it's interesting that s/he feels that in order to effectively ridicule Tommy [who is presumably male] he must be turned into a [caricature of a]woman.

Correction: caricature of a prudish, wealthy, Victorian-era woman.

My using such a portrayal says nothing more "interesting" about me than your apparent assumption that the portrayal is a caricature of women generally could be insinuated to say about you.

A suggestion has been made that we name a Contributor of the Year at the Wog.

I think it's a great idea so we'll do it.

Please send your nominations to the address at the Wog not later than Friday morning, January 2, and I'll tally the votes and make the announcement later that day.

link at sig

A lot of young & upcoming true believers demonstrated to their own satisfaction that they could have won Vietnam, if only they had been allowed to. This was called... what was it called? The anticommunist movement in Central America.

The ideology developed during those days - including the rational behind Iran-Contra, as well as the simultaneous funding of Saddam Hussein by U.S. agencies in order to counter Iran - has carried over to the present day. See Firewall, by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor, for example. See also the 1997 revelations by the Baltimore Sun about the training manuals used to train advisers in Central America:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9551.htm

Much of this was psychological torture, that left no visible marks on the subject (such as missing limbs, as in Charles Taylor). This agrees with the heavy involvement of the American Psychological Association in the officially sanctioned torture program. Note that observations of many torture victims have shown that prolonged psychological torture is typically more damaging to the individual than the most barbaric but non-lethal forms of physical torture.

Quote from the manual: "The purpose of all coercive techniques us to induce psychological regression in the subject by engaging a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships, or to cope with repeated frustrations."

"There are three major principles involves in the successful application of coercive techniques:"

"Debility (physical weakness)...many psychologists consider the threat of inducing debility to be more effective than debility itself..."

"Dependency...he is helplessly dependent on "the questioner" for all physical needs..."

"Dread (intense fear and anxiety)...sustained long enough, a stong fear of anything vague or unknown induces regression"

Yes - the "Three D's" ... and if you're feeling a bit queasy, congratulations, that's an indication you are not a psychopath.

Most of the issues with torture, domestic spying, etc. can be traced back to that same cohort that existed within the Reagan Administration - the Iran Contra gang.

Domestic spying? Check. That was initiated by one John Poindexter, convicted of five counts involving obstruction of Congress, etc. in Iran Contra. The "Total Information Awareness" package of supercomputer-based software was Poindexter's little baby, c.2002, complete with illuminati-style eyeball, which was publicly shelved after Congressional protest, but then quietly taken up again by the NSA, under Hayden c.2004, with the tactic agreement of both branches of Congress and both political parties, as well as many elements of the major media in the United States, who decided not to publish the story before the 2004 elections.

Yes, in 2001 the existing FISA court and the existing system had everything it needed to track and identify all of the 9/11 hijackers - but warnings went unheeded, transcripts went unread, and numerous warnings from low-level FBI and CIA employees were somehow never passed upwards at either the FBI or the CIA - and this was all probably facilitated by the close Bush-Saudi relationship and the Bush Administration's preoccupation with issues like the looming Enron crisis and the problems surrounding the 2000 election and the stolen Florida vote.

What does this have to do with torture? Everything. The neocons in the Bush Administration had to blame someone for their lack of competence, and so they blamed the existing system for its "built-in faults". They had to be tougher, after FOX's "24" - they had to torture the location of the nukular bomb out of the terrorist, no holds barred. Some of that story is at TPM:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004659.php

When they got caught doing it (at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bangram, and at secret "black sites" scattered around the world), instead of prosecuting the people who gave the orders, they again moved the blame others, in this case the low-ranking grunts who carried out the orders. Once again, they managed to avoid prosecution themselves. Nevertheless, the recent Senate report points directly to decisions made by Rumsfeld/Cheney and legally blessed by the Justice Department lackeys like Gonzales.

For more on that, see this Jane Mayer article / review(linked)

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/08/10/jane-mayer-on-the-cias-black-sites/

The fact is, torture has rarely been employed to gain information - it is used to terrify people into submission, to get them to sign confessions attesting to their own guilt, and so on. It has never been used to gain the trust and confidence of the suspect, that's for sure, even though that is what a successful interrogation is really all about, isn't it?

I don't mean to quibble with a slightly off topic point, but regarding the fact that you cannot suspend habeus corpus during a "real" civil war is slightly off. I think there is an explicit exception written in for 'armed insurrection'. Not many would argue to apply habeus corpus to prisoners of war, there are seperate laws relating to their treatment. In an armed insurrection, when the 'enemy' is your own citizens, it becomes allowed to hold your own citizens suspected of participating in the insurrection.

There is I'm sure much gray area regarding when and where this would apply, and I don't think international terrorism is an example, but I don't think suspending habeus corpus is not an absolute prohibition like torture is. Whether or not one agrees with that the law currently does allow for the suspension in limited circumstances.