It's only been a week, and things are already completely different under an Obama Administration.
Love means only having to say you're sorry
Barack Obama, promising the most ethical government in the history of the United States, has offered his full support for Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, saying he is confident the Senate will confirm him despite his "innocent mistake." Geithner claimed he wasn't aware that he had to pay self-employment taxes on self-employment income, a confusion not shared by 20 million other self-employed taxpayers who did not hold senior-level positions at the U.S. Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund, and as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
According to the Associated Press, President Obama is confident the Senate will confirm Mr. Geithner despite his "innocent mistake." Obama said that only one man on this planet, Timothy Geithner, has the intelligence, experience, wisdom and integrity to lead the Treasury Department during a period of financial crisis, and must be confirmed.
However, according to AP reports, this is the same Timothy Geithner who was "flummoxed by TurboTax, a popular income tax preparation computer program used by millions of people. He neglected to closely read IMF yearly statements warning him of his personal liabilities for the Medicare and Social Security taxes in question, even though he signed the statements saying he understood that. After giving up on TurboTax, he hired a tax preparer, who, he claimed, also failed to catch the errors. Geithner also incorrectly claimed summer camp for his children as a dependent-care deduction. He paid the back taxes plus interest for the years 2003 and 2004 only after being audited by the IRS. But he did not pay taxes he owed for 2001 and 2002, even though he had made the same mistakes for those years – until last fall, shortly before he was nominated by Obama to be treasury secretary."
Those wishing to invoke the "Geithner Predicate" when discussing their own tax returns with the Obama Administration's IRS, please consult Eric Holder for a possible future presidential pardon. That is, if you have a big enough bank account, and well-endowed enough wife, to help argue your case successfully.
In an unrelated story, The Sealy Posturepedic company has introduced a new "mattress stuffer" line for people who want to hide their money (taxed or untaxed) under their beds, rather than let the world's smartest Treasury Secretary use their hard-earned dollars to help manage the nation's finances.
And the "Emily Latilla Award" goes to . . .
"In what ethics-in-government advocates described as a particularly far-reaching move, Mr. Obama barred officials of his administration from lobbying their former colleagues 'for as long as I am president.' He barred former lobbyists from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past two years and required them to recuse themselves from issues they had handled during that time."
However, "Mr. Obama's nominee for deputy secretary of defense, William Lynn, has been a lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon, and his nominee for deputy secretary of health and human services, William V. Corr, lobbied for stricter tobacco regulations as an official with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, conceded the two nominees did not adhere to the new rules." To resolve the issue, Mr. Lynn would receive a formal "waiver," and Mr. Corr would promise not to do it again, thus ending the issue.
Confidence in government has therefore been restored under an Obama Administration. The rules are always the rules, except when they aren't. And there will be no exceptions, except when there are. I hope this clears up any confusion.
Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss
US airstrikes on suspected terrorist camps in Pakistan on January 24, 2009 killed at least 20 people. The strikes "follow the Bush military blueprint."
Women and Children First
Afghan President Hamid Karzai denounced a U.S. operation on January 25, 2009, he claimed killed more than a dozen civilians, including two women and three children. Karzai said the killing of innocent bystanders "is strengthening the terrorists."
Forgotten but not gone
President Obama has issued his first Executive Order on January 24, 2009 in the fight against international terrorism. The U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GITMO), housing many of the world's most dangerous terrorists, will be closed down.
In reading the fine print of the Executive Order, however, the closing will not take place for another year or so, and no decision has been made on where to send these prisoners once GITMO is finally closed. The option of releasing the prisoners has been delayed by a related Executive Order shutting down all military tribunals currently underway to assess each individual detainee's guilt or innocence.
Thus, while maintaining that the US will once again put the rule of law at the forefront of its policies and actions, President Obama has shut down any ability for individual prisoners to have their day in court, closed a military prison facility at some future point while allowing it to remain in operation for the indefinite future, and has not determined what to do with the world's most dangerous terrorists who reside at that facility if and when it is ever closed.
Oh, and just for good measure, any captured terrorist will henceforth be interrogated according to the Army Field Manual, and not made to feel uncomfortable in any way at any time. Interrogators who do not say "please" or "thank you" when interviewing captured terrorists will be subject to Congressional Investigation, fines and imprisonment for violating the terms of civilized behavior, as will those who offer these detainees a Coke instead of the new Obama-logo Pepsi products during refreshment breaks.
Questions regarding what Mr. Obama intends to do, and when exactly he intends to translate his words into actions, should be directed to the author of the Executive Order Greg Craig, the new White House Council, who explained the terms to Obama during a televised press briefing so that Obama could immediately repeat Craig's words to the press which had already heard them.
Change has definitely come to Washington. Hope too — in that we all hope the next four years go by fast with limited domestic casualties.
And they used to say that the 43rd President of the United States was too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Last Angry Man
Hey, if Phil will indulge me here with a personal note, & if you’re reading this blog, I see that TCM is playing your movie @ Midnight EST, in less than one hr.
I haven’t seen it in 50 yrs. I remember liking it, but it was about NYC & I was a kid so I may have been prejudiced.
I definitely liked the book & that was certainly not PC for today’s world. I don’t remember if the movie was PC-ed up.
LAM
Make that 2 AM EST on 2/2/09
P
Re your original comment in this thread about
Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss
See
“Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA’s controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-rendition1-2009feb01,0,4661244.story
Way back in #55 RI writes: “My own personal operational definition of ‘torture’ is: “If it has an excellent chance of making you willing to say anything to make it stop, it’s torture.”"
So if you are the groom waiting by the altar, and as the bride starts walking down the isle you begin to think about the coming evening, then she turns a runs out of the church, is that torture?
Ivan: It’s the Forest Gump-ization of the language. “Torture is as Torture does”.
Dr. Jackson – There’s really no point in continuing this. I’ll just address one item: Your histrionics about “THEN WHY WOULD ANY HONEST PERSON SAY “I don’t have a problem with torturing someone who’s been determined by a competent tribunal or judicial process to be a terrorist” IF OTHER METHODS ARE MORE RELIABLE?”
Let’s see what I actually said way back in comment #50: “I’ve already said that, from a moral perspective, I don’t have a problem with torturing someone who’s been determined by a competent tribunal or judicial process to be a terrorist. (Go read those links.) There are two separate things I have a problem with: First, that it appears that the satisfaction we might get from torturing isn’t worth the practical costs we’ll pay for it (and it doesn’t appear to have any actual benefits, compared to other techniques, except that satisfaction of seeing an evil person suffer). Second, that even if we conclude that torture’s worth it for convicted terrorists, there’s no way it can be justified for suspected terrorists, let alone mere ‘detainees’.”
I know, you seemingly cannot believe that I despise terrorists, but I do. I’ve called terrorists the “common enemy of humankind” in the links you don’t want to follow. And since you can’t grasp that, you therefore cannot comprehend what I’ve been writing. As a wise man wrote in comment 29, “When the premise is flawed, all that follows is equally flawed.”
So far as I can tell, a terrorist deserves no consideration whatsoever on any moral basis. Torture – as punishment – is therefore not a problem. (I want an actual conviction, though. Humans are unreliable and a trial’s the best way we’ve come up with to minimize mistakes. That’s why suspects and detainees don’t qualify.)
Punishment’s not the only consideration, though. We have lots of interests, and torture goes against other priorities we have. There are better ways to get information, and ones that don’t have the political and military fallout that torture does. In short, I don’t argue against torture because terrorists deserve better – they don’t – but because on the whole the advantages, if any, outweigh the disadvantages. The same logic applies to, say, plea bargains. A criminal doesn’t deserve, legally or morally, not to be prosecuted, but restraint in one case may allow capture and prosecution of a worse criminal.
I’m still extremely curious as to your own definition of ‘torture’, a definition immune to word games or lawyerly parsing. Based on your own statements, waterboarding isn’t torture but pulling fingernails is. Why? What’s the difference? I don’t expect you to ever answer that question – it would leave you far too vulnerable – but it’s amusing to point out your reluctance.
Have a nice life, I guess.
>I’m still extremely curious as to your own definition of ‘torture’
I never claimed that waterboarding was torture. You did. I asked you to explain to me what makes both waterboarding and decapitation “torture”. You won’t. You define torture as physical discomfort (so, what makes waterboarding torture and imprisonment not?), and “My own personal operational definition …” (which is just an opinion, and quite frankly no one cares about your opinions as an operational definition.)
I’ve asked you to define the terms you use. You insist on simply repeating the word “torture” again and again as if saying the word is a definition in itself. When Inwood discusses the legal definitions of torture, yopu refer to an article Christopher Hitchens wrote where he feels that waterboarding is torture — or cite abstract examples (such as physical discomfort) that mean different things to different people.
If you can’t even objectively and concretely justify why you think X is torture, and you are the one who introduced the subject, exactly why should I have to now define your term which I never used, and has nothing to do with my article (except that you feel that it does)?
This is a sophomoric way to have an intelligent debate.
By the way, I never questioned whether you like terrorists or not. [You have a persistant tendency to introduce things into a discussion that I never said, and then insist that I somehow justify those statements]. I don’t care whether you do or not. All I asked is for you to justify calling waterboarding “torture” by utilizing something other than personal opinions and abstract language which lends itself to ANY disconfort being called torture.
You won’t, because you can’t, because all you are doing is expressing your opinions about torture. And quite frankly, no one cares about your opinion. This isn’t an opinion forum; it’s a debate forum.
This is why I don’t have to “guess” whether I will have a nice life, but you have to guess about every statement you make.
P
Sigh
First Mr. Ingles ignores my point that it’s been reported that Obama has just agreed to keep extraordinary rendition (“outsourcing torture”, as the predispositional New Yorker calls it) & perhaps expand it, despite the fact that Leftists have been whining that they felt that Bush had, shall we say, shredded CAT Article 3 in this regard’
I don’t practice law with Wiki, but it has a good explanation how Leftists framed this issue as a Bush War Crime:
“Human rights groups charge that extraordinary rendition is a violation of Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), because suspects are taken to countries where torture during interrogation remains common, thus circumventing the protections the captives would enjoy in the United States or other nations who abide by the terms of UNCAT. Its legality remains highly controversial, as the United States outlaws the use of torture, and the U.S. Constitution guarantees due process. Rendered suspects are denied due process because they are arrested without charges and deprived of legal counsel.”
I don’t agree that the US Constitution guarantees due process for terrorists, but the Obamacons apparently do & so this seems like a broken promise to me.
But, to Mr. Ingle’s latest post about “torture”. He says
“’torture’, a definition immune to word games or lawyerly parsing”.
Of course, “torture” is not a definition. Let’s say that he meant
“The definition of ‘torture’ is immune to word games or lawyerly parsing.”
But he never gives us the definition used in CAT Art I, or in US law & the, shall we say, “things not quite ‘torture’, but not quite nice” in CAT Art XVI. And he ignores how the US, in its express reservation when agreeing to CAT, views Art XVI as recapitulating the “cruel and unusual” clause in the U.S. Constitution, the SCOTUS interpretations of which clause have been described, charitably as “meandering”. Or, to use Mr. Ingles formulation, subject “to word games or lawyerly parsing”.
Lawyers involved in drafting laws, rules, regs as well as contracts are faced with, on the one hand, the need to avoid defining the obvious (“as used herein, a Form is a piece of paper….”) &, on the other, the need to avoid ambiguity (contractor shall perform promptly….). Regarding the term “torture”, CAT Art I does not set forth an exhaustive laundry list of things like fingernail pulling or “come rack, come rope” in defining “torture”. Nor did the framers of the Constitution with regard to “cruel and unusual”. So there is room for legal interpretation (including, now, The Hon Warren’s “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society”).
Result: The Bushies said that their extremely limited use of “waterboarding” did not constitute “torture”. Others disagreed, generally from their safe, shall we say, warrens with much smug, self-congratulatory pronouncements.
And now, with Election 2008, we shall see, or not see, what techniques of persuasion the new Administration will use to get vital info about, you know, who’s planning to blow up things we like or people we’d miss.
OOPS, make that “Ingels’s”
Inwood. This is an old, tiresome conversation with the Ray-man. He believes in strict, empirical definitions and evidence when you’re talking about hypothetical dwarf planetoids and religion (which he uses as an interchangeable word with “God”), but when the subject turns to politics and other human activities, he’s a mass of platitutes and opinions.
We who know him from his previous comments have come to expect nothing more from his words, so it’s no great surprise that everything you’ve said about the subject has gone unacknowledged.
Since we are talking about waterboarding and feelings, I have a few questions, which I have not seen brought out by Mr. Hitchens or anyone else. We do know that this is a situation that simulates drowning and we have seen photos showing the subject strapped to a board. The comments I have heard say that water is poured on the subject face for up to 15 seconds. Now I wonder what is so bad about that. In my swim team days we had challenges to see who could stay underwater for the longest time. My record was something like 120 seconds. I’ll admit that the temperature of the water is a factor. Cold water in the face makes a person want to inhale suddenly, but the same effect can be gained by applying cold water to the neither regions and the belly. Once the whole body is immersed in the water it is not nearly as shocking to get the face wet. Second, being a water lover, I recognize that some people are not as fond of water as I am and Mr. Hitchens may be among them. No doubt Mr. KSM, being from the desert, may also be adverse to DHMO. So my question is “How does the amount of water, the temperature of the water, the time duration of application, and the subjects water aversion level affect the question of torture?” Is a cup of luke warm water thrown in a persons face torture?
Ivan
As I said earlier in this thread, the Human Rights & ACLU guys not only have the feeling, they know, they know for sure that the Bushies were using techniques in the interrogation of prisoners, most of whom were probably victims of mistaken identity, which all good men disapprove of. How do they know? Because, they know, again with certainty, that any technique which produces results, OOPS make that alleged results, = torture because these benighted victims would not, except after some immoral treatment by us, tell us anything that would violate their code of honor, which is, after all, as good as ours.
So, yes, a cup of lukewarm water thrown in the face of a person illegally imprisoned would amount to torture if he gave any information thereafter, including how many virgins he felt he was entitled to.
Inwood: thanks for the head’s up. I missed it, but I have seen the movie in recent memory, so it’s all good.
Been trying to get my own blog off the ground, so it’s a bit hectic lately.
P
But wait, there’s more:
More about extraordinary rendition in the LATimes story I noted.
I find it interesting that, in your quote, “here’s the new boss….” when I read there that
“Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they ‘do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture’, or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.”
Funny, just what The Bushies always said they did &, in fact, the article goes on to note that
”The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated.”
But wait, there’s still more:
Instead of the usual screams about the inhumanity of rendition & the impossibility of any humane version thereof as they did during the last eight years, the “Human Rights” guys are now saying that The One’s Administration will practice what we might call a kinder, gentler version of rendition. Compassionate Rendition.
Seems that according to Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions….”
It’s Orwellian. These guys have no shame. It’s like the U.S.> Communists after the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact in 1939, turning the propaganda machine on a dime!
Hey, wait, Minnesotamamma & Ray Ingles, back to “torture” that’s it: just think that The Bushies practiced a kinder, gentler version of torture under CAT Art I & the not torture but not so nice stuff under CAT XVI. “Compassionate Torture & Quasi Torture”. You know, like Compassionate Conservatism.
Why do I think that a Dem like Obama out of the Chicago ooze will be more concerned with appearance, and less concerned with “human rights” outcomes, than Bush? Maybe it’s because Liberals are always more concerned with the process than the outcome!
“Maybe it’s because Liberals are always more concerned with the process than the outcome!”
Does that mean they are still going to play loud music, but they are throwing out the Arrowsmith and Guns & Roses CD’s and replacing them with Bab’s doing People Who Need People?
Inwood – You say: Let’s say that he meant
“The definition of ‘torture’ is immune to word games or lawyerly parsing.”
…which is the exact opposite of what I said. My point is that no definition in a human language is immune to that. (See: riddles, puns, etc.) Only artificial languages in restricted domains can completely avoid ambiguity. (E.g. mathematics, computer programming languages.) It’s why frameworks of law don’t ever fully match or capture morality – they can’t.
Humans do manage to communicate anyway, but they have to want to. If someone decides to put up a barrier and repeatedly misparse and misinterpret, there’s no magic formulation that will force them to understand. There’s no magic phrasing that’ll get past bad faith.
Dr. Jackson knows this – that’s why he won’t provide a definition of ‘torture’. He decries others for not giving “universal” definitions… but doesn’t do so himself. I mean, if he is in fact working within an ‘objective’ framework, he should be able to easily provide an example – and should have every reason to do so, since it would so perfectly illustrate the (alleged) contrast between him and “the Left”. But he knows that if he actually produced a definition, it would be vulnerable to the same kind of word games others have played with mine, so I can unconditionally guarantee that he won’t do so.
Until we can establish that we’ll actually try to hold a discussion in anything resembling good faith, there’s no point in discussing other things. For example, regarding rendition: Allegedly President Obama has ordered that ‘rendition’ only be “on a short-term, transitory basis”, and “In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they “do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture,” or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.” – so it’s not quite the same thing as under the Bush administration. We could talk about that – but if everyone’s willing to fulfill Orwell’s dictum, we won’t get anywhere.
“To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel.” – George Orwell
>He decries others for not giving “universal” definitions… but doesn’t do so himself.
No, I decry other people for making statements that “X is torture”, defining X through personal opinions and glittering generalities, and then asking other people to define the term YOU introduced. I never wrote about torture in my essay. You are the one who introduced this subject.
You made a stupid, blanket statement that you cannot support. And now you want me to bail you out of your stupidity by defining terms you clearly don’t understand yourself, but continue to use.
Once again, you are the one who wants to label things as torture. So give us a practical definition of why something is torture, or just admit what everyone already knows; that you are just telling us your feelings, and not engaging in a real discussion.
[Can you imagine the stupidity of asking someone else to define a term YOU introduced, and becoming indignant when they won't?]
Inwood:
As an attorney, I think you can appreciate the following true-life story.
One of the greatest life lessons I ever had came during a deposition. My attorney asked the other guy a series of questions to expalin why he said particular things in writing pertinant to our court case.
This guy would yell and scream and bluster, tell us we were misrepresenting his words (they were direct quotes), tell us WE had to define the terms for him (sound familiar?),and generally throw up as much chaffe as he could to avoid answering the question: “please explain what this entence that you wrote means?”
My attorney would remain silent throughout the outburst, listen to all the rationalizations and condemnations, and when things quieted down again, ask him the same exact question.
The guy never gave us a direct answer, but the videotape of his dodging and weaving was played in court. We won the case (a contract dispute)because people looking in on the discussion (in that case, the jurors), aren’t stupid, and can understand when a person is being disingenuous in his protestations, and when he is not.
*Ahem*
“It all depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is…”
Ray
OK, for the sake of the argument, let’s forget who brought up “torture”.
Outside of some elevator or back-yard party situation, it doesn’t matter how you, Minnesotamamma, Phil, moi, or the Human Rights people define “torture”.
I think that I’ve shown you that the word “torture” has not been defined by anybody with legal authority in a laundry list definition, including by all the UN’s horses & all the UN’s men, & that SCOTUS, which has not defined “torture”, has meandered around the definition of “cruel & unusual”.
I guess it’s like the tax law with Obama appointees. Even the Secretary of The Treasury & assorted other wise former regulators & lawgivers don’t know the meaning of “income” or “child care”.
Thus Chris H’s understanding is as good as yours, Minnesotamamma’s, Phil’s, or mine, for the purposes of pontificating.
So let’s cut to the chase.
The Bushies, the people actually governing & the guy who was the Commander-In-Chief, thought that under the limited circumstances allowed, waterboarding did not constitute “torture” as a legal matter.
We now have both houses of Congress & the Presidency controlled by Democrats, most of whom campaigned on express promises of getting rid of “torture” & many of whom are dependent for most of their contributions from those who are opposed to “torture”.
So why can’t they now pass a law which the President can sign which specifically says “as used herein, ‘torture’ shall mean any technique which produces answers by prisoners, including, without limitation, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, throwing water on prisoners, making prisoners eat infidel food, & telling prisoners that the Koran is all B*lls**t”?
Hint: Can it be that these Hon worthies know that if the Sears Tower, The Statute of Liberty, or Bab’s House is flattened by a Muslim kamikaze attack in which 11 bombers get their 72 virgins but their 12th co-conspirator is still sitting in Gitmo getting fat on all the goodies the PC yentas say he must be fed, they, Congress & The One, might be blamed by the voters for not connecting the dots & preventing such attack?
No, let’s have a BS commission/task force study the problem, a/k/a, kicking the can down the street.
Yes, isn’t this the problem. It’s as George Patton once said, “he’s a blind Dog in a meat-house; he can smell it but he can’t find it.” So it is with this issue. Obama et al wish to relieve themselves of Guantanomo, but they have not a clue what to do following that.
Their best solution is to either send known terrorists into our nation (violating Immigration and Naturalization laws), or send them to Yemen, where they can again act out on their impulses. Swell plan, guys.
p
Did ya ever wish ya could use some rendition towards some trolls? Send them to another site?
P
I don’t mean to sidebar this thread, at least not any further than it’s already been sidebarred, but here’s an example of the problem with the term “cruel and unusual”:
NYTimes 2/3/09: “Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13″
Perp is now 33 & his lawyers say that his punishment was cruel and unusual & that he should be let out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/us/03bar.html?
_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Looks like I’d argue torture since the accompanying NYT phot has him in a wheelchair!
Inwood: Actually, I like the trolls (though I wouldn’t label Raymond as one. He’s actually contributed an article to IC).
Like liberals in general, the best way to make my case is to watch them try to make theirs.
Inwood – You can’t define ‘torture’ in a “laundry-list definition”. People will be very creative and get around it. Can’t pull fingernails? Fine, what about toenails? What about just squeezing them hard in a vise? Forgot to list “using a tire pump to inflate someone’s intestines”, didn’t you? (That’s an actual technique I heard about some of those paramilitary types using in South America.)
That’s why Dr. Jackson won’t put up a definition of ‘torture’. Any definition he puts up can be gamed, and he knows it. (Which one of us has refused to define terms, again?)
The Bushies, the people actually governing & the guy who was the Commander-In-Chief, thought that under the limited circumstances allowed, waterboarding did not constitute “torture” as a legal matter.
And, by the Convention Against Torture’s definition, they were wrong. “[S]evere pain or suffering… intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information…” (Again, if you don’t think inducing the drowning reflex in someone is ‘severe’, pony up and demonstrate how you can casually shrug it off.)
How do you know if suffering is “severe”? Like I said, is it enough to make you willing to say anything to make it stop?
Hint: Can it be that these Hon worthies know that if the Sears Tower, The Statute of Liberty, or Bab’s House is flattened by a Muslim kamikaze attack in which 11 bombers get their 72 virgins but their 12th co-conspirator is still sitting in Gitmo getting fat on all the goodies the PC yentas say he must be fed, they, Congress & The One, might be blamed by the voters for not connecting the dots & preventing such attack?
Possibly. Of course, it’s not clear the previous scheme was actually any better at preventing attacks. Let’s see, the first WTC bombing was on February 26, 1993. 9/11 happened on September 11th, 2001. That’s 103 months, or ~8.6 years, most of which were under the allegedly ineffective Clinton administration. So far, the Bush scheme has been only roughly as effective as Clinton at preventing an attack.
On our soil, anyway. Terrorism worldwide is up, and lots more U.S. citizens have died from terrorist attacks than in the Clinton years. (Most of them soldiers.)
Like I said, the best way to make my case is to watch Liberals try to make theirs.
>lots more U.S. citizens have died from terrorist attacks than in the Clinton years. (Most of them soldiers.
We just lost WWII. “Lots more” soldiers died in fighting Germany and Japan than in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What is irrelevant is the goals that these soldiers fought for, and the conditions of international security their death’s established (vs the appeasement of the 1930s which had fewer actual deaths during that decade, but created the conditions for a world war in the 1940s).
This is how Liberals keep score. There is no value/goal/principle worth defending. The only way they can view the world is as if it was a cartoon. [Remember: This comes from the guy who sees torture everywhere, but can't define it, and becomes indignant when other people won't define it for him].
Like I said, the best way to make my case is to watch Liberals try to make theirs.
I just submitted another article to IC. I wish Raymond’s latest comment had come out earlier so I could have referenced it. It fits in perfectly with the general theme.
Everybody makes stupid statements from time to time, like ‘X is torture, but I can’t really define it, so you need to define it for me, and if you won’t you’re dodging the debate.’
What distinguishes us is when the person making that stupid statement says, ‘well, yeah. that is pretty dumb. Let me accept the burden of defioning torture since I’m the one who actually introduced the term, and insisted that X is torture, so I need to justify my own statement’. This is an honest person attempting an honest debate.
On the other hand, we get someone who doubles down says ‘oh yeah, well take my original stupid statement, and take this new one too’, like “the first WTC bombing was on February 26, 1993. 9/11 happened on September 11th, 2001. That’s 103 months, or ~8.6 years, most of which were under the allegedly ineffective Clinton administration. So far, the Bush scheme has been only roughly as effective as Clinton at preventing an attack. On our soil, anyway. Terrorism worldwide is up, and lots more U.S. citizens have died from terrorist attacks than in the Clinton years. (Most of them soldiers.)”
You’ll note that unlike the single quotes I used to set aside paraphrased or hypothetical staements, one of these phrases had actual quotation marks. The truth is, I couldn’t come up with a sillier hypothetical to illustrate my point.
It’s one thing to hold a stupid position. But I don’t understand the strategy of deflecting attention from the first stupid statement by introducing other egregiously stupid statements into the mix.
R
You say po-tah-to & I say potato…
Now you repeat “severe” from CAT Art I, which, again, apparently to you means any technique which produces answers by prisoners, including, without limitation, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, throwing water on prisoners, making prisoners eat infidel food, & telling prisoners that the Koran is all B*lls**t”.
But your opinion, my opinion, Chris H’s opinion, Phil’s opinion, whatever gives Chris Matthews thrills up his leg, none of these matter. It’s the opinion of the guys we’ve elected or the judges they’ve selected.
To repeat:
The Bushies, the people actually governing & the guy who was the Commander-In-Chief, thought that under the limited circumstances allowed, waterboarding did not constitute “torture” as a legal matter. They were aware of CAT Arts I & XVI. They were aware of the Constitution. They were aware of your delicate feelings, Oh, Oh feeeeelings.
But we now have both houses of Congress & the Presidency controlled by Democrats, most of whom campaigned on express promises of getting rid of “torture” & many of whom are dependent for most of their contributions from those who are opposed to “torture”.
So why can’t they now pass a law which the President can sign which specifically says “as used herein, ‘torture’ shall mean any technique which produces answers by prisoners, including, without limitation, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, throwing water on prisoners, making prisoners eat infidel food, & telling prisoners that the Koran is all B*lls**t”?
You sidebar by citing stats about deaths from terrorism, including 9/11. Apparently The Bushies, like The Clintonistas didn’t connect the dots up to then. But you don’t want them ever to connect the dots by being what you see as “severe”.
And you won’t want to be held accountable when the next attack comes if the Dems follow your lead.
BTW, you conveniently ignore the fact that there were no more 9/11s after the 9/11. You get to have it both ways: safe but more moral than the mere mortals who kept you safe
You know, the problem I have always found to be is that there’s a swatch of Americans who insist on believing that all peoples in foreign nations have benign intentions and are really all just some foreign version of themselves, living in a foreign version of their effete suburbs.
Ray, I have a friend who retired to Honduras a few years back as a “Gentleman Farmer” (FYI, he’s a decorated Marine Vietnam combat veteran). In the process, the police – who are poorly paid and so go off on violent and sometimes deadly side-excursions to make extra gelt – put on their civilian clothes, went to his farm, killed three of his workers, and then shot him three times right through the door. Then the re-appeared in their uniforms and arrested him for shooting at the police! He spent five months in a tiny dirt floored cell, and was “tortured” by have a few dozen teeth extracted by force and without anesthesia. When he finally got to court, he was completely exonerated, but had to flee the country as the police would quite obviously then try to have him killed.
Now you compare that crap to waterboarding someone for a few moments so as to save possibly millions of lives. My suspicion is that you have no perspective on these events, not to mention the actual world we live in.
To not on great occasion and in extremis utilize things that are so commonplace around the world otherwise merely hamstrings us as a nation. I for one would not be amused to see some event occur that eliminated thousands or millions of our citizens because of your delicate sensibilities, because you see that an amorphous value cannot alter in extreme conditions.
And there’s the problem. You guys never admit that extreme conditions can exist, or for that matter that the rest of the world is a rude, ugly cesspit.
You will likely say that to violate our values would make us no better than them. Fine. Values are irrelevant when you’re dead, aren’t they?
You, Sir, do not live in the real world. You live in an artificially contrived fantasy land that only works because millions of you believe in it. It still doesn’t make it real. The rest of the actual world is still there to ruin your dream.
Inwood – No, not “any technique which produces answers by prisoners”, seeing as I’ve pointed out alternate techniques that work – produce “answers by prisoners” – without subjecting them to “severe pain or suffering”.
You’re right that the “Bushies” decided that they could do that, but they were as wrong as the Dred Scott decision.
I’m sure the current administration could try to make a law banning “any technique which produces answers by prisoners”… but since that’s not the goal, of course they won’t. They do want answers, but they want them without the negative side-effects torture has.
It’s not a choice between the Iron Maiden and the Comfy Chair. It’s not a choice between ‘beat it out of them’ and ‘please, sir, it’d be ever so nice if you could tell us where you got that bomb, thank you’. I’m not advocating letting suspects go without interrogation, not trying to gather information, not getting intelligence… no matter how many times y’all want to paint it that way.
I’m arguing that one specific technique isn’t worth the cost. (True, it’s also just plain wrong, but I don’t expect to convince y’all of that.) It doesn’t produce better information, and it has serious negative consequences. I’m not arguing throwing down our arms and giving big hugs to the people who want to kill us, I’m saying the benefits of torture are outweighed by the drawbacks.
Angry Man – You guys never admit that extreme conditions can exist, or for that matter that the rest of the world is a rude, ugly cesspit.
Comment 47 – “I did support a “massive effort to kill and imprison as many of these thugs as [we] can” – in Afghanistan, vs. al Qaeda and the Taliban, who had actively attacked us or actively supported and shielded the attackers.”
Just because I don’t agree with all the tactics you like, or all the targets you want, doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that the world can be a very ugly place with genuinely evil people.
Values are irrelevant when you’re dead, aren’t they?
Well, if you’ve got nothing you’re willing to die for, I suppose.
Look, I live near, and work in, Detroit. The largest Arab population outside of the Middle East lives in one of the Detroit suburbs. We’re right by the porous Canadian border – I can look out my window and see the border. If you think that I believe I’m at less risk than others of a terrorist attack, you’re wrong.
But I’m not willing to chuck my principles just because the bad guys are scaaary. We’ve triumphed over much worse, and terrorists aren’t an existential threat to the U.S. For example, your talk of killing ‘millions’ – what do you mean there, biological warfare or nuclear weapons?
Biological warfare is not trivial and takes massive amounts of cash and research, going up against immune systems evolved over hundreds of millions of years. To kill ‘millions’ of people is damn near impossible – the more aggressive your bug, the less effective it is at spreading. (Look up anthrax a bit, particularly the Soviet accident.)
Nuclear weapons are a risk, but the way to control that is to control the supply of enriched material. No uranium or plutonium (or thorium) – no boom. Even with the materials, making a functioning weapon is far from trivial – North Korea appears to have flubbed it.
Now, if you could show me a situation where there were a nuke counting down, and this one guy knew where it was, and… but we’ve already discussed how likely a Jack Bauer Day is in the real world.
>Now, if you could show me a situation where there were a nuke counting down, and this one guy knew where it was …
It’s good to know that deeply held values should remain deeply held as long as the real world doesn’t test them, But once the test become real (i.e. the threat becomes evident), then those values can be modified or set aside to deal with an exigent threat.
In Raymond’s world, values matter only when they’re not put to the test. If Raymond believes there’s no real threat, then we maintain a strict definition of “torture”. But when he can personally see the threat, it’s okay to torture (as long as a court gives him permission), or if a “ticking time bomb” was sitting in his front yard and he was personally threatened, then by all means torture or use any means necessary to disarm the threat (with or without court approval).
Once disarmed, we return to a state where we define torture broadly and condemn anyone who would use enhanced interrogation techniques to protect the country, (even going so far as to hold them criminally or civilly liable for their actions), until the threat to Raymond becomes obvious enough for him to see the threat or feel personally threatened, at which time we adjust our value system again to deal with it.
“Values” is just another word for “politics”; it’s used as a club to criticize your opponents and excuse your own, similar actions. This is the best operational definition of moral relativism I’ve seen in a long time.
Dr. Jackson adds sarcasm to the list of rhetorical tools he can deploy, but not recognize.
The guy who sees torture everywhere but can’t define it unless someone else does it for him, and who bases his positions on a strict (albeit incoherent) value system that he’s willing to abandon as soon as it’s in his self interest to do so, speaks about rhetoric and sarcasm.
“But I’m not willing to chuck my principles just because the bad guys are scaaary.”
Well, the issue with that is that you are in effect stating that *your* principles must needs be *our* principles, regardless of the situation. And that presupposes that all possible situations will never be such that it’s either torture to save possibly millions, or go home feeling good about your principles.
Frankly, would you allow your principles to be so deeply held that you’d risk your own life and many, many others, just so you don’t in extremis compromise what is, after all, an amorphous thing? Remember, principles are morals, and what is moral is the greatest good for your group, family, tribe, nation. And morals change and will change again.
Morals change? I don’t think so! If so, you have made Raymond’s argument. I will agree that men will debate the meaning of principles and morals forever and a day, but that does NOT mean they change, but just that humans have a limited capacity to understand the laws of God and nature and apply them.
And now we have Leon Panetta doing doubletalk, doublespeak, doublethink….
Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others!”
See NYT: Panetta Open to Tougher Methods in Some C.I.A. Interrogation
“Leon E. Panetta, the White House pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, on Thursday left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules issued last month.
“Under insistent questioning from a Senate panel, Mr. Panetta said that in extreme cases, if interrogators were unable to extract critical information from a terrorism suspect, he would seek White House approval for the C.I.A. to use methods that would go beyond those permitted under the new rules.
“ ‘If we had a ticking bomb situation, and obviously, whatever was being used I felt was not sufficient, I would not hesitate to go to the president of the United States and request whatever additional authority I would need,’ Mr. Panetta said in his nomination hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“He gave no specifics about what interrogation methods he would suggest, but he said that the agency would always abide by the law. He also said he believed that interrogators could reliably get information from detainees using noncoercive means.
“ ‘We can protect this country, we can get the information we need, we can provide for the security of the American people and we can abide by the law,’ Mr. Panetta said. ‘I’m absolutely convinced that we can do that.’”
*************
HUH?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/us/politics/06cia.html?_r=2
Ivan, what I’d meant by that was, it’s well that we follow wise guidance in the form of morals. But I also used the term “in extremis” for a distinct reason: if you are presented with a situation that goes far beyond all norms, and you cannot adapt to it, then you are likely dead. This is not a positive outcome. Can it be moral to weigh the possible deaths of millions of your countrymen versus your personal morals, and achieve that your morals are so rigidly held that yes, it’s acceptable for millions to die?
Or, as an example: we get into wars, and we are aware that no matter how hard we try, no matter how precision our weapons, some innocents will likely perish. Killing innocents isn’t moral, but if we held that so dear, then we would never fight another war again, ever, no matter the reason.
And so Ray sees his principles as etched-in-stone, never to be violated no matter what the circumstances. On the other hand, I see that there are exceptional moments when we must do exactly that.
Maybe Raymond should give Leon a call and tell him that a ticking time bomb is impossible because the US government has not declassified all of it’s actions and intelligence and revealed a similar situation to the general public, so it’s not possible for such a scenario to exist.
But at least he shares Raymond’s principled stand of stict adherence to strict definitions of torture unless there’s a perceived need to do otherwise.
> Killing innocents isn’t moral …
It is immoral to deliberately harm innocent human life. The focus is on the deliberate nature of the act directed against innocent human life. It’s the same distinction between killing and murder. It’s not immoral per se to kill. It is immoral to murder.
Oh, and “innocent” is not a legal designation, per se. A person coming at me with a knife has not been judged guilty by a court, and can be harmed or killed as a direct result of the inherent threat he poses. He is not “innocent” the way arbitrarily harming someone because they are a different race or religion, or simply picking a victim at random, represents “innocence” with respect to that action.
Of course. What would make my analogy perhaps not moral is the foreknowledge that innocents will die despite our efforts to prevent it, yet we go to war regardless. It’s a “greater good” thing.
Ya know, if this keeps up, I’m gonna think, you know, that, um, all the concern over torture, waterboarding, & rendition was just another stick with which to beat Bush & was just campaign rhetoric necessary & appropriate to get the Democrats in power.
Had lunch today with two professed Nader voters & several supposed McCain voters (though, judging from their jumping on the anti-Palin bandwagon, I’m not certain that they did vote for McCain). Seems that all are now ecstatic since they feel that Obama has shown himself to be a true patriot who will do whatever is necessary to stop the “ticking time bomb” & I was just a robotic Republican voter who did not see the need for change except where the safety of our nation was involved, where it would be America First despite campaign rhetoric. (Not sure how this unthought could be stretched to Nader, but nevermind.)
I said that gee, maybe any bad guy who is believed to have any info which would result in a big PR win for Obama was gonna have to put his hands over his privates & hope that waterboarding & rendition was the worst that he’d face.
No one seemed to appreciate my wit. Go figure.
From The Volokh Legal Blog;
“the Obama CIA’s use of coercive techniques wouldn’t be torture because we would never do that — no matter the circumstances. It also wouldn’t be ‘enhanced interrogation’ because that’s what Bush did. It would simply be ‘additional authority.’”
What was that you said in your original post before these 144 comments—meet the new boss?
And the MSM will give Obama a pass, unlike with Bush where everything, hearsay, rumors, lies, was published.
Inwood: Great citation! For the Left, it’s all about words. If and when these words bear any resemblance to reality is just a bonus. That’s how Bush can “steal” an election every recount showed he won, how he can “lie” about the same WMD Clinton said existed, and now how Obama can do the same thing as Bush — only it’s different because Obama is doing it.
Phil, Mr. Inwood:
Re: 145 and 146
So the conclusion after all these posts is that waterboarding is torture because liberals hate Bush.
As I posted several years ago, the answer to any political question revolves around whether or not you hate Bush. Nobody really cares about the GTMO detainees; they are just catalysts in the liberal hate-Bush fests.
Sedonaman
It’s a little more, you know, nuanced than your statement (#147).
What I was trying to say was
“waterboarding became torture when Bush’s opinion-poll percentages went below 50%, & the images of 9/11 & the “crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield” receded in the public’s memory or became but a bore, because liberals could then have another stick with which to beat Bush”.
As Nancy P. would say “500,000,000 American Liberals can’t be wrong, & my Catholic Theology tells me that it is not illiberal to hate Bush & all uncompassionate Republicans.”
Mr. Inwood:
I don’t think my statement (#147) overlooks any nuance. The claim that, “The answer to any political question revolves around whether or not you hate Bush” covers a verrrrrry wiiiiiiiide bandwidth of situations. In fact, I can’t think of any it doesn’t.
WSJ 2/7/09
The Jack Bauer Exception – II
As CIA director, would Leon Panetta object to aggressive interrogation?
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A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of political minds, and Mr. Obama’s executive order did allay the anti-antiterror left. But the larger danger is that his multiple personality disorder — aggressive interrogations are banned, except when they aren’t — will lead to a nervous, risk-averse CIA that can’t or won’t act when most needed. Someone in Washington will always decide later that U.S. intelligence officers went too far, usually when lives no longer seem at stake.