The Third Hand...

There’s a concept I’ve been discussing with my Father recently; a concept I’ve given to calling, the “Third Hand”.

When a Political Figure acts against his nature, for whatever reason, there’s usually some other force at work, something we don’t see.

Put a simpler way, you got one hand on Obama pulling him one way, you got another hand pulling him in reverse, and then comes another hand (hint-hint: a Third Hand), which pushes him the way he actually goes.

Think of it like this, if there’s a situation where Obama does something to deliberately anger his base, logic suggests that the alternative, whatever it may be, is far worse.

Thus, we come to the release, or non-release, of those Abu Ghraib Photos, and the President’s reversal on that decision. My fellow Progressives/Liberals are justifiably upset by the decision…or maybe not so justifiably.

Looked at on its own, by itself the decision to withhold those photos is indefensible. Lord knows people I read, admire and respect have been dumping all over it. (Though I will say, David Kurtz in TPM comes very close to the explanation I'm about to give you, and...after all...he's a professional, and got there first, so...kudos.)

But…and I hate to bring the West Wing into anything…but it’s like President Bartlet said in the episode Hartsfield’s Landing (Episode 58, Season 3): “See the whole board…”

What do I mean by that?

Ask yourself, what happened? What made President Obama change his mind, or more to the point, has something changed that would make President Obama change his mind??

I’d say, yes.

Mind you this is just a theory, but at the same time...

Since the last week of April, beginning of May, there has been a considerable uptick in the violence in Pakistan, as the Taliban has moved ever closer to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan (within 60 miles, so it seems). Now, the United States has been using Aerial drones to ice people across the Pakistani Border. The Pakistani Government has been upset about that, but since Pakistani’s Prime Minister is Asif Ali Zardari (aka Benazir Bhutto’s widower) and Islamist Militants were the ones who killed her, I don’t think he’s that upset…you know what I mean?

(In fact, should I mention that the Pakistani Government wants "ownership" over U.S. Drones? God, I hope we told them "hell, no.")

The situation was so bad that General Petraeus said that Pakistan was two weeks from falling, and the President was asked about the security of Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal at his last press conference.

But something has happened into the interim. Pakistan’s population has decided that they don’t much like the Taliban, or Taliban rule. In fact now that the Taliban has closed within 40 miles of the Capital, suddenly, we don’t have to bribe the Generals into defending their own country anymore. They’re actually (finally) pulling troops off the Indian border to get into the fight with the extremists. In fact, it’s creating something of a humanitarian crisis as refugees flee the fighting.

So, we are left with a situation where the Pakistani Military has finally gotten off its collective, and ineffective ass to start dealing some payback to the Taliban. There's popular support for the offensive in mainstream Pakistan, and all this is coming off recent American pressure to do so.

...and into this hyper-mega-combustile mix, some folks want to release some 2000 more photographs of Americans torturing Muslims?!?

Can you say…Danish Cartoons?? Times ten??

The President said that these Photographs were "not particularly sensational, particularly when compared to the painful images we remember from Abu Ghraib." Maybe, maybe not. We only have his word on this. I've heard in some quarters, these photos were pretty bad. They were bad enough to have Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman write the President a letter begging him to not to release the photos. (It's too bad they couldn't have gotten a Democrat to sign that letter. I would have been helpful if it was bipartisan.)

With the Pakistani populace finally seeing things our way, why do we want to go and insert into the discussion something that makes the Pakistanis start thinking that the Taliban has a point?!?

Listen, some of the stories I’m seeing are using a specific word: stall and/or delay. I think the Administration is eventually going to release these photos, on their own accord. Either that, or I wonder how far they'll fight the case in court. Either way, they’re not going to release those photos yet, not until Pakistan stabilizes.

Personally, I want the photos released, too, but I'm personally okay with this decision as long as it's only a stall, or a delay...and not an outright cancellation.

At the end of Hartsfield's Landing, Sam Seaborn (in case you don’t remember, played by Rob Lowe), asks President Bartlet (Martin Sheen), a question. The answer is one that is both simple and complicated all at the same time, and is one of the reasons (I trust) we all voted for the President in the first place:

SAM

I don’t know how you... I don’t know the word. I...don’t know how you do it.

BARTLET

You have a lot of help. You listen to everybody and then you call the play.

I think the President might owe us a better explanation than the “safety of American Troops”, which is both true and hollow all at once. But this advice is coming from his Generals (something we all thought Bush didn't do enough of), and its coming from his OLC (who may actually have read a Law Book or two in their careers).

Still, I think the real reasons play across a far wider board...one we all should try to see, but that the President is ultimately responsible for.

Please remember, there was a reason we decided we wanted this man to call the plays.


UPDATE (5:26pm Pacific): For the record, I beat Joe Klein to the punch.



Originally posted at Fort McHenry.

Did Holder just leave himself some Wiggle Room?

I got this from reading Andrew Sullivan (who was reading Marc Ambinder), so this is hardly a thought I can take credit for, but listen to what Ambinder has to say about Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement on the late and lamented Torture Prosecutions:

Here's what Attorney General Holder said today in his statement: "Holder also stressed that intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice from the Justice Department that their conduct was lawful, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct."

The emphasis is Ambinder's.

Now, I work around Lawyers. I work around them every day. My Dad’s new wife is, in fact, a Lawyer herself.

I’m just saying, I know how these guys sound, and I know when they leave themselves wiggle room.

Folks, that ain’t wiggle room, that’s more like a tunnel in which large eighteen wheels can pass.

Sullivan puts it better than I can:

If evidence emerges of bad faith in torture sessions, then those staffers may well face legal consequences. Ditto if the legal advice was given in bad faith, along Nuremberg lines, Yoo and Bybee should start sweating. That's why the internal OPR report on the legal professionalism of the torture lawyers is so crucial and why it is being fought over so fiercely. If Yoo and Bybee's memos were so below legal standards that they can be objectively shown to be a means to get away with torture rather than good faith effort to apply the law to proposed torture techniques, then they too acted in bad faith. And they too are war criminals.

Now, all that said “wiggle room” isn’t a substitute for action (which I think we, the ACLU, Senator Russ Feingold, and civil libertarians would prefer). But it is something, especially when you couple this with action from the Congress. Either Chamber will do.

I think, in the wake of our most recent NSA Spying Story, the Congress might find itself a little more willing to act.

Granted, it has an air of “It’s one thing to have the mob get wiretapped, but now that it’s one of us…” but again, it'll do.

Oh, and in case your fingers were crossed, uncross 'em. Spain isn't going to help:

Despite recent reports to the contrary, Spain’s attorney general has now reportedly decided not to prosecute the Bush Six — the top legal officials in the Bush administration who allegedly approved the torture of terror suspects. Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpio said that the United States would be the proper forum for such a case.

We can only hope.


Originally posted at Fort McHenry.

A matter of emphasis...

I love the Mainstream Media because you can always go there to get such straight answers.

Can you detect the sarcasm in my voice? It's a blog, it's hard to tell.

For example, in Reuters today, you see the following headline: Obama CIA pick may back "limited" abuse prosecution.

President Barack Obama's choice to head the CIA said on Thursday he would support "limited" prosecution of any agents who deliberately violated the law in interrogating terrorism suspects.

Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, in Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination, broke with outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden to support a congressional inquiry into the agency's detention and interrogation program launched after the September 11 attacks.

He said the Senate Intelligence Committee would be an appropriate place for an inquiry "to learn lessons from what happened" in the program, and said he would do everything he could to cooperate.

Ahhh, wonderful to hear.

But wait a minute Reuters is European. (Damn you, old Europe!!) Time Magazine, a fine American publication, on the other hand, has a different take entirely called: Panetta: Don't Punish Waterboarding.

CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta says the CIA interrogators who used waterboarding or other harsh techniques against prisoners on the authority of the White House should not be prosecuted.

Panetta told a Senate panel on Thursday that those individuals should not be prosecuted or investigated if they acted pursuant to the law as presented by the attorney general.

See, America the trick is...you gotta keep reading, because Time Magazine eventually says the same thing, despite its headline; which as you know is written by someone else.

However, Panetta says that if interrogators went beyond the methods that they were told were legal, they should be investigated and prosecuted.

The Bush White House approved CIA waterboarding of three prisoners in 2002 and 2003. The CIA banned the practice internally in 2006.

President Barack Obama has prohibited harsh interrogation techniques.

For the record, that's whole Time article.

But before we go cheering Reuters, they loop back as well:

Panetta said he considered "waterboarding" to be torture, but did not support prosecuting agents who relied on high-level legal guidance allowing such techniques.

But at the same time...

However, "if there were those who deliberately violated the law, and deliberately took actions which were above and beyond the standards presented to them, then obviously in those limited cases there should be prosecution," he said.

This is all good, but the truth of what's going to happen probably lies somewhere in between Reuters and Time. I bet Panetta wouldn't mind prosecuting some of his guys, if for no other reason than to get them to squeal on the big fish: Rummy, Cheney and the unemployable Gonzalez. But remember, he's not a prosecutor. He also doesn't want to start a rebellion on his first day at Langley.

The best strategy is to punt the thing to Congress, and let them do the dirty (and constitutionally mandated) work.

But if there's one thing to bear in mind, that did put me in a bit of a cold sweat, it's this paragraph from the Reuters article:

Panetta said he would if necessary ask Obama to allow harsher interrogations than those covered by the Army Field Manual, which the president last month set as the government standard. The manual bans techniques such as waterboarding.

"I would not hesitate," to seek broader interrogation authority, Panetta said, adding "I think that this president would do nothing that would violate the laws that are in place."

He promised to tell Congress if Obama were to authorize a departure from standards the president imposed last month.

So...the President might go back to torture, but he'll warn us first?

I don't see how that stands with "this president would do nothing that would violate the laws that are in place." Methinks (mehopes) this is a way to placate the Republicans on the panel.


Originally posted on Fort McHenry.

Revenge is a dish best served?

 
I read this article last week in Salon about Obama's plans to investigate torture under Bush with great interest. The torture issue has been a particular sticking point for me, as it flies in the face of what I believe the US can be, dare I say "should" (I have issues with that word) be.

(Another part of this was my frustration and dismay with the rhetoric, which I felt spent too little time on the fact that torture doesn't work. Intelligence gained through torture is always viewed as suspect at best, as it is so reasonable to believe a torturee would say anything to get the torture to stop. That's why we don't torture confessions out of criminals - the Inquisition never became the foundational basis for an effective system of justice for a reason.)

But, it has remained kicking around my head because it begs the question of how much Obama's administration will, and how much we want them to, investigate and potentially prosecute wrongdoing by the outgoing administration. (And, yes, I know the linked article specifically addresses this fact, saying that prosecution isn't the stated goal of the torture commission. But, as an investigation with no possibility of prosecution would be a pointless exercise, would contain the implicit assumption that there is nothing to find heinous enough to warrant prosecution, we can safely consider legal action as a possibility.)

Do we want any measure of revenge for the last eight years of negligent incompetence and possible willful deceit? Would you have pardoned Nixon?

Because, I have to tell you, I want some measure of accountability. In particular, and this is something I wanted more forcefully addressed in the campaign despite the political peril, I want a real accounting of the war in Iraq. I want every supporter or the war and very especially the architects of the war to publicly justify every military death and injury, every taxpayer dollar, every civilian casualty. I want the new administration to force a public dialogue, to put to rest the narratives that the Hawks sling around about our decision to invade.

This isn't a simple question, because it goes beyond any personal ax we might have to grind. To demand accountability for the past eight years puts our focus, the Obama administration's focus, on the past, and we have problems to solve that demand foresight and concentrated effort. Will too much focus on redressing of grievances undermine efforts for change?

Or, will fears that it would undermine those efforts provide a convenient cover for some truly incompetent and downright evil to escape accountability?

Would You Please Let It Go?

I only want to put up one quick post about the McCain speech tonight, it is late and I'm too tired (the time at the end of the posts for this blog is in Pacific time, where the other two authors are, but I'm on the east coast) to go into full rant mode at all the dumb crap he said tonight.

I just want to say that I am so sick and tired of being forced to fight the Baby Boomers' battles from 40 years ago. Would you please just go away? We've been bored with you ass-holes for twenty years now. You didn't change the world nearly as much as you think you did.

How many sovereign nations have we interfered with for no reason since Vietnam? How much bigger has the gap gotten between the rich and the poor? How much smaller have those polar ice caps gotten since the Summer of Love? Yea, see what I'm sayin'?

And now we've got McCain (technically not a Baby Boomer I suppose) bringing all of this crap back up for yet another election cycle. Why the hell have the last five presidential elections been about the Vietnam War?

I think 80% of tonight's convention speeches were about McCain spending 5-1/2 years in a box being tortured.

Dear Senator McCain: I DON'T CARE.

Look, I'm sure it was horrible going through what you went through and nobody should have to deal with such a horrific experience, even if you had been dropping bombs on innocent civilians.

Torture is an evil act and I would love to see it disappear from this earth. But you having gone through that experience 40 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with this election and your credibility as a candidate or even as a human being.

But the way you bring it up every time you get asked a difficult question, even about something as unrelated as the housing crisis, does say a lot about your credibility and character.

Or lack thereof.