Katherine R

Non-Denial Denials

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From the news conference today:

Q Mr. President, the Justice Department issued an advisory opinion last year declaring that as Commander-in-Chief you have the authority to order any kind of interrogation techniques that are necessary to pursue the war on terror. Were you aware of this advisory opinion? Do you agree with it? And did you issue any such authorization at any time?

THE PRESIDENT: No, the authorization I issued, David, was that anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations. That’s the message I gave our people.

Q Have you seen the memos?

THE PRESIDENT: I can’t remember if I’ve seen the memo or not, but I gave those instructions….

Q Returning to the question of torture, if you knew a person was in U.S. custody and had specific information about an imminent terrorist attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of Americans, would you authorize the use of any means necessary to get that information and to save those lives?

THE PRESIDENT: Jonathan, what I’ve authorized is that we stay within U.S. law….

Q Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we’ve learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that’s not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, I’m going to say it one more time. If I — maybe — maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We’re a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of — from me to the government.

It does not comfort me.

The position the memo takes is that it is sometimes consistent with U.S. law, and international treaties, for the President to set aside acts of Congress and to order or authorize torture of prisoners. The administration will not release the memo to Congress, or say whether they adopted its findings, or discuss it in any way. So these answers tell us nothing.

The fact that the President won’t give a meaningful answer, perhaps tells us something. The fact that the Democrats on Judiciary are not sure they’ll find one G.O.P. Senator to cross the aisle and officially request the memo, according to this AP story, perhaps tells us something. The fact that Orrin Hatch told the AP that releasing the memos would “cause the deaths of our young people … by publicizing something that shouldn’t be publicized,” perhaps tells us something.

I don’t know whether Hatch is afraid for our troops, or afraid for Bush’s re-election, or both. But he’s afraid of something. If the memo is as hypothetical and harmless an exercise as some of the President’s supporters say, the best thing to do for our troops is to prove it. Release this memo, and release the ones that shows the advice was rejected, and explain what the policy actually is.

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The Memo

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Excerpts from a Department of Defense memo on the use of torture, from a Wall Street Journal article today: “In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign … (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority…” After defining torture … Read more

Ordinary Rendition

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(an update on the Arar case and related “renditions”, since this is my last week in some time with a web connection of my own.) Dana Priest of the Washington Post continues to be the best U.S. reporter on this subject. Here’s her latest, (co-authored by Joe Stephens, at a link that does not require … Read more

Chalabi

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So I come back from vacation to news reports that Chalabi may have been spying for Iran all along. Initial reaction: can this possibly be true? Responsible reaction: I should probably wait for a better sourced story or independent corroboration before I decide that it is. I’m not buying the angle that Iran wanted to … Read more

Nick Berg and Abu Ghraib

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1) I hope newspapers don’t print headlines that say, without quotations marks or “allegedly” or “claims to be,” that this was revenge for Abu Ghraib. I don’t think the timing of this “execution” is coincidental–for one thing, if Zarqawi himself was videotaped, that was a risk he probably took for a reason. But I’m not sure that Nick Berg wouldn’t have been killed despite Abu Ghraib, and I am sure that if it weren’t this murder it would be another.

My best guess is that Abu Ghraib led to this only in that Zarqawi saw an opportunity. What he was trying to do–scare us, anger us into more abuses and deaths of innocents, inspire other Iraqis to kill innocent Americans in revenge, frighten Iraqis out of working with our troops and contractors, getting private contractors to leave Iraq, simply get his name in the papers–I don’t know. It made me much more angry than fearful, and I’m a giant wuss, so if he was trying to scare the American public I think he miscalculated. But he might have a narrower audience–if I were a civilian contractor trying to build Iraq’s infrastructure, or an Iraqi cooperating with the Americans I have no idea how I’d react.

And yes, it is at least possible that he wants us to be outraged–provoking overreaction is a tried and true terrorist strategy.

2) Neither justifies the other. I think we all agree on that. I wish people would also refrain from saying that one keeps the other “in perspective.” Perspective about what? That we’re morally superior to Zarqawi and his band of thugs? Whoop-de-freaking-do. I’m a liberal, antiwar, anti-Bush partisan, and yet I could not be less in need of that reminder. The few people who need it–ANSWER, etc.–will not listen to it. That this is what the interrogators were fighting? Most of the Abu Ghraib prisoners had no more to do with Zarqawi than Nick Berg had to do with torturing Iraqi prisoners. Abu Ghraib will probably win recruits for Zarqawi and Sadr, and definitely makes it less likely that Iraqis wil cooperate with U.S. troops or turn in neighbors whom they suspect of working for the terrorists.

Right now, I am certain, someone in the Middle East is telling someone else that Abu Ghraib keeps Berg’s murder “in perspective.” So f**k perspective. Until we ensure that these abuses won’t happen again, I think being pissed at everyone is a perfectly healthy response. (That link is highly recommended; one of the better blog comments I’ve ever read.)

3) There are a lot of comparisons of the press coverage. Some people are saying that if the press releases the photographs of Abu Ghraib, they are obligated to release the video of this. I don’t know. I think the relevant comparison is the videos of Abu Ghraib rather than the photos. I find a still photo much easier to take; I don’t know if I’d watch the videos of Abu Ghraib. But I know I’m not watching the video of the execution. I couldn’t handle it, and I feel no obligation to watch Zarqawi’s sick propaganda. I would not believe what was in the photographs of Abu Ghraib if I had not seen them, but I have no trouble at all believing what was in the video. And–this does me no credit, but I know I will find it harder to watch a kid my age from Philadelphia with a name and a family on the news be tortured and executed, than an anonymous Iraqi prisoner.

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The More You Know

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The Google Terrrorist
It was the lead item on the government’s daily threat matrix one day last April. Don Emilio Fulci described by an FBI tipster as a reclusive but evil millionaire, had formed a terrorist group that was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington, D.C. That day even FBI director Robert Mueller was briefed on the Fulci matter. But as the day went on without incident, a White House staffer had a brainstorm: He Googled Fulci. His findings: Fulci is the crime boss in the popular video game Headhunter. “Stand down,” came the order from embarrassed national security types.

A guest poster would like to make a public service announcement.

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The hearings

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An honest question:
Would it be fair to say, based on his performance today, that Rumsfeld thought the worst thing about Abu Ghraib was that there were pictures; and seemed angriest when talking about those pictures being leaked to the press?

Or do I only say that out of partisanship, bitterness, and knowledge of how things like this play out when there are no pictures?

It could well be the latter. I do realize that it doesn’t seem real until you see it first hand. Rumsfeld sounded a lot more contrite, and hell, a lot more human, at the beginning of today’s hearings than he had before. That may be because he knows his job depends on it, but it also may be that he didn’t see all of the pictures until last night.

But, God. We need to learn to prevent these things before they happen, and certainly before pictures of them are broadcast on 60 Minutes and Al-Jazeera. And I’m not even a little confident that it will happen.

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The problem with contractors

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(via Josh Marshall) One disadvantage the administration forgot about private contractors versus the military: Contractors can talk to the press without necessarily ruining their careers. And Torin Nelson, who worked as a contractor in both Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and named as a witness but not a suspect in the Taguba report, has talked … Read more

Rummy

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This is the rare newspaper editorial (as opposed to Op-Ed) that pulls no punches, and gets it exactly right:

THE HORRIFIC abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and at other facilities maintained by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public statements of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld….

The lawlessness began in January 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld publicly declared that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan “do not have any rights” under the Geneva Conventions. That was not the case: At a minimum, all those arrested in the war zone were entitled under the conventions to a formal hearing to determine whether they were prisoners of war or unlawful combatants. No such hearings were held, but then Mr. Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. observance of the convention was now optional. Prisoners, he said, would be treated “for the most part” in “a manner that is reasonably consistent” with the conventions — which, the secretary breezily suggested, was outdated.

Note that the Post accepts the administration’s view that Al Qaeda terrorists can be legitimately held and interrogated without the protections of the Geneva convention. They are okay with that, as long as there’s an initial hearing to determine that this is really an Al Qaeda terrorist and not a Taliban conscript; as long as we have procedures that ensure that the Convention Against Torture is not violated; and as long as it is reserved for extraoardinary cases.

(This will surprise many readers, but I think I am okay with that too. I would add that indefinite detention without a real hearing–probably not an ordinary criminal trial, but a real hearing with real representation for the accused that goes beyond the original POW/enemy combatant distinction–should not be an option.)

Of course, none of that is relevant in Iraq, a country which we chose to invade, where the few Al Qaeda and Ba’athist terrorists are scattered among many ordinary guerillas and even more innocent civilians we’ve captured by mistake. Yet Rumsfeld still says the Geneva Convention is optional:

On Monday Mr. Rumsfeld’s spokesman said that the secretary had not read Mr. Taguba’s report, which was completed in early March. Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld told a television interviewer that he still hadn’t finished reading it, and he repeated his view that the Geneva Conventions “did not precisely apply” but were only “basic rules” for handling prisoners.

Even if you don’t care about the Iraqis, this is not doing our own troops any favors. It’s obvious to almost everyone that Abu Ghraib is a practical as well as a moral disaster. And even if our success in Iraq didn’t depend so heavily on the general population’s trust; even if it were a simpler and more purely military struggle; even if those pictures weren’t the world’s best ad campaign for Osama bin Laden….we didn’t sign the Geneva Convention because we were goody-two-shoes. It’s in our interest to treat captives decently. It encourages the enemy to surrender instead of fighting to the death, and it increases the chances that our own soldiers will be treated decently when they’re captured.

I like his poetry as much as the next girl. But as far as I’m concerned, Rumsfeld has joined Ashcroft and Tenet and whoever ratted out Valerie Plame in the “should be SO fired” club. Read the whole Washington Post editorial and tell me you disagree.

(via commenter otmar at Tacitus)

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The “Blame Liberals First” crowd

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(to paraphrase Fox News…read on.)

Part of me wishes that the Abu Ghraib story had never come out, or at least not the pictures that accompanied it. “Hearts and minds” arguments are usually full of conjecture and self serving assumptions, but this one is easy. These pictures are going to make more people hate us. They’re going to drive recruiting for Al Qaeda, and certainly the Iraqi militias. Americans will almost certainly get killed because of these photographs—maybe only in Iraq; maybe also here.

But I also know that’s not a brave or responsible reaction on my part. The problem is what happened, not that we found about it, or that the Arab world found about it or that CBS released pictures of it. The pictures might well be necessary to prevent it from happening it again. And journalists’ responsibility is to the truth, not to the U.S.’s image. If only censorship and self-censorship stand between us and what Islamic extremists say about us—well, God help us.

John Podhoretz and Glenn Reynolds seem to disagree with me. Podhoretz:

For others, however, thoughts of the Vietnam War conjure up a sense of moral triumph. They opposed the war, and their opposition was a key element in this nation’s withdrawal from the battlefield over the course of the Nixon presidency.

Those were glory days for the anti-war movement and the American counterculture, both of which reveled in their hostility to and rejection of authority… Keep this fact in mind when considering the actions of CBS News and The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh.

Hersh and CBS are leading the media pack with graphic and lurid coverage of the disgusting atrocities committed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The tone they are adopting is a tone of moral outrage. But beneath it you can feel the thrill, the excitement of being back on the old familiar turf of standing in opposition to the foreign-policy aims of the United States – using the most despicable actions of a few criminals as a stand-in for the overall effort in Iraq.

For Hersh, this is quite literally an effort to return to old glory: He made his career almost 35 years ago by uncovering the Vietnam-era massacre at My Lai.

To take this story, and make it about American-hating hippies and journalists, is so misguided I don’t know where to start.

I once planned to grow up and be an investigative journalist, so I know about Seymour Hersh and My Lai. It is striking that the same person broke the story that shook our faith in our own rectitude in Vietnam, and the story that is doing the same in Iraq. Either a strange coincidence, or a sign of Hersh’s tenacity and the rest of the press’ lack thereof.

But. Is Hersh gleeful? He sure as hell doesn’t sound gleeful when he’s interviewed. Maybe he’s not above the odd surge of triumph, but if there is any element of vindication involved—Hersh is an investigative journalist. Finding out this stuff is his job, and he’s done it very well, and we all like to be best at our jobs. There is no indication whatsoever that Seymour Hersh is cackling with glee to be able to subvert American hegemony once again.

And even if there were….who the hell cares about the tricksy anti-Americanism that motivates Seymour Hersh, if his story is accurate? What, precisely, does Podhoretz think Hersh should have done? Not published the story of Abu Ghraib or My Lai, because it made us look bad? Say that these were six bad apples and did not detract from our noble liberation of Iraq? Hersh could say that, but it wouldn’t make it true and it certainly wouldn’t make anyone in the Muslim world believe it–for the most part they’re not learning about this from the New Yorker.

When U.S. soldiers abuse prisoners, the problem is that U.S. soldiers abuse prisoners, not that reporters write about it. When things go badly in Iraq, the problem is that things are going badly in Iraq, not that some antiwar people might be having impure thoughts about it, or think they were right to oppose this war before it started.*

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It can also happen in Brooklyn

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One of my initial reactions to the Abu Ghraib story was a vague, irrational feeling that the place itself was evil; that we should have blown it up; that we never should have used it for our own detentions. We probably should blow it up, and follow the rest of John Quiggin’s suggestions. But this … Read more

Subcontracting Torture

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That could be the title for a post about Abu Ghraib. Civilian contractors apparently played a role in the abuses there, according to the Hersh article. But I haven’t had time to learn much about what happened in that place, nor have I wanted to look at the pictures.

No, I’m still talking about our torture subcontracting to countries, not defense companies—and linking to another article about “extraordinary rendition” and the Maher Arar case (sent to me by Gary Farber, who is really on a roll these days.) Ahmad Abou El-Maati, the first of the Canadians tortured in Syria, has spoken publicly about what happened to him:

During my detention and torture by the Syrians I was forced to divulge everyone I knew. This included Mr. Maher Arar,” says Ahmad Abou El-Maati, a Toronto truck driver first arrested in November, 2001, and released from a series of Middle East prisons just a few weeks ago.
Mr. El-Maati says that shortly after his arrest he placated his torturers by falsely confessing to a bomb plot targeting Ottawa, and by falsely implicating others, including Mr. Arar, according to an affidavit he wrote after returning to Canada last month….

He says RCMP or CSIS agents questioned him in the Toronto airport and also put a spy on the plane. Then, “upon my arrival in Syria on November 12, 2001, I was immediately detained.”

During subsequent months in prison, Mr. El-Maati says he was forced to lie down naked as guards dumped ice water on him, burned him with cigarettes and beat him with cables. “I was forced to sign a false confession of false events implicating me in a non-existing plot involving my brother, which I signed and fingerprinted in order to stop the vicious and constant torture,” he says.

He says he also falsely identified an Ottawa man, 33-year-old Abdullah Almalki, as a suspect. Arrested in Syria two years ago and only recently released, Mr. Almalki is also seeking standing at the inquiry.

This is more or less what I’d have guessed he would say, if you’d asked me. It really does look like the Syrian government was interrogating and torturing Canadian citizens at the request of U.S./Canadian intelligence—and in Arar’s case, the U.S. deported a Canadian citizen from JFK airport to Syria on the basis of “evidence” gained under torture. It sounds like something out of the Salem witch trials, but that seems to be what happened.

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Wolfowitz and Pals

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Richard Clarke writes in “Against All Enemies” that,

On the morning of the 12th D.O.D.’s focus was already beginning to shift from Al Qaeda. C.I.A. was explicit now that Al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, without a state sponsor — Iraq must have been helping them.

I’ve been doing more Lexis-Nexis searches on the Pentagon hawks’ reaction to 9/11. Once again, they provide strong circumstantial evidence that Clarke is telling the truth.

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A longer stroll down memory lane

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These are from Lexis Nexis searches, so I can’t provide links. Sorry about that.

These excerpts–and there are plenty more like them–leave little question that some of the hawks in the Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq immediately after 9/11. But the articles at the time suggest that they want to invade Iraq AND Afghanistan, not that they want to invade Iraq instead of Afghanistan. And when I re-read the Guardian article I linked to in the last post, that’s a perfectly plausible interpretation of the British ambassador’s remarks.

As far as timing–I’d say we had decided on war with Taliban (unless they unexpectedly turned on bin Laden) by September 20 at the absolute latest. That’s when Bush delivered his ultimatum in front of a joint session of Congress. And presumably they decided some time before he made his speech.

Blair also seems to have met with Bush on that date, so that’s probably when the conversation in which Bush promises to postpone Iraq “for another day” occurred.

Here goes:

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Corroboration of Clarke’s account

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A trip down memory lane, from an April 4, 2003 Grauniad* article:

Tony Blair has frequently played a pivotal role in the infighting in the US administration over Iraq, according to the recently retired British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer.

Hawks in the Bush administration, mainly the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, pushed for an attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan in the aftermath of September 11.

Sir Christopher, in an interview with the US public broadcasting system last night, said that the prime minister, arriving in Washington the week after an inconclusive discussion between George Bush and his key advisers at Camp David, swung in behind the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, who saw Afghanistan as the prime target.

In the documentary Blair’s War, Sir Christopher, who returned to Britain last month, said that when Mr Blair met Mr Bush in the weeks after September 11, he urged him to deal first with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and its protector – Afghanistan’s Taliban government – before tackling Iraq.

“Tony Blair’s view was, ‘Whatever you’re going to do about Iraq, you should concentrate on the job at hand’. And the job at hand was get al-Qaida, give the Taliban an ultimatum,” the former British ambassador said.

Sir Christopher added that Mr Bush took Mr Blair aside and promised he would keep Iraq “for another day”.

I remember my jaw dropping when I read this a year ago. But the U.S. press never picked it up, and I forgot about it until I saw Clarke’s interview.

Did anyone actually see that documentary? I haven’t, but assuming this is an accurate characterization–a few observations:

1. The retired British ambassador, and the retired terrorism advisor under four U.S. presidents, seem to be telling the same story, or at least quite consistent stories. One of them may tell the story under oath next week. If they’re not credible enough sources to at least take these charges seriously–who, exactly, would be?

2. A lot of people on the left gave up on Blair and Powell as moderating influences long ago–but if this is accurate, we have a lot of reason to be grateful to them. Fighting terrorism is fraught with uncertainty, but deep in the pit of my stomach I know that if we had attacked Iraq while bin Laden and the Taliban did as they pleased in Afghanistan–there would have been another attack on New York by now. And probably London too.

3. I wonder which side Cheney was on in this debate? And Rice?

4. One of the weirdest things about that Guardian article is the reference to Blair “arriving in Washington the week after an inconclusive discussion between George Bush and his key advisers at Camp David”. I remember being surprised that so much time passed between 9/11 and the first bombs falling on Afghanistan–was this really because we spent a full week deciding whether to bomb Afghanistan or Iraq? I find that bizarre beyond words, but it does seem possible.

5. Whether it was Blair or not, whether it was a close call or not–Bush did make the right decision that September. I suppose that should reassure me. But it doesn’t seem to have weakened the hawks in the administration at all, based on what’s happened since. It’s more like there was a grudging agreement that “we’ll give Tony and Colin this one, but then a next year it’s OUR turn and they have to support us.” And in the end, Iraq got more resources than Afghanistan ever did, by almost any measure.

UPDATE I’m doing some Lexis searches of news stories the weeks after 9/11. Briefly–it is very clear that the hawks in the Bush administration immediately wanted to go after Iraq. But it’s not clear that they wanted to go after Iraq instead of Afghanistan, rather than in addition to Afghanistan. The Guardian article strongly implies the former, but Meyer’s quotations could just as easily support the latter.

More on this…I don’t know exactly when. But soon.

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Arar #23: More on Ahmad Abou El Maati

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El-Maati is the truck driver who was stopped at the U.S. border & found with a map of Ottawa that raised customs officials’ suspicions, in August of 2001. He was watched by Canadian police for a few months after that. In November 2001 he traveled to Syria, where he was detained, allegedly tortured, and allegedly questioned about information that had to come from the Canadian police. This probably started the chain of events that ended in Maher Arar’s deportation and torture.

That’s as quick a summary as I can give–there’s much more in this post.

Anyway–El Maati is still in Egypt, but he and a friend of his described as “an Islamic religious leader in Toronto”, have recently talked to a few reporters. He is expected to return to Canada soon.

Here are the two articles I found:

1. From the Globe and Mail, 3/20/04:

The RCMP probe seems to have focused mostly on Mr. El-Maati, who has complained that spies were dogging him in Canada in the summer of 2001, especially after he was interrogated by U.S. border guards.

A map of Ottawa was discovered in the transport truck he was driving and appears to have caused concern that he planned to launch a terrorist strike there. He denied the map was his, and his employer drafted a letter saying that the truck’s previous driver had an Ottawa route.

Mr. El-Maati flew to Syria in the fall of 2001, where he was immediately arrested. He has since said he was tortured there by captors who asked questions that seemed to be based on information that first surfaced in North America.

Aly Hindy, an Islamic religious leader in Toronto, said his friend first came under suspicion because he was known to have spent time in Afghanistan. But the imam said that Mr. El-Maati was never part of any plot, though he was tortured into admitting as much.

“They tortured him until he told them, ‘What do you want me to say?’ Imam Hindy said in a recent interview. “. . . He said, ‘What if I used a truck?’ They said, ‘Okay, very good idea but which building are you going to hit?’

“. . .So he said, ‘How about the Parliament Buildings?’ They said, ‘Oh, it’s a very, very good idea.’

“So he wrote everything and signed, and after that they didn’t touch him and they sent him to Egypt,” Imam Hindy said.

2. From The Toronto Star, 2/25/04:

In his first interview since being released last month, Ahmed Abou-Elmaati said his bags are packed and as soon as he obtains travel documents he will leave Cairo.

Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Reynald Doiron confirmed yesterday that consular officials are working with Elmaati to help him obtain the required exit visa.

Elmaati, who spent more than two years behind bars, first in Syria, then in Egypt, wants more than anything to come home to tell his story.

“I need my file to be closed. I need to show my innocence and I think this will not happen unless I go back to Canada,” Elmaati said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The former Toronto resident, whose case may become a crucial link in determining why U.S. authorities deported Canadian Maher Arar to Syria, said he has been denied a consular escort and fears he may again be detained as he travels.

It’s believed Arar was deported in part because he knew Elmaati (who had been the focus of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation and interviewed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) and Abdullah Almalki, an Ottawa resident who is still being held in Syria.

Born in Kuwait, Elmaati holds both Canadian and Egyptian citizenship. He said he hasn’t been threatened since being released last month but worries about his flight home.

“Actually, to tell you the truth, I’m very doubtful I would reach (Toronto) because I believe something will happen to me on the way back,” he said yesterday.

Scarborough imam Aly Hindy, who met with Elmaati when he was in Cairo earlier this month, said Elmaati was tortured, which included being stripped naked, drenched with water and then having live electrical wires placed on his body.

Hindy said it was this torture that prompted Elmaati to sign a confession about plotting to drive a bomb-laden truck into the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.

This tends to confirm my working hypothesis, but it’s not really detailed enough to make a real judgment or evaluate El Maati’s or Hindy’s credibility. If El Maati and Almalki actually make it back to Canada, and one or both of them talks to the press–El Maati definitely seems to want to–we’ll know more.

At any rate, with Almalki’s release one less person is being tortured. Which seems like an intrinsically good thing, even if the guy does turn out to be guilty of something.

I haven’t seen many stories generated by the inquiry itself yet. And U.S. press coverage has gone from pathetic to completely non-existent.

I don’t know the status of Arar’s lawsuit in the U.S., either. If I get a chance over spring break I may go to the district court in Brooklyn and try to view the file, if any of it’s publicly available. (I realize that’s the dorkiest use of spring break ever–don’t worry, I’ve got other plans as well.) But I don’t know if I’ll have time, as I’ll only be in New York for a few days.

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Abdullah Amalki released (Arar #22)

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Abdullah Almalki, a key figure in the Maher Arar affair, has apparently been released from prison in Syria.

Almalki had been in prison for almost two years. According to his lawyer, he was released a week ago, but has not gotten out of Damascus yet–his parents flew there to meet him. His lawyer doesn’t want to say very much, and has asked the Canadian government not to comment, until they are safely out of Syria.

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June 30

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The less worthy half of the right side of the blogosphere is having a severe case of “The people have spoken, the bastards!” over the Spanish election results today. Here are a few of the more egregious examples:

Stanley Kurtz: “Appeasement and shame, they[sic] name is Spain. This people lives an ocean away from us. Yet they have brought shame on all of us.”

Michael Graham: “Does anyone know the Spanish word for “coward?” “

Jonah Goldberg: “But when the Spanish people basically shout “We’re sorry” after having 200 of their people blown to smithereens, then the terrorists have won.”

Andrew Sullivan: “BIN LADEN’S VICTORY IN SPAIN–It’s a spectacular result for Islamist terrorism, and a chilling portent of Europe’s future.”

Instapundit: “TERRORISTS HAVE SUCCEEDED IN TOPPLING THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT. Jeff Jarvis observes: ” In any case, it’s a damned shame that terrorists can have an impact on the election and can help bring in the side they apparently wanted.”

Eric Olsen has more thoughts on what is, I’m afraid, a bad day for the forces of civilization.”

Roger Simon: “Meanwhile, it is a beautiful day in Los Angeles and I walk out on my deck, looking across the Hollywood Hills at Runyon Canyon, but my mind is in Madrid, at its splendid Puerta del Sol where I have spent so many wonderful days and where sadly fascists have walked before and for too long. But this time they are not under the flag of Generalissimo Franco. This time, ironically, they rally behind the words of a man, Osama bin Laden, whom El Caudillo would have reviled. But of course the cry of both men is the same: Viva la muerte!”

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Well founded fear

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The central requirement for political asylum in the U.S. is to show that you cannot return to your country because of

“persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Does anyone notice anything missing from that list? Anyone? Bueller?

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Another Canadian Tortured in Syria

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I’m just passing this along without comment–what is there to say, really?–except to note that the U.S. doesn’t seem to have been involved this time: Yesterday, another Canadian citizen — this one of Iraqi descent — met reporters to tell his story of torture at the hands of the Syrians. And here, too, the information … Read more

Gavin and Barney and Mitt and me

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Lots of criticism of S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom today, from the usual suspects (the American Family Association want to send him to prison for “up to 300 years”–though at the rate of 3 years per marriage poor Gavin is up to 7500 years in the slammer by now), and at least one not-so-usual suspect:

“I was sorry to see the San Francisco thing go forward,” said Frank, a gay congressman from Massachusetts who shared his concerns with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom as the city prepared to begin marrying gays and lesbians last week.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Frank also expressed concern that the image of lawlessness and civil disobedience in San Francisco would pressure some in Congress to support a federal constitutional amendment banning gay unions.

Frank said he and other gay marriage advocates had hoped that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry would serve as a national model for orderly, legal protection of gay marriage.

I think Frank has a very specific fear in mind. Governor Romney has started making noises about finding a way to defy the Supreme Judicial Court’s order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in…I don’t know how many days, now.

My guess is that there are too many parallels, in Frank’s eyes, between what Newsom is doing and what Romney may do.

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Loony Homophobes–and the Presidents Who Love Them

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That get your attention? Good. I hereby retract my previous comparison of the far-right, disgustingly homophobic Family Research Council to International ANSWER. The FRC may be slightly less insane than ANSWER, but a little research confirmed what I suspected: they have thousands, and I mean thousands, of times more influence on the Republican party than … Read more

The Family Research Council

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I ought not to be posting this–I am dead serious about going on hiatus. But everyone in my state and especially at my school is talking about this gay marriage debate today, and I see a huge story being missed.

Of all the anti-gay marriage lobbyists who have come to Massachusetts, the Family Research Council (FRC), and its President, Tony Perkins, may be the most quoted–I’ve seen him in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the NY Times, the Grauniad, MSNBCm all over the place. In these articles, the FRC is almost always described simply as “a conservative group” or “a conservative organization” or “the conservative Family Research Council.”

If journalists would do some background research on the FRC, they would see that this description is an insult to both gay people and conservatives.

Not all conservatives oppose gay marriage. Not all people who oppose gay marriage are homophobic. Not all homophobic people are bigots. The Family Research Council are bigots–and I do not use emotionally loaded terms like “bigot” lightly. Here are some quotations from FRC publications:

–“…one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.” “Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys,” FRC publication, July 1999.

–“”There is a strong undercurrent of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. Homosexual activists want to promote the flouting of traditional sexual prohibitions at the earliest possible age….they want to encourage a promiscuous society – and the best place to start is with a young and credulous captive audience in the public schools.” – Robert Knight, Family Research Council

–“homosexuals are included in a list of sinners, who, if unrepentant, will not inherit the kingdom of God.” – Family Research Council press release about Matt Shepard’s funeral, on the day of the funeral, October 16, 1998

–After Matthew Shepard’s death, Frank Rich wrote an article saying that anti-gay groups like the FRC–I think he singled them out because they had a press conference about converting away from homosexuality around the time Shepard was found–saying they bore some responsibilty for what happened. “[FRC Spokesperson Heather] Farish vehemently rejects such allegations. ‘Don’t blame AA because a drunk was beat up,’ she said.” (Dallas Morning News article, “Why now? Other gays have been victims of brutal attacks, but the slaying of a Wyoming student has caused a national outcry,” by Brooks Egerton, October 17, 1998.)

–If you think the above quotations take their words out of context, you can read this 32 page “study” of “Homosexual Behavior and Pedophilia” by Robert Knight and Frank York. Learn all about homosexual activists’ “long term goal” of “gaining access to children”, despite the fact that they “publicly disassociate themselves from pedophiles as part of a public relations strategy”; learn how the American Psychiatric Association is in on it, etc.
(Knight is now with Concerned Women for America, but was with the FRC when this came out and they are still quite happy to quote him on their website. They also say he is one of the draftsmen of DOMA–I just hope to God that’s not true.)

–In case you think that was the “bad old days” but now they’ve changed–the FRC still offers talking points (their phrase, not mine) on the connection between homosexuality and pedophelia on their website.

–As I noted in this post, the Family Research Council helped convince President Bush to launch “Marriage Protection Week” last October. It just so happened to begin on the five year anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death.

–Tony Perkins, the current President of the FRC, seems more telegenic and politically savvy than his predecessors but I don’t see any evidence that he’s less homophobic. In this newsletter he states, “Nor is it “loving” to suppress evidence that homosexual behavior is a “death-style” that is sending young people to an early grave.”

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Loose Ends

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This will be my last post or comment for several months. I thought of trying to restrict it to once a week, but since I proved last week that I’ll only yammer on in comments if I do that….I had my immigration law clinic training yesterday. Starting this Wednesday, I will have a lot of … Read more

U-G-L-Y

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Here is my post for this week. Since it’s my only post it’s going to be one of those lists. 1. I just returned from Palm Beach, a.k.a. Parking Lot Nation. Strip malls, parking lots, almost every street wider than any single street in Manhattan or Brooklyn, condo development after condo development with names like … Read more

At last, an inquiry (Arar #21)

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(21st in a series. In case you don’t like scrolling up from the bottom of the page, here are links to the previous posts in chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.)

As Paul noted in the comments to my last post, Canada has announced a public inquiry into the Arar case.

It will not surprise anyone that I think this is an important, and long overdue, step. I can only hope that:
1) the truth, or at least more of it, comes out, and
2) this leads to more examination of this case in the United States.

Unfortunately, I don’t think #2 is likely. From the AP story above:

O’Connor will not be able to force U.S. authorities to participate in the inquiry. A public investigation into how intelligence on both sides of the border tracks suspected terrorists is not expected to be welcomed by Washington.

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Someone asked State Department spokesman Richard Boucher about this at a press briefing today:

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When Politicians Attack

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There’s a long, proud tradition of really negative campaigning in the final hours before a primary–anonymous flyers attacking the other candidates, that sort of thing. My sense is that every campaign does it (including my preferred candidate and Handsome Larry*, who’s (accurately) perceived to have run the most positive campaign.) Every campaign is “shocked” at their rivals’ dirty tricks and indignantly denies its own–until they’re caught, in which case it’s portrayed, truly or falsely, as a one-time mistake by an overzealous volunteer.

But there’s negative campaigning, and there’s negative campaigning. These had better be isolated incidents.

1. From an AP story:

For example, Carson said, an e-mail that proposes to be from campaign manager Joe Trippi asks for interns, but then says because of tight sleeping headquarters, homosexuals are not accepted.

Frances Gehling, a Dean volunteer, said she received a phone call January 16 from a person who identified herself as a Londonderry, N.H., resident who worked for the local Kerry campaign. After Gehling said she supported Dean, the caller asked if it bothered Gehling “that Dean waffles on the issues.”

The caller then asked Gehling about Dean’s statement that “we will learn how to talk about Jesus” when he campaigns in the South. “She asked how someone who is married to a Jew and raising Jewish children can have Christian values,” Gehring said when contacted by The Associated Press.

2. There have been reports that people were calling voters in the middle of the night–4.a.m., say–in New Hampshire pretending to be from the Dean campaign. Atrios summarizes them here.

3. There were rumors on Kos of attacks on Dean’s wife and other, even nastier push polls (would it change your opinion on Dean to know that he was an abortitionist, his history of spousal abuse, etc.) in Iowa, and a recording of a Kerry volunteer calling Dean an “environmental racist.” I didn’t take these very seriously at the time, but these reports have a cumulative effect.

If these reports are true (and I think most are, except maybe the rumors about the abortionist/spousal abuse push polls, which are not well sourced and so ridiculously sleazy that I find them hard to believe), and if they are an organized effort rather than a few wacko volunteers (which is much less clear) we still don’t know who’s responsible. It could be any Democratic candidate, or even a Republican trying to sow discord. My knee jerk reaction and that of many Dean supporters, though, was “it’s probably the Kerry campaign.” I’m sure that’s partly sour grapes, but it’s also partly Occam’s razor. Most of the stories that are confirmed involve the Kerry campaign; Kerry participated in both Iowa and NH; and he was the one most likely to gain if Dean was damaged.

In any case, it needs to stop.

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my primary observations

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1) Every campaign office I’ve ever been to looks almost exactly the same: industrial grey carpet, folding chairs, cheap cafeteria style tables, cardboard boxes of flyers, bumperstickers and other paraphernalia, mismatched phones, bathroom fixtures not quite securely bolted into the wall, random assortment of junk food…. 2) Portsmouth’s pizza situation has improved greatly since the … Read more

Bound for the North Country

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So I’m up to NH tomorrow to drive people to the polls and do assorted other scut work. Probably to Portsmouth headquarters, followed by a massive gathering in Manchester to celebrate or mourn–more likely the latter–as the results come in. The weather forecast is a balmy twenty degrees and overcast, but no snow. (This is … Read more

Arar #20

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1. Juliet O’Neill says that “sources are drying up” in the case after the search on her house. 2. There is increasing political pressure on Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to order a public investigation. 3. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the fact that “Arar and his family are on welfare. He is charged … Read more

Nuclear Wal-Mart

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In reading this article, and studying for my exam tomorrow, I think I’ve finally come up with a concise, non-emotionally loaded explanation of the fundamental strategic problem I see with the Iraq war and the Bush doctrine. A nuclear Wal-Mart does not necessarily sell only to rogue nations. It might also sell directly to terrorist … Read more

Code Words

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One of the things that bothered me most about David Brooks’ ridiculous assertions about “neocon” being a code word for “Jew” is that it makes it harder to point out true code words. And if you don’t believe they exist, read this passage from a recent National Review article.

For years, the far Left has had its own rhetoric, in which certain words carry special meanings to those “in the know.” Now, conservatives have their own way of conveying messages that have unique significance for them. In the State of the Union address, Christians heard special messages that were conveyed with skillfully placed words. For believers, the “sanctity” of marriage is rooted in those biblical principles that sustain marriage; defining marriage through its “moral tradition” carries specific ramifications in terms of Judeo-Christian values and beliefs.

Two comments:
1. Of course, pretending that code words used to be the sole province of the far Left-with-a-capital-L is absurd. “States rights” and “our Southern way of life” are the two examples that immediately come to my mind.*

2. “Judeo-Christian values and beliefs”, huh? I appreciate it that Judaism has made it to the in-club of religions. But considering that most of the Boston-area Jewish community recently “voted overwhelmingly to endorse same-sex marriage,” and that
Reform Judaism (the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S.) “determined in 2000 that gay unions were ‘worthy of affirmation through appropriate Jewish ritual.'”….I wish that Ms. Crouse and her pals would leave “Judeo” out of it.

(And while we’re on this topic, isn’t Concerned Women for America itself due for a name change?)

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