And that torture is not necessarily a bad thing when the torturers are American.

Donald Douglas, who keeps a blog called “American Power,” falls into the “outright” category:

The left blogosphere has erupted in anger this morning upon news that U.S. government interrogations at Guantanamo Bay may have been modeled on Chinese Communist techniques from the 1950s.

Eric Martin’s indignation is classic:

Shame. Profound and bitter shame. I want more from my country than for our top government officials to go diving in the dumpsters of Communist regimes in order to recycle discarded manuals on torture. And for all you apologists and semantic hair splitters that insist on dancing the torture/not torture two step: you’ve been had. Not that you’d know it or admit it.

Anyway, there’s a presidential election this November. One of the candidates, John McCain, wants to continue to permit our government to engage in a policy of torture gleaned from observing the methods employed by brutal Communist regimes. The other candidate, Barack Obama, doesn’t.

Tough choice.

Martin’s profound simplicity is mirrored by many other antiadministration bloggers. One lefty commentator notes that this story “captures the moral failings of Bush’s war on terror.”

But does it? Is the application of torture as state policy so easily reduced to knee-jerk moral condemnation?

I don’t think so.

Mr. Douglas’s argument for why he doesn’t think so comes down to nothing more fancy than the fact that John McCain and “political scientist Jeremy Slater” both say that torture may sometimes be necessary. If you’re looking for anything more nuanced than that, you won’t find it at Douglas’s place.

Ed Morrissey falls into the “tacit” category. He doesn’t come right out and say he supports torture, but he doesn’t have too much fault to find with it, either. His explanation for why it’s no big deal that training classes at Guantanamo used Chinese Communist torture regimens as teaching material goes like this:

The question is whether Biderman’s chart was used as a template for tactics at all, or whether it served as a conceptual look at techniques and their limits. The Times appears to be less clear on how the chart was used:

The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”

The sessions included “an in-depth class on Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.

This material got presented, therefore, in an overview of what drove SERE, and the concepts used in training Americans to resist torture and mistreatment. This became important because the Gitmo interrogators saw evidence thatAQ detainees had received resistance training prior to their capture, and needed some indication of what that training may have prepared them to resist. The trainers noted in their overview that the individual physical pressures had to be evaulated and determined appropriate before implementation, but the overall point was to emphasize the total “captive environment”. The trainers also noted that the physical pressures actually mattered much less than the psychological pressures.

The question, now as before, is which of these techniques actually came into play, not whether they appeared on a chart in a classroom setting. According to the support materials provided by the Times and their actual reporting, it’s not clear that any of the objectionable techniques were used — although with the use of waterboarding an established fact (and used prior to this briefing by SERE trainers), one can certainly assume that at least some of them did get used. That should be a matter for closed-session investigations by Congress and the DoD. Apparently, no one has found any evidence outside of this training briefing.

Shorter Ed: Well, they taught the Al Qaeda technique for bomb-building in class, but there’s no evidence any of the students actually built a bomb, or tried to blow up the student center.

But that’s not even the worst. The worst is this (with my bolds):

The Times notes that the Biderman article title emphasizes “false” confessions, but I suspect that the Pentagon worried a lot more about preventing the release of real intelligence through POW interrogations. False confessions cause embarrassment, but the uncovering of factual intel costs lives and harms military objectives.

“False confessions cause embarrassment.” Embarrassment? To whom? Why, to the interrogators who tortured those false confessions out of the prisoners, that’s who! It’s kinda mortifying to have to admit you tried to drown someone, or forced them to stay awake for two weeks running, or kept them in a cell the size of a box with no lights, no windows, no sounds except for endless recordings of crying babies, and no human contact for months on end, and that you finally got their minds to break and got them to confess to the terrorist attack you knew they were planning, and then– oh.my.GOD! — IT WAS A FALSE CONFESSION! They didn’t, actually, really, know anything about any terrorist plot! (Oh, for you technophobes, the specialized term for that is “INNOCENT.”)

How EMBARRASSING for the administrators!

Needless to say, there is no need to concern ourselves about, or even think about, the kind of suffering that must have been inflicted on that prisoner to make him confess to something he didn’t do or to knowledge he didn’t have. That… that… thing in there is only another piece of subhuman scum vermin (as one of Ed’s readers kindly pointed out) for whom one need not feel even as much concern as one might feel for the fly you swat in the kitchen.

Late last year, the writer, polemicist and fierce proponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq Christopher Hitchens attempted, in a piece for the online magazine Slate, to draw a distinction between what he called techniques of “extreme interrogation” and “outright torture”.

From this, his foes inferred that since it was Hitchens’ belief that America did not stoop to the latter, the practice of waterboarding - known to be perpetrated by US forces against certain “high-value clients” in Iraq and elsewhere - must fall under the former heading.

Enraged by what they saw as an exercise in elegant but offensive sophistry, some of the writer’s critics suggested that Hitchens give waterboarding (which may sound like some kind of fun aquatic pastime, but is probably best summarised as enforced partial drowning) a whirl, just to see what it was like. Did the experience feel like torture?

Yes, it did, and in fact, it was:

… You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. …

Here is the legal disclaimer Hitchens had to sign before being subjected to forcible attempted drowning:

It goes without saying that I knew I could stop the process at any time, and that when it was all over I would be released into happy daylight rather than returned to a darkened cell. But it’s been well said that cowards die many times before their deaths, and it was difficult for me to completely forget the clause in the contract of indemnification that I had signed. This document (written by one who knew) stated revealingly:

“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological systems of the body.

As the agreement went on to say, there would be safeguards provided “during the ‘water boarding’ process, however, these measures may fail and even if they work properly they may not prevent Hitchens from experiencing serious injury or death.”

Apologists for torture by drowning tell us that it “is exactly the right technique for interrogating terrorists [because] it takes only two or three minutes, is almost always effective, and does no harm to the terrorist.”

Here is what Hitchens says about that:

There was a paramedic present who checked my racing pulse and warned me about adrenaline rush. An interval was ordered, and then I felt the mask come down again. Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass. …

So is there anything we won’t do, any line we won’t cross, any former enemy we won’t copy from?

Jumbo loans are for amounts up to $650,000, but the Obamas’ $1.32 million loan was so large that few comparables are available. Mortgage specialists say that many high-end buyers pay cash.

So you’re going to print a story implying that Obama got a discount for mysterious reasons without checking to see if his bank gave discounts to other borrowers who took out the same amount or more. Good going.  You’ve earned my “Stupid Lazy Journalist Hackjobs of the Day” award for this one.

If you don’t have all the facts, you don’t run the story.  Now instead of implying that there’s corruption here — and I’m not saying that there couldn’t be — keep in mind that $1.32 million is a big loan and banks compete to lend such sizable sums.  The least your reporter could have done is spoken with a few banks in the area and said, “If I want to borrow $XX and Bank Y down the street offers me interest rate Z, what would you do?”  Or you could try to find other bank customers with similar size loans and see what their interest rates are. 

You could have done this.  But instead, you run a smear job against Obama — you even had the audacity to name drop Rezko at the end of this article even though he had absolutely nothing to do with the story.

Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick…  The Maverick must be laughing all the way to the latest polls right now. 

Author’s note: The examples presented here may or may not be called “strawman arguments” — it depends on the intellect (or lack thereof) of the reader. 

There was nowhere to house an expanding headquarters staff, so giant Quonset huts were erected outside the cafeteria on the C.I.A.’s leafy Virginia campus to house a new team assigned to the bin Laden mission. In Pakistan, the new operation was staffed not only with C.I.A. operatives drawn from around the world, but also with recent graduates of “the Farm,” the agency’s training center at Camp Peary in Virginia.

“We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience,” one former senior C.I.A. official said. “But there wasn’t much to choose from.”

I can’t wait to see some morons try and defend this one.

Also related to our supposed war against terror, four ex-Abu Ghraib inmates are suing a couple defense contractors for torture. And you know…

He has scars on his leg and head that he said came from beatings with an iron rod. He also said he was forced to drink litres of water while his penis was tied to prevent him from urinating.

…I think they have a case.

Here’s something you may not have known about the US military:

Of the 1,255 Superfund sites on the EPA’s list, the Department of Defense owns 129 - making it the single biggest polluter in the country.

And with these Superfund sites, the country’s least environmentally friendly organization is refusing the EPA’s orders clean up the sites. If they were a normal corporation the EPA could simply sue them, but since its the military the EPA can’t do anything. It’s good to be the king, eh?

Unconstitutional protest zones are back, as the Democrats are trying to place the designated protest zone for their 2008 convention in Denver two football fields away from the convention center. Just for a point of reference here, I attended to protest festivities outside the 2004 DNC in Boston, and here’s how close we were allowed to get to delegates:

Any point of separation that’s greater than this should be considered a violation of civil liberties.

FEW AMERICANS, whatever their political persuasion, will mourn George W. Bush’s departure from office. Democrats and Republicans alike are counting the days until the inauguration of a new president will wipe the slate clean.

Yet in crucial respects, the Bush era will not end Jan. 20, 2009. The administration’s many failures, especially those related to Iraq, mask a considerable legacy. Among other things, the Bush team has accomplished the following:

Defined the contemporary era as an “age of terror” with an open-ended “global war” as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;

Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;

Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;

Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, “defense is not a budget item”;

Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;

Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;

Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising “global leadership”;

Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty.By almost any measure, this constitutes a record of substantial, if almost entirely malignant, achievement.

There’s more.

A Gallup poll released today shows that almost half of Americans are “very concerned” that a McCain presidency would be much the same as the Bush presidency. By contrast, 30% of poll respondents said they were “very concerned” that Obama would change Bush’s policies too much.

But enough of this silly stuff. The big issue that’s consuming all of John McCain’s time and attention right now is the conspiracy he sees (or claims to see) between Jim Webb and Barack Obama to attack his military credentials:

Now the McCain campaign is accusing the Obama campaign of coordinating with Jim Webb to “attack” McCain’s war service.

On MSNBC last night, Webb told McCain that he should “calm down” with the use of his military service in the campaign, adding that it was time to “get the politics out of the military.”

Now the McCain campaign is responding to Webb, arguing that Webb’s comments prove that Obama “can’t control his surrogate operation.” McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers sends us this:

If you didn’t think this was a coordinated attack on John McCain’s credentials before, it’s clear now that it is. Barack Obama’s surrogates are telling the McCain campaign to “calm down” about attacks on his military record? Seriously? Now somehow Wes Clark’s attacks are John McCain’s fault? It’s absurd. If Barack Obama can’t control his own surrogate operation, how can he be trusted to run the country?

If McCain reacts this hysterically to Wesley Clark answering a reporter’s question about whether McCain is especially qualified to be president because he was shot down during the Vietnam war and held as a POW for five years, how can he be trusted to make wise decisions when he takes that 3 a.m. call on the red phone?

Or, what Obama said:

At a press conference, the Illinois senator was asked what he thought about Clark’s comments, which seemed to downplay the significance of McCain’s military service — he was shot down and held as a POW for five and-a-half years during the Vietnam War — and whether he felt they were similar to the Swift Boat ads used to attack John Kerry in 2004.

“I don’t think that Gen. Clark, you know, had the same intent as the Swiftboat ads that we saw four years ago; I reject that analogy,” he said, before adding that he had said many times that McCain’s deserved honor and respect for his service to the country. “Now I have differences with him on policy, and I will vigorously debate a lot of the decisions he’s made when it comes to national security that have weakened our capacity to meet the threats and challenges of the 21st century. But that certainly doesn’t detract from his past service to America.”

He did not answer the first part of the question directly and later Obama, who said he had not spoken with Clark, seemed to bristle when asked why he had not talked with him and whether he felt the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO owed McCain an apology, suggesting voters had more pressing matters on their minds.

“I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we’ve got to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine?” he said. “I think that, you know, right now we’re here to talk about how we can make sure that kids in Zanesville and across Ohio get the kind of support that they need and communities that are impoverished can start to rebuild. I’m happy to have all sorts of conversations about how we deal with Iraq and what happens with Iran, but the fact that somebody on a cable show or on a news show like Gen. Clark said something that was inartful about Sen. McCain I don’t think is probably the thing that is keeping Ohioans up at night.”

Now, that’s the Obama I remember from primary season! Glad to have him back.

Hot on the heels of the recent bestowing of the Canadian Labour Congress’ Award for Outstanding Service to Humanity, CBC News reports that pioneering abortion rights activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler is now slated to be appointed to the Order of Canada:

Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who led the fight to legalize abortion in Canada, was supposed to be honoured Monday, but the ceremony has been delayed for unknown reasons, a government source told the Globe and Mail.

The honour, considered the highest in the country, is announced by the Governor General on the advice of an advisory panel.

Conservative MPs on Monday did not directly confirm the news, but stressed that appointments to the order are not made by cabinet. Nine people, including two government appointees, sit on the Order of Canada panel.

MP Maurice Vellacott, a Conservative from Saskatchewan who opposes abortion, told the Globe and Mail that he heard Morgentaler’s appointment was not unanimous.

“This is a pretty divisive issue,” he said. “I think we can all agree on that, so why would we have the highest honour in the country being issued when there is obviously a strong difference of opinion about it?”

[...]

Morgentaler, a trained family physician, argued that access to abortion was a basic human right and women should not have to risk death at the hands of an untrained professional in order to end their pregnancies.

Morgentaler’s clinics were constantly raided by his opponents, and one in Toronto was firebombed. Morgentaler was arrested several times and spent months in jail as he fought his case at all court levels in Canada.

His victory came on Jan. 28, 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s abortion law. That law, which required a woman who wanted an abortion to appeal to a three-doctor hospital abortion committee, was declared unconstitutional.

Cue the expected weeping and gnashing of teeth from outrage-addicted Canucklehead wing-nuts, courtesy Dr Dawg:

I was going to let this go and just party today, but reading the drivelling hatred oozing from the nut-o-sphere this morning has delayed my plans.

I’m referring to the speech-warrior crowd, the people who stand up for freedom in our Stalinist wasteland, who freep the hell out of newspaper polls, who can’t even spell the name of the person they hate, the folks who make sleazy references to Morgentaler’s Jewish ethnicity.

Yup, it’s all the old familiar faces. There’s Binky, aggregating blogposts about the Mark Steyn auto-da-fé, now dutifully directing us to various vicious anti-Morgentaler posts. Funny how the taste for freedom dissipates when women’s rights are at stake. Funny how the bigotry kicks in.

Yes, that is interesting, innit? I’d once again say something about irony’s untimely demise, but I think I’ve already buried that particular line of snark six feet under (and then some). Hey, flogging a dead horse is just too cruel, even for a baby-hating feticide-apologist like yours truly (yes, I really do think).

Maclean’s columnist Andrew Potter has it [almost] right [except for the part about there being "no other serious champions" for reproductive freedom]:

Dr. Henry Morgentaler risked his reputation, his freedom, and his life for decades in service of a cause that had no other serious champion in this country.

He is a remarkable man who has lived a remarkable life. He deserves to be a member of the order of Canada, because, more than the vast majority of members of the Order, he has lived his life according to the motto inscribed on the medal: He desired a better country.

Or, as JJ puts it (as only she can):

I don’t give a happy monkeyfuck if “others fundamentally disagree” — they can get stuffed. Dr. Morgentaler has contributed more to Canadian women’s right to self-determination than any other individual, and has risked his life and his freedom doing it. Before he stood up for our rights, our reproductive business was dictated by the state and whatever sex-obsessed authoritarian busybodies had its ear. Not acceptable: never was, never will be, and Dr. Morgentaler sealed the deal. His Order of Canada is long overdue… .

A-fuckin’-men, sister.

Look, I’m not one for overt displays of patriotism, nor for possessing much in the way of ‘pride’ in my country (as opposed to hope for humanity in general, regardless of national borders). Still, giving this particular honour to someone who essentially put his career–and his life–at risk to ensure that a Canadian woman’s right to bodily autonomy is not constrained by the State makes even a staunch internationalist such as yours truly feel a twinge in ye olde chest cavity of–yes–proud nationalist sentiment–either that, or the kielbasa I ate earlier is repeating on me. In any case, don’t expect ol’ matttbastard to take a page out of Uncle Steve’s good book and start asking ‘God’ to bless Canada (although I do reserve the right to hypocritically say ‘gesundheit’ when someone sneezes in my presence).

h/t skdadl and dBO, who offers the following wry observation in response to Liberal MP Dan McTeague’s claim that “[t]he Governor-General and the committee advising on appointments to the Order of Canada have always been careful in the past not to choose people who were controversial or who would not be unanimously celebrated by all Canadians”:

One of the commenters at JJ’s reminds us that last year, there was a choice for the Order of Canada that was controversial and affronted the fundamental rightwingnutters and fetus fetishists: the Rev. Brent Hawkes.

But-but-but what about divisiveness? Or the dead babies? FOR GOD’S SAKE WON’T SOMEBODY PUHLEEASE CONSIDER THE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DEAD BABIES?1?!!!11interrochittychittybangbangone

Background: more from CBC News:

• IN DEPTH: Morgentaler
• CBC ARCHIVES: Henry Morgentaler
• IN DEPTH: Order of Canada

Update: via Bruce and JJ: it’s official:

Henry Morgentaler, C.M.

Toronto, Ontario

Member of the Order of Canada

For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations.

Congratulations, Dr. Morgentaler.

Update 2: More from Dave at the Beav on McTeague’s bogus contention re: anodyne OoC selections.

Update 3: More cork-popping from April, JJ, Bruce, and Dawg.

Update 4: Get some bubbly at The Stormy Days of March, thought,interrupted by typos, and Canadian Cynic.

Also, Scott Tribe in comments at Kuri’s place provides the following (scroll down, second comment):

Actually, you and everyone else should also thank Beverly Mclaughlin, chief justice of the Supreme Court, for waiving the normal requirement of a vote having to be unanimous for the panel to pass along the recommendation to the G.G.

Great. I can already envision the endless parade of unhinged harangues against our tyrannical judiciary this bit of news is sure to provoke.

Update 5: Hysperia reminds us that, while this is indeed a laudable occasion, we should try not to get too caught up in the celebrations. We still have quite a ways to go before universal access to reproductive services in Canada is achieved.

With the publication of Sy Hersh’s recent New Yorker article detailing how Bush administration officials have ramped up US special forces activity in Iran, all eyes are once again fixated on the contentious Gulf state–and the potential of an Israeli-initiated proxy attack.

ABC News:

A senior defense official told ABC News there is an “increasing likelihood” that Israel will carry out such an attack, a move that likely would prompt Iranian retaliation against, not just Israel, but against the United States as well.

The official identified two “red lines” that could trigger an Israeli offensive. The first is tied to when Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility produces enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. According to the latest U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments, that is likely to happen sometime in 2009, and could happen by the end of this year.

“The red line is not when they get to that point, but before they get to that point,” the official said. “We are in the window of vulnerability.”

The second red line is connected to when Iran acquires the SA-20 air defense system it is buying from Russia. The Israelis may want to strike before that system — which would make an attack much more difficult — is put in place.

Juan Cole is dismissive of the former benchmark:

This [first] “red line” is pure bullshit. There is no evidence that Iran is enriching uranium to weapons grade at all, much less that it is making enough highly-enriched uranium that it will be able to make a bomb in 2009.

You can’t use low-enriched uranium to make a bomb. It has to be highly enriched. Iran–as far as anyone has proved–is only making the low-enriched kind, and from all accounts it isn’t doing such a great job of that, either. If it made high-enriched uranium, that could be detected by the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who regularly inspect Iran’s facilities. I.e., it just isn’t there and the idea that Iran could have enough material to make a bomb by next year is ridiculous. Now if it turned all its centrifuges to this task, then maybe it could achieve that result, though most experts think Iran’s ability to enrich is still exaggerated. It could not highly enrich without creating atomic signatures detectable by the inspectors.

The IAEA says that there is no evidence–zilch, zero, nada– that Iran has facilities for enriching to weapons grade or that it is trying to do so

With that mind, along with last year’s all-but-forgotten NIE (y’know, the one that unequivocally states that Iran isn’t actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons), how potent a threat does Iran actually present? Geoffrey Kemp, director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center and special assistant to the president for the Middle East during the first Reagan administration, provides a Realist analysis of the ‘threat’ posed by Iran to the US, Israel, and Middle East, dubbing it “an imaginary foe”:

With regards to an attack on the part of Israel, Kemp evaluates the steps Israel would have to take to initiate a series of strikes against Iran:

But, as Kemp notes, “the consequences of such an attack on oil markets, U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the reaction of Iraq’s government and possible Iranian retaliation against Israel are awesome and suggest such action has a low probability of being authorized.” He does however acknowledge that, despite his conclusion that Israeli air strikes against Iran are counterproductive to US interests and regional stability (and won’t put much of a dent in Iran’s nuclear ambitions), an Israeli-initiated attack could still take place if “this is what the Bush administration wants to happen.” Despite this, Kemp remains convinced that “while some White House advisors may still contemplate such an action, it would be far more difficult to convince the secretaries of defense and state that another Middle Eastern war would serve American interests.”

In a recent analysis, Haaretz correspondent Yossi Melman cautioned those who would interpret the recent brinkmanship emanating from Tel Aviv as a signal that that military action on the part of Tel Aviv is a done deal:

Melman notes that a “significant factor” in any decision to strike Iran is the political landscape in Tehran:

Marc Perelman, writing in The Forward, has more on Ahmadinejad’s domestic woes:

And from Kamal Nazer Yasin of Eurasia Insight:

Whether all this is enough to deter ‘bomb bomb Iran’ hardliners within the Bush admin (or, more realistically, bolster the resolve of Defence Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Rice, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to resist acquiescing to hawkish demands) remains to be seen. But, as Kemp warns, “punishing the Iranians and setting back their nuclear program for months or years will reinforce the nationalism of the country and give the mullahs a further lease on life”–a view shared by noted Iranian human rights activists Akbar Ganji and Shirin Ebadi, who both note that the international community’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program has, according to Ganji, “pushed aside the struggle for democracy and human rights”, allowing the regime to exploit “the pretext of an “impending war” to crack down more severely on its opponents.”

Ebidi puts it succinctly: “As a human rights activist I tell the people of the world that if you want to help people in Iran the solution is not to launch an attack.”

Today’s a new day, so it’s time for a new strawman!

Based on the easy contracts oil companies just got, the Iraq war really was about oil.

Feel free to not only disagree, but launch “That’s a strawman!” and other various insults that seek to defame the holder of the opinion rather than discuss the topic at hand.  But please be advised that I still reserve the right to show you this. 

Now, I think John may have taken things a touch far, but in general, and this goes against much of what I’ve been saying in recent months, I think you have to question McCain’s service.

Interestingly, the first time I heard the John McCain is a traitor for talking under torture idea was not from a liberal, but instead from a hardcore conservative co-worker of mine. I was upset at the accusation now, and I think Aravosis is out of line here. Simply put; McCain was tortured.

I dare any keyboard commando to refuse making a propaganda tape after extensive torture. I know I wouldn’t be able to; I’m soft and squishy and I really don’t like pain (or spiders). But while I think whatever McCain did under torture is, at the very least, excusable, I also think that it doesn’t automatically identify him as either a hero nor someone who is particularly qualified to run the country.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast has about the right perspective on this. Sometimes people are just victims, and what happens to them is horrible.

But, to be honest, to say that McCain’s five years as a POW makes him uniquely qualified to be the President of the United States, more specifically, the Commander in Chief, is ludicrous. Under this metric, Jessica Lynch would be qualified for high office.

This isn’t necessarily to say that Jessica Lynch isn’t qualified for high office, but if she is, and John McCain for that matter, they both have a whole lot of other standards to meet.

This is why I think it is important, and necessary to question McCain’s military service. Not as a matter of discrediting his service, or trying to turn what was honorable service into what was dishonorable service, but instead to break this illusion that because John McCain was a fighter pilot who was captured, held as a prisoner of war, and tortured for five years, he has unique qualifications to oversee the entire military.

The truth is, the two have nothing to do with each other, but far too many Americans assume that because of McCain’s experience as the former, he automatically has unmet mastery of the latter.

As a result, McCain has gotten a free ride when it comes to the foreign policy debate in this election. Because you have to declare John McCain a war hero, people are prevented from asking the tougher questions that any other candidate would rightly be forced to answer when it comes to National Security and Foreign policy.

As DDay points out, this is likely truest of all among the press who are so affected by their own guilt and awe felt towards McCain that they don’t feel right asking John to actually back up the foreign policy and military mastery that is unnecessarily heaped upon him.

The result is that while McCain’s resume is suitably long, his substance on foreign policy is remarkably thin. He doesn’t discuss foreign policy outside of Iraq and Iran. He doesn’t talk about Afghanistan, and he most certainly doesn’t talk about al Qaeda and its strongholds in Pakistan. In a true fit of irony, McCain is seen as the stronger candidate on foreign policy when in truth his foreign policy is virtually identical to that of the current president’s whose own actions and policies in that arena are viewed by most Americans as disastrous.

Further, and this is something that few seem to talk about, is that McCain’s military experience doesn’t even necessarily seem to translate into a respectable understanding of how the military works. This as evidenced by one of the most frequent attacks he launches at Obama for not being willing to “listen to the commanders on the ground.”

In a nutshell, that seems to be all that McCain’s foreign policy truly entails; listening to the commanders on the ground. But this gross misunderstanding on where the President sits in relationship to the military chain of command can only result in the kind of dangerous circular logic that got us here in the first place.

When we look at the military as a whole, it is a tool tha tis to be used at the discretion of the President, with the body of Congress acting as an important check on power. It is the president who sets policy, congress that approves policy, and the military that enacts that policy.

The particulars are a little more complex than that, of course, but for the sake of brevity, that’s how it is supposed to work, with the President being the ultimate decision maker. What John McCain’s rhetoric essentially promises, though, is that McCain will hand over the decision making to the military.

That’s not their job, and we’ve already seen the kind of negativity that can result when you put the military in what is essentially a politician’s job in General David Petraeus. Petraeus, has taken much criticism, mostly from my friends on the left, for going to congress and delivering his testimony. But what many people fail to understand is that Petraeaus was given a task to perform. It’s not his decision to decide whether the task is doable, that rests completely with George W. Bush. Petraeus’ job is to accomplish the task by any means necessary.

Thus, when you remove the decision making prerogative of the President, you create a perpetual machine with no safety stop. They will keep grinding and grinding away at the task at hand because their function is not to say “no”, not to say “stop”, not to say “we can’t do it”. As the old saying would have it, their’s is not to wonder why, their’s is but to do or die.

Which creates the ultimate irony of the John McCain presidency, one that is often remarked upon for his strengths in the arenas of foreign policy and military service. For as much credit as he is given, a careful understanding of what he offers reveals that he has at best a strange grasp of the President to Military relationship, and that he would cede his responsibilities of making the most important decisions to those people who are not, by their very function, supposed to make them.

And this is merely the surface, which is the most disturbing part, and which is why we must continue to discuss the relevance of McCain’s military service to his hopes of being president. Because for as long as that illusion persists, that McCain is automatically qualified to stand in as Commander in Chief, people are going to continue to fail to ask the right questions, the necessary questions to actually determine if he is in fact qualified.

With those questions unasked and unanswered, we won’t find out until it is far too late.

Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut was first elected to Congress in 1982, and proceeded to win re-election 11 consecutive times, often quite easily. In 2004, she defeated her Democratic challenger by 22 points. The district is historically Republican, and split its vote 49-49 for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the “false choice between war and civil liberties.” Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy’s opposition to warrantless eavesdropping. …

The result? Johnson was crushed[.]
[...]
Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy — as he runs for re-election for the first time — recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

So why is Obama embracing a losing political strategy? Libby is thinking that maybe he’s not as savvy as she thought.

One of the biggest reasons I voted for Obama was because he had energized so many young people and new voters and I believed he would be able to keep them engaged through the general. Glenn is right. The reason he was so appealing to this demo was because he was willing to push back against the false memes. That apparent courage to defy the media narrative and redefine the middle was the embodiment of the “change they could believe in.”

People like me will still vote for him, but the more Obama shrinks back from his former boldness and embraces the same old conventions, the more likely it becomes that he will lose the enthusiasm of those new voters. That’s not what they signed up for and they may well just keep their wallets in their pockets and sit it out in November.

Anonymous Liberal thinks Obama’s reasoning has more to do with the Democratic leadership than with voters:

… With over two thirds of the members of his own party prepared to vote in favor of the bill, he has no political cover. If he opposes the bill, the question posed to him by every reporter and debate moderator would be: if the bill was so bad, why did over 2/3rds of the members of your own party think it was necessary to keep America safe?

The problem that national Democratic candidates like Obama face is one of collective action. The Democratic party is, as Glenn points out, filled with politicians who believe that the only way to be taken seriously is to “move to the center,” wherever that center happens to be on any given day. As a result, it is very hard for a national Democrat to take a stand on any significant issue without looking like a fringe figure or someone far to the left of even his own party. Obama is already (thanks to the National Journal’s widely-cited “analysis”) described as the “most liberal Senator in the country.” Were he to oppose a national security bill that is supported by 85% of the Senate, Republicans would likely be able to use that against him fairly effectively this fall.

Again, I say this not to defend Obama’s capitulation, but to point out that his actions are not as politically irrational as Glenn’s analysis would at first suggest. To put it another way, so long as Democrats in Congress continue en masse to seek out the mythical political center, national Democratic candidates must choose to do the same or risk looking completely out of touch with even their own party.

I do not agree with this at all. That hypothetical reporter’s question strikes me as a very easy one to answer. All he has to do is turn the question around. Why the assumption (that word again!) that a bill or a policy is sound because it gets a lot of votes? Didn’t the AUMF passed September 18, 2001, get a lot of votes (a lot, as in only one member of Congress voted against it)? Didn’t a majority of Democrats vote yes on the Patriot Act (the original one, in October 2001)? Was that a good piece of legislation?

I don’t see how the status quo that A.L. describes is ever going to change unless someone decides it needs to change.

Cross-posted at Liberty Street.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain of Arizona also called for an increase in domestic oil production from offshore drilling Tuesday during a speech in Houston, Texas, which the candidate called “the oil capital of America.”

“The price of a gallon of gas in America stands at more than four dollars. Yesterday, a barrel of oil cost about 134 dollarsm” said McCain. “And various oil ministers and investment firms have confidently informed us that soon we can expect to pay 200 dollars for every barrel, and as much as seven dollars for every gallon of gas.”

Patterico sees this as proof that liberal bloggers who wrote that John McCain doesn’t know how much a gallon of gas costs right now were “lying”:

Think Progess cites this as evidence of “McCain’s cluelessness about gas prices.”

But McCain isn’t saying he doesn’t know the price of gas. He is saying that he doesn’t remember the last time he pumped his own gas, and how much it cost then.

So, does John McCain know the cost of a gallon of gas in America? Yes, he does. Here’s a news story from June 18:

“The price of a gallon of gas in America stands at more than four dollars. Yesterday, a barrel of oil cost about 134 dollarsm” said McCain.

Again, that McCain quote is from June 18 — six days before the O.C. Register interview that Think Progress uses to claim McCain doesn’t know the price of gas.

This Think Progress post is a lie. At best, the story is that McCain doesn’t remember the last time he pumped his own gas. Even that is a non-story, since nobody pumps their own gas while on the campaign trail. Someone ask Obama when he last pumped his own gas.

James Joyner comes to a different conclusion:

It stands to reason, then, that McCain knew the price at the time of the interview. It would seem, then, that he’s guilty merely of giving an irritated and dismissive answer to what he perceived as a “gotcha” question rather than being out of touch.

In my book, that still makes him out of touch. The high price of gas is extremely important to ordinary people who aren’t multimillionaires running for president with a Secret Service detail to take care of all the mundane details. Which means that McCain is being dismissive about an issue that affects the daily lives of millions of Americans. It should not be “irritating” to answer such a question.

And then there is that flippant “And frankly I don’t see how it matters.”

It matters because voters want to see that the candidates who are asking for their votes understand how difficult it is to struggle every day with the problem of how you’re going to get to work when you can’t afford to fill up your tank. More than that, people want to get some sense that the next president of the United States — even if he does not directly have to deal with the high cost of gas — possesses some minimal capacity to feel for those who do.

It’s crystal clear from everything John McCain chooses to say and the way he chooses to say it, that he does not. And that is why McCain’s impatience at a question about the price of gas angers and upsets as much as it does.

Just think: if any Democrat said this, the calls that he or she is “elitist” and “out of touch” would be screamed 24/7.  But when McCain says it?  Feh, the dude’s a maverick!  He could boink Monica Lewinsky on live television and the media would still kiss his feet. 

“I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that my name isn’t ‘Stephen Lewis’?”

You have got to be shitting me:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today became the first Canadian to receive the B’nai Brith International President’s Gold Medallion, in recognition of the Government’s efforts to fight discrimination and uphold human rights in Canada and around the world.

[...]

In presenting Prime Minister Harper with the award, B’nai Brith International President Moishe Smith, a resident of Ottawa who is the first non-American president of the organization, cited a number of actions the Prime Minister and the Government have taken to advance human rights and oppose discrimination, including:

Unequivocally supporting Canada’s role in the UN-sanctioned mission in Afghanistan;

Refusing to sign a resolution denouncing Israel’s right to self-defence at the 2006 Francophonie Summit;

Suspending relations with the then Hamas-led government in Palestine, for its refusal to renounce terrorism; and

Delivering a heartfelt apology acknowledging the overtly discriminatory Indian Residential Schools program.“Prime Minister, whether in opposition or in government, you have always portrayed a leadership style that speaks of principle and honesty,” said Mr. Smith.

Y’know why irony was unavailable for comment, Alison? Because it just committed suicide.

Related: Bob Hepburn on how certified humanitarian Stephen Harper is “snubbing” a true Canadian human rights icon, the *ahem* “disgraceful” (hey, wasn’t irony’s festering corpse lying face down a moment ago?) outgoing UN Human Rights Commissioner (and former Supreme Court of Canada justice) Louise Arbour.

When [Arbour] announced her resignation, diplomats from across Europe and other parts of the world sang her praises. Some presented her with flowers. Canadian diplomats, though, barely acknowledged her presence, issuing only a bland, terse statement acknowledging that Canada would continue to support human rights.

Later, then foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier tried to assuage the outrage from human rights groups over Canada’s dismissive response by issuing a short statement praising Arbour for “expanding the concepts of human rights and fundamental justice.”

Since then, Harper and his government have remained silent, except for Toews’ ugly outburst.

Is Harper so small-minded that he cannot speak for himself about Arbour and her accomplishments?

Is such pettiness a sign that Harper is once again out of step with most Canadians, this time when it comes to recognizing the need for a progressive, courageous champion for human rights?

Yes and yes.

Simple answers to simple questions.

But hey, at least Uncle Steve has a shiny medal from B’nai Brith to ease his (non-existent) conscience.

The media should not live in constant fear of facing a libel suit every time a provocative commentary is published or broadcast, the Supreme Court of Canada said yesterday in a major ruling won by controversial Vancouver radio broadcaster Rafe Mair.

In a 9-0 decision that modernizes the defence of fair comment, the court found that Mr. Mair did not defame Christian-values advocate Kari Simpson when he denounced her stand on a book-banning controversy.

“An individual’s reputation is not to be treated as regrettable but unavoidable roadkill on the highway of public controversy, but nor should an overly solicitous regard for personal reputation be permitted to ‘chill’ freewheeling debate on matters of public interest,” Mr. Justice Ian Binnie said.

Judge Binnie said that the key to a defence of honest belief - particularly in an era when extravagant overstatement is common - should lie in whether an honest person could have held the same opinion.

“We live in a free country, where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones,” Judge Binnie said. “In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are as much entertainers as journalists.”

Score one for the chronically hyperbolic Canadian media personalities who live and die on the alter of outrageous and ridiculous opinions (ahem).

H/t The Robert Bond Papers

As the Huffington Post reported, McCain in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun headed for the gutter while trying to explain why he did not choose Republican Governor Jim Gibbons (now in the midst of a messy divorce and previously the subject of sexual assault allegations) as his Nevada campaign chair:

McCain: I appreciate his support. As you know, the lieutenant governor is our chairman.

Q: Why snub the governor?

McCain: I didn’t mean to snub him. I’ve known the lieutenant governor for 15 years and we’ve been good friends….I didn’t intend to snub him. There are other states where the governor is not the chairman.

Q: Maybe it’s the governor’s approval rating and you are running from him like you are from the president?

McCain: (Chuckling) And I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago…

I’m sure clever one-liners like that totally crack up his man-crushing Beltway fanclub during bourbon-fueled late night josh sessions on the Straight Talk Express, but it’s a safe bet they aren’t the sort of entreaties that feminists (or, I’d wager, most women in general) find particularly persuasive.

Yr doin’ it wrong, McSogynist.