Sometimes I wish I was a little tiny baby.

I'd craw up in my mommy's lap to nurture.

Is it bad to chew on a yarmulke if a infant?

Thanks for another good piece, Glenn. I so often read about Bush et al., and their belief that they just had to do these things to fulfill their ultimate obligation--to protect the American people. The last time I looked, the oath of office the President takes has him promising to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

I am always baffled at the people who say "The Constitution is not a suicide pact!" I have to wonder "Why the hell would you think it is?"

We must be clear and loud as we say that people who violate laws and constitutional principles based on their seat-of-the-pants moral reasoning are attacking the fabric of our legal system. These are people who plainly do not believe in our system of government.

Our system of government was not created in a vacuum. It was created in response to real-world pressures, and represents the consensus opinion of a lot of smart people about the best way to handle crisis situations. People who think all of that should be tossed away the moment their knees start shaking are anarchists at heart.

From the Douthat quote:

The fear that through inaction you'll be responsible for the deaths of thousands or even millions of the Americans whose lived you were personally charged to protect.

There is a flip side to the consequences mentioned here. Nancy Pelosi, when she became Speaker of the House after the 2006 elections, was the one person in the world best poised to end the war crimes of the Bush regime. She chose to block all attempts at impeachment. Of course, she did this for the "right reasons", as well. After all, an impeachment would have torn our country apart. Yeah, now that we have no military left, no treasury and the scorn of the world, that internal struggle would have been a bad one, wouldn't it?

To me, that active blocking of consequences makes her guilty of war crimes as well. My latest open letter to her, telling her this to her face from mine, is linked at my name.

It sounds like this fellow is caught in a hypocrisy trap. In other words, doubting (or refusing to acknowledge) what is right because he feels complicit in the wrongdoing for not speaking up sooner.

The trouble with hypocrisy traps is that the hypocrisy stands and everybody loses. So thanks again Glenn for not falling victim.

"She said mean things about me to her friends, so I said mean things about her."

Every day, every time, my answer is always the same. The universal parent answer. You are ONLY responsible for your own behavior. Whatever anyone else did, right, wrong, or otherwise, doesn't count. What counts is what YOU did. Worry about yourself, and what YOU do, not about what someone else did to you.

Every parent I know has this discussion. International political leaders could learn a lot from the conversations in their own kitchens.

Torture is NEVER justified. It is NEVER right. "Yeah but" doesn't apply.

Just like my son hitting his sister is NEVER justified.

I did not know that Ross was a mind reader, or so willing to ascribe the "best of intentions" to Bush & Co.

Well, what did CMH Tenet allegedly say about this:

George Tenet, Drunk in Bandar's Pool, Screaming about Jews

I just picked up Patrick Tyler's forthcoming book, A World of Trouble, about America's tortured relations with the Middle East, and the prologue contains this whopper of a scene, one that is quite devastating, if true: An enraged George Tenet, drunk on scotch, flailing about Prince Bandar's Riyadh pool, screaming about the Bush Administration officials who were just then trying to pin the Iraq WMD fiasco on him:

A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.

"They're setting me up. The bastards are setting me up," Tenet said, but "I am not going to take the hit."

And then this:

"According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the rlght wing of Israel's political establishment, referring to them with exaxperation as, "the Jews."

Tyler reports in a footnote that, when asked, Tenet initially denied staying at Prince Bandar's palace, then denied that he had said anything in the pool. "He disputed the remarks attributed to him and denied that his memory might have been affected by the amount of alcohol he was reported to have consumed on top of a sleeping pill," Tyler reports.

I'll ask around about this and post any responses I get.

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/george_tenet_drunk_in_bandars.php

When cornered, obfuscate, or have Ross do it for you.

Don't worry. We know you're afraid. Don't be afraid. We're not afraid. We could be attacked at any moment. We will protect you. We stride with purpose. We see everything. We hear everything. We strike with purpose. We know who wants to hurt you. We will tell you who wants to hurt you. Be alert. Monitor your area. This will keep you safe. Don't be afraid.

That the US has declined to be a part of the world court because we have a sufficiently robust judicial system that war criminals will not go unpunished and, therefore, we didn't need to be there. In the meantime, every single court case brought seeking redress for various American violations of human rights and international law has been thrown out of the American courts.

Robust indeed.

Another justification is that the information gathered by torture has prevented another attack on the US. Is there any real evidence to back up that claim? I have only seen and heard assertions by the administration and its apologists that that is the case. Do we know?

"After all, they're not torturing me, or anybody I know. And what if people called my names like "objectively Islamofacist"?

That would be torture!