Right Wing Nut House

There’s no lack of opinions in the blogosphere about the Thornburgh-Boccardi report detailing CBS malfeasance in the Rathergate episode. Captain Ed is outraged about CBS President Les Moonves decision protect CBS anchor Dan Rather:

When seen in context, Rather’s performance during this scandal is shockingly dishonest and deliberately misleading. He seems to have no sense of loyalty to the truth or to his viewers; in fact, his actions appear quite contemptuous of the public. How could Moonves expect to retain any credibility for any story fronted by Rather in any capacity at CBS? Moonves may think that the storm has passed — but as long as Dan Rather continues to represent CBS, their news organization will have no credibility whatsoever.

The Capn’ also has a remarkable post about the failure of the report to admit that there was political bias involved in the rush to air the report. Quoting from a series of devastating emails, the Capn’ points the finger directly and unerringly at the political aspects of the “investigation:”

On page 61, we get the answer with this exchange of e-mail between Smith and Mapes. Smith outlines a “hypothetical” deal for Burkett (emphasis mine):

What if there was a person who might have some information that could possibly change the momentum of an election but we needed to get an ASAP book deal to help get us the information? What kinds of turnaround payment schedules are possible, keeping in mind the book probably could not make it out until after the election . . . . What I am asking is in this best case hypothetical scenario, can we get a decent sized advance payment, and get it turned around quickly.”

Mapes’ reply? “[T]hat looks good, hypothetically speaking of course.”

After detailing several notable examples of political bias by Producer Mary Mapes and others connected with the story, the report concluded that there was no bias in the run-up to or airing of the hit piece.

I guess having a producer who concurs that airing “information that could change the momentum of the election” is an example of “objectivity.”

One thing the report glosses over and which, to me, constitutes the most shocking and egregious aspect of the entire sorry affair is the coordination between CBS news and the Kerry campaign. The report fails to answer some significant questions as well as neglecting to even ask some questions that need to be addressed. To wit:

1. Did the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee coordinate their attack on President Bush’s National Guard service with the CBS hit piece? Circumstantial evidence would validate that assumption. The Democrats scheduled an ad campaign entitled “Fortunate Son” to begin on September 10; two days after the TANG story aired on CBS. The ads had been in the works for weeks.

2. When did the Kerry campaign learn of the existence of the TANG memos? The American Spectator on September 9 published an article saying that an opposition researcher at the DNC knew of the existence of the memos as far back as the Democratic Convention in July. Markings on the forged documents themselves show they may have been manufactured as far back as February, 2004. As early as March, the source of the documents Bill Burkett was posting on Democratic forums that he had evidence of Bush’s preferential treatment. The evidence would point to specific knowledge of the documents and their content sometime between March and July, 2004.

3. Who forged the documents? Here’s my speculation back in September:

Whoever fabricated the documents would have had to pore over Bush’s TANG records and come up with the appropriate dates, personnel, situations, and perhaps most importantly, the tone and tenor of the memos that would match what’s known of Killian. (Remember, both granny Knox and General Strong said the memos “sounded” like Killian.)

The panel, which came to no conclusion about the documents’ authenticity, nevertheless offered a detailed and devastating analysis of their shortcomings. But the question hangs over this case like a side of rotten meat; who’s the forger? Was Bill Burkett clever enough and knowledgeable enough about TANG procedures to come up with this on his own?

We’ll probably never know. My personal guess is that more than one person was involved in the forgery and Burkett may have been a straw man to hide the forgers identity.

4. Why didn’t the report delve into the political bias of both Mapes and Rather as it related to the overall reporting of CBS news during the campaign? Polipundit has some similar thoughts:

On page 211, the Report briefly, and far too poorly, reconsiders the political aspect of CBS’ attacks on President Bush. By separating the September 8th episode from the rest of the campaign to attack George W. Bush, the Report unfairly attempts to paint the attack as an isolated incident. The Report far too casually accepts assertions by Mapes and Rather that they had no political agenda, and refuses to dig any deeper than their claims. The fact that Rather’s e-mails, for example, were not reviewed, and that Mapes’ claims to only limited contact to high-ranking Democrats were accepted at face value, even with the evidence of their complicity in an organized plan to influence the Presidential election, is baffling. The Report tried to dodge the connection between Burkett and CBS, for example, by lamely stating “he declined to talk to the Panel” (page 212). Even as the Report noted that “[m]any of the sources of information that were used for the September 8 Segment had an anti-Bush political agenda” (page 212), yet somehow managed to conclude that the people collecting and organizing those sources did not also have such an agenda.

In summary, I think the reason the report glosses over so many important questions was best summed up by Captain Ed:

The Thornburgh-Boccardi report on the CBS debacle avoided casting the Killian memo story as definitively caused by political bias in its conclusions. Some of their reluctance, I think, has resulted from a legalistic mindset that pushed the panel to only state what they felt could be proven in a lawsuit.

Not everyone agrees, but it’s pretty clear to me that the report in its conclusions, is a whitewash; not meant to get to the bottom of the affair but rather to protect the reputation of CBS News from being totally destroyed.

At the same time, there is an inordinate amount of self-congratulation on the part of bloggers who believe that the Rathergate affair has somehow been a watershed event and that mainstream media will never be the same. This may be true. What I believe is misplaced is a general feeling of triumphalism and a belief that bloggers will now replace major news organs as purveyors of news.

This is nuts. Bloggers are eloquent in writing opinions about the news. Blogs are at their best when they uncover factual errors or bias in media reports. But bloggers as journalists? Generally speaking (there are many bloggers who are now or who have been journalists in the past) this won’t happen.

Back in December, I did a post on the illusion of Rathergate. I quoted extensively from an article in “The American Digest” by Gerard Vanderleun regarding the false lessons learned by bloggers:

“In a reactive medium such as blogging, one brings one’s opinions and expertise (limited, expansive or non-existent) to any question that engages one’s interest. At times, the confluence of these factors — most famously in the CBS False Documents scandal — creates a situation that causes what is sometimes referred to as “blowback” in the analog world. But these cases are still few and far between since there are not that many situations where the elements (documents, pdf files, computer and typewriter and word processing knowledge) combine to form a perfect storm of blogging blowback.”

The “Perfect Storm” Vanderleun refers to may happen once in a great while. My own belief is that blogs have much more utility in pushing stories into the mainstream media that are otherwise ignored. Stories like the “Oil for food” scandal or, more recently, the excellent work done by bloggers in uncovering and publicizing fraud in the Washington State Governors race. These are important stories that, because of bias or laziness, the mainstream media fails to cover.

But until news organs like CBS News put there own house in order, bloggers will continue to “bite at their ankles” by revealing outright bias and sloppiness in their work.

I’ve been experiencing some problems with internet connectivity due to either a balky broadband modem or a problem in the cable.

Posting has been light the last two days as a result. Moonbats rejoice!

I’m having a tech come out tommorrow and try and trace the problem. Hopefully, I’ll be back to normal by early afternoon..

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

The winning Council post comes to us via the Education Wonks who have a post on a disturbing beating that took place recently at a public school.

The winning non-council post is from the Diplomad. Their piece on tsunami relief efforts and what the UN isn’t doing has been one of the most linked posts in a while. Don’t miss it.

Although we Americans tend to be a happy-go-lucky optimistic lot, we’ve developed something of a myopic and jaded view of the rest of the world and how our supposed betters look upon us as either blithering, idiotic, tobacco chewing, red-necked crackers from Jesusland or evil, manipulative, militaristic xenophobes working clandestinely to make the world safe for Haliburton and Mickey Mouse.

The spectacular and heroic efforts of our military in aiding the hundreds of thousands of tsunami victims in SE Asia is a prime example of how Americans are being marginalized by the world press and how the United Nations is proving itself to be for anyone with the guts to see, a hollow shell, or worse, a shameless self-promoting cadre of self-important, self-aggrandizing, self-centered, do-nothing lickspittles.

Victor Davis Hanson speculates as to what the world would have been like the last 15 years or so without the United States:

Imagine a world in which there was no United States during the last 15 years. Iraq, Iran, and Libya would now have nukes. Afghanistan would remain a seventh-century Islamic terrorist haven sending out the minions of Zarqawi and Bin Laden worldwide. The lieutenants of Noriega, Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Saddam, and Moammar Khaddafi would no doubt be adjudicating human rights at the United Nations. The Ortega Brothers and Fidel Castro, not democracy, would be the exemplars of Latin America. Bosnia and Kosovo would be national graveyards like Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Add in Kurdistan as well — the periodic laboratory for Saddam’s latest varieties of gas.

Then why the resentment overseas? Hanson compares Americas detractors with the frightened townfolks in classic American westerns:

After all, the holed-up ‘good’ citizens were always angry that the lawman had shamed them, worried that he might make dangerous demands on their insular lives, confused about whether they would have to accommodate themselves either to savagery or civilization in their town’s future, and, above all, assured that they could libel and slur the tin star in a way that would earn a bullet from the lawbreaker. It was precisely that paradox between impotent high-sounding rhetoric and blunt-speaking, roughshod courage that lay at the heart of the classic Western from Shane and High Noon to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Magnificent Seven.

This doesn’t explain the attitude of the world press and their studious, almost ludicrous avoidance of any mention of the US Navy (don’t forget those magnificent Aussies too) in tsunami relief efforts. This from Powerline quoting from a Daily Telegraph story:

Last week we were subjected to one of the most extraordinary examples of one-sided news management of modern times, as most of our media, led by the BBC, studiously ignored what was by far the most effective and dramatic response to Asia’s tsunami disaster. A mighty task force of more than 20 US Navy ships, led by a vast nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and equipped with nearly 90 helicopters, landing craft and hovercraft, were carrying out a round-the-clock relief operation, providing food, water and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of survivors.

The BBC went out of its way not to report this. Only when one BBC reporter, Ben Brown, hitched a lift from one of the Abraham Lincoln’s Sea Hawk helicopters to report from the Sumatran coast was there the faintest hint of the part that the Americans, aided by the Australian navy, were playing.

What then is the real story here?

The real story of the week should thus have been the startling contrast between the impotence of the international organizations, the UN and the EU, and the remarkable efficiency of the US and Australian military on the ground. Here and there, news organizations have tried to report this, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, and even the China News Agency, not to mention various weblogs, such as the wonderfully outspoken Diplomad, run undercover by members of the US State Department, and our own www.eureferendum.blogspot.com. But when even Communist China’s news agency tells us more about what is really going on than the BBC, we see just how strange the world has become.

Could this slanted, biased coverage explain this maddening remark by a Euroweenie reported by Varifrank?

Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:

and then they looked at me. I wasn’t laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.

Okay…you’re an American sitting with a bunch of ignorant Eurofrauds who’ve just made a remark so stupid, so insensitive that, in my case, would have set loose a string of profanity laced invectives so purple, it would’ve put the Giant People Eater to shame. Varifrank, thankfully, takes a calmer approach…and even more devastating:

“Hmmm, let’s see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?

Well “Franz”, us peasants in America call that kind of ship an “Aircraft Carrier”. We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that’s right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us…”

So where is the UN? What are they doing? Hugh Hewitt, in his inimitable way, puts the issue succinctly:

With the oil-for-food-for-dictators scandals pushed temporarily into the background, it is easy to forget the absurdity of arguments in favor of a “lead role” for the United Nations. Why were there no calls for former Enron execs to take the lead role in the rebuilding of the Iraqi oil and gas industry? Why does the American press and the American left disconnect the Kofiklatch from the siphoned-off billions still being used to attack Americans and Iraqis from the meeting planners gathering at various relief conferences around the world.

Corrupt, venal, and apparently taking credit for running the relief effort even though they complain that US and Aussie helicopters aren’t throwing supplies for the victims overboard to ferry hundreds of UN employees who are acting as “assessment teams” into the disaster area, the United Nations is not only proving its impotence, it’s proving that it’s incapable of fulfilling one of its primary mandates; humanitarian relief on a global scale.

I suppose in the years ahead, Americans are going to have to get used to the idea that no matter what good we do in the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sudan, or SE Asia) we’ll be reviled, despised, feared, and belittled. Is this the price we pay for being a hyperpower in a uni-polar world? Or is it a harbinger of an even more destructive anti-Americanism that, when the next terrorist attack hits our shores, the entire planet will be dancing in the streets in joy, not just the islamofacist thugs who celebrated on 9/11?

Man…reality really bites.

Beautiful Atrocities answers a question that both Democrats and Republicans seem unwilling to ask; what price will we pay for the abandonment of mildly coercive interrogation techniques used against non-combatants?

Whom do the FBI, Defense Secretary, & Joint Chiefs answer to? What party has control of Congress? If Republicans don’t subject liberal Democrats to an aggressive public interrogation & force the issue, they’ll deserve full blame for the next terrorist attack. You can’t have it both ways.

“I hope to god I will end up being wrong, BUT, because of the changes put out; soldiers will die. I pray to god I’m wrong, but our chances just went up tenfolds because of the changes.”

We’re not playing tiddlywinks here, we’re at war. And we’re not dealing with your run-of-the-mill enemy soldier. We’re dealing with hardened killers who’d just as soon spit in the eye of an interrogator than give up any valuable information.

And we’re not talking about using the kind of shameless humiliation that was used at Abu Ghraib. We’re talking about mildly coercive “stress techniques” I listed here earlier.

It remains to be seen whether the NY Times and their moonbat allies in Congress are willing to place the lives of American soldiers over discomforting and inconveniencing a bunch of terrorist thugs. One thing’s for sure; the families of servicemen in Iraq are apparently going to lose more sleep over worrying than any of the beheaders, torturers, and homicidal maniacs who fall into our custody.

Some news from Iran:

It appears that Iranian ISPs have been ordered to block a large number of popular Web sites, including weblogging, community, chat and email services. Web (particularly weblog) use has been increasing rapidly in Iran, with 64000+ weblogs published by Iranians via various sites. As of today, if the news is correct, the majority of these may be inaccessible to their authors, as will the email (eg. Yahoo) services they use to communicate with friends, colleagues and family worldwide.”

The radioactive Mullahs are cracking down on blogs and bloggers because of what they represent; unregulated free speech.

If you haven’t been following what’s been going on in Iran over the last few months, a remarkable series of events have occurred which have challenged the absolute authority of the religious zealots currently in control in Iran. While the government of President Mohammad Khatami has buckled under pressure applied by the nutball Islamofacists to crack down on free speech, hundreds of courageous Iranian bloggers have continued to find a way to to post their stories.

Back in December at an International Internet Conference, Khatami said this:

Speaking to journalists, President Khatami added, “democracy runs in tandem with freedom of expression, but this does not mean that everything goes.

“Freedom of expression and freedom of thought are the preconditions of a democratic society. But freedom does not mean chaos”. (BBC News: 12/12/04)

Famous last words of tyrants everywhere! “Too much freedom” is a bad thing. Or, more rationally, freedom equals “chaos.”

Here’s an example of Iranian “free speech” in action:

In the U.S., when bloggers fact-check the media — as they did with the questionable National Guard memos on “60 Minutes” — they are hailed as new media heroes. In Iran, when reformist bloggers and journalists fact-check the government — as they did when the ruling hardliners railroaded the last election — they are put in jail and their publications are shut.

That point was brought home recently when the Iranian government, led by Ayatollah Khamenei, moved to block three reformist news Web sites, and then jailed three journalists — Hanif Mazrooie, Babak Ghafoori Azar, and Shahram Rafi Zadeh — the latter two are also bloggers. These moves follow a string of reformist newspaper closures this year, as well as a controversial election in which the ruling party disqualified reformist candidates, resulting in a widespread boycott of the vote.

Amazingly, Iranian bloggers haven’t let this kind of oppression stop them. They’ve continued to post riveting stories on anti-government riots in various cities involving tens of thousands of people was well as reporting on the continuing crackdown involving some of their blogging brethren. This comes from a recent post by Jeff Jarvis:

Iranian blogger Parthisan left a comment below urging us to read his translation of a post by Mohammed Ali Abtahi, the former VP of Iran — renowned for blogging himself — reporting on the imprisonment and torture of bloggers in Iran. It is his report on a committee meeting with imprisoned bloggers, called for by the president of Iran. An excerpt:

1- Physical torture, punches and kicks: “he banged my head to the bench that made my recently-operated nose bleed, and later I found out that they broke my nose”; “they punched us”; “we were alone in single cells for months”; and things of this kind…

ATTENTION MOONBATS: The next time you crawl out from under a rock and start screaming about being “oppressed” please read the above very carefully. Oppression is when you speak your mind and are thrown in jail and tortured for it…unlike in America where if you criticize the government, you get to be fawned over at cocktail parties, are offered a million dollar advance for a book contract that will make you rich and famous, and appear on MSNBC and have Chrissy Matthews kiss your overly ample ass in public.

All this brings to mind current attempts in the United States and elsewhere to “regulate” the internet. Already in Australia, there’s a serious effort underway to curtail internet freedom. And in the US, efforts to regulate internet commerce have taken on added impetus with the ballooning budget deficit and the belief by some lawmakers that a way can be found to tax internet transactions. Now, politicians generally speaking, are not the brightest of bulbs, but eventually they’re going to find a way to get a cut of the expanding e-commerce pie…and that spells trouble for the net in general.

If politicians can regulate one part of the internet, what’s to stop them from developing “standards” or other regulatory instruments to interfere with free expression? For instance, I’ve been known from time to time to use language that would be unsuitable for preteens to read. This is not uncommon on personal weblogs, even amongst some of the larger sites. Would there be some kind of push to develop a rating system for web sites? With the e-porn business topping the $4 billion mark this past year, it certainly is not beyond the realm of the impossible.

This is the crux of the problem. Once started down the “slippery slope” of internet control, politicians rarely know when to stop. And what the Iranian government crackdown on the internet proves is that any justification for oppression can be cited as long as the “people’s interest” is involved.

Posting will be light over the next two days…but I thought I’d leave you with this marvelous example of moonbattery run amuck.

I haven’t enabled any of the links mentioned…why support dingbats by throwing traffic their way?

So, Kelly…Here’s looking at you, moonbat! Please be sure to take your meds. And the bus for Bellevue leaves at 1:00 pm this afternoon.

There was no evidence that bin Laden was responsible for 9-11. Even if there was, that is not justification for attacking a country. Afghanistan did not attack. The Taliban said they would turn over bin Laden provided the US show evidence he was behind it. The supposed dossier presented to members of the British Parliament did not contain any evidence. Many members privy to these super-secret documents openly mocked the US.

Physicists, fighter pilots, police detectives, firemen (many who are on tape claiming the building was a controlled demolition), government employees, and explosives experts have ripped apart the administration’s claims.

Well…you get the picture.

Long before Abu Ghraib, the short-lived ABC TV series “Threat Matrix” had an episode that went directly to the issue of interrogation techniques. Considered an enemy combatant, a French-Algerian man is detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Because the female FBI agent refuses to allow him to see a doctor while she is interrogating him, even after he tells her three times that he needs to see one, the man suffers a heart attack and dies.

I thought at the time that the episode was thought provoking and was dealing with questions that needed to be answered. The techniques used on the prisoner; sleep deprivation, extended interrogation sessions, making the prisoner stand for very long periods of time, cutting food rations, and the like are at the heart of the debate today on “torture” of detainees at Gitmo. Remember, this was aired months before Abu Ghraib became a cause celebre . It turns out that the FBI agent is arrested and charged with second degree murder. The jury acquits her after information gleaned from the interrogation heads off an assassination attempt that prevents war in the middle east.

In her summation, the defense attorney tells the jury that “this is the price we’re paying to be safe.” The acquittal, to me, seemed logical. And this brings us to the Gonzalez confirmation hearings, definitions of torture, and abuses of prisoners in the hands of the military.

Why must these techniques be used? Do they violate the Geneva Convention? Are terrorists POW’s? Why did the Administration seek to change the rules on how prisoners are treated?

Only the most partisan amongst us would dismiss these questions and simply say that the Bush Administration is evil and has committed war crimes. This is nuts. Leaving aside the frat house antics of the ill-disciplined rabble who were in charge at Abu Ghraib, what we have here is something that’s never happened before in the history of warfare; combatants with no allegiance to any country that we’re at war with who seek to do the US massive injury. And let’s not forget that these same combatants used our forbearance in interrogation techniques against us. This from City Journal:

Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture—a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

Even if a prisoner had not previously studied American detention policies before arriving at Kandahar, he soon figured them out. “It became very clear very early on to the detainees that the Americans were just going to have them sit there,” recalls interrogator Joe Martin (a pseudonym). “They realized: ‘The Americans will give us our Holy Book, they’ll draw lines on the floor showing us where to pray, we’ll get three meals a day with fresh fruit, do Jazzercise with the guards, . . . we can wait them out.’ ” (HT: Instapundit)

In the meantime, our guys are at risk in the field. This is when the administration began looking at the problem in a new way. The “Gonzalez Memos” that have taken center stage at the confirmation hearings, if read closely, lead one to the conclusion that the Administration was groping in the dark, wrestling with the problem by looking at what was going on in real time on the ground in Afghanistan; not beholden to any prescribed or nebulous strictures listed in a nearly 100 year-old document with little relevance to fighting a war against murderous, stateless criminals. Especially since traditional interrogation methods simply weren’t working:

“Love of family” often had little purchase among the terrorists, however—as did love of life. “The jihadists would tell you, ‘I’ve divorced this life, I don’t care about my family,’ ” recalls an interrogator at Guantáname. “You couldn’t shame them.” The fierce hatred that the captives bore their captors heightened their resistance. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan reported in January 2002 that prisoners in Kandahar would “shout epithets at their captors, including threats against the female relatives of the soldiers guarding them, knee marines in the groin, and say that they will escape and kill ‘more Americans and Jews.’ ” Such animosity continued in Guantánamo.

The “stress techniques” the Army came up with, were the least radical alternative available.

Many of the interrogators argued for a calibrated use of “stress techniques”—long interrogations that would cut into the detainees’ sleep schedules, for example, or making a prisoner kneel or stand, or aggressive questioning that would put a detainee on edge.

Joe Martin—a crack interrogator who discovered that a top al-Qaida leader, whom Pakistan claimed to have in custody, was still at large and directing the Afghani resistance—explains the psychological effect of stress: “LetÂ’s say a detainee comes into the interrogation booth and heÂ’s had resistance training. He knows that IÂ’m completely handcuffed and that I canÂ’t do anything to him. If I throw a temper tantrum, lift him onto his knees, and walk out, you can feel his uncertainty level rise dramatically. HeÂ’s been told: ‘They wonÂ’t physically touch you,Â’ and now you have. The point is not to beat him up but to introduce the reality into his mind that he doesnÂ’t know where your limit is.”

But is it torture?

Clearly, what happened at Abu Ghraib and perhaps to some extent at Gitmo, was an unforeseen consequence of higher-ups in the military chain of command putting pressure on interrogators to increase the flow of information that could be used on the battlefield. Did they specifically ask for or condone more extreme methods like electric shock or humiliating or degrading treatment of Muslims? This goes back to the stress techniques. Did they work?

Did the stress techniques work? Yes. “The harsher methods we used . . . the better information we got and the sooner we got it,” writes Mackey, who emphasizes that the methods never contravened the conventions or crossed over into torture…”

In effect, the interrogators were victims of their own success. The more information they got using these “harsher methods” the more the higher ups put pressure on them. It was, perhaps predictable (though not inevitable) that the entire interrogation process would get out of hand; especially when less disciplined National Guard troops became involved at Abu Ghraib.

So, how much blame should actually be assessed the Administration? Unhappily, the entire question has now been placed squarely in the sphere of partisan politics which makes any rational discussion of these very important issues impossible. It’s become a “gotcha” game where Democrats seek to undermine the war effort and the President’s authority by trying to pin the Abu Ghraib hijinks on the Administration. What appears to be a good faith, thoughtful effort on the part of lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department to come to grips with issues never faced by any civilized nation in history is being attacked as planning to torture the poor, hapless terrorists. This has become known as the “torture narrative:”

A master narrative—call it the “torture narrative”—sprang up: the government’s 2002 decision to deny Geneva-convention status to al-Qaida fighters, it held, “led directly to the abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq,” to quote the Washington Post. In particular, torturous interrogation methods, developed at Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan in illegal disregard of Geneva protections, migrated to Abu Ghraib and were manifest in the abuse photos.

This storyÂ’s success depends on the readerÂ’s remaining ignorant of the actual interrogation techniques promulgated in the war on terror. Not only were they light years from real torture and hedged around with bureaucratic safeguards, but they had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib anarchy. Moreover, the decision on the Geneva conventions was irrelevant to interrogation practices in Iraq.

According to sources, the Army has abandoned all stress techniques in favor of more traditional interrogation methods. As a consequence, we’re getting much less intelligence of an inferior quality. And when the next terrorist attack occurs on American soil?

The very same people screaming about “torture” will take the administration to task for poor intelligence. Bet on it.

UPDATE: DOES TORTURE ALWAYS PRODUCE “LIES?”

Ace has a unique take on the issue:

Isn’t it the case that our own military expects our soldiers to break eventually under torture, but tries to get them to at least hold off on spilling anything important for 48 hours or so, after which point, hopefully, their information will now be stale and operationally useless (or at least less useful)?

Furthermore, the fact that coercion may produce a lot of lies is hardly a reason to say it’s useless. All interrogations, including non-coercive police interrogations of common criminals, produce 90% lies.

The problem, of course, is the question of American values and how torture relates to an image we’ve created for ourselves.

The “harm,” I suppose, is that we diminish ourselves by sanctioning such brutal methods.

As for absolute morality– I don’t know if I buy that, especially in wartime, and especially against such monstrous animals as we’re fighting.

Spot on. Democrats always appear to forget that we’re fighting a war; a war, as I say in the post, against “murderous, stateless criminals.” The idea of extending Geneva Convention protections to people who, at the drop of a hat, would shoot us in the back with less compunction than you or I would step on a roach is mindless moral posturing. Does this mean we should immediately take every terrorist in our custody, attatch electrodes to his nether regions, and turn on the juice? Of course not. But to hear the Democrats posturing at the Gonzalez confirmation hearings yesterday, you’d probably think so.

UPDATE II: WELCOME ACE OF SPADES READERS!

Thanks to Ace for the link…the second time in a month that I’ve been so blessed. While you’re here, check out my post on “Headlines You Won’t See in 2005.”

Spoiler…”Michael Moore Explodes“…

Man, it’s days like this that make blogging a whole lot of fun! Moonbats in full flowering moonbattery! The “Reality Based Community” at its oxymoronic best!

Today is the day that the November election for President of the United States is certified by the Congress. That is, the electoral vote count from the vote held December 10, 2004 when the Electoral College convened will be tallied and agreed to in a Joint Resolution by the House and Senate.

A mere formality, right?

One would think so. Hell, even Kos seemed to have thrown in the towel;

Us liberal bloggers like to brag that we live in the “reality-based community”. It’s kind of hard to be reality-based when people are claiming that Kerry won with no hard evidence to the contrary. Was there fraud? Sure. There always has been. Was the GOP ready to steal the election if necessary? No doubt. But they didn’t have to steal this one. This wasn’t 2000. Bush rode his fucked up war to victory, whether we like it or not. History will judge us right, but until then, we’re stuck with the results.

Now, I was open minded at first, letting the fraudsters do the analysis, ready to pounce if the smoking gun was found. But after myriad diaries crying wolf, claiming that this was the evidence to seal the deal, well, it got old. Then it got counterproductive, then it got embarrassing. (HT: Wizbang)

Leaving aside the usual blatherings of this blithering, idiotic, nincompoop about why Bush won and the judgment of history (FLASH! Moonbats confuse history with fantasy!), Kos seems to have given in to the inevitable…or has he? This from yesterday:

After giving this much thought, I am signing on to the notion that indeed, Democratic Representatives and Senators should contest the Ohio electors tomorrow. That was not my opinion a week ago, but it is now. I’ve changed my mind not because new evidence has been presented, or new arguments have arisen, but because, in the climate of today, right now, this moment, I believe that Congress is in a tactical position to make a difference.

I do not believe any evidence exists to claim that Kerry definitively received more votes in Ohio than Bush, and I believe the oft-cited exit poll evidence, in particular, is weak. But this election needs to be contested on more fundamental grounds; as an objection to the behavior of partisan election officials, unwilling to take seriously the sacred nature of their duties.

Here’s Kevin Alyward’s take:

“Ah, contest the Ohio electors as a form of political grandstanding. Good luck with that. I’m sure the voting public will be quick to forgive and forget that Democrats couldn’t concede an election they clearly lost by invoking a maneuver they could not even bring themselves to use in 2000…“

Representative John Conyers, the uber-liberal from Michigan has written a “report.” I put that word in quotes because a report is supposed to contain facts. Mr. Conyers doesn’t let that kind of nonsense stand in his way:

The 102-page report titled “Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?” lists such problems as unusually long lines, a shortage of voting machines in Democratic-leaning areas, confusion over provisional ballot rules and computer problems.

The report also contends there were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation, improper purging of voter registration lists, a lack of inspection for about 93,000 ballots where no vote was cast for president, and vote totals not matching registration numbers or exit poll data. (HT: Captains Quarters)

The Capn’ summarizes the record and offers a reason the Democrats lost in words of less than three syllables so that even moonbats could grasp what he’s saying:

We’ve gone over the nuts and bolts — mostly nuts — of Conyers’ arguments on this blog and others. After a costly recount and the move of just over 300 votes, Conyers and the Democrats know that further recounts won’t win them the election, and so they intend on casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the contest itself. They have chosen Kenneth Blackwell as their bete noir, just as they smeared Kathleen Harris in Florida four years ago. As I wrote below, in the face of the inexplicable (How could Bush actually beat Kerry?), conspiracy theories grow like mushrooms in the dark.

Of course, the explanation that the Democrats fielded a terrible candidate that ran a lousy campaign never occurs to them.

All Representative Conyers needs is one Senator to co-sponsor his effort to contest the Ohio election result and we’d have a mess on our hands. It’s unclear whether or not there could be an immediate up or down vote in each Chamber to reject the objection. If not, a Joint Session of the House and Senate would have to be called to consider the objection.

Madness! Even Conyers admits there’s no way to overturn Bush’s victory. Why then proceed with the charade? And what would be the consequences?

Clearly, some Democrats have decided that any election they can’t win fairly at the ballot box must be delegitimized in the eyes of the public. What does this strategy hold of the future of the Republic? Here’s Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush with some thoughts on that:

We are awaiting events right now - we are waiting to see if a Democratic Senator will join into the lunacy of a challenge to the crystal-clear victory by President Bush. If such a challenge is issued, then it is a very sad day for the United States - it will be, I fear, merely the first page in a long and bloody story to be written. I base this fear upon the understanding that if a free and fair election is to be held illegitimate by a substantial majority of the citizenry then we are not a united people by any stretch of the imagination - that a segment of our population has essentially renounced the United States and holds it illegitimate. Of such emotions civil wars are made - and if the Democrats take this fateful step, then a river of blood may eventually flow from their actions.

This may be a worst case scenario and not very likely…but the precedent Mark cites is spot on. With the country divided the way it is now, nothing is beyond imagining.

We’re at war. The entire world watches every move the United States makes. Every attempt to hurt the President cheers our enemies and depresses our friends. We used to call this kind of thing “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Now it’s just part of the game of politics.

Cross Posted at “The Wide Awakes“

When the World Dials 911

America’s fine, still leads the way.

Russ Vaughn (Courtesy Reil World View)