Right Wing Nut House

A good old fashioned Midwestern ice storm has arrived and we’re expecting almost 1/2 inch of ice to accumulate before it turns to rain later tonight.

I expect to lose power at any time - probably for at least 24 hours and maybe longer.

Same storm knocked out power to half of Oklahoma. Don’t know if it will be quite as bad as that but the radar does not look good.

We’ve got our flashlights and candles all set along with extra blankets. Sue won’t be able to go to work due to our depressed driveway being a sheet of ice already.

If you don’t see anything posted for a day or two, you’ll know why.

With the writers talks collapsing in a heap of acrimony out in Hollywood (and Keifer Sutherland going to jail for the next 48 days) it appears that next month’s premier of 24 is going to be put off indefinitely.

But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer the pains of withdrawal from our favorite show. Sterling Publishers has just released a book guaranteed to give you your 24 fix and then some. Entitled Secrets of 24: The Unauthorized Guide to the Political & Moral Issues Behind TV’s Most Riveting Drama, the book will give you tremendous insight into how the show is seen as well as some extraordinary background on the show’s characters and settings:

Secrets of `24′: The Unauthorized Guide to the Politics, Moral Philosophy, and Technology Behind the Most Riveting Show in TV History uses this blockbuster series as a jumping off point to pursue real issues of relevance to our times–from whether torture is ever justified to whether individual rights should be sacrificed in the fight against terrorism. These are “big think” issues, complemented by a survey and analysis of the technologies and methods that drive the suspenseful plots. The illuminating collection combines original interviews and commissioned essays from leading political figures, cultural commentators, celebrities, and experts on technology, security, and terrorism with carefully selected anthologized op-eds and essays. It follows the wildly successful model the authors established with Secrets of the Code and their Secrets books–which have more than four million copies in print worldwide and have been on more than a dozen international bestseller lists, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and USA Today.

Secrets of `24′ is an exciting, engaging, and informative read for everyone fascinated with the series–and an essential companion for understanding the show’s central concerns. It will be in stores just in time for the start of the show’s seventh season in January 2008, and the widely anticipated movie.

Yours truly was asked to submit an essay. It’s on page 50 and entitled “The Circles of Hell: Dante, Daniel Boone, Gary Cooper, and … Jack Bauer.”

A sample:

Bauer has transcended the entertainment world and become a political talisman; stroked by the right and bashed by the left, 24 has become the favorite guilty pleasure of the political class in America. Even many liberals confess their addiction to the show, despite Bauer’s enormously troubling use of torture and the cavalier way in which he disregards the constitutional niceties. And many conservatives, seeing Jack taking the fight directly to our enemies (along with maintaining a moral certitude that is both refreshing and emotionally satisfying), cheer their hero on as he battles evil.

Sound familiar? It should. Hollywood long has prospered making heroes of such men — although not quite in the same context. Jack could best be compared to the small town sheriff who finds himself up against the ruthless outlaw gang as Gary Cooper played in the classic western High Noon. Cooper’s portrayal of Marshall Will Kane, who must vanquish a gang of criminals bent on revenge on the day of his wedding, had many of the same points and counterpoints found in the character of Jack Bauer. It is the solitary nature of his fight – the man willing to do his duty against terrible odds – that brings to mind Bauer’s predicaments as Jack flies from the frying pan into the fire week after week, always coming out on top because in the end, good must triumph over evil.

The book features interviews with people like former DCIA James Woolsey as well as columnists like Frank Rich and of course, interviews with the stars about their characters.

I will have a review of the book in a few days but you can reserve your copy at Amazon by clicking on the link above.

“Anything is possible.”

That’s what I wrote on Monday morning following the “narrow” win by the NO! forces in the Venezuelan referendum on granting President Hugo Chavez enormous and unprecedented powers. My speculation seemed wild at the time but was based on reports coming from Venezuelan bloggers who turned out to be pretty damn reliable in the end.

Most pre-election polls had NO! winning by 55% or greater. For those on the left who are sneering about the fact that Chavez didn’t try and rig the election, I would suggest you wait a day or two. There certainly were some strange things going on at CNE headquarters in the wee hours of the morning.

And one rumor is the final margin of victory for the opposition was actually negotiated between the two sides so that Chavez could save face with a razor thin loss rather than the 57%-58% that some polls were showing prior to the vote. That particular rumor seems wildly off base – until you remember we’re talking about Chavez’s Venezuela where after the last presidential election, half full ballot boxes disappeared for hours only to turn up later stuffed to the brim with votes for Chavez.

As it turns out, the NO! vote was indeed a landslide and Chavez was in the process of rigging the election in his favor when the Army came a-calling and told him if he cheated, he’d be gone:

Most of Latin America’s leaders breathed a sigh of relief earlier this week, after Venezuelan voters rejected President Hugo Chávez’s constitutional amendment referendum. In private they were undoubtedly relieved that Chávez lost, and in public they expressed delight that he accepted defeat and did not steal the election. But by midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d’état if he insisted on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president conceded—but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world.

(HT: Ed Morrissey)

I also reported the role of General Baduel in heading Chavez off at the pass by going on TV and demanding that the vote - already held up several hours by the CNE - be released. Either shortly before or after he made that appearance, he placed his call to Chavez telling him the jig was up.

There are so many lefties with egg on their faces this morning that the liberal blogosphere could very well be mistaken for an omelet chef blog burst in progress. Praise for that great “democrat” Chavez and comparing him favorably to Bush was laughable at the time and now, simply priceless - one of those moments in blog history that can be trotted out time and time again whenever some lefty gets a little too large for their suspenders.

Just for fun, let’s review what some on the left had to say about their buddy Hugo and how he was a superior democrat to American leaders:

“I would be the last to claim that Hugo Chavez is a saint, or even a politician worth emulating. But I do find it interesting that when faced with the will of the people, Bush ignored that will and Chavez bowed to it. One we are told, is a vile threat to the freedom of his nation because of his incessant power grabs and disdain for democratic process. The other is a great leader of men, fully committed to democracy in his home country and abroad. If I hadn’t attached names to this story, could you tell which was supposed to be which?

This is one of my favorites:

Before the vote began, Venezuela’s government had agreed to randomly open 30% of the ballot boxes to monitors in order to assure a fair election. Upon receipt of the result, President Hugo Chavez — the putative dictator in waiting for Venezuela — announced simply, “I congratulate my adversaries for this victory. For now, we could not do it.”

The Venezuelan and American press — both enormously and dishonestly hostile to Venezuela’s Bolivarian transformation — had spun the article dropping term limits as a bid to become “President for Life,” though there was no provision to ever stop presidential elections that put that decision into the hands of Venezuelan voters. We shall now see if a single mea culpa is expressed by any of the media in the wake of the Chavez government’s quick and gracious acceptance of the referendum result. I doubt it.

The author never mentioned that the agreement to “randomly open 30% of the ballot boxes” went by the wayside that night - as did every other agreement Chavez made prior to the election about independent electoral observers, opposition access to the raw vote count, and anything else that would have prevented Chavez from stealing the vote.

And as far as shenanigans that occurred during voting, here’s a few of dozens of irregularities from this revealing letter sent by two International Observers to the Venezuelan recall vote in 2004 to Members of Congress:

* We were threatened on several occasions, at least once with pistols concealed under the shirts of Chavistas who yelled threats and showed us their weapons.

* When we went into the 23 de Enero barrio, Chavistas working in the voting area turned into rabble-rousers and tried to stir the crowd into attacking us. The Plan República troops did nothing to stop them, and when our safety was in question, they escorted us out. We could no longer observe the many irregularities in the area.

* We r eceived first hand reports from witnesses who saw armed Comando Maisanta and Circulos Bolivarianos posted outside voting centers, threatening the people who tried to vote SI.

* We witnessed military officers prohibiting the vote of people in the opposition areas because they were “wearing shorts”, a violation of the constitution and their human rights.

* Thousands of voters who voted SI, were physically assaulted at the voting centers.

* In some voting centers, the review process was started without the presence of Opposition witnesses to guarantee transparency.

* Opposition witnesses and table members were physically removed from voting centers or blocked from entering and guaranteeing transparency.

This is the election Jimmy Carter guaranteed as fair and open.

Of course, the biggest omelet on the face goes to Roger Cohen for this lights-out slice of schadenfreud:

I salute you, Hugo Chávez.

If Roger had stopped there, people would have only thought him crazy, not an idiot:

And yet, there was a glum Chávez declaring in the unadorned language no totalitarian system can abide that: “The people’s decision will be upheld in respect of the basic rule of democracy: the winning option is the one that gets most votes.”

The United States might ponder those words — not just because of what happened in the presidential election of 2000; not just because the arithmetic of voting has proved unpalatable in Palestine; not just because of the past U.S.-abetted trampling of elected Latin American leaders in Chile and elsewhere — but because democracy was alive and vital in Venezuela on Sunday in a way foreign to President Bush’s America.

As I said in my American Thinker blog post, “Thank God for that.” And I might have added, thank God Cohen only writes for the Times and not a real newspaper:

But his honoring of democracy’s brittle wonders still merits a salute. Above all, however, I salute the Venezuelan people. Chávez said before the referendum that a “no” vote equaled a vote for Bush. Unperturbed, Venezuelans went ahead. And they gave a civic example from which Bush’s battered and blathering democracy can learn.

Bush’s “blathering” democracy apparently doesn’t need to negotiate with the opposition his margin of defeat. What say ye, Roger? Up for eating a little crow?

It’s childish, of course, to gloat so. But when people are constantly throwing mud in your face, it’s sometimes nice to return the favor by tossing a banana cream pie and hitting them right in the kisser.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the CIA informed Members of Congress about what they were doing to get information from high value al-Qaeda prisoners. Nor is it surprising that Democrats who were briefed would have kept that information from their colleagues as they were bound to do by law.

Some Republicans are trying to explore the hypocrisy angle by trying to point out that Democrats are hardly in a position to come down on Republicans for torture when their own leadership was privy to the “severe interrogation techniques” being used. I have yet to see any quotes from those who we know were briefed that they then objected to the torture later and used it in a political context to bash their opponents.

In the absence of proof that Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, Harman, et al criticized the Administration for their torture policies, it is hard to make the hypocrisy charge stick.

However, they can be and should be excoriated for meekly going along with these policies and not registering their objections in the strongest possible terms. Alone among the Democrats, former ranking minority member of the House Intel Committee Jane Harman says she sent a letter of protest to the CIA questioning their methods to extract information. The letter fell on deaf ears.

Some of the netnuts are twisting themselves into knots to posit the notion that the whole purpose of the briefings was to embarrass the Democrats:

It’s pretty clear that either one of the Republican members of Congress at the meeting, or the CIA, decided to leak what happened at a super-classified post-9/11 briefing in order to embarrass Pelosi and the Democrats. And I don’t doubt for a minute that Bush approved the leak, as he always does.

It’s also clear that had Pelosi raised any private objections during the meeting - remember, it took place in the first year after September 11 - Bush and the Republicans would have leaked that fact to the public (like they just did) and destroyed her career and marked her publicly as a traitor. No member of Congress, no American, could have spoken up about anything in the months after September 11 and survived. It’s patently unfair to suggest that somehow because Pelosi didn’t object then that she doesn’t have the right to object now.

One final point. I hope this teaches Pelosi and Reid and all the Democrats that no matter what you do, this administration will mark you as a traitor and try to do destroy you. You might as well fight back and try to win, because if you don’t, you’ll sit back and lose.

Note that not only did some nefarious Republican leak from a “super classified” briefing - as if Avarosis ever gave a crap about leaking from other classified briefings as long as they reflected badly on Republicans - in order to make Pelosi look bad today, they would have leaked back in 2002 if Pelosi had objected to make her look bad today.

Of course, Johnny has no evidence whatsoever that a Republican leaked the story to the Post nor does he have a scintilla of evidence that Bush was behind it. He’s just throwing crap against a wall to see what sticks - a pastime he enjoys immensely when outing gay Republicans who would choose otherwise.

One other major meme that is emerging from the netroots is that since Bush had this meeting hanging over their heads, the Democratic leadership refused to begin impeachment hearings. With that kind of logic, we can expect an immediate effort by Pelosi to start the impeachment bandwagon moving next week now that everything is out in the open.

Fortunately for the republic, Pelosi is a little smarter than the rabid, frothing at the mouth bloggers who would push the Democratic party over the impeachment abyss.

Finally, just for levity’s sake, we now have to 9/11 truthers hot on the trail of the destroyed DVD’s that opened this whole can of worms in the first place. Here’s a comment left on my post on the subject:

The tapes destroyed primarily not because torture but because of what the tapes reveal. Possibly revealing the conspiracies behind 9/11 attack. This is another set of evidence revealing that the 9/11 was an inside job. The secret societies are directly responsible for this. Especially Bush family’s Skull & Bones. 2006 movie “the good shepherd”, directed by Robert De Nero, shows how the CIA was formed and the Skull & Bones influence over the intelligence community plus CIA’s torture…

I am not one who believes the republic has been permanently destroyed as a result of the torture authorized by the Administration. Good grief what a shallow and ignorant view of history one must have to believe that nonsense. We survived four score and seven plus years of allowing slavery in this country - even to the point that the government was in cahoots with slave owners in that they went after escaped slaves in the north and depended on revenue gleaned from cotton exports to survive.

There are plenty of sins committed by the United States government - some of which make torturing murderous jihadis look like a walk in the park. The innocents who have been victims of the government down through the years are a much blacker stain than the “severe interrogation techniques” used by the CIA and Army on, by all reports, was an extremely limited number of murderous, cold eyed killers.

Torture is wrong in all cases at all times. But to get hysterical about its implications for the republic, as most on the left seem determined to do, is absurd. Those nations overseas who are saying “American has lost its moral standing” didn’t recognize that standing in the first place. And even if some actually feel that way, I can guarantee that the next time we selflessly give of ourselves to save the victims of some natural disaster or pull some tiny country’s chestnuts out of the fire when it is being bullied by a larger neighbor, talk about America losing “the moral high ground” will disappear fairly quickly.

Let us treat this with the seriousness it deserves without either exaggerating its impact on our history or using it as a political club in a cynical attempt to demonize your political opponents. Torture has been used to our great shame and calumny. But it hardly merits the “end of the republic” rhetoric being bandied about so cavalierly by those whose outrage is nurtured and husbanded against their own government rather than directed equally toward an enemy that seeks to kill us all.

For Fred Thompson, the race for the Republican nomination has just gotten extremely simple.

Do well in Iowa or fold up shop and go home:

FORMER TENNESSEE SENATOR Fred Thompson has decided to take his campaign and virtually all of its resources to Iowa in an all-or-nothing attempt to register a strong showing in the caucuses here on January 3. “We’re getting ready to make this not only our second home, but our first home,” he told a small gathering of supporters at the Polk County Convention Center on Friday night. Thompson and his wife Jeri chatted with the crowd before making their way through the exhibits at the Iowa Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in downtown Des Moines.

Beginning Monday, December 17, Thompson will launch a bus tour that will take him throughout the state. From the beginning of that trip through caucus night, Thompson will essentially live in Iowa, taking only a one-day trip out of the state to celebrate Christmas at his home in Virginia.

“Iowa is critical to our campaign, and it may in fact be everything to our campaign,” says one Thompson official. “If we don’t do what we need to do in Iowa, it will be tough to compete effectively down the road.”

Outgunned and outmanned by Mitt Romney and on the downside of the boom for Mike Huckabee who has captured much of the support the former Tennessee senator was depending on to be competitive, Thompson finds himself in a do or die position in Iowa. He has disappeared from polls in New Hampshire, garnering less than 5% and trailing Ron Paul. Most importantly, he finds himself 3rd in the vital South Carolina primary, losing to Huckabee and Mitt Romney.

In short, Thompson must find a way to reverse his fortunes or he will be forced to make a quick exit from the race.

Thompson’s troubles have been well documented by the national press (I detailed those criticisms for Pajamas Media here). But beyond the familiar litany of charges that he’s too lazy, too detached, and doesn’t want to be president bad enough, there is simply the matter that Thompson never lit a fire under conservatives in Iowa or New Hampshire.

This left an opening for Huckabee who patiently cultivated the religious right and then tapped into the enthusiasm of the Fair Tax movement. The combination has proved itself potent - up to this point. Recent revelations about Huckabee and his intervention to get a rapist paroled (who then went on to rape and murder two women) as well as a groundswell of opposition being spearheaded by The Club For Growth who see his fiscal policies as governor in a decidedly unconservative light may create doubts in voter’s minds.

So Thompson’s “all in” move to Iowa may be coming at exactly the right time. As people begin to really scrutinize Huckabee’s record, Thompson will help them along by highlighting his opponent’s total lack of experience in foreign and defense policy:

“All I’m saying is that national security and foreign affairs is the most important thing facing this country,” said Thompson. “It affects our security and the security of our children. And who has nuclear capability is the most important part of the most important issue. I think it’s best if someone has experience in that regard. I’ve spent a lot of time–I served on the Intelligence Committee in the United States Senate, I’ve traveled around and met with foreign leaders. I chaired a committee that involved oversight of nuclear proliferation issues and things of that nature. So I think it’s surprising that someone that would aspire to be president takes the position like closing Guantanamo, for example, is a good thing. And does not keep up with what’s going on in Iran.”

In addition to throwing a bucket of cold water on the boom for Huckabee, Thompson’s emphasis on national security issues may finally excite those conservatives who see foreign policy and defense issues as the most important criteria to judge a potential candidate for president.

Previously, much of Thompson’s stump speech has been devoted to his thoughtful ideas on federalism - not exactly red meat for the right but positions that have earned him praise from most GOP quarters. A switch to emphasizing his foreign policy credentials while Huckabee stumbles over Iran and other issues dealing with the War on Terror could be just what his campaign needs to win back (or get off the fence) many conservatives who may be uncomfortable with Huckabee’s inexperience.

Thompson has previously said that he must finish third in Iowa to remain viable. That prospect certainly appears within reach even if he can’t overtake Huckabee. But realistically, Thompson must exceed expectations in Iowa by finishing second in order to generate the kind of momentum that would propel his candidacy forward. And a first place finish - a remote possibility but not unimaginable - would shock the field and give the campaign a huge boost, making the candidate a contender even in states that he’s not doing well like New Hampshire and Michigan.

There is something appealing about a candidate who recognizes what needs to be done and doesn’t hesitate to try and do it. In Thompson’s case, he is putting it all on the line in Iowa in a make or break effort to achieve a breakthrough.

Not a long shot by any means but rather a recognition of the reality of a campaign that is currently in flux. And where it will settle is anyone’s guess.

I detailed my major concerns with Mike Huckabee in this post last week, dealing exclusively with the former Arkansas governor’s decidedly unconservative fiscal record.

But frankly, to a large swath of GOP voters on the Christian right, the Huckster could be the second coming of Bill Clinton but as long as all of his religious “I’s” are dotted and “T’s” crossed, he’s their guy.

Nevertheless, the Club for Growth is planning to launch a series of ads to run in Iowa and New Hampshire (as well as nationally on Fox News) that urge viewers to ask Mike Huckabee about his tax record.

Needless to say, Mr. Huckabee has a lot of explaining to do:

To emphasize Mike Huckabee’s eager support for tax increases, the ad excerpts a 2003 clip of Mike Huckabee rattling off a list of tax increases he deems acceptable. While the former governor will argue that he had no choice and was bound by state law to balance the budget, the 2003 clip is emblematic of Huckabee’s ten-year tenure in which raising taxes was his first resort. Many cities and states have balanced budget laws like Arkansas, but not all governors and mayors embrace higher taxes the way Mike Huckabee did. Some actually cut government spending and waste in order to make ends meet. But under Mike Huckabee’s tenure, the average Arkansas tax burden increased 47%. Mike Huckabee’s support for tax hikes include:

Just to let you know, Huckabee has also expressed support for an internet sales tax that would make shopping online an adventure.

I don’t believe The Huck is a closet liberal or anything. He’s just stupid:

Then tell me, what does he mean here when he asserts that Bush had the new NIE “for four years”? The whole point of the NIE is that it reversed the previous NIE from 2005 that claimed Iran had a covert weapons program. The one that just came out is brand new, compiled over the last year or so and reportedly reliant on intel that was recently obtained. He didn’t misspeak, either; he hinted that the report was four years old in an interview on MSNBC this morning too.

Between this and the “INS” gaffe yesterday, if he doesn’t watch out the narrative’s going to shift from Dumond, immigration, and religion to whether this guy has even a basic sense of what he’s talking about.

The “INS gaffe” was an eye popper. In a position paper he released on immigration, Huckabee (or some amatuer hour staffer who wrote it) referred to the “Immigration and Naturalization Service,” an agency that when folded into DHS in 2003 became the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).

Holy Christ! Doesn’t anyone vet these things before releasing them to the press?

And not only did Huckabee accuse Bush of having the NIE on Iran for four years, when questioned about the document on Tuesday, almost 24 hours after it became available, Huckabee hadn’t even heard about it.

Scared yet? Let’s go to Huckabee channelling Pat Robertson. The TV preacher, as I’m sure you know, conducts regular conversations with the Almighty about all sorts of things. Here’s Huckabee on his recent surge in the polls:

There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Applause) That’s the only way that our campaign can be doing what it’s doing. And I’m not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out.

I want to make it clear I am not complaining that the guy has faith. I think that’s just fine.

Just don’t expect me to support someone for president who explains his rise in the polls by intimating that God is on his side.

Are we really going to hand the nomination to this neophyte? This man whose knowledge of foreign and defense policy is deficient, whose grasp of large issues like immigration questionable?

And we haven’t even gotten to the “electability” issue. This guy is a walking disaster for the Republican party. In a general election against Hillary Clinton he will be lucky to take 8 states - all in the south - and make the GOP debacle of 1964 look like a walk in the park.

So go ahead, indulge yourselves my Christian right friends. Nominate the man who can quote parables from the bible but doesn’t know that the INS isn’t in business anymore. Elevate a man who is “right” on all your issues but is as unschooled in foreign policy as George Bush was when he took office in 2001. Except we weren’t at war then and didn’t think it necessary to have a president who had a broad, adult, outlook on the world.

What do you think now?

Nominate Huckabee and I won’t be the only one shopping my vote somewhere else next November.

I see from Memorandum that the only people writing about this at the moment are on the left. I sincerely hope that changes because this is a very important story and I would hate to think that a sense of partisanship would intrude on what is a probable violation of the law.

There may be good reason to destroy DVD’s of interrogations. But not when they have probative value in a potential court case nor when they are destroyed to cover up wrong doing by employees of the government:

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

This is bad enough. But what makes this a budding scandal for the CIA is that both the 9/11 Commission and attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui specifically requested such evidence and the CIA denied they had it:

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah.

Granted the judge may not have asked for the specific tapes nor did the 9/11 Commission request anything specific. But if the CIA is going to hang its hat on that defense, damn them. Their failure to turn over potential exculpatory evidence may open an avenue of appeal for Zacarias Moussaoui to at least grant him a new trial. And they impeded the 9/11 investigation by failing to fully cooperate with the Commission’s requests for information.

It is against American law to torture prisoners - even terrorists. And American law’s definition of torture mirrors that of the definition given by the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention prohibits the kind of “severe interrogation techniques” that were used on Zubaydah. It’s not a question of whether waterboarding isn’t really “torture” because our special forces guys go through it as part of their training. Or other “stress techniques” aren’t really torture because they leave no marks or don’t really distress the prisoner. The law is the law and these special interrogation techniques are in violation of the Geneva Convention and hence, American law.

If one plus one still equals two, that would mean that the officials who were concerned that the tapes “could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy” and went ahead and destroyed them anyway are up for obstruction charges.

We can argue - and I have in the past on this site - that the Geneva Convention is ridiculously out of date, moldy in its thinking and laughably naive about men at war and the exigencies of the times. And the fact that we and other western countries are the only ones who even make an attempt to conduct ourselves by its rules is patently unfair and revealing of a sickening double standard abroad in the world.

But until and unless it is amended, those officials who authorized the interrogations and who carried them out could be in violation of the law and subject to prosecution. Destroying the tapes therefore is destroying potential evidence in a criminal trial.

I don’t write much about the torture issue anymore because it sickens me to have my friends on the right trying to excuse it and it nauseates me when the left moralizes about it. It is wrong and will come back to haunt us. Not because, as some argue, that it puts our own soldiers in danger. That argument flies in the face of history. We have never fought a war where the enemy we were fighting followed the Geneva Convention. In fact, most of the enemies we have fought have been flagrant violators of human decency in their treatment of prisoners much less paying any attention to the strictures in the GC.

We should not torture because of who we are not because of what the Geneva Convention says, or the left says, or the hypocritical third world moralists say. It is wrong for Americans to do it. And yes, waterboarding is torture. Putting a prisoner in stress positions is torture. Sleep deprivation is torture.

Forget the hysterics from our political opponents and examine the issue not as a partisan but as question of simple human decency. If we Americans have lost that - if we’ve forgotten that we hold ourselves to a higher standard than the brutes we are fighting and their allies in the hypocritical third world, then we will have lost a very important component of what makes us an exceptional nation.

I don’t know if we have the courage to face this issue and bring the violators to some kind of justice. I totally reject the idea of allowing any kind of foreign tribunal to judge Americans for the simple reason I wouldn’t trust them to be fair and objective, anti-Americanism being a dominant ideology in much of the world where the efficacy of such tribunals is acknowledged. And facing the music on torture opens a chasm beneath our feet in that the techniques used on these prisoners were approved at the highest levels of the American government. The idea that these officials will walk away scott free is troubling. But if you put Bush on trial, what does that do as far as limiting the options of his successors? And is it the kind of precedent we really want to set?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. And those on the left, blinded by their unreasoning hatred of this president, are not the ones to judge the best course of action. But there clearly must be some kind of accounting for what has been done in our name. How that plays out will say a lot about us as a nation that purports to stand for the best in humanity and not the worst.

UPDATE

More from the Times here.

And The Blotter is reporting that DCIA Hayden issued a statement to CIA employees before the Times article broke, giving a rather disingenuous reason for the destruction of the tapes:

CIA Director Mike Hayden sent a message to CIA employees today saying “the press has learned” that the CIA videotaped interrogations in 2002 and that the tapes were subsequently destroyed in 2005. The decision to destroy the tapes was made by the CIA, but he says the leaders of the congressional intelligence committees knew about the tapes and the decision to destroy them.

Hayden offers an explanation for why the tapes were destroyed — “no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries” and offers another defense of the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.

John Sifton, a human rights attorney who is active in cases involving the CIA’s secret prison program, said today that the destruction of the tapes is a scandal.

“This is a major piece of the mosaic of evidence, and now it’s gone,” said Sifton. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

If the CIA didn’t have a history of stiffing Congressional Committees, judicial proceedings, and special tribunals like the Warren Commission, we might be more inclined to believe General Hayden.

But it is ridiculous for Hayden to say that the decision to destroy them was made in a political vacuum. As the Times article points out, the tapes were destroyed at the height of Congressional interest in the CIA’s interrogation techniques. To then go ahead and destroy a tape that may have been instructive of how the CIA carried out interrogations would seem to infer cover-up rather than some kind of standard operating procedure.

That is, unless you trust what Hayden and others are saying about the subject. And frankly, they lost the right to get the benefit of the doubt long ago.

UPDATE: 12/7:

Jamses Joyner also sees obstruction of justice as a problem for those who ordered the tapes destroyed. He also points out that there was Congressional oversight of a sort in that the Chairmen and Vice Chairs of the House and Senate Intel Committees were informed of the plan to destroy the tapes. (No mention of informing the Speaker and Minority Leader in the House and the Majority/Minority Leader in the Senate which would also be the custom in these cases of limited notification.)

James pretty much takes Hayden at his word as far as why the tapes were destroyed but points out the discrepancies in his explanation. Any way you slice it, someone needs to be held accountable for the tape’s destruction.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is yours truly for my post “Buchanan’s New Book: “Prepare Ye for the End.” Finishing a close second was “The Visual Imagery Society” by The Glittering Eye.

Finishing on top in the Non Council category was “Have Our Copperheads Found Their McClellan in Retired LTG General Sanchez?” by Council newbie Wolf Howling as GW joins the gang this week.

If you’d like to participate in the Watchers Council vote, go here and follow instructions.

Lost in all the back and forth about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nukes is the shocking fact that such a document saw the light of day to begin with.

Is there any other nation on earth - perhaps in world history - that would share the deepest secrets of its intelligence gathering with its own citizens and the citizens of the world? And even more remarkable is the fact that by releasing this particular NIE, the government itself is forced to acknowledge an error in what it previously believed about an adversary - if not an outright humiliation certainly an embarrassment that every other government I can think of would avoid at all costs.

There are examples of democracies that have investigated their government’s actions and publicized wrongdoing or embarrassing incidents. But those revelations were dragged out the government as a result of official inquiries. What makes this situation different is that the release of the NIE was done voluntarily and with full recognition of the consequences.

Now before everyone starts ripping flesh off my bones for being a naive, jingoing, nationalistic, incurable romantic about America allow me to acknowledge that just about every reason you can give for why the NIE was released is probably valid. I hold no illusions that the government didn’t make the NIE available because it was bound to come out anyway. And when I say that the release was “voluntary” I don’t mean to imply that on a superficial level, the prospect that the report would be leaked didn’t play a role in the NIE’s release.

But in the end, for whatever reason, this is an extraordinary turn of events. The government could have refused to release the findings and then stonewalled when the document was leaked. Judging by the reaction on the right (and the dismissal of the key findings by the Israelis), the Administration may very well have been able to get away with not commenting on the report at all. To release it - reluctantly and trying to put the best face on the findings as they did - doesn’t obviate the fact that in some very important ways, the act of allowing the public to view the most secret deliberations of our government validates American democracy.

We live in a time when secrecy in government threatens our basic liberties as well as the concept of “open government” on which our democracy rests. This Administration has classified more documents already than any other in American history and has been more secretive in its deliberations than any other in memory. While recognizing that much of what our intelligence agencies do must necessarily remain hidden in order to protect the methods with which that intel is gathered as well as the lives of people gathering it, we as a people must demand that our leaders be as accountable for their actions as our national safety permits.

While recognizing this danger, we can celebrate when the exceptional nature of American democracy reveals itself. With great reluctance, the Bush Administration took a tiny step toward a more open government. I have no illusions that this will continue nor do I believe it redeems the Administration for the previous 7 years of obsessive, over the top secrecy.

But taken as a separate event, the release of this document should elicit feelings of pride that the core beliefs we hold about this country can be confirmed in such a public and remarkable way.

Above and beyond the questions about the reasons key judgments on the Iranian nuclear program were altered so dramatically over the course of just two years, the biggest puzzle of all is why the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was released in the first place.

Aside from initiating a political earthquake here at home, the revelation that Iran stopped working on its nuclear program in the fall of 2003 and that there is no evidence they have started it up again is causing a sea change in opinion overseas as well.

Almost everyone now agrees that bombing Iran is off the table - if it hadn’t been removed previously. The President’s jawboning on the issue has recently been less about American options and placed more in the context of why the world needed to act to prevent an Iranian bomb. Judging by their success in getting two rounds of sanctions passed by the Security Council, this seemed to be a winning strategy. As recently as 48 hours ago, China had agreed to the outlines of another round of sanctions against the Iranian regime.

But now, the support for another blast of sanctions directed against Iran seems to be slipping away. Russia is standing firm against more restrictions and China seems to be reconsidering as well:

“Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated that the U.S. acknowledgment that Iran halted a suspected nuclear weapons bid in 2003 undermined Washington’s push for a new set of U.N. sanctions.

We will assess the situation regarding a new U.N. Security Council resolution taking into account all these facts, including the U.S. confirmation that it has no information about the existence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” he said.

Russia and China, another veto-wielding council member, have grudgingly approved two sets of limited U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. But the Kremlin has bristled at the U.S. push for tougher measures, saying they would only widen the rift.

China had said Tuesday the U.S. report raised second thoughts about new sanctions.

This would be a huge blow to our Iran strategy. The fact is, the Security Council placed these sanctions on Iran in the first place not because they were building a bomb but because they defied the Council’s order that they stop enriching uranium and cooperate 100% with he IAEA in assessing how “peaceful” was their program. Even the mild mannered bureaucrats at the IAEA are not satisfied with Iran’s performance in this regard:

“To be frank, we are more skeptical,” a senior official close to the agency (IAEA) said. “We don’t buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran.”

The official called the American assertion that Iran had “halted” its weapons program in 2003 “somewhat surprising.”

IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei has constantly urged Iran to be more transparent in divulging information about their program. It hasn’t worked to date which is why ElBaradei has reluctantly gone along with the sanctions.

But losing ElBaradei would be the ballgame as far as sanctions by the Security Council is concerned. And right now, it doesn’t look good:

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s public stance, and the main message of Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general, was to praise the new finding as proof that his agency had been right in its analysis.

The American assessment “tallies with the agency’s consistent statements over the last few years that — although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities — the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran,” Dr. ElBaradei said in a statement.

He said the American intelligence assessment “should help to defuse the current crisis.”

One reading of that could be “no crisis, no sanctions.” And if ElBaradei would abandon his support for sanctions, it is likely that the entire regime would collapse and all our hard work in getting the cooperation of Russia and China would have been for naught.

This begs my original question; if all this fallout from the NIE could be foreseen, why release it in the first place?

For the answer, ideology and loyalty colors most analyses. The left believes Bush was forced to release the report due to its explosive nature. Indeed, it is likely that if the President had tried to sit on the report, someone associated with the loose cabal of intelligence officers and analysts who have been leaking damaging information for years - both to point the finger at some administration mistake or to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the difficulties we’ve had in Iraq and elsewhere - would have surely passed the NIE on to one of their friends in the national security press.

Or perhaps Bush was persuaded by Congress to release the unclassified version thinking it likely that the report would see the light of day that way. Either way, the NIE would have hit the public in the worst possible light - spun by hostile legislators, spooks and journalists. Rather than create a firestorm of controversy, he allowed the redacted version to be released with his blessing.

All of this may be true. But I think there was another, more compelling reason why Bush gave the go ahead to release the report. He wanted to undercut the neo-conservatives both in and out of his administration who have become a lead weight around his presidency for at least the last 3 years.

For the last year, ever since Donald Rumsfeld left the Administration, the President has slowly altered his course in foreign affairs, taking a more traditional approach to world problems. He has not only changed military strategy in Iraq but has initiated diplomatic moves resulting in meetings with both Syrian and Iranian officials. He has become more engaged in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, culminating in the meeting in Annapolis last week where both sides agreed to resume peace talks. He has shown more willingness to work with the United Nations on a variety of issues not limited to Iran including problems in Lebanon and Africa. Bush has even relented slightly on issues relating to climate change in that he is now at least willing to discuss the problem.

To say that these moves would have been unthinkable during the first 4 years of the Bush presidency would be an overstatement. But there is no doubt that there has been a shift in Administration strategy away from unilateralism and toward engagement. And each of these small steps toward traditionalism has brought criticism and resistance from the clique in the Administration variously known as the neo-conservatives or the Cheney faction.

Much ink has been spilled trying to explain the relationship between George Bush and his Vice President. The simple minded portray Cheney as a puppeteer pulling the President’s strings. Others have Cheney as a totally independent force riding roughshod over the executive branch to get his way with Bush standing by helplessly unable to stop him.

Bush himself has a hard time describing his working relationship with Cheney. Here he is trying to talk about it in a special on Fox News:

Q: “Is he a man of few words inside the White House? What’s his style when you meet?”

Bush: “I think I’m wiser than that — than to be pigeonholed or, you know, to get cornered by a wily advisor. Look, that’s not the way it works. Dick Cheney walks in and I say, ‘What’s your advice on this subject?’ And he gives it to me and I make up my mind based upon a variety of factors including the advice of key advisors and he is one of them.”

Outsiders see something different. David Gergen In an interview for the PBS Frontline documentary Cheney’s Law:

I think this particular vice president has had an enormous amount of persuasion with this president. I think he’s listened to him more closely than anybody else, especially in those early years. But still at the end of the day it’s the president who’s made the calls, and I think this penchant for secrecy and large executive power that Dick Cheney has been pushing, I think it’s something the president has bought into. Did Cheney help to persuade him? Absolutely. But is the president now persuaded? Absolutely. I think he’s now a devotee of expanded executive power.

Not Svengali or Machievelli but more a mentor perhaps. And as the years have gone by and the Administration’s plans have come a cropper in many places but especially Iraq, there must have been a time when Bush realized that relying on his own instincts rather than on the Vice President’s advice served him just as well.

With the hiring of Robert Gates as defense secretary and the exiting of most of the neo-conservatives from the Pentagon that Rumsfeld relied on for support, Cheney’s influence waned. And Condi Rice’s ascension to Secretary of State signalled a more pragmatic, less ideological approach in foreign policy, sidelining many of Cheney’s allies at Foggy Bottom.

It would be ridiculous to say that Bush woke up one day and realized that he was his own man and that he didn’t need or want to rely on the Cheney faction to play such a large role in making policy any longer. But there is no doubt a metamorphosis has taken place in the last year and that the President has been charting a course more independent of his Vice President’s ideas on foreign and defense policy. This is not to say that Cheney is no longer a valued advisor or that he has no power to influence the president or policy. But as the sands of time run out on the Administration, Cheney’s clout has lessened.

Confronted with a complete change in policy on Iran necessitated by the findings in the NIE, Bush has taken the opportunity to embrace the shift, placing it in the context of his successful UN sanctions policy and urging the world to keep the pressure on the Iranians.

The disappointment in the writings of many neoconservatives evident by the dark intimations of conspiracy in the NIE findings against the president’s policies shows how far apart the President and the neocons have grown. Where Bush apparently sees the NIE as a challenge to shift American policy and carry the world along with him, the neocons see dark betrayal.

Not quite a final break but certainly the President is striking out in a direction the neocons are extremely reluctant to follow. It should be interesting to watch the Administration over the next few months to see just where this newfound independence leads.