Liberty Street: 2005-11-27

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Sidney Blumenthal on Condoleezza Rice

Today's must-read: Sidney Blumenthal's Salon op-ed blasting Condi Rice.

Rice, Blumenthal writes, is a back-stabber:

The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protege into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her public relations team at the State Department depicts her as a restorer of realism, builder of alliances and maker of peace.

...a manipulator:

Rice arrived as the enforcer of the Bush administration's torture policy. She reminded the queasy Europeans that their intelligence services, one way or another, are involved in the rendition of hundreds of suspected terrorists transported through their airports for harsh interrogation in countries like Jordan and Egypt or secret CIA prisons known as "black sites." With her warnings, Rice recast the Western alliance as a partnership in complicity. In her attempt to impose silence, she spread guilt. Everybody is unclean in the dirty war and nobody has any right to complain. "What I would hope that our allies would acknowledge," she said, "is that we are all in this together."

...insensitive:

In Germany, Rice was greeted by the new chancellor, Angela Merkel, eager to repair relations with the Bush administration made awkward by former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's opposition to the Iraq war. Rice's visit was supposed to smooth over the conflicts of the past, but instead it surfaced new ones that indicated that the divisions between Germany -- and Europe -- and the U.S. are rooted in the Bush administration's fundamental policies.

Rice arrived in Berlin on the heels of a Washington Post report about the rendition, to a secret CIA jail in Afghanistan called the Salt Pit, of a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured and imprisoned for five months in a case of mistaken identity. After meeting with Rice, Merkel announced that Rice had acknowledged that the U.S. had made a "mistake" in the case. But Rice countered with a statement denying she had said that at all. The reconciliation with Germany was botched; Merkel was embarrassed; and Rice's credibility, at least in the German press, was left in tatters.

...a propagandist:

"Torture is a term that is defined by law," said Rice. "We rely on our law to govern our operations." She neglected to explain that "torture" as she used it has been defined by presidential findings to include universally defined methods of torture, such as waterboarding, for which U.S. soldiers were court-martialed in 1902 and 1968 specifically on the basis of having engaged in torture.

But the Bush administration has rejected adherence to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," in the term of then White House legal counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; rejects torture as it is defined in the United Nations Convention Against Torture (although the U.S. is a signatory); and rejects torture as it is interpreted by other international expert bodies, including the European Human Rights Court, whose judgments are binding on the nations of the Council of Europe.

"The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances," Rice insisted in her statement. "Moreover, in accordance with the policy of this administration: The United States has respected -- and will continue to respect -- the sovereignty of other countries." But was the kidnapping of the Egyptian suspect in Italy that has resulted in the 22 indictments of CIA operatives a fiction? Have the Italian prosecutors been made aware that the event was a figment of their imaginations? Was holding el-Masri, the innocent German, not a violation of the sovereignty of another country?

Rice continued: "The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured." But the German government was reported to have a list of 400 flights over European airspace for the purpose of renditions. And Amnesty International reports that there have been 800 such flights. Once again, Rice relies upon her own definition of "torture" to deny it.

She went on: "The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." In fact, the U.S. receives assurances from those countries that it would be unlikely that the suspects will be tortured, a technical loophole that provides for a washing of hands. Everybody on all sides understands that there will be torture, as there has been.

Rice's legal interpretations were authoritative, bland and bogus. It is hard to say whether they should be called Orwellian for their intentional falsity or Kafkaesque for their unintentional absurdity.

and a flat-out liar:

Since 2003, Rice has repeatedly told representatives of Human Rights Watch and other similar organizations that the U.S. does not torture. There is no trail of memos tracing her involvement in the titanic struggle over U.S. torture policy between Powell and the senior military on one side and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft's Justice Department on the other. Was the national security advisor completely out of the loop? On Nov. 19., ABC News reported, "Current and former CIA officers tell ABC News there is a presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, approving the [harsh interrogation] techniques, including waterboarding."

That technique has its origin in the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, in 1490, a baptized Christian who was a secret Jew, a converso named Benito Garcia, was subjected to water torture. The process drew out of him a confession of the ritual murder of a Christian child by crucifixion to get his blood for a magic ceremony to halt the Inquisition and bring about Jewish control. The incident greatly helped whip up the fear that led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, as described by James Reston Jr. in his new book, "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors."

Since the Inquisition, the method of waterboarding has been little refined. But Rice, like Bush, says we did not and will not torture anymore.

On the Difference Between Spin and Propaganda

Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate about a key difference in the way the Clinton and Bush administrations managed information to make themselves look good:

A frequent complaint about the Clinton administration was that it tried too hard to "spin" everything in its own favor. Clinton's spin doctors had a variety of individual styles but shared a grating habit of relentlessly coloring the news to support their side in any argument. George Stephanopoulos, with whom the technique was closely identified, once defined spin as "a hope dressed up as an observation." In practice, Clinton-era spinning meant that officials seldom conceded the obvious or acknowledged losing, failing, or being wrong about anything.

George W. Bush arrived in Washington avowing an end to all that. He promised he would never parse, shade, or play nice with the truth the way that Clinton had. But if Bush has shunned spinning, it has been in favor of something far more insidious. If the Clintonites were inveterate spinners, the Bushies have proved themselves to be thoroughgoing propagandists.

Though propaganda and spin exist on a continuum, they are different in essence. To spin is to offer a contention, usually specious, in response to a critical argument or a negative news story. It does not necessarily involve lying or misleading anyone about factual matters. Habitual spin is irksome, especially to the journalists upon whom it is practiced, but it does not threaten democracy. Propaganda is far more malignant. A calculated and systematic effort to manage public opinion, it transcends mere lying and routine political dishonesty. When the Bush administration manufactures fake "news," suppresses real news, disguises the former as the latter, and challenges the legitimacy of the independent press, it corrodes trust in leaders, institutions, and, to the rest of the world, the United States as a whole.

Massachusetts Court Rules Catholic Hospitals Can Refuse to Give Emergency Contraception to Rape Survivors

Rape survivors in Massachusetts be warned: Do not go to a Catholic hospital if you want emergency contraception. That state has exempted Catholic hospitals from having to comply with a new law that requires all hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape survivors.

The state Department of Public Health has determined that Catholic and other privately-run hospitals in Massachusetts can opt out of giving the morning-after pill to rape victims because of religious or moral objections, despite a new law that requires all hospitals who treat such victims to provide them with emergency contraception.

The decision, which is likely to result in a legal challenge, reignites an issue that has been fiercely debated on Beacon Hill: who should have access to emergency contraception and which hospitals, pharmacies, and medical centers should be required to provide it.

The ruling set off criticism from reproductive rights advocates and other backers of the new law, who believe rape victims should have wide access to what they say is a safe, effective means to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But it heartened conservatives and Catholic groups, who oppose the morning-after pill because they believe it amounts to abortion in some cases.

The ruling, which the department plans to outline to hospital CEOs in a letter this week, says the new law applies to all hospitals but does not nullify a statute passed years ago that says privately-run hospitals cannot be forced to provide abortions or contraception.

"We feel very clearly that the two laws don't cancel each other out and basically work in harmony with each other," Paul Cote Jr., commissioner of the Department of Public Health, said in an interview yesterday.

The two laws "work in harmony with each other," says the leading public health official, whose first name makes it clear that he will never be compelled to surrender his body for nine months to the growth and nourishment of a baby conceived in rape.

U.S. Pledges to Abide by U.N. Convention Against Torture

Condoleezza Rice appears to have made a major concession on the issue of how the U.S. treats detainees in the "war against terror":

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the United States had banned all of its personnel from conducting cruel or inhumane interrogations of prisoners. Her statement appeared to mark a significant shift in U.S. policy.

"As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," Rice said during a news conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Rice's word choice is significant because, although the U.N. Convention Against Torture obligates its signatories (of which the U.S. is one) to " 'undertake to prevent' cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners 'that do not amount to torture,' " the Bush administration previous to this has insisted that this obligation only applies to prisoners on U.S. soil.

CIA interrogators in the overseas sites have been permitted to use interrogation techniques prohibited by the U.N. convention or by U.S. military law, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials.

This is good news, no question -- but I am waiting to see whether this ban on cruel, inhumane, and degrading prisoner interrogations by U.S. personnel anywhere in the world signals a corresponding change on the larger issue of secret prisons. Policies banning torture, or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, are useless if prisoners are held in clandestine facilities. Accountability, and thus enforcement, is impossible when no one knows where the prisons are or who is being held there.

My worry is that the Bush administration authorized this ban as a way of defusing the secret prisons issue. Will Europe let that issue drop now that Condi Rice is saying detainees will be treated humanely in accordance with international law?

Poll Indicates a Majority of Americans Support Torture

A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll shows that solid majorities in the United States, England, France, and South Korea think torture is justified "in rare instances."

"I don't think we should go out and string everybody up by their thumbs until somebody talks. But if there is definitely a good reason to get an answer, we should do whatever it takes," said Billy Adams, a retiree from Tomball, Texas.

It's too bad that we can't take a retroactive poll on how many Americans thought torture could be justified if there was "a good reason" before George W. Bush popularized the idea. I think that 9/11 has less to do with Americans' growing acceptance of torture than the message our leaders have been putting out for the last five years. It's the Bush administration's methodical and efficient degrading of the meaning of torture and erosion of the instinctive abhorrence of torture most Americans have always felt that has led to this widespread acceptance of it. Even more to the point, Bush has managed to create a distinction between torture and what his lawyers call "cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment." It should be obvious that this "distinction" is meaningless -- one might even say it's a tortured distinction. It's certainly an artificial distinction, meant specifically to serve as a device to permit the Bush administration to torture people in fact while reassuring Americans and the world that the U.S. does not torture. We do not practice torture. We only practice cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.

This poll, if it is indeed an accurate reflection of how a majority of Americans feel, demonstrates vividly how we have changed as a people -- how we have been changed; how we have allowed ourselves to be changed. In the four years since two planes piloted by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center, destroying the towers and killing almost 3,000 people, it is we who have changed -- not the terrorists.

Think about that for a moment. When Pres. Bush invaded Iraq, he told Americans that we were liberating Iraq and giving Iraqis freedom and democracy. We were ending the reign of terror they had lived in for over two decades. Almost three years later, have terrorists been changed by our ideals of freedom and democracy? Does a broad swath of Al Qaeda's members, supporters, and sympathizers now support a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion?

Now ask yourself the opposite question. Three years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, do large majorities of Americans oppose secret prisons, arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention without charges or access to legal counsel?

Bush's "war on terror" has not changed the terrorist value system one iota. But it has changed our value system. Today, it would be far easier to find an American who thinks pulling out fingernails or delivering electric shocks to genitals is fine "if there's a good reason" than it would be to find a follower of Zarqawi who thinks religious pluralism is a fine thing. It would be far easier to find Americans who have no problem with banning antiwar protest and charging violators with treason than it would be to find a Taliban fighter who agrees that women have the right to wear pants and go to university.

In this battle to counter the violent, hate-filled philosophy of terrorists by spreading Western values of democracy and individual freedom all over the globe, whose values, whose philosophy, is winning?

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Innocent Victims of U.S. Renditions Policy

The New York Times has two stories today about the tensions between Germany and the Bush administration resulting from the rendition of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped by the C.I.A., beaten, and detained for five months in Macedonia and in Afghanistan, in what the Bush administration has admitted was a mistake. During the five months of his detention, al-Masri was assaulted, forced to strip nude while prison staff photographed him, and injected with drugs.

Khaled al-Masri has filed a lawsuit against former C.I.A. director George Tenet and three U.S. companies said to have provided flight services to the C.I.A.

In a joint news conference with Angela Merkel, Germany's new chancellor, Condoleezza Rice said she could say nothing about al-Masri's particular case, but added: "...[A]ny policy will sometimes result in error, and when it happens we do everything we can to correct it."

Which is a fancy way of saying, "Mistakes happen. We do our best, but we're only human." That response does not even begin to cut it when you're talking about a "mistake" that involved being kidnapped, beaten repeatedly, sexually humiliated, injected with drugs, and kept in secret detention for five months. No one knew where he was. His wife and children had no idea what happened to him. And the physical, emotional, and psychological consequences for al-Masri are ongoing -- perhaps permanent.

Condi Rice asks for "a healthy respect for the challenges we face" in the war against terror, while seemingly not showing any real respect for the enormity of the damage done to Khaled al-Masri and his family.

But then, neither does the administration she is part of. After publicly acknowledging that al-Masri did nothing wrong and should never have been arrested, much less detained and tortured, you would think the U.S. government would do everything it could reasonably do to communicate its sincere regret. Certainly, one would not expect the U.S. government to humiliate al-Masri again or to give him cause to fear for his safety again. Yet, the Bush administration did exactly that, by refusing to allow him to enter the United States to speak about his experience and answer questions at a news conference in Atlanta:

...Khaled el-Masri, a 42-year-old Lebanese-born former car salesman, was refused entrance to the United States after arriving Saturday in Atlanta on a flight from Germany with the intention of appearing at a news conference today in Washington. He spoke instead by video satellite link, describing somberly how he was beaten, photographed nude and injected with drugs during five months in detention in Macedonia and Afghanistan.

"I want to know why they did this to me," Mr. Masri said, speaking in German. He said that he had been reunited with his wife and children and was seeking work in Germany but that he had not fully recovered from the trauma of his experience.

"I don't think I'm the human being I used to be," he told reporters through an interpreter.

In a separate interview in Germany, Mr. Masri said his weekend encounter with federal immigration officers in Atlanta made him briefly fear that the ordeal might be repeated or that he might be taken to the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"My heart was beating very fast," he said. "I have remembered that time, what has happened to me, when they kidnapped me to Afghanistan. I have remembered and was afraid." [Emphasis mine.]

Khaled al-Masri is far from being the only innocent person detained and mistreated by the U.S. government. The Christian Science Monitor's Terrorism and Security Daily Update tells us that there have been a number of highly publicized cases in which innocent people were arrested, flown to secret prisons, and tortured for extended periods of time.

The problem for the US has been that, along with the disclosure of the existence of the "secret prisons," there have been several high-profile cases that have highlighted US mistakes, such as US agents grabbing the wrong person, wrongly imprisoned subjects of rendition alleging they had been tortured in the countries where they had been taken, and allegations that the CIA lied to a European ally about a rendition.
[...]
The [Washington] Post reports that the Masri case shows how pressure on the CIA to apprehend Al Qaeda members after 9/11 led to an unknown number of detentions based on slim or faulty evidence, and just how hard it is to correct these mistakes in a system "built and operated in secret."

One [US] official said about three dozen names fall in that category [those mistakenly detained]; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by Al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the Al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

"They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association" with terrorism, one CIA officer said. [Emphasis added for extracted quote within article.]

Maher Arar, the Syrian-born Canadian who was arrested while changing planes at JFK airport in New York City on (completely unfounded) suspicions of being associated with Al Qaeda, is another notorious example of innocent civilians being thrown into a nightmare of secret prisons and torture because of the Bush administration's propensity for detaining people on slim, questionable, or nonexistent evidence.

A man of slight build, unassuming character and average looks, Arar is strident yet soft-spoken. Before his detention at J.F.K., he was an apolitical workaholic who was obsessed only with making ends meet and spending free time with his family. "Engineers by nature are machines," he says. "They work 9 to 9. They do what they're told to do." But it wasn't a bad life. The Damascus native, now 34, immigrated to Canada with his family in 1987 and became a citizen four years later. By 1997, he was making a decent living in Ottawa amid the city's high-tech boom. Two years later, while his wife Monia Mazigh was completing a Ph.D. in finance at McGill, Arar took a job at the MathWorks, a Boston-area computer company. In 2001, wanting to be near family and friends, he returned full-time to Ottawa and started a consultancy specializing in wireless technology.

That life came to an abrupt end on Sept. 26, 2002, when Arar was pulled aside while passing through J.F.K. after a vacation in Tunisia, where most of his wife's family lives. He was detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where he says U.S. authorities questioned him for 10 days. Then, in the middle of the night, he was put into shackles and spirited away via Jordan to Syria, a country he hadn't been to in 16 years -- despite the fact that he was a naturalized Canadian citizen traveling on a Canadian passport en route to Canada.

Arar ended up in a dark, 1-m by 2-m cell he calls the "grave" in the Syrian military intelligence agency's Palestine branch in Damascus. He was held there without charge for 10 months and 10 days. During his first two weeks, he claims, he was interrogated about people he had known in Canada, sometimes for 18 hours at a time, and tortured. One punishment, he says, was repeated lashings with a 5-cm black metal cable on his palms, wrists, lower back and hips. The mental ordeal was also brutal, he said in November 2003 at one of the most dramatic press conferences ever televised in Canada. "The second and third days were the worst," he told the world that day. "I could hear other prisoners being tortured, and screaming." During his first week in prison, he says, he falsely confessed that he had received military training in Afghanistan.

Many would have crumbled emotionally under such duress, but Arar hung tough. Finally, almost a year later, on Oct. 5, 2003, the Syrians released him, saying publicly that they considered him "completely innocent." When Arar made it back to Canada, Amnesty International's [Alex] Neve [director of Amnesty-Canada] was among those who met him at the airport in Montreal. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind," Neve declared at the time, "that he has been through a horrific ordeal."

In the face of cases like these, Bush and his minions will continue to insist that the U.S. does not torture people or send them to countries where they might be tortured. And that's why nobody will trust the U.S. or believe the U.S. about anything anymore.

Redefine "Torture" and Then Say We Don't Do It

THE WASHINGTON POST has a strong editorial about Condoleezza Rice's dishonest defense of U.S. policy toward detainee treatment and international obligations:

IN AN ATTEMPT to quell a growing storm in Europe over the CIA's secret prisons, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday issued a defense based on the same legalistic jujitsu and morally obtuse double talk that led the Bush administration into a swamp of human rights abuses in the first place. Ms. Rice insisted that the U.S. government "does not authorize or condone torture" of detainees. What she didn't say is that President Bush's political appointees have redefined the term "torture" so that it does not cover practices, such as simulated drowning, mock execution and "cold cells," that have long been considered abusive by authorities such as her State Department.

Ms. Rice said, "It is also U.S. policy that authorized interrogation will be consistent with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." What she didn't explain is that, under this administration's eccentric definition of "U.S. obligations," cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not prohibited as long as it does not occur on U.S. territory. That is the reason for the secret prisons that the CIA has established in European countries and other locations around the world, and for the "renditions" of detainees to countries such as Egypt and Jordan: so that the administration can violate the very treaty Ms. Rice claims it is upholding.

It always amazes me how this administration and its supporters claim the right, as the Roman Empire of our time, to be above diplomacy, compromise, negotiation, and the common understandings to which we hold other countries -- yet always and without fail get angry, hurt, and upset when the rest of the world does not recognize that we do so with the most noble of intentions. We want to flex our muscles and throw punches as we please, and be admired at the same time. We want to be feared yet loved. We want to act in ways that terrify and terrorize, but if, in doing so, we are told that the things we do cause terror, we roar and bellow in outrage.

I spend more time than I should trying, trying, trying, to understand why the Bush administration is angry when Europe tells us our secret prisons violate international law, and when they won't take our word for it that we don't torture people in those prisons.

I drive myself to distraction trying to fathom the thinking of conservative bloggers who explode in fury at a leading member of the Senate because he tells a news broadcaster that American soldiers terrorize Iraqis when they conduct arbitrary house searches:

Kerry thinks that the American soldiers are the terrorists in Iraq, applying that unique gift of his for moral relativity once again to indict an entire deployment of soldiers as criminals of the same order as our enemy. And Bob Schieffer sat there, without even raising an objection to Kerry's smear. Had Kerry not shown a long track record of this kind of rhetoric in the past -- and had to answer for it repeatedly during last year's presidential election -- one could possibly believe it came out as a slip of the tongue. However, he obviously has never stopped believing that the American fighting man and woman represents the same relative evil as the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, and al-Qaeda.

The Democrats need to answer for this outrage. Is it really the party position that American soldiers terrorize Iraqi civilians? Do they want the Iraqis to do it instead of us? Kerry has unmasked himself and his fellow anti-war zealots for the hypocrites they are.

What is Captain Ed disputing here? That the U.S. military in Iraq conducts these arbitrary house searches? Or is he arguing that these arbitrary middle-of-the-night house searches do not terrify the Iraqi families that experience them and cause such families to feel terrorized? Is he arguing that U.S. soldiers do not intend to terrorize or terrify, so therefore it doesn't matter how Iraqis themselves perceive having their home broken into and searched by foreign soldiers?

I ask myself, Does it matter what the "party position" is about arbitrary house searches in Iraq if such searches are causing Iraqis to feel terror? Can unquestioning support for arbitrary house searches here in the United States help win the support of Iraqis whose houses at any moment can be broken into and ransacked by American soldiers? What purpose does it serve to condemn domestic critics of such actions if because of those actions we lose the support of the Iraqi people? If we all here at home memorize and repeat every morning and evening the mantra, "Our soldiers are brave and patriotic and they are helping, not terrorizing, the Iraqi people," will that make a rat's ass of difference if Iraqis think U.S. troops behave like cossacks? It's the question that's been asked a zillion times: Is it the criticism of the house searches by men like Sen. Kerry that is hurting "our cause" in Iraq, or is it the house searches themselves?

Monday, December 05, 2005

Where Is the Line?

WAS THE SOVIET UNION'S GULAG ARCHIPELAGO a violation of international human rights agreements because people were tortured in those secret prison camps? Or was it a human rights violation because the people who were tortured in those secret prison camps were innocent writers, artists, political activists, and others who were not actually a threat to the Soviet system? Did the Soviet government know they were disappearing and torturing and killing people who were not, in reality, a threat to them? Or did they sincerely believe that those arrested and sent to the gulag were dangerous people, and that by detaining them in secret prisons and labor camps they were saving innocent lives? Supposing for a moment that many of the prisoners who passed through the Soviet gulag were dangerous, and threats to the Soviet government, would that have justified the existence of the gulag?

The Bush administration will not confirm that the United States has a network of secret prisons scattered across Europe, and elsewhere; but Condoleezza Rice has tacitly acknowledged these secret prisons do exist, by telling European leaders, when they ask for clarification, about the benefits of cooperating with the U.S. on anti-terrorism efforts, and by denying that the U.S. tortures detainees or sends them to other countries where they might be tortured.

Rice is, in effect, saying that secret prisons in which interrogation methods and conditions of detention are unknown to all but a handful of individuals are acceptable if such prisons keep innocent people safe. But she also insists that the U.S. does not torture detainees. Of course, the Bush administration defines torture differently from the way torture is defined in international law. But let's assume for the sake of argument that subjecting prisoners to extremes of heat and cold, intimidating them (severely, like with snarling dogs, for example, or putting them in cells with rats), and "other techniques" (like waterboarding, because bringing a prisoner to the point of suffocation and back, repeatedly, is not torture in the Bush definition) are not sufficient to induce the prisoner to give interrogators the information they want, or confess to what the interrogators want them to confess. Since the all-important, overriding priority is to keep innocent people safe, wouldn't interrogators have to resort to more ... persuasive methods? Would interrogators be justified in pulling out fingernails or kneecapping with an electric drill, or putting the detainee in boiling water, if that was the only way to get him to talk and thus save the lives of innocent people? And if not, why not?

Put another way, my question is this: Where is the line between public safety and actions that cannot be justified under any circumstances? How much goodness and decency do you have to sacrifice before you've sacrificed too much? When you go over to the dark side for a good purpose, can you ever travel too far into the other side? Does it ever get too dark? If you do go too far, will you even know it? Or is the definition of going too far that you lose the ability to know that you have gone too far?

Setting moral philosophy aside, there is also the issue of credibility. As I mentioned above, Condi Rice has indirectly admitted that there are secret U.S.-run prisons in European countries. She has also acknowledged the practice of renditioning suspected terrorists to third countries. But she denies that detainees' human rights are thereby violated:

Terrorists are often captured far from their homes, in lawless areas. They can be dangerous people. In addition, some may "have information that may save lives, perhaps even thousands of lives," said Rice.

In this context, the US does practice "rendition," said Rice, meaning the practice of taking detainees to third countries.

But in doing so the US complies with all laws and treaty obligations, including those under the Convention Against Torture, said Rice. The US does not transport detainees for the "purpose of interrogation using torture," nor does it transport them to any country where US officials believe the detainee might be tortured.

But how can anyone trust the United States to tell the truth about anything anymore?

...the negative effect of the images of US mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere, plus the unpopularity of the Iraq war among many Europeans, may make it difficult for her to win over the region.

"The real issue here is that no one trusts the United States anymore," says Hurst Hannum, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

I'm even wondering how the Bush administration can make a serious argument that people can be detained and interrogated in secret prisons without torturing them and without breaking international law. Are secret prisons and humane treatment even compatible? Once upon a time, the courts in this country argued that "separate but equal" was a legitimate concept in regard to black and white children going to school together. That notion was blown out of the water by the Brown decision in 1957. Separate is inherently unequal. Secret prisons are inherently abusive.

The Rape Narrative

One of my regular readers posted a comment about my piece on the 19-year-old young woman in Oregon who was raped two years ago by three men, one of them her boyfriend at the time.

I am responding to the comment here because I think the arguments my reader makes go to the heart of how rape is viewed in our society, why getting a conviction for rape in court is so difficult (if the case even goes to trial), and why rape is such an underreported crime.

Here is the comment:

Bloggers have jumped on this story without bothering to find out if it was reported accurately. I checked out the links and saw lots of opinion and few facts. Newspapers are very unreliable for accurately reporting the reasons for a court's decision. One of the factors that influenced that judge was the girl did not seem traumatized after the event. If that was the sole reason he dismissed the case, then he is nuts. But we don't know that. We don't know how much weight he gave to that conclusion. We only know it was part of his reasoning.

If you recall a big scene was made about the woman who sued McDonald's when she burned herself spilling coffee in her lap that she had purchased from the drive through window. Everyone wrung their hands about frivolous lawsuits and stupid people who don't realize coffee is hot. It took a long time before anyone picked up on the fact that she had 3rd degree burns in her lap from coffee that was kept scalding hot so it would stay fresher longer. The temperature of the coffee was kept at a temperature not permitted for the very reason that somone might spill it on themselves and do serious damage. To this day many people do not know the whole story about that law suit.

Unless we look at the actual decision from the Judge we do not know why he dismissed the rape case and why he charged this girl with the false reporting of the rape. What is the point of even offering an opinion on this case until that is done?

There are things commentators on this case do not understand. For example, the sexual history of the girl IS relevent in this specific case vis a vis the boyfriend. Sexual history is admissable when it goes the defendant's belief that there was consent. The only sexual history that is relevent is her history with this particular man. There is no information as to whether this rule was followed or not during this trial. Hence we do not know if the court erred.

Men and women DO falsely accuse others of rape. It probably does not happen often but when it does happen the defendant is facing some pretty draconian consequences. That is the difference between falsely reporting a car stolen and pointing at a specfic man and saying: "that man over there raped me."

IF this was a false accusation, I would come down pretty hard on the girl as well. She simply cannot put other people in that situation.

Kevin may know the girl, but he wasn't in the room when the inceident occured and he himself admits that he is biased. No body wants to believe someone they cared about is capable of doing something so wrong.

The focus on this issue should be an analysis of the NUMBER of women who report a rape and are later charged with making a false police report when the charges are dropped or the defendant is acquitted. How many women does this happen to? Is it becoming a trend? Is it done to intimidate women who report a rape? These are the issues people should be concentrating on for their blogs to make any sense at all. Taking ONE case where we do not know all the facts is pointless.

First: Kevin wrote about this case because he has known the girl since she was a baby, because he attended the trial (against the girl, on charges of filing a false police report), and because he was so upset about the judge's ruling. Others then picked up on the story because they shared Kevin's outrage, even if they did not have his personal involvement. Kevin did not say he was "biased"; he said he could not be completely objective. There is a difference. It's not like nothing Kevin says can be trusted or believed simply because he's known this girl all her life.

There's nothing wrong with commenting on a particular case, and no necessity to do an academic study on rape before one can comment. If people had to be present in the courtroom and have heard or had access to the entire transcript of a court proceedings before they could come to any conclusions or take any informed action, no one would ever be able to comment or act on anything.

My reader says, "The focus on this issue should be an analysis of the NUMBER of women who report a rape and are later charged with making a false police report when the charges are dropped or the defendant is acquitted."

Why? Why is the number of women who are charged with falsely reporting that they were raped more relevant than the fact that in THIS case, the prosecutors brought this girl to trial for filing false rape charges, based on statements made by her mother and by the three alleged rapists, when those same prosecutors had found those same people inconsistent and lacking in credibility during the pretrial investigation? If there wasn't enough evidence for a trial, how could there have been enough evidence to charge the girl with a false accusation of rape?

It's not like there WAS a trial and the alleged rapists were ACQUITTED. If the case HAD gone to court and the three men HAD been acquitted, THEN, maybe, an argument could have been made for charging the girl with filing a false police report. But the case never went to trial!

How does "Neither side in this case is credible enough to go to trial" translate into "We can't prove these rape allegations so that means the girl lied about being raped"?

The district attorney's office in Washington County, Oregon, where this alleged rape occurred, defends the decision to bring false rape charges against the girl because, although both sides lacked credibility, she lacked credibility MORE. What kind of a legal argument is THAT?

The D.A. also said their decision to charge her with filing a false police report was based on the fact that she did not "act traumatized." That's not a legal argument, either; it's also not a well-informed argument in terms of how rape victims typically act after a rape.

If you want to know how rape survivors typically act in the aftermath of the rape, go and read the accounts by actual rape survivors at Shakespeare's Sister. These painful stories have been pouring out since Kevin wrote his piece; it really touched a nerve.

With regard to the girl's sexual history, the notion that it had any relevance to her rape is just plain wrong. It has no relevance whatsoever. A virgin can consent to sex as easily as a prostitute can. If a woman had consensual sex many times before, that does not mean she is more likely to have consented this time, too. It does not mean she is more likely to say that she was raped if she was not. If a woman has no sexual history or a very sparse one, that also does not mean she is less likely to have consented to sex.

From Shakespeare's Sister:

A woman's sexual history has absolutely no bearing on whether she was raped -- including her past sexual history, if any, with her attacker. A rapist doesn't give a rat's ass whether he rapes a virgin or a whore, or any of the majority of us who fall somewhere in between, which makes each of us as likely to fall victim to the crime as anyone else.

The idea that there is a connection between a woman's sexual history and whether she was raped is rooted in what might be called The Rape Narrative: that women who like sex and have a lot of it are dirty and bad, and therefore deserve to be raped. In contrast, a man charged with rape is unlikely to be grilled about his sexual history in order to show that, because he is addicted to sex, he must have raped this women when she said no to sex with him.

Arthur Silber at Once Upon a Time... says it has to do with The Male Myth that men are always right, and their authority is not to be questioned.

As the other bloggers note, it is very revealing what evidence was allowed, and what was not: the woman's sexual history came into evidence, while a great deal of negative evidence about the other witnesses was disallowed.

In short: with regard to every critical issue, the very worst possible interpretation and outcome was accorded to the woman, while the most innocent explanation was eagerly provided to the men. This is "justice" provided by every woman's worst enemy.

So what explains this? I think the ultimate root is the prevailing view of women that still dominates and saturates every aspect of our culture: that, in essence, women are the root of all evil. ...
[...]
The central point is simple: with regard to evil in the world, in all its manifestations and no matter what the evidence might suggest about other causes, women are the ultimate source of all evil. All of it, bar none.

When you consider that throughout history and into our own time, men have held all the positions of power and that men, and only men, control all major events, one might well wonder why men are so fragile and insecure that they cannot bear even to contemplate that anything might be their own fault. But no matter what happens, it is never their fault. It's always someone else's. If no other man is available to take the blame, then pick a woman -- any woman. They're inherently evil, so they can fit any bill of particulars.

So when there is talk about not having been there and not knowing all the reasons for a court's decision and not having the full story, we should remember that the Rape Narrative and the Male Myth and all of the deeply rooted cultural assumptions about women, men, and sex are part of the reasons and the full story.

No Place To Run

It seems Condi Rice cannot escape those annoying questions about secret prisons -- even though she made it clear that the U.S. is tired of being lectured by our European underlings to practice what we preach.

It's true, as BBC News notes, that poor Condi is in a fairly perplexing quandary. How is she to answer questions about secret prisons that she still has not acknowledged, and will not acknowledge, even exist? At the same time, how can she truly reassure her country's European allies that the U.S. respects and abides international agreements on human rights (which all forbid secret prisons) if she cannot state categorically that they don't exist? And she can't -- because everyone would know she was lying, and that would strain U.S. relations with Europe even more. So, given that she cannot deny the prisons exist, but she also cannot acknowledge that the prisons exist, her only option is to insist that the U.S. respects its international obligations and does not violate its allies' sovereignty while saying sorry, we can't give you any proof that we're telling the truth.

Meanwhile, national security advisor Stephen Hadley, in a vain attempt to take the pressure off his former boss while not actually giving anyone any answers, is reduced to talking in circles:

Speaking on Sunday, President Bush's national security advisor Stephen Hadley said that if such operations were taking place "they're the kind of things that one cannot talk about."

Mr Hadley went on to say "...the information would help the enemy... it would put countries who are co-operating with us at risk," all the while refusing to confirm or deny the reports first published in the Washington Post.

Which of course begs the question -- because if there were no secret interrogation centers, where suspected terrorists are tortured, there would be no damning information for the enemy to use as ammunition against us. Countries that are cooperating with us would not be put at risk if the U.S. were not demanding of those countries that they cooperate with us in doing something that is immoral and a violation of international law.

Maybe then, too, the United States would be defending itself against the threat of terrorism in a rational and effective way, instead of giving our friends and our enemies another reason to "question America's moral authority."

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Trust, But Verify

This is a follow-up on my post the other day about Condoleezza Rice's plans to tell European leaders to stop pushing the U.S. about the C.I.A.'s secret prisons for suspected terrorists.

An Observer article dated December 4 mentions that Jack Straw, Britain's Foreign Secretary, told Rice in a letter that he wanted her to explain why approximately 80 C.I.A. planes had passed through the UK.

Rice's response, apparently, will be that she will not explain. That she does not have to explain, nor does anyone else representing the U.S. government have to explain, despite the fact that a network of secret prisons on European soil accessed by flights through European countries violates international laws against torture.

But you know, it's like the old joke about police officers breaking the law. Who are you going to report them to -- the police?

It also occurs to me that these hundreds of C.I.A. flights (it must be hundreds overall, if the flights in the UK alone number 80), with people in the countries involved strongly suspecting what the planes are for and where they're going, but no one saying it out loud, are not unlike the hundreds of nameless, unmarked trains that traveled through Eastern Europe carrying Jews to the Nazi death camps.

But these are thoughts one is not supposed to express, especially if you are part of the European leadership that agreed to "cooperate" with the U.S. in the war on terror. Kind of like when you get money from a loan shark: "You agreed to the terms for our help: no questioning our methods. You want to back out now because you're getting a little queasy? There's a price to pay for that. Are you fond of your kneecaps?"

State Department officials have hinted that Rice's response to Straw and other European ministers will remind them of their "co-operation" in the war on terror. She is expected to make a public statement today stressing that the US does not violate allies' sovereignty or break international law. She will also remind people their governments are co-operating in a fight against militants who have bombed commuters in London and Madrid.

In other words, "The U.S. is keeping you safe. Don't argue with us about how we do it."

At least one European legislator has an answer for that:

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who will be chairing a Commons committee of MPs along with Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, has said Rice needs to make a clear statement. She "does not seem to realise that for a large section of Washington and European opinion, the Bush administration is in a shrinking minority of people that has not grasped that lowering our standards [on human rights] makes us less, not more, secure."

Condoleezza Rice and the U.S. leadership she represents are demanding that Europe (and for that matter the entire world) give to the U.S. the benefit of the doubt that the U.S. refuses to give the rest of the world.

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses.

But what reason has America given allies or anyone, anywhere, to "trust" that America does not abuse human rights? Rice asks for trust where trust has not been earned.

What Pres. Bush Did Not Mention in the Rose Garden

YESTERDAY, Pres. Bush spoke to the press in the Rose Garden about the economy. His speech was full of optimism and positive words about how hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created, how Americans are working hard and doing well, and how bright and promising the future looks.

Here is what the President said:

Thanks to good, old-fashioned American hard work and productivity, innovation, and sound economic policies of cutting taxes and restraining spending, our economy continues to gain strength and momentum.

Our economy added 215,000 jobs for the month of November. We've added nearly 4.5 million new jobs in the last two-and-a-half years. Third-quarter growth of this year was 4.3 percent. That's in spite of the fact that we had hurricanes and high gasoline prices. The unemployment rate is 5 percent. And that's lower than the average for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

We have every reason to be optimistic about our economic future. I mean, when you think about the news that's come in, the jobs report, the recent report on strong economic growth, low inflation, strong productivity, lower gasoline prices, a strong housing market, increases in consumer confidence and business investment, our economic horizon is as bright as it's been in a long time.

The foundation for growth is strong. It's based upon low taxes and restrained government spending, legal reform, incentives for saving and investment.

The small business sector is vibrant. Most new jobs in America are created by the small business sector, and our entrepreneurs are doing well. We got the best work force in America -- in the world. People are productive, they're hardworking. Our ingenuity and know-how and -- is vibrant. This economy is in good shape.

We're not going to rest until every American who wants a job can find one. We're going to continue to work for good policies for our workers and our entrepreneurs. I'll continue to push for pro-growth economic policies, all aimed at making sure every American can realize the American Dream.

Thank you very much.

Here is what the President did not mention -- although, according to Scott McClellan at Friday afternoon's press briefing, the President had known about it since the previous evening:

Ten Marines on foot patrol were killed and 11 wounded by a roadside bomb near Fallujah, Iraq, in one of the deadliest attack on American troops in recent months, the Marine Corps announced on Friday. A brief statement said the Marines were from Regimental Combat Team 8, of the 2nd Marine Division.

They were hit Thursday by a roadside bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device, or IED, made from several large artillery shells, the Marines said. IEDs are the most common cause of U.S. casualties in Iraq.
[...]
The 10 deaths on Thursday marked the deadliest incident for Marines in Iraq since 14 were killed by a roadside bomb on Aug. 3 near Haditha, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. Those Marines were traveling in a lightly armored amphibious assault vehicle when it hit the bomb, flipped into the air and exploded in a fireball.

Try to imagine how the families of those 10 dead Marines might feel, knowing that the man who sent their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons to Iraq gave a glowing speech about the economy with not one word about their loved ones killed in Iraq. Imagine, if you can, what emotions they might be experiencing right now, knowing that their loved ones' Commander-in-Chief decided not to mention their deaths because it was such a downer, and he "didn't want to take the focus off today's message, the 'good news' about the economy. "

One More Disincentive for Women to Report Rape

Kevin Hayden at The American Street has a chilling story about a 17-year-old girl who was gang-raped by three men, all of them known to her. One of the men was her boyfriend. She reported the rape and filed charges, but the case never went to trial because the district attorney for Washington County, Oregon, concluded that all of the parties involved -- the victim and the three men who raped her -- lacked credibility, making it unlikely that they could get a conviction.

But the story gets much worse than this. After making the determination that they lacked enough evidence to prove the rape charges, the district attorney's office decided to file charges against the victim for false allegations of rape! The young woman did not at any time recant or withdraw the charges; the prosecution simply decided that, although both the alleged rapists and the rape victim were inconsistent in their statements, the victim was more inconsistent, and thus had to have lied about being raped!

Yesterday, the municipal judge ruled in favor of the city of Beaverton, Oregon: He found the rape victim (now 19 years old) guilty of filing a false police report of rape against her boyfriend and his two friends.

Kevin actually attended the trial: He has known the young woman since she was a baby.

You should also read Shakespeare's Sister on this story: She has more details about the history of the case and the people involved. One of the reasons (perhaps the major reason, although I'm not clear on that) that the young woman's allegations of rape were found "not credible" was because her mother and her friend told the authorities she "did not act traumatized" after the rape occurred. But these same two people were among those who urged the rape victim to file a police report.

Again: The judge decided that the victim was not credible because her friend and her mother said she did not "act traumatized" in the days after the incident. He then filed a charge against the victim which turned the two people he had deemed credible witnesses into criminal conspirators. That seems rather confusing, that two criminal conspirators could also be credible witnesses, and experts on post-rape trauma no less.

Melissa (Shakespeare's Sister) also provides some solid, factual information about how rape victims typically react after being raped (there is no typical reaction), and gives us the truth behind the widespread idea that lying about rape is common:

Here are some things we hear a lot: Vindictive women use rape charges to get back at men. Women's sexual histories can be informative in a rape case. Women who were "really raped" are easily identified by the way they behave.

None of them are true.

I like the way Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest summarizes this case:

A judge decides that since he doesn't know who to believe he'll convict the woman for filing the charges in the first place.

More commentary at The Heretik.

U.S. Military Touts Drop in Suicide Bombings

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a high-ranking military officer and spokesperson in Iraq, is saying that the number of suicide bombings in November went down to their lowest level in seven months. Lynch gives the credit for this drop to U.S.-Iraqi offensive operations in the Syrian border region.

Lynch told reporters that suicide bombings declined to 23 in November as U.S. and Iraqi forces were overrunning insurgent strongholds in the Euphrates River valley west of the capital.

Communities along the river are believed used by foreign fighters, who slip into the country from Syria and travel down the river highway to Baghdad and other cities.

Lynch called suicide bombings the insurgents' "weapon of choice" because they can inflict a high number of casualties while sacrificing only the attacker. Classic infantry ambushes draw withering American return fire, resulting in heavy insurgent losses.

"In the month of November: Only 23 suicide attacks -- the lowest we've seen in the last seven months, the direct result of the effectiveness of our operations," Lynch said.

Car bombings -- using vehicles parked along streets and highways and detonated remotely -- have declined from 130 in February to 68 in November, Lynch said.

I guess this is part of the U.S. military's "favorable information" campaign, but it's misleading in a number of ways. Although the number of suicide bombings may have been lower in November, they have gone down before and then spiked again to higher levels. The AP's Chris Tomlinson notes that actual casualties were much higher than the number of bombings would indicate:

...[T]he trend in Iraq has not resulted in less bloodshed: 85 U.S. troops died during the month, one of the highest tolls since the invasion.
[...]
[Also,]...suicide attacks have not consistently decreased over the past year. After more than 70 such attacks in May, the number fell in August by nearly half and then climbed to over 50 two months later.

And despite the decline over the past month, there has been no letup in the relentless toll of American deaths at a time of growing discontent in the United States over the Iraq war.

The U.S. command said Thursday that four American service members were killed the day before, three of them from hostile action and the fourth in a traffic accident. The deaths raised the American fatality toll for November to at least 85.

That was down from the 96 American deaths suffered in October — the fourth deadliest month since the war began in March 2003. But it was well above the 49 deaths in September. U.S. monthly death tolls have hit 80 or above during 10 of the 33 months of the war.

There also has been no decline over the past six months in the Iraqi death toll from suicide attacks, according to an Associated Press tally. In November, at least 290 Iraqis were killed in such attacks, more than double the figure from the previous month. The count shows the Iraqi toll ranging from at least 69 deaths in August to at least 356 in September.

November's suicide attacks included near-simultaneous bombings at two Shiite mosques in Khanaqin, killing 76; a car bombing at a Shiite funeral north of the capital, killing 36; and a car bombing near a hospital in Mahmoudiya, killing 30.

Juan Cole writes that 87 U.S. troops died in November:

[That is]...among the highest death tolls for a 30-day period since the war began, and one wonders about the rate of severely wounded. Moreover, in one two-week period in November, bombers (suiciders or not) killed hundreds of Iraqis, spreading insecurity, fear and anger.

It raises the question of whether the guerrillas are depending more heavily on roadside bombs and remotely detonated bombs rather than on kamikazes. Whatever the case, the mere decline in the latter seems to have little or nothing to do with the level of security in the country, which is generally poor, and, indeed, among the worst of any country in the world.

Prof. Cole also notes that the Ukraine's withdrawal of its almost 1,000 troops in Iraq will be complete by the end of this year:

It seems likely that the US will be virtually alone in Iraq as a foreign military power by mid-2006.

U.S. Plans to Get Defiant About Secret C.I.A. Prisons

Reuters reports that Condoleezza Rice is planning to abandon the somewhat conciliatory approach initially taken by the U.S. in response to European concerns about secret C.I.A. prisons on European soil.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to give allies in Europe a response next week to their pressure over Washington's treatment of terrorism suspects: back off.

For almost a month, the United States has been on the defensive, refusing to deny or confirm media reports the United States has held prisoners in secret in Eastern Europe and transported detainees incommunicado across the continent.

The European Union has demanded that Washington address the allegations to allay fears of illegal U.S. practices. The concerns are rampant in among the European public and parliaments, already critical of U.S. prisoner-abuse scandals in Iraq and Guantanamo, Cuba.

But Rice will shift to offense when she visits Europe next week, in a strategy that has emerged in recent days and been tested by her spokesman in public and in her private meetings with European visitors.

She will remind allies they themselves have been cooperating in U.S. operations and tell them to do more to win over their publics as a way to deflect criticism directed at the United States, diplomats and U.S. officials said.

"It's very clear they want European governments to stop pushing on this," said a European diplomat, who had contact with U.S. officials over the handling of the scandals. "They were stuck on the defensive for weeks, but suddenly the line has toughened up incredibly," the diplomat said.

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses -- a sign she will avoid giving Europe a detailed response on U.S. intelligence work.

And she refused to give Ahern a personal assurance Ireland has not been used for secret prisoner transfers, saying he had already heard that denial from the U.S. ambassador, a senior State Department official said.
[...]
Rice will stress in public that Washington does not violate allies' sovereignty or break international law, and she will remind publics their governments are cooperating in a fight against militants who have bombed commuters in Madrid and London, senior U.S. officials said.

In other words, we don't have clandestine prisons in your countries, but if we do, shut up, because you agreed to do what we tell you to do.

But here's the truth: Condi is a vile and despicable liar. Washington does force sovereign countries to host the C.I.A. gulag and Washington does land planes on sovereign European ground to kidnap people and force them onto those planes and fly them to secret prisons where nobody can hear them scream as they're being tortured. And since Washington has not denied that there is a C.I.A.-run secret detention and interrogation network -- and indeed has all but admitted it by refusing to answer any questions about it; and since secret, clandestine, hidden prisons are undeniably and unarguably a complete and total violation of international human rights agreements by which the U.S. has agreed to abide, the fact of the matter is that Washington does break international law. And everyone knows it.

Gingerbread Houses and Massacred Iraqi Children

If George W. Bush's public statements about the war on terror are proof that he lives in a fantasy world, disconnected from reality, Digby tells us Laura also inhabits a fantasy world -- in a parallel universe. She lyricizes about pear collars and pink tulips while at the exact same moment in time, her husband speaks of Londoners blown up in subways and urges Americans to embrace sacrifice.

Let us say, and why not, that the President of the United States said what he meant and meant what he said on Wednesday over at the Naval Academy when he offered, "A time of war is a time of sacrifice... we honor the memory of every fallen soldier, sailor, airman, Coast Guardsman, and Marine." Let's just say for the sake of argument that George W. Bush and his administration actually believed this, that they just didn't titter to themselves at how easy it is to fool the rubes. No, let's stop our cynicism for just a moment and buy the line.

If you wanted the citizens of the country to believe you, then, why, why, why the fuck, at the exact same time the President is talking about death, destruction, and sacrifice in Iraq, would you have Laura Bush leading reporters around the White House for a tour of the expensive, exquisite, and utterly useless decorations there? No, really, and, c'mon, George's speech started at 9:45 a.m. and ended at 10:28 a.m. Laura's "preview" started at 9:58 a.m. and ended at 10:07 a.m. They were thirty miles or so apart in distance. But their voices, oh, their conjoined voices, spoke volumes.

That means that at roughly the point in his speech when the President said, "The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on September the 11th. Those terrorists share the same ideology with those who blew up commuters in London and Madrid, murdered tourists in Bali, workers in Riyadh, and guests at a wedding in Amman, Jordan. Just last week, they massacred Iraqi children and their parents at a toy give-away outside an Iraqi hospital," the First Lady was, shit you not, complimenting White House pastry chef Thaddeus DuBois for his gingerbread house (and, truth be told, it is one impressive fucker of a cookie).

It means that when Bush was lying about Iraqi forces leading the assault on Tal-Afar, the First Lady, immaculately dressed and coiffed, told reporters about the food and decorations, "So in a minute all of you are going to get to taste all of [chef]Cris's foods. But I wanted to point out the way we decorated in here with the pears -- the pear collars on the cache-pots and the pink tulips. Everything, again, is fresh and real."

When he was talking about dead soldiers and dreams of victory that'll involve "sacrifice," Laura was describing the art on the White House Christmas card, adding, "Barney and Beazley and our kitty made an appearance on the card"

Let's not belabor a point here - that the very idea of gloating over decorating the White House in a time of war is kinda stomach-churning. But, shit, everyone loves royalty and all its pretty accessories. No, this is about the timing of the two events. It says, in a very clear way, that the Bush White House is divorced from reality, that it's all a fantasy, from the gingerbread White House to the number of Iraqi forces, all one continuum of fantasy and disconnect from any reality.

And the reality was, to be sure, awful, as four more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis died on the same day as Bush was telling us to sacrifice, on the same day that Laura was talking about "the magnificent tree that we have in the Blue Room that's covered with lilies this year." Those lilies may as well have been plucked from the graves of all 2100 American soldiers. It'd make a mighty impressive show on that Christmas tree.

We Had to Deceive in Order to Protect the Truth

The Washington Post, on the U.S. military's planting of "news" favorable to the Americans in Iraqi newspapers:

The U.S. military command in Baghdad acknowledged for the first time yesterday that it has paid Iraqi newspapers to carry positive news about U.S. efforts in Iraq, but officials characterized the payments as part of a legitimate campaign to counter insurgents' misinformation.

In a statement, the command said the program included efforts, "customary in Iraq," to purchase advertising and place clearly labeled opinion pieces in Iraqi newspapers. But the statement suggested that the "information operations" program may have veered into a gray area where government contractors paid to have articles placed in Iraqi newspapers without explaining that the material came from the U.S. military and that Iraqi journalists were paid to write positive accounts.
[...]
In describing the program, military officials said third parties -- including the Washington-based Lincoln Group -- were sometimes hired to distribute the articles to newspapers to protect publishers that might have been targeted by insurgents if they were known to accept material from the military.

Officials said one unanswered question they have is whether the Lincoln Group intentionally misled newspapers by presenting the articles as freelance journalism, obscuring the fact that the material came from U.S. armed forces.

Lincoln Group officials would not discuss specifics of the contract. Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for the company, said yesterday that Lincoln Group has been promoting truthful reporting across Iraq.

"We counter the lies, intimidation, and pure evil of terror with factual stories that highlight the heroism and sacrifice of the Iraqi people and their struggle for freedom and security," Adler said in a written statement. "We are encouraged by their sacrifice and proud to help them tell their side of the story."

Oh, come off it. The "enemy" always lies, intimidates, and terrorizes with its pure evil ways. "Our side" is always heroic and self-sacrificing and struggling for freedom. Sounds like the military's idea of the truth is just as much propaganda as Al Qaeda's is.

Which brings up an important point. Somebody in the MSM needs to challenge the assumption that the planted articles were the truth, and the only problem was the failure to make clear that the source of the "factual information" was the U.S. military. This is not just about "the military using covert methods to get favorable information into print"; it's about whether the "information" is actually disinformation, designed to gain military advantage by preventing any facts, truths, or unpleasant realities being put out that contradict the military's carefully crafted message. In other words, the Washington Post and other papers should be writing that the U.S. military paid Iraqi journalists to write propaganda favorable to the U.S. side -- not that the military paid Iraqi journalists to write news favorable to the U.S. side.

Of course, Al Qaeda puts out propaganda and calls it truth also; but that's why they are called the bad guys. They don't care about the truth if the truth makes them look bad. We care about the truth even when it does make us look bad. Right?

Friday, December 02, 2005

Abortion in Latin America

A New York Times article reports on the stepped-up efforts by Latin American women to mount legal challenges to their countries' anti-abortion laws.

In most of these countries, women have been barred from getting legal abortions under any circumstances -- even if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; even if the pregnancy threatens the woman's life. One of the few exceptions, interestingly enough, is Cuba. There, abortion is "readily available."

Which is not to say that women in Latin American countries do not have abortions. They do; abortion is quite common there, in fact. But the abortions are not legal; therefore they are done clandestinely, by unqualified or underqualified people, or by the woman herself; and the result is a very high mortality rate for the woman and, of course, the fetus.

The Times article opens with a typical such incident, in Pamplona, Colombia:

In this tradition-bound Roman Catholic town one day in April, two young women did what many here consider unthinkable: pregnant and scared, they took a cheap ulcer medication known to induce abortions. When the drug left them bleeding, they were treated at a local emergency room - then promptly arrested.

Insisting that abortion was rare, Pamplona's conservative leaders thought the case was over. Instead, the episode reverberated throughout Colombia and helped to galvanize a national movement to roll back laws that make abortion illegal, even to save a mother's life.

Latin America holds some of the world's most stringent abortion laws, yet it still has the developing world's highest rate of abortions -- a rate that is far higher even than in Western Europe, where abortion is widely and legally available.

Increasingly, however, women's rights groups across the region are mounting challenges in courts and on the streets to liberalize laws that in some countries ban abortion under any circumstances. At least one major case with implications for the entire region could be decided in the coming days.

So far, no country has dropped its ban. But the effort, spurred by the high mortality rate among Latin American women who undergo clandestine abortions, has begun to loosen once ironclad restrictions and opened the door to more change.

If these draconian anti-abortion laws prove anything, it's that their supporters are motivated far more by fanatical religiosity and extremely unenlightened views about the value of women than they are by concern for the health, lives, or well-being of either pregnant women or their unborn babies.

Regional health officials increasingly argue that tough laws have done little to slow abortions. The rate of abortions in Latin America is 37 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, the highest in the world outside of Eastern Europe, according to United Nations figures. Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions.

In an interview, a doctor in Medellín, Colombia, said that while he offered safe, if secret, abortions, many abortionists did not.

"In this profession, we see all kinds of things, like people using witchcraft, to whatever pills they can get their hands on," said the doctor, who charges about $45 to carry out abortions in women's homes and who spoke on condition that his name not be used, because performing an abortion in Colombia can lead to a prison term of more than four years.

"They open themselves up to incredible risks, from losing their reproductive systems or, through complications, their lives," the doctor said, referring to women who have such abortions.

Such arguments have done little to sway an anti-abortion movement that is largely led by influential leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

In Colombia, José Galat, the Catholic rector of the Gran Colombia University, has collected two million signatures against efforts to legalize abortion and has paid for full-page newspaper advertisements criticizing abortion rights advocates.

"If there is life, then it has all the rights and a mother cannot apply the death penalty," he said.

How revealing that he says "a mother" instead of "a woman." Apparently once a sperm and egg fuse in a woman's fallopian tubes, her personhood is less important than her job description.

A Shameful Milestone

Thomas Maher, attorney for Kenneth Lee Boyd, after Boyd became the 1,000th person to be executed, for the double murder of his estranged wife and her father:

"The execution of Kenneth Boyd has not made this a better or safer world. If this 1,000th execution is a milestone, it's a milestone we should all be ashamed of."

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Murtha Says the Army is "Broken and Worn-out"

Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha has created another stir by telling a civic group that the Army is on its last legs:

Most U.S. troops will leave Iraq within a year because the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth," Rep. John Murtha told a civic group.

Two weeks ago, Murtha created a storm of comment when he called for U.S. troops to leave Iraq now. The Democratic congressman spoke to a group of community and business leaders in Latrobe on Wednesday, the same day President Bush said troops would be withdrawn when they've achieved victory, not under an artificial deadline set by politicians.

Murtha predicted most troops will be out of Iraq within a year.

"I predict he'll make it look like we're staying the course," Murtha said, referring to Bush. "Staying the course is not a policy."

Murtha, 73, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, expressed pessimism about Iraq's stability and said the Iraqis know who the insurgents are, but don't always share that information with U.S. troops. He said a civil war is likely because of ongoing factionalism among Sunni Arabs, and Kurds and Shiites.

He also said he was wrong to vote to support the war.

"I admit I made a mistake when I voted for war," Murtha said. "I'm looking at the future of the United States military."

Murtha, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, said the Pennsylvania National Guard is "stretched so thin" that it won't be able to send fully equipped units to Iraq next year. Murtha predicted it will cost $50 billion to upgrade military equipment nationwide, but says the federal government is already reducing future purchases to save money.

Conservative bloggers are incredulous and aghast at such heresy (and underinformed heresy at that) from someone in Congress who up until a couple of weeks ago was known for his hawkish views.

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom (and I'm really wondering if Jeff meant that to be Protean Wisdom -- unless he really wants to convey that his insights come from a specific nutrient) thinks that Murtha is using circular logic:

This insane calculus -- which is the position of the Democratic leadership, at least in the House -- argues, in essence, that going to war puts a strain on our troops, and that protecting ourselves is impossible if our troops are stretched thin from protecting us.

Look, I'm the first to admit I'm not an expert on the military, but it's not war per se that has put such an undue strain on U.S. troops, and it's ridiculous to suggest that's what Murtha was implying, given his service in Vietnam and his support for the war in Kosovo and the Persian Gulf War, among others. Murtha is saying that going to war in the way and for the reasons that we did, and the way the Bush administration has chosen to use military resources, has strained the military's ability to defend this country to the breaking point. Of course it's an opinion, but it's not an unreasonable one, nor is it impossible to support.

Confederate Yankee counters Murtha with the argument that Army reenlistments are way up, and that U.S. soldiers are "optimistic about [our] chances for success in Iraq."

But the sources he uses to back up his argument don't seem to do the job.

His source for the claim that Army reenlistments are up is a USA Today article from July 17. But what he fails to mention is that, according to this article, one of the major reasons reenlistments surged during this period is the fact that Army recruiters were offering "unprecedented cash bonuses" -- an average of $10,000. In short, soldiers had to be bribed to reenlist. The article also notes:

The bright re-enlistment picture won't fully compensate for the recruiting problems, ... because the Army needs new troops to fill its lower ranks and has limits on how many senior soldiers it can keep.

Which is precisely the problem Murtha was talking about. Soldiers are doing multiple tours of duty because new enlistments are so way down. No matter how committed soldiers are to fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and I suspect the extent of that commitment is exaggerated (how many of those "committed" soldiers would have reenlisted without the cash bonuses?) -- you can't redeploy the same men and women over and over without causing a serious strain on your human resources.

The article Confederate Yankee links to to back up his statement that soldiers are optimistic about success in Iraq is an essay in WSJ.com's Opinion Journal; and I can't find anything in it that even addresses the feelings of soldiers in the field. As far as I can make out, the piece is based on an extended interview with Gen. David Petraeus, and it's about the general's feelings about how the war is going.

Lawhawk at A Blog for All also points to high reenlistment rates, and adds that it's Congress's fault if the military in Iraq is underfunded.

...it's Congress' job to make sure that the Army is properly funded to provide for the common Defense (Article I, Sec. 8, Clause 1 and Clause 12). So, if there is a problem, it's up to Murtha and his colleagues in Congress to make sure that the military is properly funded so that it has the proper levels of equipment and supplies. As we've seen in the past, Congress hasn't exactly been on top of making sure that appropriations for military equipment get done or making sure that the Pentagon is doing their job. That's called a failure of oversight.

Lawhawk does have a point there; but then again, Congress has failed to exercise oversight in a lot of ways the Constitution says Congress should exercise oversight -- and not only are folks like Lawhawk not concerned about that, but whenever Congress has made even feeble attempts to suggest that maybe oversight would be a good idea, Congress has been blasted by folks like Lawhawk for being un-American, anti-American, unpatriotic, for not giving the President the support he needs to fight the war on terror, and providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

Trying to have it both ways really undercuts your argument.

Some of Us Sow the Seeds; Some of Us Grow the Trees

Dalton Conley writes in the New York Times about his right to keep the seed he sowed:

If a father is willing to legally commit to supporting and raising the child himself, why should a woman be able to end a pregnancy that she knew was a possibility of consensual sex? Why couldn't I make the same claim - that I am going to keep the baby regardless of whether she wants it or not?

Because the pregnancy equals the woman's body. It's her body that's pregnant. "Bun in the oven" is a figure of speech. It's not meant to be taken literally. A woman is not a stove. When it's your body that's pregnant; when it's your body that has something inside it, growing and using up your bodily resources, then you maybe might be able to grasp the difference between taking custody of a baby after it's born against the mother's wishes, and forcing your girlfriend to grow a baby for you inside her body for nine months. Not that I'm advocating anyone taking forcible custody of a child against the other parent's wishes, but it IS different from forcing someone to host a living being inside their bodies for close to a year.

Well, you might argue that all the man provides is his seed in a moment of pleasure. The real work consists of carrying a child for nine months, with the attendant morning sickness, leg cramps, biological risks and so on.

You're still not getting it, Dalton. This isn't about comparing manual labor to paper pushing in an office. It isn't about "doing all the work." It's about you saying to your girlfriend, "I want you to sign over your body ownership rights to me for the next nine months. And if you don't want to, I'll get the law to make you." Sorry, but that's a nonstarter.

But how many times have we heard that fatherhood is not about a moment, it is about being there for the lifetime of a child? If we extend that logic, those 40 weeks of pregnancy -- as intense as they may be -- are merely a small fraction of a lifetime commitment to that child.

Forty weeks of changing diapers and spooning Gerber's into a baby's mouth is not the same as forty weeks of biological changes in your body. Cleaning up a baby's vomit every day for three months is not the same as vomiting every day for three months (or more). Taking baby to the doctor is not the same as going to the doctor yourself for high blood pressure, trouble breathing, abdominal cramping, etc. Do you understand? You cannot compare the biological experience of growing a baby inside your body to the experience of parenting, no matter how much longer the second experience lasts relative to the first. Spare me the patronizing "as intense as they may be" crapola. You will never know.

The bottom line is that if we want to make fathers relevant, they need rights, too. If a father is willing to legally commit to raising a child with no help from the mother he should be able to obtain an injunction against the abortion of the fetus he helped create.

No he shouldn't. Raising the child yourself with no help from the woman does not compensate her for using the force of law to compel her to lease her body to you for nine months. Your legal commitment to being a parent is not a fair exchange for forcing a woman to allow her body to be subjected to pain, discomfort, and biological danger for nine months. You get an injunction to force her to put her health at risk, and you agree to change diapers and help with the homework? I wouldn't need an attorney to know that's a crap contract.

For the point of view of a different sort of man -- one who actually gets it -- read Duncan Black (aka Atrios) over at Eschaton. Oh, what the heck. I'll quote the whole thing (pretty much). It's that good.

Sometimes I wish the level of debate in our elite national publications could exceed, ever so slightly, the level of late night freshman dorm conversations. When he writes "have a say in whether to keep a baby" what he actually means is "decide what a woman does with her uterus." It would be nice if there were some intermediate position, but biology dictates that there just isn't. Either you have the baby or you don't. Someone has the right to make that decision for themselves or they don't. And, of course, he eventually makes that clear. He doesn't mean "have a say." He means "decide."

I suggest all sensible women "decide" to not let their vaginas get within 20 miles of this guy. He thinks he has the right to decide, once he voluntary donates his sperm to you, that you must carry the child to term.

Fucking wanker.

Gorgeous.

A Thousand Executions

Kenneth Lee Boyd, a 57-year-old Vietnam veteran, is scheduled to be the 1,000th human being to be executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1977. Boyd will die by lethal injection early Thursday morning as punishment for the fatal shooting of his estranged wife and her father in 1988.

Boyd has three sons, two of whom witnessed their mother's and grandfather's murder almost 20 years ago. All three sons want their father's life to be spared, and are hoping for North Carolina's Gov. Mike Easley to grant a last-minute stay of execution. That possibility is considered highly unlikely.

I am not one of those who think that Boyd's Vietnam service can explain or justify what he did, or exonerate him for killing his wife and father-in-law. I simply do not believe that it is moral, ethical, logical, consistent, or reasonable for the state to take a person's life, in cold blood, because that person took someone's life, in cold blood. As a statement of abhorrence for the taking of human life, it makes absolutely no sense to me. It's wrong. Like others who oppose the death penalty, I think that Boyd should have been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. That would be a meaningful indication of society's respect for human life and wrath at the taking of human life.

And this I find extraordinarily bizarre: that if Kenneth Lee Boyd had gunned down a Vietnamese woman and her father while serving in the U.S. undeclared war in Vietnam, he would not have been tried for or convicted of capital murder, and he would not be on the verge of being strapped down to a gurney and injected with poison. Same crime, except for one thing: The killing of Vietnamese civilians was, if not sanctioned, certainly condoned and excused by the government of the United States. The killing of an American woman and her father by the woman's estranged husband was an act not authorized by the government of the United States. Boyd was acting on his own, not under the direction of the state. That is the only difference that I can see.

NOTE ADDED LATER: The Australian drug smuggler who was sentenced to death for being in possession of 14 ounces of heroin was executed today, despite outraged protest from the Australian government and people, and numerous appeals for clemency. Nguyen Tuong Van, 25 years old, was hung before dawn today.

The Right to Make Personal Health Decisions

That is what the New Hampshire parental notification law currently being argued in the Supreme Court is about. The justices' ruling will answer two broad questions: One, does a teenage girl have the right to her health? And two, does a doctor have the right to make medical and health decisions for her or his patients?

Consider the hypothetical situation raised by Justice Stephen Breyer today:

It's the middle of the night in New Hampshire, and a teenager, afraid to tell her parents she is pregnant, appears at an emergency room. A doctor diagnoses a spike in blood pressure that won't kill the girl but could render her sterile unless she has an immediate abortion. The doctor calls a judge for permission to perform the procedure, as state law prescribes -- and voice mail answers.

"What's supposed to happen?" asked Justice Stephen Breyer, who posed the hypothetical situation Wednesday during oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

I would have added a second part to Justice Breyer's question: What if the doctor calls a judge for permission to perform an abortion, knowing that if an abortion is not performed, some important aspect of the girl's health will suffer -- and the judge refuses that permission?

These are very important and relevant questions, given that the New Hampshire parental notification law contains no health exception -- only an exception for cases in which the girl will die if an abortion is not performed immediately. In other words, the girl has a right to stay alive; but she does not have a right to stay healthy.

This makes a twisted kind of sense, when you remember that the same philosophy applies to the fetus a pregnant teenager is carrying: The fetus has a right to life; but it does not have a right to adequate or decent health care, either before birth or after. What I mean by this is that the government is so invested in the idea that a fetus has an inherent right to be born that said government will force a woman, or a girl, to carry a pregnancy to term. But the government is not so invested in the idea that a fetus or a newborn baby has an inherent right to be healthy that said government will make certain that the fetus or baby gets health care, even if that means making free or low-cost prenatal and postnatal services available to poor mothers or fathers.

Parental notification or consent laws are on the books in most states now, but almost all those laws contain health exceptions to the requirement for parental involvement. Only five states have parental notification or consent laws with no health exception; New Hampshire is one of them.

And New Hampshire's attorney-general does not think that a health exception is necessary.

In answer to Breyer's question, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said that doctors confronted with a midnight emergency could proceed, protected by other provisions of New Hampshire law that shield doctors' good-faith medical decisions from liability.

But Breyer said the parental notification law itself "suggests the contrary." Nor did he embrace Roberts' approach, telling U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement that any effort to have courts craft a solution would "get into the greatest difficult issue there is in this area, which is what does that health exception mean? We've said throughout that that health exception has to be defined first by a legislature."

It was expected that the case would not turn into a vehicle for reassessing Roe v. Wade. But the repeated emphasis on a narrow ruling that might return the hardest questions to lower courts was perhaps more of a surprise.

New Hampshire had asked the court not only to rule that it does not have to have a health exception but also to apply a strict standard under which its law could not be challenged unless it could be shown to be unconstitutional in all circumstances.

It's hard to believe, but it's true. The state of New Hampshire (its government, at least) is weeping crocodile tears over fertilized eggs, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses; but doesn't have a penny's worth of concern for the health of a pregnant teenage girl.

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