DebateGate

Been thinking a bit lately.

Correct me if i am wrong but most of the stories that have come out about how to hack electronic voting machines  have been prominently displayed on places like huffpost and daily kos. In here Brass and Lanya like to post them. And i'm not sure it is republicans who figured out how to hack these machines. The folks at blackbox don't seem that type.

So I'm wondering.

If the dems win congress will that be the end of election fraud charges or will it be discovered that the dems put into practice what they have discovered and written about.

Just asking, ya know.

Just under a year ago I wrote the following while Paris burned:

They say Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East. Does that mean Paris is the Beirut of Europe? Or is that an insult to Beirut?

A week later my mother visited me in Lebanon after I finally convinced her it was safe. “Thank God we didn’t stop in Paris on the way to Beirut,” she said with an absolutely straight face. And I laughed out loud. Beirut, in her mind, was the epitome of urban disaster areas. Paris, as far as she was concerned, was the greatest city on earth. I loved the sudden inversion.

In hindsight I was naïve. I feel chagrined now after arguing long and hard that no one in Lebanon would hurt her, me, or anyone else. To be sure, even if she had visited during this summer’s war she would have been safe from Lebanese. Israeli warplanes were the serious hazard I hadn’t considered.

Lebanon was not as safe as I thought, and it’s less safe today. Last week someone fired rockets at the Buddha Bar across the street from UN headquarters. I took my mother to that bar. The attackers might be Syrian, but they also could be Lebanese. Nobody knows.

Perhaps I was dumb for suggesting that Beirut is safer than Paris even in jest. But sometimes I wonder.
Before next week’s anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.
The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

I doubt this is the work of radical Islamists. Violence in France looks a lot more like race war and class war than jihad. Either way, burning cars -- even at the insane rate of 112 every day -- certainly beats massacreing commuters on the way to work in the morning or blowing up tourist hotels.

Most of the violence is in the outskirts of Paris rather than in the city center. The Buddha Bar and the UN are in downtown Beirut. Parts of Paris may be safer than anywhere in Beirut if you forget, for the sake of discussion, that no one ever gets mugged in Lebanon. There is no chance at all that any country will drop bombs on Paris from warplanes.

Comparing Beirut and Paris is, I admit, a bit ridiculous.

Even so, 15 attacks every day against French police and emergency services is astounding. 3,000 injured police officers is an incredible number. How many cars can even be left if 115 are burned every day?

We’re not talking about jihad or a war against infidels here. But is it crazy to ask how many Israeli police and soldiers have been injured or killed by Hamas and Hezbollah at the same time?

The point is not that France resembles Israel in any meaningful way, or that the suburbs of Paris are a match for the dahiyeh south of Beirut which was controlled by a private Iranian army. I'm comparing these places because I want to draw attention to the enormous disconnect between perception and reality.

If 80 percent of the foreign correspondents in Israel, Iraq, and Lebanon moved to France and covered that conflict instead, France would look like a frightening place indeed. It would, in all liklihood, look more dangerous than it really is. (No cars are burned in the Latin Quarter as far as I know.) Instead the Middle East -- with the probable exception of Baghdad -- looks more dangerous than it really is.

I'm not saying the Middle East isn't dangerous. Some parts of it are. Other parts are safe, though. Even some of the dangerous places are reasonably safe most of the time. My friend Michael Dempsey described Beirut as a "safe dangerous" place, which nails it exactly I think.

My friends and family no longer give me a hard time when I travel to places they wouldn't go. Every time I come home unharmed and untraumatized they lighten up a little bit more. But people who don't know me well, who don't read my blog, and who don't follow the Middle East closely still have a hard time understanding what it's really like across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. My wife has decided that she will no longer tell people when I'm out of town.

"So," one of her clients said the other day. "What hell-hole is your husband in now?"

"Is your husband in Iraq?" our corner grocer asked her in August.

"No," she said. "He's in Israel."

"Oh no!" he said, genuinely alarmed.

She hears this sort of thing constantly. It stresses her out, and it annoys me.

The media make the Middle East look like one never-ending massacre and explosion. France, meanwhile, looks like a storybook land of gourmet cheeses, cafes, and castles. So perhaps I can be forgiven by responding to one cartoon with another, as long as I admit that's what I'm doing. It's fun telling people who think I need body armor in the Levant that Paris is the Beirut of Europe.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001280.html

George W. Bush's "admission" and the Tet analogy

The President has apparently made news by "accepting" the Iraq-Vietnam comparison. Drudge has linked, and lefty blog Think Progress is making a big deal of it. Here is what President Bush said:


Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.

"He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."

Here's what Think Progress said he said:

President Bush is right to finally admit that violence in Iraq has reached a tipping point, and that the U.S. is not winning the war as he has claimed.

That is, of course, not what the President said. He merely agreed that there was an appropriate comparison to be made between the Tet offensive and the violence we are seeing in Iraq today. I agree. The question is, what was the lesson of Tet (the all-out offensive of the Viet Cong in early 1968, at the time of the "Tet" new year holiday in Vietnam)?

At the time the media perceived and promoted the Tet offensive as a great victory for the enemy. In an age when the network anchors deployed truly awesome power, Walter Cronkite destroyed Lyndon Johnson's chances for re-election when he editorialized that we were "mired in stalement". President Johnson declared "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America," and withdrew from the 1968 presidential campaign.

Tet, however, was not a military disaster for the United States. Quite to the contrary, history has revealed that the Tet offensive was in fact a crushing defeat for the Viet Cong, and effectively required that the Communists conquer the South by invasion from the North, rather than by civil insurgency. The Viet Cong were only able to turn a military disaster into strategic victory by persuading the American media that the United States was mired in stalement. With the domestic political support for the war fading fast, the United States decided to withdraw from Indochina, even though it would take Nixon and Kissinger another four years to accomplish it.

The summary of the Wikipedia entry on the Tet offensive captures the current view of military historians, even if it is quite different from the conventional wisdom of the Boomer editors and producers who set the agenda in the mainstream media:

The Tet Offensive can be considered a crushing military defeat for the Communist forces, as neither the Viet Cong nor the North Vietnamese army achieved any of their tactical goals. Furthermore, the operational cost of the offensive was dangerously high, with the Viet Cong essentially crippled by the huge losses inflicted by South Vietnamese and other Allied forces. Nevertheless, the Offensive is widely considered a turning point of the war in Vietnam, with the NLF and PAVN winning an enormous psychological and propaganda victory. Although US public opinion polls continued to show a majority supporting involvement in the war, this support continued to deteriorate and the nation became increasingly polarized over the war.[1] President Lyndon Johnson saw his popularity fall sharply after the Offensive, and he withdrew as a candidate for re-election in March of 1968. The Tet Offensive is frequently seen as an example of the value of propaganda, media influence and popular opinion in the pursuit of military objectives.

Not surprisingly to me but shocking to many, the President obviously knows more history than his interviewer. When President Bush "accepts" the analogy of the surge in violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive in Vietnam, he is not "accepting" that Iraq is an unwinnable struggle against a noble enemy. He is saying that victory or defeat in Iraq will not be a function of the amount of violence that the enemy is able to do during any given period, but our will to keep fighting notwithstanding that violence. In that one regard, Iraq is dangerously similar to Vietnam, which fact the mainstream media would know if the typical editor read military history instead of the journalism pretending to be history that fills the bestseller lists.

http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2006/10/george-w-bushs-admission-and-tet.html

Interesting post over at Instapundit. Click the link to spider off to the embedded links in the original article.



A GOP PRE-MORTEM: So is it over for the GOP majorities in Congress? It's still too early to say, I guess, but when even John Hinderaker is sounding extremely gloomy that's certainly the way to bet.

So I want to stress, for the edification of any Republican leaders who might pay attention, that this is the result of a series of unforced errors on their part. Following is a (partial) list:

1. The Terri Schiavo affair: The bitterness it aroused, which was substantial, opened a fracture in the GOP coalition: Social-conservatives against the rest. And as I noted at the time, the social conservatives were pretty nasty to the rest. No, it wasn't really a case of "theocracy" at work, as people like Ralph Nader agreed with the social conservatives. But the haste to enact federal legislation over a matter of state law, and the mean-spiritedness with which those who disagreed were treated, did the Bush coalition no good. What's more, as I noted at the time (see first link above), this wasn't enough to make the social conservatives happy anyway. Politically, I think this marked the beginning of the end.

2. The Harriet Miers debacle: Plenty of warning in the blogs that this was a big mistake, but all ignored by the White House and Congressional leadership. Social conservatives were mad here, and so was anyone who cared about the credentials of nominees. The nomination was withdrawn, but the damage was done.

3. The Dubai Ports disaster: Here I think that the Administration was on defensible ground from a policy perspective, but its ham-handed approach -- once again ignoring early warnings from the blogs -- turned it into a mess, and cost it major credibility with its national security constituency. The Administraiton was bumbling and inept in addressing this matter, which gained currency because of its flaccid stance on the cartoon Jihad. The consequence: Lost faith from its strongest constituency.

4. Immigration: Another unforced error. The national security constituency once again lost faith in the Administration. You can't talk about secure borders when the borders are porous. The Administration also failed to make a strong clear argument for immigration, outsourcing that to the Wall Street Journal, which did its best but couldn't do the President's job. Again, the White House's position on immigration was defensible in the abstract, but favoring easy immigration is one thing, favoring easy illegal immigration is another.

5. William Jefferson: A Democratic Congressman is caught in a bribery scandal with a freezer full of cash, and Dennis Hastert backs him up, making clear that protection of insider privilege is more important to the Republican leadership in Congress than either party or principle. The White House, at least, intervened here, eventually. Add to this the GOP leadership's failure to follow through on promised ethics reforms, and its addiction to pork-barrel spending, and you've got lots of reason to think that they don't stand for anything except stuffing their pockets.

6. Foleygate: Not much of a scandal in itself, but the last straw for a lot of people. As Rich Lowry noted, a long chain of missteps and self-serving actions has exhausted their stock of moral and political capital, leaving them vulnerable to, well, almost anything. This was probably enough.

At the end of this process, the Republicans have managed to leave every segment of the base unhappy, mostly over things that weren't even all that important. It's as if they had some sort of bizarre death wish. Looks like the wish will come true . . . .

As I've said before, the Republicans deserve to lose, though alas the Democrats don't really deserve to win, either. I realize that you go to war with the political class you have, but even back in the 1990s it was obvious that we had a lousy political class. It hasn't improved, but the challenges have gotten greater. Can the country continue to do well, with such bad political leadership? I hope so, because I see no sign of improvement, no matter who wins next month.

As I wrote earlier, in suggesting that the GOP deserved to lose:


The counter-case is that a Democratic House would be a disaster for the country. I gathered from Boortz's discussion that that's the case that Hannity and Limbaugh were making yesterday. It's a strong argument -- except that if Republican control of the Congress is so all-fired important to the future of civilization, then why haven't the Republicans who control Congress been acting as if it is so important? . . .

Were GOP control of the Congress so important to the country, wouldn't the GOP leadership have exercised a trifle more self-discipline and self-denial? And if it's not capable of doing so, then what kind of leadership is it?


If, as seems likely, the GOP fares badly in next month, it should ponder this point. If it somehow squeaks through -- well, then it should ponder this point just as hard, as it will have squeaked through in spite of its performance, not because of it.

UPDATE: Preston Taylor Holmes adds:


I would add that Bush (and the GOP) not backing up the Bush Doctrine when Israel tried to apply it against Hizbollah should have been included. If you’re not going to back up your own “doctrine” then don’t have a doctrine, you half-assed pansies.


A bit harsh, but it demonstrates the GOP problem with the "war base" that I've mentioned here before. So does this email from a reader named Stacy, in Tucson:


One point I have not seen much in the blogs or elsewhere concerns the Republican handling of the War on Terror. As part of the conservative 'base' I am dissapointed in the administration for not being MORE agressive in fighting the war...it reminds me of the speech by George C Scott in Patton..."Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser"...I think that the Republicans could remain in power if they showed more outward signs of strength in the matters of North Korea, Iran and Iraq. If we were fighting to 'win', I think the average american would back the president and congress.


Yes, Jacksonians want to fight and win, not just fight. (See this, too.) Meanwhile, over at The Corner, I'm savaged by a reader who emails Jonah Goldberg:


And if it doen't go down, it's becuse it had it coming ? Insipid.

I give Dick Cheney's advice to Leahy to all you boneheads who don't have the courage to stand up for the only political party that responds to Conservatives, as the House did in refusing to support the ridiulous Amnesty bill from the Senate.

Many of you live in the Media and Beltway bubble. You actually shiver when the WaPo attacks relentlessly someone like George Allen. You buy into the smearing of Speaker Hastert. You care what your Liberal friends think of you because of your political beliefs.

What will the Dems do when they lose ? That's the question.


I think it's silly to pretend that the GOP isn't in trouble -- just look at the futures markets, as WindyPundit has. And if they do somehow squeak out a victory, it won't be because they've been doing well all along. As WindyPundit says, "Certainly they haven't delivered much of what they promised."

Reader Stephen M. sees me as a shill for the Democrats: "Are you stumping, knowing that polls are so often wrong? Or is that a pre-Victory lap?"

Neither. But I've seen fumble after fumble and just thought it would be helpful to point them out. Dale Light also thinks I'm wrong:


My reaction -- what self-serving bullhockey!

Are we to turn the party, the government, the conduct of the war, and everything else over to a bunch of narcissistic amateur loudmouths with keyboards?

The Democratic Party is going down that path right now, and the results are not pretty, nor do they promise to lead to good government.

Do we really want a government that responds dutifully to direction by the Kossacks and Move Oners? Neither should we want a Republican majority to follow the prescriptions of the conservative bloggers. There are good and rational reasons for every one of the policy decisions that the Instapundit denounces. Certainly the Schaivo stance was controversial. So was the Miers nomination..., and so on. But in each case the decision was eminently defensible, and I usually supported the leadership's positions.

I applaud the Republican leadership for having the courage to take difficult stances, even if they were unpopular with the ideologues of "the base".

Remember, "al Qaeda" is Arabic for "the base."

Blogging is fun..., I certainly enjoy it. But like journalism it is essentially an irresponsible game. Those who actually have to wield power cannot allow the ideological enthusiasms of their respective "bases" to determine their decisions.

These are, as John Keegan recently remarked, mean and dangerous times. The issues at stake are far too important to be turned over to tumescent fringe elements in either party. The center must hold.


Well, I've got nothing against tumescence. But I don't see the GOP here as having been smart about moving to the center, either. The moves I discuss above were politically dumb. They weren't pragmatic political moves that outraged the fringe -- they were ham-handed moves that angered the base without winning anyone else over.

Sam Lambert emails: "I can't believe you, of all people, forgot the unforced error of pork. This was an issue they could have really pleased their base with."

Well, I mentioned pork above. But it's true that they blew it by not taking on the issue in a bigger way. We saw some modest improvements at the end of the session, but they could have ridden this issue hard if they'd wanted to.

Rebecca Harris emails: "Yes, we are all unhappy at the lack of leadership, the staggering around like a drunk outside a whorehouse, but how can we decry GOP leadership if we are not making our wishes known, loudly and often? They behave as if they have a mandate, which is certainly wrong. There has to be a mechanism for making them understand that they DON'T have a mandate, and that we are not to be taken for granted. What is it, short of the risk of voting them out of power?"

I think the dissatisfaction has been obvious for a while. I think they just haven't cared enough to do anything about it, assuming that people would vote for them regardless rather than let the Dems win. I think the polls and the futures markets indicate that they've hit the limit of that principle.

Fred Boness, however, isn't giving up yet:


As Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local."

I think as bad as people feel about Republicans in general or Democrats in general they will vote for their own Republican or their own Democrat and see the individuals they know in a better light than they will poll on the generic loathed politician.


The GOP certainly hopes so.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey thinks that the GOP's electoral woes are overstated. We'll see. But as I say above, even if they win, they need to learn from their mistakes. A last-minute win after four quarters of dropped balls doesn't mean that the balls weren't dropped. Me, I think that although a GOP win (meaning retention of both houses) is possible, it's looking unlikely, and the reason is defection from the base for the reasons I list above.

Interesting discussion going on in Ed's comments. Just keep scrolling. More thoughts here and here. And Ginny at Chicagoboyz has more thoughts, too.

But Thomas Valletta emails:


Man, I'd hate like hell to have you as a coach. Real motivating half-time chat - you're going to lose and here's why you deserve it. I'll respond by telling you that the people do not deserve to lose and that is what happens if the Dems win in November. We lose our money through taxes, our freedoms through Democrat-appointed judges, and we lose our wars with a "cut and run" leadership. I'm sure glad you can take it so calmly, and with such a snooty and detached posture. Well, I'll tell you what, Reynolds, I think Bush and Rush are right and you are wrong. I think the Republicans hold both Houses. I think you then come off as a total idiot. Remind me to write you after the elections.


I'm not a coach, or a cheerleader. I call 'em as I see 'em. But even if Valletta is right, the GOP has gone to the "Democrats are worse" well about as much as it can. It's true, the Democrats are worse, but lots of people are starting to feel taken advantage of by that approach, as the GOP shows no signs of trying to get, you know, better.

Likewise, reader Mike H. writes:


All the perfection in the world won't do any one, any good, if there isn't a culture to support the perfection. The Democrats want to cut and run from not only Iraq, but the War on Terror. Explain how the resultant chaos will allow us to clean up pork? Explain how the multicultural nightmare that is Europe would be the role model that would be desirable for the US. We should welcome the rapes in Sweden and the riots in France? We should welcome the chance to buddy up to Chavez? We want to go with a party that thinks the military are a bunch of jackbooted nazi's?

Oh well, so be it. The perfect is the enemy of the good.


I'm not asking for perfection here. Just a little effort.

MORE: Barry Dauphin emails:


I think the reasons you listed possibly represent the dissatisfaction of many core Republicans. I don’t think they are reasons so much as examples of something. Yes, there has been a hamhandedness on the part of Republicans, and I think that spending and immigration are really big base issues (the other ones are fleas by comparison).

However, should the Republicans lose Congress, the elephant in the living room is Iraq. If we are in a war, people have to pick sides even if one’s side has substantial problems. I believe that many supporters of Bush have become demoralized by the pace of progress in Iraq and the drumbeat of media negativity. I think that many people implicitly believed that this would be tough, but that we would prevail in a more demonstrable way and sooner. Instead the picture painted is that of an endless pit of commitment. When the Baker workgroup is making policy recommendations that look an awful lot like “cut and run”, it is easy for loyal supporters to get down. It is difficult to develop metrics for the kind of war we are in, but the public needs metrics of some sort to get a sense of where we are at.

I don’t think the Administration being “tougher” is the issue. I’m not sure what toughness is missing, frankly, and what the Jacksonians wish the US to do that is realistic and that wouldn’t lead to a copious amount of other problems. We need a causus belli for Syria and Iran, and the US population is no where near that yet. We cannot fight that kind of war without the support of the public. At some point we have to remember that the public is us.

However, having said that, those who support the WoT and Iraq should decide if they want to take the risk of having the Dems chair all the committees, distract the efforts of the Administration, further polarize the country, etc. Those who choose to sit home are essentially voting for Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid; committees chaired by Conyers, Dingell, Kennedy, Waxman, etc. Those are the choices. Maybe we can try to understand why the Iraqis are having difficulty developing the democratic process when we stop and think about our own choices. We can be demoralized, or we can be grownups and act.

If the Reps lose, it will be because the “base” allowed it to happen not because the Dems command a lot of support. If the “base” chooses to sit and pout, they have no right to complain about the results, but they will. And the op-ed people will continue to make a healthy living “defending” the base.


Well, there's something to that. But nobody likes feeling taken for granted, and a lot of people feel that way. The sense is that support for the war is being abused, in order to keep Republican leaders from having to deliver on other promises. As I say, I think the GOP leadership has taken that as far is it will go.

http://instapundit.com/archives/033235.php

Ned Lamont belly-flops as his negative, purposeless campaign grinds down to its inevitable conclusion:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman angrily disputed a black leader's unsubstantiated accusation Wednesday that Lieberman lied about his civil rights work in Mississippi 43 years ago.

"Now, that's really outrageous and, of course, it is a lie," Lieberman said at a hastily called press conference, where he blamed the episode on his opponent, Ned Lamont.

Hours earlier, former state Treasurer Henry E. Parker had questioned Lieberman's oft-cited civil rights history as he and other black leaders endorsed Lamont.

"I'm saying that my view is there's no evidence of what he's done. Let him prove that he's been there," Parker said at a press conference attended by Lamont.

Lamont's campaign, which immediately seemed to grasp the political misstep, disavowed Parker's claim even before Lieberman produced news clippings placing him in Mississippi.

"We have no doubt that Sen. Lieberman was active in a variety of causes prior to his career as an elected official. We have not looked into his involvement in the civil rights movement and will not question Joe's involvement," the Lamont campaign said.

But the damage was done. The episode gave Lieberman an opportunity to reinforce a constant theme of his campaign - that Lamont has relentlessly distorted Lieberman's record in the contest for the U.S. Senate.

"Don't put this on Hank Parker. This is an open letter to me at a press conference for Ned Lamont," Lieberman said. "Ned Lamont was right there. He can't disown this."

Lamont stood with Parker and other members of the Connecticut Federation of Black Democratic Clubs as they endorsed Lamont and released an open letter to Lieberman. The letter disputed a television ad that recounts his civil rights involvement.

The Lamont campaign paid for 300 to 400 copies of the open letter in which the federation said that it was "offended by your television ad which claims you were an advocate for African Americans' first class citizenship and as such you marched for our civil rights."

The letter was a sharp attack on Lieberman, accusing him of exploiting the civil rights movement for political gain, but it stopped short of Parker's claim that Lieberman lied.

"Our research indicates that there is no evidence of you taking any action that could be described as initiative to remove the shackles of second class citizenship from African Americans," the letter said.

Although the letter contained some ambiguity, as it seemed to address the value of Lieberman's contribution to the movement, Parker flatly shared his belief that Lieberman lied about marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and going to Mississippi.

"I suspect that he was not there, and the reason I suspect that is because he's a guy who says anything to win," Parker said.

Ned, we hardly knew ye, but the Ned we are getting to know is desperate and unappealing.

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/10/prove_there_was.html

FAQ - Torture!
Posted by Dean Barnett  | 3:37 PM
1) Let’s get right to it. Do you support torture?

Let me say what I do support: When it comes to high value targets in the war on terror, wannabe evil-doers who possess or might possess important information, I support any measures necessary to extract that information.


2) So you support torture! I am gobsmacked and filled with heartache.


There you go again, making erroneous conclusions without really knowing what you’re talking about. What is commonly considered torture – the rack, breaking kneecaps, bamboo under the finger-nails - is useless for extracting actionable information. Such techniques can get the victim to confess to anything under the sun but if it’s intelligence you seek, they’re not very helpful. And if you read a book like “Confessions of an Innocent Man” which details the hell a North American went through in a Saudi Arabian prison, you know these techniques spring from deeply sadistic souls, not committed professionals.


3) But I watch Jack Bauer on “24” and see him getting everything he needs by brandishing a pistol and with a judiciously placed blow. What gives?

It may have escaped you, but “24” is not a documentary, nor is it a scholarly inquiry on effective interrogation techniques.


4) So what does the actual scholarship say?


The key to gathering information is to disorient the subject. If you disorient the subject enough, he lets go of his secrets. Discomfort is actually much more useful than pain.


5) What’s the best way to get information?


Unquestionably water-boarding.


6) Gosh, I live in an intellectual broom closet and determinedly try to avoid any enlightenment on this subject. Please, please, please – don’t tell me what water-boarding is.

No dice. In water-boarding, the subject is strapped to a board with his feet above his head. A sheet of cellophane is placed over his face. Since the technique has existed and been used successfully for centuries, cellophane wasn’t always the face-covering tool of choice. It used to just be a cloth. The interrogator pours water over the cellophane. This triggers a gag reflex. The prisoner feels like he’s drowning. He feels that way because the combination of everything causes supreme disorientation. If one speaks with intelligence agents who openly used this technique like the French, Germans or Russians, they swear by it. It also works quickly. The rumor is that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad broke in under a minute.


7) But Amnesty International and the left say the information gleaned from this technique is unreliable. Is it?


Amnesty International is either confused, dishonest or both. Some people do say it’s unreliable. But the undeniable consensus is that water-boarding is an extremely productive interrogation tool.


That’s a very clinical way of putting it. Why don’t you go have yourself water- boarded and see how you like it.

No thanks. I’m sure I wouldn’t like it. I’m sure it’s extremely unpleasant. Does it rise to the level of “torture”? That’s for each individual to decide.


9) What do you think?

I don’t care. If some body of linguists or semanticists convened a weekend retreat in Cambridge, impartially studied the issue and labeled it torture, I still wouldn’t care. The welfare of terrorists is not my concern. Even if all the Jack Bauer-type crap you see on “24” was the best way to go, I’d still be okay with it.


10) But it’s not just terrorists. It’s suspected terrorists. Surely that bothers you.

It does. It’s inevitable that innocent people will be subjected to this kind of treatment. But this is war, and in war we make moral compromises. For example, normally we don’t like to kill people. In war, we try to kill people by the thousands. That Amnesty International guy that I was on TV with last night kept whining that we wouldn’t be having any of this if it weren’t for 9/11. Duh. If we weren’t at war, we could comfortably remain in the moral sphere that we aspire to. But right now, that’s not an option.


11) But we didn’t do stuff like this in World War II, did we?

I don’t know. But I do know we fire-bombed Dresden. I know we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I know that in doing these things we knowingly engaged in actions that killed tens of thousands of innocents. When you’re at war, moral compromises are part of the deal.


12) But tell the truth – you and the others who support the measures we’re talking about, including the president, don’t seem particularly broken up about these so called “moral compromises.”

With you, I always tell the truth. Look, it’s a grim reality. It stinks that we have to do this. It would be nice if all those Jihadist lunatics would give up on their dreams of a global caliphate and leave us alone. I think what we have to do is clear, so I’m unbothered by the administration’s direction.


13) But wouldn’t you like to have a president who is more bothered by (or at least cognizant of) such things?

Definitely not. Bush 41 was so bothered by the ugliness of war that he enshrined the Powell Doctrine and refused to topple Saddam. People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men are ready to do violence on their behalf. I’d rather these rough men not be contemplating their navels and flagellating themselves over doing what needs to be done.


14) Now I know you’re on a little bit of a high because you debated this issue on TV last night. How’d it go?

The guy I was debating, the head of the local chapter of Amnesty International, had three points he kept raising. They were Abu Ghraib was bad, Bush is bad, and giving field-agents carte blanche to torture is bad. Since all three of these were irrelevant and just partisan talking points, I didn’t really address them.


15) How do you see the politics of this playing out?

The Democrats hate this issue. Abu Ghraib, which truly was a national disgrace, didn’t move public opinion because the public just doesn’t care about the welfare of these people. The fact that a guy like Sherrod Brown, one of the most liberal members of the House who’s running to become one of the most liberal members of the Senate, supported the bill tells you that the smart Democrats don’t like this issue one bit.


16) Smart Democrats? Heh.

Heh indeed.

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Common/Print.aspx

At the top of my list i would have:

Neocon
facscist
racist

What's on your list?