So Jack Bauer, America’s favorite torturer and all around sociopath, is back!

Jack will spend the next 24 hours in the fictional African country of Sangala “saving the children” from what looks like a vicious child soldier-recruiting rebel.  That, of course, will make up for all the horrible stuff he’s done in the past.

So the new and improved Jack. . .

• is now killing caricatures of Africans rather than caricatures of Arabs;
• doesn’t have to worry about beating the hell out of people because he’s in Africa, which of course doesn’t have laws or something;
• can shoot people while standing in the middle of a crowded African street and not worry about hitting innocents;
• loves the kids, even if it means having to shoot people in front of them;
• cannot, even with all his powers, get a nasty American official to open the damn gate.

Wait a second.  Wasn’t last year supposed to be Bauer’s redemption?  Didn’t they even name it “24: Redemption”?  How many times can this guy  be redeemed?  Will next year be “24:  Jack Gets an Indulgence from Pope Innocent IX”?

Instead of “24: Exile,” They should just call it what it is: “24: We Know the Whole Torturing Arabs Thing Doesn’t Seem to Be Working Anymore.”

Of course, rehabilitation of Wacko Jacko doesn’t mean that the producers have completely abandoned their neoconservative conspiracy theorist ways:  Bauer refuses to return to Washington to testify before a Senate committee investigating his past crimes, and it looks like one of the villains, as Diplopundit notes, is the most officious, insensitive foreign service officer in history.  He not only hates Jack, he hates the children.  The bastard.

My only hope is that this storyline will so bore the hell out of the American people that they will flee from “24: Exile” like. . .well, like everyone flees from Jack Bauer whenever he pulls out a gun.

Then, at last, our long national prime time nightmare finally will be over.

UPDATE:  This is actually from Charlie, not Chris.  Not quite sure how that happened, but I can’t change it.

Related posts

• Twenty Questions for the Debate Tonight
• The Manchurian President
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• September 11, 2001
• John McCain Must Be at the Beach. . .

I’m surprised that I have seen absolutely nothing in the blogosphere about Jack Goldsmith’s piece in today’s WaPo, which argues that the Obama Administration should forgive and forget when it comes to the Bush Administration’s torture policies:

[Both prosecution and a bipartisan commission are] bad ideas. They would bring little benefit, and they would further weaken the Justice Department and the CIA in ways that would compromise our security. . . .

Second-guessing lawyers’ wartime decisions under threat of criminal and ethical sanctions may sound like a good idea to those who believe those lawyers went too far in the fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001. But the greater danger now is that lawyers will become excessively cautious in giving advice and will substitute predictions of political palatability for careful legal judgment. . . .

When the CIA was asked to engage in aggressive tactics early in the Bush administration, it knew from bitter experience that the political winds would change and that it might be subject to “retroactive discipline.” And so it sought approval from the president and his Cabinet, informed congressional leadership many times about what it was doing and got what it thought were airtight legal opinions from the Justice Department.

But these safeguards failed, and the CIA is once again mired in investigation and controversy. The lesson learned by many at the agency is that politically sensitive counterterrorism actions should be avoided, even if they are deemed legal and even if they have the express approval of political officials. We are going to be living with this skittishness for a long time, to the detriment of our security.

Yet another round of investigations during the Obama administration, even by a bipartisan commission, would exacerbate this problem. It would also bring little benefit. The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution.

Jack Goldsmith emerged as a hero among critics of the current Administration’s torture policies, largely as a result of his tenure as head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.  During his brief time there, Goldsmith stood up to David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney by withdrawing John Yoo’s infamous 2002 memo, which had redefined torture as physical suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury” or mental suffering that had to “result in signifcant psychological harm. . .lasting for months and years.”  Goldsmith deserves significant credit for his courage, and for writing The Terror Presidency, which described in detail his efforts to rein in Addington, Gonzales, and, ultimately, Cheney and Bush.

But he’s dead wrong to suggest that an Obama Administration should forget the past.

The first thing that struck me about Goldsmith’s piece is that, other than the headline (which most likely was written by someone at WaPo, not Goldsmith himself), he bends over backwards not to use the word “torture”: Instead, he uses a number of increasingly ridiculous euphemisms:  “what many view as the Bush administration’s harsh, abusive and illegal interrogation program,” “interrogation and related programs,” “wartime decisions,” “aggressive tactics,” “politically sensitive counterterrorism actions,” “mistakes” and “ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate.”

Goldsmith apparently can’t bring himself to admit that the Bush Administration actually tortured people.  It’s not hard to recognize the reason for his reluctance:  prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Goldsmith held other posts, including in the Office of the General Counsel in the Pentagon.  Despite his decision to withdraw the Yoo memo, he could face legal jeopardy should any future investigation recommend prosecution.  So, as he himself acknowledges, it is in his interest to argue against any investigation.

But there are greater problems with Goldsmith’s arguments than merely self-interest.  The first is his suggestion that “Second-guessing lawyers’ wartime decisions under threat of criminal and ethical sanctions may sound like a good idea to those who believe those lawyers went too far in the fearful days after Sept. 11, 2001.”  The irony, of course, is that it was Goldsmith himself who was one of the first to second-guess Addington and Yoo.  His June 14, 2004 decision to withdraw Yoo’s memo was the beginning of the end of the Bush Administration’s unfettered license to do as it saw fit with those it detained.  For Goldsmith now to suggest that others should not do what he already did is at best inconsistent and at worst, smacks of a cover up of other memos or actions that have not yet seen the light of day.

The second is Goldsmith’s attempt to further muddy the waters by suggesting that current investigations by Congress, Justice, and the CIA should also look at Congress’s role and potential illegalities approved under the Clinton Administration.  Although I agree with Goldsmith that Clinton-era officials must be held accountable for approving the rendition of drug offenders, it is a bit disingenuous to suggest that the policies of the Clinton Administration should be put on the same footing as those of its successor.  To assign equal weight to Clinton- and Bush-era policies is not unlike suggesting that someone who smokes pot occasionally should be subjected to the same level of accountability as a drug kingpin.

The third and by far most significant problem with Goldsmith’s piece is his suggestion that any investigation and/or prosecution would lead “many government lawyers to be more risk averse and politically sensitive than ever. . . .The lesson learned by many at the [CIA] is that politically sensitive counterterrorism actions should be avoided, even if they are deemed legal and even if they have the express approval of political officials. We are going to be living with this skittishness for a long time, to the detriment of our security.”

To begin with, Goldsmith’s argument that government lawyers might be more “risk averse” and “politically sensitive” in the future ignores the fact that Bush-era lawyers (with the exception of Alberto Mora and Goldsmith himself) did what they did because they didn’t want the wrath of Cheney, Addington, and Gonzales brought down on their heads.  They understood that challenging the Administration’s stated determination to shred existing laws prohibiting torture and war crimes would quickly end their careers as government lawyers.

Such fears weren’t unfounded.  In some cases, such as that of Jesselyn Radack, who challenged the some of Administration’s actions during the detention of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, the Administration not only pushed people out of government, but tried to blackball them with potential future employers.  In Radack’s case, they even put her on the no-fly list.

To put it another way, part of the problem with what happened over the past eight years is that so many lawyers were exactly what Goldsmith suggests they shouldn’t be: utterly risk averse and politically sensitive.  They didn’t speak out because they feared the consequences.  It’s not like Goldsmith didn’t understand this — he submitted his letter of resignation two days after he decided to withdraw Yoo’s memo and, in all likelihood, before he could be fired.

Goldsmith’s concern about limiting the ability of the CIA to conduct “politically sensitive counterterrorism operations” is equally supect.  Since Nuremberg, “legality” has never been a sufficent defense for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The reality is that senior CIA officials were just as unwilling to stand up to the Administration’s desire to torture those in its custody.  In fact, some in the Agency, including Cofer Black, were eager to “take the gloves off” long before Yoo started drafting memoranda.

And as the recent controversy over the possible appointment of John Brennan to serve as CIA Director demonstrates, even those not directly involved in policy decisions are now viewed as accountable merely for being in the room when some of these decisions were discussed.

In the end, Goldsmith’s arguments simply don’t stand up to closer scrutiny.  They represent little more than a weak apologia for policies that he may slowed but nonetheless did not stop.  In fact, had Goldsmith stayed (and, in fairness, had he not been fired), he would have had to draft a replacement for the memo he withdrew.  Chances are that he would have drafted something not unlike that put forward by Dan Levin, his successor, which stated that the CIA could not be held criminally responsible for actions authorized by the Yoo memo.

It really is a shame that Goldsmith has chosen to tarnish his reputation by trying to protect the very people whom he once so courageously opposed.

Note:  As is usually the case when it comes to questions of the Bush Administration’s torture policies, Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side was indespensible in helping me reconstruct time lines and roles.

Related posts

• Prosecuting Those Responsible for War Crimes
• Ambassador for All War Crimes except Our Own
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The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Elisa Massimino.  You can find the previous posts here.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz for making the cross-postings happen.

Tonight, many Americans will tune in to watch Senator McCain and Senator Obama face off in the final presidential debate before the 2008 election. With just twenty days left in the campaign, the candidates are relentlessly focused on highlighting their differences. But the fury of this final round of sparring should not drown out the sound of a particular silence: there is no debate going on between the candidates about whether the United States should continue to allow the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. Last month, in the first debate between the two parties’ nominees, Senator Obama and Senator McCain agreed that the United States must end the use of torture, which has stained our national honor and undermined the ability of the United States to lead.

Restoring our nation’s commitment to the rule of law must be a top priority for the next president of the United States. What the next president says will be important in this effort. In the early primary debates, both nominees condemned torture rather than extol the supposed heroism of 24’s fictional Jack Bauer or call for a doubling of the size of Guantánamo, as some of their opponents did. Hearing more from the two candidates tonight about the particulars of how they plan to restore the rule of law would be instructive. But, because of the way the current administration has sought to distort, obscure and evade the clear language of the law, words alone — from the candidates now or from the new president in January — will not be enough. After all, President Bush has repeatedly asserted that “we do not torture,” meanwhile privately authorizing conduct like waterboarding that our own military has long considered to be war crimes. It will be the actions of the next administration that will either confirm Vice President Cheney’s assertion of a “new normal,” or will prove him wrong.

The next president should prioritize a return to the rule of law in two key areas: enforcing the prohibitions on torture and other cruelty; and abandoning the failed experiment at Guantánamo in favor of the proven effectiveness of our federal criminal justice system. Taking these steps will go a long way toward restoring the essential moral authority of the United States as a leader for human rights and will strengthen national security by contributing to a more effective counterterrorism strategy.

The next president will have a window of opportunity to signal to the American people and the rest of the world that the policies of the last seven years were an aberration and that the United States is serious about restoring the rule of law, upholding our Constitution and respecting the international rules our country played such a central role in formulating.

Here’s the 12-step program to get us back on the straight and narrow:

• Renounce torture and official cruelty, ideally in the inaugural address.
• Enforce existing bans on torture and cruel treatment.
• Repudiate and rescind all orders, memoranda and legal opinions authorizing cruel treatment or secret detention.
• Release publicly all documents authorizing cruel treatment, secret detention, or rendition.
• End secret prisons and the practice of holding “ghost prisoners.”
• Put a moratorium on extraordinary renditions and direct the National Security Advisor to undertake a 90-day review to assess the use of diplomatic assurances and issue new regulations to ensure we are not sending people to places where they are likely to be tortured.
• Announce the intention to empty the Guantánamo detention facility within one year.
• Suspend pending military commission proceedings and terminate Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Boards.
• Direct the Attorney General to review Guantánamo cases for federal court prosecution.
• Direct the Secretary of State to perform individualized risk assessments and review remaining cases for transfer to prosecution, repatriation, or resettlement.
• Direct the Attorney General to identify secure U.S. detention facilities capable of housing detainees identified for federal court prosecution.
• Establish a bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. government detention and interrogation operations, assess the strategic impact of these operations, identify lessons learned, and make recommendations to avoid future abuses.

The misguided embrace of indefinite detention, torture and deeply flawed military commissions has greatly damaged the reputation of the United States, fueled terrorist recruitment and undermined international cooperation in counterterrorism operations. Repairing our reputation as a nation committed to the rule of law will require bold action. That must start with finally closing the detention facility in Guantánamo and demonstrating — in deed, not just in word—an unequivocal commitment to treating all prisoners humanely.

Elisa Massimino is the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights). Elisa is the organization’s chief advocacy strategist, an expert on a range of international human rights issues and a national authority on US compliance with human rights law. She testifies frequently before Congress, writes extensively for legal and popular publications, and serves as one of the organization’s primary spokespeople with the media. She is Human Rights First’s point of contact with U.S. government leaders, international diplomats, and human rights opinion leaders and decision makers.

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There’s word today from numerous sources that Colin Powell will go on Meet the Press this Sunday and endorse Barack Obama. The Obama campaign certainly isn’t doing anything to discourage the speculation:

Today Obama spokesperson Linda Douglas said she has no news on the Powell front, but the campaign would obviously love an endorsement.  ”We would welcome the support of somebody with such a distinguished and honorable career as General Powell,” she told me this morning, as Obama’s plane flew to Virginia for a rally.  Obama has previously cited Powell as a potential member of his administration, and the two have been in touch before. “I know they talk from time to time about foreign policy matters,” Douglas said, though she did not know the last time they spoke.  Powell is widely viewed as a thoughtful public servant who carries credibility (and experience) in both parties.

Quite a few folks in the progosphere think Powell endorsing Obama would be a great thing.  I’m not so sure.

Like many others, I had a great deal of respect for Powell before he joined the Bush Administration.  His story was a compelling one and his service was largely distinguished.  In 1996, Powell chose, for a variety of reasons, not to run for President.  Had he done so, he very well might have defeated Clinton.  Instead, he remained on the sidelines until Dubya asked him to serve as Secretary of State.

These days, Powell is often viewed as a tragic figure, largely because of his 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council during the Administration’s push for war with Iraq.  According to Powell, he was duped by the CIA, who convinced Powell that the intelligence behind his presentation was unimpeachable.  Powell then went out and made the case for war.

Thirty months later, Powell told Tim Russert that the CIA had misled him, using intelligence based on discredited sources.   Since then, conventional wisdom has given Powell the benefit of the doubt.  Many commentators regard his statement that he had been misled as the same thing as an apology:

Private warnings cannot cancel out Powell’s hawkish presentation to the U.N., but unlike so many war cheerleaders in politics and the media, he owned up to his mistakes. On national television, Powell called the U.N. address a “blot” on his record.

Fair enough — everyone makes mistakes, and to his credit, Powell has acknowledged (or at least gave the appearance of acknowledging) that he was wrong.  Second chances are the American way, and certainly a Powell endorsement of Obama would represent an open repudiation not only of his friend John McCain, but also of the Administration for whom he worked.

There’s just one small problem.  Powell’s testimony before the UNSC was only the second biggest “blot” on his record.

The biggest was, and is, his tacit support for torture.  If, as the Nuremberg tribunals established, knowledge is complicity, then Colin Powell is guilty of war crimes.  And unlike Iraq, he’s never apologized for his role in helping to shred the Constitution, ignore the Convention against Torture, and trash the Geneva Conventions.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Here’s what Jane Mayer has to say in The Dark Side:

Bush also knew about, and approved of, White House meetings in which his top cabinet members were briefed by the CIA on its plan to use specific “enhanced” interrogation techniques on various high-value detainees.  The meetings were chaired by Rice. . . . The participants were members of the Principals Committee, the five Bush cabinet members  who handled national security matters:  Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, CIA Director Tenet, and Attorney General Ashcroft.

Knowing how the Agency had been blamed for ostensible “rogue” actions in the past, Tenet was eager to spread the political risk of undertaking “enhanced interrogations.” However, some members of the group became irritated with Tenet’s insistence upon airing the grim details.  “The CIA already had legal clearance to do these things,” a knowledgable source said, “and so it was pointless for them to keep sharing the details.  No one was going to question their decisions. . . . It’s not as if any of the principals were debating the policy — that was already set.  They wanted to go to the limit that the law required. . . .”

There is no indication. . .that any Bush cabinet members objected to the policy. [emphasis added]

As Mayer acknowledges, Powell did object quite strongly to Bush’s decision to suspend the Geneva Conventions.  But he did not make those concerns public or threaten to resign.  He merely accepted the outcome and soldiered on.  It is only at the time of Abu Ghraib (and the first media reports of John Yoo’s infamous August 2002 “torture memo”), Mayer notes that Powell (along with Rice) began to express qualms:

After reading the torture memo  itself for the first time in the newspapers, Rice and Powell confronted Gonzales together and furiously insisted that there be “no more secret opinions on international and national security law.”  Their righteous anger seemed somewhat undercut by reports that Tenet had provided graphic details of specific coercive interrogations during the Principals Committee meetings while both were present.  And while they directed their frustration at Gonzales, neither had the temerity to confront Cheney, who clearly was the true source of these policies. [emphasis added]

Colin Powell passively assented to torture.  Although he occasionally raised concerns, there is no evidence that he threatened to resign — as Ashcroft and others did over the issue of domestic wiretapping.  He sat in meetings and listened as George Tenet offered graphic descriptions of torture committed by U.S. government officials — and never once objected, other than to complain that Tenet’s statements were unnecessary, given the fact that the President already had authorized torture.

As was the case with his presentation at the United Nations, he accepted what he heard and did as he was told.  Only later, after the Yoo memo and the Abu Ghraib scandal became public, did he begin to object — and then only to ask if there were any other memos he should know about.  At no time did he confront Cheney or Bush, threaten to go public, or quit in protest.

Later on, after he was once again a private citizen, Powell did raise concerns about the Administration’s policies, writing in 2006 to John McCain to express his opposition to proposed rules on Military Commissions:

In his letter to McCain, Powell said the effort to “redefine” the article was “inconsistent” with his previous opposition to the use of torture. “The world,” he wrote, “is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” . . .

Powell declined yesterday to address Bush’s comments. “To say that we want to modify, clarify or redefine Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions], which has not been modified for the 57 years of its history, I think adds to the doubt” about U.S. morality, he said. “Plus I believe that the legitimate concerns that the administration has can be dealt with in other ways.”

The problem, of course, is that there is no public record during Powell’s tenure as Secretary of State of his “previous opposition to the use of torture.”  In his letter to McCain, Powell makes it clear that his objection is not with the underlying policy, but rather the tactics around the military commission.  That is not exactly taking a stand in the face of evil or speaking truth to power.

Silence in the face of evil is assent.  In the eyes of the law, it’s called conspiracy.   At best, Powell’s  actions — both in regard to Iraq and to torture — show a lack of critical thinking.  At worst, they demonstrate profound moral cowardice.

So pardon me if I’m not thrilled at the notion of Powell endorsing Barack Obama.

Related posts

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Over at TPM Cafe, Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, asks the same question that I’ve been asking:

While both McCain and Obama have spoken out against torture, neither has spelled out what he plans to do about holding Bush Administration officials accountable who may have committed or authorized crimes. Understandably, this is a toxic subject, reeking of political payback. But I have personally interviewed CIA officers who have said they refused to partake in the “enhanced interrogation” program because they feared that eventually it would lead to criminal charges. They had seen this happen before, and wanted nothing to do with it, even if it meant in some instances, leaving the CIA. The threat of prosecution clearly acted as a deterrent.

My question is what happens if there is no accountability for America’s first program of state-authorized torture? Does it send a green light to torture again when the next attack takes place? Is it an invitation to other forms of lawlessness by the U.S. Government? But, if top officials of the Bush Administration who were acting in what they believed to be the best interests of the country’s security, are now prosecuted, is that just? Will the public support it? Particularly if Obama is elected, wont this become exhibit A that the Democrats are soft on terrorism, and members of the “Blame-America-First” Club?

. . . [O]n a morning when accountability seems to have evaporated in the financial world - I’d like to know what we do about accountability at the top of our government for authorizing the abuse- and in some cases the killing of U.S.-held prisoners, all of which were criminal until the day before 9/11.

My answer is that we need to prosecute everyone responsible, from Bush down to the CIA agents, military interrogators, and even translators and medical personnel who participated.  It is not political payback, but justice — let us not forget the fundamental principle that came out of Nuremberg:  “I was just following orders” is no excuse for participation in heinous acts.

I suspect that the American people are going to want the Bushies held accountable for everything they’ve done, and that Republicans, who have spent so much time and effort lately running away from their President, will not be in a position to defend him or any of those responsible.

But let’s start from the top, not at the bottom as was done in Abu Ghraib.  We need to take down the twelve individuals who designed and implemented America’s first-ever Presidentially sanctioned torture regime:  Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Flanigan, Haynes, Chertoff, Tenet, and Rice.  All of them knew what was happening.  All of them signed off on these policies.  All of them should go to jail.

As Mayer notes, accountability has evaporated under this disastrous regime.  We must do everything we can to ensure that it returns, not merely in financial matters, but across the board.

Image via Wikipedia, in the public domain.

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Twenty questions I would like to see asked at the debate tonight:

1.  Are we at war with Pakistan?  Senator Obama, given your pledge to go into Pakistan, if necessary, to take out Osama bin Laden, do you support President Bush’s current counter-insurgency efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?  And Senator McCain, when Senator Obama made those comments, you accused him of being reckless.  Do you now think President Bush is being reckless?

2.  Numerous reports have indicated that the State Department is woefully underfunded and understaffed.  Secretary Gates, among others, has urged Congress and the President to take steps to address these concerns.  Congress has largely been unsympathetic.  What would you do, as President to make the State Department more effective, and to give it the resources it needs to succeed?

3.  Do you support making USAID a cabinet-level agency?  Given the current financial crisis, can the United States afford to continue its foreign assistance programs?  Do you support reestablishing the US Information Agency or a similar construct to coordinate and strengthen our public diplomacy?

4.  Is the United States more or less safe and secure than it was on September 12, 2001?  Why or why not?

5.  Senator McCain, can you please tell me what the difference is between Russian incursions into Georgia and American incursions into Pakistan?  Don’t both involve a large power moving into territory controlled by a democratic ally of the United States?

6.  Some have argued that the American century is over and that China will soon be the world’s dominant economic and political power.  Do you think that is accurate?  Why or why not?  Would it matter if the United States wasn’t the biggest dog in the yard anymore?

7.  Senator McCain, five former Secretaries of State, including two who have endorsed you, have called for dialogue with Iran without preconditions.  You have stated your opposition, and your candidate for Vice President has suggested that such views are naive.  Yet when it came time for you to choose someone to brief Sarah Palin on foreign policy, you asked Henry Kissinger, one of those five, to do it.  Do you still believe that it is not possible for the United States not to talk to Iran?

8.  Senator Obama, are there any situations where you think it would be necessary to set conditions before meeting with a foreign leader?  In other words, is there anything that any leader can do that would make it impossible for you to meet with him or her?

9.  Senator McCain, your running mate has suggested that the United States should not second-guess Israel should it decide to attack Iran.  Is that your view as well?  Senator Obama, do you agree or disagree?

10.  Both of you have called on the Bush Administration to close Guantanamo and to end the practice of torture.  There is growing evidence that Bush Administration officials may have violated U.S. law as well as treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory.  Would you favor the investigation of such allegations and the prosecution of those, up to an including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, found to have broken American laws including statutes against war crimes?

11.  What can the United States do to strenghten the United Nations?

12.  Should the United States ratify the International Criminal Court treaty?

13.  What can the United States do to prevent genocide?  Would you favor military intervention by U.S. forces if it could help prevent a genocide?  Would you have intervened in Rwanda?  What are you going to do in Sudan?

14.  What is the one foreign policy issue that you think is currently under the radar but will have an impact on your administration?

15.  Most of the world has come to regard the United States as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.  What steps would you take to reverse that?

16.  Have we “lost” Latin America?  What steps would you take to reverse growing anti-Americanism in the region?

17. When this campaign started, no issue was bigger than Iraq.  Now it appears to be an almost forgotten issue.  Senator McCain, given Prime Minister Maliki’s outspoken desire to see American troops leave, why do you continue to oppose a phased withdrawal from Iraq?  Senator Obama, is there any situation where you can see American troops remaining in Iraq beyond the timetable you outlined?

18. Is the war in Afghanistan lost?  Would you favor a surge there along the lines of what happened in Iraq?

19.  Senator McCain, how can we afford to stay in Iraq and deal with the financial crisis at home?  Senator Obama, you have suggested moving troops in Iraq to deal with the growing crisis in Afghanistan.  Can we afford to do that as well?

20.  Given the fact that Russo-American relations have cooled considerably since Russia’s invasion of Georgia, what steps would you take to ensure continued Russian-American cooperation on anti-proliferation measures, including not only implementation of Nunn-Lugar, but also the situations in Iran and North Korea?

Add your own questions in the comments below.

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I just finished Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side.  I’ve blogged a bit on it already, and if I have the time, will try to offer some additional observations later this week.  In the meantime, Alan Jacobs over at The American Scene wonders why conservative media outlets have chosen to ignore the book:

[I]f you. . .see the book only as an anthology of information in the public record — newspaper articles, interviews with named figures, books by former Bush administration officials, government documents, and so on — it’s still a convincing demonstration of how certain high-ranking leaders ignored international law and overturned decades (even centuries) of American practices towards enemy combatants.

Yet I have seen almost no response to this book in the conservative press. What’s up with that? The Dark Side has been reviewed in most major newspapers and magazines, but not from any of the conservative organs I’ve seen. Have I missed something? And if not, what are we to make of this silence?

Do conservatives think Mayer’s book is so bad that it’s unworthy of response? (If so, they’re wrong.) Are they just trying to avoid acknowledging uncomfortable truths, and would prefer not to think about what the Bush administration has done in prosecuting its war on terror? Or — perhaps the most interesting possibility — do they agree that Mayer has accurately described the administration’s actions but simply judge those actions very differently, as necessary and even commendable responses to the Islamist threat?

Keep in mind that Jacobs himself is a conservative, so he is not looking for an excuse attack his movement colleagues. If his last thesis is the correct one, then conventional conservativism no longer regards civil liberties and the rule of law as important as national security.

I do find it interesting that many of the conservative voices now arguing that the Paulson-Bernanke bailout plan as an unconscionable expansion of government power didn’t seem to have a problem with government overreach when it involved torture, rendition, and other abuses.  Their acquiesence then helped lay the groundwork for a similar expansion today.

To put it another way, conservatives had no problem with the Administration’s application of the theory of a unitary executive when it involved war powers.  So why are they suddenly surprised that the Administration now wants to take a similar approach toward the economy?

What conservatives have consistently failed to understand is that this is one of the least conservative Presidencies on record.  It has overseen the single greatest expansion of government authority in history — not merely in terms of war powers, but also with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the expansion of wiretapping and other forms of intrusion into the lives of average Americans, and the unchecked growth of government spending.  No previous Administration — Republican or Democrat — comes close.

In fact, the only field where government authority retreated was regulation.  From the environment to the economy, this Administration has loosened existing controls over big business.  The end result, of course, is the Great Crash we’re facing today.  And the Bush Administration’s solution?  Extend executive authority in order to bail out its friends.  It is consistent with their past policies of imperial overreach.

The Administration’s actions are both disgraceful and fundamentally unconservative.

Since it’s going to take us decades to clean up this mess, it might be a good idea to slow down a little and make sure that the decisions our leaders make over the next week don’t end up doing more harm than good.

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This morning, The Washington Postdated confirms that yesterday’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was the work of a group known as the Soldiers’ Brigade of Yemen, an affiliate of al Qaeda, using techniques that they may have learned while fighting in Iraq:

[T]he first vehicle exploded near a guard post. Cameras then recorded attackers taking positions nearby, until a second vehicle packed with explosives detonated near a sidewalk. . . . The use of two vehicle bombs — one to breach the perimeter of a compound, a second to drive inside and explode — is a tactic used by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Matt Duss over at Think Progress demonstrates how this blows away yet another justification for the Iraq war — the “we’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here” idea, also known as the flypaper theory:

Those who have been following the Iraq debate might remember “flypaper theory,” which was one of the earliest exponents of the “incoherent post hoc justifications for the Iraq war” genre. The idea was that there was some limited number of terrorists in the Middle East, and the presence of an occupying U.S. army would lure them to Iraq, whereupon they could all be conveniently killed, presumably as soon as they stepped off the bus.

This plan was prevented from working only by the fact that it was staggeringly dumb. The U.S. occupation radicalized scores of young Muslims, many of whom traveled to Iraq, where they learned terror warfare and were galvanized in the global jihad. And now they’ve begun returning home, to share the tactics and technology developed in a laboratory we provided for them by invading Iraq.

Of course, that doesn’t even take into account the role of torture, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other such obscenities in helping to radicalize Muslims as well.

To put it another way, the Bush Administration have spent  billions upon billions of dollars on the Iraq War, largely based on the bankrupt theory that we are building an island of democracy that will de-radicalize the Middle East.  In reality, we have made things far worse than they would have been had we never invaded, so much so that we have unthinkingly created another generation of terrorists, in the process weakening ourselves to such a degree that we may not be able to fight back the next time the come “over here.”

Imagine how bad things would be if Bush had taken a similar approach to the economy.

Oh.  Wait.

Never mind.

Hat tip:  Obsidian Wings

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. . .because I sure do hear the sound of flip flops.  More from the View:

The man is either delusional, high, suffering from memory loss, or a flat-out liar.  Think Progress has a list of forty-two issues where he has changed course.  Here are three off the list, all concerning the Bush Administration’s pursuit of the War on Terror at home and abroad:

Detention of Detainees

McCain Flips:

In 2003, McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham wrote a letter to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld urging him to resolve the issue of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The letter6/19/05] said that “a serious process must be established in the very near term either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action.” In 2005, he told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that “I know that some of these guys are terrible, terrible killers and the worst kind of scum of humanity. But, one, they deserve to have some adjudication of their cases.” [Meet the Press,

McCain Flops:

In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo are required to receive habeas corpus rights. McCain called the Court’s ruling “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” “Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman, and I…made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have,” he said. [Newark Star-Ledger, 6/14/08]

Torture

McCain Flips:

In 2005, McCain pushed President Bush to sign a bill that would, among other provisions, prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. government custody. McCain authored the torture ban himself. “We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists,” McCain said. McCain was also against waterboarding, saying during presidential primary campaigning “all I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today…It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.” [MSNBC, 12/15/05 & New York Times, 10/26/07]

McCain Flops:

In 2008, McCain voted against the Intelligence Authorization Bill, which requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding. [New York Times, 2/17/08]

Illegal Wiretapping

McCain Flips:

In an interview with the Boston Globe in December 2007, McCain was asked if, as President, he would ever authorize illegal wiretapping. “I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is,” he said. “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.” [Boston Globe, 12/20/07]

McCain Flops

The New York Times reported that a letter from top McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that McCain believes that the Constitution gave President Bush the authority to wiretap Americans “without warrants.” The letter says that “neither the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.” [New York Times, 6/6/08]

Kudos to Think Progress for their work on this.

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An excerpt from Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin tonight:

GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?

PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it’s about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues.

She then changed the subject to energy.

But hold on a second, Governor.  You said that “putting government back on the side of the people. . .has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues.”  I’m willing to take you on your word on that — at least for the moment.  But I have a few questions for you.

1. Given that a majority of the American people believe that we should not have gone to war in Iraq, does that mean that you favor us getting out?
2. Given that a majority of the American people want the United States to be an international leader on climate change, are you willing to support much more aggressive measures to combat global warming, even if it means cutting back on the use of internal combustion engines, thus hurting your state’s economy?
3. Given that a majority of the American people support the end of torture, the closing of Guantanamo, and as you so quaintly put it in your acceptance speech, “reading their rights” to terrorist suspects, are you and Senator McCain in favor of ending the Bush Administration’s assault on civil liberties and the rule of law?  Would you prosecute those in the Bush Administration suspected of committing war crimes?
4. Given that a majority of the American people want the United States to work within the United Nations system and with our allies, would you and Senator McCain support reengaging with the United Nations in a meaningful way, including an end to the rhetoric we saw at the Convention attacking the UN?  And if so, can you explain the presence of John Bolton as an informal foreign policy advisor to the McCain-Palin campaign?

Because, Governor, that’s putting foreign poicy back on the side of the people.  Because that’s what a majority of the American people want.

I didn’t think so.

By the way, on Pakistan, she agreed with Obama and contradicted McCain.

And she thinks we should go to war with Russia if it invades Georgia again (or Ukraine).

Last but not least, Governor Palin might want to check out this page before her next interview.

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On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in New York City to interview some job candidates at my then-employer, Amnesty International USA.  As I walked from my hotel to the AIUSA office, I came upon  dozens of New Yorkers standing on the sidewalk outside a McDonald’s on the corner of 28th Street and 6th Avenue, staring at something going on downtown.

When I looked up, I saw that the North Tower of the World Trade Center was on fire.  Nobody around me knew what had happened.  I pulled out my cell phone and called a friend to tell her to turn on CNN.  As we were chatting, I started yelling into the phone — “Oh shit oh shit oh God oh no no no. . . .”  As I and all those around me watched in horror, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.

Before the day was out, I saw first the South Tower and then the North Tower collapse.  I watched as a convoy of dozens of ambulances raced down 8th Avenue.  I stood in the door of a neighborhood delicatessen as hundreds of soot-covered residents trudged past.  I consoled friends and colleagues who lost loved ones in the collapse. I saw a city I loved turn into a silent ghostly shell of itself.

I also had spent much of the day desperately trying to reach friends in Washington to make sure they were okay.  When the attacks had just taken place, there were dozens of what later turned out to be false alarms.  CNN reported was that a car bomb had destroyed the northwestern corner of the State Department — which was where my office had been and where many of my friends still worked.

That night, as a result of a tip from a friend still in government, I managed to get on one of the few trains leaving New York for Washington.  Sitting across from me for the first two stops was a firefighter who had lost over half of the members of his company.  The trip took a lot longer than it normally did — we must have stopped at least a half-dozen times while engineers checked the tracks to make sure nothing was wrong.

That train felt like a refugee convoy – except these refugees wore suits, carried suitcases, and kept trying to use their non-functioning cell phones.  The trip turned into a discordant symphony of repeated “call failed” signals.

I returned home to a city under siege, with military police in armored personnel carriers patrolling the streets around the Union Station.  Although that worried me, my main emotion was relief that I made it home.  But when I got there, I couldn’t go to sleep.  Instead I stayed up almost all night, watching CNN replay the days’ events over and over and over again.

I am not a “survivor” of September 11.  My life was never at risk, and none of those I love died.  I have no right to speak on behalf of those who lost their lives or loved ones on that sad day.

For the next few months, that’s what I kept telling myself:  what happened to me wasn’t that bad.  But then I started to have trouble sleeping.  When I did manage to get to sleep, I dreamed of planes crashing into my apartment building.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but these were symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, PTSD is “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.”  Those suffering from PTSD often have flashbacks in which they believe the traumatic incident is happening again, as well as other symptoms.

That’s what happened to me.  That’s what the dreams were about: planes I could see coming but couldn’t stop.  I had no trouble getting on a plane or flying, but the sight of planes in the air freaked me out.  Living near the Potomac River, which is the approach path used by commercial airlines flying into Washington National, became a nightmare.  Planes come in low and fast, and often look as if they’re veering towards the city.  Every time I saw one, I would panic.  A couple of times, I had to pull off the road.

There were also other symptoms, ones that weren’t as obvious but which often manifested themselves in unexpected ways. I got angry a lot — irrationally and blindly angry — often for no reason.  I became moody.  I snapped at people –- no, I yelled at people.  Folks didn’t want to be around me.  I withdrew from the world.

The good news is that I got better.  Thanks to a wonderful therapist and caring friends (especially my future wife), I was able to understand what I was going through and start taking the necessary steps to get better.  After some bumps in the road, including one significant relapse triggered by a completely unrelated incident (also not uncommon among those with PTSD), I no longer have the dreams, get angry for no reason, or panic at the sight of planes over the Potomac.

What I wonder is whether my country — our country — also has gotten better.

There’s another moment that day that I still remember.  After I got off my cell phone that morning, when I and all those around me were still not sure what had happened, a woman next to me noticed the Amnesty pin on the lapel of my jacket.  She asked me if I worked for Amnesty and when I said yes, she said “Good luck.  You’re going to need it.  We’re all going to need it.”

I had no idea how right she was.

We have, over the past seven years, suffered from a collective form of PTSD, one from which we have yet to recover fully.  It manifests itself in many ways:  the fear of the other, the blanket hatred of Muslims and Arabs (and, for a brief period of deep insanity, even Sikhs), the irrational anger, the use of torture and other heretofore unspeakable acts.

Is it too soon to suggest that we need to move on?

We must find a way to continue mourning those who lost their lives but stop trying to revenge their deaths.  We must remember that we were wronged but stop using it as an excuse to inflict harm on innocents.  We must recognize that what happened that day, horrible though it was, cannot justify moral relativism or situational ethics.  We must accept that we do not honor the dead by undermining our values or abrogating our freedoms.

I believe that we as a nation can do these things.  I believe that we can get beyond the symptoms of our collective stress disorder and start living our lives again — without fear, without anger, and with acceptance.

But we’re not there yet.

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From an interview John McCain did with Marie Claire magazine:

MARIE CLARE: You liken Obama to Britney in your famous ad, while portraying yourself as the more serious candidate. Which celebrity would you like to be compared to? Bob Dylan? Jack Nicholson?

McCAIN: Kiefer Sutherland. [laughs, imitates a voice from the show 24] “It’s Jack Bauer.” We have a lot in common because he escapes all the time.

MARIE CLAIRE: Um, he’s also a torturer.

McCAIN: Yeah, that’s right. That’s where Jack and I disagree. He believes in torture, but I don’t. He says, “Tell me where the weapons are.” The person says, “I won’t.” Bam! “OK, I’ll tell.”

Okay let me get this straight.  McCain admires Jack Bauer, the most sick, sadistic character on television, but he doesn’t approve of his use of torture — which is only about 98 percent of what makes Jack Bauer tick.  And then after offering a pro forma “that’s where Jack and I disagree,” he then talks about how he beats people to get answers — as if he approves.

Another thing:  does McCain think Bauer is a real person, or is he having internal dialogues with a fictional character?  And what exactly does he mean when he says he escapes all the time?  From whom? From what?  And are the people he escapes from somehow morally equivalent to the bad guys on 24, who also torture?

John McCain has to figure out what exactly he thinks of torture.  And he can’t have it both ways.  He can’t be against torture before he was for it.  He can’t condemn it and then express admiration for a character who does little else (and, lest we forget, do a cameo on that show).  He can’t say he opposes torture and then vote against a provision that would have prohibited government officials from committing it.

If he’s going to run on his history — which after all is ultimately the story of how he was a victim — he can’t also favor making victims of others, no matter how wrong or disgusting or evil they may be.  Because when it comes to torture, there is no double standard.  It’s wrong all the time.  Anything else is situational ethics.

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Take a moment to watch this clip.  It’s from an Obama town hall appearance yesterday in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

At first glance, it seems pretty good.  He says that “there should be no contradiction between keeping America safe and secure and respecting our Constitution.”  He gets in a good shot in about the need to catch the terrorists before you worry about what to do with them.  And he has a great line at the end:  “Don’t mock the constitution.  Don’t make fun of it!  Don’t suggest that it’s un-American to abide by what the founding fathers set up.”

Those are all good points.  The problem is that along the way, he violates two fundamental rules of messaging:

1.  Don’t use your opponent’s talking points to frame your arguments.  Obama did that on three occasions:

“Senator Obama is less interested in protecting people from terrorism than he is in reading them their rights.”

“You may think it’s Barack the bomb thrower, when in fact it might be Barack, the guy running for president.”

“The reason you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism.”

When you do this, you reinforce people’s preconceptions about you.  If folks are already inclined to worry about whether you’re the right guy, then what they’re going to hear is that Obama is soft on terrorism, has a Muslim name, and is interested in protecting the bad guys.

2.  Don’t try to convince people with facts.  Obama spends over a minute explaining the concept of habeas corpus.  He sounded like a professor.  Most people don’t have any idea what the words “habeus corpus” mean.  But they do understand the underlying principle:  that sometimes, our government makes mistakes, and we need rules to protect innocent people from being thrown in jail indefinitely.  They’ll understand that much more readily than talking about how this right goes back to before we were a country.

So what should have Obama said?  How about something like this:

You know, all of us want to be treated fairly.  You could say that’s the basic idea behind the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:  do unto others as you would have them do onto you.  In this country, we give people the chance to be heard. We promise them that they won’t be tortured.  We say to them that they have the right to prove that they are innocent of the charges against them, and that they don’t have to incriminate themselves.

These are our core values.  These are incredible gifts