DougJ: What fucking bullshitSo: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day. Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM.
The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.
That doesn't sound very effective to me.
Sign the petition telling Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture here.
Update: Here's one reason to demand a special prosecutor to investigate these actions. In addition to revealing the sheer number of times KSM and Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded, the memos reveal that the interrogators who waterboarded these men went far beyond even the expansive guidelines for torture described in the Bybee Memo, notably by dumping water onto their nose and mouth, rather than dribbing it on.
- Yglesias adds: The Frequently Ticking Time Bomb
Marcy Wheeler offers some close reading and observes that “According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.”
This should, I think, put to rest the notion that some kind of ticking time bomb story lies at the heart of the Bush administration’s torture policy. And of course once you start torturing people, the tendency is for torture to always become excessive. Among other things, normal people aren’t going to want to torture anyone. So after the first few dozen torture sessions, your more well-adjusted torturers are going to find themselves drifting out of the torture business and you’re left more with the people who like torturing. Maybe they’re sadists or just eager to avenge 9/11 or god knows what. But that how your torturing sessions can end up in the triple digits.
Yglesias: After-Tax Income 1979-2006Yeah, yeah, I know I spend too much time reading the Washington Post online, but good Lord, you find some crazy shit there. From their Planet War blog moderator (no, I didn’t make that name up):
President Obama’s decision to release the so-called torture memos, over the strenuous objections of many of the senior national security and intelligence professionals, may go down in history as one of the most consequential of his first 100 days. The former Director of the CIA Michael Hayden and the former Attorney General Michael Mukasey argue strenuously that it was a mistake, and that it will hurt U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. There seem to be two principal objections to the Obama decision. One is that the release of the memos “tips our hand” to terrorists so that they can better prepare against interrogation techniques. When they know our methods precisely, they can better develop counters to them.
I think there is something to this concern, but only so much; presumably, one can develop counter-techniques to the counters, and so on, and so on. Even people who know exactly what they are getting into and exactly how far the interrogator will go, report that some techniques like water-boarding are so effective that there is essentially no plausible counter.
I am far more persuaded by the second objection: that the release of the memos will spur further witch-hunts which will produce an over-cautious intelligence and national security establishment. President Obama worried about this, and that is why he took pains to say he would not prosecute intelligence professionals who acted on the basis and within the limits of the guidance in these memos. But he left open the door to go after those who went beyond the memos, and that, of course, legitimizes more fact-finding to determine exactly what was done by whom. That is how Senator Leahy, who is keen to conduct such investigations, read Obama’s statement. But, as Hayden and Mukasey remind us, the bureaucratic response to such open-ended investigations is predictable: national security professionals will be even more cautious and even more reluctant to act going forward. Will such hesitation put America at risk? Candidate Obama repeatedly said that Bush policies made America less safe. If there is another terrorist attack, and if that attack can be traced to government failures due to an over-abundance of hesitation, will the charge apply to President Obama as well? What is your view?I because they make drivers too cautious. Why have any laws, really, since all they do is induce caution in otherwise law-abiding citizens?
These “intelligence professionals” know goddamn well that waterboarding someone six times a day for a month constitutes torture. What would caution mean here, that you only waterboard him twice a day?
Interesting table the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled based on CBO data:
Big market downturns tend to reduce inequality, but the trend is unmistakable. Higher taxes, more transfers, and more government services.
Ezra Klein: CAN THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY SAVE THE PLANET?
This was largely expected, but it's big news that the Environmental Protection Agency is readying to issue finally issue its finding that greenhouse-gas emissions endanger public health. Under the provisions of the Clean Air Act, this means that the EPA will be able to begin regulation carbon as a pollutant.
In essence, this now gives the energy industry an easy way and a hard way to deal with carbon emissions. The easy way is the congressional process. There, they'll have local representatives and friendly senators willing to protect their interests. If that process breaks down, however, they'll face the hard way: Tight regulation by the capricious and unsympathetic bureaucrats who staff the EPA. Ed Markey put it bluntly: "Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your congressman or senator to be in the room and drafting legislation? ... Industries across the country will just have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation."
It's the "do ya feel lucky, punk?" theory of congressional pressure. Or, to put it slightly differently, it's the executive branch's version of the reconciliation process. If this can't go through the normal congressional order, then they'll use a tool that's much blunter and whose impacts are much harder to predict, but that's essentially immune to obstruction.
MORE: Kate Sheppard has a good article outlining the likely next steps. Brad Plumer offers some analysis. For technical commentary, check out ClimateIntel's piece on the Implications Of Regulating CO2 as an NSR Pollutant.
Benen: THE INTENDED AUDIENCE(S)....
The assumption has been that the Tea Baggers' efforts were directed at the nation's governing majority this week. Tea Party activists, organizers, and sponsors want Democratic policymakers to know that there's a far-right contingent that opposes the popular economic platform that President Obama was elected on last year.But let's also not forget that the protestors' message wasn't just directed at the majority party.
The Dallas Morning News' Mark Davis had an item the other day, describing the Tea Baggers as having "an opportunity to offer reminders and even primary-season punishment to Republicans insufficiently devoted to fighting a socialist-leaning future."
Now, describing the Democrats' agenda as aiming for a "socialist-leaning future" is obviously silly, but it's easy to believe that enraged conservatives are sending a message to their Republican allies: toe the far-right line on economics or face perilous consequences.
Consider, for example, the merciless booing Rep. Gresham Barrett (R) of South Carolina received at his local Tea Party this week.
Barrett, who voted in favor of the $700 billion bailout to stabilize the financial sector, despised by many of the demonstrators, knew what he was getting into. South Carolina grassroots conservatives have been blasting the congressman for months because of his vote on the Bush administration's bill last October. Previewing his Tea Party speech earlier this week, The Greenville News wrote that Barrett was headed "into the Lion's Den."
But that may have been an understatement, according to video of his remarks captured on Friday by the South Carolina political Web site "The Palmetto Scoop." From the moment he was introduced to the Greenville crowd, his speech was drowned out by boos, turned backs and angry shouts "Go Home!" [...]
Barrett got one of the loudest jeers of the speech when he told the crowd: "You may boo, you may turn your back, but I have devoted my life to the conservative cause."
The booing and shouting continued for the entire five minutes Barrett was on stage. When he pointed out that he recently introduced a bill called the TEA Act to stop wasteful government spending, one protested yelled repeatedly: "Too late!"
It's hard to say with certainty whether the Republican establishment cared at all about this week's far-right rallies. The turnout totals were underwhelming, and the purpose of the events was more than a little vague. For that matter, most of the GOP officials won't need much convincing to embrace the economic vision of the party's confused conservative base.
But the treatment Gresham Barrett received was nevertheless a reminder to Republican officials, especially those seeking higher office (Barrett is running for governor next year): right-wing activists are in an intolerant mood.
Rich (NYT): The Bigots’ Last Hurrah
WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic “The Village of the Damned” with the Broadway staple “A Chorus Line”? You don’t need to use your imagination. It’s there waiting for you on YouTube under the title “Gathering Storm”: a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism.
The actors are supposedly Not Gay. They stand in choral formation before a backdrop of menacing clouds and cheesy lightning effects. “The winds are strong,” says a white man to the accompaniment of ominous music. “And I am afraid,” a young black woman chimes in. “Those advocates want to change the way I live,” says a white woman. But just when all seems lost, the sun breaks through and a smiling black man announces that “a rainbow coalition” is “coming together in love” to save America from the apocalypse of same-sex marriage. It’s the swiftest rescue of Western civilization since the heyday of the ambiguously gay duo Batman and Robin.
Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”
Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.
What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.
“Gathering Storm” was produced and broadcast — for a claimed $1.5 million — by an outfit called the National Organization for Marriage. This “national organization,” formed in 2007, is a fund-raising and propaganda-spewing Web site fronted by the right-wing Princeton University professor Robert George and the columnist Maggie Gallagher, who was famously caught receiving taxpayers’ money to promote Bush administration “marriage initiatives.” Until last month, half of the six board members (including George) had some past or present affiliation with Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. (One of them, the son of one of the 12 apostles in the Mormon church hierarchy, recently stepped down.)
Even the anti-Obama “tea parties” flogged by Fox News last week had wider genuine grass-roots support than this so-called national organization. Beyond Princeton, most straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont. There was no mass backlash. At ABC and CBS, the Vermont headlines didn’t even make the evening news.
On the right, the restrained response was striking. Fox barely mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as to “celebrate what happened in Vermont” because “instead of the courts making a decision, the people did.” Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as “a biological error” and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNN’s Larry King that she now views committed gay relationships as “a beautiful thing and a healthy thing.” In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative writer Kyle Smith demolished a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered whether her errant arguments against gay equality were “something else in disguise.”
More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.
The Obamas’ dog had longer legs on cable than the news from Iowa and Vermont. CNN’s weekly press critique, “Reliable Sources,” inquired why. The gay blogger John Aravosis suggested that many Americans are more worried about their mortgages than their neighbors’ private lives. Besides, Aravosis said, there are “only so many news stories you can do showing guys in tuxes.”
As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.”
Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a state’s legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. “The only difference,” the judge wrote, is that “civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.”
Some opponents grumbled anyway, reviving their perennial complaint, dating back to Brown v. Board of Education, about activist judges. But the judiciary has long played a leading role in sticking up for the civil rights of minorities so they’re not held hostage to a majority vote. Even if the judiciary-overreach argument had merit, it was still moot in Vermont, where the State Legislature, not a court, voted to make same-sex marriage legal and then voted to override the Republican governor’s veto.
As the case against equal rights for gay families gets harder and harder to argue on any nonreligious or legal grounds, no wonder so many conservatives are dropping the cause. And if Fox News and Rick Warren won’t lead the charge on same-sex marriage, who on the national stage will take their place? The only enthusiastic contenders seem to be Republicans contemplating presidential runs in 2012. As Rich Tafel, the former president of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, pointed out to me last week, what Iowa giveth to the Democrats, Iowa taketh away from his own party. As the first stop in the primary process, the Iowa caucuses provided a crucial boost to Barack Obama’s victorious and inclusive Democratic campaign in 2008. But on the G.O.P. side, the caucuses tilt toward the exclusionary hard right.
In 2008, 60 percent of Iowa’s Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. That’s the hurdle facing the party’s contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. Palin even broke with John McCain on the issue during their campaign, supporting the federal marriage amendment that he rejects. This month, even as the father of Palin’s out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people “degenerates.” Such homophobia didn’t even play in Alaska — the State Legislature voted the nominee down — and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections.
One G.O.P. politician who understands this is the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, who on Friday urged his party to join him in endorsing same-sex marriage. Another is Jon Huntsman Jr., the governor of Utah, who in February endorsed civil unions for gay couples, a position seemingly indistinguishable from Obama’s. Huntsman is not some left-coast Hollywood Republican. He’s a Mormon presiding over what Gallup ranks as the reddest state in the country.
“We must embrace all citizens as equals,” Huntsman told me in an interview last week. “I’ve always stood tall on this.” Has he been hurt by his position? Not remotely. “A lot of people gave the issue more scrutiny after it became the topic of the week,” he said, and started to see it “in human terms.” Letters, calls, polls and conversations with voters around the state all confirmed to him that opinion has “shifted quite substantially” toward his point of view. Huntsman’s approval rating now stands at 84 percent.
He believes that social issues should not be a priority for Republicans in any case during an economic crisis. He also is an outspoken foe of the “nativist language” that has marked the G.O.P. of late. Huntsman doesn’t share “the view of some” that “the party was created in 1980.” He yearns for it to reclaim Lincoln’s faith in “individual dignity.”
As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.
I wrote a similar letter.
Sully: Dissent Of The Day
A reader writes:
I'm an Army vet and a Navy family member and prior to the invasion of Iraq I was one of the ragged, resentful, and naive out on the streets demonstrating against the inevitable invasion. Except I am neither ragged, resentful, nor naive. I was exceptionally well informed and took to the streets out of a crisis of conscience. The folks I stood vigil with and marched with were, for the most part, some of the most thoughtful and gentle people I've ever dealt with. Like me, most of the people I met out there were brand new to the world of protest.
We didn't have a friendly media outlet promoting our every move. The media was hostile and interpolated us in a way that was unrecognizable. There was no anti-war blogosphere to speak of, even people like Josh Marshall over at TPM had bought into the rush to war (I forgive him). Move-On was active but nothing close to the force it would grow into. We were alone.
When I protested the war I was made out to be the scum of the earth. What must it be like to show up for a protest, denounce your Country, bad mouth the President, threaten armed revolt, and have your very own media outlet brand you a patriot.I know many tea-baggers, or tea-bagger sympathizers, and to a person, they are poorly informed, and instead of being alone and acting out of a crisis of conscience they are a part of a herd being stampeded by right-wing interest groups and right-wing media. They are the Clinton bashers dusting off the same tired old rhetoric. I hear nothing new and nothing authentic. For Ross to suggest a comparison is intellectually lazy.
Just as a heads up this post from Emptywheel talks about how Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month and KSM was waterboarded 183 times in another.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month