The only testimony elicited by torture or -- as was true in his case -- the threat of torture to connect Al Qaeda and Iraq was Al Libi's false confession (later recanted) that Iraq trained Al Qaeda in the use of chemical weapons.

You have only to look at the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission Report to see how much of the detainees' testimony involved the operational details of 9/11, all consistent with the official version of the 9/11 story.

Yes, it was all about getting false testimony that the government wanted, but only some of it involved Iraq.

There's also the little matter of lying this country into an illegal war of aggression. Just like Hitler did with that claim that the Poles attacked the border radio station at Gleiwitz.

nt

read Hans Fallada's great novel Every Man Dies Alone [Jeder Stirbt f&uum;r sich Allein], which is now out for the first time in English translation.

the Convention Against Torture? The CAT WAS executed.

on some issues, just to give him reason not to go after them on torture?

Could it be because they are confident that he won't go after them on that, no matter what they do?

wrote and got established as the law in Nazi Germany that state security was such an important matter that what the Gestapo did in defense of it should be outside the jurisdiction of the courts.

so long as they end up being published some place. That could be justified by saying that the importance of freedom of the press in a democracy trumps national security concerns.

On the other hand, where the secrets are not published, passing the secrets would be criminal.

That could either be made explicit in the law by Congress, or a court could do it, by limiting the scope of secrets laws where freedom of the press is implicated.

when the Holocaust got started. If you can't compare anything that does not involve the equivalent of a Holocaust with Nazi Germany, doesn't that mean that you can't compare pre-1941 Nazi Germany with post-1941 Nazi Germany?

(I remember being impressed by it when I read it the first time back in the 1960's, and the analogy with Israel made me want to read it again.) The author was a South African white Communist activist who eventually went into exile in Britain. The point of the book, as its title indicates, was to underline the ideological similarities between Nazism and South African apartheid, and indeed the historical influence he claimed Nazism had on South African politics.

Why is such a comparison indecent?

and who did not make the Yale Law Journal at Yale Law School, I declare myself impressed.

I would really be interested to learn how saying I am makes me an ignorant asshole.

I discover, reading Sotomayor's Wikipedia entry, that I have more in common with her than our both having gone to Princeton and Yale Law (although, as I noted earlier on this thread, she has me beat there: I only got magna cum laude, and I didn't make the Yale Law Journal).

We're both from the South Bronx. We both have working-class backgrounds. We both went to Catholic high schools in New York City. We both have diabetes.

Not only do I have to like her. You've got to think she would have something distinctive to offer to the court.

(Although I guess it should be noted that, if she is still a practising Catholic, she would make it six Catholic justices out of nine on the court.)

(although, as a retired naval officer, I was more impressed by LCDR Charles Swift's work for him, as he was endangering -- and ended up terminating -- his naval career).

Then, Katyal deeply disappointed me by teaming up with Jack Goldsmith to write in favor of a national security court.

on the no-fly list, almost certainly as retaliation against the stuff he had written. I very much doubt that these people complained against that sort of thing either.

from another site because I recounted how U.S. Army veterans of World War Two in Europe had told me how they had seen the policy after the Malmédy massacre of not taking SS prisoners alive.

Then I found links and quotes from historians substantiating my claim, and he didn't even have the decency to admit that he had been wrong.

It would be very awkward for them to oppose a Hispanic woman.

But why would neoliberals of the New Republic ilk join them?

I wonder what that thing he wore on his back during the debates makes Bush.

Of course, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that "TOTUS" stands for "traitor of the United States." In which case, one can also ask about Bush.

by the interrogators. But how could he have been confident that they wouldn't kill him unintentionally, by accident?

Earlier this morning, Mona Charen said on C-SPAN that Barack Obama owes an apology to the members of the Bush administration that he has been attacking over torture and the like, now that he has adopted Bush-like policies on things like state secrets and military commissions.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/09/obama-to-git-mo-better-military-tribunals/#more-4091

brought a lot of Koolaid-drinking Obamabots out of the woodwork to abuse the diarist.

Here it is: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/9/11041/91504

Whether or not Saberi was actually guilty is secondary.

What matters much more is that it looks like the U.S. and Iran are exchanging friendly gestures which could well result, if we are lucky, in a full-fledged rapprochement.

A grand bargain with Iran might well be the best way to, among other things, extricate ourselves from Afghanistan (as well as Iraq).

Neither of them would welcome an attempt to destabilize the Baluchis in the other.

even though it's spoken so far north in the Indian subcontinent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_language

language, like Kurdish, even though it is spoken so far east.

(Brahui contains loan words from an Indo-Iranian language, which turns out to be Baluchi.)