The law: It's not for 'people like us'

David Broder has lost his mind.

At least I hope so -- that would be the charitable explanation for his Washington Post column urging President Obama to let sleeping torturers lie. But I don't think that's the case.

NO, I THINK there's another explanation for rhetoric like this:

Obama, to his credit, has ended one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States.

He was right to do this. But he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government. And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices.

But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps -- or, at least, careers and reputations.

Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability -- and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance.

Obama has opposed even the blandest form of investigation, a so-called truth commission, and has shown himself willing to confront this kind of populist anger. When the grass roots were stirred by the desire for vengeance against the AIG officers who received contractual bonuses from government bailout funds, Obama bought time by questioning the tactic. Quickly the patently unconstitutional 90 percent tax the House wanted to slap on those bonuses was forgotten.

LOOKING FOR SCALPS? Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. U.S. and international law prohibits torture of captured combatants, with penalties ranging up to death if the torture is fatal. Furthermore, the United States has led prosecution of torturers from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the wake of World War II, sending those individuals to prison for years. Or worse.

I think this example is interesting. An American military commission, in 1947, tried four Japanese defendants for war crimes committed against U.S. prisoners. Among the war crimes? Waterboarding.

Of course, Japanese war criminals had nothing on your average Texas sheriff.

In 1983, the San Jacinto County sheriff and three deputies were charged with -- and convicted of -- waterboarding prisoners to elicit confessions. The "lawmen" all went to prison for a long, long time.

As the judge said in federal court as he passed sentence: ''The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.''

But not, as it turns out, a certain president of the United States hailing from the Lone Star state.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I gather what American interrogators did to "enemy combatants" in the name of the American people does embarrass David Broder. Just not enough to prosecute Bush Administration figures for acting just like Hitler's and Tojo's henchmen . . . or sadistic Texas lawmen.

No, according to Broder, war crimes just aren't that big a deal when it's Americans committing them. Or ordering them. I'll bet the venerable pundit also wonders why the world hates us.

Probably, in the fever swamp of his Beltway consciousness, Broder believes the world -- like the left-wing Washington ideologues and the provincial populist yahoos -- just harbors an "unworthy desire for vengeance." Vengeance identical to that we took against the Nazis and Japanese for their World War II atrocities, no doubt.

What were we thinking back then?

Couldn't Harry Truman see he was engaging "in a retroactive search for scapegoats"?

It's all so clear. At least to Broder:

That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness -- and injustice.

IF ONLY President Truman had had the wisdom and foresight of David Broder, ace columnist of The Washington Post, we might have spared ourselves six decades of poisoned relations with Germany and Japan. Who knows? Perhaps we even could have turned those fierce enemies into close allies.

Oh, wait. . . .

Nevertheless, the point remains for the oracle Broder: Justice is never its own reward. Justice may or may not be useful depending upon what one's ulterior motives happen to be.

Like Pontius Pilate -- his philosophical brother two millennia removed who famously asked "What is truth?" -- Broder stands before verifiable, objective truth and muses "What is justice?"

Obviously, he figures justice must be radically different today for civilized people -- D.C. insiders with whom he's shared drinks and bon mots -- than it was for uncouth Nazis and wild-eyed Japanese fanatics of the 1940s.

Or for some Buford Pusser gone wrong in Bumf*** Tejas.

AND THE REST of us who figure the law is the law is the law . . . and that no man stands above it? In the world of David Broder and his Washington cronies, we're just so many grass-roots vigilantes, full of "populist anger" and hell-bent on vengeance.

No, in BroderWorld, the elites stick together against the rabble -- those crazy folk talking crazy talk. Really, what nut came up with foolishness like "government of the people, by the people, for the people" anyway?

Obviously, some rube who didn't know who his betters were.

Tojo hearts Cheney

For those with lingering questions about whether our government has gone all Mussolini and Tojo on us, here's the latest from Vice-President Dick Cheney, courtesy of MSNBC and the Financial Times:

WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney, US vice-president, has endorsed the use of "water boarding" for terror suspects and confirmed that the controversial interrogation technique was used on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qaeda operative now being held at Guantánamo Bay.

Cheney was responding to a radio interviewer from North Dakota station WDAY who asked whether water boarding, which involves simulated drowning, was a "no-brainer" if the information it yielded would save American lives. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney replied.

The comments by the vice-president, who has been one of the leading advocates of reducing limitations on what interrogation techniques can be used in the war on terror, are the first public confirmation that water boarding has been used on suspects held in US custody.

"For a while there, I was criticized as being the 'vice-president for torture'," Cheney added. "We don't torture ... We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth.

"But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture and we need to be able to do that."

Cheney said recent legislation passed by Congress allowed the White House to continue its aggressive interrogation program.

But his remarks appear to stand at odds with the views of three key Republican senators who helped draft the recently passed Military Commission Act, and who argue that water boarding is not permitted according to that law.

"SO," YOU SAY, "Cheney approves of waterboarding terrorist scumbags. So what?"

This what (from The Washington Post):

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk."

The article said the practice was "fairly common" in part because "those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury."

The picture reportedly led to an Army investigation.

Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.

BUT WHY TAKE TED KENNEDY'S WORD FOR IT? OK, there is more detail and documentation in this column by Robyn Blumner:

Bush was strident in asserting that the CIA chamber of horrors or ''program'' could be open for business again. But at the same time, the president gravely assured us: ''The United States does not torture.''

Interestingly, we weren't nearly as blithe to water-boarding when it happened to our own guys during World War II. Then, we considered it a war crime and a form of torture.

In Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts, Judge Evan Wallach of the U.S. Court of International Trade, has documented the trials in which the United States used evidence of water-boarding as a basis for prosecutions. The article, still in draft form, will be published soon by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

Among the numerous examples, Wallach cites one involving four Japanese defendants who were tried before a U.S. military commission at Yokohama, Japan, in 1947 for their treatment of American and Allied prisoners. Wallach writes, in the case of United States of America vs. Hideji Nakamura, Yukio Asano, Seitara Hata, and Takeo Kita, ''water torture was among the acts alleged in the specifications . . . and it loomed large in the
evidence presented against them.''

Hata, the camp doctor, was charged with war crimes stemming from the brutal mistreatment and torture of Morris Killough, ''by beating and kicking him (and) by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.'' Other American prisoners, including Thomas Armitage, received similar treatment, according to the allegations.

Armitage described his ordeal: ''They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.''

Hata was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor and the other defendants were convicted and given long stints at hard labor as well.

Wallach also found a 1983 case out of San Jacinto County, Texas, in which James Parker, the county sheriff, and three deputies were criminally charged for handcuffing suspects to chairs, draping towels over their faces and pouring water over the towel until a confession was elicited.

One victim described the experience this way: ''I thought I was going to be strangled to death. . . . I couldn't breathe.''

The sheriff pleaded guilty and his deputies went to trial where they were convicted of civil rights violations. All received long prison sentences. U.S. District Judge James DeAnda told the former sheriff at sentencing, ''The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.''

But, obviously, not Dick Cheney . . . or George Bush.

It is not my place, on this non-partisan blog, to proclaim that we have voted ourselves over to a fascist -- or neofascist, as it were -- regime. It may or may not be the case and, at any rate, we shall have our answer soon enough.

That determination lies with you, dear reader. Listen to what the administration says, then look at what it is doing in our name and, finally, look at how we have dealt with enemies who have done the same.

Look at how torture is defined. Here's a definition.

And here's what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about torture:

2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law. 90

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

What you, as a Christian and an American, are willing to tolerate is up to you. Free will and all that, don't you know?

Christ will judge George Bush and Dick Cheney, whether or not the American people get to them first. As He will judge us all.

Just remember that we all are accountable to God for what we do, what we fail to do, and for what we put up with. Lord, have mercy.

Amerika, Amerika, verschüttet Gott Seine Gnade auf Ihnen. . . .

Andrew Sullivan sums up an account of what the Bush Administration has ordered -- and which American personnel carry out -- in your name, which happens to be identical to what Adolf Hitler ordered in the name of the Third Reich.

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

WHOA. HE'S RIGHT. Thus, I am here to advocate on President Bush's behalf.

For criminal malfeasance in ignoring -- or, at a minimum, failing to act upon -- intelligence questioning the wisdom of going to war with Iraq and predicting what would happen if we did, the president (and other key figures in his administration) deserves impeachment, removal from office, criminal prosecution and jail time.

For criminal malfeasance in failure to take serious measures -- in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 -- against the illegal and uncontrolled flow of foreign nationals across our southern border, the president (and other key figures in his administration) deserves impeachment, removal from office, criminal prosecution and jail time.

For war crimes relating to authorizing torture of select "enemy combatants" -- several of whom have died -- in defiance of domestic and international law, it at first glance seems that the president (and other key figures in his administration), according to U.S. law, would be eligible for the death penalty.

AS A CATHOLIC, HOWEVER, I do not believe in applying the death penalty when imprisonment is sufficient to remove the threat from society. So, in the name of mercy, I merely advocate impeaching George Bush, Dick Cheney and other officials as necessary, removing them from office, prosecuting them according to U.S. law and international covenant, then throwing their asses in prison long enough to make a point.

It's less, certainly, than they deserve. But, then again, aren't we betting everything, as Christians, on getting much less than we deserve.

Book him, Danno.



HAT TIP: Mark Shea.

Censor fi

The next time some Bush Administration commisar -- or some Bushie media shill -- uses the phrase "The troops in Iraq are putting their lives on the line for our freedom," blow up your TV.

And mail the smoldering parts to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.

I'm not sure, exactly, what our troops are in Iraq for, but it's not to fight for your freedom or mine. Hell, they can't even secure their own.

BUT THE PROBLEM is neither al Qaida nor any of the Wahoobi suicide jockeys who seek to plunge the world neck deep into the 13th century. No, according to this Washington Post story, the problem is Uncle Sam:

The national commander of the proud, patriotic, 2.4 million strong Veterans of Foreign Wars (motto: "Honor the dead by helping the living") took one look at the mushrooming dispute between three antiwar Marine reservists and the U.S. Marine Corps, and knew where his sympathies lay: with the protesters.

"What the Marine Corps is trying to do is hush up and punish these individuals who served our country," Gary Kurpius, the national commander, said in a telephone interview. "All they're doing is exercising the same democratic voice we're trying to instill over in Iraq right now."

The Marines have accused the three reservists, all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, of wearing their uniforms during political protests and making "disrespectful" or "disloyal" statements. All three were honorably discharged from active duty, but now face "other than honorable" discharges from the inactive reserve, which could affect future employment and veterans benefits.

The VFW issued a blistering statement on the controversy yesterday. Headline: "VFW to Corps: Don't Stifle Freedom of Speech."

Kurpius, an Army vet who fought in Vietnam, doesn't even agree with the protesters. "We're pretty much on record supporting the troops, and if you're going to support the troops, you're going to have to support their mission," he said. "I may disagree with the message . . . but I and my organization will always defend their right to say it."

The Marines respond that this is not a free-speech case. Adam Kokesh, 25, one of the protesters, "violated Marine Corps uniform regulations and he was disrespectful to a commissioned officer," said Master Sgt. Ronald Spencer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Mo. "That would be the issue. It has nothing to do with free speech."

Kokesh, who fought in Fallujah and now is a graduate student at George Washington University, was wearing parts of his camouflage uniform in March during a demonstration where 13 veterans roamed Capitol Hill and downtown Washington carrying imaginary weapons to mark the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.

When Kokesh was contacted by the major assigned to investigate the case, he responded with an e-mail about his service and opposition to the war, and concluded with a profane suggestion about what the major could go do.

While all three reservists wore parts of their uniforms during demonstrations, at least one of the charges seems to involve speech only: Liam Madden, 22, of Boston, is accused of making disloyal statements in a speech where he accused the Bush administration of "war crimes"; said the conflict is a war "of aggression" and "empire building"; and said Bush "betrayed U.S. military personnel." Madden says he was not in uniform during that February speech in New York.

Spencer, after addressing the uniform issue, said he needed a few hours to research questions about the alleged disloyal statements, then did not return messages to answer those questions. Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman, referred those questions back to Spencer, saying, "I'm unable to speak to the legal reasoning behind the freedom of speech charges issued by the Marine Corps."

NONE OF THE MARINES are on active duty. They're not even in the regular reserves. They're all in the "Individual Ready Reserve" -- a reserve of last resort, for lack of a better description -- membership in which is involuntary and lasts for eight years after discharge from the armed services.

They're all civilians, in other words.

The Marines are going after civilians because the government doesn't like what those veterans are saying about the war. The Marines are going after civilians because they can . . . or so someone in Washington thinks.

That's not freedom. That's Mussolini's Italy -- or Chavez's Venezuela -- fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn looking for the "Hitler's Germany" exit. And if these Marine combat veterans haven't earned the right to say Crazy King George's catastrophic little war is full of beans . . . well, then none of us have the First Amendment right to say the God's honest truth in public.

Either wearing fatigues or butt naked.

If Americans can't goad our elected representatives into putting an end to this plague of Mad Bush Disease -- putting an end to the insanity ASAP -- it's going to get worse. Much worse.

Irony is . . .

Irony is, sometimes, a humongous case of what goes around comes around . . . at the hands of the recipient of Goes Around.

In this case, it is well possible that don't-let-the-Pentagon-door-hit-you-in-the-arse, soon-to-be-ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be facing war-crimes charges in . . . the German courts.

And Rumsfeld is far from the only one.

Time magazine has the exclusive:

Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski — who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case — has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: "It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

A spokesperson for the Pentagon told TIME there would be no comment since the case has not yet been filed.

Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are
General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides "universal jurisdiction" allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a "a big, big problem." U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case.

The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue
the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.

In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case — that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue — has been proven wrong.

The abomination of Trumpolation

It has been many years since I've wanted a goddamned thing to do with the professionalized, politicized "pro-life" movement. Why? Because it's God-damned.

That sad fact becomes clearer by the day, if not by the minute.

Any organization that isn't wouldn't mock the Almighty by saying, with apparently straight faces -- both of them -- that Donald John Trump was "a voice for the unborn and continuously working to build a culture of life." That is a whopper of Trumpian proportions, at least.

Trumpian, hell. Orwellian.

Having Trump speak at an alleged March for Life is like having the ghost of Joseph Goebbels keynote an Anti-Defamation League convention. This most vile and dangerous of American presidents is building some kind of culture, alt-right all right, and it is anything but a "culture of life."

A CULTURE OF LIFE does not see ripping children from their parents at the border, then placing them in squalid and overcrowded Border Patrol stations as a feature and not a bug.

A culture of life's stance on the treatment of women does not include "grab 'em by the pussy."

A culture of life does not celebrate war crimes, it does not threaten war crimes, and it does not tolerate peacetime assassinations of foreign leaders.

A culture of life seeks to ease the struggles of the poor -- it does not cut their SNAP benefits.

A culture of life takes a dim view -- a really dim view -- of referring to women as "dogs."

A culture of life does not claim there's "some very fine people" among neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

A culture of life does not celebrate someone who's told 16,241 public lies in his first three years in office.

A culture of life is not racist.

A culture of life is not anti-Semitic.

I could go on, but it's late and I'm tired.

WHEN I SAW the March of Life's tweet, the first thing -- literally -- that came to mind was "abomination of desolation." That's Bible speak, roughly describing something horrific and defiling. Apocalyptic, even. Think of erecting pagan monuments on the ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, as the Romans did.

Think of building an altar to Satan in a Catholic church.

Think of having Donald John Trump speak at a March for Life.

I'm thinking of the Archdiocese of Omaha sending busloads of teenagers to the March for Life -- and all of its hyperpoliticized Trumpdolatry -- like lambs to the spiritual and ideological slaughter. One of three things is likely to happen to each poor soul, and none is good:

* The kid might die of irony overload right on the spot.

* The kid might become a MAGA enthusiast, endangering his or her immortal soul and causing much harm to others somewhere down the road.

* The kid might be unusually perceptive, see this for the evil, blasphemous bullshit that it really is, take note of who and what brought him or her into this moral clusterfuck . . . and be lost to the Church (or Christianity, period) forever.

What an amazing witness for Christ. America -- and the church -- will have much to suffer because of such sulfurous subversion from the depths of hell.

I'm also imagining Jesus on one of those buses full of Nebraska teens as it crosses the Potomac River. It is written, "As he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it."

War is over. (If you want it.)

"The battle is always lost within the castle."

Well, John Lennon got that one right. We elected Donald Trump president -- or at least voters in states comprising a majority in the Electoral College elected Donald Trump -- and what seems to be a nearly inevitable war with Iran already is lost.

It didn't -- doesn't -- have to be fought. The fuse was lit when Trump pulled the United States out of the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran, then ramped up sanctions in an attempt to destroy the Iranian economy.

After a year or so of tit-for-tatting with the mullahs, Trump poured jet fuel on the burning fuse by ordering the (nominally) peacetime, extralegal assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, said to be the second-most powerful member of the Iranian government. The Iranians will strike back -- hard.

When they do, Trump, who has blown up any plausible deniability that he is a madman, has threatened to respond by committing war crimes on an epic scale -- airstrikes against 52 Iranian targets including civilian sites and cultural treasures.

THE IRANIAN regime is not innocent in this, and Suleimani had much blood on his hands, including American blood. Then again, so does North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Trump considers him a friend . . . at least for the time being.

Tomorrow, who the hell knows?

No, Iran is not innocent. But after years of neocon warmongering, Trump's diplomatic duplicity, foreign-policy recklessness and -- now -- an illegal assassination of a foreign official that pretty clearly was an act of war, the United States stands before a global jury guilty as charged.

We are a deeply wrong country set to embark on a clearly illegal and unjust war.

And we are guilty of putting the madman who's about to pull the trigger in just the position to do it. With impunity.

As we say during the Roman Catholic Mass, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

But . . . perhaps if getting into this catastrophic mess is our fault, maybe we also can get out of it. Somehow, like we eventually did in Vietnam. 

"War is over. (If you want it.)"

Title 18. Part I. Chapter 118. Section 2441.

§ 2441. War crimes

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

(b) Circumstances.— The circumstances referred to in subsection (a) are that the person committing such war crime or the victim of such war crime is a member of the Armed Forces of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act).

(c) Definition.— As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct—

(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;

(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;

(3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non-international armed conflict; or

(4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.

From MSNBC:

The CIA failed to fully inform Congress that it was videotaping the harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects and that it destroyed the tapes in 2005, the bipartisan leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday.

"Our committee was not informed, has not been kept informed and we are very frustrated about that issue," said Chairman Sylvestre Reyes, D-Texas, after a three-hour closed-door meeting with CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden. That meeting, he said, "is just the first step in what we feel is going to be a long-term investigation.

That probe will include calling other witnesses, including Hayden predecessors George Tenet and Porter Goss, and John Negroponte, the former Director of National Intelligence, said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the panel's senior Republican. Reyes said he would also call on Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA director of operations who actually had the tapes destroyed.

From The Times (London):

The CIA's use of waterboarding to torture terror suspects was approved by the White House, a former agency official claimed yesterday. The accusation comes amid growing uproar over the destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation of al-Qaeda members.

John Kiriakou, the former agent, said that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida — the first senior al-Qaeda operative captured after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 — broke him in less than 35 seconds, and “probably saved lives”.

The harsh interrogation technique, which critics — and Mr Kiriakou — say is torture, was approved at the highest levels of the US Government, said Mr Kiriakou, who led the team that captured Zubaida.

Referring to the waterboarding of Zubaida — a technique that simulates drowning — Mr Kiriakou told the NBC TV station: “This isn't something done willy-nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner.

“This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and the Justice Department.”

Mr Kiriakou's comments came as the head of the CIA was questioned yesterday in closed-door hearings on Capitol Hill over the destruction of the tapes, amid allegations that the agency tried to hide evidence of illegal torture.

From The Associated Press:

The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.

Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.

While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.

The brownshirt strikes back

Over at Louisiana Conservative.com, "Avman" just doesn't get it:

I’ve had it with some people’s stupidity. Where’s common sense at? I laid out the reasons why I will not support John McCain, and instead of trying to give me a reason to support him, I get called a Brown shirt, and exactly who is trying to intimidate who again? When I say I don’t support John McCain’s 100 year war in Iraq, I mean that I don’t support wars that last so long that eventually everybody forgets why we are fighting. I mean that I don’t want to commit children who haven’t even been born yet to an endless war. When I say I want to do what is necessary to win a war, that means I want to keep war to a minimum instead of supporting decades of mothers and fathers crying because their child died in a war that nobody even knows why they are fighting. What’s so ridiculous about wanting wars to be short lived? Would anybody actually argue that 20 year wars are better than a five year war? How stupid is that? When wars are fought, do what it takes to win it, and win it quickly. Cripes, where’s General Patton when you need him?

WELL, THEN. If "do what is necessary" is the be-all, end-all "gold standard" of human conduct, let's just blow the whole Middle East to hell with our nuclear arsenal -- and China, too! -- and we can win the War on Terror and solve global warming via nuclear winter in one swell foop!

Then, back at home, we can attack the nation's crime problem by overturning the Supreme Court's Miranda decision and then move on to waterboarding suspected gang bangers until they rat out every Crip, Blood and MS-13 hoodlum from sea to shining sea.

And, you know, the poor are a pretty bad drag on the rest of us, even when they're not committing crimes. Maybe . . . I mean, if we're truly committed to "do what is necessary" to build a more literate, prosperous and orderly country . . . maybe we just ought to "eliminate" the problem.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more! Say no more!

Cripes, where's Adolf Hitler when you need him?

THEN AGAIN, maybe we could just try another tack. Maybe we could start by adhering to the Geneva Conventions.

And maybe we could try not attacking countries on the flimsiest of suspicions that they might try something funny.

After we've mastered those things, maybe we could crack open some compendium of the moral law -- I like the Catechism of the Catholic Church, myself -- and take it to heart. Like this part, for example:

Respect for bodily integrity

2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.⁹¹

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

Respect for the dead

2299 The dying should be given attention and care to help them live their last moments in dignity and peace. They will be helped by the prayer of their relatives, who must see to it that the sick receive at the proper time the sacraments that prepare them to meet the living God.

2300 The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy;⁹² it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.

(snip)

III. SAFEGUARDING PEACE

Peace

2302 By recalling the commandment, "You shall not kill,"⁹⁴ our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral.

Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice."⁹⁵ If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. The Lord says, "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."⁹⁶

2303 Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."⁹⁷

2304 Respect for and development of human life require peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is "the tranquillity of order."⁹⁸ Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity.⁹⁹

2305 Earthly peace is the image and fruit of the peace of Christ, the messianic "Prince of Peace."¹⁰⁰ By the blood of his Cross, "in his own person he killed the hostility,"¹⁰¹ he reconciled men with God and made his Church the sacrament of the unity of the human race and of its union with God. "He is our peace."¹⁰² He has declared: "Blessed are the peacemakers."¹⁰³

2306 Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death.¹⁰⁴

SO, I MAY BE STUPID, but I do understand one important thing that American brownshirts don't. Many things are possible. Not all are permitted, lest we ourselves become that which we find repellent.

What would Jefferson Smith do?

Where, oh, where is Frank Capra when we need him?

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington may be playing out in the new century as Mrs. Sheehan Goes to Washington, only with the disillusionment taking place before the anti-war activist even aspired to political office.

This story from The Associated Press . . .

Cindy Sheehan, the soldier’s mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush. That’s when Sheehan and her supporters are to arrive in Washington, D.C., after a 13-day caravan and walking tour starting next week from the group’s war protest site near Bush’s Crawford ranch.

“Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership,” Sheehan told The Associated Press. “We hired them to bring an end to the war. I’m not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn’t be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money.”

. . . plus this . . .

Nearly half of the US public wants President George W. Bush to face impeachment, and even more favor that fate for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a poll out Friday.

The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney.

The study by the private New Hampshire-based ARG canvassed 1,100 Americans by telephone July 3-5 and had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points. The findings are available on ARG's Internet site.

The White House declined to comment on the poll, the latest bad news for a president who has seen his public opinion standings dragged to record lows by the unpopular war in Iraq.

The US Constitution says presidents and vice presidents can be impeached -- that is, formally charged by the House -- for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" by a simple majority vote.

Conviction by the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority, means removal from office.

. . . means that we could be in for some interesting times.

I'm just sayin'.

The naked truth about Michelle

Here's the naked truth. And, no, I'm not talking about the new Starbucks cups.

The naked truth is that it's often useful to change the subject when, like right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin, you're backing an administration guilty of war crimes -- both in pursuit of its "War on Terror" and in its prosecution of an illegal war in Iraq.

LIKE WHEN you start bleating about Rachael Ray's allegedly Jew-hating scarf in a now-canceled Dunkin' Donuts commercial.

But wait. Didn't Malkin appear in a web ad promoting a conservative T-shirt company selling stuff like this?
And this?
Not to mention this?


NOW WHO'S supporting terrorism? Rachael Ray and her Ay-rab lookin' scarf or Michelle Malkin, endorser of unambiguously fascist T-shirts?

All I know is that given a choice between Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, those craven appeasers of the waterboard right, I'll get my java jive on with the nekkid mermaid.

War crimes aren't just for Serbians . . . or Saddam . . . or Nazi Germany anymore

Oh, Lord. Seymour Hersh has another blockbuster about American war crimes in the "War on Terror."

The general who first investigated Abu Ghraib, now retired, is pointing fingers. So are some other military and congressional insiders. And all those fingers are pointing to the top.

HERE ARE LENGTHY EXCERPTS from Hersh's piece in The New Yorker (which I strongly urge you to go and read), but they're only a fraction of the whole long, horrifying article.

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn’t say anything.” (I did not meet Taguba until mid-2006 and obtained his report elsewhere.) Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. “Here I am,” Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, “just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.” As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, “He’s looking at me. It was a statement.”

At best, Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint. On January 13, 2004, a military policeman named Joseph Darby gave the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) a CD full of images of abuse. Two days later, General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, the director of the Joint Staff of the J.C.S., were e-mailed a summary of the abuses depicted on the CD. It said that approximately ten soldiers were shown, involved in acts that included:

Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.

Taguba said, “You didn’t need to ‘see’ anything -- just take the secure e-mail traffic at face value.”

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.

On January 20th, the chief of staff at Central Command sent another e-mail to Admiral Keating, copied to General Craddock and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq. The chief of staff wrote, “Sir: update on alleged detainee abuse per our discussion. DID IT REALLY HAPPEN? Yes, currently have 4 confessions implicating perhaps 10 soldiers. DO PHOTOS EXIST? Yes. A CD with approx 100 photos and a video—CID has these in their possession.”

In subsequent testimony, General Myers, the J.C.S. chairman, acknowledged, without mentioning the e-mails, that in January information about the photographs had been given “to me and the Secretary up through the chain of command. . . . And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts and other abuse, was described.”

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’ ” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” Asked specifically when he had been made aware of the photographs, Rumsfeld said:

There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I don’t remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know, and you didn’t know, and I didn’t know.

“And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are,” Rumsfeld said.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S. -- Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

(snip)

Richard Armitage, a former Navy counter-insurgency officer who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the first Bush term, recalled meeting Taguba, then a lieutenant colonel, in South Korea in the early nineteen-nineties. “I was told to keep an eye on this young guy—‘He’s going to be a general,’ ” Armitage said. “Taguba was discreet and low key—not a sprinter but a marathoner.”

At the time, Taguba was working for Major General Mike Myatt, a marine who was the officer in charge of strategic talks with the South Koreans, on behalf of the American military. “I needed an executive assistant with brains and integrity,” Myatt, who is now retired and living in San Francisco, told me. After interviewing a number of young officers, he chose Taguba. “He was ethical and he knew his stuff,” Myatt said. “We really became close, and I’d trust him with my life. We talked about military strategy and policy, and the moral aspect of war—the importance of not losing the moral high ground.” Myatt followed Taguba’s involvement in the Abu Ghraib inquiry, and said, “I was so proud of him. I told him, ‘Tony, you’ve maintained yourself, and your integrity.’ ”

Taguba got a different message, however, from other officers, among them General John Abizaid, then the head of Central Command. A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

(snip)

Taguba eventually concluded that there was a reason for the evasions and stonewalling by Rumsfeld and his aides. At the time he filed his report, in March of 2004, Taguba said, “I knew there was C.I.A. involvement, but I was oblivious of what else was happening” in terms of covert military-intelligence operations. Later that summer, however, he learned that the C.I.A. had serious concerns about the abusive interrogation techniques that military-intelligence operatives were using on high-value detainees. In one secret memorandum, dated June 2, 2003, General George Casey, Jr., then the director of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, issued a warning to General Michael DeLong, at the Central Command:

CIA has advised that the techniques the military forces are using to interrogate high value detainees (HVDs) . . . are more aggressive than the techniques used by CIA who is [sic] interviewing the same HVDs.

DeLong replied to Casey that the techniques in use were “doctrinally appropriate techniques,” in accordance with Army regulations and Rumsfeld’s direction.

Abu Ghraib had opened the door on the issue of the treatment of detainees, and from the beginning the Administration feared that the publicity would expose more secret operations and practices. Shortly after September 11th, Rumsfeld, with the support of President Bush, had set up military task forces whose main target was the senior leadership of Al Qaeda. Their essential tactic was seizing and interrogating terrorists and suspected terrorists; they also had authority from the President to kill certain high-value targets on sight. The most secret task-force operations were categorized as Special Access Programs, or S.A.P.s.

The military task forces were under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command, the branch of the Special Operations Command that is responsible for counterterrorism. One of Miller’s unacknowledged missions had been to bring the J.S.O.C.’s “strategic interrogation” techniques to Abu Ghraib. In special cases, the task forces could bypass the chain of command and deal directly with Rumsfeld’s office. A former senior intelligence official told me that the White House was also briefed on task-force operations.

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”—in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, “Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?’ ” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’”
(snip)

An aggressive congressional inquiry into Abu Ghraib could have provoked unwanted questions about what the Pentagon was doing, in Iraq and elsewhere, and under what authority. By law, the President must make a formal finding authorizing a C.I.A. covert operation, and inform the senior leadership of the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees. However, the Bush Administration unilaterally determined after 9/11 that intelligence operations conducted by the military—including the Pentagon’s covert task forces—for the purposes of “preparing the battlefield” could be authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, without telling Congress.

There was coördination between the C.I.A. and the task forces, but also tension. The C.I.A. officers, who were under pressure to produce better intelligence in the field, wanted explicit legal authority before aggressively interrogating high-value targets. A finding would give operatives some legal protection for questionable actions, but the White House was reluctant to put what it wanted in writing.

A recently retired high-level C.I.A. official, who served during this period and was involved in the drafting of findings, described to me the bitter disagreements between the White House and the agency over the issue. “The problem is what constituted approval,” the retired C.I.A. official said. “My people fought about this all the time. Why should we put our people on the firing line somewhere down the road? If you want me to kill Joe Smith, just tell me to kill Joe Smith. If I was the Vice-President or the President, I’d say, ‘This guy Smith is a bad guy and it’s in the interest of the United States for this guy to be killed.’ They don’t say that. Instead, George”—George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A. until mid-2004—“goes to the White House and is told, ‘You guys are professionals. You know how important it is. We know you’ll get the intelligence.’ George would come back and say to us, ‘Do what you gotta do.’ ”

(snip)

Rumsfeld was vague, in his appearances before Congress, about when he had informed the President about Abu Ghraib, saying that it could have been late January or early February. He explained that he routinely met with the President “once or twice a week . . . and I don’t keep notes about what I do.” He did remember that in mid-March he and General Myers were “meeting with the President and discussed the reports that we had obviously heard” about Abu Ghraib.

Whether the President was told about Abu Ghraib in January (when e-mails informed the Pentagon of the seriousness of the abuses and of the existence of photographs) or in March (when Taguba filed his report), Bush made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of prisoners before the scandal became public, or to reëvaluate the training of military police and interrogators, or the practices of the task forces that he had authorized. Instead, Bush acquiesced in the prosecution of a few lower-level soldiers. The President’s failure to act decisively resonated through the military chain of command: aggressive prosecution of crimes against detainees was not conducive to a successful career.

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.” (A spokesperson for Cody said, “Conversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.”)

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff” -- the explicit images -- “was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

READ THOSE WORDS AGAIN. Read them, and weep for your nation, for your military and for all of us. Read them, and weep for Iraq. For what we have done to Iraq. Read them for, as Longfellow wrote, "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep. . . ."

Here is the "money graf" again:

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.

THE WAR ON TERROR is over. The United States has defected to the terrorist camp.

We invaded Iraq to -- allegedly -- bring that country freedom and security. It has neither.

Saddam Hussein is dead. Long live Saddam Hussein. He lives on in the disorder we have exacerbated in the Middle East. He lives on in every IED. He lives on in every American interrogator who stoops to torture "for the greater good."

Saddam lives. Saddam is victorious. A part of him lives on at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Allahu akbar, y'all.