A letter to Harper's Magazine by Joseph Marguelies of Chicago. Harper's entitled it "Stress Position":

In “We Still Torture” [Criticism, July, 2009], Luke Mitchell notes that President Obama has preserved much more than he has rejected of his predecessor’s approach to post-9/11 detentions. This fidelity to the past is not confined to detentions; regarding domestic surveillance and state secrets, the differences between Bush and Obama are likewise insignificant.

There is nothing unusual about a president who fails to deliver on a promise of change. What is striking is that so many people—on both the left and the right—seem to believe, contrary to all evidence, that change has indeed come, and that Obama has adopted a set of policies diametrically opposed to those of the Bush Administration. For some, this misconception—an alleged end to a shameful epoch—has occasioned a sigh of relief; for others, like former vice president Dick Cheney, it has produced alarmist consternation. Why do so many see so much in so little?

As with much in politics, it is a problem of perspective. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, post-9/11 detention policy is necessarily remote. Shrouded in secrecy, it operates in a realm set apart from our daily existence and completely beyond our influence. It exists as a collection of evocative images and ideas—black sites, Guantánamo, terrorists, torture—that are entwined with the most powerful political symbols in American life: race, national security, and, the most elusive of all, “American values.”

This potent symbolism guarantees popular interest in the debates surrounding our detention policy even as the policy’s remoteness means that people cannot intelligently evaluate these debates. Are the prisoners innocent men, wrongly detained and horribly mistreated? Or coddled terrorists committed to destruction and mayhem? Can they be tried in federal court or paroled into the United States? Or would they overwhelm our courts and disappear into the shadows only to strike again?

We are apt to forget that Americans rather recently attached inordinate significance to a junior senator’s dramatic allegations that Communists had infiltrated the State Department. McCarthyism and its attendant debates unfolded mostly at a symbolic level; today, the public’s passionate attachment to the course of detention policy is similarly untempered by reason.

Under such circumstances, people form opinions based on symbolic gestures from trusted voices. That is, when remote issues acquire symbolic significance, symbolic gestures substitute for actual change. In a recent speech at the National Archives, surrounded by our founding and most revered documents, President Obama announced that he had broken with the policies of President Bush and embraced the Constitution. The response was swift and predictable: obama reinstates rule of law. The details announced in the same speech, including Obama’s plan to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial—the same policy so detested during the Bush Administration—were generally ignored. The symbolic gesture (the closure of Guantánamo) satisfied the portion of the public that trusts Obama and alarmed the portion that does not.

It makes no difference—to either group—that Guantánamo may be closed but immediately re-opened elsewhere, or that Obama has stepped into the footprint left by the forty-third president. Political change is usually just symbolic change, and that, for most, is enough.

Public Option Now!

An email I sent to a bunch of friends and family today:

Greetings fellow Americans,

I have never tried to start a pass-along email before, but this issue seems so important that I hope you will excuse me for doing it now. Whether you see yourself as right, left, or centrist, I am hoping you will send this email to as many friends and family members you know who will consider reading up on what I see as the most important aspect of the healthcare reform that the Obama administration is currently trying to push through: what is known as the "public option."

I am hoping this email might encourage liberals and lefties like myself to learn even more, and back even more, the "public option" over an unrealistic "single-payer" system. Let's admit it: single-payer in the U.S. is just not going to happen in our lifetimes.

I am also hoping that some conservatives out there might be able to look beyond their usual dismissals of a public option as "socialized medicine" and take some time to at least understand better what they are fighting against--and, more importantly, to understand the difference between a "single-payer" or strictly public system and the private-public mix currently under consideration in Congress.

I am hoping our country will work toward a public-private mix, one that has a viable and complete "public option" for any American who wants it, and one where those desiring more or better healthcare would be free to purchase private insurance. Beyond seeing the establishment of a strictly public system as unrealistic in our country, I also see it as potentially unnecessary since people should be free to purchase private insurance for more or better healthcare than what the state can provide, even if the state is providing great care (as, I believe, it is morally obliged to do). The goal is to get every citizen of the state basic health care, and any private option should be just that: an option. It should be secondary and not get in the way of a viable, prevention-focused, womb-to-tomb public option.

As reported on June 20, 2009, a NYT/CBS poll shows that there is currently "wide support for government-run health" in our country: "Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers [known as 'the public option.'] The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector."

If you are worried about higher taxes, you should know that the average insured American family currently shells out $1000 per year for the cost of the uninsured. It is called a "hidden tax"--and this is just the cost of the uninsured. Just think what the "hidden tax" is for insurance companies' profits--companies like AIG who have recently received $173 Billion in a government bailout. After AIG received their first $80 Billion, "the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort." Later AIG would balk at the claims of AIG-insured passengers of the jet that was ditched in the Hudson. There's free-market efficiency for you!

Would you rather have an AIG bureaucrat between you and your doctor, or a government employee? Why are government employees so maligned? Soldiers, by the way, are government employees. Actually, given how much we tax payers have given AIG the only difference is that the AIG bureaucrat gets a much larger salary and a big fat bonus if he or she buys up some toxic asset and helping AIG become "too big to fail." Also, this report by the Commonwealth Fund argues that it is clear that the government does a better job at running its part of Medicare than the private sector does with its part, called "Medicare Advantage" (see this post by Maggie Mahar which lists the myriad ways Medicare Advantage amounts to an insurance company scam). As Paul Waldman argues, Medicare Advantage shows that "the government pays insurance companies more to provide a service it is providing to other enrollees for less."

The U.S. spends more for less in general, according to a World Health Organization report: "The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance.... The United Kingdom, which spends six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health services, ranks 18th." In 2007, according to a report by the the National Coalition on Health Care, the U.S. spent $2.4 trillion or $7900 per person on healthcare, which constituted 17% of GDP. So we spent 17% of our GDP for a 37th ranking, while the U.K. spent 6% of its GDP to be ranked 18th. That is more than bad health care; that's bad business, fiscal irresponsibility. It's also immoral because that 17% of GDP, that $2.4 trillion, leaves 50 million Americans uninsured.

I think most would agree that our current insurance-company-based healthcare system does not work. It is in fact, broken. Very sick. A "sicko" in both senses: ill and also pervertedly immoral. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies estimates that 18,000 Americans will die this year due to being uninsured. I know a 23 year old who is right now putting off a much-needed second heart surgery because she is worried she can't afford it, and she can't get insurance because of her pre-existing condition. What should she do? Yes, she could die if her heart valve fails due to the scar tissue from the first operation, one she received when she was six months old. If she doesn't get the operation soon, and she doesn't die, her life is at risk of being really hurt or ruined by a variety of health issues her heart problems could cause. 18K die each year, but how many millions of Americans' lives have been egregiously hurt or ruined by being uninsured?

Not only is this immoral; people like this person with a bad heart valve end up costing more over the span of their unnecessarily unhealthy lives. The same WHO report ranked the US 72nd in overall health. According to a report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "promoting the health of young children, before five years of age, could save society up to $65 billion in future health care costs." What could we save by focusing on preventative health care in general?

You might ask yourself why the so-called "competition"of our current system has failed so miserably, and why basic healthcare is not a basic right like education--why the myths circulated about the Canadian system are so often accepted as fact. I ask why would anyone defend a system ranked 37th overall in the world by the WHO? Right above Slovenia, but way below number-one-ranked France. Even those liberals at BusinessWeek agree that "the French system--a complex mix of private and public financing--offers valuable lessons for would-be health-care reformers in the U.S."

Let's put away our usual prejudices about the French, the Canadian healthcare system, and knee-jerk reactions to government health care as "socialist" and take a serious look at a "public option" that would lay the foundation for the U.S. system to move toward where it has to go: a more viable and ethical "mix of private and public financing." It has to go there because we cannot afford our current "sicko" system: it is too expense in dollars, lives, and needless suffering. Health care should be a basic right here in the U.S., just like it is in every other advanced nation. It's obvious to almost anyone who has grown up in an advanced nation. Please pass this email on so we can get more people educated about what it means to support a "public option." We need a viable public-private system where health care is treated like a basic right.

Thanks for your time.

The Baggage Handler

A Brief History of Recent Failures to Uphold the Constitution

When it comes to the many issues surrounding the US war crime of torture, one of the main political questions for me is who among American politicians should be investigated, prosecuted and, if found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, sentenced according to the law (impeachment, jail time, disbarring, censure, etc.).

It has been rather clear to me that Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Rice, Rumsfeld and several of their minions (Addington, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, etc.) should have been investigated back in 2004/2005 after Abu Ghraib broke--that is, after it became more and more clear that the Bush administration had authorized, rationalized and ordered crimes such as extraordinary rendition and torture.

Since then it has become clear that prosecution has been in order for years, especially after Obama's recent release of the so-called torture memos and the recent release of the Red Cross report. It has also become clear that many in congress and elsewhere, Democrats and Republicans, are now guilty of failing to uphold the constitution and should also be investigated and potentially prosecuted.

Condoleezza Rice's recent comment that "by definition if it was authorized by the President" any controversial interrogation technique is therefore legal suggests why Bush and his cronies should be in more trouble than they are currently in: they believed that they were above the law simply by Presidential decree. Dana Milbank reported on the Bush administration's post-Watergate move to return power to the President, but his report buys into Bush administration rationalizations that there is actually a constitutional theory that supports giving the power to the President to suspend the constitution. Milbank calls this theory a strong version of the "unitary executive theory," but even this executive-biased theory has to be stretched beyond all recognition to match Rice's imperial legal theory (irony: she will be teaching political theory at Stanford).

In 2005 it became clear that Bush and Co. had broken the Watergate-inspired FISA law by wiretapping US citizens without warrants. By early 2006, the focus of those interested in bringing the Bush administration to justice switched from lying us into war, war crimes and torture to warrantless wiretapping, which at the time seemed like a much clearer violation of the law since Bush and Co., in all their arrogance, admitted they were accountable. There was also an under-reported majority of Americans who supported impeachment for warrantless wiretapping. In January, 2006, Al Gore said on ABC News that warrentless wiretapping could constitute an impeachable offense.

To many, these areas of "high crimes" were all, by themselves, deserving of investigation, prosecution and even impeachment years ago. But from Abu Ghraib in 2004 to the mid-term election in late 2006, the Bush administration had nothing to fear because a Republican-led congress had no problem violating the law by ignoring calls for independent investigations. They felt no need to uphold the constitution, and the citizenry did not hold them accountable to their sworn oaths to do so. These violations of the law themselves deserve investigation: legislatures should not have a choice with respect to upholding the constitution. It is their legal obligation. This is also true for Democratic legislatures, including Pelosi, and our current Executive, who both share an "off the table" policy with regard to even investigation of these high crimes.

My argument has always been that deciding not to investigate, let alone prosecute, these obvious high crimes is itself a high crime. The oath that all of these politicians take when they begin their service to us citizens starts with the idea of upholding the constitution. It's very basic, very American. Of course, the idea is to have a system of checks and balances between three equally weighted branches of government, in a way that supports the rule of law (in order to avoid the rule of people and parties, dictators, kings and oligarchies). During 2004-2006, a GOP dominated executive, legislative and judiciary did not provide any hope for such checks and balances, but it did provide fertile ground for the executive's abuse of power in the form of assuming king-like powers to be above the law. GOP leaders even employed the anachronistic idea "sovereign immunity"--and our supposedly liberal President has followed suit and even gone further than the Bushies in some ways.

In November, 2006, there was cause for hope regarding investigations of GOP high crimes when a new, Democratic-led congress was elected. This hope was quickly dashed by the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, when she declared soon after assuming power, in contrast to the campaign promises of many in her party, that impeachment processes, including any investigations to see if prosecution would be warranted, were "off the table."

A little over a year later, in December, 2007, a reason came to light for Pelosi's "off the table" policy, an obvious betrayal of her duty to uphold the constitution. Pelosi had been briefed on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" in September, 2002. As John Nichols recently points out, this was known in late 2007, but it has only recently become big news after the release of the pertinent CIA briefings notes, which do not explicitly mention waterboarding. Everyone is focused on waterboarding and whether Pelosi was briefed on them in September, 2002, because it is seen as an obvious form of torture, and even more obviously when used 83 times, as it was against Abu Zubaydah. The problem with this focus on waterboarding, according to the Physicians for Human Rights, is that all of the EITs are potentially torture:

The unprecedented analysis by Human Rights First and Physicians for Human Rights combines medical and legal expertise to comprehensively examine ten techniques widely reported to have been authorized for use in the CIA's secret interrogation program, including sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, stress positions, beating, and induced hypothermia. The Report —"Leave No Marks: 'Enhanced' Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality"— demonstrates the mental and physical consequences of the use of these techniques, and its title refers to the techniques' intended design, which is to inflict psychological trauma and pain without leaving physical scars. U.S. law requires an assessment of the physical and mental impact of an interrogation method to determine its legality. The report concludes that each of the ten tactics is likely to violate U.S. laws, including the War Crimes Act, the U.S. Torture Act, and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Pelosi insistence that she was not briefed on waterboarding in September, 2002, is basically a claim that she was not briefed on techniques that would constitute torture, therefore she had no obligation at the time to report or investigate possible war crimes. The CIA claims Pelosi knew about waterboarding in 2002, but Pelosi claims she didn't know until 2003 and that the CIA lied to her then, saying it would be used, not that it had been in use for a long time. All of these complexities are moot: if Pelosi was briefed on EITs, she was briefed on possible war crimes, with or without waterboarding, and whether it was briefed as being done at the time or as a plan for the future. She was legally obligated to have done something in 2002 and should be investigated.

GOP leaders have recently called for investigations of Pelosi's role in approving torture, and have even gone so far as to say she was one of the authors of this policy. I agree with Robert Scheer when he argues that calling Pelosi an "author" of the policy is nonsense, but I go farther than calling her simply an enabler:

"She was neither the author of a systematic policy of torture nor has she been, like Cheney and most top Republicans in Congress, an enduring apologist for its practice. It is a nonsensical distraction to place her failure to speak out courageously as a critic of the Bush policies on the same level as those who engineered one of the most shameful debacles in U.S. history. But what she, and anyone else who went along with this evil, as lackadaisically as she now claims, should be confronted with are the serious implications of their passive acquiescence."
Pelosi silence after the 2002 briefing and her "off the table" policy certainly enabled the Bush administration to both continue torturing and avoiding prosecution. But "enable" seems too weak here. I would go with "accomplice" and suggest that she should be investigated and prosecuted if it is found that she failed in her duty to uphold the constitution."

Pelosi is also embroiled in the wiretapping crime. She admitted that she was briefed "a few years ago" on Bush administration illegal wiretaps of Representative Jane Harman and, again, chose to do nothing about it. Take a second and consider this: the Bush administration confesses to wiretapping (Watergate!) a leading Democrat (Watergate!), and they confess this to another leading Democrat, and she then decides not to do anything about it. Regardless if she was protecting herself or Harmon, how could she rationalize that it was okay not to do anything about this obvious high crime of subverting our democracy, one that is so much like the Nixon administration's bugging of the Democratic headquarters? It is important to ask if Harmon break the law with regard to AIPAC, but it is much more important to investigate the Bush administration for these crimes, and anyone who enabled them to get away with it, including Pelosi and Harman, who has now changed her tune on warrantless wiretapping.

These two examples of Pelosi enabling the Bush administration's criminal actions--wiretapping and torture--make Pelosi's "off the table" policy understandable: she was protecting herself from investigation and possible prosecution. This also makes Obama's decision to adopt the "off the table" policy more understandable: in addition to trying to create an environment better suited to passing the legislation he wants passed, he was probably also protecting the second highest ranking Democrat: Nancy Pelosi. Regardless of his reasons, his DECISION not to uphold the constitution seems to me be a high crime itself.

Obama's Duty to Prosecute

Here are two articles that clearly spell out Obama's duty to prosecute those who committed or authorized war crimes in the form of torture:

"Obama Stands Nuremberg On Its Head" by Mike Farrell.

"Not the Better Part of Valor: Obama's Duty to Prosecute Torturers" by Marjorie Cohen.

Here's my response to the first article:

I am a graduate of the military’s SERE program, the well-documented source of torture techniques used by the CIA. For me, it is obvious that what the CIA did was torture, and therefore a war crime. SERE was set up to train soldiers and flyers to resist torture in case they ever found themselves captured. The whole idea of the program was to teach this type of “resistance” (the R in the name). The techniques used by SERE cadre came from Chinese torture techniques used in the Korean War (and from the sadistic imaginations of “hell week” trained cadre). We all knew these techniques were torture; that was the point.

The parallel with Nuremberg is not the severity of the crime; the parallel is that a war crime was committed and the legal question is whether someone should be held accountable for that crime if they were following orders. I am confident that the torturers in question were trained, as I was during SERE training, on the Geneva Conventions, and that they knew they were torturing. They also knew that they had a legal obligation not to commit war crimes, not to torture. My training made this abundantly clear.

I am not trained as a lawyer, but the question for me is whether Obama is putting himself above the law by *deciding* not to uphold the constitution when war crimes were obviously committed. It seems to me that Obama is legally obligated to uphold the constitution, and therefore legally obligated to prosecute potential war criminals, including the CIA agents, the lawyers who helped justify their crimes, and those who gave the ultimate orders: Bush and Rumsfeld.

I supported Obama in the election, so it saddens me to think that his *decision* to put himself above the law in this way may be an impeachable crime. Of course, it gets really messy if we consider that many democrats have been guilty of such crimes, of not upholding the constitution, for a while now (Pelosi and Reid) for not prosecuting these war crimes earlier: keeping such prosecutions “off the table” for political reasons. This is all unclear to me because I am not a lawyer, but Bush put himself above the law (with the help of Yoo and friends) by ordering torture (and wiretapping). I felt he should have been impeached for it long ago, and I feel he still should be prosecuted.

We need a big reminder that kings aren’t allowed here in the US. Presidents can’t *decide* whether or not to follow and/or uphold the law. If they *decide* not to uphold the law, to betray their oath (botched or not) for political expediency, they should be impeached. Doesn’t Obama, a constitutional scholar of sorts, understand what his duty is here? He has a duty to uphold the constitution first and foremost. He is not fit for the job if he doesn’t do his duty.

A letter to Robert Scheer on torture

Dear Robert Scheer,

I am writing to thank you for your comments on torture last Friday, 10/19/07, on Left, Right & Center (LR&C)....

You mentioned the "Fort Hunt Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII" 10/6 article in the Washington Post. These state-side WWII interrogators seem convincing when they claim not to have done anything to unsettle the American myth that "we do not torture."

With respect to the issue of the use of torture by Americans in WWII, I wanted to draw your attention to a book review I read yesterday in the NY Review of Books. The book is After the Reich: The Brutal History of Allied Occupation by Giles MacDonogh and the article is "Cruel Allied Occupiers" by Patricia Meehan. It seems the Fort Hunt interrogators were the state-side exception when it came to US interrogators of WWII. From the book:

The Americans had used methods similar to those employed by the SS in Dachau. One of these was keeping the prisoner for long periods in solitary confinement.... Worse still were the mock executions.... More conventional methods of torture included kicks to the groin, deprivation of sleep and food, and savage beatings. When the Americans set up a commission of inquiry into the methods used by their investigators, the found that, of the 139 cases they examined, 137 had "had their testicles permanently destroyed by kicks received from the American War Crimes Investigation team."

In America's Anti-Torture Tradition, Robert Kennedy Jr makes the point that an anti-torture stance goes to the root of the American tradition, connecting it to George Washington and the American Revolution. But you have to wonder how complete his research is when he argues that Ike guaranteed the fair treatment of Germans. Perhaps he should read MacDonogh's book?

I'd be interested in what you think about these points on torture. I will be speaking on torture at Stanford's Center on Ethics in January. I know you are busy, but it would be great if you could make it. The time is yet to be determined. Thanks for your time.

Best wishes, Baggage Handler

My Answer to MoveOn’s ad: it’s clearly “General Betray Us”

I’m not sure I can add much to Cindy Sheehan’s and Kieth Olbermann’s slamming of Bush and the yes-vote Dems on the MoveOn ad issue. Olbermann is particularly strong on the very American line between the military and politics. Sheehan is particularly strong on why support for MoveOn is critical, but also why MoveOn needs to distance itself more from the Dems and less from what she considers the real peace movement.

My disgust goes out mostly to the yes-vote or no-vote-at-all Dems.

One of the most important outcomes of the Senate vote on 9/20/07 to repudiate an ad from MoveOn.org that referred to Gen. David Petraeus as “General Betray Us” is a surprisingly neat division of the Democratic faction of the corporate party.

It seems to me that the “yes” voters would constitute the “fanaticism tolerant” faction of the Democratic faction (if not just the fanatical faction), whereas the “no” voters would simply be those who have to be a part of this faction, and this one-party system, in order to get elected.

I would be more disgusted by the charade of this Senate repudiation if this type of thing weren’t so common. To paraphrase a celluloid Colonel, America can’t handle the truth.

(Progressive voters, by the way, should scratch off any presidential candidate not clearly on the “no” list--even though I am not a Clinton fan. Feingold-Boxer for ’08?).

Democrats Voting to Condemn MoveOn.org:

Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Cardin (D-MD), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Conrad (D-ND), Dorgan (D-ND), Feinstein (D-CA), Johnson (D-SD), Klobuchar (D-MN), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Leahy (D-VT), Lincoln (D-AR), McCaskill (D-MO), Mikulski (D-MD), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Salazar (D-CO), Tester (D-MT), Webb (D-VA)

Demsocrats Who Voted ‘No’:

Akaka (D-HI) Bingaman (D-NM), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH), Byrd (D-WV), Clinton (D-NY), Dodd (D-CT), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Harkin (D-IA), Inouye (D-HI), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerry (D-MA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Levin (D-MI), Menendez (D-NJ), Murray (D-WA), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Sanders (I-VT), Schumer (D-NY), Stabenow (D-MI), Whitehouse (D-RI), Wyden (D-OR)

Democrats Not Voting:

Biden (D-DE), Cantwell (D-WA), Obama (D-IL)

In addition to the Senate repudiation, the MoveOn ad has been the talk of right-wing news. The repudiation, however, has also galvenized MoveOn members like me, and thousands of non-members have emailed to show support:

"I'm currently in Iraq. I do not agree with this war, and if I did support this war, it would not matter. You have the RIGHT to speak the truth. We KNOW that you support us. Thank you for speaking out for being our voice. We do not have a voice. We are overshooted by those who say that we soldiers do not support organizations like MoveOn. WE DO. YOU ARE OUR voice."

"I have given a son to this country. My brother, my father, my uncle have all served honorably and bravely. I am a loyal American. I am outraged and sick to death of the tactics this administration uses to try to silence dissent to a war that is unjust, built and maintained on lies, political power, and greed. I was content to let others fight more loudly, but no more."
–Sharyn W., NC

"I am a prior soldier who served in Iraq for 13 months, and am now an expecting mom with a husband who is deployed in Baghdad. I don't think I can ever forgive the Bush administration for the lies that tricked America into this war and hurt my family so badly. I am ashamed of those American politicians who would condemn an organization for practicing the Freedom of Speech that so many soldiers have died for. "
–Danielle B., OH

"As a US Navy veteran and an Iraq war veteran of over a year I want to ask, What has happened to us? What has happened to our voice? Where is this country going with stopping free speech and free press? ... Every time I think of the long nights I had in Anbar remembering what I was fighting for, well here it is.... "
–Ahmad H., LA

MoveOn has also received record contributions for their next political ad, "Betrayal of Trust," another truthful, hard-hitting ad, this one about how the GOP's so-called support of our troops keeps them longer in Iraq by keeping their tours unreasonably long.

Regardless of any potential tactical blunder of the "General Betray Us" ad, of throwing such a corporate-media-syntonic bone to the rabid fanatics of the large right-wing faction of the corporate party, MoveOn’s position, clearly stated in the ad and backed up thoroughly on their web site, was to simply suggest the obvious truth: General Petraeus mislead the American people in 2004 with his Washington Post op-ed piece, and did the same during his recent testimony in congress. He has clearly betrayed us, his country, his duty, his profession, and the oaths he repeatedly took to serve the constitution and to tell the truth.

Paul Krugman had it right in his 9/3/2007 NYT Op-ed column, “Snow Job in the Desert,” which made an excellent comparison between Colin Powell’s WMD address to the UN and Gen. Petraeus’s then upcoming testimony to congress. In both cases, “the political and media establishments swooned” as the Generals presented doctored evidence in the attempt to make the Bush administration’s lies seem true, their folly seem reasonable, their folie seem sane. Both Generals have clearly betrayed the American people and their country by being followers and not leaders, by being overly loyal to their boss and their political careers.

The only solid evidence these two testimonies gave was for the fact that, since George Washington, generals more and more should stay generals and keep out of politics. Powell never ran for President, though a 2004 bid would have been welcomed because anyone is better than Bush. His UN address would have haunted him in the general elections, of course, but many Republicans are still making the same arguments he made to the UN, so he may have had a chance in the primaries.

Three things have struck me about the career of General Petraeus. First, Bush’s grand warrior didn’t see combat until he arrived in Iraq four years ago as a Major General (!). This veteran and Air Force Academy graduate knows that this is really unusual. Second, his military effectiveness there has come under considerable criticism (of course, in utter contrast to the administration’s obviously effective staging). And, third, there is a credible report that he wants to be president someday.

The latter makes more sense when you consider how inappropriate it is for an Army General to write any op-ed piece while in command during a war, and particularly one that was so blatantly partisan, one so blatantly timed to influence the elections, and one that can now be seen as so blatantly untrue. Beyond kissing Bush’s ass, few besides Gary Hart and Rachel Sklar have mentioned that this presidential election season op-ed can also be understood as the General writing his own report card for the job he had been doing in Iraq. The Democrats never should have allowed Petraeus to testify since they should have known he would once more be giving himself and Bush a B+ when they are obviously failing.

Rachel Sklar, however, is significantly off the mark in her Huffington Post piece. She states that the basic evidence against Petraeus is not “enough to damn the Petraeus report on its own, not by a long shot.” Her reasoning here strikes me as more swooning over uniforms, rank, and medals: “There are four stars on his shoulder that didn't get there by being on the sidelines.” No, he’s been in the game, but the game has only recently included war: he had only two stars before he saw combat at all. Kissing ass to Bush secured the other two.

Sklar includes most of the important evidence against Petraeus. She summarizes Krugman’s main two points: “(1) Petraeus, whose assertions are being so eagerly awaited, has been wildly wrong before; and (2) The publication of that op-ed so close to an election is suggestive of a political/partisan interest.” Actually, Krugman’s first main point is that Petreaus lied in 2004. In other words, Petraeus “betrayed us” in 2004. His second point is that the op-ed piece is much more than “suggestive” of inappropriate partisan politics.

When you combine his crass partisanship, the inappropriateness of the op-ed piece, the fact that Petraeus is clearly a Bush kiss ass with political ambitions, and Hart’s point that “(3) The credibility of the report [and the congressional testimony] is affected when the reporter has a stake in the outcome,” it seems to me that there is clearly more than enough evidence here to substantiate an answer to MoveOn’s question.

Moreover, this military fetish is itself a huge problem in our unbelievably militaristic nation: the swooning, the pedestal granted to the uniform, etc. Remember, we live in a country where “support our troops” means keeping them in Iraq to either die, get maimed, or suffer from PTSD (and then be neglected by the VA). According to the GOP (and too many in the Democratic faction of the corporate party), “support our troops” also means we have to kowtow to four-star generals even though they got their stars mostly by being kiss-ass politicians and liars—and not by being a great warrior.

Krugman is an economist and his 9/14/07 column “A Surge, and Then a Stab” simply asks us to follow the money when we think about the current state of the Iraq war. He makes it clear where the smart money is going: out of Iraq. Bush crony Ray Hunt and his Hunt Oil know this. The column also makes it clear that Bush and crew know this.

Petraeus is a member of Bush and crew. The plan seems to be to keep the money and blood flowing while hoping for something better—but, if that something better doesn’t come, Bush’s tenure is almost over (thank god!) and Cindy Sheehan, the peace movement, MoveOn, and even some Dems can be blamed like the peaceniks were for Vietnam. Bush has obviously been laying the groundwork recently for this type of revisionist history with his troubled, bizarre and hypocritical comparisons of Vietnam and Iraq. Laying the groundwork for right-wing revisionist history is the only explanation I can muster for this odd move. I don’t look forward to the Rambo equivalents of tomorrow where the hero is bemoaning the MoveOn ad.

SERE and American Torture: A Speech Given at the 8/18/07 San Francisco Protest of the American Psychological Association

The military’s "sear" or "seary" program is S-E-R-E: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. It is a school designed to teach officers and special forces--particularly pilots and special forces--how to survive behind enemy lines, evade the enemy, resist interrogation and torture, and escape from a POW camp. The resistance portion of the training simulates the experience of being held prisoner and interrogated and tortured by enemy forces who do not observe the Geneva conventions. Since SERE interrogation techniques do not follow the Geneva conventions, since they are torture, they are only appropriately applied to SERE training. To apply these techniques outside of SERE would be a war crime.

In May 2004 I wrote a blog entry as a response to the Abu Ghraib atrocities. A couple lines from this blog entry were quoted by Stephen Soldz in his important article, "Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanimo,” where he makes it clear what I had suspected back in 2004: that the resistance training I got during SERE could be and has been "reverse engineered" to teach torture rather than just teaching resistance to torture.

What is crucial about this revised, reverse-engineered SERE is that we have a government-sponsored, tax-payer-supported program that we know teaches US citizens to be torturers, and which has lead to the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and more.

What is NOT new here is that Americans are using and teaching torture. US torture does not start with the Bush administration. What is new with Bush is the openness of his administration’s torture policy, and what Naomi Klein calls the “in-sourcing” of that policy. In-sourcing means US citizens are being taught to be torturers.

In Vietnam the US out-sourced much of the torture of the Phoenix Project, a complex of forty interrogations centers around South Vietnam, built and run by the CIA and the US military, but manned mostly with US-trained south Vietnamese interrogators. This complex of torture centers was responsible for the deaths of at least twenty thousand Vietnamese, and it tortured many thousands more. The training textbook for the Phoenix Project was the CIA’s 1963 training manual, the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, which has a whole chapter on “coercive techniques” and was the textbook for Phoenix Project training.

The CIA’s second interrogation manual also has a whole chapter on “coercive techniques”: The 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual. Both manuals “recommend arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets” (see “US Army and CIA Interrogation Manuals”). The manuals describe coercive techniques to be used "to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist."

The 1983 manual was the product of the US Army Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program, also called Project X. Both manuals were presented as evidence during the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1988. These hearings were the response to abuses by the CIA-trained death squads in Honduras. These death squads, and many others like them, trained in Panama at the US-run School of the Americas, also know as “the School of the Assassins,” and “the School of Coups.” Since the rise of Castro, the School of the Americas has been an anti-communist counterinsurgency training school taught by CIA and US military, and taught solely in Spanish. The curriculum included torture and other tools of counterinsurgency. In 2000, the School of the Americas was given the new Orwellian name, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, and moved out of Panama to the US. The name and location has changed, but it is doubtful that the curriculum has.

When it comes to teaching torture, SERE seems to me like elementary school when compared to the graduate programs of the Phoenix Project, the School of the Americas, and the myriad CIA programs throughout the coldwar. The CIA has had torture expertise since its inception during WWII. Again, what is new is that US citizens are being taught to torture rather than out-sourcing to citizens of Latin America or South Vietnam, and that this administration is relatively open about torturing. What is old is that the US continues to produce world-class torturers and to be guilty of world-class war crimes. The CIA and US military learned from the Nazis and Japanese during and after WWII, and then field-tested in Vietnam and Latin America their pseudo-scientific and criminal research of the 1950s done on psychiatric patients and prisoners (See "Prisoner Abuse" below). What is new is that after 9/11 the Bush administration has basically demanded the right to torture openly and so far the American Psychological Association, congress, and much of the country has gone right along with it.

After Abu Ghraib, Bush had to choose a venue to make his ridiculous “We do not torture” speech. He chose Panama City, about an hour from the former home of the School of the Americas. Even if the “we” goes beyond his administration to the US in general, my basic point here is that “we do torture.” US torture doesn’t start with Bush and 9/11. It goes beyond SERE, and beyond Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. WE DO torture - WE DO secret prisons - WE DO rendition - WE DO abolish habeas corpus.

We need to come to terms with who WE are and what WE DO.

Thank you.


See also:

Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from the Past, U.S. National Security Archive, May 12, 2004:

"Throughout the 1950s and early ’60s, the CIA -- the lead agency doing interrogations at Abu Ghraib -- financed and conducted secret research on coercion and human consciousness, McCoy said. 'The scale of that research should not be minimized. By the late ’50s, it reached a billion dollars a year. The agency was providing the majority of the funding for a half-dozen leading psychology departments.'”