Oh – and I meant to say – please, please, don’t just automatically dismiss any and all (non-conservative) criticism of (Republican) government policy with cries of ‘America-haters!’ It runs the risk of helping let our leaders initiate or continue bad policies, policies which could, well, hurt our country. Seriously. From one American to another. Please.

Ok – but it’s not all that clear to me that how much (or even if) the information elicited by torture contributed to preventing an (or multiple) attacks. Again, I can’t say with certainty that it didn’t, but . . . Heck, we don’t even know for sure if torture was necessary to obtain any such information – the FBI and CIA seems to have had some disputes over this. But anyway, as I’ve said before, I’m not arguing that torture cannot, in any circumstances, elicit information (although I think pro-torture advocates exaggerate its effectiveness and reliability – there’s a reason civilized nations, including the US, moved away from it over centuries). That doesn’t make it right, and that doesn’t make it something we should be doing.

“I say, people who are so furious over losing the last two elections”

Again, the constant denial the one’s political opponents could have any valid and reasonable objections, even if they happen to be mistaken. It’s just that they’re all driven by BDS. Hardly rational. Not even worth listening to. They might as well be making animal-like howling noises. That ‘they’ at this point constitute a significant chunk of Americans – so?

On Greenspan : “However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” he says. Maybe he really did just misspeak. Or not. Dunno.

“Not to mention make up stories about Bush “connecting” 9/11 to Iraq.”

That’s why I said misleading rhetoric instead of ‘Bush said Iraq caused 9/11′.

Clinton’s (failed) attempts to get bin Laden: ok, so we’ve gone from ‘Clinton did nothing’ to ‘ok, ok, Clinton went after him – with missiles, not just warrants – but they didn’t really hurt Al Qaeda, heck, they probably helped ‘em, and – Monica!! Monica!! Monicagate!! Double standard, too, one suspects.

To be fair, I kinda bought the ‘wag the dog’ scenario back then – as I’ve said, everybody makes mistakes in college. Of course, then I got up one morning and heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the WTC . . . (granted, that’s not a strictly logical progression there, but still . . .)

Incidentally, while my memory isn’t the best, I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up with it on my own, but read folks putting it forward in . . . the Nation.

“Sure sounds like Clinton wasn’t interested in getting Bin Laden.”

See – it can’t be that a Democratic president was as least in part being over-cautious, too concerned about legality or America’s image or anything like that – he had to be a scheming, evil, deceitful thing.

“I haven’t heard of any instances of Bush having Bin Laden in his sights and refusing to pull the trigger in his brief 8 months before 9/11”

Yep. Because he didn’t bother, didn’t really seem to grant it much importance. (He did, to his credit, apparently ask if there was any threat to the nation, but apparently then he got distracted. I don’t think it’s cause he’s an evil little Bushitler, though – it’s just that he’s Bush, with all that entails. He must feel horrible about it though.

“I guess this is an excellent example of the difference between conservatives and liberals/democrats/progressives or whatever the popular term is today. We see that the U.S. is a good nation. ”

Well, I think it’s a bit more complicated, but what does this have to do with what I said? I’m just objecting to this cartoon view, where Syria is Bad and therefore in league with all the other Bad people and would never ever do anything to help us. Nations aren’t people, but they’re run by collections of people, and so can be kinda thought of as such – presumably you don’t divide the world into simply, completely Bad people (all identical) and simply, completely Good people, but realize it’s more complex, and that people have interests, and sometimes work together even if they’re very much not friends, and can sometimes be motivated by rational self-interest (and sometimes not).

“Read your link about Syria and although very interesting, it provided no proof that the torture of Arar produced any intelligence for the U.S. ”

Agreed. Everything I’ve heard seems to say they didn’t get anything out of him. (One of the reasons I tend to think he’s innocent -even at our worst in terms of torture, Syria’s still a lot worse. (Cold comfort indeed)). But . . . so? This seems to go back to the idea that we can’t make mistakes, and anyone we detain, torture, and then ship to Syria must have been an evil terrorist? (That’s one of the reasons for such protections as we’re defending – human error.)

“Not to mention many of the instance quoted in that article helped Syria more than anyone.”

Sounds about right. I wasn’t saying the Syrian government was a bunch of sweethearts who want to help us our of the goodness of their hearts – merely that they’re not simplistic cartoon villains. (Between the support for various terrorist groups and serious political repression and etc., they’re pretty nasty. But one of our very helpful allies in the GWOT apparently boiled some political opponents alive, so . . .{shrugs}

I’d say more about goodness and America and patriotism and such, but our host wants to bring this to an end, so I’ll just say that I’ll stick up on open thread over at my mostly abandoned blog in a bit just in case anybody wants to keep arguing.

No, I don’t know why you would either. But hey, just in case. It’s definitely been interesting, if insanely frustrating.

(Sister Toldjah – I can definitely understand if you don’t want to let this out of moderation, in the interests of brevity, but if so could you put up that invitation at the end? Although I suspect I’m just flatterin’ myself).

Anyway – all I wanted to say (and I do go on . . .) was that with very, very, very rare exceptions, we don’t hate America. Satullo doesn’t hate America. I don’t hate America. The random liberal or leftist down the street from you doesn’t hate America. It’s not just that many liberals do manage to be patriotic, as ST kindly says – it’s that the whole thing about “a not so insignificant number of far left self-haters like Chris Satullo just itching to find a reason to drag the country down to their level” is just a complete and utter misunderstanding, a fantasy. (The bit about Satullo being “far left” is so downright bizarre it’s virtually dreamlike). I’m not saying you can’t find any people like that anywhere, but they’re very small in number and very far from the liberal and leftwing mainstream; indeed, don’t have any sort of mainstream platform to speak from. It’s like when many folks on the right seemed to think that Chuchill idiot was some sort of big liberal leader, when pretty much nobody had ever heard of him (indeed, when that story broke, my first reaction honestly was ‘wait, wait, I thought they liked Churchill, but anyway, he’s dead – oh, some other fellow with that name. Hmm – well, he sounds like a [deleted].) Look at that column again – there’s nothing about being ashamed of our country – rather, being ashamed on behalf of our country, because, he says, we’re failing it, abandoning it. You might disagree, but that’s very far from ‘America sucks, , let’s go burn a flag, woo-hoo!’

So.

I agree – it’s pretty confusing.

No, it isn’t really. As I stated before, if you prevent attacks, which this information certainly did, you save lives. The terrorists don’t shoo all the people out of a target before attacking.

{shrug} You say:

unprovoked rush to war with the wrong country over WMD fantasies & highly misleading rhetoric intended to falsely connect Saddam, AQ, and 9/11 and terrify the American public, all without bothering to make postwar plans beyond ‘catch flowers, eat candy, enjoy applause, go home’.

I say, people who are so furious over losing the last two elections that they are perfectly willing to ignore all the intelligence, including from foreign countries and the U.N., as well as the fact that Iraq attacked 4 sovereign nations since 1980, and had nuclear ambitions. Not to mention make up stories about Bush “connecting” 9/11 to Iraq.

But I’m willing to step back from the online-arguments-over-Iraq precipice if you are . . .

Ok

Although I have to say, if it was a war largely over oil, as Greenspan has claimed, we sure screwed that one up.

Except for the fact that the very next day, he changed his mind.

Greenspan Backtracks On Iraq War Oil Claim

Former Fed Chief Now Says Oil Wasn’t The Reason For U.S. Invasion.

The fiscal guru backed off that assertion by suggesting that while securing global oil supplies “was not the administration’s motive,” it should have been.

Wonder why you didn’t see that story? That’s odd.

Wait, I thought conservatives were supposed to value what was good for the country over selfish political gain?

Indeed they do, unlike the dems. The difference is that Clinton actually had several chances to kill Bin Laden, and refused.

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Bin Laden Unit of the CIA under Clinton had this to say:

The president (Clinton) seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impugnity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That’s the bottom line.

Well, I think it goes without saying that he certainly didn’t do enough. But to say he “did nothing” seems to forget stuff like this:

Oh, I didn’t forget it. Those attacks have been largely written off as doing absolutely nothing to impact Al Qaeda and did in fact strengthen Osama Bin Laden’s reputation across the Muslim world. Not to mention the timing of the attacks certainly calls into question the motivation for them. The Monica Lewinsky scandal was beggining to break and Clinton needed a distraction.

Scheuer addressed that as well:

Well, the president is correct, in that he got – President Clinton is correct that he got closer than anyone, but, of course, he always refused to pull the trigger. And in addition, we were never authorized, while I was the chief of operations, to kill Usama bin Laden. In fact, Mr. Richard Clarke definitely told us we had no authorization to kill bin Laden.

Sure sounds like Clinton wasn’t interested in getting Bin Laden.

I haven’t heard of any instances of Bush having Bin Laden in his sights and refusing to pull the trigger in his brief 8 months before 9/11.

See, the problem here is that you’re going by the simplistic saturday-morning-cartoons good guy/bad guy model of international relations.

I guess this is an excellent example of the difference between conservatives and liberals/democrats/progressives or whatever the popular term is today. We see that the U.S. is a good nation. We have liberated millions of people from brutal dictatorships and stopped the wholesale slaughter of innocents throughout our history. We are the first ones offering a helping hand when other nations suffer devastating natural disasters.

Read your link about Syria and although very interesting, it provided no proof that the torture of Arar produced any intelligence for the U.S. Not to mention many of the instance quoted in that article helped Syria more than anyone.

Some person on Yahoo Answers said that “When it comes to the figurative sense of the term, “laundry list” usually describes a long, hastily assembled or disorganized, and seemingly random list of items..”

Good for the person from Yahoo Answers. Not sure what that has to do with anything, except for another disagreement about terminology.

Ha! (I also like the bit about how radical Islamists end up looking better than Chris Matthews . . .). Raises an interesting question, though – let’s say you were captured, imprisoned in a small room, and kept almost constantly awake by recordings of Obama speeches blaring at full volume, day after day after day after . . . would that count as a kind of torture?

. . . Now that’s change you can believe in . . .
(Personally, I’d distinguish that from waterboarding, stress positions, etc . . . )

Anyway – I’m assuming you’re being sarcastic, but just in case you really don’t understand, it’s not that I’m depending on the Schwenksville Police Department to arrest bin Laden (or perhaps not even them). It’s that you can’t deal with terrorism (at least in the current instance) simply by, say, invading Iraq. (And you can joke about NY State Troopers waving an arrest warrant at bin Laden, but we sent the U.S. military to get him (among many other things), and as far as we know that hasn’t worked either, yet. (Of course, that’s obviously a really grotesque & unfair oversimplification, and you’ll probably decide I’m smearing the troops. Jeez . . . )

Instead, it’s going to require a wide range of effective tactics, many of which are going to be the kind of thing you do to fight the mafia or drug cartels – not relying on random state troopers but everything up to national law enforcement agencies, and constant international cooperation. For example, I’m thinking of the Bush administration’s (entirely proper) work in shutting down terrorist financing. Then there’s the incredibly important effort of showing people that we’re their friend (or at least not their enemy), and that they don’t want to support anti-American terrorists, much less join them. A lot of our recent conduct has really undermined that (what would you do if foreign forces, having invaded the U.S. to overthrow some horrible near-future dictator, proceeded to detain your son/father/brother in a random sweep, so that he disappears for weeks or months, until he’s finally released with stories of being abused in twisted and degrading ways, or is never released, or you’re informed, eventually, of his death in custody . . . .?). And it’s not either a national security or law enforcement thing – obviously, we need both. In some cases, military operations – small, like bombing a terrorist camp – or perhaps even large ones – will surely be necessary.

But I’m an evil America-hater, so what do I know?

“Once again, NC Cop’s pointed out the flaw in your stance.”

‘Condoleezza Rice said it, so it must be true’ seems a little bit overtrusting to me. That’s probably just my crazy America-hatin’ coming out, though. Clearly we can blindly trust all our government officials – wait, but not the ones with (D)’s after their names? Man, I keep missing these memos . . . . And it’s not like Rice ever says things that aren’t totally accurate, like that nobody ever predicted that terrorists could use a plane as a weapon, etc. (And much less seriously, apparently Laura Bush has a sister-wife – but that’s getting kinda pettily unfair. Although personally, I think that would be hilarious.)

“. It would have helped if during the previous administration the security agencies hadn’t been actively prohibited from sharing anti-terrorist information (Gorelick’s famous ‘wall’)”

The reality seems a lot more complicated – see for example here. I’m assuming you’re particularly likely to distrust that site, and that’s ok – hey, blindly trusting liberal organizations isn’t a good idea either – but it provides a) criticisms of that claim (in case you’re not yet familiar with them), and b) most importantly, links to documents and testimony and such, so you can judge whether the evidence supports their assertions, and evaluate how reliable it is.

“ for transparently political reasons.”

Eh? What would those be? I’m sure you’re not saying that the Gorelick “wall” memo was actually an attempt to protect Clinton from one or another imaginary or wildly-overblown scandal, but I can’t think what else you might be getting at.

“Inside story: the daughter of some friends of mine has worked there. While in college . . .”

Y’know, not to impugn your friends’ honesty – it is true that often tales grow and change in the telling (at least it’s not from a ‘friend of a friend!’) and it’s easy to think of other explanations – with only the slightest variation – that might put this in a different light. But then again, it might be completely accurate, though I’m unsure why you want to tell us all that your friend’s daughter is/was ardently pro-Castro (hey, we all make mistakes in college – for example, it turns out it’s not necessarily the best idea to take most of a box of Vivarin within the space of an hour or two while washing each one down with cans of coke . . . ) nor why you think this anecdote reliably tells us anything about that publication (besides that they employed such a person). Anyway, the whole thing is completely irrelevant to the point I was making – which is instead of being evil monsters who put the pursuit of power above all else, and are utterly united in their attempt to destroy America, liberals and folks on the left do indeed criticize or oppose others on the ’same side’. People often feel that members of despised outgroups are relentlessly monolithic and unvaried, along with with being evil schemers acting only for selfish gain. This is why remarks (like yours) along these lines are so worrying – along with forest hunter’s joke about stomping out everyone they disagree with for the good of the country, such baby steps of dehumanization can form a fetid breeding ground for far more serious eliminationist sentiments.

“By the way, Dan, did you forget to wax indignant before because I deigned to call Castro an America hater?

Um, what? I mean, he is, y’know . . .

“I have no hate for the left. You’re [etc.] but I don’t hate you.”
Rat, you believe that we would happily – and knowingly – hurt America (including countless of our fellow-citizens) in an naked, all-consuming quest for political power. If you don’t hate us, even a little, you’re quite a tolerant fellow. What next, embracing Castro?

“ But it is one of your heros, Howard Dean, who openly states that he hates Republicans”

““That was a little out of context” Dean answered. “I don’t hate Republicans as individuals. But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do.”

“ Tony Snow is ill? Read the hate and watch the digital high-fives among the rest of their electronic sewage. ”

Actually, I can’t remember any of the liberal/left bloggers I read reacting anything at all like that, although I’m sure there are some bloggers somewhere who said something nasty. Memory can be selective, but . . . (and compared to things you can find deep in the fever swamps of the far right, or even in the comments of major best-selling folks like Coulter – poisoning judges, wishing for terrorist attacks aimed at journalists she dislikes, etc. – not that this makes it any better, of course, just to address false claims of exclusivity).

“. But when Ted Kennedy was diagnosed, you didn’t find a like reaction here or at any other mainstream conservative site. ”

What, you want a gold star for being a decent human being? Well, ok. Good job! Good job! (and to be fair, that is an admirable thing. I mean, it shouldn’t be a claim one even has to make – look, ma, we didn’t celebrate when a politician we dislike got diagnosed with brain cancer! – but still . . .)

After all, Michael Savage isn’t a blogger. So he doesn’t count. (And to be fair, he was an exception. There really is something kinda wrong with that guy).

“ Jesse Helms has passed away? . . .”

Now here I have, unfortunately, to pretty much agree with you. Helms was a hateful & bigoted person who should have never been put in a position of power (so he would have caused less damage), but he was still a person, a comrade-in-arms in the battle every human being has with mortality. Blech.

It’s messed up that so many folks on the right were praising him, but a different kind of messed up, I’ll agree.

“And once again we come back to ST’s original point – leftists who hate America because it isn’t run by THEM, in a way THEY want.”

But I won’t agree with that, because it’s nonsense. As I’ve been saying – it’s my original and intended-to-be-only point, but I’m easily distracted – you’ve got this utterly, completely wrong. We don’t hate America. In fact, if you go back to the Satullo column, it’s kinda hard to imagine how anyone can misread it as such, at least without really trying. He’s not saying he hates America – indeed, the exact opposite: because he so cherishes what America stands for, and at it’s best, has been, he’s deeply, hurtfully ashamed at how we’re so horribly failing to live up to its standards, how we’re disgracing our own country and mocking our founding ideals. It’s not necessary to agree with this assessment to realize that there’s nothing in here of hating America – unless, I suppose, America is defined as ‘George Bush and the GOP.’ Satullo doesn’t even go ‘look what those horrible evil people have done to our country! Get them!’ – instead, he includes himself, liberals, lefties – we’ve pretty much all failed, he’s saying – we need to do better.

To again briefly address your argument from the earlier comment – two main problems with it (of many):
1) false equivalences. For example, a horribly screwed-up raid on a cult compound that was stocking up on heavy weaponry doesn’t actually equal a full-bore assault on our basic values.
2) inaccuracy (see again what I said about the tendency towards viewing those one dislikes, fears and/or hates as a monolithic mass): No Code Pink for Bosnia? Some of that was that our intervention to stop an ongoing ethnic cleansing doesn’t seem to have been strongly opposed by most Americans, while an ever-growing number of people opposed Bush’s war, even from the beginning, and for good reason. But that aside, there were folks on the left – unfortunately – who opposed our intervention there – Chomsky, for example, (certainly not a minor figure). And of course, I’m sure you remember what so many Republican politicians were saying [pdf] at the time, how steadfastly they supported the Commander in Chief . . .

What’s really depressing and disturbing is how you don’t seem to see your political enemies as fellow citizens – heck, fellow humans – who in most cases are at least partly motivated by sincere beliefs, good intentions, even misunderstandings . . . just as amoral/evil, scheming monsters who care only about gaining power. That’s kind of worrying.

doesn’t actually give us a firm answer

Ahhhhh the sound of defeat!!! Since Dan S. is an expert in interrogation techniques I am certain he would give us a more definitive answer, but he’s not so he gives us this have it both ways answer to CYA himself. Good one Dan S.

You’ll believe in Global warming on the say so of an idiot that is making huge profits off of it, but you question anyone else ad nauseum. Thanks for you answers Dan S. Next contestant please. – Lorica

So which is it?”

I agree – it’s pretty confusing. “Probably helped prevent attacks doesn’t actually give us a firm answer – did it or didn’t it? If he thinks it did, what evidence is he basing this on? Etc. I can’t say with any certainty that it didn’t, to be sure, but . . . .

“You see how berserk the Bush critics went when we invaded Iraq,”
{shrug} you say tomato, I say unprovoked rush to war with the wrong country over WMD fantasies & highly misleading rhetoric intended to falsely connect Saddam, AQ, and 9/11 and terrify the American public, all without bothering to make postwar plans beyond ‘catch flowers, eat candy, enjoy applause, go home’. But I’m willing to step back from the online-arguments-over-Iraq precipice if you are . . .

Although I have to say, if it was a war largely over oil, as Greenspan has claimed, we sure screwed that one up.

“ I can only imagine what would have happened had Bush dropped bombs on an unheard of Osama Bin Laden in a foreign country less than 8 months after taking over. They would have been screaming “impeachment” before the smoke cleared. ”

Wait, I thought conservatives were supposed to value what was good for the country over selfish political gain? Now I’m confused!

And anyway, seriously now – if Bush had taken out bin Laden in summer ‘01, the vast majority of people would’ve gone either “huh? bin who?” or “yay!”. Oh, and about 10 folks would have been standing somewhere waving signs and yelling about Bush being an evil imperialist capitalist warmonger. So?

“ Clinton had YEARS, of not only warnings, but actual attacks that killed Americans, and he did nothing because he was worried about his all too important poll numbers.”

Well, I think it goes without saying that he certainly didn’t do enough. But to say he “did nothing” seems to forget stuff like this:

“August 20, 1998 WASHINGTON (CNN) — Saying “there will be no sanctuary for terrorists,” President Clinton on Thursday said the U.S. strikes against terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a facility in Sudan are part of “a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism.” . . . The president said he ordered the strike against bin Laden and his compatriots because of “compelling information they were planning additional terrorist attacks against our citizens and others with the inevitable collateral casualties and .. seeking to acquire chemical weapons and other dangerous weapons.”

Sure, he dropped the ball, but damn, at least he was trying to catch it, as opposed to just standing dazedly in the outfield, looking around aimlessly . . .

“Not at all.
Sorry ’bout that, I misunderstood. That’s what I get for commenting instead of sleeping . . . .

“What I’m suggesting is that why would the Syrians agree to take someone, torture them, and then turn over the information they get to the United States? It makes NO sense at all. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but Syria is the bad guy, they don’t want to help the good guys, get it?”

See, the problem here is that you’re going by the simplistic saturday-morning-cartoons good guy/bad guy model of international relations. I’m certainly not saying that Syria isn’t a fairly nasty dictatorship, much less our good friend (not that the two are mutually exclusive, unfortunately) – but we’ve had somewhat of a common enemy in bin Laden and al Qaeda – after all, Syria’s run by the secular Ba’ath party (the Syrian version, that is). Indeed, it would seem that Syria did supply some (limited) help in fighting Al Qaeda after 9/11 (see for example here, under “Syria’s Record, Post-September 11“) – although of course they are big supporters of certain other terrorist groups.

“Innocent? Apparently you failed to read the laundry list of things Arar has been involved with. ”

Some person on Yahoo Answers said that “When it comes to the figurative sense of the term, “laundry list” usually describes a long, hastily assembled or disorganized, and seemingly random list of items..” It certinly does sound like a lot of claims being thrown around that don’t really seem to go anywhere or rest on much. Both Canada and Syria apparently feel there isn’t any evidence of Arar having any links to terrorism (at least going by – hangs head in shame – wikipedia, caveat lector, etc.).

Did read it, though.

Cause that’s what I – or anyone else – is advocating. Yep.

Sarcasm noted. OK, let’s see…you don’t want the military handling terrorism, and you’re not going to have the police agencies do it…who then? Do you honestly think that maybe playing a tape of Obama reading an endless succession of “hope” and “change” non-sequiturs off his teleprompter will end islamic radicalism? It won’t – they’re made of sterner stuff than, say, Chris Matthews, ya know.

but honestly, inter-agency rivalry seems to have been the biggest factor there.

Once again, NC Cop’s pointed out the flaw in your stance. It would have helped if during the previous administration the security agencies hadn’t been actively prohibited from sharing anti-terrorist information (Gorelick’s famous ‘wall’) for transparently political reasons.

also, you’re forgetting liberals again.

Wrong again. I deliberately use “leftist” because the term is more accurate. The classical liberal was in favor of more freedoms in both the political and economic arenas. That doesn’t describe the left today. They’ve bastardized the term. It’s why I also won’t use their current euphemism of choice: “progressive”. There’s nothing progressive about the left today.

Like a ton of other folks on or near the left, wasn’t much of a fan. You should look at old issues of the Nation.

Funny you should mention that publication. If a conservative were to dream up his most side-splittingly funny parody of a left-wing magazine, you wouldn’t be able to tell it from the Nation. Inside story: the daughter of some friends of mine has worked there. While in college she once called her mother and asked her to find some good reference books on the Cuban revolution and current system. The most important part of the request was that the references had to be pro-Castro or she didn’t want them. That’s the criteria for working there. By the way, Dan, did you forget to wax indignant before because I deigned to call Castro an America hater? You’re slipping, my boy…

It must suck to hate or despise so many of your neighbors . . .

I’m no psychiatrist, but I think the technical term for what you’re doing here is “projection”. I have no hate for the left. You’re politically misguided, intellectually bankrupt, and economically unfit to run so much as a lemonade stand, but I don’t hate you. But it is one of your heros, Howard Dean, who openly states that he hates Republicans. Hate is the province of the left today. Go to your left-wing web sites and observe. Jesse Helms has passed away? Hate and glee erupt. Tony Snow is ill? Read the hate and watch the digital high-fives among the rest of their electronic sewage. But when Ted Kennedy was diagnosed, you didn’t find a like reaction here or at any other mainstream conservative site. Hate is your side’s monopoly, Dan.

And once again we come back to ST’s original point – leftists who hate America because it isn’t run by THEM, in a way THEY want.

Unless Dan shocks us with some actual substance in his next missive, I’m finished with him here.

That’s actually not at all clear – it would help if the recordings of those interrogations hadn’t been destroyed,

I’m confused Dan. First you say it’s not clear if it saved lives, but then in YOUR link the interrogator says:

the technique provided a crucial break to the CIA and probably helped prevent attacks

So which is it? Just so we set the record straight here, preventing attacks means SAVING LIVES. Usually when the bad guys attack something they kill people.

but honestly, inter-agency rivalry seems to have been the biggest factor there.

Actually no, it was red tape and bureaucracy. The kind you normally get with any major LAW ENFORCEMENT investigation:

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that structural and legal problems prevented federal agencies from gathering and sharing critical information about terrorist threats within the United States before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Legal problems, Dan. That’s what you get when you treat terrorism as a legal problem rather than a national security one.

or even an alternative-universe Bush who spent more time reading memos with titles like “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US and less reading stories like My Pet Goat

Riiiiiiight. You see how berserk the Bush critics went when we invaded Iraq, a country with a leader who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people, supported terrorism, and gave the finger to the UN every time he could over his WMD program. I can only imagine what would have happened had Bush dropped bombs on an unheard of Osama Bin Laden in a foreign country less than 8 months after taking over. They would have been screaming “impeachment” before the smoke cleared. So don’t hand me that “if only Bush had done more” crap. Clinton had YEARS, of not only warnings, but actual attacks that killed Americans, and he did nothing because he was worried about his all too important poll numbers.

It seems to suggest – and perhaps I’m reading it wrong – that we simply couldn’t have ended up shipping off an innocent man to be tortured in Syria, and since even a year of torture in Syrian prisons couldn’t get info out of him, the whole thing must be nonsense or misleading . . .

Not at all. What I’m suggesting is that why would the Syrians agree to take someone, torture them, and then turn over the information they get to the United States? It makes NO sense at all. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but Syria is the bad guy, they don’t want to help the good guys, get it?

sending someone to Syria to get tortured for info, except that they happened to be innocent)

Innocent? Apparently you failed to read the laundry list of things Arar has been involved with. Try actually reading the links I post, Dan, it will help tremendously.

Gratuitous and dully vacant personal insult aside (what next, ‘your momma’?)

Spare me. As if any of your sarcastic humor is any less insulting.

“ You’re from New York…have you petitioned the governor to send a NY State Trooper over to Waziristan with an arrest warrant and ask bin Laden to come along peacefully?”

Uh-huh. ‘Cause that’s what I – or anyone else – is advocating. Yep.

“So let’s now talk about the Clinton administration.”

Do I have to? Like a ton of other folks on or near the left, wasn’t much of a fan. You should look at old issues of the Nation. Not nearly as bad as the current occupant, ok, but . . .

The Waco disaster was a disaster. Complete bungle of a very risky situation. But it was just that – a disaster, a bungle, not an overarching policy. (Although I don’t think there was sufficient accountability).

The two paragraphs starting “And there, in one sentence, is a very basic difference between conservatives and leftists.” (and much of the previous few paragraphs – also, you’re forgetting liberals again. Unless you intend your comments not to apply, in which case you shouldn’t use liberal examples.)

Where do I start? Since I’m in a hurry, I’ll just quote my earlier comments: “People often do attribute these sorts of schemingly deceitful motives to despised outgroups, while their own group is acting in pure good faith, selflessly motivated by high &serious concerns and careful consideration.)”

And how do you manage it, being surrounded by such amoral, power-hungry traitors? It must suck to hate or despise so many of your neighbors . . .

“One Chris Satullo, that’s who. I checked the archives.”

You could help me out then, since his Inky columnist page only goes back a year or two, while the $ archives don’t seem to turn up Satullo stuff before 2000. What am I missing? – Although apparently he did, back in the late 90s, call for Clinton to resign . . .

“You want to know why we find the likes of Satullo far off to the left?”

I don’t know, ’cause it doesn’t seem to have all that much to do with actual policies supported, esp. on any standard left/right axis . . .

Ok, have to run. Because I hate my country, don’cha know . . .

“Dopeler effect, commonly referred to as DanS disease: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter, when they come at you rapidly.”

Gratuitous and dully vacant personal insult aside (what next, ‘your momma’?), I rather like that (and so then they’d be at normal stupid level as they pass you, and appear even extra stupid as they keep going . . .) Interestingly, the Doppler effect also works with electromagnetic radiation (light, for example) as well as sound waves. So stars and such that are receding far away into the distance – buh-bye! – appear shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, while ones growing ever closer look bluer.

Hmm.. .
Ok, done amusing myself. And of course, this is disgustingly oversimplified and I don’t understand most of it. Cool, though.

Anyway, careful observation has convinced me that stupidity is part of the fundamental make-up of matter at the atomic level. Sure, everybody knows about protons and neutrons and electrons – but what they’ve been missing is that other atomic particle . . . the moron.

“England is looking for more easy to deceive fools, check it out.”

Ooh – Mrs. S. would love to see London – do you have any more information on this exciting opportunity? I mean, I figure you’d know . . (I wonder if the folks who put together the ARPANET ever imagined their creation developing into an enormous entity largely used to trade playground insults, cat pictures, & etc. . . .?)

“Comparing the Islamic fanatics to Nazis?? Are you kidding me? They are two completely different enemies”

Yep. I mean after all, Germany’s in Europe, not the Middle East! Silly me! And it’s Islamofascists, not Islamonazis! And everybody knows that Nazi generals had a reputation for being laid-back, easy-going, open-minded fellows . . .

More seriously, though, it’s not an utterly absurd argument – the German generals and their interrogators did have more shared culture and history, for example. But it’s just that – an interesting argument, which would need to be supported, and doesn’t have any more of a priori claim to being correct than its opposite. Indeed, it’s perfectly reasonable to think that – while cultural factors are important – there are also shared basics of human psychology.

“On the other hand, harsh interrogation techniques [that is, torture] HAVE worked.”

Indeed. They worked in the early -1690s Salem, Mass., when they helped root out many Wiccanist terrorists (or ‘witches’) who were meeting in terrorists cells (’covens’) and obtaining WMDS – that is, weapons of magical destruction. They had been working in similar trials across much of Europe for several centuries. Indeed, prior to the witchcraze really getting started, they worked to uncover a plot by Jews and lepers to attack France with chemical WMDs (ie, poison the wells and rivers) at the behalf of the Muslim king of Granada. (Rather disturbingly, if you poke around online, you’ll find neonazis, etc. who seem to take this at least partly seriously. I keep touching on the sort of gaping, well, gap between our views, but it could, after all, be a lot bigger.)

Now, I should clarify here, given that some folks seem to believe I think the terrorists who killed ~3000 people in my hometown are imaginary. I’m certainly not saying that. Nor -obviously – are details elicited by torture always wrong. But torture is first and foremost not reliable. If you look at the long 1957 quote (and link) in one of my earlier comments, you’ll notice that one of the main aims that the Communists were using these methods (which we’ve now adopted) for was the production of false confessions. – Indeed, I tend to think that human nature means that the use of torture inevitably moves away from intelligence-gathering into other purposes – but that’s another matter.

“That information helped uncover several plots that SAVED LIVES!!!”

That’s actually not at all clear – it would help if the recordings of those interrogations hadn’t been destroyed, but . . . – and there have been arguments over Abu Zubaydah’s importance and sanity. In some cases it at least seems like we already had information that was supposedly uniquely supplied by AZ, etc . . . According to a Dec. ‘07 Washington Post article featuring John Kiriakou – a former CIA agent who was involved in capturing and interrogating Abu Zubaydah,
“Kiriakou said he now has mixed feelings about the use of waterboarding. He said that he thinks the technique provided a crucial break to the CIA and probably helped prevent attacks, but that he is now convinced that waterboarding is torture, and “Americans are better than that.”

“Maybe that’s inconsistent, but that’s how I feel,” he said. “It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we’ve moved beyond that.”

Probably?
Sounds a very mixed and uncertain bag.

[re: terrorism prevention as a (partly) law enforcement issue] “Except in the case of 9/11. . . . .. The reason it succeeded was because the FBI was shackled with the red tape and bureaucracy of federal law enforcement.

Well, that’s not so clear, either. And I suppose one could try to argue that it was earlier reforms – instituted in reaction to serious abuses, see for example the mid-70s Church Committee – that kept the CIA and FBI from sharing info – but honestly, inter-agency rivalry seems to have been the biggest factor there. And when you look at the major puzzle pieces that agonizingly almost got put together, note, for example, that an alert about “an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” who were suddenly attending aviation schools” – and a suggestion that this might represent a “coordinated effort” by bin Laden – came from an FBI guy – that is, a law enforcement official.

Maybe these problems were unsurmountable, but what really would have helped, at least, was clear leadership and focus from the top. Unfortunately, it seems that increasingly frantic attempts – by the outgoing administration, the CIA, etc.- to get Bush to actually pay attention mostly failed. Can we say that a Gore administration – or even an alternative-universe Bush who spent more time reading memos with titles like “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US and less reading stories like My Pet Goat – would have prevented 9/11? Absolutely not. 20/20 hindsight, y’know. Even with a more focused administration – and we can’t be sure we’d have gotten one – and a lot more knowledge, there’s no guarantee at all that we would have been able to identify, find and stop that handful of individuals in time. But it’s hard not to imagine we would have had a better chance.

“Don’t know where that came from. I don’t recall anyone here saying the we never make mistakes.”

“Interesting article about Arar, though. The only thing I don’t understand is that if we sent him to Syria specifically to be tortured, what information to we gain from it? It was always my understanding that the point of torture was to get information out of someone. Did that happen? It appears not.”

That second quote is interesting. It seems to suggest – and perhaps I’m reading it wrong – that we simply couldn’t have ended up shipping off an innocent man to be tortured in Syria, and since even a year of torture in Syrian prisons couldn’t get info out of him, the whole thing must be nonsense or misleading . . .

(Granted, we can’t, I think, absolutely rule out an alternative possibility, which is that we (and Canada) didn’t do this on purpose, but merely out of enormous incompetence and ignorance. (As opposed to the gross incompetence of intentionally sending someone to Syria to get tortured for info, except that they happened to be innocent) . But you know, that doesn’t exactly strengthen the case for gov’t being able to snatch people off the street and torture them in secret prisons either . . .)

“t was always my understanding that the point of torture was to get information out of someone”

That’s one purpose. It’s not the only one, and often it’s – at least functionally – not the main one. Torture can also serve (additionally, or instead) as an instrument of political oppression, retribution, etc. – in a sense, as a form of state terrorism – as well as a number of other things, a few of which have to do a lot more with psychology than security.

I need to go to sleep. GWR, – well, I was going to try to stay awake long enough to reply to your comment, but reading it through I realized that it was really a brilliant parody in the style of Stephen Colbert, and I need only admire it.

Well, no. But I will try to respond tomorrow. Or, I guess, today. *Yawn*.