Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 360 Editor's Choice: 12
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@yellowdog
[Read the article: Mukasey's nomination and the sudden opposition to "waterboarding"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I thought of Congress as a target. But that's absurd. I do believe that they have been sending polticized intelligence briefers to the Hill and to the Beltway media with scare talk about immediate dangers of attack, but that's not the same thing.
Not us. We're still posting away--I'm using my own name. I'm not worried. (Although I admit to being a little worried about Glenn, out of the country and attacking Petraeus when he went silent for about 20 hours.)
The Inquisition and the NKoreans and the Stalinist show trials and Winston Smith's fictional torture (or for that matter, Harlan Ellison's Harlequin) were primarily to obtain the confessions they wanted. The NK is the purest form of this; the NKoreans weren't torturing American sailors to terrorize other American sailors.
But in these other cases, torture was also a means of stifling dissent--of threatening the entire population with torture if they dared to speak out. They knew, when they saw the televised confessions, that the speaker was not acting freely.
But that's not true in this case either. There are no show trials--there are no trials at all. Now the idea may be to intimidate and terrorize future conspirators, by disappearing people and torturing some of them. But how do you terrorize suicide bombers? And the people they're catching are generally marginal at best.
I really think they are doing it because they can. No more than that. They can do it, and they enjoy making it happen.
Mukasey needs to be reminded that this is what he is signing on to. If someone could make that clear to him, maybe he would withdraw himself from consideration.
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@amity
[Read the article: Mukasey's nomination and the sudden opposition to "waterboarding"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The hearings also, as someone noted way upthread, preserve the trappings of the constitution. This is actually a good thing. That the president has to get rubberstamps along the way for his actions maintains the possibility that that those rubber stamps may be withheld.
BTW, that's why if the Kagro X position is adopted, in effect, by rejecting Mukasey, the president will simply dispense with the approval process. He will simply make interim appointments.
The only remedy for that approach is impeachment and conviction.
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HANGING UNDERSCORE
[Read the article: Mukasey's nomination and the sudden opposition to "waterboarding"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The update post has a hanging underscore tag.
Please delete this after you fix the mistake.
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At some point, you have to accept that they vote their conscience
[Read the article: Mukasey's nomination and the sudden opposition to "waterboarding"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn put this differently in his post. But I agree. At some point, after all the temporizing, all the stalling, all the claims that exigencies outside of their principles and their conscience don't cut it anymore.
This confirmation, as Glenn said, was a very small thing. Refusing it would have been symbolic, not substantive. It would have been a feeble attempt to assert, I don't know, something that is consistent with American values.
But, no.
There is a point where you have to conclude that the Democratic senators voting in support of Bush actually do support Bush.
I think we've pretty clealy pasesd this point today. It's not calculation. It's not what you have to do to get anything done. Chuck Schumer believes that Americans should torture people.
That's what he's said today. That's what he believes. That's what he stands for.
It's time to look for an opponent to Chuck in 2010. There are plenty of people, with money, in New York, who don't believe that America should torture people.
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Chuck's phone is still busy.
[Read the article: Mukasey's nomination and the sudden opposition to "waterboarding"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And you still can't get through to hear the official rationalization for his support for torture.
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@Argon
[Read the article: The Ron Paul phenomenon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ah, well, I don't think you should make assumptions about Glenn's political views.
Moreover, you may have noticed that Glenn frequently writes about applying one's reasoning in the same way in all circumstances. That is, if it is unpatriotic to criticize General Petraeus, it is equally unpatriotic to criticize captains and enlisted men who believe the occupation is a disaster.
Ron Paul raises a number of difficult issues for Republicans. He espouses the views that they have always attributed to themselves, when out of power, and have completely abrograted when they gained power. This is very much worth noting, in some detail. Doing so exposes the Republican program as utterly without principle, as being corrupt to its very core and as unAmerican as could be imagined. In fact, it is so unAmerican that I don't think even lapel pins can erase the taint.
So it is good, from your partisan perspective, to have Glenn point out that Ron Paul is far from loony, if you believe in the ideas and principles that Republicans say they believe in. Ron Paul is what a real republican would look like--opposed to an enormous standing army when there is no war on. Opposed to massive federal deficits. In support of states determining whether abortions are legal. (in my view, there is no rights based argument against abortion that makes any sense. Even if you grant a blastocyst citizenship, making the mother carry it to term creates issues wrt slavery and self-defense rights.)
You would be hard pressed to make such an argument for Kucinich. But the issue is not a paean to Paul. The issue is that Paul is making credible arguments. He is gaining support at least as significant as McCain's. We should be hearing more about him in the Beltway press.
Now, as I said, his positions are sometimes loony. But have you listened to Mitt or Rudy!! lately? They're running to the authoritiarian right of Bush, whose policies have proven to be completely disastrous. Their response to this long sequence of utter failure has been to say they'll double down, and do it more. Paul is a breath of sanity in this environment.
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Clinton's response
[Read the article: Democrats in big, big trouble because of the Great Iraq War -- again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, Clinton will not have to respond dourly by saying it wasn't worth it. (Note, by the way, that the inevitable Clinton narrative is woven in everywhere. here's just one more example.)
She'll just have to say, "Fine. So the withdrawal can now commence, right?"
Of course, with Dodd's position on the occupation, it will be easier for him to say that credibly, but, what the hey.