Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

What Code Red?

AMERICAblog reports that the military unfortunately seems to have recorded over the tape (they originally denied existed) of the American soldier beaten to a pulp in Guantanamo. I hate when that happens.

Divorce #3

…and it’s not hard to figure out why.

Ladies, this will make your blood boil:

LIMBAUGH: I remember way, way back in the ’80s, at — at one of the fractious moments when the militant feminists were ruling the roost and defining a lot of the national debate. … The NAGs would have a press conference. Six NAGs would show up somewhere — National Association of Gals — don’t misunderstand this, my pet name for the NOW gang. … The NAGs don’t represent the majority of female thought in this country, and they aren’t — they aren’t determining who wins elections. White men are. And this is — I’m not being sexist. This is just pure demographics.

I guess it’s a good thing he’s so charming and handsome or he might have trouble getting a date now that he’s back on the market.

The Poorman knows a very hot Republican babe who is definitely interested. Not only is she brilliant but if you scroll down the entry, you can see that she’s just the kind of gal Rush has been dreaming of (as he “investigates” those pay porn sites he keeps talking about …breathlessly…holding back a slight moan … whenever the topic of that girl with the leash comes up….)

Neocon Worms

The call for President Bush’s defeat in a statement released Wednesday by a group of former diplomats and military officials highlighted the stark divide that has opened among foreign policy experts over the administration’s national security strategy.

[…]

The statement suggests how much certain parts of Bush’s foreign policy do mark a break with the establishment,” said Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a leading conservative theorist. “The simplest way to put it is that Bush thinks 9/11 was a fundamental break and we needed a new doctrine after that, and the foreign policy establishment doesn’t believe that.”

Bullshit. 9/11 had nothing to do with it and Kristol, of all people, knows that. His PNAC plans, adopted wholesale by Crusader Codpiece, were laid out long before 9/11 and should have been rendered irrelevant afterward. It was the neocons, not the foreign policy establishment who twisted the attacks to their own use without regard for the changed circumstances that 9/11 wrought. If you look at their record, they never considered terrorism a serious threat and 9/11 didn’t change that.

Just as the Bush administration argued for tax cuts for the rich, no matter the circumstances — surplus or deficit — so too have the neocons argued for unilateralisam, global military dominance and the invasion of Iraq. It made little sense before 9/11 and even less afterwards. The neocons adopting the “9/11 changed everything” mantra is chutzpah of the highest order. For them it changed absolutely nothing.

It’s not the ossified old foreign policy establishment that’s rigid and unyielding to new ideas, it’s the starry-eyed neocons and their ivory tower vision of a Pax Americana forced on the world at the end of a gun that’s out of step with the new reality.

The result of these tremors may be the most turbulence in the foreign policy landscape since the late 1970s, when a flight of hawkish Democratic thinkers known as neoconservatives migrated to the GOP in reaction to the dovish post-Vietnam foreign policy embraced by most Democratic politicians.

“I don’t know where it ends up, but clearly it is a very fluid moment like the late 1970s,” Kristol said.

Those signing the sharply worded statement included Arthur A. Hartman, ambassador to the Soviet Union for President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock, who assumed that post toward the end of Reagan’s second term and held it under President George H.W. Bush. Others were William Harrop, the elder Bush’s ambassador to Israel; retired Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff during the Persian Gulf War; retired Adm. William J. Crowe, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under Reagan; and Donald McHenry, the U.N. ambassador under President Carter.

It’s long past time for the real conservatives to speak up. Their children have gone out of control and they need to rein them in. If they can’t, then it’s time to join the other side and we’ll help put them in their place. We are dealing with serious stuff for serious people, now. It’s time for the real Republican grown-ups to take a stand.

Hair On Fire

It’s as if while we weren’t looking John Kerry stepped into the phone booth as Clark Kent and emerged as Superman. Yes, at least for one day anyway, Kerry, master of convoluted context, numbingly nuanced non-answers, and perpetually polysyllabic pentameters, has, voila! turned into a smash-and-slash, take-no-prisoners stump speaker.

A startled political press took note of the transformation in its coverage today. The Washington Post’s Lois Romano described Kerry’s speech to 800 union members gathered in Atlantic City as “passionate” and “populist.”

Romano cited this portion of Kerry’s remarks: “I’m running for president to put America back to work…I’m running for president because health care is not a benefit just for the wealthy or the elected or the connected…I’m running for president because I know that we could be a hell of a lot stronger in the world if we were to secure our freedom…”

Both the Boston Globe’s Glen Johnson and the New York Times’ Robin Toner sat upright for another part of Kerry’s sizzling New Jersey speech:

“Our tax code has gone from 14 pages to 17,000 pages. Any of you get your own page? Enron’s got its own page. Exxon’s got its own page. Looks to me like Halliburton’s got its own chapter.”

A sense of timing is a very important thing in life. I’m thinking Kerry’s got one.

Also from the Globe article :

John F. Kerry said yesterday he would appoint a prominent, independent public figure such as John McCain or Bob Dole to investigate allegations of torture by US soldiers during the war on terror, abuse that he suggested was an outgrowth of the Bush administration’s liberal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, speaking with reporters for the first time in two weeks, said such an investigation is needed to assure the world that the United States remains committed to human rights and to protect its future prisoners of war from similar abuse.

“Torture is not acceptable. Period,” Kerry said after his campaign charter touched down in Covington, Ky., so he could attend a fund-raiser across the Ohio River in Cincinnati.

“I think the president is underestimating the full impact of what has happened in the world to our reputation because of that prison scandal. The president himself gave a speech in which he said, ‘Oh, it’s just a few people.’ But now, already, we’ve seen it’s not just a few people, and there are serious questions about how high it goes,” Kerry added. “I believe that it’s vital for us to prove to the world that this is really not going to be swept under the rug; . . . we’re going to prove to the world we’re willing to show that we will hold people accountable.”

Kerry suggested that the inquiry could be led by McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and former prisoner of war, or Dole, another veteran and former Republican senator. He also mentioned Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, and former senators George J. Mitchell of Maine and Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire as possible picks.

Kerry noted that the administration “took themselves outside of even the prisoner abuse law that was passed,” which raises “very, very serious questions about the messages that went out to leadership within the military, and especially — ultimately — to the rank and file.” Around the world, Kerry said, “our moral authority has been tarnished as a consequence of what’s happened.”

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for President Bush’s reelection committee, said the criticism, as well as comments Kerry made about the economy earlier in the day, reflected the “misery and pessimism” of the Democratic campaign. ”It’s another example of John Kerry exploiting the war on terror and the prisoner abuse situation for political gain.”

From the NY Times piece:

He ended his day at a rain-soaked outdoor rally in Columbus, which drew a large crowd of supporters as well as a scattering of abortion protesters, and some Bush supporters. The Republicans blasted the theme song from “Flipper” for part of his speech to accuse him of flip-flopping on issues. As dusk fell, Mr. Kerry delivered his paean to the middle class, and the crowd held in a driving rain, cheering as he invoked the legacies of Presidents Clinton and Roosevelt.

The flipper thing is just sad. Kerry’s talking about the president of the United States ordering torture and they’re playing games.

I’m expecting to see Kerry start to ramp up the energy going into the convention where he will be introduced to the people who are only peripherally paying attention. If it’s a good convention and Kerry hits the ground running, Bush may not be able to stop him. Like I said, a sense of timing is incredibly important. It’s looking as if Kerry is a long distance runner with the instinct to know when to hang back and when to pull away from the pack.

Rumsfeld ordered prisoner held off the books

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else in possible violation of international law.

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It’s the first direct link between Rumsfeld and questionable though not violent treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

The Iraqi prisoner was captured last July as deadly attacks on U.S. troops began to rise. He was identified as a member of the terrorist group Ansar al Islam, suspected in the attacks on coalition forces.

[…]

In the military’s own investigation into prisoner abuse, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross were “deceptive” and a “violation of international law.”

Pentagon officials claim it’s entirely lawful to hold prisoners in secret if they pose an immediate threat. But today, nearly one year after his capture, he’s still being held incommunicado.

At the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held off the books.

In fact, once the prisoner was returned to Iraq, the interrogations ceased because the prisoner was entirely lost in the system. [Can you believe it?]

[…]

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said, “If they thought he was such a threat that he could not get Red Cross visits, then how come such a threatening prisoner got lost in the system?”

Pentagon officials still insist Rumsfeld acted legally, but admit it all depends on how you interpret the law.

fubar.

Angst and Anti-Americanism

Even if you have to sit through ad, I urge you to read this fascinating article in Salon called “America’s blankness,” which was originally a prepared speech by professor Stephen Holmes.

He explores the roots and reasons for the growth in anti-Americanism and asks if it matters. (It does.) He examines how it happened and what actions the US took that precipitated this surge of ill feeling toward us. And he suggests various ways in which we might turn some of this around in a new administration.

The way he sees it, the Europeans are freaked out by Bush, but will put it behind them if we kick him out and behave in a more civilized fashion. If Kerry wins, Holmes suggests that he may robustly renew the Atlantic alliance on the basis of the shared threats faced by both Americans and Europeans: nuclear proliferation and terrorist attacks on major cities. After Madrid, we should be able to enlist the Europeans, whose security agencies have much more experience with infiltration and intelligence gathering of terrorists than we do. It would be very helpful if we could all sincerely work together on this. It’s a terrible failure of foreign policy and national security that Bush has poisoned this necessary relationship.

Anti-Americanism in the mid-east, on the other hand, has morphed into hatred. And the probable consequences of that are even worse than I thought. The most obvious result is that we are creating terrorists in exponentially greater numbers than we are killing them. That is not a winning strategy.

But, we have also succeeded in doing the precise opposite of what we intended with Bush’s long term democratization strategy by strengthening autocratic regimes as they borrow our rhetoric on the WOT and crack down on their own people. The region is becoming less democratic rather than more and even those that are democratic hate our guts too. This Iraq project is a huge failure on all levels. Holmes’s scenario of what is likely to happen in iraq is both depressing and scary. It was a mistake from the beginning, but the cock-up of the occupation and the lack of planning is simply unforgiveable.

On the grand global scale, we have destroyed the mystique of American power, a subject that Michael Lind explores in this very interesting piece and I discussed here some time back. Showing our weaknesses at this particular time makes it much more likely that our enemies will feel emboldened or will make a mistake. There are huge consequences to this sad performance in Iraq, but none are bigger than that. That it was done unnecessarily makes it a crime.

Clearly, anti-Americanism has increased hugely since 9/11 all over the globe. There is no good reason why that needed to happen. We were the victims and the entire world was in sympathy with us until the Bush administration began to behave irrationally.

The GOP has recently been using the orwellian argument that to vote for Kerry is to vote for the terrorists even though we are demonstrably less safe under Bush’s policies. They’ve been trying to innoculate themselves from this glaring fact since 9/11 by silencing dissent and forcefeeding the nation a diet of fear and fantasy to hide the fact they have been screwing things up from the beginning.

The real argument is that a vote for Bush is to validate his failed policies and convince the rest of the world that we truly are nation of dangerous fools. This will not increase our safety, I’m afraid. In fact, nothing could help the terrorists more than to put this rogue administration back in office.

Tribal Leadership

Q: The Vice President, who I see standing over there, said yesterday that Saddam Hussein has long-established ties to al Qaeda. As you know, this is disputed within the U.S. intelligence community. Mr. President, would you add any qualifiers to that flat statement? And what do you think is the best evidence of it?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Zarqawi. Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda. He’s the person who’s still killing. He’s the person — and remember the email exchange between al Qaeda leadership and he, himself, about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom?

Probably the murkiest and most intriguing feature of this man of many mysteries is the question of Zarqawi’s relations with Osama bin Laden. Though he met with bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, the Jordanian never joined al Qaeda. Militants have explained that Tawhid was “especially for Jordanians who did not want to join al Qaeda.” A confessed Tawhid member even told his interrogators that Zarqawi was “against al Qaeda.” Shortly after 9/11, a fleeing Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main plotters of the attacks, appealed to Tawhid operatives for a forged visa. He could not come up with ready cash. Told that he did not belong to Tawhid, he was sent packing and eventually into the arms of the Americans.

Zarqawi and bin Laden also disagree over strategy. Zarqawi allegedly constructed his Tawhid network primarily to target Jews and Jordan. This choice reflected both Zarqawi’s Palestinian heritage and his dissent from bin Laden’s strategy of focusing on the “far enemy” — the United States. In an audiotape released after the recent foiled gas attack in Amman, an individual claiming to be Zarqawi argued that the Jordanian Intelligence Services building was indeed the target, although no chemical attack was planned. Rather, he stated menacingly, “God knows, if we did possess [a chemical bomb], we wouldn’t hesitate one second to use it to hit Israeli cities such as Eilat and Tel Aviv.”

[…]

The slaughter of Shias touches on another Zarqawi beef with bin Laden. While both men follow the strict code of Salafi Islam, which reckons Shias as apostates, bin Laden prides himself on being a unifying figure and has made tactical alliances with Shia groups, meeting several times with Shia militants. Zarqawi, by contrast, favors butchering Shias, calling them “the most evil of mankind . . . the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom.” American military officials hold Zarqawi responsible not only for assassinating Shia religious leaders in Iraq, but also for the multiple truck bombings of a Shia religious festival this past March, which killed 143 worshippers.

But though bin Laden and Zarqawi differ on strategy, Zarqawi too cloaks his plans for mass murder in the language of the religious zealot. To Zarqawi, “religion is more precious than anything and has priority over lives, wealth, and children.” He considers Iraq ideal for jihad especially because “it is a stone’s throw from the lands of the two Holy Precincts [Saudi Arabia] and the al Aqsa [mosque, in Jerusalem]. We know from God’s religion that the true, decisive battle between infidelity and Islam is in this land [Greater Syria and its surroundings]. . . .” On the tape of the beheading of Nick Berg, entitled “Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi executes an American with his own hands and promises Bush more,” Zarqawi rages, “Where is the compassion, where is the anger for God’s religion, and where is the protection for Muslims’ pride in the crusaders’ jails? . . . The pride of all Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and other jails is worth blood and souls.”

The CIA has verified that Zarqawi himself spoke on the tape and personally beheaded Berg. Similarly, the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal in February 2002 was carried out directly by another jihadi leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The latter, like Zarqawi, never swore allegiance to bin Laden. In this bloodthirsty crowd, it appears that slitting the throat of an American Jew wins laurels.

In January 2004, Iraqi Kurds captured a message from Zarqawi in Iraq to bin Laden. Zarqawi offered bin Laden a chance to expand al Qaeda’s role in Iraq. Victory, Zarqawi instructed, meant fomenting sectarian war between Shiites and Sunnis. There are no indications that bin Laden responded, and there are now signs of cooperation between some Iraqi Shia and Sunni militants. Are bin Laden and Zarqawi running competing terrorist organizations in Iraq?

[…]

Zarqawi exemplifies Sunni terrorism after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, what some call “al Qaeda 2.0.” The Western counteroffensive decimated al Qaeda’s leadership, stripped the organization of safe havens and training camps, and disrupted its command and control. Former al Qaeda subsidiaries became franchises, receiving inspiration from bin Laden’s occasional messages but operating independently. Historically speaking, the dynamic of revolutionary movements favors the most radical faction — the Jacobins, not the Girondists, the Bolsheviks, not the Menshiviks. If this dynamic prevails in contemporary Sunni terrorism, Abu Musab al Zarqawi represents the future.

A very nasty customer indeed, if this is true and if he’s still alive. And, of course, if he is let’s not forget it will be no thanks to our president:

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

I’m sure Junior believes that Zarkawi being in Iraq proves something about 9/11, al Qaeda and the GWOT, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He believes the same thing many of his supporters believe which is that that all arabs are pretty much the same and in his mind that includes Persians, Afghans, Indians (and probably Mexicans and Frenchmen too.) The subtleties are for pussies. His gut tells him that the arabs will only do what we tell them to do (in the name of freedom and democracy, of course) if we show them who is boss. He is, after all, famously “not into nuance.”

I think that the distinctions between the various players in the mid-east are simply not relevant to him, and neither is it of interest to his supporters. “They” are different from “us,” but “they” are all the same. He gave himself away with his little aside last month in which he said:

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.

I think we know what we’re really dealing with, don’t we?

“My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in years”

Natasha at Pacific Views had an interesting little chat with one of the Republican conmen … er, grassroots people’s movement representatives who are protesting Fahrenheit 911.

Let’s just say they aren’t really the toppermost of the poppermost of the PR world, if this is the best they can do.

For information on how to combat the Drudge-enhanced smear campaign and boycott, go to PoliticalStrategy.org to get everything you need.

Beat Me Hurt Me

Let’s see here. Do you want to run the table, or do you want to go eat lunch?

Hold on a second, I’ll get you in a minute, please. A little patience in front of the President here.

How many questions? One question apiece. If we’re going to stand out here in 100-degree temperature, let’s just have one question.

You can pass your question on to some other person, and I might call on them. I’m not so sure I’m going to be so international this press conference. (Laughter.) The first question was about am I concerned about economic vitality? I’m pleased with — what?

Go ahead, Terry. No, you’ve asked your question. Terry. Hold on for a second. Terry. Thank you, though

Which question do you want me to answer?

Q:Well, I think they’re related; both —

No, they’re not — (laughter.)

Q Please, I’ll say, please.

Look, it’s very hot out here, we’ve got a President from a — a respectful President here. Why don’t you just ask one question, i f you don’t mind? I don’t mean to be telling you how to do your business. All right, I’ll answer both. (Laughter.)

The second part was what? I forgot. It was so long ago that you asked it —

Q I know, I apologize, I was long-winded.

Okay, a couple more questions. Yes. Let me work my way through the TV readers.

Which one, you or Sanger?

I’m getting distracted over here, there seems to be some noise.

And then the naked emperor snapped his towel one more time at the cowering press corps and walked away as they all sang, “thank you sir, may I have another,” in unison.

He was very clear on one thing. Between bouts of showing the press whose bitch they are, he repeatedly assured them that he’s a leader who leading and the American people know he’s leading because he’s led. And, he’s leading us in the fight against darkness and hatred by killing the terrorists on their own turf and then defeating the forces of evil wherever it may be, god-bless-us-everyone.

First, it’s in our interests that we defeat terrorists there than fight them here. That’s our short-term security interest.

Secondly, it’s in our long-term interests that we work for free societies in parts of the world that are desperate for freedom. And the reason I keep saying that, Wendell, is because I know that a free society is a peaceful society. And America is interested in working with friends to promote the peace. And that’s what we’re doing. The short-term solution for our security problem is to find the terrorists and bring them to justice before they hurt Americans again; is to deny them training bases; is to deny them affiliates and allies in the war on terror. That’s what we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The long-term solution is to promote free societies that are able to defeat the forces of pessimism, darkness, intolerance and hatred.

And then he went into his office and defeated the forces of pessimism by ordering up some torture of Afghan cab drivers right after he shined the light of freedom on the Geneva Conventions and declared them dead. After lunch he planned to end intolerance and hatred by holding thousands of innocent Iraqis in unlimited detention. He is the president of a free society, after all. He can legally set aside any laws he deems … unfree.

This idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious

Back in the early blog days, I used to read Instapundit regularly. Compared to the neanderthal wingnuts I commonly sparred with on bulletin boards and the like, he was a breath of fresh air. But, after 9/11, like so many, he stopped making sense on a regular basis and I ended up having to put him in the “life is too short” file. Since then, when I do check in over there or follow a link I am quite stunned at how knee jerk he has become, even while there are nuggets of good sense still sometimes tucked between the lines.

Yglesias reminds me today of both why I used to like him and why he is so insufferable today:

I find it hard to respond to these things in terms of cost-benefit. My law school mentor Charles Black once said that of course you can come up with scenarios — the classic ticking-nuclear-bomb example — where torture might be justified. And you can be sure that, in those cases, if people think it’ll work they’ll use it no matter what the rules are. But there’s a real value to pretending that there’s an absolute rule against it even if we know people will break it in extraordinary circumstances, because it ensures that people won’t mistake an ordinary remedy for an extraordinary one.

Well said.

I also think that the rather transparent effort to use this against Bush — often by people who think nothing of cozying up to the likes of Castro, for whom torture and murder are essential tools of governance — has caused the Abu Ghraib issue to be taken less seriously than perhaps it ought to be.

Taking the second part first, when, exactly, did Reynolds decide that he had to ass-kiss the Right with such sycophantic upside downism? It’s “the Left’s” fault because if they didn’t make such a big deal out of it — and hold Bush accountable — people would take the issue more seriously. What Gillepie-esque nonsense. It’s that kind of hackery that makes Reynolds unreadable.

The first part of his analysis, as Yglesias points out with his “well said”, is quite interesting and relevant, however. It’s one that people don’t talk much about, perhaps because to debate it openly would render the concept useless. It’s a bit cynical and even a bit dishonest, but Yglesias can see the utility of it and so can I, Dershowitz’s torture[d] theories notwithstanding.

The idea that the “ticking time bomb” scenario might call for someone to break the law (and face the consequences of doing so) gets to the nub of our concerns with torture and the right of self-defense. As Reynolds points out, people will likely employ torture in a real ticking time bomb scenario whether it is legal or not. It is ridiculous to think someone wouldn’t if the scenario were as straightforward as it’s always presented. But, by outlawing acts of torture in all circumstances you prevent using torture in interrogations that are not ticking time bomb scenarios because you force the person who breaks that prohibition to show that it was a matter of self-defense. The bar is high. It must be so obvious that prosecutors or a jury of your peers can see that your actions directly saved the lives of specific would-be victims.

It would be a transparent legal process that everyone can judge based on the specific facts of the case. Finding that someone acted in self-defense under these circumstances would no more nullify our prohibition against torture than finding a policemen who acted in self-defense by shooting an armed man threatening people at a bus stop nullifies our prohibition against murder. The individual circumstances, reviewed in an open legal process, are all that would ever be required to justify the “ticking time bomb” torture defense. And, since there are an infinitesimal number of ticking time bomb cases, this specific circumstance is interesting but largely theoretical and therefore it’s actually a red herring.

The real problem we face here is determining what does and does not constitute a ticking time bomb and what does and does not constitute self-defense. And, that is where the Bush administration has gone so far off the rails as to be flying.

It’s not just that the torture memos explicitly give the president unprecedented powers to set aside the laws of the land (something the “libertarian” Reynolds should at least get a little bit exercized about), but that after 9/11, the Bush administration decided that the definition of self-defense is unlimited, even including preventive war. Under their definition pretty much anything goes. Somebody looks at you sideways — kill him. Why take a chance he might have a gun and shoot you first? Somebody says somebody might have some useful information? Torture him. It could save lives. In that sense, all threats, real or imagined, immediate or potential, are considered ticking time bombs that we have a right and obligation to diffuse any way we can.

This definition of self-defense is what makes it possible to excuse wanton torture, unprovoked aggression, lying and manipulation and usurpation of democracy itself. And what makes it so dangerous is that it allows it to be done under the rubrik of patriotism and the rule of law.

I have no doubt that many Americans see any act that might prevent further attacks as justified. Perhaps there are even quite a few who believe that if many thousands of innocent people, including children, are swept up in this “preventive” activity, it is a sad but necessary and moral thing. But, in order for this make any sense at all one would have to assume that the government has some idea what the threat is in the first place and knows who can tell them what they need to know to prevent it.

Unfortunately, recent events have just proven on the grandest scale imaginable that our government wouldn’t wouldn’t know a ticking time bomb if it fell into the oval office with a goddamned sign on it. The Bush administration did, after all, just invade a country on the basis of a threat that simply didn’t exist after ignoring people running around with their hair on fire for months about a threat that actually did. I’m afraid I just don’t have a lot of faith in these fellows’ ability to know when we are and aren’t being threatened. So, perhaps it’s best not to leave the definition of what constitutes self-defense in the hands of such incompetents and rely instead on the long established legal definitions that stood us in good stead through 223 years. Human beings, it turns out, aren’t very good at playing God.

The extreme overreaction of the government to the attacks of 9/11, heinous as they were, and its subsequent willingness to dispose of all previously agreed upon limitations to its ability to act in “self-defense” led directly to pictures of torture being shown all over the world — pictures symbolizing American indecency, immorality, incompetence and relentless will to power. And there is a paper trail that leads directly to the oval office where the man who sits behind the desk there says that he never ordered anything illegal and the world should be comforted by that.

If not that man, then who should we hold responsible for the utter vacuousness that has replaced a previously complex system of belief in the rule of law and inalienable human rights with a lizard brain definition of self-defense they wrap in meanlingless terms like “moral clarity?” The only people I see imitating Castro these days are sitting in the White House.