swimming freestyle

Final Iowa Polls

The Des Moines Register published tonight the final polling results for the January 3rd Iowa Republican and Democratic Presidential caucuses  

Happy New Year

Eddi Reader at opening ceremony of the new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, Oct. 2004.

("Auld Lang Syne" by Robert Burns)

2008 Predictions

Next Year’s News
Predictions for 2008 from BorowitzReport.com

January: After paying five billion dollars for The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch will reduce the size of the paper by removing the facts.

February: Responding to the controversy over the CIAs’ waterboarding videotapes, President Bush will reaffirm his administration’s opposition to videotaping.

March: As the writers strike drags on, Paramount will produce the second “Transformers” film without a script, just like they did with the first one.

April: Monica Lewinsky will announce her candidacy for President of the United States. She will offer herself as an alternative to Hillary, saying, “It worked before.”

May: Attempting to bolster flagging enlistment rates, the Army will change its recruitment slogan from “Army Strong” to “I Can’t Believe It’s Not a Civil War.”

June: Population experts will warn that the world’s population will soar in 2008, largely due to the Spears sisters.

July: China will send a new brand of rat poison to the United States under the name “Delicious Cupcakes.”

August: Sen. Edward Kennedy will abandon plans to write his memoirs, explaining, “I can’t even remember what I did last night.”

September: At the Republican National Convention, G.O.P. nominee Mike Huckabee will select Jesus Christ as his running mate.

October: O.J. Simpson will be convicted in Las Vegas, proving that it is easier to get away with murder than stealing sports memorabilia.

November: President-elect Michael Bloomberg will defend the five-billion-dollar cost of his campaign, arguing, “Rupert Murdoch paid that much for The Wall Street Journal, and I get a whole country.”

December: In his last official act, President Bush will announce an exit strategy from Iraq. The President will withdraw all U.S. troops – through Iran.

Read This (New York Times Editorial)

Looking at America

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Picking and Choosing

Former Governor Mike Huckabee, Republican candidate for his party's Presidential nomination appeared on "Meet The Press" yesterday.  Here's one exchange between Huckabee and MTP host Tim Russert:

MR. RUSSERT: Some Americans believe that life does not begin at conception, and that it's...
GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, scientifically I think that's almost...a point that you couldn't argue. How, how could you say that life doesn't begin at conception...
MR. RUSSERT: Right. Do you respect that view? [..]
GOV. HUCKABEE: I respect it as a view, but I don't think it has biological credibility.

It's ironic (I once heard irony is just hypocracy with a sense of humor) that Huckabee would rely on biological sciences to make his case that life begins at conception.  After all, Huckabee is, famously, on record for denying the theory of evolution, a cornerstone of modern scientific thinking.

Torturous Detail

The New York Times reported today the CIA initiated videotaping of Abu Zubaydah out of concern that should the recently captured and seriously wounded al Qaeda member die in custody, world and domestic opinion (and particularly Middle Eastern opinion) would lean towards U.S. culpability in his death. There was, of course, another motive for assuring Zubaydah's recovery; he could only provide information to the CIA if he was kept alive.

Per the Times, the videotaping included nearly every moment of Zubaydah's early captivity; sleeping, medical treatment, and early interrogation sessions with the CIA.  As these interrogation sessions began to employ harsher methods the videotaping ended, but recorded tapes did include sessions showing Zubaydah being waterboarded.  Why did they stop the videotaping?

“By that time,” Mr. Krongard (#3 man in the CIA) said, “paranoia was setting in.”

Recall that what stunned Americans about U.S. abuse at Abu Graib were the photographs.  Reports of abuse had been circulating for some time before, but the visual evidence is what repulsed Americans.  The CIA began to worry the public display of videotapes of interrogations would likely have the same effect.  As the public reaction to Abu Ghraib festered and first reports of several U.S. held prisoners who had recently died under severe conditions, the CIA was now getting nervous.

"Scrutiny of the C.I.A.’s secret detention program kept building. Later in 2003, the agency’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, began investigating the program, and some insiders believed the inquiry might end with criminal charges for abusive interrogations.

Mr. Helgerson completed his investigation of interrogations in April 2004, according to one person briefed on the still-secret report, which concluded that some of the C.I.A.’s techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the international Convention Against Torture."

The CIA manager in charge of clandestine affairs, Jose Rodriguez, Jr. was receiving conflicting advice on whether to keep or destroy the tapes.  It seems clear rank and file CIA personnel favored destruction of the tapes, but Porter Goss (then Director of the CIA), and Congressional and Administration personnel advised Rodriguez to save the tapes, though none gave explicit orders to that effect.

"One official who has spoken with Mr. Rodriguez said Mr. Rodriguez and his aides were concerned about protection of the C.I.A. officers on the tapes, from Al Qaeda, as the C.I.A. has stated, and from political pressure.

Apart from concerns about physical safety in the event of a leak, the official said, there was concern for the careers of officers shown on the tapes. “We didn’t want them to become political scapegoats,” he said."

After finally being given authorization by CIA attorneys within the clandestine branch, Rodriguez ordered the videotapes destroyed in November, 2005.

"The investigations over the tapes frustrate some C.I.A. veterans, who say they believe that the agency is being unfairly blamed for policies of coercive interrogation approved at the top of the Bush administration and by some Congressional leaders. Intelligence officers are divided over the use of such methods as waterboarding. Some say the methods helped get information that prevented terrorist attacks. Others, like John C. Gannon, a former C.I.A. deputy director, say it was a tragic mistake for the administration to approve such methods.

Mr. Gannon said he thought the tapes became such an issue because they would have settled the legal debate over the harsh methods.

“To a spectator it would look like torture,” he said. “And torture is wrong.”

It would look like torture because it is torture.  And torture is against the law.  Despite the hollow assurances the Bush Administration provides that "we do not torture", the destroyed videotapes are evidence we do, indeed, torture.  It is becoming increasingly apparent CIA personnel began to realize their culpability and the likelihood they would be used as fall guys for war crimes authorized by the Bush Administration.

In fact, distinctions aren't made between those who commit torture and those who authorize it.  They are all, so tragically, responsible for war crimes and should be held accountable. 

   

Returning to Earth; A Pragmatic View

There's been several quite romantic and waxing articles written lately about the worldwide implications, particularly the impact in the Middle East, the election of a black male named Obama might have.  Andrew Sullivan has written in a recent piece in "The Atlantic" just the image of an inaugurated Obama would literally transform America's image around the world.

Reza Aslan, author of the excellent "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam" has a terrific opinion piece in today's Washington Post,  "He Could Care Less About Obama's Story."

The "He" Aslan is referring to is the "young Muslim boy" that these commentators euphemistically refer to as the person who will be most impacted by the re-branding of America with someone in the White House that "looks" innately different than his or her predecessors. I should add that this should be "She" as well.

Aslan writes:

"As someone who once was that young Muslim boy everyone seems to be imagining (albeit in Iran rather than Egypt), I'll let you in on a secret: He could not care less who the president of the United States is. He is totally unconcerned with whatever barriers a black (or female, for that matter) president would be breaking. He couldn't name three U.S. presidents if he tried. He cares only about one thing: what the United States will do.

That boy is angry at the United States not because its presidents have all been white. He is angry because of Washington's unconditional support for Israel; because the United States has more than 150,000 troops in Iraq; because the United States gives the dictator of his country some $2 billion a year in aid, the vast majority of which goes toward supporting a police state. He is angry at the United States because he thinks it has hegemony over almost every aspect of his world.

Now, more than one commentator has noted that on all of these issues, the next president will have very little room to maneuver. But that is exactly the point.

The next president will have to try to build a successful, economically viable Palestinian state while protecting the safety and sovereignty of Israel. He or she will have to slowly and responsibly withdraw forces from Iraq without allowing the country to implode. He or she will have to bring Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran, to the negotiating table while simultaneously reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions, keeping Syria out of Lebanon, reassuring Washington's Sunni Arab allies that they have not been abandoned, coaxing Russia into becoming part of the solution (rather than part of the problem) in the region, saving an independent and democratic Afghanistan from the resurgent Taliban, preparing for an inevitable succession of leadership in Saudi Arabia, persuading China to play a more constructive role in the Middle East and keeping a nuclear-armed Pakistan from self-destructing in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination."

"I Must Be Hopeful"

In talking about the power of hope, Obama also stepped outside of himself to take a look at his own candidacy in which his race could be a handicap if he were to run as the first African-American president.

"I'm a black guy running for president named Barack Obama. I must be hopeful." (Link)

Crunch Time

Apropos