Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Cogs In The Machine

by digby

One of the most hyped tales of political wizardry in recent years is the story of how Karl Rove energized the evangelical base and created an army of Republican GOTV foot soldiers. The facts are that the targeting of the evangelicals goes back much farther than Rove and can be attributed to earlier GOP grassroots strategists:

“With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. ‘Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That’s it, Falwell exclaimed. That’s the name of the organization.’ [David Grann, “Robespierre of the Right,” New Republic, October 27, 1997]

Rove and these other strategists knew the religious right were “new voters” which is the political promised land. Everybody dreams of dragging some of the unaffiliated, apathetic uninvolved into the political arena. Getting an entire block of voters who will vote according to what they are told by an authoritarian organization is a miracle. Hallalujah.

With the business marketing savvy of the big money boys of the GOP they were quite successful in the last decade or so at convincing the media and many of the public that the Republican party actually is more moral and more sincerely religious than the Democrats. However, the events of the last year have begun to unravel that carefully constructed image.

After Foley’s “naughty emails” were revealed, Paul Weyrich said what I think most people would expect an honest religious right leader to say:

“One of the things that people say to me all the time is, in Washington nobody takes responsibility for anything,” continued Mr. Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. “And I think that he, having not delved into this the way he should have, has to take responsibility and therefore has to resign.”

Of course he backtracked the next day, but his first instincts, at least, were consistent with what you would expect of a cultural conservative. Dobson, Bauer and Perkins and the rest of the religious right leaders on the other hand, came out of the box sounding like slick, blow-dried PR spinners feverishly explaining away Foley’s predatory IM trail as a prank or a dirty trick. They behaved like political operatives, not religious leaders.

And this week we are also getting a glimpse into how Karl Rove and the Bush white house really view conservative Christians. The new book by David Kuo is causing quite a stir:

Kuo says, ‘National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy.’ “

So how does the Bush White House keep ‘the nuts’ turning out at the polls?

One way, regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.

Kuo says, “Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending. Advice was solicited [but] that advice rarely went much further than the conference call. [T]he true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy.”

They do get some things from the Bush White House, like the National Day of Prayer, “another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says.

And “passes to be in the crowd greeting the president when he arrived on Air Force One or tickets for a speech he was giving in their hometown. Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper were passed out like business cards. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”

This sounds as though the GOP thinks that conservative Christian leaders are dupes, but I doubt that is literally true. I think they understand each other quite well and have plenty of respect for their different roles in the power structure. It’s obvious to me that both the Republicans and the leaders of the Religious Right are contemptuous of rank and file conservative Christians, not each other.

If you doubt that, take a look at the response among the evangelical elite to the fall from grace of the co-founder of the Christian Coalition, a man who got so greedy for political power he stepped out of his religious role and went for it:

Given the Reed scandal’s potential to erode evangelicals’ faith in politics, it’s no surprise that the main reaction among movement leaders has thus far been “an embarrassing silence,” to quote Ken Connor, the former head of Dobson’s Family Research Council. Even Richard Land, the normally forthcoming Southern Baptist powerhouse, has been rendered speechless. (“Dr. Land has decided to pass on this topic,” his spokeswoman told The Nation after first agreeing to an interview.) …One notable exception to the official silence has been Marvin Olasky, a longtime Texas adviser of Bush who literally wrote the book on “compassionate conservatism.” Olasky, editor of the most popular organ of the evangelical right, World magazine, has been outspoken in his view that Reed “has damaged Christian political work by confirming for some the stereotype that evangelicals are easily manipulated and that evangelical leaders use moral issues to line their pockets.” World reporter Jamie Dean has filed a series of fearless Reed exposes, causing a sensation in the evangelical community. Her dogged questioning of Christian-right leaders whom Reed dragged into his “anti-gambling” campaigns inspired sharp criticism from the most powerful of them all, Focus on the Family leaders Dobson and Tom Minnery, in a February radio broadcast. “They have a reporter who wanted me to dump on Ralph Reed,” said an exasperated Minnery, explaining why he refused to answer questions from World.

Nobody has nailed the discomfort better than Reed’s old cohort Pat Robertson. “You know that song about the Rhinestone Cowboy,” he told The New York Times last April as the Abramoff-Reed connections began to go public. “‘There’s been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.’ The Bible says you can’t serve God and Mammon.” Robertson has subsequently fallen quiet on the matter–perhaps because he knows that a willingness to serve both God and Mammon has been indispensable to the success of evangelical politics. It’s the very glue that holds together the awkward marriage of Christian moralism and high-rolling Republicanism.

The glue that holds it together is the business of evangelism. Those followers who give their money to these churches and organizations that sell Republicanism as a religious brand might as well spend their money at WalMart. They’re buying the same thing. It’s tribal identity but it isn’t religious and it isn’t moral.

It’s time everybody recognized that so we can deal with it honestly. These so-called religious leaders (and it’s not just the national leadership, it’s the whole hierarchy) are not dupes. Sure Rove and the rest call them nuts. But the leadership and the party know they are essentail to each others’ continued status, even if they spar over who’s their daddy. The truth is that they are all elites who have the same goals — power.

The big losers are the followers who are being sold a cheap bill of goods by both the Christian Right leadership and the Republican Party. Maybe some day they’ll wise up but it’s a tall order. It means they have to lose faith in both their church and their party and I wonder how many of them have that in them. It would be a terrible disillusionment.

There’s a vacuum to be filled in the evangelical leadership by preachers and leaders who eschew worldly, political power for its own sake. It remains to be seen if anyone steps up to claim it — and whether the sincere believers are not just “red team members” but true Christians who will reject the Elmer Gantrys who have been playing them for fools.

Update:Here’s more on the same topic by Hans Johnson in In These Times:

This June, Dobson had to devote a page of the magazine to coming clean about his ties to Jack Abramoff and the other Republican corruption scandal. In classic Dobson fashion, the disclosure was wrapped in an attack on “liberal” philanthropist George Soros and titled, with the subtlety of a schoolyard taunt, “We’re calling your bluff.” So much for mea culpa.

Far from being a free-standing moral voice, Dobson and Company are part and parcel of conservative political machinery. He has used his organization’s tax-exempt status, radio network and greedy data-gathering techniques for the past 25 years to convert it into bare-knuckled political empire dressed up as a Christian ministry.

Update II: And now it is reported that Rove personally threatened Foley when he tried to retire last year. Oh what a tangled web we weave…

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Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

by digby

The Republicans really, really need to deal with their latent sexual issues because this is getting ridiculous. I just flipped over to FoxNews and saw two scantily clad young men (with very unmilitary looking mop-tops) sitting across the desk of a giggling and blushing Neil Cavuto, flogging a Marine Hunk beefcake calendar. I’m not kidding.

You can kind of understand why Foley self-destructed. It’s strange and creepy in that Republican closet.

Oh and speaking of creepy, if you’d like to sign a petition objecting to the great Christian child psychologist James Dobson’s characterization of Foley’s p[redation and hastert’s cover-up as a joke, you can go here.

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Brilliant

by digby

Most of you have probably already seen this over at Atrios’ place, but if you haven’t check it out:

Unlawful State of Denial

by poputonian

France Sparks Uproar With Genocide Bill

PARIS — French politicians are galloping into diplomatic quicksand with a proposal to imprison anyone who publicly denies that the Turkish massacre of Armenians a century ago constituted genocide.

The draft law, to be debated by the National Assembly Thursday, was submitted by the opposition Socialist Party and has strong support among those on the political right who hope to derail Turkey’s candidacy for European Union membership.

Members of France’s 400,000-strong Armenian diaspora, whose votes are important to all sides in next spring’s presidential election, have lobbied for years to criminalize negating their genocide, just as it is a crime in France to deny the Holocaust.

Is there such a thing as indirect genocide, such as might happen when you intentionally destabilize a foreign sovereign? I suppose in crime parlance, one would call it reckless genocide. The drunk driver, after all, didn’t intend for an innocent death to be the outcome of the actions taken (the drinking.) But the driver is nonetheless held accountable. Cause and effect, you know.

Attention: Rightwing Guardians Of Free Speech!

by tristero

Dear Rightwing Defenders of the Politically Incorrect,

Are you bored by Idomeneo? I don’t blame you. After all, it’s not Mozart’s best opera by a long shot. I vote for Figaro or Zauberflote, but won’t complain if you say Giovanni. Oh, and if you know what’s good for you, get the Gardiner DVD of Figaro.

But I digress. For you courageous defenders of free speech who spoke up so bravely for the wealthy rightwing Danish newspaper magnates that published those Muhammad ‘toons, here’s your new cause celebre. This guy is about to get into a heap o’ trouble for speaking his mind. You must put your considerable moral power behind him, rise to his defense, denounce the thought police that would eliminate his right of free expression and, well, you know the drill:

A university instructor who came under scrutiny for arguing that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks likens President Bush to Adolf Hitler in an essay his students are being required to buy for his course.

The essay by Kevin Barrett, “Interpreting the Unspeakable: The Myth of 9/11,” is part of a $20 book of essays by 15 authors, according to an unedited copy first obtained by WKOW-TV in Madison and later by The Associated Press.

The book’s title is “9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out.” It is on the syllabus for Barrett’s course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Islam: Religion and Culture,” but only three of the essays are required reading, not including Barrett’s essay.

Barrett, a part-time instructor who holds a doctorate in African languages and literature and folklore from UW-Madison, is active in a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group’s members say U.S. officials, not al-Qaida terrorists, were behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

“Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies,” he wrote.

Barrett said Tuesday he was comparing the attacks to the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

Now, you may think he’s just an hysterical nut. But he’s not. He’s quite thougtful in advancing his bold, audacious thesis. He is not in any way saying that Bush personally is comparable to Hitler. Read on:

“That’s not comparing them as people, that’s comparing the Reichstag fire to the demolition of the World Trade Center, and that’s an accurate comparison that I would stand by,” he said.

He added: “Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush, so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an insult to Hitler.”

Now some of you may think that, unlike Germany, this is America where free speech is respected and defended as a matter of course. He doesn’t need your help as there are no repercussions. Not so:

The university’s decision to allow Barrett to teach the course touched off a controversy over the summer once his views became widely known.

Sixty-one state legislators denounced the move. One county board cut its funding for the UW-Extension by $8,247 — the amount Barrett will earn for teaching the course — in a symbolic protest, even though the course is unrelated to that branch of the UW System.

Democratic Governor Jim Doyle and his Republican challenger, Mark Green, have both said they believe Barrett should be fired.

So to the barricades, my rightwing friends! Contact David Horowitz and come ye all together, rise to Professor Barrett’s defense! And denounce the liberals and Democrats and Republicans (RINOs, obviously) who are calling for him to be fired and vilified for his views.

love,

tristero

P.S. Please don’t ask me to join you. But don’t get me wrong. I’m all for free speech and free expression, even if I hate it. That’s why I’m a card-carrying member of ACLU who I’m positive are following the attempts to censor, censure, and shut Professor Barrett up very closely. If ACLU determines that his rights have been violated, I’m sure they will defend him, as they have Oliver North and some other paragons of free speech who wanted to hold a politically incorrect march through Skokie, Il. Since I didn’t resign when ACLU defended North, I certainly won’t resign if they rise to Professor Barrett’s defense. But that’s as much activism in his cause as I have time for. You see, I’d like to do more but I have some important things I really must do. Like fr’instance, this morning I have to go watch some paint dry. Somebody has to, y’know.

P.P.S. Special note to those who seriously wish to discuss the merits of Professor Barrett’s theories on who was behind 9/11: Of course, my friends, I agree with him. And you, especially you. I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with you. Ever. You’re all absolutely right, Bush himself meticulously planned 9/11 and set up bin Laden as a patsy. I don’t see how anyone – do me a favor, please, and just stay back over there in your chair, thanks – could doubt you. I”m serious. Hey, have you heard about Clinton and Dallas, ’63? Well, some say it’s just speculation but…no, seriously, please sit down. Please!

Ok, ok. Put it down. PUT IT DOWN, I SAID! Put that CD DOWN! N-n-n-n-n-n-noooooooooooooooooo! Don’t play it, please God, no. Anything but that, please! Get away from that cd player. Please I’ll do anything you want, believe anything you say. Really, ah…ahh….!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Short Term Death

by digby

Reading this article by Jacob Weisberg on the subject of Bush’s creation of the Axis of Evil, I realized that one of the most frustrating aspects of right wing hawkish thinking is their belief that it is useless to have any kind of short-term solution to a problem unless it can be guaranteed to result in a long term resolution. Indeed, they even think of truces and ceasefires as weakness. Here’s Bush a couple of months ago talking about Lebanon:

“Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace — not a temporary peace, but something that lasts,” said Bush. “We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don’t want something that’s, you know, short term in duration.”

Right. Tell it to the people who died or were wounded because that “short term” solution just wasn’t good enough for George W. Bush.

That is just one very bizarre aspect of their black and white thinking that leads to such things as their ridiculous posturing on North Korea in which no interim agreement (like that achieved by Clinton with the Agreed Framework) is countenanced because they will only accept a permanent solution. I suppose one could say that this might be a useful way to run a kindergarten, but real violence in the real world is something that should always be punted if at all possible. This is not because of a general moral revulsion toward violence, although that should certainly be a factor. Nor is it simply that to delay would save lives “in the short term.” It’s because we cannot tell the future. Kim Jong Il could die from a heart attack. A short term cease fire in Lebanon could have given everyone a chance to catch their breath and perhaps recognize that escalating the war was indefensible. Anything can happen. A break from violence creates a possibility that it won’t start up again. A crazy dictator delaying the development of a nuclear bomb opens up the possibility that he won’t develop one.

I realize that Bush and his pals think that their “enemies” are nihilistic at best and animals at worst. But they are humans and humans are always subject to change from within or without. The idea that it is “useless” to put off something like a a war or a nuclear showdown until tomorrow when you can have one today (or put off a ceasefire ’til tomorrow when you can have one today) is beyond stupid or irresponsible. It’s sick.

* I should note that the right has come to think that anything short of a hostile, aggressive military response to everything is “appeasement.” It isn’t.

“The word in its normal meaning connotes the pacific settlement of disputes; in the meaning usually applied to the period of Chamberlain’s premiership, it has come to indicate something sinister, the granting from fear or cowardice of unwarranted concessions in order to buy temporary peace at someone else’s expense.” D.N. DIlks, Appeasement Revisited, Journal of Contemporary History, 1972.

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A Man’s Gotta Make A Living

by digby

All this lying McCainiac finger-pointing about Clinton being at fault for North Korea having nukes is par for the course. That’s the GOP game — if it wasn’t Clinton it would have been Carter — or Truman — or Woodrow Wilson. It’s never their fault. Here’s Rich Lowry explaining it to us from their perspective:

The Clinton administration dealt directly with the North, producing the Agreed Framework, a sham that the North Koreans began cheating on, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “as the ink was drying.” The North agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. Immediately, however, it set up a secret uranium-enrichment program and obstructed inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. When the U.S. called the North on it in 2002, the North confessed, expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerated its nuclear quest.

I like Josh Marshalls pithy translation for those of us who live on planet Earth:

“Failure” =1994-2002 — Era of Clinton ‘Agreed Framework’: No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.

“Success” = 2002-2006 — Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.

But let’s take Lowry at his word that all the smart people knew that the agreed framework was bunk and that the eight years of a non-nuclear North Korea it bought were worthless. Why in the world was Donald Rumsfeld involved in building those light water reactors back in the 1990’s?

I understand that when this story came out back in 2003 the media were still in thrall to the Hunky Rummy, but what’s the excuse for not pursuing that question now? The only person besides Bush who still thinks he’s even sane is Midge Decter,and she never loved him for his mind anyway — it was his hot 72 year old bod and macho aggressiveness that turned her on. (That probably explains Bush’s infatuation with him too, come to think of it.)

May 12, 2003

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it’s surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What’s even more surprising about Rumsfeld’s silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.

[…]

FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he’s convinced that ABB’s chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. “This was a major thing for ABB,” the former director says, “and extensive political lobbying was done.”

The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked “to lobby in Washington” on ABB’s behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn’t provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB’s power-generation business until 1995, says he’s “pretty sure that at some point Don was involved,” since it was not unusual to seek help from board members “when we needed contacts with the U.S. government.” Other former top executives don’t recall Rumsfeld’s involvement.

Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for “regime change” in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did–or didn’t do–as an ABB director. There is no evidence that Rumsfeld, who took a keen interest in the company’s nuclear business and attended most board meetings, made his views about the project known to other ABB officials. He certainly never made them public, even though the deal was criticized by many people close to Rumsfeld, who said weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from light-water reactors. Paul Wolfowitz, James Lilley, and Richard Armitage, all Rumsfeld allies, are on record opposing the deal. So is former presidential candidate Bob Dole, for whom Rumsfeld served as campaign manager and chief defense advisor. And Henry Sokolski, whose think tank received funding from a foundation on whose board Rumsfeld sat, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the 1994 agreement.

I guess he must have felt that just because Clinton was conducting a “feckless, photo-op” foreign policy, as St. John McCain used to say, that was no reason he shouldn’t make a buck on it. He’s a Republican, after all.

Update: Dover Bitch points out the irony of the Republicans blaming Clinton and Carter (yes, they’ve blamed him too) for all things wrong in the universe while simultaneously decrying the notorious “blame America first” crowd. (They are always able to have it both ways, aren’t they?) She found this amazing little nugget from Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s famous 1984 speech on the subject:

“When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first.”

I suppose they can always fall back on their belief that Democrats aren’t “Real Americans” so it’s not inconsistent to them that they always blame America first themselves — and always have. (“Who lost the civil war?” “Who lost China?” “Who lost Vietnam?” “Who lost Iraq?”)In fact, their entire worldview is shaped by the idea that the enemy within, the treasonous Americans among them, are at fault for everything that’s gone wrong in the world. James Wolcott dismembers Dinesh D’Souza just today for claiming that Americans are to blame for islamic terrorism.

In fact, I suspect that if Republicans couldn’t blame America for every single thing that they believe has gone wrong in the world they would completely lose their moorings.

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What Americans Have Sacrificed In Bush’s “War On Terror”

by tristero

Many critics of the Bush administration have it wrong. They have repeatedly charged that while Bush has said the country is at war he has refused to call off the tax breaks for the rich or implement any measures that would require the American people to sacrifice.

Not true. In pursuit of war, he has instituted, and the American public through its apathy has gone along with, an extremely profound hardship. Bush has sacrificed American democracy:

In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla’s “dependency and trust,” he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live. The base ingredient in Mr. Padilla’s torture was stark isolation for a substantial portion of his captivity.

For nearly two years – from June 9, 2002 until March 2, 2004, when the Department of Defense permitted Mr. Padilla to have contact with his lawyers – Mr. Padilla was in complete isolation. Even after he was permitted contact with counsel, his conditions of confinement remained essentially the same.

He was kept in a unit comprising sixteen individual cells, eight on the upper level and eight on the lower level, where Mr. Padilla’s cell was located. No other cells in the unit were occupied. His cell was electronically monitored twenty-four hours a day, eliminating the need for a guard to patrol his unit. His only contact with another person was when a guard would deliver and retrieve trays of food and when the government desired to interrogate him.

His isolation, furthermore, was aggravated by the efforts of his captors to maintain complete sensory deprivation. His tiny cell – nine feet by seven feet – had no view to the outside world. The door to his cell had a window, however, it was covered by a magnetic sticker, depriving Mr. Padilla of even a view into the hallway and adjacent common areas of his unit. He was not given a clock or a watch and for most of the time of his captivity, he was unaware whether it was day or night, or what time of year or day it was.

In addition to his extreme isolation, Mr. Padilla was also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr. Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress. The pain and discomfort of sleeping on a cold, steel bunk made it impossible for him to sleep. Mr. Padilla was not given a mattress until the tail end of his captivity. . . .

Other times, his captors would bang the walls and cell bars creating loud startling noises. These disruptions would occur throughout the night and cease only in the morning, when Mr. Padilla’s interrogations would begin. Efforts to manipulate Mr. Padilla and break his will also took the form of the denial of the few benefits he possessed in his cell. . . .

Mr. Padilla’s dehumanization at the hands of his captors also took more sinister forms. Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr. Padilla was denied even the smallest, and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors.

A substantial quantum of torture endured by Mr. Padilla came at the hands of his interrogators. In an effort to disorient Mr. Padilla, his captors would deceive him about his location and who his interrogators actually were. Mr. Padilla was threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country, including U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was threatened his fate would be even worse than in the Naval Brig.

He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time. He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla.

Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Throughout most of the time Mr. Padilla was held captive in the Naval Brig he had no contact with the outside world. In March 2004, one year and eight months after arriving in the Naval Brig, Mr. Padilla was permitted his first contact with his attorneys. Even thereafter, although Mr. Padilla had access to counsel, and thereby some contact with the outside world, those visits were extremely limited and restricted. . . .

The deprivations, physical abuse, and other forms of inhumane treatment visited upon Mr. Padilla caused serious medical problems that were not adequately addressed. Apart from the psychological damage done to Mr. Padilla, there were numerous health problems brought on by the conditions of his captivity. Mr. Padilla frequently experienced cardiothoracic difficulties while sleeping, or attempting to fall asleep, including a heavy pressure on his chest and an inability to breath or move his body.

In one incident Mr. Padilla felt a burning sensation pulsing through his chest. He requested medical care but was given no relief. Toward the end of his captivity, Mr. Padilla experienced swelling and pressure in his chest and arms. He was administered an electrocardiogram, and given medication. . . . .

The cause of some of the medical problems experienced by Mr. Padilla is obvious. Being cramped in a tiny cell with little or no opportunity for recreation and enduring stress positions and shackling for hours caused great pain and discomfort. It is unclear, though, whether Mr. Padilla’s cardiothoracic problems were a symptom of the stress he endured in captivity, or a side effect from one of the drugs involuntarily induced into Mr. Padilla’s system in the Naval Brig. In either event, the strategically applied measures suffered by Mr. Padilla at the hands of the government caused him both physical and psychological pain and agony.

It is worth noting that throughout his captivity, none of the restrictive and inhumane conditions visited upon Mr. Padilla were brought on by his behavior or by any actions on his part. There were no incidents of Mr. Padilla violating any regulation of the Naval Brig or taking any aggressive action towards any of his captors. Mr. Padilla has always been peaceful and compliant with his captors. He was, and remains to the time of this filing, docile and resigned – a model detainee.

Mr. Padilla also wants to make clear that the deprivation described above did abate somewhat once counsel began negotiating with the officials of the Naval Brig for the improvements of his conditions. Toward the end of Mr. Padilla’s captivity in the Naval Brig he was provided reading materials and some other more humane treatment. However, despite some improvement in Mr. Padilla’s living conditions, the interrogations and torture continued even after the visits with counsel commenced.

In sum, many of the conditions Mr. Padilla experienced were inhumane and caused him great physical and psychological pain and anguish. Other deprivations experienced by Mr. Padilla, taken in isolation, are merely cruel and some, merely petty. However, it is important to recognize that all of the deprivations and assaults recounted above were employed in concert in a calculated manner to cause him maximum anguish.

It is also extremely important to note that the torturous acts visited upon Mr. Padilla were done over the course almost the entire three years and seven months of his captivity in the Naval Brig. For most of one thousand three hundred and seven days, Mr. Padilla was tortured by the United States government without cause or justification. Mr. Padilla’s treatment at the hands of the United States government is shocking to even the most hardened conscience, and such outrageous conduct on the part of the government divests it of jurisdiction, under the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment, to prosecute Mr. Padilla in the instant matter.

Now for the benefit of the cognitively damaged out there in the blogosphere, let me insert some boilerplate here to the effect that I have no idea what Padilla may or may not have done. That is an entirely separate issue. The issue here is illegal detention and torture of one its citizens by that citizen’s government. That kind of behavior by any state, for any reason, is inexcusable.

After racking my brain, I can come up with only one reason why Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years without charges and tortured. It was not because Padilla had 3 1/2 years of information that needed to be elicited it from him. It was not because what he may have known was a state secret. Padilla was imprisoned and suffered simply because Bush wanted to prove he had the power to do so. To anyone, even Americans.

Why? Why would Bush want to do that? What does he – more importantly, what does the country – gain from this kind of totalitarian behavior? Well, once again, Bush is making a point, that the president has the power to do whatever the president wants, without having to provide reasons to anyone. Especially during “wartime.”

And Bush thinks, and the Bush administration thinks, and Republicans think, that it is a Good Thing. They must destroy America in order to save it. Shrink the American government down to nothing, so it drowns, as Norquist once said. What no one ever asked Norquist was what Republicans would replace the American government with.

Well, now we know.

Sickening. Absolutely sickening.

[Edited slightly after initial posting.]

Dear God

by digby

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq’s government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated “excess deaths,” 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

There’s more:

Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body’s top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide.

Reports from Iraq indicate that torture “is totally out of hand,” he said. “The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”

Nowak added, “That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine.”

Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible, with government forces among the perpetrators, he said, citing “very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centers.”

“You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed,” Nowak told reporters at the U.N.’s European headquarters.

“It’s not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you’ll find by private militias,” he said.

A report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq’s Human Rights office cited worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in “honor killings” of women.

October 11, 2001

You know, I’m asked all the time — I’ll ask myself a question. How do I respond to — it’s an old trick — how do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am — like most Americans, I just can’t believe it. Because I know how good we are, and we’ve go to do a better job of making our case. We’ve got to do a better job of explaining to the people in the Middle East, for example, that we don’t fight a war against Islam or Muslims. We don’t hold any religion accountable. We’re fighting evil. And these murderers have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their evil deeds. And we cannot let it stand.

April 20, 2004

The people know where I stand. I mean, in terms of Iraq, I was very clear about what I believed. And, of course, I want to know why we haven’t found a weapon yet. But I still know Saddam Hussein was a threat, and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. I don’t think anybody can — maybe people can argue that. I know the Iraqi people don’t believe that, that they’re better off with Saddam Hussein — would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.

May 5, 2004

Q Mr. President, critics are saying that by your action in Iraq actually invited al Qaeda and other terrorists to do business with you over there. Could you address that?

THE PRESIDENT: Sure. Do you remember September the 11th, 2001? Al Qaeda attacked the United States. They killed thousands of our citizens. I will never forget what they have done to us. They declared war on us. And the United States will pursue them. And so long as I’m the President, we will be determined, steadfast, and strong as we pursue those people who kill innocent lives because they hate freedom.

And, of course, al Qaeda looks for any excuse. But the truth of the matter is, they hate us, and they hate freedom, and they hate people who embrace freedom. And they’re willing to kill innocent Iraqis because Iraqis are willing to be free. Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. And we will help them rid Iraq of these killers.

The most powerful nation on earth, led by a fool who is led by a madman, unleashed hell on Iraq for no good reason. What have we done?

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St John The Anointed

by digby

I just love watching St. John McCain sticking it to the Democrats with everything he’s got after they spent the month of September anointing him as the premiere national leader on security and military affairs. This looks pretty stupid now, doesn’t it?

“When conservative military men like John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Colin Powell stand up to the president, it shows how wrong and isolated the White House is,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “These military men are telling the president that in the war on terror you need to be both strong and smart, and it is about time he heeded their admonitions.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, “Instead of picking fights with Colin Powell, John McCain and other military experts, President Bush should change course, do what the American people expect, and finally give them the real security they deserve.”

What were they thinking? Now you have McCain out there talking total nonsense about North Korea and since he’s been portrayed not only as an expert, but as a highly moral and decent man whom everyone including the president should trust, the media and everyone else are raptly listening to his crazy utterances like a bunch of fangirls.

The problem is that he’s going to be an even worse problem than Bush in many ways as he emerges as a presidential contender. He’s just as much of a warmonger, and just as wrong about everything, but he’s got this phony bipartisan “credibility” that’s going to make the slam dunk run-up to the Iraq war look like a a serious foreign policy debate. Which Democrats are going to be able to summon the nerve to oppose the great McCain when he tells tells the country that in his “expert judgement,” we need to launch WWIII?

The country just can’t afford any more of these kooks running the government — and McCain is as kooky as any other Republican, possibly even more than most when it comes to national security. Unless the Democrats start yanking him off that pedestal soon, it’s going to get more and more difficult for them to do it.

For the real scoop on the North Korea situation, this article by Fred Kaplan remains the gold standard. Hint: Massive screw-up, and it wasn’t Clinton’s.

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