torture

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Crashing Andrew Sullivan’s Anniversary Party

October 11, 2010 | Comment

As of today, Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Daily Dish is ten years old. His assistants/staffers/co-conspirators/whatever they are have solicited contributions from a host of prominent bloggers, inviting them to “Toast or Roast” their boss. Needless to say, I did not hear from them. No hard feelings, of course — given my lack of attention to SEO and the (in)frequency with which I post, I am sanguine about being (to paraphrase Triumph) a prominent obscure blogger. So here’s my unsolicited Toast or Roast post, for whatever it is worth, a few bucks at most. (Yes, I will stop that.)

One need have only the slightest awareness of the worldwide web’s developmentally hyper-accelerated nature to appreciate how remarkable it is for any web site to have remained in place for a decade. Still more remarkable is for that site to be a blog, one which speaks in the same voice on the same subjects as it did ten years ago. Yet while Sullivan’s voice maintains its distinctive tone and timbre, Read the rest of this entry »


Mukasey: Don’t Know Much About Waterboarding

January 30, 2008 | 3 comments

Memo to Sen. Dianne Feinstein: thanks a whole big bundle.

Too well I recall the morning last November when I read your stated intention to vote in favor of confirming Michael Mukasey as U.S. Attorney General. It made what would have been a pleasant breakfast at a local café go down quite a bit less easily. I narrowly averted embarrassment, because your characterizations of Judge Mukasey as independent-minded and repulsed by the idea of torture were such stuff as spit-takes are made on. I couldn’t believe that you, my home state’s senior senator, had watched the same confirmation hearings as I had and not come away similarly disgusted at Mukasey’s craven dodging of the torture issue.

Your op-ed included a desire to see Judge Mukasey come before the senate panel again to have another chat about the whole Dick Cheney/Jack Bauer-iziation of American justice thing. Well, who’s back on the Hill today but your guy Mike the AG, front and center, talking waterboarding and destroyed CIA interrogation tapes. You must’ve been geeked, armed with a bucket of popcorn and ready to see The Muke torque up and bring the outrage, huh?

There are times when a mere “I told you so” doesn’t seem to cover it.
Read the rest of this entry »


We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

October 23, 2007 | Permalink

Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamahana has shared a moment of sickening clarity:

I had lunch today with a prominent German Constitutional scholar who was flabbergasted about something that I could not adequately explain.

He asked me how the candidate to become the top legal official of the U.S. government could say that he does not know whether water-boarding constitutes “torture” (as Judge Mukasey stated yesterday in his confirmation hearings). My colleague insisted that in Germany any person who uttered such a statement would be finished. He found it shocking that a person could say this in America and still become our Attorney General.

At first I was surprised at his genuine disbelief; and then I felt a bit ashamed that I did not also react with disbelief.

And yesterday at Slate, a piece Read the rest of this entry »


Spit take-inducing Headline of the Day

August 9, 2007 | 1 comment

Put down that cup of coffee, unless you like a mess. Courtesy of TPM Muckraker:

Gitmo to Stay Open as Human Rights Sanctuary

Turns out it’s more than just a catchy headline. The story is that the good ol’ Bush administration wants to slim down the prisoner headcount at Gitmo from the current 360 to 150. So good news for 210 wrongfully-imprisoned and even-more-wrongfully tortured detainees? Actually, no. We’ve still got one more level of wrongful to go: there’s nowhere to drop them off. Their home countries and all of the possible foster-home states that have been asked either won’t take them, or won’t take them without promising not to torture or kill them. So they get to stay in Guantánamo, where their human rights will be, uh, protected.

I wonder if they’d take any consolation in not being among the other 150 prisoners – the ones the Bush DoD doesn’t want to get rid of. Of those 150, Bush & Co. have selected 80 finalists whom they want to [beverages down again...] charge with war crimes. I shit you not. The Bush administration, having exempted itself from international accords and the U.S. Constitution in order to avoid being charged with war crimes, is gearing up to charge some of the victims of its war crimes with war crimes. Yes, some of them are surely guilty of war crimes, but we’ll never really know with the kangaroo-court military tribunals that will try them.

What about the 50 semi-finalists? The Bush junta says that they’re too dangerous to release from Gitmo, but not bad enough to put on trial. Um… I have nothing to add to this point. I guess my disgust has reached critical mass, at least for the moment.

The thing that’s saddening me the most right now is that after 6+ years of Bush, this level of absurdity doesn’t even seem unusual anymore. It’s like a ghastly, global-scale version of one of the “Cowboys and Indians” games I participated in during my single-digit years: the ones where the biggest kids make up the rules as they go along, and their manipulations become more and more illogical until chaos and disillusionment set in and the game collapses.

Would that I could just say “I’m not playing anymore,” quit the so-called war on terror and walk home.


Parse This

November 16, 2006 | 1 comment

There’s a new mutation of bullshit that is taking hold in Washington, and I want everybody to get inoculated now. Before we have to listen to any more of this infectious mealymouthed tripe. And look, it is not my aim to just pile on Bush again. He’s had a bad week, and I feel for him in that regard, but this little outbreak started with him.

September 14, 2006 press conference, transcript posted on Whitehouse.gov:

REPORTER: What do you say to the argument that your [Military Commissions Act] proposal is basically seeking support for torture, coerced evidence and secret hearings?

PRESIDENT BUSH: This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court’s ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s very vague. What does that mean, “outrages upon human dignity?” That’s a statement that is wide open to interpretation.

Is it? The rest of the world hasn’t seemed to have had all kinds of trouble interpreting what Common Article 3 means in the 50+ years since it was written Read the rest of this entry »


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