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Thank you, Gary Farber, for telling me about this neat way to get older NY times articles free of charge.

If

Here’s what I hated more than anything after 9/11 — the fact that everybody seemed to lose their frigging minds and turned into complete, blithering idiots. There’s not a lot of grace under pressure in the old US of A, I’m afraid.

Do you remember the old Kipling poem, If?

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

[…]

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Remember that? Well, let’s just say that the American body politic has a lot to learn about maturity. I’m reminded of this whenever I read something depressing and stupid that people said right after the attacks that has now come back to bite us.

In following this ongoing blogosphere discussion of Jonathan Alter’s somewhat relative criticism of Bush, I came across a column of his from November 2001. Honestly, I’m wondering why people were so upset at Ann Coulter’s call to “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” when “liberal” guys like Alter were blithely writing amoral crap like this:

In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to … torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren’t talking at all.

COULDN’T WE AT LEAST subject them to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap? (The military has done that in Panama and elsewhere.) How about truth serum, administered with a mandatory IV? Or deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings? (As the frustrated FBI has been threatening.) Some people still argue that we needn’t rethink any of our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they’re hopelessly “Sept. 10”—living in a country that no longer exists.

[…]

Actually, the world hasn’t changed as much as we have. The Israelis have been wrestling for years with the morality of torture. Until 1999 an interrogation technique called “shaking” was legal. It entailed holding a smelly bag over a suspect’s head in a dark room, then applying scary psychological torment. (To avoid lessening the potential impact on terrorists, I won’t specify exactly what kind.) Even now, Israeli law leaves a little room for “moderate physical pressure” in what are called “ticking time bomb” cases, where extracting information is essential to saving hundreds of lives. The decision of when to apply it is left in the hands of law-enforcement officials.

[…]

Short of physical torture, there’s always sodium pentothal (“truth serum”). The FBI is eager to try it, and deserves the chance. Unfortunately, truth serum, first used on spies in World War II, makes suspects gabby but not necessarily truthful. The same goes for even the harshest torture. When the subject breaks, he often lies. Prisoners “have only one objective—to end the pain,” says retired Col. Kenneth Allard, who was trained in interrogation. “It’s a huge limitation.”

Some torture clearly works. Jordan broke the most notorious terrorist of the 1980s, Abu Nidal, by threatening his family. Philippine police reportedly helped crack the 1993 World Trade Center bombings (plus a plot to crash 11 U.S. airliners and kill the pope) by convincing a suspect that they were about to turn him over to the Israelis. Then there’s painful Islamic justice, which has the added benefit of greater acceptance among Muslims.

We can’t legalize physical torture; it’s contrary to American values. But even as we continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we’ll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that’s hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.

It’s contrary to American values? How fucking touching after that precious little whine about “can’t we at least play loud music in their ears or threaten their families?” Is forced sodomy with a glow stick contrary to American values if it doesn’t actually, you know, take place here in the United States? Hey, nobody said this was going to be pretty.

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

A pundit be not, you’re much too wise

The four men who Alter contemplated sending to “the land of beheadings,” by the way, were all innocent.

Update: A commenter informs me of this piece by Mark Ames, which makes this point and more.

Words Don’t Do It?

COLLINS: In retrospect, do you believe that you erred in not coming forward, not just to the president and the Congress — you’ve made very clear today that you regret not doing that — but to the world community? Would it have made a difference if it had been the Pentagon itself that had disclosed the full extent of this abuse, whatever you knew, and what actions you were going to take?

RUMSFELD: I think in my statement I responded in full to your question. The — I would characterize what was done in the Central Command by way of swift, corrective action as being just that — swift, corrective action.

And second, the — I don’t know quite how to respond to your question. The Department of Defense announced that their abuse was being charged, there were criminal investigations under way. No one had seen the photographs.

They were part of a criminal investigation. And they were in that Central Command — I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them. And they were part of that investigative process.

It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don’t do it. The words that there were abuses, that it was cruel, that it was inhumane — all of which is true — that it was blatant, you read that and it’s one thing. You see the photographs and you get a sense of it and you cannot help but be outraged.

He’s a lying bastard. Here are the words and they convey extremely well what kind of sick, sadistic shit was going on in that prison. One after another they tell the same disgusting story over and over again.

He knew very well was going on. At best, he didn’t give a damn. At worst, he ordered it.

Here are more awful pictures.

Forever And Ever Ahmad

Yeah, right. Nobody knows nothing. Rummy says the press should talk to “the Iraqis,” because he has no idea what’s going on with his erstwhile good friend Chalabi.

There’s no need to reiterate everything that’s wrong with that crook Ahmad, but it should be remembered that Cheney himself approved Rummy’s plan to airlift Chalabi into the country a year ago, after Bush had explictly promised Tony Blair that it would not happen. As ye sow and all that crap…

It’s sad that Rummy’s lost touch with the fortunes of his former friend because he was once one of his strongest supporters. Those were the days.

I’ve read the various theories about what is really going on with this, and I have no opinion other than that the official explanation seems fairly believable to me. Not that Chalabi has a history of bank fraud or anything like that, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that he might have been taking just a little taste for himself after all the years of dining on bad hors d’ouvres in Georgetown salons for the good of the cause:

For several months, U.S. officials have been investigating people affiliated with the INC for possible ties to a scheme to defraud the Iraqi government during the transition to a new currency that took place from Oct. 15 last year to Jan. 15, according to a U.S. occupation authority official familiar with the case. The official said the raids were partly related to that investigation.

At the center of the inquiry is Nouri, whom Chalabi picked as the top anti-corruption official in the new Iraqi Finance Ministry. Chalabi heads the Governing Council’s finance committee, and has major influence in its staffing and operation.

When auditors early this year began counting the old Iraqi dinars brought in and the new Iraqi dinars given out in return, they discovered a shortfall of more than $22 million. Nouri, a German national, was arrested in April and faces 17 charges including extortion, fraud, embezzlement, theft of government property and abuse of authority. He is being held in a maximum security facility, according to three sources close to the investigation.

In recent weeks, several other Finance Ministry officials have been arrested as part of the investigation. A U.S. official familiar with the case said, “We are cracking down on corruption regardless of names involved.”

I won’t be surprised if there is more to it. Why, there might even be more embezzlement involved:

BLITZER: They found hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. $100 bills. They found other money. How much money do you suspect is still available to finance this insurgency?

CHALABI: There are hundreds of millions of dollars still unaccounted for from Saddam’s loot that he took from the Central Bank of Iraq. He looted the Central Bank. I have the records. He took $920 million in U.S. dollars, cash $100 bills, and he took $90 million euro from — that’s about $100 million now from the Central Bank of Iraq on the 19th of March. He sent a letter signed by him ordering the Central Bank government to give the money to his son from the account of the presidency.

This may be the largest cash withdrawal in history. He took all of this money, put it — it was already packed in crates of $4 million each, and it took three trucks to load the money in, and he took it. Most of that money is unaccounted for.

According to this post by The Angry Bear, Chalabi says he doesn’t need any more money.

Uhm Hmm. Imagine that.

Update: On the other hand —

Senior U.S. officials told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Chalabi has been passing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to Iran.

The evidence shows that Chalabi personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, “get Americans killed.” The evidence is said to be “rock solid.”

Sources have told Stahl a high-level investigation is underway into who in the U.S. government gave Chalabi such sensitive information in the first place.

There is only one degree of separation between Chalabi and the deputy secretary of defense.

Loosen Your Corsets, Girls

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lashed out at President Bush on Thursday, saying his Iraq policies show incompetence and the only conclusion to draw is that “the emperor has no clothes.”

“I believe that the president’s leadership and the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience,” the California Democrat told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

Oh, oh… I think I’m going to faint. This is such… it’s such… oh, I have to sit down…

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said the comments “represent a grotesque political attack. They’re simply outrageous and the American people will reject that type of blame America first. … American troops are bravely fighting the terrorist enemy and it is the terrorists who are responsible for the violence, not the president.”

Oh Edward, Edward…please make them stop the horrible hatred…

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie issued the following statement today in response to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s statement that ‘Bush is an incompetent leader,’ that the President has ‘no judgment, no experience and no knowledge’ and that he has the deaths of thousands of soldiers ‘on his shoulders.’

“To angry Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy, terrorists and militia aren’t responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers, their commander-in-chief is. And our servicemen and women, in putting torture chambers ‘under U.S. management,’ are no different than a regime that systematically tortured, raped and killed its own people. The San Francisco/Boston Democrats led by John Kerry have now adopted Blame America First as their official policy. “

Oh my heavens … Blame America First! Does anyone have any burning feathers? I think I’m going blind…

Have mercy. Stop these San Francisco liberals from saying that our brave leader is incompetent. It’s unbearable to listen to!

This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts… Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.

Dear God. Make them stop!

President Bush’s mantra of “stay the course” rings increasingly hollow in the face of abrupt policy reversals that reek of desperation. First the U.S. kept Baathists out of government; now it is inviting them back in. First it dissolved the Iraqi army; now it is re-creating it. First it sidelined the United Nations; now it is counting on the U.N. to form a new government.

Jeeves, my laudenum, poste haste. These Democrats are so evil, so cruel. I can listen no more…

I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it. It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually.

“O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!”

Chutzpah Award Of The Millenium

Mickey Kaus says that Juan Cole is too “shrill” to be “completely reliable”

I knew there was something about Professor Cole that was shallow and partisan. Perhaps if he spent more time deconstructing the meaning of Ahmad Chalabis hair or skreeching hysterically over Paul Wolfowitz’s eyebrows, I might be persuaded to take him seriously.

Sacrifice This

I’m not a McCain worshipper. He’s way too right wing for me and I wouldn’t vote for him (unless it was between him and any other Republican.) But like many people, I can’t help liking the guy and it’s mostly because he seems to be completely unafraid of the GOP bullyboys. But then, he’s been tortured at the hands of tough guys that make the likes of Lil’ Tommy “isn’t that French?” DeLay look like a 6 week old kitten by comparison.

So, it was especially stomach churning to see “Doughboy” Denny Hastert and his posse of Beavis, Butthead, Dilbert and Elmer Fudd laughing and snorting as he lectured McCain about the sacrifices of the men and women at Walter Reed.

As other House GOP members stood behind him laughing, Hastert, R-Illinois, then expressed doubt that McCain was indeed a Republican.

The exchange started when a reporter asked: “Can I combine a two issues, Iraq and taxes? I heard a speech from John McCain the other day…”

Hastert: “Who?”

Reporter: “John McCain.”

Hastert: “Where’s he from?”

Reporter: “He’s a Republican from Arizona.”

Hastert: “A Republican?”

Amid nervous laughter, the reporter continued with his question: “Anyway, his observation was never before when we’ve been at war have we been worrying about cutting taxes and his question was, ‘Where’s the sacrifice?’ ”

Hastert: “If you want to see the sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda. There’s the sacrifice in this country. We’re trying to make sure they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to be able to do it. And, at the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong.”

Hastert, I believe, once sacrificed the two for one special at IHOP in favor of the RazzleDazzle Waffle Slam so he knows what he’s talking about.

During Vietnam though, like his owner Dick Cheney, Denny had other priorities. After getting his Masters in Gym in 1967, it was not for the Denster to join either the service or the unwashed war protestors. Denny, a fervent supporter of the war, believed that the best way for him to serve was in the vital national security role of drivers ed teacher. The nation honors his sacrifice.

Meanwhile, glory hog McCain, was sharing a few frat boy pranks with the North Vietnamese:

That is your final answer?” one of his interrogators, nicknamed the “Cat,” asked McCain on July 3, 1968 — not coincidentally the very day McCain’s father, John Sidney “Jack” McCain Jr., was named commander of U.S. naval forces in the Pacific.

“That is my final answer,” McCain said.

“They taught you too well,” said an irate Cat. “They taught you too well.”

Added another interrogator, the “Rabbit”: “Now, McCain, it will be very bad for you.”

And it was. One of his captors, the one they called “Slopehead,” told McCain, “You’re a black criminal. You must confess your crimes.”

McCain demurred. “Fuck you,” he said.

“Why do you treat your guards so disrespectfully?” Slopehead asked. “Because they treat me like an animal,” McCain replied.

“When I said that,” McCain wrote in U.S. News, “the guards, who were all in the room — about 10 of them — really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes … For the next four days, I was beaten every two or three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.”

On the third night, as McCain would later write in “Faith of My Fathers,” he was beaten so badly he almost committed suicide before “confessing” his war crimes:

I lay in my own blood and waste, so tired and hurt that I could not move. The Prick [another captor] came in with two other guards, lifted me to my feet, and gave me the worst beating I had yet experienced … Despairing of any relief from pain and further torture, and fearing the close reproach of my moment of dishonor, I tried to take my life. I doubt I really intended to kill myself. But I couldn’t fight anymore, and I remember deciding that the last thing I could do to make them believe I was still resisting, that I wouldn’t break, was to attempt suicide.

McCain took off his shirt. He turned over the waste bucket and stepped on it. He looped his shirt through a shutter. But before he could act, the Prick ran in and beat him up.

One day later, McCain signed a confession admitting to war crimes. He would remain a POW for almost five more years, until March 15, 1973. His injuries are still with him; he cannot raise his arms above his shoulders; he still has a slight limp.

If visiting Walter Reed doesn’t sufficiently remind him of sacrifice maybe he could just try to comb his hair.

I make no excuses for McCain’s racist nicknames, but I do cut him some slack for the hatred. It’s probably what kept him alive. However, it must also be noted that unlike his immature GOP brethren, he was man enough to put the past behind him and he and John Kerry went on to engineer the rapprochement with Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Denny and the boys, still angry and nursing their wounds from 4th grade dodge ball, are today using young Americans as board pieces in their little game of “I am too a real man!” and it’s destroying this country.

Losing Their Religion

Among other wonderful observations in a great post, Josh Marshall notices the Great Wingnut Meltdown and writes:

Let’s be a little more clear about what’s going on here. Having led the country perilously close to humiliation and defeat, the architects of the war want to shift the blame for what’s happened to their opponents who either said the whole thing was a mistake in the first place or criticized the incompetence of its execution as it unfolded. They take the blame, the moral accountability, by ‘wishing’ for a bad result. That at least is Podhoretz’s reasoning.

If ever there was an example of moral up-is-downism, this is it. And claiming that their political opponents — liberal, in Podhoretz’s usage here, is just a catch-all — want defeat and humiliation for their country is certainly the most gutterish sort of slander there is.

There’s something almost uncomfortable about watching the mix of desperation, panicked zeal and projection evidenced in Podhoretz’s column. It’s like the pornography of watching someone beg for his life or shift the blame onto someone else when they’ve been caught in the act — with the added twist of spasms of aggression mixed in. But on a broader level, it’s in character. Not for Podhoretz — this isn’t at all directed at him as a person — but for the movement, the crew, he’s part of and is trying to defend.

Smug or rabid. There is no in between.

This is the first time that the “conservative movement” has held the reins of power and they have not done well. Filled with hubris, dazzled by naive Leninist dorm room dreams, these people have proven that they are incapable of leading a great nation responsibly and competently. They are good at money politics, and they could win the next election — but the “movement” is dead.

The New Left went through something like this back in the 70’s. Luckily, we were only in our 20’s at the time so it wasn’t as ugly and depressing as watching a bunch of flaccid, middle aged adolescents lose their twisted idealism. This isn’t natural.

I wonder if they’ll be having the Conservative Prom this year or if they will they finally graduate. Let’s hope they opt for maturity. It’s long overdue.

Warrior Message

Blumenthal has an interesting update on General Aimee Semple McBoykin in tonight’s Salon. I was aware that he was Cambones very own GI Joe, but I didn’t know until now that he personally went to Cuba to tell Miller to Gitmo-ize the mud-people over in Eye-Rack.

Saving Gen. William ‘Jerry’ Boykin seemed like a strange sideshow last October. After it was revealed that the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence had been regularly appearing at evangelical revivals, preaching that the United States was in a holy war as a ‘Christian nation’ battling ‘Satan,’ the furor was quickly calmed.

[…]

Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment, in fact, he was at the center of the secret operation to “Gitmo-ize” Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. He had flown to Guantánamo (known as “Gitmo”) in Cuba, where he met with the commandant of Camp X-Ray, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, ordering him to extend his methods to the Iraq prison system, orders that had come from Rumsfeld. While Boykin weathered his public storm, he remained the operational officer overseeing Miller’s new assignment.

[…]

Just before Boykin was put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and then inserted into Iraqi prison reform, he was a circuit rider for the religious right. He allied himself with a small group known as the Faith Force Multiplier that advocates applying military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto, “Warrior Message,” summons “warriors in this spiritual war for souls of this nation and the world … God has given us the stewardship and accountability of FAITH as our strategy for this time to mobilize an exceedingly great army.”

As the head of the Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N.C., Boykin invited Southern Baptist ministers for prayer meetings that would be highlighted by demonstrations of Special Forces hand-to-hand combat and guided tours of the “Shoot House” and “Snake Room.”

Boykin staged a traveling slide show in which he displayed pictures of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein around the country. “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army,” he preached. “Why do they hate us? The answer to that is because we’re a Christian nation. We are hated because we are a nation of believers.” They “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” It was the reportage of his remarks at one such revival in Oregon that made him a subject of brief controversy. But public relations handling rescued him so that he could pursue his job, including turning up the heat at Abu Ghraib.

So, they sent this crazy, fucked-up Christian crusader to whip the Muslim heathens into shape.

Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick must be laughing hysterically right now, wherever they are. It can’t get any more absurd than this.

Can it?

American As Rotten Apple Pie

Following up the story I posted about yesterday, EditorandPublisher has this:

E&P today obtained from Reuters a report submitted to the company’s senior editors in mid-January, less than two weeks after the journalists were detained, by Bureau Chief Andrew Marshall, who had interviewed the three staffers separately. The Reuters employees are Salem Ureibi, who has worked for the company since 1991, mainly as a cameraman; Ahmad Mohammad al-Badrani, who has worked with Reuters on a freelance basis since July 2003, shooting video; and Sattar Jabar al-Badrani, a driver.

Marshall observed in his report, ‘It should be noted that the bulk of their mistreatment — including their humiliating interrogations and the mental and physical torment of the first night which all agreed was the worst part of their ordeal — occurred several hours AFTER I had informed the 82nd Airborne Division that they were Reuters staff. I have e-mail proof of this.’

Reuters also made available to E&P about two dozen pages of transcripts of Marshall’s interviews with the three staffers on Jan. 8.

Here are excerpts from Marshall’s report:

‘When the soldiers approached them they were standing by their car, a blue Opel. Salem Uraiby shouted ‘Reuters, Reuters, journalist, journalist.’ At least one shot was fired into the ground close to them.

‘They were thrown to the ground and soldiers placed guns to their heads. Their car was searched. Soldiers found their camera equipment and press badges and discovered no weapons of any kind. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs and they were thrown roughly into a Humvee where they lay on the floor. …

‘After half an hour to an hour they were transferred to a larger armored vehicle. Ahmad and Sattar (along with NBC stringer Ali who I have yet to formally interview) were thrown on the floor under the seats. …

“Once they arrived at the U.S. base (this was FOB Volturno near Fallujah) they were kept in a holding area with around 40 other prisoners in a large room with several open windows. It was bitterly cold. They were given one blanket between two. All were interrogated separately at different times and the worst treatment they suffered was on the first night when for several hours (they believe it was from around midnight until dawn) all of them were put in a room together and subjected to hours of abuse.

“Bags were alternately placed on their heads and taken off again. Deafening music was played on loudspeakers directly into their ears and they were told to dance around the room. Sometimes when they were doing this, soldiers would shine very bright torches directly into their eyes and hit them with the torches. They were told to lie on the floor and wiggle their backsides in the air to the music. They were told to do repeated press ups and to repeatedly stand up from a crouching position and then return to the crouching position.

“Soldiers would move between them, whispering things in their ear. Ahmad and Sattar did not understand what was whispered. Salem says they whispered that they wanted to have sex with him and were saying “come on, just for two minutes.”T hey also said he should bring his wife so they could have sex with her. …

“Soldiers would whisper in their ears “One, two, three…” and then shout something loudly right beside their ear. All of this went on all night. … Ahmad said he collapsed by morning. Sattar said he collapsed after Ahmad and began vomiting. …

“When they were taken individually for interrogation, they were interrogated by two American soldiers and an Arab interpreter. All three shouted abuse at them. They were accused of shooting down the helicopter. Salem, Ahmad and Sattar all reported that for their first interrogation they were told to kneel on the floor with their feet raised off the floor and with their hands raised in the air.

“If they let their feet or hands drop they were slapped and shouted at. Ahmad said he was forced to insert a finger into his anus and lick it. He was also forced to lick and chew a shoe. For some of the interrogation tissue paper was placed in his mouth and he had difficulty breathing and speaking. Sattar too said he was forced to insert a finger into his anus and lick it. He was then told to insert this finger in his nose during questioning, still kneeling with his feet off the ground and his other arm in the air. The Arab interpreter told him he looked like an elephant. …

“Ahmad and Sattar both said that they were given badges with the letter ‘C’ on it. They did not know what the badges meant but whenever they were being taken from one place to another in the base, if any soldier saw their badge they would stop to slap them or hurl abuse.

What was that inspiring saying I heard again?

Oh yes.

“I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help spread that freedom.”

After 30 years under Saddam, I just don’t know how much more “freedom” these poor bastards can take.

I think the saddest thing about all this is that once again we raised these people’s hopes that we were coming to rescue them. That makes us even crueler than Saddam in some ways. Under him they didn’t have any dreams. We, on the other hand, encouraged them to dream and then crushed them. Laughing in their faces while we did it.