Right Wing Nut House

Trying to get news from Iran this morning is very difficult. Most contact with the outside world has been severed - including phone and cable traffic - while the internet is very unreliable and slow from all reports.

What information is getting out reveals a nation close to chaos but with the authorities evidently well prepared in advance for trouble.

So what does the Iranian election mean? Was it a coup by Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the Revolutionary Guards, done without the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei? Or is Khamenei behind the whole thing and this is an attempt to purge the “reformers” who threaten the position of the powerful clerics who run every facet of the country - its economy, its culture, its social structure, and especially its politics?

A good case can be made for both scenarios. Haaretz is reporting that the opposition leader who challenged Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has been arrested. There are reports that many visible opponents of the regime are also being systematically rounded up with many arrests. Opposition media is shut down. And as mentioned above, normal channels of communication have been interrupted.

The fundamental question seems to be at this point is who is controlling the Revolutionary Guards? They are the ones in the forefront of the crackdown. They are supposed to be under the direct control of the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But this amateurish, way too obvious election fraud would seem to be too inept if Khamenei and say, the senior Guard leadership was going to do the vote stealing. After all, it is widely believed they engineered the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 in the first place. However they did it, they were able to fool most of the international observers who were invited to watch the proceedings (more like the observers were kidding themselves but at least they were given a fig leaf to hide behind).

So it’s not like they don’t know how to be subtle about rigging an election. The heavy handededness of this election’s shenanigans, however, might show more unsure hands at work in the Interior Ministry where the election was obviously stolen. And this would point to an Ahmadinejad-led cabal of loyal bureaucrats and friendly Guardsmen - a possibility I raise in my piece on what might have happened:

Ahmadinejad’s biography has a couple of holes in it; specifically his time spent as a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force:

Ahmadinejad was reportedly a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards stationed at Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran. This was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “Extra-territorial Operations,” for mounting attacks beyond Iran’s borders. Reports suggested that his work in the Revolutionary Guards was related to suppression of dissidents in Iran and abroad. Sources associated him with atrocities in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and alleged he personally participated in covert operations around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem; literally ‘Holy’) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. It was reported that he directed assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. According to Revolutionary Guard sources, Ahmadinejad was a key planner of the attack. He was also reported to have been involved in planning an attempt on the life of Salman Rushdie.

Ahmadinejad’s connections to some very powerful elements in the Revolutionary Guards may have given him something no Iranian president has had previously; an independent power base in the Guards. Would it be enough to challenge Khamenei for control of the Guards? Khamenei has the senior leadership but perhaps some junior officers would be more loyal to Ahmadinejad. It is pure speculation but not without merit as Middle East expert Gordon Robinson writes:

Scenario Two: There has been a coup. Ahmedinejad and the security services have taken over. The Supreme Leader has been preserved as a figurehead, but the structures of clerical rule have effectively been gutted and are being replaced by a National Security State. Reports that facebook, twitter, text messaging and foreign TV broadcasts have been blocked, that foreign journalists are being expelled and that large concrete roadblocks (the kind that require a crane to move) have appeared in front of the Interior Ministry all feed a sense that what we are now seeing was pre-planned. Underlying this is the theory that Ahmedinejad and the people around him represent a new generation of Iranian leadership. He and his colleagues were young revolutionaries in 1979. Now in their 50s they have built careers inside the Revolutionary Guard and the other security services. They may be committed to the Islamic Republic as a concept, but they are not part of its clerical aristocracy and are now moving to push the clerics into an essentially ceremonial role. This theory in particular seems to be gaining credibility rapidly among professional Iran-watchers outside of the country.

If a coup, this is very, very bad news for the US and especially Israel. It is thought that Khamenei was something of a steadying force who countered Ahmadinejad’s extreme radicalism with a more traditional and less confrontational approach. Several times over the last 4 years, Khamenei has appearedto slap down Ahmadinejad when he went too far, contradicting some wild pronouncements made by the president (he never intervened when Ahmadinejad threatened Israel). If that brake is gone, the Iranian president becomes very unpredictable.

Then there’s the “panic” theory where the regime was overconfident in Ahmadinejad’s victory and was reacting to the overwhelming vote for Mousavi and the other reform candidates. This explains why the stolen election appeared to be amateurish.  I find this less than compelling for the simple reason they were deploying regime forces before the polls closed.

With so many arrests of “reformers” (outside of Mousavi, no real big names have been taken into custody that we’ve heard about yet), it may yet turn out to be a simple purge and life will eventually settle back down to normal. But a coup, by its nature, breeds instability. And given the factional nature of the Iranian regime, it is a sure bet that some of these factions will not sit still for an Ahmadinejad power grab. In that case, a low level civil war will play itself out with many “disappearances” and “tragic accidents” as well as a “heart attack” or two before things get sorted out. We saw this kind of thing several times in the old Soviet Union so it shouldn’t surprise us if we see something similar in Iran over the next year or so.

I posed this scenario at the end of my Pajamas Media article on the Iranian elections:

It is possible the incumbent actually received a plurality of less than 50% which would have forced a run-off with Mr. Mousavi and the vote fraud was engineered simply to give Ahmadinejad a majority. But whether or not the president won an outright victory is beside the point; the news from Iran almost certainly points to massive fraud undertaken to give President Ahmadinejad a second term.

This from Tehranbureau appears to make fraud a pretty much an open and shut case:

The best evidence for the validity of the arguments of the three opponents of the President for rejecting the results declared by the Interior Ministry is the data the Ministry itself has issued. In the chart below, compiled based on the data released by the Ministry and announced by Iran’s national television, a perfect linear relation between the votes received by the President and Mir Hossein Mousavi has been maintained, and the President’s vote is always half of the President’s. The vertical axis (y) shows Mr. Mousavi’s votes, and the horizontal (x) the President’s. R^2 shows the correlation coefficient: the closer it is to 1.0, the more perfect is the fit, and it is 0.9995, as close to 1.0 as possible for any type of data.

Statistically and mathematically, it is impossible to maintain such perfect linear relations between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting. This is particularly true about Iran, a large country with a variety of ethnic groups who usually vote for a candidate who is ethnically one of their own. For example, in the present elections, Mr. Mousavi is an Azeri and speaks Turkish. The Azeries make up 1/4 of all the eligible voters in Iran and in his trips to Azerbaijan province, where most of the Azeri population lives, Mr. Mousavi had been greeted by huge rallies in support of his campaign. Likewise, Mr. Karroubi, the other reformist candidate, is a Lor. But according to the data released by Iran’s Interior Ministry, in both cases, Mr. Ahmadinejad has far outdone both candidates in their own provinces of birth and among their own ethnic populations.

The question you have to ask is why? Why would the regime so obviously and deliberately fix the election? The mullahs may have insulated themselves and cut themselves off from the rest of the world but they aren’t stupid. Something is not adding up and Laura Rozen over at Foreign Policy’s blog The Cable offers some chilling quotes on what might be happening:

“Yesterday’s events could have a very negative impact on Khamenei’s desires to maintain stability and balance within his administration,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Middle East analyst. “The question is: what caused him to take such a drastic action, by ordering fraud on such a massive scale?”

“The disappointment and disorientation of people in Iran that I’ve spoken to is unmistakable,” said Parsi. “While a majority argue that this is a coup by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei against virtually the rest of the establishment, there are several question marks: Khamenei, most experts agree, is addicted to the perception of legitimacy for himself and the system. But this coup does away with any chances for such legitimacy. Indeed, it is difficult to see why he would view this situation as terribly favorable.

“Which then raises the question,” Parsi continued, “as to whether a reassessment is needed of the assumption that Khamenei enjoys the position of strength that so often is ascribed to him. If this is not a favorable situation, why is he going along with it? Is he too under pressure from circles in the Guard?”

Ahmadinejad’s biography has a couple of holes in it; specifically his time spent as a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force:

Ahmadinejad was reportedly a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards stationed at Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran. This was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “Extra-territorial Operations,” for mounting attacks beyond Iran’s borders. Reports suggested that his work in the Revolutionary Guards was related to suppression of dissidents in Iran and abroad. Sources associated him with atrocities in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and alleged he personally participated in covert operations around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem; literally ‘Holy’) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. It was reported that he directed assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. According to Revolutionary Guard sources, Ahmadinejad was a key planner of the attack. He was also reported to have been involved in planning an attempt on the life of Salman Rushdie.

There is something else too, also from Global Security:

Some outside observers had great difficult understanding Ahmadinejad’s popularity across the country. They were not able to comprehend his ability to out-poll better-known figures, such as former speaker of parliament Mehdi Karrubi or former national police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. The other candidates had been nationally visible for years, and had campaigned throughout the country. Ahmadinejad only became nationally visible after he became Tehran’s mayor. He did not campaign as extensively as his rivals. Some speculated that electoral interference by the Basij and the Guardians Council was the only explaination of this otherwise inexplicable rise to power. Reports suggested there was evidence of vote rigging by Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his supporters. These claims were publically voiced by Rafsanjani and his supporters after the results of the election were announced.

The Basij Forces, or Mobilization Resistance Force, a volunteer paramilitary militia under the Revolutionary Guards, was called upon to vote for Ahmadinejad and get others to do so. Since its creation Iranian authorities suggested that on mobilization its active numbers could total 1 million individuals or more. Reformists charged that the Basij violated prohibitions against military involvement in politics by mobilizing votes for Ahmadinejad. Although the military was supposed to steer clear of politics in Iran (as seen with the withdrawal of Mohsen Rezaie), it had always played some role. However, it had never been as prominent as it was during the 2005 election.

If the Guard wanted to assert itself, it certainly had the means to do so. Khamenei is supposed to have control of the Guards, thus giving him a power base independent of the army. Could the Revolutionary Guards have threatened Khamenei’s position if he didn’t return the Guard’s favorite, Ahmadinejhad, to power?

I am not an expert on Iranian politics nor on its political culture which I know from my reading is riven with factions and even features factions within factions. It is a labyrinth that few really understand. As recently as two years ago with the Iranian capture of some British troops on an Iraqi waterway, we saw what appeared to be factional disputes among the leadership on what to do with the prisoners. Some wanted to try them for espionage. Others wanted to negotiate. A couple of times it appeared an agreement had been reached to release the Brits only to have the deal fall through. This is how the Islamic Republic has done business for 30 years.

Given what we know of Ahmadinejad’s past association with a powerful element within the Revolutionary Guards as well as the stated reluctance of the Guards to see a “reformer” assume office, there may be more than meets the eye as far as voter fraud in the Iranian election. It may have been some kind of “coup” by the Guards that was clumsy in its execution and obvious in its intent. Yesterday, the Guardian reported that “A Revolutionary Guard warning about not tolerating a “velvet revolution” by the Iranian “greens” has been noted with some alarm.”

All signs point to a stolen election. But the “why” will have to wait a while.

UPDATE

That statistical analysis performed by Tehranbureau above is flawed. Respected political polling blogger Nate Silver shows how, if a similar technique were applied to the results of our own election last November, the same kind of linear result on the graph would show up.

Congrats to Nate on discovering the truth.

There are few of us who haven’t made up their minds about whether torture is immoral, illegal, or both/neither. But wherever you come down on this issue, good arguments and thoughtful writing should never be ignored or dismissed out of hand simply because you disagree with it. In fact, I find that reading opposing viewpoints - when they are argued rationally and with a minimum of bombast - help clarify my own thinking and sometimes, even alter my position on an issue.

Not this time. But Commentary’s Peter Wehner has a great piece that tries to set some moral parameters for torture that are well argued and well written. Such clear thinking - even though I believe him wrong - should be commended given all the crap that has been sloughed off as “commentary” on both sides of this issue.

I can appreciate Wehner’s struggle to understand the moral universe he inhabits and seek exceptions and clarifications to the idea of using torture. The problem as I see it is he has adopted the “ticking bomb” scenario that has been thoroughly debunked by people much more knowledgeable than I about terrorism. And there is a troubling detachment on Peter’s part that disconnects what many of us consider the absolute moral wrong of torture as he seeks wiggle room in a kind of moral relativism that I don’t think he would ordinarily embrace.

Wehner’s attempts to “define down” what is torture and what isn’t misses the point that what was done was illegal. Can a moral good (or morally neutral) action be found in breaking the law? It can if, as Wehner attempts to do, you twist the ends/means argument into a pretzel. He also brings up the straw man argument about some of our military going through the SERE program (that I dealt with here) as well as the fact that others have endured it so, he reasons, it can’t be all that bad.

Finally, Wehner employs the argument that because torture “worked,” this should be taken into account when judging the morality of its use during the Bush administration.

To begin, allow me to quote extensively from a Daniel Larison post as he responds to a piece by Jim Manzi who asks, “[W]hy is the belief that the torture of captured combatants is wrong compatible with anything other than some form of pacifism? I mean this an actual question, not as a passive-aggressive assertion.”

Larison swallows hard and lets him have it:

One of the things that has kept me from saying much over the last week or so is my sheer amazement that there are people who seriously pose such questions and expect to be answered with something other than expressions of bafflement and moral horror. Something else that has kept me from writing much on this recently is the profoundly dispiriting realization (really, it is just a reminder) that it is torture and aggressive war that today’s mainstream right will go to the wall to defend, while any and every other view can be negotiated, debated, compromised or abandoned. I have started doubting whether people who are openly pro-torture or engaged in the sophistry of Manzi’s post are part of the same moral universe as I am, and I have wondered whether there is even a point in contesting such torture apologia as if they were reasonable arguments deserving of real consideration. Such fundamental assumptions at the core of our civilization should not have to be re-stated or justified anew, and the fact that they have to be is evidence of how deeply corrupted our political life has become, but if such basic norms are not reinforced it seems clear that they will be leeched away over time.

[snip]

mplicit in Manzi’s entire post is the rejection of any distinction between combatant and non-combatant, which tells me that he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t accept the concept of limited war. For him, unless one is a pacifist, one must endorse total war. In such a view, there would be nothing immoral about the summary execution or cruel and inhumane treatment of POWs, since the latter would have been targeted for death while they were still combatants. After all, if torturing such prisoners is not immoral, as Manzi seems to say it is not, what could possibly be wrong with killing them? That is where one must ultimately end up once the distinctions between combatant and non-combatant are erased or blurred, and it is the barbaric conclusion one will eventually reach if one does not start from the assumption that war itself is a sometimes-necessary evil and that it is morally justifiable only under specific circumstances and within certain limits. One of those limits is that captured combatants are to be treated humanely, and when we go down the road towards easing those restrictions we taint not only the institutions responsible for national security with crimes but we also abandon any real claim to moral integrity.

Larison’s argument might be viewed as the absolutist view of torture. I might disagree with the extent he worries about the corrupting nature of torture but there is no dismissing the line in the sand he has drawn - a line I accept for practical, rational, and moral reasons as well.

Wehner? Not so much:

Critics of enhanced interrogation techniques have taken to saying that Americans don’t torture, period – meaning in this instance that we do not engage in coercive interrogation techniques ranging from sleep deprivation to prolonged loud noise and/or bright lights to waterboarding. Anyone who holds the opposite view is a moral cretin and guilty of “arrant inhumanity.” Or so the argument goes.

Methinks Peter listens too much to liberal bomb throwers and besides, this is a gross oversimplification and something of a straw man. But to continue:

But this posture begins to come apart under examination. For one thing, the issue of “torture” itself needs to be put in a moral context and on a moral continuum. Waterboarding is a very nasty technique for sure – but it is considerably different (particularly in the manner administered by the CIA) than, say, mutilation with electric drills, rape, splitting knees, or forcing a terrorist to watch his children suffer and die in order to try to elicit information from him.

The question Peter leaves unanswered is whether it is legal or illegal? How can you make a moral judgment about torture — and defining down what is torture is irrelevant to whether it meets the definition under the law — without taking into consideration the moral imperative to obey the law? Wehner is pouring quicksand and doesn’t realize the ground is shifting beneath his feet.

I certainly wouldn’t want to undergo waterboarding – but while a very harsh technique, it is one that was applied in part because it would do far less damage to a person than other techniques. It is also surely relevant that waterboarding was not used randomly and promiscuously, but rather on three known terrorists. And of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program, according to Michael Hayden, President Bush’s last CIA director, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey – and of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of the techniques discussed in the memos on enhanced interrogation.

“Far less damage” as opposed to electrodes and thumbscrews but again, it avoids what Wehner apparently doesn’t want to face; the fact that the civilized world has proscribed the practice in words of unmistakable clarity — unless you are seeking a moral “out” and wish to begin to parse pain and suffering.

US law, the Geneva Accords, and the UN Convention Against Torture all use language that clearly makes the physical and psychological pain of waterboarding a form of torture. The fact that our servicemen are not being held as prisoners and therefore not subject to the law’s protections as well as being volunteers who fully realize the nature of the exercise makes Wehner’s use of the SERE argument nothing more than a strawman set up to excuse torture.

Wehner’s thesis really goes off the rails when he tries to imply that moral relativeness, when evaluating torture, should be employed to blur the ends/means distinction. He dubiously invokes Senator Charles Schumer’s thoughts during a Congressional hearing on torture back in 2004 where the New York lawmaker invokes the “ticking bomb” scenario as one exception to torture. Here’s Schumer:

Take the hypothetical: if we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believe that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most Senators, maybe all, would do what you have to do. So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the fox hole, it’s a very different deal.

Wehner eagerly embraces the hypothetical and runs with it:

Apropos of Schumer’s comments, critics of enhanced interrogation techniques need to wrestle with a set of questions they like to avoid: if you knew using waterboarding against a known terrorist may well elicit information that would stop a massive attack on an American city, would you still insist it never be used? Do you oppose the use of waterboarding if it would save a thousand innocent lives? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? What exactly is the point, if any, at which you believe waterboarding might be justified? I simply don’t accept that those who answer “never” are taking a morally superior stand to those who answer “sometimes, in extremely rare circumstances and in very limited cases.”

First, it is an absolute impossibility to know that “using waterboarding against a known terrorist may well elicit information” that could prevent an attack. That is sophistry on a stick. We might also “know” that pulling his fingernails out might get him to talk if waterboarding doesn’t work. And we wouldn’t know, for instance, whether this particular terrorist had been specifically trained to resist waterboarding or other forms of torture - at least long enough to fail in our efforts to stop a “ticking bomb” attack.

The whole ticking bomb scenario needs to be dumped by torture defenders. It does their argument no good to posit a hypothetical that is more the product of fantasy than possibility.

A good debunking of the ticking bomb myth can be found in an article published in Public Affairs Quarterly last year by Jamie Mayerfield, associate professor of political science at the University of Washington:

Among the many unrealistic elements of the ticking bomb hypothetical, I give
particular attention to the exaggerated degree of certainty attributed to our belief in the prisoner’s guilt. In the scenario we are fully certain that the individual in our custody has launched an attack on civilians and is now withholding the information needed to save the civilians’ lives. Such certainty is unrealistic. Any realistic approximation of the ticking bomb scenario creates too high a risk that an innocent person will be tortured.

The made-to-order features of the ticking bomb scenario blind us to torture’s
reality. In the real world, torture “yields poor information, sweeps up many innocents, degrades organizational capabilities, and destroys interrogators.”7 Consider the problem of false information, which not only causes delays, swallows man hours, and leads down blind alleys, but can also encourage disastrous choices.

Below I discuss how the Bush administration used false information extracted
under torture to help justify the Iraq war. In this case, torture did not save lives, but helped bring about a great many deaths. Torture also inflames enemies, alienates friends, and scares away informants. And it spreads.

These dangers, purged from the ticking bomb hypothetical, are inseparable from actual torture. Yet public attention is consumed by the hypothetical. Obsession with the better-than-best case scenario warps our thinking about torture. We overlook torture’s dangers and exaggerate its effectiveness. By now, the ticking bomb narrative has acquired its own momentum, but fear and anger do much to keep it aloft.

Mayerfield’s point is well taken; because the ticking bomb scenario has not only permeated our culture through fictional variations found in TV, novels, and films, but also because it has been eagerly embraced by many torture apologists, it has become a rote defense even though there has never in history been a situation that remotely resembles it. Mayerfield, like Larison above, may exaggerate the dangers of torture to America’s soul but that doesn’t obviate his point that justifying torture in one, limited case can open the door to its use in other scenarios as well.

So the answer to Peter’s question regarding whether torture condemners would use waterboarding if it could save “a thousand innocent lives? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?” is irrelevant because its impossible to answer a hypothetical that doesn’t exist except on TV and in film.

And Mayerfield’s point about torture being hugely unreliable is spot on as well. I don’t buy the flat statement that torture doesn’t work, or never works. It wouldn’t have been in use for thousands of years unless it did. The problem with it is its unreliability as a means to accurate information. Those thousands of lives Peter wishes to save by waterboarding a terrorist wouldn’t be worth spit if the bomber lied under torture about everything.

The fact that we simply couldn’t be sure means but would have to act as if the terrorist was telling the truth. Suppose while the authorities were off on a wild goose chase the bomb went off and killed those thousands of innocents? That nice moral house of cards torture defenders have built up would collapse in a heap. Is bad information better than no information at all — or good information that might have been extracted using interrogation techniques other than torture?

Wehner answers this argument by trying to make the case that the good information we extracted via torture saved lives and therefore, the ends justifies the means because saving so many innocents is an absolute moral good in and of itself. It is a strange argument considering Peter’s moral waffling earlier in his piece.

On the substantive level, there is the question of the efficacy of enhanced interrogation techniques. There is an intense debate surrounding this matter, but we can certainly say that respected members of the intelligence world insist that innocent Americans are today alive because we employed a set of coercive interrogation techniques. According to Hayden and Mukasey, “As late as 2006, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those interrogations.” Former CIA Director George Tenet said, “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.” And former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, “We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened.”

I will ignore the dubious employment of authority by Peter of people who may go on trial for crimes related to what they are defending and only point out what Peter himself admits later:

It seems unlikely that asking a jihadist his surname, first name and rank, date of birth, army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information – which is what the Geneva Conventions say ought to apply to prisoners of war but not, historically, to unlawful enemy combatants – would elicit as much information as coercive interrogation techniques. Dennis Blair, Obama’s national intelligence director, admitted to his staff that “high value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding” of al Qaeda. (Once Blair’s memo was revealed, he added this caveat: “There is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.”

Why does Wehner concoct this strawman of “name, rank, and serial number?” Professional interrogators are masters of putting psychological pressure on a subject without coercive or “enhanced” interrogation techniques. It is a gross simplification to make it appear that the “either/or” options open to an interrogator would be polite banter about al-Qaeda or waterboarding.

But the key here is Blair’s statement that there was “no way of knowing” whether the exact same information could have been obtained through legal interrogation methods. The reason is because they weren’t tried or, more likely, the interrogation regime that involves non-torture wasn’t given much of a chance to work. (See this Heather McDonald piece in City Journal from 2004 where she details the initial, successful efforts of army interrogators who used psychological pressures on prisoners, walking up to the line but never crossing it.)

Thus, the interrogators who used torture became victims of their own success, leaping for the opportunity to employ torture as a short cut when such methods were unnecessary or, at the very least, non-coercive interrogations were given short shrift.

Finally, Wehner tries to excuse and justify torture because we’re at war and moral choices are hard:

There are of course serious-minded critics of enhanced interrogation techniques. But to pretend, as some critics do, that the morality of this issue is self-evident and that waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques are obviously unacceptable and something for which our nation should be ashamed is, in my judgment, not only wrong but irresponsible. When a nation is engaged in war, you hope to find in government sober people who are able to weigh competing moral goods and who take seriously their obligation to protect our nation. They may not get everything right at the time – hardly anyone does in the heat of the moment – but they should not have to face a lynch mob years after the fact (especially those in the lynch mob who blessed the activities at the time they were being used). The American public, one hopes, can see through all this. And as Nancy Pelosi might well discover, playing a role in inciting a mob can come at a cost.

“Competing moral goods?” That’s a new one when discussing torture. But here is where Peter and I agree - at least I am moving toward his position that the law is not a concrete edifice with only form and substance. What of justice? What of mitigating circumstances? Unlike the revenge seekers and out and out Bush haters, I grant the administration the benefit of their good intentions in a very difficult and morally ambiguous universe. I think they made the wrong choices - horribly wrong - but recognize that some allowance must be made when the awesome responsibilities under which those men and women were working is thrown into the mix.

It doesn’t excuse their actions. It won’t “lessen their time in purgatory” as we used to half-jokingly use as a catch-all for arguments about ethics and morals with our Viatorian teachers back in the day.

But perhaps, it should keep them out of the dock. And out of jail.

Yes, silly.

I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration. We’ve heard for years from reckless open-borders ideologues who continue to insist there’s nothing to worry about. And we’ve heard for years that calling any attention to the dangers of allowing untold numbers of people to pass across our borders and through our other ports of entry without proper medical screening - as required of every legal visitor/immigrant to this country - is RAAAACIST.

9/11 didn’t convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality.

Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will.

I am as strong a supporter of guarding our borders and dramatically reducing illegal immigration as anyone but the attempt to hijack the Swine Flu story and portray it as a question of too many illegal immigrants coming into America spreading disease is so far off base as to be a laughable exaggeration.

The Chinese are fanatical about closing their borders and yet SARS became a huge problem for them. Disease doesn’t know about walls or barbed wire. Viruses don’t care if you have 100,000 soldiers guarding your border. If Swine Flu does become widespread, the overwhelming majority of people will catch it as a result of contact with an American citizen.

Even the beginnings of the spread of Swine Flu in the US cannot be traced to illegal immigrants. The kids in New York who contracted what appears to be a mild form of the disease got it in Mexico after a recent trip.  The Texas and California cases were also mild and still something of a mystery because none of the infected people were anywhere near pigs and hadn’t been to Mexico. As the CDC narrows its search to find “Patient Zero,” it is likely that individual would have recently been exposed to the bug  in Mexico.

But even if the original infection came from an illegal immigrant,  it is not reasonable to assume that if we had only closed the borders, we would have been any safer whatsoever. Millions of Mexicans have entered the US perfectly legally since the outbreak began and it a dead certainty that any serious spread of the disease would occur in this group rather than the tiny number of cases that could be attributed to illegals.

Adequate border protection will go a long way to preventing another terrorist attack. It will help relieve the burden on our schools, health clinics, and other social services from illegals who leech from the taxpayers after breaking the law to get here.

But to believe that closing the border to illegals  will have any effect on the spread or even containment of Swine Flu is refuted by the facts. It is estimated that anywhere between 500,000 and one million illegals pour across our border every year. Almost the same number - about 650,000 -  enter the US legally every day.

Let’s not bring unrelated issues into the discussion of Swine Flu.

UPDATE: HEY KIDS! LET’S BLAME AGRI-BUSINESS!

This is not only sillier than trying to drag illegal immigrants into the mix, it is dangerous rumor mongering as well:

Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site-a level nearly equal to Smithfield’s total U.S. hog production.

On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the Comfood listserv and has written about it on her blog, Peak Oil Entrepreneur):

Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak.

From what I can tell, the possible link to Smithfield has not been reported in the U.S. press. Searches of Google News and the websites of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all came up empty. The link is being made in the Mexican media, however. “Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha. No need to translate that, except to point out that La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started. Judging from the article, Mexican authorities treat hog CAFOs with just as much if not more indulgence than their peers north of the border, to the detriment of surrounding communities and the general public health.

To sum up, a couple of newspapers and a couple of blogs have tried to make the connection between the evil Smithfield and a Swine Flu outbreak  and that swarms of flies feeding on the apparently untreated fecal matter is the way the disease spreads - at least how it began to spread.

I guess we can call the WHO and tell them to stop the investigation, that we’ve found the cause and the culprit. Aside from being incredibly irresponsible, I would think that the scientists at WHO and the Mexican health agency IMSS might want to look into it before rumor mongering newspapers and ignorant bloggers start spreading false information.

No explanation forthcoming as to how the disease mutated from one that spread through fly bites to one that apparently spreads human to human (no one is sure yet how the bug spreads). Neither is there an explanation for how these flies were able to travel hundreds of miles to infect others. But that doesn’t stop irresponsible journalists and bloggers from just making sh*t up as they go along.

We’re going to see a lot of this.

My friend Tom Elia at the New Editor raised this question in an email and it bears looking into.

The fact is, if this mess with Burris had been made public back on February 5 when the Illinois senator submitted his “corrected” affadavit to the Democratic Majority Leader, there is a pretty good chance that the Illinois senator would not have been able to vote on the stimulus bill in the senate on the 13th.

Why? Because pressure would have been building - as it is now - for the “lying little sneak” to resign his seat. It seems surreal but Roland Burris has now changed his story about contacts with Governor Blagojevich’s henchmen about the senate seat at least 4 times - twice yesterday alone. If he had been forced to resign in a similar time period that is shaping up now, there would have been no 60th vote on the stimulus bill in the senate, no cloture, and the bill would have been sent back to conference.

So which Democrats knew of this affidavit and why wasn’t it made public immediately? Burris says he sent the affidavit to the chairman of the impeachment committee who then promptly sat on it until the Chicago Sun Times got wind of the story at which point Burris himself gave it to the newspaper. The committee chairman was Barbara Flynn Currie, House Majority Leader.

Barbara Flynn Currie has represented the 25th Congressional district in the Illinois House since 1979. That district includes Hyde Park - former home for many years of President Barack Obama.

Just sayin’.

So what does Rep. Currie say about the affadavit? Not much:

Currie acknowledged receiving Burris’ letter but said she was unfamiliar with its contents.

After being read Burris’ account of his dealings with Robert Blagojevich, Currie said: “Very odd. I don’t know there is anything actionable here, but I would like to check the record.”

“Unfamiliar with its contents?” And we’re expected to believe that the second ranking Democrat in the Illinois House never opened a letter from the junior senator from her state, that there was no cover letter explaining what was inside, and that Burris’s lawyer had not contacted Currie’s office to see what she was going to do?

The chances that there were other Democrats - local and national - who knew of this “corrected” affidavit and what was in it would seem to be pretty good. What would be your first move as a state party leader if you discovered that your junior senator was basically a liar? Or, even putting the best face on it, was going to be involved in a huge political firestorm as a result of a convenient memory loss?

I would think a call to Illinois’ senior senator Dick Durbin might be in order, don’t you? Durbin, the #2 Democrat in the senate, just might have mentioned it in passing to Harry Reid, wouldn’t you think?

Speculation, yes. And logical? You decide.

The point being, Democrats were willing to sit on this story until the stimulus vote was safely passed. The vote in the senate was Friday the 13th and the Sun Times story appeared the next day. But what if the story had broken on February 6th, the day after Burris says he gave the letter to Currie? The story would have been vying with the stim bill for attention and the calls now emanating from Republican quarters in Illinois for Burris to step down would have been huge news. Who knows what national Republicans would have done? They very well may have demanded Burris recuse himself from voting until the matter was cleared up - a perfectly reasonable request. If that had happened - or if Burris had been pressured to step down as he still may do - there would have been no 60th vote for cloture.

This would seem to be a very powerful incentive for Democrats to cover up Burris’s lies, keeping the country, the people of Illinois, and the opposition in the dark about a matter that, if known at the time of his confirmation by the senate, may have resulted in Burris being rejected.

So what to do with Burris? Here’s Harry Reid prior to Burris’s testimony before the impeachment hearing:

After days in which Senate leaders had demonstrated determined resistance to Burris’ appointment to the Senate by scandal-tainted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Reid praised Burris as “candid and forthright.” And he suggested the testimony Burris is to give Thursday before the state legislature’s impeachment committee could be crucial to his prospects of gaining the seat.

“He’s going to go answer any other questions they might have. He’s not trying to avoid any responsibility and trying to hide anything,” said Reid (D-Nev.) “Once that’s done, we’ll be in a different position and see what we are going to do.”

If that testimony - now under investigation for perjury - was “crucial to his prospects of gaining the seat” what say you now, Harry Reid? You have a sitting senator, appointed by a sleazy governor, who quite possibly perjured himself at a hearing you yourself deemed “crucial” to a decision on his fitness for office. Does the Democratic party stand for ethics and transparency? Did you know of Burris’s problems with the truth and sit on the story until after the stimulus bill was passed?

There are few in Illinois who believe Burris outside of the predictable support he is receiving from the African American community. The Chicago Tribune editorial board blog, Vox Pop, is calling on the senator to resign:

The hole just gets deeper and deeper, and Burris keeps digging. He has no credibility.

And many Democrats are losing theirs.

Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), who chaired the impeachment panel, sat on Burris’ amended testimony for more than a week.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed that no Senate appointment by the disgraced Rod Blagojevich would stand—until Blagojevich appointed Burris.

They told Burris to go to the impeachment committee and testify fully and truthfully. And he did not.

And now what? “He went before the state Legislature and he obviously convinced them, but we’ll have to see… I hope he didn’t try to avoid or mislead anyone…” Reid said Tuesday. Durbin is on an overseas trip and hasn’t bothered to comment on the tomfoolery back home. Late Tuesday came word that the Senate Ethics Committee has started a preliminary inquiry.

Finally, remember that Illinois Democrats failed to do right by the people and schedule a special election for this Senate vacancy. If they had done that, voters today might be weighing the lost credibility of candidate Burris, instead of expressing their disgust with Senator Burris.

Disgraceful. Disgraceful all around.

There’s only one honorable action for Burris: resign.

Oh that this all would have been happening last week instead of this week. What might have been…

UPDATE

From commenter Aurelius:

Wasn’t the Senate cloture vote for the stimulus package 61-36 (http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/02/09/stimulus_vote/)? So even with Burris out or incapacitated the vote in favor presumably would be 60. That’s still meets the supermajority requirement. Say if Burris resigned and no one was appointed immediately. Then there would be two Senate seats vacant and the supermajority requirement would be reduced to 59 (3/5 of all senators). So Burris resigning even could be a strategy to pass the bill. The only argument that works is whether the problems with Burris make it politically dangerous for the majority party to press cloture and passage of the stimulus.

My response:

Ah - you are correct - I think. And thinking about it, if it was that desperate of a situation, they probably would have wheeled Ted Kennedy in to vote.

Still, when Reid found out about Burris’s lying - if he found out and I think it a good bet he did - the senate vote was in doubt. So the motivation to cover up still would have been there.

UPDATE II

Dan Riehl sends along this old Jim Lindgren post about House Majority Leader Currie. Lindgren is a constituent and thinks quite highly over her. Indeed, Currie has apparently marched to a reformist tune during her career.

But this is a partisan political matter. And, as Lindgren points out, Currie is actually friends with the president. It is not beyond imagining that Currie sat on Burris’s letter so as not to make any trouble for her friend’s efforts to get his stim bill through the senate. Nor is it impossible to imagine Currie ringing up Senator Durkin and relaying the contents of Burris’s “corrected” affidavit and warning of big trouble ahead.

Burris may or may not have affected the outcome of the vote if this scandal had broken a week earlier. But the very fact that the letter was kept quiet shows that the Democrats knew it contained political dynamite and that at the very least, it would have complicated matters in the senate. Reid had no idea when Burris handed in this letter if he had enough votes for cloture. Reason enough to cover up the truth from the people of Illinois and the GOP opposition.

The pages of punditdom are full today of breathless questions about the Obama White House. Is Obama an incompetent empty suit as the right was charging all those months? What happened to the candidate who so confidently talked of hope and change, igniting a grass roots political effort this nation has never seen? Is the Obama Administration already “in trouble” - whatever that means?

Rule Number 1 for success as a serious commentator on politics is never get too far ahead of the pack. In this respect, it appears that many of my fellow bloggers - especially on the right side of the sphere - are sipping some heavy duty koolade. A couple of missteps by the newbies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and we’re already talking about an “Epic Fail” for the Obama presidency? Let’s hope not. If Obama “fails” it will mean this nation will go into an economic tailspin the likes of which haven’t been seen since Clark Gable was the bees knees and Al Jolsen could wear blackface and sing about his “Mammy.”

Actually, I am exaggerating a bit. But there is no doubt the subtext of many analyses is that Obama is not inspiring much confidence so far and that in some areas - personnel selection, Congressional relations, and foreign policy - he has shown a troubling lack of basic competence. In vetting his cabinet, controlling the debate on his stimulus bill, and moving to assure the rest of the world, Obama has stumbled, froze, and failed to engender confidence in his leadership overseas.

It must be pointed out that there is nothing new in this, that a new president and his people have to get the kinks out of their operation as they power up. Talk of “hitting the ground running” is all well and good but, as Theodore H. White pointed out in his brilliant Making of a President series, all Administrations eventually face a period as Obama and his people have faced the last 72 hours. That is, the “well oiled machine” of the campaign runs smack into the reality of governing a nation. New faces and personalities with new responsibilities take time to mesh. This is made especially obvious in their Congressional outreach operation and the seemingly incomprehensible surrender of the process on the stimulus bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The Democrats loaded up what is essentially an infrastructure and jobs bill with so much outrageous pork having nothing whatsoever to do with stimulating anything (except perhaps the saliva glands of Democratic constituencies) that Republicans in the House were able to safely band together and reject it. Support for that monstrosity in its current incarnation is dropping like a stone, a fact not lost on Senate Republicans or Democrats.

The fact that so many items have already been dropped from the measure shows that the White House simply didn’t think this thing through very thoroughly. Allowing liberal Democrats to lard up the bill with goodies for teachers, unions, feminists, and other loyalists and then using the economic crisis to try and ram it down the throats of the country has been exposed and it doesn’t make the Administration look very good. The Senate could pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire and radically alter the package, reducing its cost substantially while doing a better job of targeting tax cuts and infrastructure improvements where it will do the most good. If that occurs, the Administration would do well not to fight it but rather embrace the alterations in the Senate and then try and convince Pelosi and House Democrats to go along with the changes.

At least the stimulus bill is salvageable. But what about the rash of personnel problems being experienced by the Obama White House? Two cabinet nominees have already withdrawn with another presidential appointee Nancy Killefer also walking the plank. That doesn’t include a tax dodging Treasury Secretary and an Attorney General who has proven adept at playing politics at the Justice Department when it suits the goals of the man in the Oval Office. (See Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists.) There has also been a rash of appointments where the president has gone back on his promise not to hire lobbyists for his administration. Politico counts 12 former lobbyists so far which gives a whole new meaning to “Hope and Change” - as in, “I hope no one will notice what a hypocrite I am by hiring all these lobbyists who won’t change much of anything.”

Amazingly, the only appointee who has had relatively smooth sailing so far is - Hillary Clinton? But don’t worry. With Bill Clinton on the loose, something is bound to pop up to embarrass everyone. The smart money is on women trouble but I’d lay odds that it will be a money issue that explodes in Obama’s face.

Perhaps even more troubling than the withdrawals and the reasons for them is the fact that the Obama people apparently knew of both Geithner and Daschle’s tax problems before announcing their names. This wasn’t a matter of bad vetting, just a tone deaf approach to the process. How could they possibly think that no one would care that the Treasury and HHS Secretaries are tax scofflaws.

And while we’re on the subject of insensitivity, the Administration’s response to the suffering of people in the Midwest as a result of the winter storm may not have reached the Katrina level of “Heckuva job, Brownie” but has certainly not been Obama’s finest hour. His aide David Axelrod brags about how warm the Oval Office is while people are shivering in unheated homes? The president dines on exotic steak while some can’t get out of their driveways to go to the grocery store? He has chosen to remain virtually silent on the tragedy, quite rightly fearing comparisons with Katrina. Meanwhile, a week after the storm winds stopped, there are still tens of thousands without power in Kentucky alone. The National Guard has just now made it to Western Kentucky and officials are going door to door to hand out welfare checks.

My ironic post on the storm’s aftermath and the failure of FEMA to alleviate suffering in a timely manner scooted over the head of most lefties without even musing their hair. The feds are not to blame for this suffering, Mother Nature is. But I found the schadenfreude irresistable in that it was the left who chose to politicize natural disasters and Obama will almost certainly have his own “Katrina moment” eventually.

And Obama’s initial steps into the foreign policy arena have not been without a slip or two. His interview with Al-Arabiya TV - the first interview he granted following his inauguration - was chock full of moral equivalence and a curious detatchment about Iran’s ambitions, undercutting his own sanctions policy at the UN in the process.

But the reported rift between Obama and the military brass may prove most damaging in the long run. Obama cannot simply say “I won” to Petreaus and the Chiefs - especially since he promised to listen to the commanders before committing to a hard timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Well, he apparently thinks it better that he keep a campaign promise to the anti-war crowd than follow the advice of his generals. This is his prerogative, of course. And it may end up being a tempest in a teapot. But the potential for trouble between Obama and the military when we have a war to win yet in Afghanistan does not bode well for the future.

But given all these pratfalls and miscalculations, Obama is still in good shape with the people who elected him. They are much more willing to stick with him than right wing pundits and mainstream media critics who seek to create a little news by trying to rain on the president’s honeymoon. He still has plenty of time to right the ship. And admitting mistakes is a good first step.

But if the president continues to stumble over the next few weeks, then he can expect the tenor of the criticism directed against him to change. America doesn’t have time to break in a new president. Fairly, or unfairly, Obama will not have the luxury of a long, leisurely shake down cruise for his Administration. He has already lost a significant amount of goodwill with his faux pas. Given the enormous challenges we face, it would behoove the new Administration to get its act together sooner rather than later.

UPDATE

As usual, Ed Morrissey and I are on something of the same wavelength this morning.

No “hope and change” for the Iranian people - not if Obama’s State Department gets their way regarding a new “overture” to Tehran.

It will apparently take the form of a letter - either addressed directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei or an open letter. The letter may do something that no American president - not even Jimmy Carter - was willing to do; guarantee the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Iranian regime.

In othe rwords, both a “no invasion” pledge as well as the US promising not to seek regime change by proxy or otherwise:

State department officials have composed at least three drafts of the letter, which gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Islamic regime, but merely seeks a change in its behaviour. The letter would be addressed to the Iranian people and sent directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or released as an open letter.

One draft proposal suggests that Iran should compare its relatively low standard of living with that of some of its more prosperous neighbours, and contemplate the benefits of losing its pariah status in the west. Although the tone is conciliatory, it also calls on Iran to end what the US calls state sponsorship of terrorism.

The letter is being considered by the new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as part of a sweeping review of US policy on Iran. A decision on sending it is not expected until the review is complete.

In an interview on Monday with the al-Arabiya television network, Obama hinted at a more friendly approach towards the Islamic Republic.

Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he was waiting patiently to see what the Obama administration would come up with. “We will listen to the statements closely, we will carefully study their actions, and, if there are real changes, we will welcome it,” he said.

Ahmadinejad, who confirmed that he would stand for election again in June, said it was unclear whether the Obama administration was intent on just a shift in tactics or was seeking fundamental change. He called on Washington to apologise for its actions against Iran over the past 60 years, including US support for a 1953 coup that ousted the democratically elected government, and the US shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988.

Will Obama give in to Ahmadinejad’s demand that we apologize? If we are going to go as far as guaranteeing their legitimacy, why not? Bill Clinton toured the world his second term apologizing for America’s past behavior to anyone who was ever even slightly offended (or pretended to be) at US actions over the years. Given the critique by Obama of our Iran policy during the campaign, I certainly wouldn’t put it past Obama to grovel before the Persians.

There may be some political gamesmanship at work here as Allah points out at Hot Air:

In fairness, there may be an ulterior motive to this: Ahmadinejad’s up for reelection in June and Khatami, the “moderate” who preceded him in office, is evidently planning to challenge him. By showing a conciliatory face now, The One may be trying to swing Khamenei towards backing Khatami and the reformists and leaving Ahmadinejad and the hardliners out in the cold. Although if Khamenei’s planning to dump the tiny terrorist for anyone, I’d guess it’s for his protege Larijani. He is high on Hopenchange, after all.

Good points and I would add that Larijani, who resigned as chief nuclear negotiator last year, has been slowly gathering support in the Guardian Council which could prove to be very significant. The Council chooses who gets to run for president and the Iranian Majlis. They can nix a candidate for the most specious of reasons - that they do not interpret the Koran correctly or commit some other religious faux pas. It is possible Larijani could out manuever Khatami, even to the point of having him denied access to the ballot.

Khamenei, who is reported to be in poor health, has no interest in making Obama look good but may see a lessening of tensions as a godsend for the Iranian nuclear program. The drive for ever more biting sanctions in the UN will be slowed if there is any kind of a rapproachment with the US. Russia and China, who have subsumed their own commercial interests in Iran to go along with the sanctions, will almost certainly reject any further efforts to punish Tehran for their nuclear program. There is even a possibility that the sanctions already in place will be lifted - at least there may be more of an effort to circumvent the sanctions.

This is a pretty bad idea in my view. Anything that legitimizes the Iranian regime condemns the Iranian people to further indignities under the rule of the religious crazies who still beat women in the streets for not covering themselves and jail anyone who breathes opposition to them. And any idea that improving relations with Iran will keep Hezb’allah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any number of terrorists groups at bay is wishful thinking.

Seems to be a lot of that at the White House since Obama took over.

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker

President Obama had a very difficult task yesterday. It wasn’t just the stratospheric expectations for his inaugural address engendered not only by his previous performances but also because of the frenzy whipped up by his sycophants in the press. I doubt whether even something along the lines of the Sermon on the Mount would have been good enough to live up to the build up given him by his cultists in the media.

Obama’s primary task to my mind - what I wanted to hear from him - was a commitment to bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a successful conclusion while maintaining the pressure on al-Qaeda around the world.

The sticking point, as always, is to define “success” in Iraq and Afghanistan. I must confess to cringing whenever I hear one of my fellow conservatives praise George Bush for bringing “democracy” to Iraq and how our efforts have created a “strong ally” in the war on terror.

Iraq may be a democracy some day. But it is far from being a free country today and even our own ambassador thinks things are still balanced on a knife’s edge. The situation is much better than it was two years ago but, all things being relative, Iraq is still a violent place that needs American assistance to keep from flying apart at the seams. Also, the latest Freedom House ranking for Iraq, based on very specific criteria is “not free.” Granted it is difficult to create a functioning democracy following so many decades of brutal dictatorship and there is no doubt that there have been some improvements even in the face of violence by terrorists who wish to destabilize the country. But for anyone to claim that Iraq is “free” or even close to being free is being disingenuous or ignorant. Holding elections does not make a nation free or democratic by itself. One glance at Gaza proves that.

We have yet to even see the beginning of the end game in domestic Iraqi politics that will play out among the various factions of Shias as they vie for power. Some of those factions are loyal to Iran or at least look to Iran for protection and leadership. The idea that Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror is still up in the air and it may yet devolve into a religious dictatorship like the one next door. The chances of that happening are ebbing but who can tell?

In short, Iraq is still messy - about what you’d expect from a nation that has gone through what the Iraqis have had to endure these last 6 years. Therefore, a definition of “success” in Iraq at a bare minimum would have to include a functioning Iraqi government capable of handling its own security. The longer we stay on in numbers capable of assisting the Iraqi government in achieving this goal, the better the chance for success. Right now, a clock is ticking on our presence in those kind of numbers with the alarm set to go off by the end of 2011. And it appears Obama wishes to speed things along. Do not be surprised if, after meeting with his military chiefs, the new president sets his own timetable for withdrawal.

In his speech yesterday, Obama said nothing about “success” regarding Iraq or Afghanistan:

We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We’ll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.

Indeed, it is difficult to succeed if one does not wish to. This is especially true in Afghanistan where it is becoming increasingly clear that no positive outcome will be possible there as long as al-Qaeda and the Taliban are using Pakistani territory with impunity to attack NATO troops and train suicide bombers to wreak havoc in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. I will watch with great interest as Obama deals with Pakistan. I predict he will have even less success than President Bush in getting the Pakistanis to reassert sovereignty over their own territory and kick the terrorists out. The post-Musharraf government is disinclined to make the all out effort required to defeat their enemies which means they will be at constant risk of being overthrown themselves either by the military or, less likely, a combination of forces sympathetic to the extremists.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan bleeds. And given the great reluctance most other NATO countries have shown to carry their weight in this war and commit their troops to combat, the burden of “forging a hard earned peace” will fall squarely on the shoulders of the US and the few nations who are already fighting. Will this mean that President Karzai will be forced to treat with the Taliban? He may have little choice if President Obama decides that the war is unwinnable and starts withdrawing US forces.

The key to Obama’s foreign policy can be found in this passage from his speech:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

Welcome words for the rest of the world - including our enemies. He is right when he states that our military power alone cannot protect us. But it goes a damn sight farther in doing so than “humility and restraint.” In fact, it appears to me that Obama is saying that “doing as we please” - protecting our own interests first which may not fit his definition of “justness” - is a mistake and that we should be “humble” and practice self-abnegation in abjuring what is in our best interests to show the world we will allow our nose to be blown off to spite our face.

An exaggeration but apropos of what Obama and the New Left have been spouting for years. If there is the stink of self-interest involved in a military action (or any other application of hard power), it is likely to be opposed. Darfur or the Congo is where we should be sending troops thus showing our selflessness to the world. Anyplace where war fighting advances or protects American interests is evil.

Just how “humility and restraint” will do anything besides make liberals feel good that the rest of the world doesn’t despise us anymore because we have subsumed our own interests to some other “higher” interest, including humanitarian goals or perhaps the will of the United Nations escapes me.

And then, there’s the idea that fanatics and thugs were just itching for George Bush to leave office so they could turn over a new leaf in our relations with them:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

On my radio show last night, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker pointed out that in the last decade we have freed Muslims from persecution and tyranny in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Praytell why is it the United States who should be coming hat in hand to the Muslim world? What more could we possibly do to prove our “respect?” Time for the moderate Muslims to stand up and start reciprocating. That is the true way forward with US-Muslim relations.

And who but a liberal could actually believe that the thugs and fanatics care one whit about “the people” in their countries and what they think? All they care about is if someone looks sideways at the regime, they are lined up against a wall and shot. Being “on the wrong side of history” is an occupational hazard for the Assads, the Castros, the Chavez’s, and the fanatical mullahs of the world. They seem to be surviving just fine, thank you.

And why should any of those peace loving gentlemen “unclench their fist” when they can achieve so much more dealing with a president who wishes to approach them with “humility and restraint?” Most of the animosity directed against America by the brutes of the world is, as Obama points out, manufactured internally in order to justify oppression. Only Iran has broadened their anti-Americanism to include proxies like Hezbullah and, potentially, Hamas. The question remains why should our enemies extend a hand in friendship or even civility? As we have already seen, the inauguration of Obama has changed nothing, altered no positions, softened any hearts.

I will not refer to Obama as naive in deference to my friend and frequent commenter Michael Reynolds who has almost convinced me that the new president has a realistic take on our enemies. But will approaching Iran with “humility and restraint” actually do anything except risk the overture being thrown back in your face with the typical derisiveness demonstrated by the Iranian leadership?

I have a feeling we will find out over the coming months.

Can you identify this president?

“…a good man who didn’t understand his own shortcomings. He was genuinely religious, loved his wife and reshaped himself so that he could adapt to her ways and show her true affection. He was one of the most popular men in [his state], polite and thoughtful, easy and good at the political game, charming and fine and handsome. However, he has been criticized as timid and unable to cope with a changing America.”

Nope. Not Bush. It’s Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States. This is the guy (among a half dozen others) that contemporary historians deliberately forget in order to be able to say that George Bush is the worst president in American history.

It was America’s bad luck to have a run of bad presidents at the most inopportune time. The decade preceding the Civil War saw some of our worst chief executives - all more incompetent and more wrong headed than Bush #43. We had 4 presidents between 1850 and 1860 and each one a bust to varying degrees. It is no accident that also during that decade, the nation moved slowly and inexorably toward splitting in two.

Elected in 1848 and dying suddenly on July 9, 1850, Zachary Taylor proved the adage that generals usually make terrible politicians. The Whig party, in its death throes, put “Old Rough and Ready” up, expecting to reap the spoils of having their man in the White House. But Taylor wasn’t much of a Whig and didn’t think much of Whiggery in general. His singular achievement was creating the Department of the Interior for which Native Americans will always be grateful, I’m sure. Indifferent to foreign affairs, he managed to anger the south, the north, and all points in between with his tepid policies toward slavery.

His successor was, if possible, even more incompetent. Millard Fillmore is, to this day, a national joke, a punchline of a president. Historians try to be kind to the guy but Fillmore’s rabid enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (a product of the last great compromise by the Great Compromiser Henry Clay) meant that hundreds of freed slaves or slaves who had been living free in the north became targets of bounty hunters and slave owners with dubious claims on their person. Many freed blacks fled to Canada rather than take a chance with Fillmore’s federal marshals who enforced the act, working cheek to jowl with the bounty hunters. The legislation was part of the Compromise of 1850 that lasted less than 4 years when the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the seminal Missouri Compromise of 1820 and made the 1850 legislation moot. Even the Whigs refused to nominate him for a full term in 1852. He ended up running for president in 1856 on both the Whig and Know Nothing Party tickets. Considering that there was no such party as the Whigs except as it existed in the drawing rooms and salons of a few rich men, Fillmore’s greatest claim to fame may be that he was the last major figure to run for president on the Whig party ticket.

He was succeeded by the above referenced Mr. Pierce - a drunk “dough face” Democrat who managed to make people forget how bad a president Fillmore had been. Pierce was the darkest of dark horse candidates at the convention. He was desperation choice, receiving the nod on the 49th ballot. And the only reason he won the general election was that the Whigs had been self destructing since the Mexican War, splitting the party in two while the issue of slavery in the territories acquired in that conflict finished the Whigs off and cleared the way for a new party. The Whigs put up muttonchops Winfield Scott, another Mexican War general. This time, the military hero ploy failed as Scott managed to win only 4 states.

Pierce’s greatest success was in swindling Mexico out of a couple of million acres of land for $10 million. The Gadsen Purchase was ostensibly to be used for part of the transcontinental railroad. It never came close but they did find billions of dollars in precious metals. He is perhaps best remembered for signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act which led directly to Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, and disunion. The New Hampshirite inexplicably took the southern side when two rival constitutions were presented to Congress when Kansas petitioned to become a state. This was the last nail in the coffin of the union and paved the way for James Buchanan’s election in 1856 - my choice for worst president in history.

Buchanan plainly froze. With the nation disintegrating around him, he did nothing to stop it. Perhaps by then it was too late. We wll never know because when South Carolina seceded from the union, he failed to act. He failed to hold on to federal forts and customs houses in the south as the rebels seized them one after another. He failed to resupply Fort Sumter. State after southern state voted themselves out of the union and he basically kicked the can down the road.

James Buchanan makes the presidency of George Bush look like a smashing success.

None of those presidents placed their mark on history the way that Bush has. For good or ill, George Bush will be remembered as a consequential president whose footprint will affect presidents’ policies far into the future. Witness Barack Obama keeping many of his foreign policies - even ones he criticized during the campaign. Right or wrong, those policies cannot be easily tossed aside or, even more surprisingly, Obama found upon being briefed that the policies were sound and correct after all. This is true to a large extent of Iraq. Our withdrawal under Obama will differ only at the margins from Bush’s plan.

As for domestic policies, Bush has changed the education debate forever as he brought the idea of judging teachers for their effectiveness into the mix. Many will argue that No Child Left Behind is a horrible piece of legislation and it certainly has its critics. But no one can argue that NCLB isn’t a starting point for any further educational reform and that testing, charter schools, and perhaps some form of vouchers will be staples of the debate over the federal role in education.

Superannuated fools like Buchanan or incompetent drunks like Pierce didn’t come close to having that kind of impact on the future.

Bush certainly made it necessary for disaster relief to be a top priority of the federal government - a job previously (and best) left to local communities and the states. For good or for ill, every earthquake, hurricane, or tsunami will now be judged by how much better the response will be than Katrina. The Democrats, having politicized disaster relief, will now reap their own whirlwind.

There is one other aspect of the Bush legacy that has had an impact on the future and that will mark him as an important president; he will be held up as an example of conservative governance despite the fact that he has not governed as a conservative nor does he hold much in the way of conservative principles or any influence at all in the conservative movement.

This last may be the most consequential aspect of the Bush legacy. Democrats will successfully be able to portray Bush as a conservative largely as a result of his religious beliefs which endeared him to the social conservatives of the Republican party and his decidedly neo-conservative views on foreign policy which reflected few traditional conservative ideas but at the same time, was embraced by many conservatives following 9/11. Besides those exceptions, his policies were almost universally center right or even center left (prescription drug bill, anyone?).

This will easily affect the next 3 or 4 presidential elections - just as the presidency of Jimmy Carter was held up as an example of liberal excess by Republicans despite the fact that, even though a man of the far left now, Carter governed from the center. Many forget that he substantially raised defense spending, tried some modest entitlement reforms, and advocated a mostly free market energy solution. His social policies were decidedly liberal as was his failed foreign policy. But Carter’s judgement was always anchored in centrist politics.

Does this mean that Bush will be remembered as a “great” president? I hardly think so. Presidents who practice the worst kind of cronyism are not remembered as great. Presidents who politicize the government are not remembered as great. Presidents who stick the veto pen in their pocket while the federal deficit spirals out of control will not be remembered as great. Presidents who go to war without a plan for the aftermath and end up losing billions of dollars to corruption and graft will not be remembered as great. Presidents who create an entirely new federal department to deal with Homeland Security and then duplicate jobs that were already being done by other agencies and departments will not be remembered as great. Presidents who acquiesce and approve what the international community defines as torture will not be remembered as great.

There’s more but I want to go to lunch.

(Note: For some fun in the comments, insert your reasons why George Bush will not be remembered as a great president.)

George Bush - for effectiveness, for sound policies and judgment, and for competence in running the government - will not be remembered as a great president. He will almost certainly be ranked in the bottom fifth in any listing of our chief executives. But he is far from the worst presisdent we’ve ever had and his mark on history is assured. Might he be seen in a different light years from now? His stock may rise a bit if Iraq continues to improve. But any success in Iraq is offset by the empowerment of Iran in the region and the role Bush’s policies played in that development.

In fact, the rise of Iran brings up something very important about these last 8 years and highlights one of Bush’s biggest failings; he didn’t understand that the world and America were changing (with or without 9/11) and because of that, we are behind the curve and trying to catch up. Iran’s rise, like China’s and India’s, was inevitable. It would have taken Saddam Hussein a decade to rebuild his military to act as a counterweight to Shia fundamentalism. Knocking him out was inconsequential to the march of Islamic extremism across the Arab and Muslim world. Witness the rise of al-Qaeda allied groups in Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, and elsewhere in Asia. Our invasion of Iraq had little to do with those movements which are homegrown and have their own beefs with non-Muslims in that part of the world.

Iran, with half its population under the age of 25, was funding Hezbullah and Hamas long before Bush came into office. Only now are those seeds they planted bearing fruit in Lebanon and Gaza. They are using asymmetrical warfare to garner influence throughout the Muslim world. No Bush, no rise of Iran? If you believe that, you haven’t been paying much attention to what’s been happening in the world over the last 2 plus decades.

Still, the changes overseas and the changes at home were never anticipated by the Bushies nor was any attempt made to map out a long term strategy to counter. This may be the most critical part of the Bush legacy unless President Obama can act quickly and intelligently to get us back in the game; find a way to checkmate Iran, block Hezbullah from gaining power in Lebanon, develop a true strategic partnership with India, block Chinese ambitions in east Asia, ditto Russian designs everywhere, and shore up our friendships in Latin America. Bush did not react well to many of these changes which is why the train has left the station and Obama is running to catch up.

At home, the 8 years that Bush has been in office has seen the country slide back toward the center while demanding more from government. Obama successfully captured a yearning among citizens for an end to partisan sniping. They don’t care that the Democrats have spent the last 8 years in perpetual derangement over the Bush presidency. They want a new spirit in Washington and so far, Obama is delivering.

Talk to me 6 months from now and we’ll see if that spirit is still with us. But whatever happens, it won’t reflect the fact that Americans clearly wanted change when they pulled the lever for Obama. And that change is from perhaps the most tumultuous and consequential 8 years in several generations.

Is there any purpose served by investigating allegations of ordering torture, illegal surveillance, and other sins alleged to have been committed during the years of the Bush Administration?

For those of us on both sides who are slightly less partisan in our view of government and politics, it is a serious question. For those who have already made up their mind on both sides, not so much. While they scream at each other across the great divide in American politics, serious people will have to grapple with the serious questions - legal and constitutional - raised by the actions of the Bush Administration over the years.

As I see it, there are two major roadblocks to investigating previous actions of the administration. The first is that much of what has been alleged involves top secret programs, only parts of which we have been given a glimpse. It is a dead sure bet that no one has seen the legal opinions written by the Justice Department for any of these alleged abuses which makes any charges of illegal or unconstitutional actions by the Bushies even more problematic.

To base an opinion only on what has come out in the press about the Terrorist Surveillance Program, for instance, has always puzzled me. Forming an opinion without all the facts is the definition of “half-assed.” And what information we have as far as the TSP is concerned has come to us largely from anonymous sources who may, or may not, have had sufficient access to information about how the program worked in its entirety, not to mention a question of their knowledge of the legal implications involved. Compartmentalization of information in these top secret programs is a given and the number of people who would have a good overall picture of how they worked would be few indeed.

The only way to find out for sure is to investigate how the program was set up, how it was run, the technical means employed, and the legal justification for them. (Torture is a different matter that I address below.) But is it possible to investigate the workings of a top secret, on-going intelligence program without compromising its effectiveness?

And this brings me to my second major roadblock to investigating alleged abuses in the Bush Administration; the probability that any such investigating will degenerate into a partisan circus.

The Judiciary Committee under John Conyers has written two reports since 2006 that goes into excruciating detail about illegalities and unconstitutional actions by the Bush Administration. The problem is - and Conyers admits it - is that nothing in either report constitutes a finding of fact. This is not surprising given that the overwhelming number of allegations are based on newspaper accounts, studies done by liberal think tanks, or reports from partisan left organizations like Human Rights Watch and the ACLU.

Here’s Conyers from the Forward to today’s release of a 457 page list of allegations against Bush and his Administration. He is quoting from an op-ed he wrote in 2006 after the release of his initial report, “The Constitution in Crisis.” After all that ”investigating,” we are left with little better than a political indictment of actions Conyers and much of the left disagrees with:

The administration’s stonewalling, and the lack of oversight by Congress, have left us to guess whether we are dealing with isolated wrongdoing, or mistakes, or something worse. In my view, the American people deserve answers, not guesses. I have proposed that we obtain these answers in a responsible and bipartisan manner.

It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those “revolutionaries,” it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate. So, rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader.

The committee’s job would be to obtain answers - finally. At the end of the process, if - and only if - the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee.

Conyers admits he has no “answers” - only questions. Hence, the idea of some kind of “bi-partisan” committee to look into these allegations (there are hundreds) and discover “the truth.”

The Judiciary reports take issue with the Administration over just about every action they’ve undertaken in 8 years. Signing statements, intelligence, detention policies, rendition (begun under Clinton and expanded under Bush), warrantless searches and surveillance, the Plame Affair, the politicization of the Justice Department, the states attorney imbroglio, and “enhanced interrogation” or torture.

How many are actual allegations of crimes committed and how many are reasonable (or unreasonable) differences of opinion over politics? We won’t know unless someone, somewhere investigates what went on. The question of whether we need answers or not is moot. We do. The problem is who is going to find the answers?

Conyers’ idea of a bi-partisan committee or commission made up equally of members from both sides won’t fly. The Republicans tried it with investigating intelligence leading up to the Iraq War and the Democrats rejected the findings and substituted their own narrative. There was also the 9/11 Commission that degenerated into a partisan tug of war and that failed to assess enough blame to either Clinton or Bush while going easy on Giuliani and the intel agencies. There was also the findings of the WMD Commission most Democrats rejected out of hand.

The fact of the matter is politicians are, well, politicians and asking them to forget that primary fact of their existence is absurd. Hence, Conyers idea of entrusting such a daunting task to Congress is, to my mind, a non-starter. Even beyond the 9/11 Commission or the other investigative committee reports on the war, any body that investigates the president must be beyond partisan suspicion.

The leaves us with two choices; naming a special prosecutor (or several) to impartially investigate potential abuses or, intriguingly, set up a Commission of private citizens a la the South African Truth Commission. The latter idea has some interesting possibilities but at bottom, is a little ridiculous. In South Africa, they were dealing with decades of apartheid as well as political murders and violence. Unless you think Bush is responsible for 9/11 or actually caused Hurricane Katrina, I think some kind of Truth Commission is a just too much drama for what is at stake in any investigation of the Bushies.

A special prosecutor would probably be the fairest and most efficacious way to investigate wrongdoing during the Bush years. I think one should definitely be appointed to address the issue of torture which is not a political issue and represents some of the most serious charges of illegality against the president and his people.

As for the rest of Conyers allegations, I just don’t know. The problem with special prosecutors is that once you appoint one, they are almost duty bound to find illegality come hell or high water (i.e. Scooter Libby, Ken Starr). If it would be possible to narrow the scope of what a special prosecutor might be tasked to investigate, it might be possible that such an examination of Administration actions could rise above partisanship and would be accepted by a large majority.

But perhaps, that is only wishful thinking. Obama himself recognizes the difficulties which is why he would rather “look forward” than behind:

Obama also views waterboarding as torture. To find out who authorized its use in interrogations, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has introduced a bill creating a bipartisan commission with subpoena power. But when Obama was asked on ABC’s This Week whether he’d back such a commission, he was cautiously noncommittal.

“We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth,” Obama said. “Obviously, we’re going to be looking at past practices and I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward.”

Some Democrats who have strongly opposed the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation practices say they agree with Obama’s cautious approach. Among them is the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin.

“There’s a big debate going on about holding the previous administration accountable for [its] actions, and I would say for the time being that the Obama team is focused properly on the future,” Durbin said. “Our economy is so weak; we’re in desperate need of jobs. Before we start looking at the pages of history in the Bush administration, we should be looking at the obvious need to create jobs and create a new economic climate in this country.”

There’s a good reason both Obama and Durbin are cautious and it has little to do with the state of the economy. Congress or any Commission named can easily carry out its duties. Congress, especially, can do more than one thing at a time.

The danger that both Democratic leaders see is in the extraordinary difficulty in investigating Bush in a non-partisan manner and whose findings would be accepted by a majority of Americans. If the investigation would be seen as a partisan witch hunt, it would not redound to the Democrat’s advantage and might even hurt them at the polls. This would seem to make some kind of a special prosecutor even more likely but even there, Obama and the Democrats will tread cautiously.

Perhaps there will be more of a push for the facts by the American people of what happened during the Bush years than one can currently imagine. But like Obama, Americans tend to be a forward thinking people who tend not to dwell on the past. Except in this case, there may be good reason to find out what went on at the White House during the last 8 years. Whether it can be done believably and fairly is another question entirely.