Politics

John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody - including by crushing that child's testicles.John Yoo is one of the primary legal advisors to George W. Bush, responsible for legal reasoning to justify torture, warrantless wiretapping, and virtually anything else the president feels is necessary. Here's the exchange with Yoo, from a December 1, 2005 debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel: Cassel: If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him? Yoo: No treaty. Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo. Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.More description and a link to an audio clip here.

In 2003, the Bush administration said that the $200 billion estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq from Larry Lindsey, Bush’s economic advisor, was too high. Paul Wolfowitz suggested that the cost of reconstruction would be financed entirely by Iraq. Congress has so far appropriated $251 billion for military operations, and the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that we should expect another $230 billion in costs over the next ten years. Now a paper by Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes argues that the CBO’s estimate leaves out some significant costs, like healthcare for injured soldiers–lifetime care for brain injuries alone may cost $35 billion. Their paper argues that $1 trillion is a conservative estimate of the total costs. (Story at The Guardian.) ...

The latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education includes an article (“The Taboo Standard”) by Marni Landry of Paradise Valley High School, who reports that she proposed a study to survey life science teachers in the Phoenix Union High School District on the subject of evolution. The survey, intended to support her M.A. thesis work at the University of Phoenix, asked the recipients whether they agreed or disagreed slightly or completely with the following statements: I have helped to write the district or state science standards. I would like to contribute in the writing of the district or state science standards. I know specifically what the district standards are concerning the theory of evolution. I have avoided details about the origin of life in order to avoid conflict in my classroom. The theory of evolution goes against my religious beliefs. If I were to get into a confrontation with a student or parent concerning the theory of evolution, I feel that [the] administration would support my actions. I feel that creationism (creation science) should be taught parallel to evolution in the classroom. I am concerned over the fact that many states have removed evolution from their science standards. Students must understand the theory of evolution in order to understand the study of biology. I have experienced conflict with a student, parent, or administrator concerning my teaching of evolution.This survey and edited versions were rejected by school district administrators as “too controversial.” The irony of being unable to conduct a survey of science teachers about a subject that they are required by state science standards to teach is explicitly noted. The author was able to complete a pilot study, and her article reports the percentages for the above statements (16.5% say that evolution conflicts with their religious beliefs and that creationism should be taught). The same issue of Reports has stories from Texas and Arkansas about high school teachers being unable to teach about evolution or (in Arkansas) even mention the ages of rocks in millions of years. This, to me, is far more frightening than attempts to force the teaching of intelligent design or creation science–that teaching about evolution has already been removed from or watered down in many of the classrooms of the United States. It’s no wonder that the average American is completely ignorant on the subject. ...

Rev. Rob Schenk of the National Clergy Council in D.C., Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of Faith and Action were barred on Thursday from entering the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a confirmation hearing for Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday. They were permitted to bless the doors–reading three Psalms, kneeling to say the Lord’s Prayer in front of the doors, and marking a cross in oil on a door. They also said that they had actually entered the hearing room a day earlier to anoint the seats with oil. “We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,” said Schenk. Schenk and Mahoney say they had done the same prior to the hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts and were pleased with the results.

The Boston Globe reports that the “signing statement” issued by George W. Bush after signing the bill outlawing the torture of detainees contains caveats that indicate that the restrictions in the law can be bypassed in situations where he sees fit. Bush seems to be under the impression that executive powers granted to him as president allow him to violate any law he deems inconvenient. It’s high time for this corrupt, dishonest president to be impeached. ...

He was in favor of states deciding the issue for themselves, until he was against it. There are lots more examples of this kind of hypocrisy across a wide range of issues documented in James Bovard’s The Bush Betrayal. Above link is to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where readers have offered additional examples in the comments.

In a New York Times followup about the Bush-approved program to engage in interception of email and voice calls to international destinations without warrants approved by the FISA Court, it is stated that The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials. The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said. ...

Blairwatch has published the text of memos from Craig Murray, UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which complain about the U.S. giving aid to the country after accepting sham improvements in human rights, as well as collecting intelligence information obtained via torture. Some excerpts: I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging). […] We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror. […] I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as “From detainee debriefing.” The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured. […] I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact. ...

Earlier this year I was an almost obsessive reader of Antiwar.com. For a time, I was also a financial contributor. Now, it wasn’t in the hundreds or thousands of dollars or anything, but it was a decent monthly pledge. Soon after seeing Justin Raimondo’s pathetic and embarassing showing in this video, though, I started to become annoyed with the frequently shrill tone of his columns—not to mention their excessive linkage (in a seemingly infinite regress through his own prior columns!), and their often bizarre focus—and although I mostly agree with him about Glenn Reynolds, I just can’t see what his problem* is with Tom Palmer. Palmer is no pacifist, certainly, but he’s also no war-monger, and his libertarian credentials seem beyond question (although he really does seem to have raised the ire of at least one other paleolib—see also here. All I can say is “bizarre!”). Once I saw Justin’s comments (and possible sock-puppetry as “Clement”) on this post at Tom Palmer’s blog, though, I decided, with a heavy heart, that I had to end my financial support of Antiwar.com. I took my Antiwar.com bumper sticker off my car, and I haven’t been visiting Antiwar.com much lately. However, I did go back recently, and saw this photo in the blog. It shows Eric Garris standing with the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir (you can also see Justin Raimondo there in the background). The photograph was taken at the recent Perdana Global Peace forum, where, along with Dr. Mahathir, Garris, and Raimondo, such luminaries «em>cough> as “his excellency” Robert Mugabe spoke. What I think is interesting about this picture is that if, instead of Eric Garris or Justin Raimondo, it were Glenn Reynolds or Tom Palmer standing there, wouldn’t Antiwar.com be having a field day over it? I suspect the shouts of “Warmonger!” would be endless. Take a look at this page, where Tun Mahathir is acting in his capacity as chairman of the Perdana Global Peace Forum. Everything seems fabulous, there. But now, contrast it with this page, which is the text of a speech he gave at the 10th Islamic Summit Conference. Now, I think a careful reading of Dr. Mahathir’s words gives him just the right measure of plausible deniability. But, do you not agree that it is difficult not to interpret his speech as “incendiary,” and “a call for global war against the Jewish people by 1.3 billion Muslims,” as the Anti-Defamation League has done? Even if we recognize that the ADL has an incentive to sensationalize when it serves them, and in spite of Justin’s borderline anti-Semitism (though he may still have a small sliver of plausible deniability on that score), I still have to wonder. Why is it that Garris and Raimondo believe that it is helpful to their cause or to the cause of peace to associate with Dr. Mahathir? Lots of discussion of this over at Tom Palmer’s blog. * Note that I myself actually agree with the Herbert Spencer quote found in that link.

In a New York Times op-ed defending the president’s warrantless wiretapping of international calls and emails, former Justice Department attorneys (under GHWB and Reagan) David Rivkin and Lee Casey write: Furthermore, the FISA court is not a rubber stamp and may well decline to issue warrants even when wartime necessity compels surveillance.It’s not? Let’s take a closer look (stats from EPIC by way of Talking Points Memo). The FISA court, established in 1978, had received 18,761 requests for warrants as of the end of 2004. How many were rejected? Four or five (sources disagree). Of the four which were definitely rejected (all from 2003), all four were partially approved upon reconsideration. And how many have been modified by the court from the original requests? 1978-1999: 0 (?) 2000: 1 2001: 2 2002: 2 (but the modifications were later reversed) 2003: 79 (of 1727 requests) 2004: 94 (of 1758 requests) It looks to me like the FISA court was a rubber stamp at least until 2003, and quite arguably still is. Rivkin and Casey go on to argue that Congress has no authority to regulate how the President exercises his wartime authority: The Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, and Congress can no more direct his exercise of that authority than he can direct Congress in the execution of its constitutional duties.Say what? Have they not read Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives Congress authority to regulate many aspects of military and wartime activity? I’ve italicized a key passage: Congress shall have the power … To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; ...