Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

A Rout Vs. A Rogue President

by tristero

Riffing on Digby’s post earlier, I agree that Bush et al are too sanguine. And it’s very spooky. But rather than speculate on why they are so apparently clueless about reality (yet again), let’s speculate on something else. And if I’m shown wrong, I’m wrong (and I’ll say so). But I don’t think it’s frivolous to explore the possible implications of what the November vote could bring. It might help us better deal with it and understand the potential and limitations.

Ok, let’s first speculate that it really will be a rout. I, like you, will thank God, Thor, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster that it happened. And like you, I’ll give myself a little pat on the back for voting for Democrats and helping make it happen.* But what are the first things the Republicans are gonna do the day after?

That’s right, goopers gonna demand recounts of as many races as they dare to. Lets not forget that many of the national races are major-league gerrymandered. The Republicans will scream something that boils down to, “Hey! No fair! We *#&*@$ rigged these races within an inch of our lives. We made sure those districts would be slamdunk GOP wins. Democrats simply had to be cheating!”

And so there will be recount demands. Lots. And here’s the kicker: Some of those recounts could take a very long time. A very long time, indeed. And cost a lot more money than the Democratic party has. (BTW, a question for legal people out there: Can GOP incumbents be stopped from casting their votes if their seat is up for dispute, the vote is being recounted, and a new term has started?)

Okay, but let’s put the concern about recounts aside. Let’s speculate that regardless of election disputes, a newly Democratic Congress is finally seated. Now what? Well, William Greider sez we should “insinuate” ourselves as “friendly critics” and push progressive, meaning liberal, ideas. And he rounds up some delicious sounding promises if the Dems win the House, such as investigations into waste and constitutionality. I agree (but geez, Bill, “insinuate?” couldn’t you have picked a better word? ) and I promise to help push.

But while we’re trying to bring some commonsense back to national politics, let’s try to anticipate what might plausibly happen. I think it’s a safe bet that a Democratic House that starts genuine investigations will be charged with revenge, payback and fomenting destructive vendettas “during wartime!” by everyone on the right and the mainstream media will let them. And, btw, you haven’t seen hysterical yet from the right. It will be ugly: Remember the “White Collar Riot” in Palm Beach, 2000? But all in all, that doesn’t concern me too much. Those kinds of charges and fights are par for the course, even if they become exceptionally vitriolic this time around.

No. Here’s what concerns me. What if Congress passes laws Bush don’t like?

Well, he may just go along with some of them. And for some he will surely release a signing statement or just quietly ignore them. But for certain laws that he thinks his actively opposing them will play well to other rightwing extremists – say bills that roll back the “Patriot” Act to something more befitting a free society – I think the odds are good that Bush may actually publicly refuse to follow them, citing the “overriding principle of the unitary executive.”

In short, Bush will say, “Try ‘n make me.” And the amen choir at Fox and elsewhere will stand up for him, deploring a fascist Democrat [sic] Congress trying to Subvert the will of the People.

Actually, I don’t think this dramatic – no, melodramatic – scenario is likely for a very simple reason. Congress wouldn’t dare to substantively repeal the “Patriot” Act or the Torture Act or anything else that central to Bushism. I believe that Bush will, as he has done since the beginning, continue to play chicken with the US Constitution, daring Congress to force the constitutional crisis he’s created, which has been going on since before he took office, into a full-blown public meltdown. And I believe, just as they did with the filibuster, that Congress will back down to prevent a public meltdown from happening. Congress, either Dem-controlled or not, will prefer to avoid a very frightening confrontation with a rogue presidency – that could lead who knows where – in the hopes that Bush’s insane challenge to the very structure of the US government simply will end when Bush leaves office in 2009.**

I’m not saying I like this or that I think it’s a good (or bad) idea. All I’m suggesting is that even if there is a rout, don’t expect much. With Bush in office, the serious danger to the country’s kind of government persists. He will do whatever he wants to do. The Congress, like it or not, will be very anxious to do nothing to exacerbate the crisis, hoping to wait him out.

Yes, indeed, a Democratic House/Congress may raise quite a stink over Bush’s desire for the big Iran Bang Bang he’s planning. But even so, Congress will do all it can not to confront Bush but avoid the confrontation.

That’s right: Even a Democratically controlled Congress may very well go along with Bush’s war plans in order to avoid a catastrophic showdown over who really has the true power in America these days.*** It may mean that the confrontation over Bush/Iran could devolve into an open clash between Bush and very reluctant generals, with Congress stuck, badly, in the middle. (And I can clearly see the headlines on Fox declaring a ” military coup d ‘etat” and “mutiny.”) But frankly, I doubt it. I suspect that there will be no major dramatic confrontations and, barring the totally unforeseen, that Bush could get away with starting another war. Possibly even a nuclear war – and then watch the fur fly as the world condemns the US and Congress tries to figure out what to do while the bodies of radiated children are displayed on television and Bush demands “loyalty in a time of active war.”

Don’t get me wrong. A Democratic Congress is a Very Good Thing and we should all be working to see that it happens. But we should be realistic about how much even a Democratic Congress will feel it can do, given a president who has the unchecked power, the corrupt will, and the truly perverse desire to be a cheap dictator instead of an American leader.

——–

*As for those of you who vote your conscience and vote for a Republican-funded third party candidate, may your music collection vanish in a puff of Green, except for the Yanni and Vangelis compilations your well-meaning and trying-to-be-hip aunt bought for you once and that you couldn’t bring yourself to touch, let alone, toss.

**Congress has no reason to doubt Bush will leave at the end of his term, nor do I: Bush is anxious to become Commissioner of Baseball, after all. That’s the job he’s really wanted all along.

*** Yes, I know the situation and his support is not Fall, 2002 even though Congress did cave in back then to avoid exactly such a showdown. However, I don’t think Bush cares about public opinion (or the rule of law). He does what he wants. He’s the decider, not the American people. He has the power and he will exercise it. And how, exactly, does a Congress stop a president who believes that he, not the Supreme Court, is the ultimate arbiter of all legislation? And “during wartime,” as he will surely claim? And if they succeed, what kind of potentially dangerous precedent does that set? I think Congress will try to avoid gettting into a position where those questions have to be answered.

Cheap And Tawdry

by digby

So, the religious right now claims they are all upset about the gay Republicans in their midst.

“It’s time for what we call a ‘Come to Jesus Meeting,'” said Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. “Homosexuality is a dysfunctional lifestyle, and it must be addressed.”

“Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?” Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote in an e-mail to activists. “Does the party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?”

Excuse me, can I just inquire where in the hell they were when this little kabuki took place during the last campaign?

Mary Cheney, one of two Cheney daughters, is openly gay and an official in the Bush-Cheney campaign. The vice president has spoken at length about his daughter’s sexuality and his view of gay relationships, even disagreeing with the president about the need for a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages.

Asked Wednesday night by debate moderator Bob Schieffer whether homosexuality is a choice, Kerry said: “We’re all God’s children, Bob, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was. She’s being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it’s not a choice.”

Kerry issued a statement Thursday after the Cheneys had expressed anger over his remarks: “I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue.”

Cheney told supporters at a rally Thursday in Fort Myers, “You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected, and I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father.” He made no other reference to Kerry’s remarks about his daughter.

Mrs. Cheney, introducing her husband in a post-debate appearance Wednesday night in Coraopolis, Pa., also avoided a specific reference to her daughter’s sexuality when she made clear she thought Kerry had crossed a line into family privacy.

“Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man,” Mrs. Cheney said. “Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.”

That was one of the most frustrating moments of the campaign. Here they were with an openly gay daughter, working on their campaign, but they had the chutzpah to claim righteous parental indignation at Kerry for mentioning it when asked about gay marriage — a campaign issue stoked by Bush and Cheney to turn out their religious right base to vote against it. I’ll never forget how the crowd cheered wildly when Lynn Cheney made her nonsensical statement.

The only thing I could conclude from that episode is that the religious right is phony or stupid. This recent Claude Rainsing about the “gay cabal” has not changed my mind on that.

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Crazy Jesus Lady

by digby

Roy reads the Crazy Jesus Lady’s latest so you don’t have to. She’s impressed by how all the Republicans are doing an honest reassessment of their values in light of the party’s “problems” while the Democrats are just being so rude about everything, as usual. She says we don’t have “grace.”

Here’s a little advice for her, from her, to think about while she ponders how to deal with the social embarrassment of being a high profile member of the party of criminals, screw-ups and sexual deviants:

A lot of you–you need to stop, sit down, think, question yourself, look at your actions and ponder what you’ve become. And how somehow love for your side in the fight became hatred for the other.

Let me be very candidly specific. Some of you need to get a good psychologist and a good holy man or woman, a priest or rabbi or minister–or how about all three–and figure out why you’re turning everything in your life into politics. Because I have to tell you what I know: Politics is the biggest, easiest way in all of America to avoid looking at yourself, and who you are, and what fence needs fixing on your own homestead.

A lot of you are in politics not because you want to lead, but because you want to run. From yourselves.

When you’re in politics not to live life but avoid it, you become especially susceptible to a kind of polar thinking. You become convinced you’re with the good team and the good people over here. You become convinced anyone who doesn’t want the same policies you want must be bad. After all, you’re good, so if they disagree they must be bad. When you’re polar like that you dehumanize the people on the other side. And when you dehumanize them–well, then you wind up … starting wars on lies, excusing sexual predation of teen-agers, stealing billions from taxpayers and legalizing torture.

Think about it Peggy. You and your little friends really ought to spend some time with your holy men — if they can pull themselves away from the porn and the spread sheets — and think about how you all managed to pick a group of leaders whose colossal incompetence is only exceeded by their titanic avarice.

I promise I’ll work on my grace.

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Voodoo?

by digby

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president’s news conference this week.

“They aren’t even planning for if they lose,” says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush’s final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

“The Bush White House has had no relationship with Congress,” said a Bush ally. “Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans–the ones that survive–treat them if they lose next month.”

I don’t want to get all tin-foily here, but this just strikes me a very, very odd. Maybe it’s the tinkerbelle strategy taken to the next level. But you do have to wonder why they are so eerily confident in the outcome of an elections that looks more and more to be a rout.

Billmon, from whom I lifted this link, points to this:

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

Chris Hedges
Does Bush Think War With Iran is Preordained?
October 10, 2006

I think most of you readers will probably think of this.

I suspect it may just be something simpler: president pissypants:

The President’s Increasing Isolation: A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President’s increasing isolation. Bush’s bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he’s wrong. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. “The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,” the aide recalled about a session during the first term. “Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, ‘All right. I understand. Good job.’ He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom.”

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It’s Not The Sex

by digby

…no matter how titillated he was by the pictures.

Chris Shays keeps digging:

“It was a National Guard unit run amok,” Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable … This is more about pornography than torture.”

Uhm, no it isn’t just that sex abuse is torture, although it is, which he apparently has finally discovered. But he and Rush and many on the right see this thing as pornography which is defined as “material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement.”

Rush said, you’ll recall:

LIMBAUGH:And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.

LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.

(Apparently, it isn’t just him. I always wondered why Shays stayed in the Republican party and now I know.)

Seriously, do Republicans really think those pictures of the mentally ill patient covered in excrement or the terrified man who suffered that bloody dogbite were intended to cause sexual excitement? Where does this pornography thing come from? Did it cause them sexual excitement?

Shays said Friday he wished he had more fully explained his views at the debate.

“I was maybe not as expansive as I needed to be,” he said. “Of course, the degrading of anyone is torture. We need to deal with it.”

Shays said his debate comments reflected the disturbing photos he has seen of Abu Ghraib abuses: “Naked Iraqis, naked Americans, Americans having sex … gross and despicable pictures.”

I guess he was so overwhelmed by the male nudity and the pictures of Americans having sex (which none of the rest of us have seen) that he didn’t notice this stuff:

11:15 p.m., Nov. 7, 2003. The detainees were brought into the hard site for their involvement in a riot. The seven detainees were flexi cuffed and thrown into a pile on the floor. Soldiers then jumped on the pile, stomped on their hands and feet. CPL GRANER is depicted holding and in the process of punching a detainee. [Detainee name deleted] is detainee with writing on leg wearing the white underwear.

Maybe Republicans think that’s porno, but it sure looks like torture to me.

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“Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant”

by digby

I would become a believer myself if this happened:

Dear Dr. Dobson and Friends

I write this letter to you as an admirer, and as one who is eternally grateful for all that you have done to fight for Christian values in America. Although fine Americans such as Don Wildmon, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, The Arlington Group and others have fought the fight as well, you more than anyone, are the face of the pro-family movement. You have the scars to prove it and I consider you an American hero.

But Dr. Dobson, it is time to build an ark. It is time to leave the Republican Party. Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant.

I know that seems like a radical move, sir, but it has become increasingly apparent that the core values of the Republican Party are not Christian values. It is time all Christian leaders ask ourselves if it is possible for God to bless a polluted party. Make no mistake, the Republican Party is polluted.

[…]

Now is the time to form our own party. You and your friends have the influence to do it. Remember how quickly people got behind Ross Perot? Can’t our Christian leaders do the same? We have the resources and the network. It is time to stop wasting them on Republicanism.

The world has gotten smaller. The power of the internet has changed the way Americans communicate. With one click of a mouse, millions can be alerted to Truth. A network of churches and ministries already exists. We can override the lunacy of television ads, without spending a dime, if we focus now on 2008.

Here is a plan.

· Begin now to build the network of partnerships of those who espouse Christian values. Much of it is already in place.

· Draft Judge Roy Moore as the 2008 presidential candidate. He has proven his mettle. Begin working for his election now. There is no question where his loyalty lies. Work to get him on the ballot in all fifty states. Stay out of the Republican primary. Build a war-chest for the general election.

· Begin a training program for future candidates in Constitutional government as it relates to God-ordained freedoms. Train up men who will not compromise for personal gain. Courageous men who stand in the face of the anti-god establishment. Men who will restore Constitutional government. Men in the tradition of Madison and Washington. In two years we will have a group of God-fearing men to run in local races.

· Hire experts to create PAC’s that will support the candidates giving opportunities for Christians to donate to Godly candidates, rather than compromised Republicans. Thumb your nose at the IRS. Would Jesus be silent on the great moral issues of the day because he was afraid of losing His tax-exempt status?

· Give no money to Republican or Democratic candidates–only those who join the new party.

· Offer current God-fearing officials an alternative to status quo politics, and offer an alternative party for them to join.

[…]

Things are not looking good for Republicans. It is time to abandon ship, to build an ark, to raise the standard. Republicanism is making Christianity look bad.

Dr. Dobson, America needs bold new leadership. You and your friends have the influence to pull it off. Are you and your friends willing to give up your seat at the Republican table? With leadership comes responsibility and the Lord will hold us all accountable for the compromising of His standards. The wonks will tell us a third-party can’t win, that we will only divide the vote, that Hillary will be president.

I say God will do something great if we honor His name and His ways. Matthew 19:6 “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

So, Dr. Dobson, who will you choose to believe?

Praise the Lord! I think there is no doubt that Jesus would want these people to form a third party of conservative Christians with Judge Roy Moore at the top of the ticket.

I’m with them on this 100%. In fact, I’ll give money to help them make it happen. Republicans are polluted, yes they are. Long live the Conservative Christian Crusade Party. It is exactly what this country needs at a time like this.

h/t to SarahT

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Do it For The Constitution

by digby

Glenn Greenwald’s blog Unclaimed Territory sort of took the blogosphere by storm this past year or so and for good reason. He is fearless in taking on the right wing — from the crazed harpy wingnut vloggers to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And he makes such well-reasoned yet passionate arguments they are forced to engage him. His blog is does what the best lefty blogs have to do — entertain, inform and… kick rightwing ass.

Glenn is just a great blogger and I’d hate to see Unclaimed Territory have to change or go dark. If you have the wherewithal and you value what bloggers like Glenn are doing, head on over and give him a donation. Bloggers aren’t getting any institutional or advertising support from the big money boys in the party. This is the way independent bloggers like Glenn can keep the lights on.

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It Doesn’t Bother Him Politically

by digby

More dispatches from the GOP Freakshow:

MJ Rosenberg over at TPM Cafe makes note of religious conservative Dennis Prager’s strong moral stand on Larry King last night. It’s quite inspiring:

KING: … Does the Foley matter bother you?

PRAGER: The matter bothers me but not politically. A congressman is given a page to nurture and take care of and not to try to have an affair with, with same-sex or opposite sex, so that bothers me. There’s no question about it and a great deal in fact but, it doesn’t bother me politically.

KING: Why?

PRAGER: Because it will have no repercussion in my opinion. Even “The New York Times” I’m sure through [sic] its great chagrin had on the front page that conservative, religious conservatives, the people most likely to be offended by such a sexual scandal, are not at all turning away from the Republicans. It was a front page article.

KING: Why aren’t they offended?

PRAGER: Oh, they are offended but they’re not going to — they’re not going to stop voting Republican as a result. That was what the article was about. They’re going to still go to the polls and they should because what is the alternative, a party that doesn’t share any of their values.

So, as much as any conservative might say, “Well, it’s not been a conservative enough administration,” when you look at the alternative, you end up voting Republican.

First of all, since when is a congressman “given a page to nurture and take care of?” This isn’t feudal Europe and these Republican perverts sure as hell aren’t knights in shining armor.

Second, are we supposed to be impressed that even though the Republicans steal billions of tax dollars, cover up for sexual deviants and demand the right to torture, moral Americans will vote for them anyway because they couldn’t possibly be as bad as liberals? That’s what’s known as moral clarity among religious conservatives like Prager.

Considering that, perhaps some of you will be surprised to learn that Prager is an “ethicist” who said back in 1999:

Five years ago, I became a Republican for one reason — aside from the religious renaissance, the Republican party was the only force in America that could stop Democrats and liberals from further eroding America’s fundamental values. I still believe that undoing and preventing liberal damage is the most noble and honest Republican agenda.

He has always had some rather unusual ideas about sexuality, some of which he shared with the congress when he testified in 1996 against same-sex marriage:

I don’t feel threatened by same-sex marriage…I perceive a different danger. It is the danger that is regarding human sexuality, which is a non-issue here. I interviewed a professor of psychiatry at UCLA before coming here to check whether my research on this was valid, and he said, and I quote, Professor Steven Marmer (ph), UCLA Medical School: “Human nature is largely bisexual. In the 18,000 word paper I wrote on homosexuality three years ago, I discovered something that I never knew. Judeo-Christian civilization is unique in human history in saying that sexuality should be exclusively channeled to the opposite sex and in monogamous marriage.” I repeat, it is unique.

Homosexuality, bisexuality have been normative throughout human history. Judeo-Christian civilization alone said, channel the polymorphous sexual urge that the human nature has into marriage with someone of the opposite sex. If we wish to dismantle that, it is not Representative Frank, a political gesture in a Republican Congress. [HEARING OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEESUBJECT: SAME-SEX MARRIAGES CHAIRED BY: CHARLES T. CANADY (R-FL) MAY 15, 1996]

Impressive argument, isn’t it? He thinks that religion and traditional marriage are the only things saving humans from their natural bisexual state. (Why that state would be bad, he doesn’t explain, but it’s clear the thought terrifies him.) I’d say that’s very revealing coming from a strict religious conservative like him, don’t you?

How many of these weirdos are using the excuse of religion and “values” to force the law to keep them from acting on their deepest desires? We need to figure it out because their psychological problems are starting to become problems for all of us.

By the way, Prager holds seminars on many subjects including “male sexuality.”

No subject is more perplexing than male sexuality. Dennis unravels the mysteries of the male mind with startling clarity and insight. Every man who wants to better understand his nature and every woman who wants to fully appreciate the opposite sex should listen to this tape course.

That ought to be a real eye-opener.

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Sex Ring Republicans

by digby

I guess I’ve been living in some sort of dreamworld here in the wholesome Hollywood heartland, but I am honestly shocked at the degree of depravity and sadism that Republicans across the board seem to find normal. I don’t consider myself a prude, but damn.

The original Limbaugh reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty telling, but I figured he just represented the rich, S&M portion of the GOP constituency. And while I was a bit surprised that there was no outcry among the conservative moralists I figured it was just because they were being good soldiers in the GWOT. The Mark Foley thing has proven that they just don’t much give a damn about sexual depravity or morals at all if it threatens their political power. The House leadership in charge looked the other way but the moralists are lining up to blame a fictitious gay cabal they believe has infiltrated “their” party. Talk about moral relativism.

But I really thought that the northeastern moderates might be the last holdouts for sanity. They have always seemed temperamentally conservative in the old fashioned sense of relying on prudence and reason. Apparently not. Yesterday Chris Shays described the events at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” and denied that any torture took place. A sex ring:

“Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said according to a transcript provided by Democratic challenger Diane Farrell’s campaign and confirmed by others who attended the debate. “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.”

Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn’t doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.

“I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff,” Shays said. “The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn’t primarily about torture.”

Shays defined torture as anything that could cause mental or physical pain or sleep depravation.

I don’t know what kind of sex these GOP freaks are having, but I don’t think most of these things (from the Taguba report) are normally considered “sex,” even in Rush’s wildest S&M fantasies — certainly when they are perpetrated against prisoners against their will:

a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? That’s not torture? That stuff is over and above the things we’ve all seen with the forced masturbation, simulated fellatio, smearing feces on prisoners and forcing them to wear women’s underwear while chained in stress positions to their cells or beds.

Characterizing what happened at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” is bizarre enough but he defends his comment the next day which means it wasn’t a slip of the tongue or a badly worded phrase. He’s thought about this and he believes it.

He said he looked at all those pictures and saw sex. Did you? I sure didn’t. But then we libertine lefties base our belief that people should be able to do whatever they like in their private lives on the bedrock principle of individual freedom, agency and rights. It’s the coercion that makes all this stuff so wrong. When somebody is coerced or forced into doing “sexual” things against their will, it can most certainly be torture. (I can’t believe I even have to make that argument.)

Furthermore, in the case of Abu Ghraib, it’s well known that what we saw in those pictures were techniques that were developed and shipped in from Guantanamo when General Geoffrey D. Miller was brought over to “straighten out” the prison and get actionable intelligence. They believed that these sexual techniques were a particularly potent way to break conservative Muslims. This stuff was common and it was pervasive — if it was a “sex ring” it was a mighty big one that went all the way to Rumsfeld and probably Bush and Cheney too.

This is exactly why you draw bright lines on torture. Chris Shays is pretty much telling the world that the only problems with what went on at Abu Ghraib were matters of inappropriate sex and, therefore, don’t violate the Geneva Conventions prohibition against torture. I’ll be anxious to hear him explain to the families of American troops in the future that they shouldn’t sweat it when their relatives are repeatedly raped or paraded around naked and forced to perform sex acts for cameras. (Hell, even being bitten by dogs or beaten with chairs isn’t torture according to him.)

Republicans apparently find these actions little more opprobrious than they find one of their friends hitting on underage boys but I would bet the families of these troops won’t see such treatment as being part of a “sex ring” and might just believe their loved one is being tortured. Shays and his pals will have to explain to them why that isn’t so.

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Undaunted

by digby

We all know that before 9/11 the neocons didn’t give a damn about terrorism (and still don’t, really.) But what were they obsessed with? Saddam, yes. Israel, yes. But they reserved a whole bunch of their firepower for the great yellow peril, the Chi-Coms, whom they are anxious to blame for the North Korean nuclear threat today. They apparently don’t feel we have enough problems, we need to start poking China in the eye too.

In their view, Beijing has always had the power to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms programmes, and the fact that it has not done so demonstrates that China sees itself as a “strategic rival” of Washington, a phrase much favoured by administration hawks during Bush’s first year in office.

Indeed, in the most prominent neo-conservative reaction to the North Korean test to date, former Bush speechwriter David Frum called in a column published by the New York Times for the administration to take a series of measures designed to “punish China” for its failure to bring Pyongyang to heel.

Among them, Frum, who is also based at AEI and is sometimes credited with inventing the phrase “axis of evil”, in which North Korea, Iran, and Iraq were lumped together, for Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, urged the administration to cut off all humanitarian aid to North Korea, pressure South Korea to do the same, and thus force China to “shoulder the cost of helping to avert” North Korea’s economic collapse.

Frum, who is also based at AEI, urged that Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to be invited to join NATO and that Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, to send observers to NATO meetings.

Frum, who in 2003 co-authored “An End to Evil” with former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, also suggested that Washington “encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.”

“A nuclear Japan is the thing China and North Korea dread most (after, perhaps, a nuclear South Korea or Taiwan),” he asserted.

Somebody has got to get the DEA to confiscate that shit these guys are smoking. What magic do these guys think we possess? Aside from the fact that China is holding all of our markers at the moment, does it seem like a good idea to be encouraging any country to renounce the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty right now? It’s an invitation to a nuclear free-for-all. Have their hare-brained schemes to destabilize the middle east failed to satisfy them enough that they have to destabilize Asia as well?

This is the nature of neocon thinking. After all we’ve seen, after everything they’ve screwed up, they still believe that they can control events on the world stage as if they were pieces in a board game. I’m not sure a simple madman would be more dangerous.

Update: And yes, the PNAC Democrats should wise up too. They are classic enablers, searching desperately for common ground with lunatics.

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