Later On

Via Bacon Unwrapped:

Ali Frick in ThinkProgress:

On April 23, the Obama administration announced it would release hundreds of photos of detainee interrogation, obeying a court order from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Predictably, conservatives furious with the Obama administration’s attempt at greater transparency denounced the move. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) wrote to President Obama asking him not to release the photos because they could inflame potential terrorists:

The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now clearly been prohibited will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country’s image, and endanger our men and women in uniform. We know that many terrorists captured in Iraq have told American interrogators that one of the reasons they decided to join the violent jihadist war against America was what they saw on Al-Qaeda videos of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib,” wrote Graham and Lieberman.

Today, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President, decried the move as “appalling,” saying in a Fox News interview that the decision was proof Obama was aiming to “side with the terrorists”:

CHENEY: Clearly what they are doing is releasing images that show American military men and women in a very negative light. And I have heard from families of service members, from families of 9/11 victims, this question about, you know, when did it become so fashionable for us to side, really,with the terrorists?

Watch a compilation of conservatives complaining about the potential release of torture photos:

The photos of torture aren’t the root of the problem. After all — if you don’t torture, you don’t have torture photos. Notably, many of the figures decrying the release of photos have ardently defended the government’s right to torture people:

SEN. LIEBERMAN: “Most people think it’s definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on people. … [W]e ought to be able to use something like waterboarding.”

HANNITY: “I am having a hard time understanding, though, why dunking somebody’s head in water….just to scare the living daylights out of them… why would you oppose that?”

LIZ CHENEY: “[T]he tactics are not torture, we did not torture. The memos lay out the extent of exactly how far we could go before it would become torture because it was very important that we not cross that line into torture.”

LT. COL. BOB MAGINNES: “If we take away tools, whether actual tools or implied tools, from [American intelligence officials'] tool chest, and therefore undermine their potential effectiveness, then I think we hurt our whole cause.”

HUCKABEE: “It was like a carnival ride. … For example, it wasn’t that we were actually going to drown someone, but it was a simulation of it. And for that, there was in fact some information that came forth.”

In fact, Huckabee defended the utility of waterboarding within 30 seconds of agreeing with Hannity that Obama’s release of interrogation photos was “hurting our nation’s defenses.” Fox reporter Catherine Herridge said that “these pictures of humiliation” can be “a primary factor of suicide bombers.”

It’s not the pictures that recruits suicide bombers; it’s what the pictures depict. Torture — ordered by Bush and Cheney — damaged America and increased the risk of another terrorist attack, and revealing the truth of what happened doesn’t change that fact.

This is disgraceful—but, of course, business as usual. Mike Lillis:

And the First Amendment to the Senate Credit Card Reform Bill Is …

A proposal allowing guns in national parks.

That’s right. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pushing a provision to overturn the Obama administration’s dismissal of a controversial Bush administration rule allowing concealed weapons in national parks and refuges.

The vote will take place before 6 p.m. this evening, with Coburn and other supporters requiring 60 votes for passage.

What this has to do with credit cards, it’s tough to say.

UPDATE: From Mike Lillis:

This is bad. Glenn Greenwald reports:

Ever since he was released from Guantanamo in February after six years of due-process-less detention and brutal torture, Binyam Mohamed has been attempting to obtain justice for what was done to him.  But his torturers have been continuously protected, and Mohamed’s quest for a day in court repeatedly thwarted, by one individual:  Barack Obama.  Today, there is new and graphic evidence of just how far the Obama administration is going to prevent evidence of the Bush administration’s torture program from becoming public.

In February, Obama’s DOJ demanded dismissal of Mohamed’s lawsuit against the company which helped “render” him to be tortured on the ground that national security would be harmed if the lawsuit continued.  Then, after a British High Court ruled that there was credible evidence that Mohamed was subjected to brutal torture and was entitled to obtain evidence in the possession of the British government which detailed the CIA’s treatment of Mohamed, and after a formal police inquiry began into allegations that British agents collaborated in his torture, the British government cited threats from the U.S. government that it would no longer engage in intelligence-sharing with Britain — i.e., it would no longer pass on information about terrorist threats aimed at British citizens — if the British court disclosed the facts of Mohamed’s torture.

As I wrote about in February, those threats from the U.S. caused the British High Court to reverse itself and rule that, in light of these threats from the U.S., it would keep seven paragraphs detailing Mohamed’s torture concealed.  From the British court’s ruling:

The United States Government’s position is that, if the redacted paragraphs are made public, then the United States will re-evaluate its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United Kingdom with the real risk that it would reduce the intelligence it provided (para. 62) . . . . [and] there is a real risk, if we restored the redacted paragraphs, the United States Government, by its review of the shared intelligence arrangements, could inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains (para. 106).

Just think how despicable that threat is:  if your court describes the torture to which one of your residents was subjected while in U.S. custody, we will withhold information from you that could enable you to break up terrorist plots aimed at your citizens.

In the aftermath of that ruling, there was some dispute about whether the Obama administration had really issued this threat to Britain or whether it was merely a residual threat from the Bush administration.  But in the wake of a recent motion by Mohamed’s lawyer to the British court for re-consideration of its ruling, in response to which the British government submitted the written threats from the Obama administration, there can now be no doubt not only that Obama made these threats to Britain, but did so in a remarkably extreme and heavy-handed manner.

The Washington Times‘ Eli Lake …

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Extremely interesting post from Marcy Wheeler:

Since Andy Worthington reported on Sheikh al-Libi’s death over the weekend, a few more details on timing have come out.

Ibn Sheikh al-Libi Died in the Last Two Weeks

The first important point is that al-Libi died sometime after April 27, when a Human Rights Watch researcher spoke with him in a Libyan jail.

Human Right Watch researcher Heba Morayef told Reuters in London that she saw Fakhiri on April 27 during a visit to the Libyan capital’s main Abu Salim jail.

She said Fakhiri appeared for just two minutes in a prison courtyard. He look well, but was unwilling to speak to the Rights Watch team, she said. "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" she quoted him as saying.

This makes his death all the more suspicious, as it occurs after it has become clear there will be an inquiry of some sort here in the US (to say nothing of international prosecutions). The SSCI, remember, is conducting detainee by detainee reviews of treatment, and al-Libi is close to the top of the list in terms of seniority and brutality of treatment. Any reconsideration of Moussaoui’s sentencing given the treatment of evidence in his case may well point to al-Libi. Likewise, any contempt proceedings out of the ACLU case my bring attention to al-Libi’s treatment.

Most importantly, think of the people who would have an interest in having al-Libi–recently discovered by Human Rights Watch–silenced. If al-Libi had an opportunity to testify about how he fabricated the reports of al Qaeda ties to Iraq, it would focus intense attention on Dick Cheney’s lies to get us into war. And Egypt can ill afford to have the extent of their cooperation with the US on these matters exposed.

So there are a lot of reasons why al-Libi’s recent death is all the more suspicious.

Ibn Sheikh al-Libi Was Turned Over to Libya in 2006

Then there’s the detail that al-Libi …

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Masccio at Firedoglake:

Paul Krugman says “…there’s no longer any reason to believe that the wizards of Wall Street actually contribute anything positive to society, let alone enough to justify those humongous paychecks.” Bank of America’s credit card practices are a perfect demonstration, right down to the part where they make stuff up.

Let’s look at the latest 10-Q. Massive businesses like BAC (the ticker symbol for Bank of America) report their businesses by segment. After acquiring Merrill Lynch, BAC changed its segment descriptions. The new segments are on page 92. Credit cards have their own segment now. Page 95.

Banks make money on cards from interest on balances and from fee income. The latter category is down from the first quarter of 2008, for non-operational reasons. Interest income, on the other hand, is up from $4.5bn to $5.2bn. The SEC requires management to explain significant changes: …

Continue reading to see BofA caught in an outright lie.

Dean Baker at TPMCafé:

Progressives should be feeling good right now. There is clear evidence that we are winning on two really big issues.

Starting with the smaller of the two, Sallie Mae, the largest private issuer of student loans, is now proposing to accept a plan in which the government is the sole issuer of government guaranteed loans. Sallie Mae’s plan is that it continue to be given the opportunity to originate these loans, picking up fees in the process.

This proposal is in response to the Obama administration’s plan to get the private sector out of the government guaranteed loan business. There is ample evidence that the involvement of private firms just adds costs — approximately $90 billion over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office. Sallie Mae’s compromise proposal is a recognition of the fact that it cannot stop the Obama plan.

If this story is good, the news on health care is even better…

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Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent:

As the Senate today continues debate on Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) credit card reform proposal, Dodd’s 2010 GOP opponent, former Connecticut Rep. Rob Simmons, just issued a statement asking the Banking Committee chairman a biting question: What took you so long?

Credit card reform is long overdue and if Sen. Dodd wasn’t so busy collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from big banks, credit card companies, the pay day loan industry and pawn shops we might have had reform years ago. This bill is a belated improvement on the current system, but has more to do with covering Sen. Dodd’s extremely exposed hind end than with protecting consumers.

Simmons isn’t far off here, on several fronts. Dodd has taken millions of dollars from the banks and other credit card issuers in his 34-year tenure in Washington; he’s struggling in the polls; and although he sponsored a credit card reform bill last year, he declined to hold hearings on it despite being head of the powerful Banking Committee. (House Democrats, by contrast, held a string of hearings before passing a similar bill last September.) Democratic leaders, by pushing Dodd’s bill so prominently, clearly hope to improve his public image as a way to help him keep his seat.

What’s inane about Simmon’s statement is the implication that Republicans somehow have a greater appetite for finance reforms than Dodd does –  as if Congress under former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) or former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) — (not to mention a White House under President George W. Bush — ever took seriously the concept of protecting consumers from the traps and schemes often used by credit card companies. Instead, it’s Republican senators who watered down Dodd’s bill in recent weeks, and it’s Republican senators who are right now threatening to kill the proposal, in order to protect the banks.

Simmons knows all of this. Indeed, he was a member of Congress for six years between 2001 and 2007, when the GOP was in the majority — just enough time to rack up nearly $119,000 in donations from the same finance industry he’s accusing Dodd of coddling, according to the campaign finance watchdog, Center for Responsive Politics.

Then again, if hypocrisy were a crime, the Capitol would be empty.

Every afternoon now, when I walk by the bedroom, I see Megs curled up asleep on top of my pyjamas. New habit.

Nate Silver has an interesting post:

Richard Posner has a fascinating read:

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

Now, take a look at this chart; this is the share of the vote of those with post-graduate educations won by Democrats: …

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James Fallows has a very interesting post:

I don’t talk about it as often as, say, small-plane aviation or, recently, Chinese education, or my doomed quest in Asia for good beer. But for many many years I have been fascinated by the relationship between "pure" acts of thinking – logic, memory, argument, expression, the process of making connections and finding distinctions; all of which rely fundamentally on words – and the various tools, cues, shortcuts, and stimuli other than words that can play an important part in what we think of as thought.

I’m not talking about entirely separate realms of expression – like music, which obviously conveys meaning beyond words, or the emotional or imaginative power of artwork, photography, illustrations, and other visual representations. Rather I mean systems specifically designed to help the plain old reasoning parts of the brain do their job better, by shoring up common weak spots or by giving more or better material for the "real" brain to work on. For an Atlantic article on this topic from 2007, go here. Things have changed since then, mainly for the better, in ways I’ll go into in coming days.

Today’s theme: the potential of argument maps. These are something like sentence diagrams, without the drudge-work overtone. I was introduced to them through two programs from the Austhink company of Melbourne, Australia: bCisive, whose name is I think a pun on "decisive" and is a tool for decision-making, and Rationale, which is supposed to help students improve the logic of their presentations. Tim van Gelder, who teaches philosophy at the U of Melbourne and founded Austhink, weighed in here yesterday on the Chinese education, defending the proposition that critical thinking can be taught.

Here’s one illustration of an argument map, a small portion of a complex map prepared by Austhink director Paul Monk (an author and former intelligence officer) to weigh arguments about who "really" killed JFK.

Continue reading to see actual argument maps.

Hilzoy has another good post:

CharleyCarp makes a very important point about prosecuting Bush administration officials for making torture US policy:

"The people who think prosecution of these people is too divisive need to take into account their continuing conduct. They are trying to sow division right now. I’m not saying we should give in to them, but at a certain point holding back to preserve societal consensus isn’t on the menu."

I think this is absolutely right. I do not think that we ought to fail to prosecute Bush officials because it would be divisive — I think that upholding the rule of law is more important than avoiding divisiveness, and besides, since any prosecution of high administration officials is always divisive, this principle would seem to me to imply that no high official should ever be punished for breaking any law. I think this would be disastrous. I also hate the idea of a double standard for the powerful and the powerless.

That said, some people, possibly including our President, do seem to think that it is important to avoid divisiveness. Anyone who holds this view ought to consider whether there is anything that, say, Dick Cheney might do that would render this consideration beside the point.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should prosecute administration officials because they seem to have nothing better to do with their time than accuse the present administration of willfully sacrificing American security. My argument all along has been that we should make the decision whether to prosecute on purely legal grounds; prosecuting people for being complete pains would be obviously abhorrent.

The point is rather that …

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Interesting post by Marcy Wheeler:

FWIW, Greg Sargent’s account of his interview with Bob Graham seems to suggest Graham may have gotten even less in his briefing on torture than Nancy Pelosi did in September 2002.

“I do not have any recollection of being briefed on waterboarding or other forms of extraordinary interrogation techniques, or Abu Zubaydah being subjected to them,” Graham told me by phone moments ago, in a reference to the terror suspect who had been repeatedly waterboarded the month before.

Graham is the only other Dem aside from Pelosi to get briefed in 2002, so they are both in effect asserting that no Dem was briefed on the use of EITs that year. The date of the next briefing was in February 2003.

Graham claimed he would have remembered if he’d been told about the use of torture. “Something as unexpected and dramatic as that would be the kind of thing that you would normally expect to recall even years later,” he said.

[snip]

Graham denied being told about EITs, and argued that the presence of two staff members at the meeting (as indicated in the records) would have made it “highly unusual” for the briefers to divulge such sensitive info. “I don’t recall having had one of those kinds of briefings with staff present,” he said. “That would defeat the purpose of keeping a tight hold” on the info.

Graham, however, was circumspect on what was actually discussed, saying only that “the general topic had to do with detainee interrogations” but didn’t include any reference to EITs or waterboarding.

Click through to see the account of a US Official (remember–the torture briefing list came via the Director of National Intelligence office from the CIA) saying only that CIA records say Graham was briefed on torture. Right. Yes. We know CIA is not vouching for the accuracy of those documents.

Pelosi has said, a variety of times, that the opinions approving some interrogation techniques were discussed, but that they weren’t told the techniques were going to be used or–much more importantly–had been used.  [Update: here's the statement her spokesperson Brendan Daly put out last week: "As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002.  The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used."] Or to put it very simply for those who still don’t get this, Pelosi has been saying that CIA briefed them on the legality of using torture, but did not admit (and may have specifically denied) that they had used these torture techniques. Pelosi is making a temporal claim as much as anything else.

But Graham is making a much more expansive claim, saying techniques were not discussed in the least.

Now, I can think of two explanations for that (aside from either forgetfulness or deception on one or both of their parts): that Pelosi is remembering learning (according to a confidant) about the waterboarding in February 2003, and her statements reflect that. Or that the Senate intel leaders (Graham and Shelby) really did get a less extensive briefing than the House intel leaders (Goss and Pelosi) in 2002.

And I can think of two reasons for the latter scenario–the Senate getting less of a briefing than the House…

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Excellent article by Matt Taibbi:

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, “You do what you have to do.” And then take the responsibility.

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don’t entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.

The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. We know we must act but have no idea where or how — and we can’t know that until we have information. Catch-22.

Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding.

Charles Krauthammer, via Townhall.com.

So I got pelted with emails from the usual lunatics this weekend after making the mistake of saying on television that I thought the lawyers who greenlighted the waterboarding program should be prosecuted. I’m not going to delve into this too deeply, because this is clearly one of those issues that few people are willing to change their minds about, but I feel like I’ve got to talk about one particular aspect of this debate, because it’s just too crazy to let go.

Here’s a snippet from one letter I got: “What really gets me about liberals like you is that when other countries torture and kill our people, and cut off their heads, [there's] not a peep from you. But you dunk some terrorist’s head underwater for a few minutes and you go all weepy.”

I saw the same kind of thing in a letter from a guy named Robert Reeg  to the New York Post this morning:

My chest was crushed in the collapse of 2 WTC. If people think waterboarding is torture, they should try having their chest cracked while fully conscious. I haven’t had a pain-free day since then, never mind the memories. What outrages me most is the “selective” outrage. No one complains when Americans are tortured and murdered.

Obviously Mr. Reeg suffered a terrible experience; I would never make light of that. What I do want to say is that there seems to be this idea that those of us who are against making torture an allowable practice in the U.S. are somehow condoning the behavior of those wacko/asshole religious extremists, that we’re picking “their side” in the debate, like it’s an either/or proposition or something. I don’t think I could count the number of times I’ve had this argument on the campaign trail at Republican rallies: …

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From Tom Ricks:

Here is a note an Army National Guard lieutenant colonel I know sent to the columnist Charles Krauthammer, who didn’t respond:

Mr. Krauthammer,

I don’t usually make a point of responding to the talking-head proselytizers in my Sunday paper but your column prompted me to do so.

I’ll make this simple. There are NO circumstances under which torture is acceptable. Jack Bauer’s "24" makes for great TV but even in a ticking time bomb situation such behavior is inappropriate and illegal. Torture is counter to our moral code, a violation of the Geneva and Hague conventions to which we subscribe and perhaps least understood, but most significantly, counterproductive and ineffective. Nothing else really needs to be said, but if you want more details read on.

I have friends who have been to SERE and instructed SERE students and acted as interrogators. All agree that waterboarding and other such ‘enhanced’ techniques are good for training (in a strictly controlled environment) our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on what to expect in captivity. They also agree that it is torture to anyone outside that training environment. Finally, they all agree that torture rarely results in actionable intelligence, as the victim is willing to say most anything to end the torture.

So you must wonder, by what authority is this letter writer speaking? Well, as a Lieutenant Colonel and Combat Arms Battalion Commander in the Army I am responsible for the welfare, training, good order, and discipline of my soldiers. I am responsible for everything they do or fail to do. I am also responsible to follow and issue only those orders that are legal, ethical and moral. Torture of another human being is illegal, unethical and immoral, and I would be duty bound to disobey any such order…just as PFC Lynndie England and SPC Charles Graner (and their many counterparts, senior officers and NCOs at Abu Ghraib) should have done…just as any of my soldiers should disobey should I give such an order. We all have the lessons of Nuremburg to rely upon anytime such questions come to mind; "I was just following orders" is never justification for committing crimes against other human beings.

Before deploying to Iraq last year, I explained these things to my troopers. It is difficult to explain to young (practically) kids, with little experience, and poor knowledge of the world…but if you are caring and committed, and repeat yourself often enough they learn and understand. I told them the most important thing they needed to take away from all their preparations was that while it would be terrible to lose one of them or have one of them seriously physically injured, it would be worse to have them come home physically well and mentally broken because they had somehow lost their humanity. Torture destroys our humanity, and any equivocation (feel free to exercise the Kantian absolutist vs utilitarian argument to your heart’s content) on the matter is just bullshit.

. . . If captured I would honor our Armed Forces Code of Conduct to the best of my ability and go to whatever my fate, resolute in the knowledge that our nation remains a last bastion of what is right (or ought to be right) in the world. Torture has no place in America, and Americans have no reason to employ it. War ain’t fair, but we have to fight it while maintaining a level of dignity and humanity, jus in bello [law concerning acceptable conduct in war – LG]. This is rough work for people bound to a code of Duty, Honor, Country. Proselytizers, who say but do not act, need not apply. 

To summarize: Those who endorse torture need to think twice about the effect it has on the moral and discipline of our troops. Also, think about his point that torture has two victims: the person suffering it, and the person inflicting it.  

Very good post by Christy Hardin Smith:

If Harry Reid puts Dawn Johnsen in the voting mix, it could single-handedly earn the man a carrot from me. 

Via Politico:

“It appears that we have no alternative but to have votes next Monday,” Reid said in a Senate floor speech Monday. “I’ve tried lots of different ways to get [the nominations] done, but there appears that the only thing I can do is file cloture.”

Republicans have blocked consideration of Craig Fugate, who has been tapped to head up the Federal Emergency Management Agency; David Hayes, Obama’s choice for deputy secretary of the Interior Department; and Cameron Kerry, who has been selected to serve as Commerce Department counsel.

That’s a lot of blockage from the Party of No. GOPeevish much?

Don’t expect it to get any better — they are already gearing up to fight any SCOTUS nominee, regardless of qualifications or character.

Movement conservatives are in a position to oppose the nomination of almost any nominee that the president puts forward. In conversations with TWI, activists portrayed the coming confirmation hearings as a chance to peel the bark off of the president’s bipartisan image, to unite the conservative movement, and to learn lessons for future hearings with higher stakes….Their focus was not so much on defeating this pick — an incredibly difficult task with only 40 Republican senators — but on carving out an election issue for the 2010 midterms and on building capital for a theoretical future battle to replace one of the court’s conservatives.

It is about election cycle political positioning and revving the rabid base, pure and simple. Bloodying whomever the nominee may be in an effort to weaken Obama’s public support for the midterms. 

Which is why efforts to restore the rule of law have to move forward. Now. 

Here’s hoping this demonstration of "not putting up with your crap any longer" from Harry Reid holds.  Because this constant kabuki is hurting the nation’s justice system.

Coming on the heels of AG Eric Holder saying that confirming Johnsen to OLC is his top priority, perhaps the Democratic leadership finally sat up and took notice. Because we sure as hell have.

Call Harry Reid’s office today — (202) 224-3542 — and thank them for taking this action. Let’s help keep that newly found spine stiffened, shall we? It is very much needed.

Ask that Dawn Johnsen’s OLC nod be included for a floor vote.  Because you’ll note that the Politico avoided mentioning her altogether.

Then call your Senators and tell them to vote FOR cloture and FOR Dawn Johnsen. The nation cannot afford to keep restoration of the rule of law on the back burner any longer.

Thanks for all the nudging on this, gang. I heard through the grapevine last night that it’s been noticed.

Daphne Eviatar points out that, if you’re donating to Norm Coleman:

… you might see your dollars sucked into a defense fund for a lawsuit that has a bit less to do with control of the Senate than the former senator’s challenges of the results of the 2008 election.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has requested permission to use his campaign funds for legal fees relating to a federal investigation of a campaign donor, according to documents from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Coleman donor Nasser Kazeminy has been accused of ordering $75,000 in payments to Coleman’s wife, Laurie Coleman, in a lawsuit filed in Texas. Coleman is not a defendant in the lawsuit, but he has been forced to respond to certain aspects of the case that involve him. The lawsuit alleges Kazeminy tried to benefit Coleman with the payments.

The scandal had an impact on the Senate race: it broke right before the election, and Coleman accused the Franken campaign of being involved with the timing. But this isn’t, presumably, what Coleman donors thought they were funding.

Eric Martin of Obsidian Wings makes a good point:

Greg Sargent passes along one of the latest developments in the ongoing controversy surrounding Bush administration-authorized use of torture:

There’s a big piece of news about Dick Cheney and torture buried toward the end of this big Washington Post piece about the torture wars.

Specifically: The White House has decided to declassify and release a classified 2004 CIA report about the torture program that is reported to have found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots on American soil — directly contradicting Cheney’s claims. The paper cites “allies” of the White House as a source.

Dem Congressional staffers tell me this report is the “holy grail,” because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives.

While it’s all well and good that the Obama administration plans to debunk some of the Dick Cheney’s mendacity, we should resist the urge to engage the frame of discourse that Cheney has sought to impose: Assessing the desirability of implementing a torture regime based on whether or not torture "works."  In short, it shouldn’t matter.  Although many respected experts in the realm of interrogation best practices contend that building a relationship/rapport is a more effective of extracting reliable information (rather than false confession), the reason that we, as a nation, should abstain from torture is because torture is a morally reprehensible practice. 

Full stop. 

To use a slightly more extreme example to highlight the point, if Cheney had suggested that raping (or simulating the rape of) a detainee’s spouse would be an effective means of getting the information desired, should our popular discourse engage the merits of that argument?  Or, rather, should we recoil at the notion of engaging in such immoral acts for the sake of some expediency, real or imagined?

Torture is a vile, sordid business and should be ruled out on those grounds alone, rather than parsed, rationalized and demagogued into accepted practice.  At least, if our principles are more than fair weather ideals to be paraded about ostentatiously when circumstances make them an easy fit, but then abandoned when they become, in the slightest, inconvenient.

As Rob Farley Charli Carpenter observed:

Torture probably does work occasionally. But so what? The whole point of the anti-torture regime is to stay the Inquisitor’s hand even when it’s in our interest to torture. If we only refused to torture when/if there was no conflict with our self-interest, the rule would be unnecessary. Torture is wrong because it’s wrong, not because it’s never effective.
…The more we get into the study of torture’s effectiveness, the more we legitimate the idea that effectiveness matters. It shouldn’t.

It does not.

Ali Frick at ThinkProgress:

As conservatives continue to rally around torture, Karl Rove last night praised Dick Cheney for his “reasoned, thoughtful series of observations” about how President Obama has made the U.S. less safe. He also conjectured that ending the practice of torture will provide al Qaeda with a great “tool” to help them recruit new terrorists:

ROVE: Taking, for example, the memoranda about the enhanced interrogation techniques and making them public has been a value to our enemy. It has served, frankly, I think, as a recruiting tool. They can now take these memoranda and go to prospective, you know, recruits and say, This is the worst that the enemy, the United States, would ever do to you, and they’ve even forsworn these things. We can help you, prepare you to deal with these things, but even the enemy is so weak they’re not going to use these techniques on you. And it’s given them a tool to make it more attractive to recruit people, and you know, this kind of thing is harmful to us over the long haul.

Watch it:

It is torture itself — not its cessation — that serves as a recruiting tool for new terrorists. Experts from FBI special agent Jack Cloonan to torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to former Army JAG Major General Thomas Romig all agree that Bush and Rove’s “enhanced interrogation” program recruited terrorists who have killed thousands of Americans. Indeed, former military interrogator Matthew Alexander cited Bush’s interrogation program as the most effective means to recruiting insurgents in Iraq who were battling Americans every day:

The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

To read ThinkProgress’s extensive report, Why Bush’s “Enhanced Interrogation” Program Failed, click here.

Via ThinkProgress: Jesse Ventura, a former SEAL, was waterboarded as part of his SERE training. He has some interesting comments:

KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That’s right. I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Later: “Even though you know it’s not going to happen — even though before it, you know you’re not going to drown,” King stated.

“You don’t know it. If it’s done wrong, you certainly could drown. You could swallow your tongue. You could do a whole bunch of stuff. If it’s it done wrong or — it’s torture, Larry. It’s torture,” Ventura responded.