Just Above Sunset

One characteristic of shameless people is they don’t listen to advice from people who know things – those with experience or expertise.  They know better than any expert, and call their approach to the problem at hand bold and visionary, or necessary, as the old expertise is useless in a changed world.  And they take pride in their rejection of voices urging prudence.  They might quote William Blake – “Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid, courted by incapacity.”  But they may not, as Blake was a bit of a nut case – he and his wife used to sit naked in the backyard pretending they were Adam and Eve.  Most often rejection of sensible advice is said to be not mad at all – it’s bold leadership for a new age and so on.

We’ve had six or more years of that.  On February 27, 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz rejected the claim of Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki, now retired.  Shinseki predicted that “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers would be required” to provide adequate security in a post-invasion Iraq.  Wolfowitz said that Shinseki was “wildly off the mark” and that he, himself, was “reasonably certain that they [the Iraqis] will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.”  The Wolfowitz position was shared by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who predicted that post-war troop levels would be much lower than what was required for the invasion of Iraq.  Shinseki had to retire early – they took care of that pest.  And there was Lawrence Lindsey, Director of the National Economic Council and the Assistant to the President on Economic Policy.  He was the one who formulated the Bush 1.35 billion dollar tax cut plan – breaks for the rich folks would be an “insurance policy” against an economic turndown.  He was the man.  But he left the White House in December 2002.  He made the mistake of testifying to congress that the cost of the Iraq war could reach two hundred billion.  Bye, bye, Larry.  Paul Wolfowitz was sent in to assure Congress that the cost could be twenty billion, tops, but really, as Iraq was awash in oil, the Iraqis themselves could certainly pay for whatever reconstruction might be necessary – no problem.   Of course we’re currently at almost seven hundred billion in direct costs, and well beyond a trillion in indirect costs.  But it was bold, or shameless, or something.

And no one at the Pentagon, with all that military experience, could hold a candle to the military insight of the Vice President.  You remember the business in the first gulf war.  Cheney thought Schwarzkopf was timid.  Schwarzkopf received a gift from Secretary of Defense Cheney right before the air war finally got under way – a complete set of videotapes of Ken Burns’ PBS series, The Civil War.  That was to firm him up.  Then Cheney got his staff working and began presenting Schwarzkopf with his own ideas about how to fight the Iraqis – parachute the 82nd Airborne into the far western part of Iraq, hundreds of miles from Kuwait and totally cut off from any kind of support, and seize a couple of missile sites, then line up along the highway and drive for Baghdad.  Schwarzkopf describes the plan as being “as bad as it could possibly be.”  That hardly mattered – “Despite our criticism, the western excursion wouldn’t die: three times in that week alone Powell called with new variations from Cheney’s staff. The most bizarre involved capturing a town in western Iraq and offering it to Saddam in exchange for Kuwait.”  But it was bold, or shameless, or something.  Cheney never served in the military – six deferments in the Vietnam years – but you see, that meant he had “fresh eyes.”  And he had watched the Ken Burns thing.

In the first four years of this particular Bush, Colin Powell was Secretary of State.  The widely-respected general had served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993) – during the Gulf War.  But he knew nothing of war, and nothing really about international law, as the Counsel to the President explained in the now famous memo –

January 25, 2002

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

FROM: ALBERTO R. GONZALES

SUBJECT: DECISION RE APPLICATION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION ON PRISONERS OF WAR TO THE CONFLICT WITH AL QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN

Purpose

On January 18, I advised you that the Department of Justice had issued a formal legal opinion concluding that the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW) does not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda. I also advised you that DOJ’s opinion concludes that there are reasonable grounds for you to conclude that GPW does not apply with respect to the conflict with the Taliban. I understand that you decided that GPW does not apply and, accordingly, that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under the GPW.

The Secretary of State has requested that you reconsider that decision. Specifically, he has asked that you conclude the GPW does apply to both al Qaeda and the Taliban. I understand, however, that he would agree that al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could be determined not to be prisoners of war (POWs) but only on a case-by-case basis following individual hearing before a military board.

It’s quite long and contains the famous line – “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions…”

What did Powell really know?  Gonzales enlisted in the Air Force in 1973, for a four year term of enlistment, and ended up serving two years at Fort Yukon, Alaska and two years as a cadet at the Air Force Academy.  Prior to beginning his third year at the academy, which would have caused him to incur a further “service obligation,” he transferred to Rice – and that was that.  The recipient of the memo kind of flaked out on his last years of service too.  But they knew better than Powell.  This too was bold, or shameless, or something.

But that’s all old history, but it does bring us up to Thursday, October 4, 2007, and this –

Senate and House Democrats demanded Thursday to see two secret memos that reportedly authorize painful interrogation tactics against terror suspects — despite the Bush administration’s insistence that it has not violated U.S. anti-torture laws.

That’s just not going to happen.  White House and Justice Department press officers said any legal opinions, written in 2005, if there really were such things, did not at all reverse an administration policy issued in 2004 that publicly renounced torture as “abhorrent.”  And anyway, if they exist, they’re secret.  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller sent a letter to the acting attorney general saying the administration’s credibility is at risk if the documents are not turned over to Congress.

It’s that damned New York Times again, a sort of Pentagon Papers rerun.  The Times reported that the first 2005 legal opinion specifically authorized the use of head slaps, freezing temperatures and simulated drowning – waterboarding – while interrogating terror suspects, and it was issued as soon as Alberto Gonzales took over the Justice Department, as the new Attorney General, not the president’s counsel.  Yep, this secret opinion – which explicitly allowed using the painful methods “in combination” – came just after a December 2004 opinion where the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” and the administration seemed to back away from claiming authority for the rough stuff.  And these secret authorizations came after the withdrawal of an earlier classified Justice opinion, the one in 2002, above, that had allowed certain “aggressive interrogation practices” so long as they stopped short of “producing pain equivalent to experiencing organ failure or death.”  That memo up top was withdrawn in June 2004 – it was an embarrassment.  But then, embarrassment is not the same thing as shame – not at all.

The Times item also indicates all those “black sites” where we secretly hold people, without charges, overseas, were not shut down as was said – they too have been reauthorized.  We grab people, they disappear, and that’s that.  That got little play.  What people note most was this passage –

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

The whole piece is long, but that is what everyone is talking about – shame, or some sort of pathological inability to even understand the concept.  The administration decided on breaking America’s historic ban on torture and then pursued a long, corrupting policy of ensuring that the interpretation of the law was politicized to keep torture alive – at least that’s how Andrew Sullivan sees it.

See also Marty Lederman –

Between this and Jane Mayer’s explosive article in August about the CIA black sites, I am increasingly confident that when the history of the Bush Administration is written, this systematic violation of statutory and treaty-based law concerning fundamental war crimes and other horrific offenses will be seen as the blackest mark in our nation’s recent history - not only because of what was done, but because the programs were routinely sanctioned, on an ongoing basis, by numerous esteemed professionals - lawyers, doctors, psychologists and government officers - without whose approval such a systematized torture regime could not be sustained.

Sullivan –

The way in which conservative lawyers, and conservative intellectuals, and conservative journalists aided and abetted these war crimes; the way in which the president of the United States revealed so much contempt for the law that he put a candidate to run the Office of Legal Counsel on probation before he appointed him in order to keep the torture regime in place, the way in which Republicans and Democrats in the Congress pathetically refused to stand up to these violations of American honor and decency in any serious way (and, I’m sorry, Senator McCain, but in the end, you caved, as you always do lately): these will go down in history as some of the most shameful decisions these people ever made. Perhaps a sudden, panicked decision by the president to use torture after 9/11 is understandable if unforgivable. But the relentless, sustained attempt to make torture a permanent part of the war-powers of the president, even to the point of abusing the law beyond recognition, removes any benefit of the doubt from these people. And they did it all in secret - and lied about it when Abu Ghraib emerged. They upended two centuries of American humane detention and interrogation practices without even letting us know. And the decision to allow one man - the decider - to pre-empt and knowingly distort the rule of law in order to detain and torture anyone he wants - is a function not of conservatism, but of fascism.

Well, the Times item does center on James Comey - one of the principled conservatives – Ashcroft’s second in command, who stood up a bit –

“We are likely to hear the words: ‘If we don’t do this, people will die,’” Mr. Comey said. But he argued that government lawyers must uphold the principles of their great institutions.

“It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say ‘no’ when it matters most,” he said. “It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country.”

Sullivan –

A couple of things need to be stressed, because I’ve learned the hard way that intelligent people simply refuse to absorb what is staring them in the face, when what is staring them in the face is so staggering: Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics.

So what?

There is no doubt - no doubt at all - that these tactics are torture and subject to prosecution as war crimes. We know this because the law is very clear when you don’t have war criminals like AEI’s John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power. We know this because the very same techniques - hypothermia, long-time standing, beating - and even the very same term “enhanced interrogation techniques” - “verschaerfte Vernehmung” in the original German - were once prosecuted by American forces as war crimes. The perpetrators were the Gestapo. The penalty was death. You can verify the history here.

We have war criminals in the White House. What are we going to do about it?

Nothing much, probably.  Most people would accept a police state to feel safe, and not worry about any of this.  Actually, it seems they have.

From the Times –

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

… Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said.

The Times says that “most lawmakers” didn’t know about this secret opinion.  And Kevin Drum points out the obvious –

That means that some of them did. I’d like to know which ones. I’d also like to hear each of the Democratic candidates tell us whether or not they promise to repudiate all secret Bush administration memorandums on torture and detention during their first day in office. Quickly, please.

Ah – enter that nice young man, Barack Obama –

The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security. We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer - it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration’s approach.  Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America’s standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It’s time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It’s time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning. When I am president America will once again be the country that stands up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won’t work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values.

But he won’t be president.  Hillary or Rudy will be, unless something changes – and they’d never be this clear.

Sullivan adds more –

It’s perhaps worth reminding some readers that my first response to reports of abuse and torture at Gitmo was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration or deliberate deception. I simply didn’t believe America would do those things. I’d also endorsed Bush in 2000, believed it necessary to give the president the benefit of the doubt in wartime, and knew Rumsfeld as a friend. It struck me as a no-brainer that this stuff was being invented by the far-left or was part of al Qaeda propaganda. After all, they train captives to lie about this stuff. Bottom line: I trusted this president in a time of war to obey the rule of law that we were and are defending. And then I was forced to confront the evidence. He betrayed all of us. He lied. He authorized torture in secret, and then, when busted after Abu Ghraib, blamed it on low-level grunts. This was not a mistake. It was a betrayal.

See also Jack Balkin here –

An essential component of the rule of law is transparency. The laws must be knowable, not only so that people can structure their behavior with fair warning, but also to prevent government officials from engaging in abuses of power. The Bush Administration has used the shibboleths of terrorism and national security to violate this basic principle.

The Administration said, “Trust us.” And then this is what they did in secret.

Also note this at Obsidian Wings –

The techniques in question are repugnant. But in many ways, the administration’s disregard for the law is worse. When your policies violate treaties you have signed and laws that are on the books, you are not supposed to come up with some clever way of explaining that appearances to the contrary, what you’re doing is not illegal at all. You’re supposed to stop doing it.

Yep – that is rather obvious.  What’s the line?  “Have you no shame, sir?”  Here we go again.

At Salon, Glenn Greenwald reminds us not to get too sanctimonious – he argues against the simple “Blame Bush” reaction –

All of these subversive and grotesque policies - the Yoo/Addington theories of the imperial presidency, torture, rendition, illegal surveillance, black sites - began as secret, illegal Bush administration policies. But the more they are revealed, and the more we do nothing about them, the more they become our own.

Gee, out here in Hollywood the LA Times lands on the doorstep with a thump, and Thursdays are when you get the thick entertainment section, and this was the day they had an interview with George Carlin -