“A Future Cheney Could Do It All Again”: The U.S. Will Torture Again—And We’re All To Blame
Reliably enough, out came Dick Cheney to trash the Senate torture report and to say of the use of torture: “I’d do it again in a minute.” None of us doubt that he would. But the more interesting and challenging question is: Could he?
More precisely, could a future Cheney, after a future terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland, get away with it? Could a future administration set up the whole fraudulent and immoral apparatus—a Department of Justice defining torture so narrowly that it somehow magically doesn’t include sleep deprivation or rectal hydration or waterboarding, followed by a CIA and military saying “Hey, what’s the big deal? It’s all legal!”? (Even in his press conference Thursday, CIA chief John Brennan acknowledged that it all could happen again: “I defer to the policymakers,” he said, as to what might occur.)
People like me are supposed to say something like: No, we’re better than that. Alas, I say we are not better than that. It could happen again. Easily.
In fact, let’s go further. Cheney is a figure of horror and ridicule these days (although by no means to everyone—to the Fox News audience to which he spoke the above words Wednesday, he’s oracular). But can we honestly say that back in 2002, 2003, 2004, he wasn’t carrying out the people’s will? We get the government we deserve, de Tocqueville said. And in the Bush-Cheney regime, we got exactly that.
There exist four mechanisms in our democracy by which the state can be compelled to live up to what we call, rather farcically in a gruesome week like this one, “our ideals.” There is the will of the people; the resolve of the political class; the courage of the media; and the authority of the courts. With regard to our torture regime, all four failed, and failed completely.
The people were, in theory, against torture. I have on my screen here a study from Reed College (PDF) that asserts that from 2001 to 2009, majorities of public opinion consistently opposed torture, by averages of about 55 to 40 percent. That may be, in the abstract. But were Americans ever so worked up about the practice that they demanded it not be undertaken in their name? Never.
In fact, for most of the Bush era, the opposite was the truth. I remember very clearly the public mood after the 9/11 attacks. There was appropriate anger and shock and sorrow. But it bled into other less honorable manifestations, a paradoxical combination of, on the one hand, a lust for revenge in any form among a certain segment of the populace, and on the other hand a tremulous fear among a different segment that sanctioned anything being done in its name. Too many people reverted to a childlike state, and they wanted a daddy-protector. And no, this wasn’t understandable under the circumstances.
As for the political class, I doubt I need to give you a very hard sell on its failure. It was thoroughgoing and bipartisan. The timorous Democrats, with a few noble exceptions like Robert Byrd, largely bought into the global war on terror. The Republicans, well, you know about them. The foreign-policy establishment of Washington and to some extent New York lined up behind the administration on nearly every important question. The urge among this class is always to swim with the tide: In 2003, when the Council on Foreign Relations was casting about for a new leader, it settled on Richard Haass, who had been in Bush’s State Department. He has said since that he was 60-40 against the war, but one would have been hard pressed to know that then, back when his boss, Colin Powell, was warning us about those weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. On the torture question, this class was outraged when it was easy to be outraged, like when the Abu Ghraib story broke, but the outrage was never sustained.
Among the media, there were to be sure many brave journalists—Jane Mayer, Robin Wright, many others—who broke story after story about torture. We’re in their debt. But their great work was more than balanced out by the equivocation caucus—well, we can’t really be sure it’s torture. And then there was the segment of the media that actively cheered it all on. More broadly, the media as a whole were afraid to break ranks. I have had a number of conversations with prominent media people—in TV and radio, names you’d know—who, by way of trying to defend their lack of zeal and confrontation in those post-9/11 days, tried to explain how many furious emails they got when a report diverged modestly from the accepted line.
And the legal system? Again, there were some courageous judges who tried. A Virginia federal judge named Gerald Bruce Lee ruled in 2009 that four Abu Ghraib detainees could sue CACI, the private military contractor in Iraq. But overall the legal system has done little to say “this was against the law.” Much of the fault for that, of course, lies with Barack Obama, who chose early on not to seek prosecutions of Bush administration officials. And even now, in the wake of this report, what is your level of confidence that anyone will be prosecuted as a result of the release of this report? I thought so.
Failures top to bottom. Now, one would like to say that we as a society have learned the lessons of these failures and would not permit this to happen again. Don’t count on it. If there is another terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland, the odds are strong that we will reenact this grim tragedy from start to finish, if a neoconservative regime happens to be ensconced in the White House. The people would respond with the same fear, which would give license to the same behavior, and the political class and the media and the courts would probably go along.
So yes, it’s a moral horror that Cheney says he’d do it all again. But it’s also all too likely that a future Cheney could do it all again. That’s the far greater moral horror, and the one we don’t want to face, because it implicates us.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, December 12, 2014
“Coaching Sessions Have A Long Way To Go”: Rick Perry; ‘Running For The Presidency’s Not An IQ Test’
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is wrapping up his 14-year tenure as his state’s chief executive – the longest such tenure in Lone Star State history – and as he gets ready to launch a second national campaign, the governor is talking more to the national media. The goal, in all likelihood, is to help reintroduce Perry in the wake of his failed 2012 presidential bid.
It’s off to a curious start.
The recently indicted Texas Republican talked with the Washington Post earlier this week, for example, “for a wide-ranging 90-minute interview.” It was a reminder that Perry hasn’t quite shaken off some of his bad habits.
Last week, Perry studied income inequality and economic mobility with experts Scott Winship, Erin Currier and Aparna Mathur. In the Post interview, he was asked about the growing gap between rich and poor in Texas, which has had strong job growth over the past decade but also has lagged in services for the underprivileged.
“Biblically, the poor are always going to be with us in some form or fashion,” he said.
I’m not a Biblical scholar, but I can find no Scriptural references to the notion that that the poor “are always going to be with us.” [Update: see below]
Perry acknowledged that the richest Texans have experienced the greatest amount of earnings growth, but dismissed the notion that income inequality is a problem in the state, saying, “We don’t grapple with that here.”
I suppose that’s true – in order to “grapple with” a problem, policymakers have to at least try to address it – though the fact remains that income inequality has gotten much worse in Texas in recent years, and a 2012 analysis of income trends published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that Texas was the nation’s seventh-worst state when it comes to the gap between rich and poor.
The governor’s new interview with msnbc’s Kasie Hunt was arguably even more informative about Perry’s progress as a national candidate.
For example, Hunt asked the governor, quite candidly, “Are you smart enough to be president of the United States?” He replied:
“Running for the presidency’s not an IQ test,” he said. “It is a test of an individual’s resolve. It’s a test of an individual’s philosophy. It’s a test of an individual’s life experiences. And I think Americans are really ready for a leader that will give them a great hope about the future.”
I’m a little surprised the governor didn’t reply with a more direct, “of course I’m smart enough” answer.
As part of the same interview, which was conducted Tuesday, Hunt asked Perry about the torture report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The governor’s answers didn’t quite bring his position into focus. For example, Perry sounded like he opposes torture:
“I agree that what happened to John McCain was abhorrent. It is inhumane. And the United States Government should never ever condone that type of activity. America has a record, going all the way back to George Washington when George Washington said that those British soldiers need to be treated with respect.”
And Perry also sounded like he understands Bush-era torture.
“But in the fog a war, you think back to 2001, and George W. Bush standing on that pile a rubble after he had talked to mothers and fathers and wives, loved ones of Americans who’d been killed by these soulless terrorist – you think back to Abraham Lincoln, suspending habeas corpus – you know, in retrospect, you know, sometimes decisions made in the fog a war, we can criticize ‘em, some years later.
And then Perry switched back, sounding like he opposes torture.
“But I think more importantly here is that the message that America is not going to be– like ISIS and cut the throat of innocent children– that we’re not going to– commit heinous acts, is clearly a message that Americans want to hear…. I respect [John McCain] for standing up and saying America will not be involved in torture. ‘No one in this country will ever do to any combatant what they did to me.’ And I totally agree with that.”
And then asked whether waterboarding is torture, Perry changed the subject.
“One of the most important things, though, that we need to do as a country, is that when the leader of the United States says, ‘Here’s a red line,’ that that’s what it means. Words matter. And hollow words hurt us as a country. They hurt us as an ally. And the words that come out of the president of the United States need to mean something.”
By all accounts, the Texas governor is meeting regularly with advisers who are helping him shape his agenda and vision. The coaching sessions apparently have a long way to go.
* Update: Several alert readers have brought Matthew 26:11 to my attention, which, depending on the translation, actually says, “The poor you will always have with you.” I stand corrected.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 11, 2014
“Congress, Deal-Making, And How The Sausage Gets Made”: If You Want Bipartisan Cooperation, This Is What It Looks Like
The closer one looks at the $1.1 trillion spending package that barely cleared the House last night, the easier it is to notice its flaws. The so-called “CRomnibus” is filled with giveaways, rollbacks, and handouts that almost certainly don’t belong there.
Kevin Drum made a compelling case yesterday that many critics have overlooked an important, big-picture detail: if you want bipartisan cooperation, this is what it looks like.
This is one of those things that demonstrates the chasm between political activists and analysts on the one side, and working politicians on the other. If you take a look at the bill, it does indeed have a bunch of objectionable features. People like me, with nothing really at stake, can bitch and moan about them endlessly. But you know what? For all the interminable whining we do about the death of bipartisanship in Washington, this is what bipartisanship looks like. It always has. It’s messy, it’s ugly, and it’s petty. Little favors get inserted into bills to win votes. Other favors get inserted as payback for the initial favors. Special interests get stroked. Party whips get a workout.
That’s politics. The fact that it’s happening right now is, in a weird sense, actually good news. It means that, for a few days at least, politics is working normally again.
I think that’s largely correct. The old line about no one wanting to see how the sausage gets made applies to lawmaking for a reason – neither process is pretty. For many Americans – including plenty of Beltway pundits – there’s a sense that Democrats and Republicans can get stuff done if they just sit in a room and agree to work out a deal.
And here we have an excellent example of what happens when the parties do exactly that.
But I think there’s one other relevant detail to this that I’d add to the mix.
While it’s never pretty when these bipartisan, bicameral talks produce a thrown-together solution, what’s a little different about 2014 is that Congress, by historical standards, really is broken to an unusual degree. The legislative branch still exists, of course, but its capacity for governing has atrophied to a level with no modern precedent.
That’s relevant in this context for one simple reason: lawmakers realized that this spending bill was an extremely rare opportunity to advance their policy goals. Some of those goals had merit, and some were ridiculous, but in either case, members of Congress saw something unusual: a shortcut.
We all know that the usual legislative process is long and arduous. It involves a series of choke points – hearings, committees, amendments, chambers, etc. – all of which make failure easy. Apply that to the contemporary Congress, which struggles to complete even routine tasks, and members understand that their proposals are almost certain to die, regardless of popularity or merit.
But if a lawmaker can get that proposal squeezed into a spending package like this, all of a sudden, the choke points disappear. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the “CRomnibus” is, in legislative terms, the shortest distance between drafting and law.
To be sure, this isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, but my point is, the need to take advantage of these rare opportunities is more acute when the usual legislative process has broken down to such a farcical degree.
This was members’ only chance to advance their ideas. Are we surprised they exploited it?
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, December 12, 2014
“A Conspiracy So Vast, It Now Involves Republicans”: Republicans Turn On Each Other Over Benghazi Conspiracy Theories
Once the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee issued its report on the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, there was a sense of finality to the process. GOP lawmakers on the panel themselves described the findings as “definitive.”
Every possible question has been answered. Every conspiracy theory has been discredited. Every wild-eyed allegation has been proven false. Every House committee, every Senate committee, every State Department investigator, and every inquiry launched by independent news organizations have reached the exact same conclusion. There’s a general feeling, even among many Republicans, that it’s time to just move on.
But that’s not going to happen. Not only is the House on track to spend at last another $1.5 million – of our money – on yet another committee, but many GOP lawmakers have decided to reject the findings of other GOP lawmakers.
Some of the loudest torch-and-pitchfork wielding Benghazi investigation enthusiasts weren’t satisfied. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on CNN he thought the report “is full of crap” and that the House Intelligence Committee had done a “lousy job of policing their own.”
“I’m saying that anybody who has followed Benghazi at all knows that the CIA deputy director did not come forward to tell Congress what role he played in changing the talking points,” Graham said. “And the only way we knew he was involved is when he told a representative at the White House, I’m going to do a hard review of this, a hard rewrite.” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) agreed, telling the Salt Lake Tribune that Graham “is probably right.”
He’s really not.
And while it’s certainly interesting to see Graham and Chaffetz reject the exhaustive findings prepared by their colleagues from their own party, no one seems quite as hostile to the evidence as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), arguably Congress’ most zealous conspiracy theorist.
The Kentucky Republican wrote an op-ed for a right-wing website this week, and I hope readers will take a moment to appreciate Rand Paul’s approach to logic in all its glory.
The Associated Press claims the report debunks, “A series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.”
None of these accusations contain even a modicum of truth?
It’s important to appreciate Paul’s intellectual rigor: there are lots of allegations, and even though the evidence proves the allegations false, maybe, since there are so many of them, one of them is a little true?
As Simon Maloy noted, the Republican senator proceeded to suggest his own GOP allies may be “helping the Obama administration cover-up the truth about Benghazi.”
That’s right, it’s come to this: Republicans have uncovered a conspiracy so vast, it involves Republicans who went looking for evidence of a conspiracy.
I get the feeling that the Beltway media considers Rand Paul so “interesting” that his antics, no matter how ridiculous, simply cannot be disqualifying. But that’s a shame – his approach to Benghazi is itself a cringe-worthy embarrassment.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 5, 2014
“Extremism And Corruption In The Sunshine State”: What Americans Don’t Know (Yet) About Jeb Bush
Whenever the deep thinkers of the Republican establishment glance at their bulging clown car of presidential hopefuls – with wacky Dr. Ben Carson, exorcist Bobby Jindal, loudmouth Chris Christie, and bankruptcy expert Donald Trump jammed in against Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, to name a few – they inevitably start chattering about Jeb Bush.
Never mind that his father was a one-term wonder of no great distinction, or that his brother is already a serious contender, in the eyes of historians, for worst president of the past hundred years. And never mind that on the issues most controversial among party activists — immigration and Common Core educational standards — he is an accursed “moderate.”
Lacking any especially attractive alternative, powerful Republicans are pushing Jeb Bush to run in 2016. And he seems to be on the cusp of a decision. Besides, more than a few Democrats agree that Bush, however damaged his family brand, would be the most formidable candidate available to the GOP. They too whisper about him as “the only one who could beat Hillary.”
Perhaps he could, although nearly all the polling data so far suggests Clinton would trounce Bush. But it is far too early to tell – in part because Jeb Bush, a politician who has been around for more than 20 years, is so little known to the American public. Most voters are ignorant about Bush’s record in Florida, where he was an exceptionally right-wing governor. They either don’t know or don’t remember, for example, how he signed a statute enabling him to intervene in the case of Terry Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state, despite her husband’s wishes. Florida’s highest court later voided that law as unconstitutional – and the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court likewise rejected an appeal.
Extremism and corruption in the Sunshine State during Bush’s tenure will provide ample fodder for investigative reporters and primary opponents, as will many episodes in his long business career.
Five months after he left the governor’s mansion in 2007, he joined Lehman Brothers as a “consultant.” No doubt he was well compensated, as reporters may learn if and when he releases his tax returns someday. The following year, Lehman infamously went bust – and left the state of Florida holding around a billion dollars worth of bad mortgage investments. (A Bush spokesperson said “his role as a consultant to Lehman Brothers was in no way related to Florida investments.”)
There are many equally fascinating chapters in the Jeb dossier, rooted in his declaration three decades ago that he intended to become “very wealthy” as a developer and yes, “consultant.” His partners back then included a certain Miguel Recarey, whose International Medical Centers allegedly perpetrated one of history’s biggest Medicare frauds. (Connection to Medicare fraud seems to be a prerequisite to becoming governor of Florida, at least among Republicans; see Rick Scott and the Columbia/HCA scam.)
Indicted by the feds, the mobbed-up Recarey fled the country – but not before Jeb had placed a call on his behalf to his presidential dad’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Margaret Heckler. For serving as a crook’s flunky, Recarey awarded Bush a generous tip of $75,000.
He performed a similar service, with more success, on behalf of the Cuban political gangster Orlando Bosch, for whom he sought a presidential pardon from his father. The boastful murderer of dozens of innocent people – and a prosecution target of the U.S. Justice Department — Bosch deserved a pardon about as much as the worst jihadi in Gitmo. But his sponsors were the same Cuban-Americans in Miami who had fostered Jeb’s real estate business there, so he ignored the Republican attorney general’s denunciation of Bosch as an “unreformed terrorist.”
It will be fascinating to see whether the mainstream press, which vetted his brother George W. so inadequately during the 2000 presidential race, will perform any better this time. But one way or another, American voters are going to learn much more about frontrunner Jeb than they know – or remember – today.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, December 4, 2014
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