Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

I always begin my posts by noting that I haven’t used any Associated Press content. I’ve wondered at times if my ongoing boycott is over the top, if I’m just being contrarian or cranky. Then things like this happen and my doubts are dispelled. AP seems to be grappling very poorly with the world of new media, and it seems like they periodically come down with some ridiculous, heavy-handed attempt to extort money from people, particularly bloggers (most of whom do not have a legal department). When they engage in nonsense like this I’m glad I make it a point to not even link to their content. I’m a small fish, but it seems that no amount of reference to their content is too trivial to ignore.  Screw ‘em.

While I’m writing about the site (Yay! It’s all about ME today!) I gave some thought this week to my continued link to Alex Jones’ site on my blogroll. He was in the news for his conspiracy theories and I considered taking the link down. However, in addition to the New World Order material there’s links to articles like this. Posse Comitatus and the domestic deployment of the military is a big deal to me, and I’m glad Jones is willing to highlight it. I expect those who visit here (and everywhere) to bring their brains and skepticism with them, and shouldn’t uncritically take a link from me to mean a wholesale endorsement of the site linked to. I’m willing to link to any site that has news, aggregation or analysis I can’t find anywhere else.

Barack Obama has been getting some heat over his positions on civil and human rights. Bruce Fein has taken a fairly dim view of him. Scott Horton wonders “whether a Cheney ‘shadow administration’ actually has the power to influence policy.”  Jake Tapper took notice.  Glenn Greenwald got in some clean but hard shots.  Zachary Roth piled on a couple of times.  The heat really seems to be turning up on the administration and it’s very heartening to see.  Obama doesn’t seem to be getting the message, however.

I linked to a couple of stories about the suppression of protests at the Republican National Convention last year, so I’m glad to see some of those involved telling their stories and getting some recognition.  Those who get roughed up for engaging in political protest deserve our thanks and ought to be celebrated.  Think anyone at the tea bag protests on Wednesday will be charged with terrorism?  Me neither.

Andrew Sullivan pointed to an almost comically dishonest post by torture apologist John Hinderaker  Among other points (all emphasis mine):

Torture has been illegal for a number of years, and President Bush insisted just as strongly as Obama that the U.S. does not torture. There was a legitimate debate about waterboarding, which does no physical injury, and which I do not believe constitutes torture. But according to press reports, only two or three top-ranking terrorists were waterboarded, none after 2003. And waterboarding has been banned by the U.S. military since 2006.

On the bolded parts:

• Insistence is not proof.  That he offers the insistence of a politician as evidence is almost insane.
• What is this debate he speaks of?  The public debate on torture amounted to the pro-torture forces questioning the patriotism of anyone on the other side and the large media outlets being too cowed to insist on an honest accounting.  From a legal standpoint there was no debate either, just (in my increasingly quoted reference to Jane Mayer) tricky legalisms adopted in classified memos.
• What Hinderaker believes constitutes torture is irrelevant.  What the rest of the world has agreed upon as a definition is what matters.  Waterboarding is torture and a war crime.  How you happen to feel about that is not legally binding.
• War crimes are illegal at any level, even “only” two or three times.  Once is enough.  There isn’t some threshold of widespread examples required.  Do it once and you’re as responsible under international law as anyone tried at The Hague or Nuremburg.

On that last point, consider this from John Sifton:

Under international law—the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture, and basic precepts of customary international law—the United States has a positive obligation to investigate and prosecute persons alleged to have committed torture and other violations of the laws of war. As of Valentine’s Day 2007, and possibly earlier, the U.S. government was obligated to investigate and prosecute the abuses detailed in the report. The United States’ failure to do so is a recurring breach of international law. If the Spanish case against six high-level Bush administration officials accused of authorizing torture proceeds, the Red Cross report—among other documents—may be entered as evidence. Further international prosecutions that the U.S. is obligated to respect may go down the chain of command to Panetta’s deputies.

Torture isn’t practical either:

given how little intelligence at least some of the 14 “high value” detainees provided — even the Bush administration’s much-heralded “star witness” turned out to be of only limited value — the image the report conjures up is of innocent people tortured by the CIA and now vanished by mutual agreement with other countries.

I don’t know how many times that point has to be made before it penetrates the thick skulls of the barbarians who enjoy practicing cruelty.  Even if you are completely unmoved by the moral argument it is also against your immediate self-interest.  You have to really like inflicting pain to be willing to put yourself at a disadvantage in order to do so.

I’m already running long so here’s a link dump. Jane Mayer has another great report, this time on the legal jeopardy of Bush officials.  Andrew pointed out the latest kamikaze mission by the GOP and writes, “You’d imagine they’d want to get as far away from the Bushies as possible at this point, rather than embracing what history will surely judge as one of the most shamefully lawless periods in US presidential history.”  Digby pointed to two reports about past horrors - and how they are infecting the present.  Raw Story published one story about why “fusion centers” are terrible, two more about problems at the CIA and two about interesting developments overseas.  That last link refers to the Alien Tort Claims Act, something I hadn’t heard of before but could become very interesting.

The Wall Street Journal had an article on spies hacking into the electrical grid. I’m very skeptical of news articles that use anonymous sources for anything besides whistleblower or personal safety reasons, and this is a great illustration - it quotes “a senior intelligence official” and “a former Department of Homeland Security official.” Why the need to disguise their identities? For all we know they are in the revolving door between government and K Street, and I am particularly suspicious of the timing: Right on the heels of the Defense Secretary announcing a major reconfiguration of spending priorities. These could just be lobbyists trying to position their clients to cash in on the next generation of contractor boondoggles and self-perpetuating programs. All that aside it’s clear our infrastructure faces much more prosaic threats. If it turns out that protecting against these “hackers” requires a massive payout to Raytheon, GE, etc. then maybe we’re better off just taking our chances. It wouldn’t be the first time a threat had been overhyped due to politics.

UNPACKING JANE:  On pp. 273-4 Mayer describes the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

Mohammed, meanwhile, alleged that he was beaten incessantly, attached to a dog leash, and yanked in such a way that he was propelled into the walls of his cell.  Sources said that he also claimed to have been forced to stand shackled in a stress position for eight hours a day, during which he was suspended from the ceiling by his arms, his toes barely touching the ground.  The pressure on his wrists evidently became exceedingly painful.  Many other detainees held by the CIA in Afghanistan around the same time gave notably consistent accounts of their treatment, though they had no opportunity to collude.

Those similarities may end up being the most difficult to refute evidence against high level officials who want to use the “bad apples” argument.  It’s also one of the reasons it’s such a problem for Leon Panetta to promise low level people at the CIA won’t even be investigated.  It’s boilerplate strategy for investigating criminal organizations that you put pressure at the lower levels and roll it up from there.  If the bad apples are given immunity then we’ll have a much harder time making a case against those higher up - and establishing that the consistency of detainee testimony is not some kind of fabulous coincidence.