Mid-Day Tuesday: Frickin Laser Beams Edition

Momentous times.

Also vile. John Cole: More On the Torture

We tortured. You can not read this report (warning- .pdf) and tell me it was just “enhanced interrogation techniques.” This was not, as Rumsfeld asserted, akin to standing at a desk all day long.

We tortured these people, and who knows what else we have done. The details need to come out, and there need to be prosecutions. This was not a few bad apples at Abu Gharaib. This was systemic torture, and it goes to the highest levels of our government.

• Sully: Quote For The Day

  From the International Committee of the Red Cross report:

  To this end, the ICRC recommends the following:
  
  that the US authorities investigate all allegations of ill-treatment and take steps to punish the perpetrators, where appropriate, and to prevent such abuses from happening again.

  Why did the Bush administration ignore this recommendation? And why is the Obama administration doing the same?

• Sully says Something Is Rotten
  

  Glenn Greenwald notes it:

  Note how warped our political culture is: Sen. Dick Durbin was forced to tearfully apologize on the Senate floor for accurately comparing our treatment of detainees at Guantanamo to the techniques used in Soviet gulags and by Gestapo interrogation squads, but those who perpetrated these war crimes have apologized for nothing, remain welcome in decent company, and are still shielded by our Government from all accountability.

Sully: “No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you.”



This is a keeper. In fact, this Maddow segment chronicles an event that you may be telling your grandkids about someday - or they theirs. And it has lasers.

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Yglesias: The Gates/Obama Reform Budget

Let me quote Matt Duss’ Wonk Room post on today’s defense budget announcement:

I don’t think it’s overstating things to say that Defense Secretary Gates’ announcement of his 2010 defense budget recommendations represents an appreciable shift in the way that the United States approaches the issue of military acquisitions. Applying lessons learned in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as signifying a recognition that the continuing economic crisis places real constraints on defense spending, Gates’ recommendations are an important — but by no means comprehensive — move toward a responsible re-balancing of America’s defense priorities. […]

Gates laid a shot across the bow of those in Congress who are likely to try and reinstate beloved boondoggles like the Airborne Laser and the F-22 Raptor, (which Gates recommended canceling after 187 are built) saying “I know that in the coming weeks we will hear a great deal about threats, and risk and danger -– to our country and to our men and women in uniform –- associated with different budget choices. Some will say I am too focused on the wars we are in and not enough on future threats.”

These are important shifts and this is audacious policy. Frankly, you’ve got to worry that it may be too audacious. The defense budget looks the way it looks because that’s how the key players in congress want it to look, and I don’t really know what Robert Gates or Barack Obama can do about that.

Yglesias: Praise for the New Defense Budget

For more analysis on yesterday’s defense budget analysis see Robert Farley, Spencer Ackerman, Fred Kaplan, and James Fallows. All are impressed, and all rightly so.

This is the move that justifies the decision to keep Robert Gates on at the Pentagon. Any new Defense Secretary, no matter how brilliant, would have had to have spent his first three months in office building relationships with the top military commanders and focusing on filling out the DOD civilian staff. Only a Secretary who’s already been in office could have the ability to propose sweeping change. But only a president who’s brand new could have the popularity and honeymoon effect necessary to have any hope of driving the changes through congress. Hence the appeal of the odd alignment of new president and old defense secretary.

Aravosis: Judging Obama's foreign trip

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post wrote the following about new polls showing the American people approving of Obama's trip abroad:

Before the White House begins celebrating the political success of this trip, however, it's important to remember two caveats.

First, former president George W. Bush was so despised by much of the world that an improvement in the way that America is seen by the rest of the world was almost inevitable once he left office. (The Post/ABC survey showed a whopping 61 percent of voters believed that America's image in the world had worsened under Bush.)

Second, first appearances are not necessarily lasting. Remember back to the campaign when Obama received rave reviews for his tour of Europe including over the moon analysis of his address to several hundred thousand people in Berlin.

But, the trip quickly turned sour -- from a political perspective -- as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) used the footage of thousands of cheering Germans to paint Obama as an empty celebrity, a tag that stuck for the better part of a month and slowed the Democratic candidate's momentum.

Okay, first off, just because George Bush was an idiot doesn't mean that the American people might not sincerely like the way Obama is handling himself as president. It's not at all clear that the world would have been happy had we elected John McCain president - and I'll bet they were laughing along with us at Sarah Palin. So let's not chalk George Bush up as some kind of anomaly. And even if he were, which he isn't, that doesn't preclude Obama from actually being good, and people recognizing that fact.

Second point, yes, McCain pulled the celebrity card on Obama and made his previous successful trip abroad into a bad thing. But what are we really saying here? That we should be careful with polls showing the public approving of Obama's handling of his foreign trips because the Republicans might smear Obama and trick the public into thinking the trips were really bad? Well, sure, they might. But that might happen any day, on any issue. Republicans lie. It's in their nature. (See our Rick Warren post below). That doesn't mean that when Democrats shine, we shouldn't give them credit.

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