On the Contrary

Well the other shoe has dropped.  I hear the wailing now.  “We need to look ahead, not focus on our past.”  “This kind of an investigation could demoralize our intelligence community.”  And from the left of the left (that would be me), “It doesn’t go nearly far enough.”  Let me take them on one at a time since our media, as usual, is so far missing the point.  In short, we can’t move forward until we resolve the past; it will only demoralize those who grossly abused their power and position; and once you start digging, the finger pointing will begin and those fingers will point up the chain.

President Obama’s view and the political conventional wisdom quoted by Chuck Todd last week on the Bill Maher show is that an investigation will simply cause a political food fight (as though business as usual isn’t one already) and the President’s agenda will get mired down in this misdirection.  Sadly this overly simplified conclusion is actually counterproductive.

Yes the Republicans will throw up every roadblock possible to hide what occurred under their watch, but once the true extent of this is exposed, it is very unlikely that their super patriotic excuses will ever be believed again.  If the American people are kept in the dark about what really happened, then it is way too easy to say it worked, it was worth it, and on we go with the “24” fantasy.  Just think about what has happened with health care and the Republican’s false claims about what is in the plan mainly because we don’t have a plan yet to examine.

This is the difference between short term gains and long term gains.  In the short term the Republicans will throw a hissy fit with lies and misdirection that will complicate the Democrat’s agenda.  But in the long term as the facts come out, it will be clear that this program was a dismal failure, run by incompetents, and destroyed our moral fabric.  Then those who defend it will be forever tarnished and the Democratic agenda will have even more momentum.  It is the difference between the Sarah Palins of the world and real intellectual curiosity.  If you have intellectual curiosity you can learn from your mistakes.  If you are a Sarah Palin, you can continue to believe fiction about what is effective for our future and promote obvious lies.

Jane Mayer wrote the definitive book on what really happened (The Dark Side) and there were CIA officials who did unconscionable acts even when they had every reason to believe the person they were torturing was innocent.  There were levels of unprofessionalism and downright amateurism that became criminal.  These need to come out and the people involved need to be identified and punished.  And this goes directly to the second argument against these investigations, that it will demoralize hard working and patriotic intelligence professionals.

The real “hard working and patriotic” intelligence professionals were appalled by what was going on, especially in light of the failure of most of these programs and the lack of experienced professionals in the CIA to carry it out.  Political operatives and opportunists in the CIA were feeding the Bush Administration what they wanted to hear and ignoring the real professionals who saw through this program.  It will actually strengthen professionalism to go after those that abused the system getting information their supervisors wanted to hear instead of allowing real professional dissent to counter political pressure.  The rules and real professionalism have to be more important than political power and opportunity.

As for not going far enough and those at the top will not be exposed in this investigation, the devil is in the details.  Clearly the investigation can be limited to the more egregious offenders, those that went beyond the already egregious standards set by the Bush White House.  But when accusations are made, those accused will start pointing fingers.  In my mind there were facilitators up and down the system, or as I called them, political opportunists, who wanted to serve the political purposes of the White House and either facilitated these illegal interrogations, or turned a blind eye.  Either way they are just as culpable and will be identified in any real investigation.  As for those actually in the White House who originally authorized torture, from the Vice President and his Chief of Staff, David Addington, to John Yu and the other legal sycophants who rendered whatever legal opinion was requested, that is a very different issue.

This investigation only involves going beyond those despicable limits and therefore their actions will not be challenged.  But we are still waiting the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommendations on what should be done about these highly unprofessional legal opinions that later had to be withdrawn.  Disbarment might be the appropriate action

This is going to be a long torturous (no pun intended) process to get to all the facts.  But each day more and more of our scandalous and immoral behavior is being exposed and once there is a crack in the wall, it will slowly expand.  Thank goodness.

Related Post:  The Conventional Wisdom and Enforcing the Law

I know that your aggressive agenda for this country is important for us to rebound and we must move forward on it, but to push aside the issues of torture and the treatment of the detainees as an inconvenient distraction will simply hinder any hope for progress on these or any other issues.  Our conduct during the last eight years has stained our American soul.  It has tarnished everything we mean when we say we are Americans.  As I read our great Constitution and the debates leading up to the Bill of Rights, I know that waving due process, treating our enemies without rights, and degrading humans through torture and abuse violates everything we have stood for.  As I contemplate that we did these acts, I no longer know who I am as an American.  It doesn’t matter what the justifications are, we have lost our way and the answer to redeeming our soul is not to move on and take the attitude that what is done is done, but to face these issues head on.

In order to heal ourselves we have to face our demons.  Right now, as evidenced by the political turmoil, we are still in denial.  We are still having arguments about whether it was justified, failing to understand that if we can justify it, we no longer hold dear to the principles of the Constitution.  We are no longer the Americans who stood for liberty and justice because if you start classifying who deserves liberty and justice and who doesn’t, it doesn’t exist anymore.  The debate has become a political football that further demeans us and trivializes our values.  Facing the reality of what we did will have severe consequences, but the consequences of not facing up to and living with our actions will forever demean us as a people.  There are some tough times ahead, and we must bear the consequences to restore ourselves.

First and foremost we need a real investigation to explore in a fully public way the whole sordid mess.  The focus of this investigation is to get at the facts, not partisan politics or prosecution.  To put the political sniping out of its misery, we have to release all the facts.  If laws were broken and we are a nation of laws, then those who broke them must face their crimes.  There will always be mitigating circumstances regarding their punishment, but if we violated international law and our own laws, then these transgressions must be exposed and those responsible held accountable.  If you don’t carry out this responsibility of your office, you are simply setting us up to repeat this nightmare in another time, in another place, when someone thinks the ends again justify the means.

Second, you must release all documents and pictures related to our treatment of the detainees.  Without the full truth and impact of what was wrought by these misguided policies, then we will never face the full impact of our actions.  I understand that this puts our international relations and our military at risk of reprisals, but to continue to hide the full impact of our actions simply degrades our ability to ever lead as a nation who stands for the principles of liberty and freedom.  Our men and women in uniform know they are fighting for our principles and this puts them at risk.  It is time we stood up for those principles to make their sacrifices meaningful.

Third close Guantanamo and do not restart the military tribunals.  Guantanamo is a symbol to the world, and quite frankly to most of us here at home, of our trampling on the human rights of others.  It also is a gross violation of your own Christian principles.  It is a continual reminder that among the very guilty, we also punished the very innocent without thought or caring, and where for many the punishment did not fit the crime.  Military commissions, no matter how you tweak them, will never provide the full measure of protections or justice that open public trails will.  They will always be seen as kangaroo courts no matter how you white wash them and will again sully our very soul and the principles for which we used to hold so dear.

I understand the downside.  I understand that some of these men who have committed grave crimes may have to be released because the evidence we have is so tainted.  I understand the difficult politics of incarcerating some in the United States.  I understand that some may return to the battlefield.  I also understand that in our own criminal justice system we release people every day who we know will be repeat offenders.  But in our society, Mr. President, we don’t prosecute people for what we think they will do, only for what they actually do.  Any other choice denies one’s hope for redemption that is basic to our fundamental beliefs.  Our basic principles are sometimes difficult to live with and sometimes exact heavy penalties, but that is what made us special and to make an exception, any exception, is to no longer have those principles.

So finally Mr. President, I beseech you to enter the fray and lead us in the right direction.  Letting politics as usual drive the train or doing the politically expedient thing will not resolve this blot on our soul.  Without your leadership to make the hard, but necessary decisions, we will have left a cancer on our national character that will only slowly grow.  And like a cancer that is in remission, sooner or later we will have to do something about it.  If it is later, our choices will be severely limited.  Please Mr. President, I want to be a proud American again, but in order to achieve that, we must hold ourselves accountable for our failures and be a model for the world as someone who really does stand up for our values and face the consequences.  Everything you hope to accomplish will be tainted if we don’t deal with this cancer.  Please lead us through these difficult times by showing us the true American character.

It is truly ironic that the Republicans want to put Nancy Pelosi on trial for not objecting to torture when she learned of it.  These are the people who think torture is okay and have been defending it and then they want to criticize her for her lack of political courage.  I also find it somewhat amusing that we have the Republicans telling us that the intelligence agencies would not mislead us.  They are no different than any other agency or company and when they want to do something, they will put the best face on it, i.e. spin the briefing.  Said another way, not tell any untruths, but omit salient facts.  Anybody remember yellowcake uranium?  Anybody remember the cherry picked intelligence that sent us to war in Iraq?

Statements that “notes” from the briefings indicate the CIA told the “Gang of Four” about using waterboarding are highly suspect as you can bet the notes were written after the fact and reviewed to make sure their asses were covered.  If they thought they might have omitted a mention of actually torturing people they could just add it later.  These are the guys who destroyed videotapes of torture to cover their asses remember?  Also note that ex-Senator Bob Graham from Florida backs up Nancy’s story and also pointed out that they indicated he was briefed three times and they later found that to be erroneous.  Their record keeping is mighty convenient.

All of this is not to say she did or did not know. Personally I have found the Democrats lack of a spine over the last 9 years truly disappointing. All of this is really beside the point.  For the Republicans this is a great opportunity to side step the real issue of who authorized and carried out torture, or even more salient, was torture used to get misinformation.  The issue around Nancy Pelosi is what could she have done about it had she known.  Or said another way and more importantly, is the Gang of Four really Congressional oversight and what could they do if they objected?  In a New York Times op-ed piece, Congress’s Torture Bubble, Vicki Divoll, a former deputy counsel to the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, and general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2001 to 2003, wrote that there was nothing they could really do without support from all of Congress and they could tell no one about what they heard.  They could not even consult their staff about the administration’s claim of legality for the torture they were conducting.  You also have to remember at the time, and this is the great Republican argument about using torture because we were all so scared, that to dissent from the Administration was to be labeled unpatriotic.  So fighting on this would have probably been political suicide although in my mind better than going along with it.

In 2003 when there was no disagreement that the new Gang of Four were notified of the actual interrogation techniques being used, Jane Harmon did sent a letter to the CIA and the Bush administration saying she objected and the administration told her to go piss up a rope.  Well not really, but the effect was the same.  So when the Republicans stop all their displacement tactics, the real question is how do we restore Congressional oversight so that it is meaningful.  Ms. Divoll discusses this in some length in her op-ed piece and I won’t repeat it here except to say that there must be an effective way to ensure a balance of power.  There was some things they could have done then, so nobody is squeaky clean in this thing, but the real issue is not who went along with it, but whose bright idea was it.

One last thought.  Many are clamoring for a special prosecutor to investigate the wrongdoing and our violation of the Geneva Conventions.  I think this would be a great mistake.  As soon as you appoint a special prosecutor, the lid clamps down tight on the information and we are left in the dark about what really went on.  Think about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.  Heard anything lately about his pay to play investigation?  The real issue is for us, you know, we the people, to know what went on, why, who authorized it, and what if anything was gained from it.  This is only going to come out in an investigation that is fully visible to all of us.  Whether this is a truth commission or other form of non-partisan look at what happened is not really important.  Then if there are violations of law, they can then be pursued in the criminal justice system.   If the Republican argument that these were extraordinary times, then these can be evaluated as mitigating factors that effect the sentence, but not whether we enforce the law.  Note that Diane Feinstein is investigating this behind close doors so we the people can be protected from the truth.  I have a fundamental problem with that approach.

Are you paying attention Mr. President?  It is time to wade in and take control of this by doing the right thing, not the easy thing.

President Obama changed course today when he may have realized he was repeating George Bush’s mistake in trying to define when the law will be applied and when it won’t.  He now says that for those who crafted these obviously flawed legal memos to justify torture, he will leave the decision as to whether to investigate and prosecute where it belongs in the Justice Department.  Many of us think he has no choice but to prosecute if we are going to honor our own laws,  treaties, and international law.  Otherwise we have no standing in the world and we cannot expect anyone else in the world to follow the law either.

But this whole argument gets confused within several issues.  First is the legal one, did we violate our own law, international law, and treaties we have signed?  The second one is the moral issue, should we even be involved in this kind of behavior?  And the third one which is closely related to the second, does it work?  If it doesn’t work, the second question becomes more problematic.  We know we have violated the law and if we are a nation of laws, we must enforce them becasue picking and choosing which laws to follow means there are no laws.  In judging people who violated the law, the second and third issues come into play.  There are mitigating circumstances if they broke the law trying to prevent a more heinous crime.  If it is immoral, then was it justified if it worked and saved lives?  This last question is really the crux of the argument Dick Cheney is making on FOX news.  “Sometimes good people have to do bad things for the greater good.”

Now I would be the first one to say once we go down this road to institutionalized torture for Al-Qaeda suspects, we have lost our bearings about who we are and it does more damage than it prevents, both to our own psyche, and to the enhancing of recruitment and motivation for our enemies.  But let’s forget that argument for a minute and just ask the question, is it effective?  Now once again I have an opinion based upon multiple sources that says no.  But what do we really know?  I would argue that we need a full and open investigation to find out what we found out and when; what happened when the CIA took interrogations away from the FBI; and did they actually get anything new or useful that wouldn’t have been found out anyway, and maybe sooner?

Now enter Dick Cheney who is calling for the release of memos he says exist that prove that torture was highly effective and prevented many attacks on the United States. This is interesting on several levels.  First, we have Mr. Secrecy now wanting to release real intelligence findings that could be considered much more damaging than legal memos on the legal basis of torture.  Second, if these memos exist, I don’t think the CIA is going to release them and the reasons are obvious.

Do you remember the justification for attacking Iraq?  The Vice President went intelligence shopping and he cherry picked anything that supported his preconceived view of the threat Saddam Hussein presented, rewarded those who provided him that information, and punished those that did not.  Some of this intelligence came from suspects tortured that later turned out to be false.  That is how we got it so wrong.  There is no question in my mind that once he turned the CIA loose to torture, they fed him what he wanted to hear.  Am I saying they lied to him?  I think they stretched the truth and in some cases, the information they claimed the got, was already known.  In some cases they exaggerated the importance of a detainee, or they got out of him what they wanted to find and Cheney wanted to hear, not necessarily the truth.

But don’t take my word for it.  If those memos are released and unclassified, then government officials who might know what really happened are then free to talk about it.  And based upon what I have read about the competing interrogation teams, there are some interesting things to find out.  In other words if those memos are released, their veracity can then be questioned, and people are free to talk about what really happened.  You can bet your sweet bippy that there are many in the CIA who never want to let those memos meet the light of day.  Because when all the conflicting information really gets out, they are going to look like they were involved in Amateur Hour for torturers and interrogators.  What they really wish right now is that Dick Cheney would just shut up and go away. Much like the intelligence for Iraq, he got fed what he wanted to hear and the truth got lost somewhere.  He is so delusional he could not sort out the difference.

All of this leaves one with the undeniable conclusion that we need to fully investigate what happened, what we really found out, and what is the truth.  What we will find will not be pleasant, but it is necessary to end this sorry period in our history.  The one thing we will find out about Dick Cheney is that as George Lucas told Maureen Dowd, Dick Cheney is no Darth Vader.  Darth Vader was once a good person lead astray.  Dick Cheney is the Emperor, evil and flawed through and through.

Note:  Tonight as I write this, the New York Times released a story that those who authorized torture never looked at its use in the past or its effectiveness.  Why would they, they have all seen “24″.  What bothers me about this is that this is all documented in Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side.  Anybody read it?

There are various news stories out there that give us a real look in the mirror and bits and pieces is my attempt to summarize some of my favorite for your reading pleasure:

• Iraq and Afghanistan – Several stories have appeared recently documenting that in Iraq, there is still seething ethnic rivalries and resentment at the American occupation.  Baghdad is basically a segregated community where many Sunnis have not moved back.  In Afghanistan, similar dislike of the American occupation is being recorded and with the infusion of another 30,000 American troops, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are gearing up for heated battles.  Does it ever occur to anyone that maybe more troops is the problem?  What if they had a battle and no one came?  One thing we are learning is that military action is expensive.  So where does the Taliban and al-Qaeda get their dough?  If nobody cared would there be a problem anymore?  Maybe it is time for them to solve their own problems.
• The Washington Post on Sunday ran a front page story that basically told that the CIA’s first high value detainee, Abu Zabaida, which they tortured, and which Cheney and Bush lauded as a great source of information to justify their torture policies, gave no reliable information.  Well that is not quite true.  He gave some very reliable information before they started torturing him, but the reality was that he was not a kingpin in al-Qaeda as Bush and Cheney claimed.  This comes as no surprise to anyone who has read The Dark Side by Jane Mayer who last year pretty much totally chronicled the keystone cops approach to interrogation that the CIA applied, the torture that led to nowhere, and the murders and brutality committed in our names that was totally unproductive.  Jane couldn’t name sources, but apparently now they are willing to tell their tale so the major news organizations are picking it up.  Welcome America to a story that will make you sick to your stomach.
• In a related story, Spain may indict some of the Bush Administration officials for war crimes in their part in promoting torture.  It is a very sad day when we have to look to Spain to uphold the law that the United States used to stand for.  If the Obama Administration does not investigate our war crimes as required by our treaties and leaves it to other countries, it will further decay our moral standing in the world if not our morals themselves.  Why is this so hard?
• Meanwhile in Cambodia, they have started their first trial on the torture and killing that occurred at Tuol Sleng prison where at least 14,000 people were tortured before being executed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.  And what is the chief warden’s defense.  I was just following orders and they would have killed me and my family if I did not comply.  It will be the same defense that will be heard in the U.S. if we prosecute those who partook in torture.  Sooner or later we have to establish that following orders is not a defense against these crimes against humanity.  Oh, I forgot.  We already did that at Nuremberg after World War II.  You think we could remember that.
• In North Korea, two American female journalists may face trails for entering the country illegally.  With the North Koreans, there is probably no basis to the charges.  The connection I see is the missile launch this month.  In the warped North Korean mind, it may seem logical to have a couple of American hostages in case we try to shoot down or prevent their missile launch.  If the launch occurs without incident, the situation with these two will probably clear up.  Hopefully.
• President Obama made another trip to Congress this week, this time in the House, to encourage Democrats to support his budget.  Some Democrats (Conseradems as Rachel Maddow calls them) in the Senate are playing right into the Republican’s hands with their idea to force many votes that would be subject to the filibuster.  Let’s get back to majority rule instead of minority rule so we can get something done.  If you are afraid we are being too aggressive, just think back to the last eight years and ask yourself we could do more harm than that.  It is time to try something new and that is what this budget is about.
• President Obama moved aggressively to reject the automakers plan, asked for CEO resignations, and set a deadline for real action.  Republicans are screaming government intervention and others are saying that the CEO should have stayed on.  Just remember the cardinal rule:  When the strategy must change, you need new generals.  Old thinking won’t get us there and that applies both to Republicans in general, and CEO’s specifically.  We don’t need to fight last years wars all over again.
• Simon Johnston and Paul Krugman, both economists, have noted something we all ought to be thinking about:  Restoring the financial markets to business as usual is just setting us up for failure once again.  Packaging and selling debt is not the growth industry of the future and financial institutions can never again be too big to fail.  There are major implications of these ideas in the regulations that must come out of this debacle and in the mindset of Wall Street.  You can bet the vested interests will fight this every step of the way and is why change and progress are so hard.  The pockets of both Democrats and Republicans is lined with Wall Street Money.
• In the debate to overhaul health care, many are arguing that a government program similar to Medicare competing with private insurers would be unfair.  But I have come up with a way to level the playing field.  All government programs would have to charge a 30% surcharge so that the administration costs of the private insurers trying to either deny claims or skim healthy members would be competitive.  Then every one would have the same inefficient systems.
• Our prisons are full and overflowing, and more importantly for most politicians that used “throw the key away” rhetoric to get elected, the costs are now swamping our state governments.  We have the largest incarcerated population in the world with 1 in 10 Americans having been incarcerated.  Why does it take the all mighty dollar for politicians to finely recognize that many in prison don’t belong there and to start doing the right thing?
• Last but not least is that there seems to be a bipartisan movement in the Senate to finally relieve the restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba.  Most now see our economic and travel restrictions there have been an abject failure.  But we still have diehards such as Senator Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey, who see this as rewarding their bad behavior.  Let’s see.  The policy has been totally unsuccessful, but to change it would be to reward them?  Is this not the definition of inflexibility and stupidity?  Reminds me of the Republicans and their continued campaign of denying global warming.  Those melting ice caps and the new studies by the majority of scientists that show the phenomenon accelerating are just liberal tactics to destroy the economy.  See any connection between this kind of thinking and the failure of the auto industry to adapt to change?

You know, it is sad when you can see the way forward but you just can’t get the rest of the country to move in your direction.  Whether it is health care, global warming, energy policy, torture investigations, our prison systems, or Cuba restrictions, why is it so hard to do the reasonable thing?

Did this nation break international law and engage in torture?  That is what Senator Leahy wants to explore in his “Truth Commission” hearings.  Meanwhile the Obama administration would rather “look ahead” than look backward.  Clearly any attempt to investigate the last administration’s torture and illegal incarceration would certainly turn into a partisan food fight.  It is understandable that President Obama would want to avoid this and move the country forward on a new agenda that would really reflect change.  But I would argue that this approach to sweeping it under the rug will not only continue to dog us as our moral failure, it is a violation of international law, and will certainly set up a scenario where it can be repeated in the future.

The part I find most entertaining about finding out what really happened is that for the most part we know exactly what happened and it is disgusting.  Anyone who has read Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals knows most of the details.  It is all there from the direction of White House on the exact methods of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to be used and their complicity in authorizing torture, to the ignoring of gathering wealth of evidence that their program was counterproductive, that they had many innocent detainees, and that their methods were producing unreliable information.  The book chronicles the amateur hour approach to interrogation driven by Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington, self-serving and ultimately unsustainable legal opinions by John Yoo, to George Tenet’s willingness to serve the administrations needs for justification instead of being an honest broker of intelligence. The level of incompetence and lack of legal integrity is stunning.

Sunday we found, as Ms. Mayer had chronicled, that the Red Cross had written a report documenting the war crimes that were committed by the United States and gave detailed information about exactly what was done and included excruciating and painful details of our depravity in this report (not suppose to be released to the public).  Mark Danner, a journalism professor published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released Sunday.  The amazing thing is that Ms. Mayer had it right on the mark.  But she even took more time and did the research to question claims of reliable intelligence gathered by these techniques and chronicled how traditional approaches were working (gaining trust and understanding their language and culture) and then the CIA came in, having no expertise in interrogation, Arab culture, or their language, took over the interrogations, and began the abusive techniques that shut these people down.  It is important and critical reading for every American, but of course, they won’t and that is why hearings and prosecutions are mandatory.

One of my favorite stories is the interrogation of  al-Shaykh al-Libi who gave evidence during torture in Egypt where we had rendered him of WMD and of a connection of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that President Cheney relied upon as irrefutable evidence of this connection and Secretary of State Powell used in his testimony to the UN.  Later he recanted this confession and when asked why he made it, his answer was simple:  “They were killing me, I had to tell them something.” The whole episode is the epitome of how we got the intelligence so wrong.  We knew what answers we wanted and we tortured people until we got them.  It was amateur hour in cowboy land.

It is extremely important to get all of this out into the open.  Does torture work?  We will never know for sure until we find out exactly what was done and if in fact it really did lead to actionable intelligence.  My reading of all the material is no it does not, and is so counterproductive as to cause us irreparable damage.  This also seems to be the opinion of most of the knowledgeable and experienced intelligence professionals that are familiar with what really happened. The downside, besides getting false or unreliable information, was that we lost the moral war and the reason for standing up for justice.  We provided the other side the biggest recruiting tool we could have ever imagined.  We also tainted any prosecution of those truly culpable so that we may never see justice in the courts.  Ms. Mayer points out that the British, with their lesson from interrogating IRA subjects, warned the administration that this would result if they perused this counterproductive path.  But it was cowboy time at the OK Corral.

We have committed war crimes and we have violated the very basis of our Constitution and the values for which we stand.  The Bush administration did this in your and my name.  If we want to cleanse our souls, find out what really happened, and understand how this could have happened, we need to hold those accountable who have destroyed everything we stood for.  So as messy as it is going to be, we have no choice.  Not if we are the United States of America. Not if we stand for our principles.  Just following orders was not an acceptable excuse at Nuremburg and it is not now.  Bring on the investigations.  It won’t be pretty but it is so necessary.

President Obama in his inauguration address told us what we all should know:  “But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

Apparently the message was lost on many who want an easy road forward.  They missed the whole point about this not being easy and even more important, they missed the point that the world has changed:  “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…”

What demonstrates this very clearly is the same old Republican obstructionism in their complaints about the economic stimulus plan.  They want to be in charge, they want to do the same stuff that brought us here and was rejected in the last election, and they think that if President Obama doesn’t roll over there is no bipartisanship.  But you expect no less from these low-life scoundrels.  Just keep reminding yourself who got us here and even though the bailout bill is not perfect (see The Economic Stimulus), it is a start.  But what is coming to the forefront is that we are not ready for the hard work, courage, and bold action necessary to bring about the change necessary to save us.  Here is my evidence:

• The Democrats are working way too hard to achieve bipartisanship agreement on the stimulus package when the compromises they make with the Republicans further waters it down and makes it less likely to succeed after passage.  The tax cuts in this bill are a bone thrown to the Republicans, but a big one of 37% of the total package.  They are inefficient for stimulating the economy and give us nothing for our money spent.  Democrats need to have the courage of their convictions and write a bill they think will really help (move the money to infrastructure).  As it is they are giving the Republicans a chance to water down their bill and then claim victory if it fails to stimulate the economy because it is too timid.
• When President Obama signed his executive order to close Guantanamo and to end torture, the cries went up that we would not be safe.  I have addressed this in detail in my blog (What Part of Get Rid of Guantanamo Don’t You Get), but to make long story short either we have values or we don’t.  Those who want to throw out the law so they can feel safe are moral cowards.  They don’t have the guts to stand by their values and except the consequences.  There is no other way to look at it.
• President Obama not only asked EPA to revisit allowing states to set their own greenhouse gas limits, but moved to raise the mileage standard by 2011.  Let the shrieking begin.  The auto industry, you know, those guys who have run themselves into the ground with poor decisions, starting shrieking how this would be their downfall supported by their paid for politicians.  This is just too much to bear in these hard times.  So when do you guys come into the 21st century and retool with a car we want?  When it was the good times you made the same argument.  Hard decisions don’t wait and those that can make this transition will be around for a while, and those that can’t wouldn’t be here anyway.  Just exactly what were they going to do with the bailout money, continue building their gas hogs?  The climate and our dependence on foreign oil won’t wait any longer.  What part of this don’t you get yet?  Recovery is a bitch isn’t it? (New York Times)
• Energy policy is producing some dissidents in the Democratic Party.  Republicans by definition are dissidents.  The argument is quite frankly who are the winners and who are the losers.  The mid-West, dependent on coal and manufacturing, wants a much more slow moving program that does not disrupt their economic life.  The West and East want, well, you have seen California’s approach to capping green house gases.  It would seem at first blush to be prudent to move carefully, but global warming and our dependence on foreign oil are not moving carefully.  Sooner or later we have to make hard decisions to move us away from our failed path and in those decisions some will be losers.  So far we have not shown the moral courage to face the hard consequences of hard decisions.  We are still addicted to the Republican free ride. (New York Times)

There will of course be more to come and the whining and shrieking will commence again, “It’s too hard, we can’t do it now, it hurts too much.”  So I will ask you all, if not now, when?  We already lost eight years.  Every day we lose is a day we lose.  It is now or never.  It is going to hurt and some apple carts are going to get over turned.  Isn’t that what President Obama said?  Where the hell is our courage?  Do I sense some gutless wonders out there hoping for gain without pain?  That is what we got from the Republicans with trickle down economics and it has been a disaster.  Didn’t you all say we were on the wrong path?  Where is your courage to face change?  What I see is a bunch of gutless wonders.

It is the start of the new television session and one of my favorites, 24, has returned.  I enjoy a good thriller as Jack Bauer shoots and tortures his way through the plot to save the world, but to enjoy it I have to suspend my disbelief.  In other words, I know it is fiction.  That is apparently not the case for some of our conservative columnists who watch the show and then say, “see, torture works.”  The prime example is Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday morning (From Jack Bauer to Leon Panetta).  She used the show as an example of times when “extreme interrogation techniques” might work and once again cited the claim that the torture of Abu Zubaydah “disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks” when performed by “professionals.  This has been widely refuted elsewhere and there is not one shred of evidence to support this claim, but Debra picks her sources of information selectively to support her misguided views. I will leave the refutation of these misguided ideas to others, but let’s focus on the Jack Bauer thing because it tells us a lot about the misinformation about torture.

The plot starts out when Jack is before a Congressional committee meeting being attacked for his “extreme interrogation techniques”.  The failure in logic in all this is that you have to assume that the torture worked.  You have to believe that they got the facts and they prevented some horrible act against the American people, thus your suspension of disbelief.  My suspension of disbelief arises from my training during the Viet Nam war to resist torture.  To make a long story short, most of us flying combat missions were trained on how to resist interrogation.  It began with the basic premise that name, rank, and serial number wasn’t going to cut it, and eventually they were going to get more.  Second was that if you had any information that would help the enemy, it probably was only good for about 24 hours (plans are changed once you are compromised).  So we were taught how to obfuscate effectively.  I won’t bore you with the training or the simulated prison camps and interrogation we were put through, but we were taught that one technique was to lie effectively.

Back to the plot line in 24:  Jack has to get the location of a renegade government agent and he threatens to poke the bad guy’s eye out with a pen after the bad guy refuses to talk.  Note that the information is highly time sensitive, which is the whole justification for the extreme interrogation measures.  Now, of course, when the bad guy is threatened he agrees to spill the beans (here is where you have to suspend your disbelief which is the part Debra doesn’t get).  All the guy really has to do is send them on a believable wild goose chase.  Not only would he have stopped the torture, but he would have tied up their resources on a wasted effort.  In the case of the plot line, he could have sent them to last location they were at because they would have moved once he was compromised.  In these situations you simply have to cause a delay because the information is time sensitive and the good guys have no way to determine if the information you are giving them is true.  In the real world think about “Curve Ball” here who gave Cheney all the false information he could ever want.  We have been misdirected in Iraq now for almost five years.

In the second instance, a captured bad guy is on a ventilator, but can talk (ever seen anyone on a ventilator talk?) which requires another suspension of disbelief.  But the FBI agent who sees that shouts and threats are going nowhere, decides to crimp his ventilator line and of course, he spills the beans.  Now in this case his lawyers are right outside the door so all he has to do is delay a minute or two.  So fake your terror, tell this agent some bogus, but believable location, and off she goes on a wild goose chase wasting time and resources.  In other words, from my training and rational mind, these scenes are not believable, but I go with the flow to enjoy the story line.

So in the popular medium we have this idea that torture works.  My naive mind assumes that everyone else can see through the failures in this logic, but after reading Debra, I see that even though she rejects Jack’s simple minded approach to torture, she thinks a more reasoned approach to it is effective.  But keep in mind the time sensitive nature of most information you are seeking.  It makes the information you are seeking uncheckable and as a result highly unreliable.  There is a high probability of misdirection and wasted time.  Second, as soon as you compromise the source, you are assuming your enemy is not smart enough to change his plans to thwart the information you are getting.  Back in my Viet Nam days, torture was very effective and getting you to say anything they wanted, eventually.  Note that none of the information they wanted was of tactical value.  They wanted you to disown the actions of your country for propaganda purposes.

But if you still reject my logic consider this:  I flew missions where there was the probability that I might be shot down and subjected to torture.  What gave me the courage to do my job was knowing that I fought for a country that did not treat people that way and followed the Geneva Conventions.  Debra and her bunch want us to jettison that important value.  My question to her is simply what would I be fighting for anymore if we have become them?