commander at the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where U.S. and foreign troops are taught interrogation techniques.

• Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was the ranking officer in Iraq and approved many of the interrogation techniques now deemed abusive. He was returned to his command in Germany of the prestigious Army V Corps.

• The officer who oversaw interrogation at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, was given a light administrative punishment.

The president decided to bend the rules on torture. "Most reasonable people" would consider the present outrage to be reaping what you sow.

This president doesn't feel he has to answer to anyone. In a few short years however, history will judge him as Worst President Ever. His attempt last night at dredging up the 9/11-Iraq Bait & Switch is the latest example of how bereft of ideas he is. Worst President Ever.

[Phil]

I think we should treat all prisoners like war heroes. They are freedom fighters! We should start their day with a deep tissue massage, then a delicious gourmet breakfast of quail eggs and steak with sourdough rolls and the finest creamery butter. After breakfast, we can have video fun with lots of moveon.org commercials that pour hot oil on any policy right of center. Lunch should be poolside, but we should take great pains to make sure nobody swims for at least an hour after they have eaten. Afternoons should be golf or tennis, or, if they prefer, "practice for heaven" with 72 virgins. Prior to dinner they can wash up in the spa or lie on the beach. I'd make dinner a buffet affair, but with really nice china and silverware. After dinner we can interrogate them politely, but with a strict "no means no" rule where, should they elect not to give us any information they are free to go and attend personalized legal briefings from ACLU attorneys. Before bed we can all just praise them or sing to them, and maybe we can have schoolchildren make videotaped thank you cards they can watch. Then, all the pay per view they can watch all night until the whole cycle starts again. Then we'll be really safe and americans around the world can go about their business free from any fear of decapitation or having their asses bombed. God bless all the nice jihadists for showing us the error of our ways!

[Randy Paul]

Quail eggs cause flatulence which is about all you have added to the discussion.

[BIG YAWN]

Your strawman nonsense notwithstanding, I only want those detainees (who are innocent until proven guilty) to be treated no better and no worse than any US citizens captured by jihadists. Don't know how you were raised, but my mama raised me to know that two wrongs don't make a right.

[Phil]

Randy,

I'm sorry my sarcasm wasn't appreciated. I'm not sure I see what you mean about my straw man, but perhaps I am missing something. Certainly no intent to flame. It is my view that those who are are on the other side of the fence with those who support the administration overplay their hand with this gulag business. Abuse is a very subjective and far reaching term (if you believe the "red ink as menstrual blood" to be "abuse" in the same context is torture, for instance) and to group all the "systemic" claims under that term is political haymaking to the extent of hurting national security, in my view. We should zealously pursue intelligence, as the object here is to win a war, which is difficult enough. I think you are grossly off base with the innocent until proven guilty thing as well, which is not even as far as Geneva went. Obviously we disagree, but to pigeonhole my dissent from your view as advocating physical torture would be quite intellectually dishonest.

[Randy Paul]

Here's the strawman: I never suggested that detainees be treated in the ways you suggested. Indeed, all I have suggested is that they be treated in the same way that US citizens are treated under similar circumstances. Do you want fake mesntrual blood thrown on US soldiers? Do you want them to be forced to lie in their own feces? I certainly don't and wanting decent treatment for your side while inflciting abuse and torture on the other side is hypocrisy.

I certainly never said that you advocated torture, nor did I imply it. As for innocent until proven guilty, bear in my mind that some of those detained were rounded up by Afghanis with an axe to grind against them on a personal basis, some happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This administration has also said that even if detainees are acquitted in a tribunal, they could still be imprisoned. If you're comfortable with that, so be it. I'm not and as long as Gitmo, Camp Bucca, Bagram and the other locales continues as they are, they will contniue to function not as a deterrent to terrorism, but a recruitment method for terrorism.

Do you want that?

[Phil]

Frankly Randy, with rare exception, Gitmo prisoners do have a country club compared to how the North Viet Namese and Japanese treated American POWs. On one side of the scale, you essentially have fraternity hell night. On the other, glass tubes up the urethra and then broken. As I said, one overplays their hand terribly with the use of the gulag term. My wife is a Korean American whose mother fled the North in 1950, and she still has relatives in Kim Jung Il's gulag. NO comparison, my friend. I get your concern with those who are at Gitmo by error or fraud, but sorry, that is not enough to deter me from advocating what it takes to prevent Islamo fascists from blowing off the tip of Manhattan with a smuggled warhead or some other calamity. This whole argument seems ironic when those with whom I engage with so often wrap themselves in the "reality based community" moniker, as if those who dissent from their view live in candyland. Nobody wants to lower themselves to the degradation of the enemy more than I do, but if you are a cop chasing a car that just abducted someone's daughter but refuse on principle to exceed 55, then it is you, not I, who need a shot of reality. Giving foreign combatants innocent until proven guilty and other US citizen status does just that.

[Randy Paul]

On one side of the scale, you essentially have fraternity hell night. On the other, glass tubes up the urethra and then broken

Two wrongs don't make a right. Perhaps you can spend a week in your own feces and report to me on the experience.

You're being intellectually dishonest, btw. You accuse me falsely of pigeonholing you as supporting physical torture then you liken it in true Limbaughian style to a fraternity prank and you liken it to speeding.

Give me a frigging break. You ignore such activities as extraordinary rendition which is against US law. You don't seem to be bothered by people being kidnapped off the streets in Italy to be tortured in Egypt.

As for "blowing off the tip of Manhattan with a smuggled warhead or some other calamity" When my Dad was stationed in Germany the Baader Meinhof gang blew up a car in the parking lot where he parked his.I work at 120 broadway. I don't need you to lecture me on terrorism. None of what is happening in Gitmo ro Camp Bucca or Bagram Airbase is making us safer.

As for the reality based community appellation, why don't you even make an effort to consider its origin. It can be found here. Your side was the side that pooh-poohed reality, not mine.

Heal thyself.

[Randy Paul]

Nobody wants to lower themselves to the degradation of the enemy more than I do,

Assuming that's a slip I hope it's not Freudian.

[Phil]

Simple syntax error, Randy. Obviously, "less than I do." I know the origin of the phrase "reality based community," but I appreciate your predictable condescension. And you aren't pigeonholing? HA. Very typical of the liberal elite. Parse metaphors all you wish; obfuscation has always been a tool of knee jerk contrarians. NO MATTER WHAT WE DO, and no matter how humane we are to prisoners, islamo-fascists will always propogandize our way of life to demonize us in their recruiting efforts. Slow news days they'll always use MTV. Terrorists ply their trade to demoralize and divide. Obviously with you, they have succeeded. Obviously, your priority is to make political points rather than join in the fight against the greatest evil on the earth right now. You are no patriot.

[Phil]

I hasten to add "when you do that."

[Randy Paul]

Let me see, you start out commenting by sarcastically making the strawman argument that somehow my legitimate concern about detainee treatment should be responded to by treating them regally and you have the audacity to accuse me of condescension? Grow up unless you like living in a glass house fileld with stones.

Yes, terrorists ply their trade to demoralze and divide, but terrorists united us on 9/11 (I favored what was done in Afghanistan by the way) and the president succeeded in dividing us with the Iraq War, based on false allegations of WMD's and hyped with duplicitious attempts to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11, yet somehow this is the fault of the liberal elite. It was the president you support who said a few months after 9/11 that he didn't think about bin Laden too much.

Your comment is just further proof that if you repeat a lie often enough you start believing it. As for remarks about my patriotism, disabuse yourself of the notion that you hold a monopoly on the moral high ground. You don't and neither do I. Your comment in fact, reminds me of a quote from Fidel Castro that I have to bring to the attention of the allegedly freedom-loving conservatives: "All dissent is opposition. All opposition is counterrevolutionary." Great company you're keeping.

I work on the 39th floor of a building one block away from Ground Zero. I ride the NYC subway 7 days a week. I don't need you to lecture me about the dangers of terrorism. I see it every day.

As for me, I'm going to be spending the rest of the day waiting anxiously to hear from two good friends who live in London and who take the tube to work. "By fighting them in Iraq, we don't have to fight them here." What a load of crap, but that's not unusual considering the source.

[Andrew]

My pathetically earnest attempt to inject reasoned discourse into this thread seems to have backfired terribly. Back to June 29, I know of no evidence that the U.S. commanders approved the disgrace at Abu Ghraib, or that Bush "bent the rules on torture." I know a Marine NCO who served in Guantanamo and he can attest to the first-class treatment the detainees are getting. Some of them are incorrigibly hostile and brutish, often throwing feces at guards. (BTW, that would NOT excuse any retaliatory abuse.) As for the arrest warrants, some Italian agents were involved in that rendition operation, but their government may continue to deny it. In war, you sometimes have to cut moral and legal corners to win, as any realist knows. Just read Reinhold Niebuhr or Hans Morgenthau. As for the 9/11 link, if you can't see the fascist ideological roots shared by Al Qaeda and the Baathists of which Bush spoke, it's no wonder you can't understand U.S. grand strategy. Thank God Tony Blair gets it. "Worst President Ever"??? I'm sure 20%-30% will always think so, just as a small minority will always think likewise about Clinton. Before sinking deeper into your own rhetorical quicksand, why not decide to just wait and see? Your thin-skinned reaction to Phil's satiric post of June 30, and failure to grasp the quite valid points it made, suggests an inability to see issues from a detached perspective, which is an essential trait of a good scholar. I appreciate your passion about serious matters (even if I disagree with your viewpoint), but you need to face reality, stepping aside from your deeply ingrained presuppositions. (!) WE are the good guys in this conflict, we DO aspire to higher standards of behavior than the enemy, and we ALL share a stake in prevailing.

[Randy Paul]

Back to June 29, I know of no evidence that the U.S. commanders approved the disgrace at Abu Ghraib, or that Bush "bent the rules on torture."

Read Jay Bybee's torture memo. I quote this part specifically:

Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical serious injury, impairment of bodily function or even death.

There is no such restriction in the Torture Statute nor the Convention Against Torture. As for Mr. Bybee did the president say that "this is outrageous and unacceptable! We would never torture people." No, he nominated Bybee to the Federal Court. Alberto Gonzales kept the memo secret and it was not repudiated until after it was leaked.

As for whether it was defining torture down, Don't take my word for it:

Following Gonzales's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a panel of experts testified. The panel included former Admiral John Hutson, the head of the Navy's Judge Advocates General Corps, and Harold Koh, a former Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration. Koh, an expert in international human rights, is now the Dean of Yale Law School.

Both of these witnesses decimated Bybee's legal interpretations. For example, Dean Koh minced no words when he stated, "in my professional opinion as a law professor and a law dean, the Bybee memorandum is perhaps the most clearly legally erroneous opinion I have ever read." And he proceeded to spell out no less than "five obvious failures" within the memo.

According to Dean Koh, the memo's blatant flaws include its ignoring the existing "zero tolerance policy" on torture, and its defining torture so loosely that it would tolerate "the things that Saddam Hussein's forces did" such as "beating, pulling out a fingernail, burning with hot irons, suspension from ceiling fans" to name a few. Also, Koh noted, the memo so "grossly overreads the president's constitutional power" that, under its logic, the president could "order genocide or other kinds of acts" and neither Congress nor the courts could stop him.

Additionally, the memo's advice that "executive officials can escape prosecution if they are carrying out the president's orders as commander in chief" is, Koh noted, the same I-was-following-orders "defense which was rejected in Nuremberg and is at the very basis of our international criminal law." Finally, Koh noted, Bybee's memo tolerates "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," which is contrary to the existing law.

Other international law, and law of war, experts tell me that Bybee's memo (not to mention a few others) is damning evidence suggesting a common plan on the part of the Administration to violate the laws of war. Strikingly, such a "common plan," or conspiracy, is itself a war crime.

There's more analysis from a legal scholar here. If you know of no evidence, then IMHO you're in denial.

So you know a Marine NCO who's assigned to Guantanamo. I guess the FBI agents who witnessed abuse there were lying.

As for the 9/11 link, if you can't see the fascist ideological roots shared by Al Qaeda and the Baathists of which Bush spoke, it's no wonder you can't understand U.S. grand strategy.

There is no grand strategy. Here's a sampling of what I heard was the reason for invading Iraq:

Saddam could launch WMD's within 45 minutes.

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Saddam has mobile germ warfare weapons labs.

"Iraq is the front in the War on Terror."

As for the "grand strategy," it doesn't seem to be working. Consider this:

The U.S. government’s National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) announced this week that the number of worldwide terrorist attacks that occurred in 2004 was 3,192. This number is almost five times higher than the figure of 651 “significant” attacks that NCTC released on April 27 of this year, after the administration received widespread criticism for attempting to hide a major increase in terrorist incidents by dropping the data from the State Department’s 2004 report on global terrorism. The large discrepancy between the April and July figures occurred, according to NCTC officials, because the new number includes “domestic” attacks, in which the victims and perpetrators are of the same nationality, as well as “international” incidents of terrorism.

So they got caught trying to game the numbers to keep from showing that things are getting worse. Pathetic. The Iraq War has made matters worse.

As for Phil's "valid points" in his sarcastic post, there were none IMHO. He completely misrepresented my thoughts in an attempt to be cute. God forgive me for seeing it for the poppycock it is.

Regarding Italy, i call your attention to Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture:

Article 3

1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

I also call your attention to the US Department of State's HR report on Egypt:

The security forces continued to mistreat and torture prisoners, arbitrarily arrest and detain persons, hold detainees in prolonged pretrial detention, and occasionally engage in mass arrests. Local police killed, tortured, and otherwise abused both criminal suspects and other persons.

Whether Italy knew of it is irrelevant. The US has signed, ratified and implemented the CAT. There is no reservation to that section. Accordingly it is the law. Those are the facts. That is the mark of good scholarship: marshaling the facts to make your argument.

The disadvantage of feeling that your side has to bend legal and moral corners is twofold:

1.) The slippery slope argument.

2.) The other side will make the same case. On what moral ground can you stand under those circumstances?

As for "facing reality," I face it every day when I exit the R train at Cortlandt Street to go to work and look at the 16 acres of empty space to my right. We are the good guys, but we are not above criticism.

It certainly appears that is lost on you.

[Phil]

Randy,

You aren't the only NYer in this discussion, nor are you the only person with people in London. Why do you intimate that because you supposedly have more at stake than others based on your zip code that you know more? Spare me. I can almost see Indian Point from my driveway. We ALL have a legitimate concern with the treatment of prisoner treatment at Gitmo. I simply disagree that humane treatment should include granting them constitutional rights. It has been said elsewhere that you can't beat terror in the courts. I agree. I don't believe that the things you disagree with about Iraq and Guantanamo to be recruiting tools one lick. So long as we live, support Israel, and have miniskirts they will hate us. If Bush emptied the prisons, issued an apology, and walked on water, Al jazeera would report that he can't swim.

You are a smart guy. Do I REALLY need to explain Bush's comment that he doesn't think about Bin Laden too much? Would you have been offended if, in 1942, FDR remarked that he didn't think about Mussolini too often? Obviously that is a rhetorical question.

Tethering me to Castro does not edify you or your argument. Your right to dissent is plenty respected, even by people like myself who may disagree. The fact remains that the presumption of innocence for Gitmo prisoners is a dangerous thing to our safety in the view of many whose JOB IT IS to know of these things. Will we ever know how many of the Gitmo prisoners released to the UK were involved in the London Bombing? I'd sure love to know. You don't know, but are you wondering? If you aren't, forgive me, but I would find that a little scary.

I can appreciate that you favored action in Afghanistan. Were you of the opinion that if we replaced regimes in Afghanistan and found bin Laden that we could then hang up our gun, or would you want terror-embracing radicals to be fought on all fronts? I know there are nuances to this argument but I also see Bush as Wilsonian.

Randy, I seriously doubt if this were 1941 that you be protesting that Hitler had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. There are other fronts to this effort than bin Laden.

[Randy Paul]

It has been said elsewhere that you can't beat terror in the courts. I agree. I don't believe that the things you disagree with about Iraq and Guantanamo to be recruiting tools one lick. So long as we live, support Israel, and have miniskirts they will hate us. If Bush emptied the prisons, issued an apology, and walked on water, Al jazeera would report that he can't swim.

That's also not an argument to make matters worse and that frankly is what is being done. As I pointed out in response to Andrew's comment, the grand strategy isn't working. Terrorism incidents are on the rise. Feel safer? If so, on what empirical proof are you basing this?

Tethering me to Castro does not edify you or your argument. Your right to dissent is plenty respected, even by people like myself who may disagree.

Then don't accuse me of not being a patriot simply because I disagree with you. I'll gladly afford you the same courtesy.

Why do you intimate that because you supposedly have more at stake than others based on your zip code that you know more?

Never said that. Please be aware of the difference between what I actually say and what you are inferring from what I say. My point was that I see the impact of terrorism every weekday and am aware of it, probably more acutely so than some of my critics. I was aware of it when I lived in Germany in the 1970's. I claim no special knowledge, I just feel no need to lie down and take it when Bush supporters accuse me of not "fac[ing] reality."

I can appreciate that you favored action in Afghanistan. Were you of the opinion that if we replaced regimes in Afghanistan and found bin Laden that we could then hang up our gun, or would you want terror-embracing radicals to be fought on all fronts?

To begin with, the job in Afghanistan wasn't finished. Secondly, terror-embracing radicals weren't engaging in acts of terror in Iraq (nor was there evidence of terrorist camps in Iraq) prior to the invasion. As for choosing other fronts, here were some suggestions: Sudan, Saudi Arabia (the home of Wahhabiism), Pakistan (the home of the Madrasas), Liberia (before the ouster of Charles Taylor), the DRC to stabilize the region.

Randy, I seriously doubt if this were 1941 that you be protesting that Hitler had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.

If Saddam Hussein had declared war on on the US on September 15, 2001, your statement might be relevant and I would certainly support an invasion. He didn't, the reasons for the invasion of Iraq which I highlighted above turned out to be false and we are mired in a very difficult situation.

Will we ever know how many of the Gitmo prisoners released to the UK were involved in the London Bombing? I'd sure love to know. You don't know, but are you wondering? If you aren't, forgive me, but I would find that a little scary.

Of course I'm wondering. Are you wondering how many were not involved in terrorism before Gitmo and participated in the London bombings angered at their treatment there? If not, please forgive me, but it seems like you're in denial.

I'm willing to agree to disagree. I just don't like being misrepresented, nor do I believe that, in spite of all that has been done in Iraq we are any safer. In fact, I feel that the danger has increased.

Lest you think that I am blindly partisan, consider my praise for the Senate Appropriations Committee on President Uribe's "amnesty" plan for the AUC in Colombia.