The De-Throning of King George

From Andrew Sullivan
30 Jun 2006 12:31 pm
Absorbing the Hamdan decision today prompts the following thoughts. This is not an unprecedented moment in America's constitutional history. In war-time, presidents have over-reached before, and they will over-reach again. The over-reach is often for good reasons; and after 9/11, it's understandable that some corners were cut. What this decision represents is therefore the re-balancing of the constitutional order, after the heat of the moment. Think of it as the moment when King George's crown was yanked off his head. The Congress has tried a couple of times, but been foiled by "signing statements." So the judiciary has stepped in. Other presidents have tried mini-coronations. What we are seeing is the end of the latest monarchical pretension.
This time, however, the relief is greater for a few reasons. The first is that this war has no clearly defined enemy and no clearly defined end-point. So the presidential over-reach was particularly grave because it threatened a permanent expansion of law-free executive power (which is another word for an elected tyranny). As Orwell understood, a permanent war is integral to the maintenance of tyranny; and in our current predicament, vigilance is warranted perhaps more than in any previous, more discretely formulated conflict.
There is also clear evidence that much of what this president attempted was not simply a good-faith attempt to protect American civilians. It was a deliberate attempt to expand executive authority, promoted by radical theorists of state power, and fomented by a cabal of dead-enders, bent on avenging Nixon. The intent of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Addington, Cambone, Yoo, and the other advocates of an untrammeled executive was the acquisition of unaccountable power. In wartime, such dangerous characters are even more of a threat, because they can use the cover of security to seize new prerogatives. By far the most disturbing aspect of those prerogatives was the power to torture. The ever-lasting stain on this president will be his abandonment of centuries of Anglo-Saxon prohibition of this evil. Eventually, when we discover the full extent of his torture program, we will be able to assess the profound damage he has done to his own country and the civilization which it defends.
Lastly, this is not over. The court decision was relatively close. If Roberts had not already endorsed a quasi-monarchy in a perpetual war, he would have voted with the dissenters. The Republican party, which has become an enemy, rather than a friend, of domestic liberty, cannot wait to place another proponent for an executive-on-steroids on the Supreme Court. When the next attack comes, the possibility exists for another, graver suspension of constitutional liberty. If Bush-style Republicans keep winning the presidency, there is no knowing what permanent suspensions of basic liberties we may confront. There is a balance here, of course. Some loss of liberty is inevitable in a conflict such as the war on terror. Many of those shackled in Gitmo are dangerous, ruthless and barbaric. But many, many are not; and were not detained "on the battlefield" as the president keeps saying. They were picked up often far from battlefields, incarcerated on the flimsiest of evidence, tortured, abused and sent into a black hole of lawless arbitrary power. That is what we are fighting. It is not what we should become. We have been granted a chance to maintain that distinction. But if we do not keep that constantly in our minds, we may lose it. And in losing that distinction, lose ourselves.

Court rejects military tribunals
The high court's 5-to-3 ruling Thursday scuttled US plans for Guantánamo detainees.
By Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – In a landmark decision restricting the president's powers during wartime, the US Supreme Court has dealt the Bush administration a severe blow in its push to prosecute terrorists in military tribunals.
The court ruled 5-to-3 Thursday that Mr. Bush acted outside his authority when he ordered Al Qaeda suspects to stand trial before these specially organized military commissions. The ruling said that the commission process at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could not proceed without violating US military law and provisions of the Geneva Conventions. "The commission lacks power to proceed," writes Justice John Paul Stevens for the court majority.
In the MonitorThursday, 06/29/06

Israel's return to Gaza: multiple motives
High court upholds 'on demand' redistricting
Why the flag amendment hasn't cleared Senate hurdle
Amid war on terror, a war with the press
Editorial: Giving the Buffett wayTERRORISM & SECURITYExplosions rock London-->
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President Bush said he would honor the decision in the case called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, but do it in a way that did not jeopardize the safety of Americans.
"I want to find a way forward," Bush told reporters. "I would like there to be a way to return people from Guantánamo to their home countries, but some of these people need to be tried" in court.
Human-rights organizations praised the ruling as a step forward for the US, while administrtation supporters expressed concern.
"This is a very serious blow for the president," says Andrew McBride, a former federal prosecutor who filed a friend of the court brief in the case. "It takes a very narrow view of the president's authority."
Thomas Wilner, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represents several detainees at Guantánamo, said the ruling shows that presidents must act in accord with other branches of government. "It really reaffirms what courts have said from the beginning of the republic. That at times of crisis, the executive is not exempt from following the law," Mr. Wilner says.
The case sharply split the high court with six separate opinions covering 177 pages.
"The (Uniform Code of Military Justice) conditions the president's use of military commissions on compliance not only with the American common law of war, but also with the rest of the UCMJ itself," Justice Stevens writes. "The procedures that the government has decreed will govern (detainee Salim Ahmed) Hamdan's trial by commission violate these laws."
Joining Justice Stevens' opinion were Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito dissented, saying the court lacked jurisdiction to take up the case. In a second dissent on the merits, Justice Thomas said the court owed the president "a heavy measure of deference."
"The court's evident belief that it is qualified to pass on the military necessity of the commander in chief's decision to employ a particular form of force against our enemies is so antithetical to our constitutional structure that it simply cannot got unanswered," Thomas writes.
Chief Justice John Roberts did not participate in the case because he was part of a three-judge federal appeals court panel that ruled on the same case in the Bush administration's favor last July.
On Thursday, the high court overturned that earlier ruling.
The decision comes in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, who is alleged to have worked as a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. Mr. Hamdan is one of 10 detainees at Guantánamo facing war crimes trials before a military commission.
Defense officials say 65 more detainees are under consideration for commission trials.
Overall, there are some 450 detainees at the controversial detention facility. US allies in Europe and the UN's Committee Against Torture have urged the US to close the detention camp. Critics say harsh treatment of detainees at the camp has tarnished America's image as a champion of international human rights.
Supporters of the camp say it is necessary to facilitate intelligence gathering and that without military commissions many "enemy combatants" could not be prosecuted. Evidence against some of them was obtained through sensitive intelligence operations and using methods that likely violate constitutional protections, legal analysts say.
The Supreme Court ruling does not address whether Guantanámo should remain open or shut down. Instead, it focuses on the process for holding commission trials established by the president in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Lawyers working on Hamdan's behalf had charged that President Bush violated US and international law in ordering specially formulated commission trials at Guantánamo.
The Supreme Court agreed.
"It bears emphasizing that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the government's power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities," Stevens writes. "But in undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the executive is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction."
The case was being closely watched because it required the justices to confront the fundamental constitutional tension between presidential, congressional, and judicial power during times of national peril.
In reaching their decision, the majority justices said provisions within the Uniform Code of Military Justice - rules for conducting trials and other judicial matters within the US armed forces - bar the president from establishing military commissions with fewer procedural safeguards than are afforded to American soldiers charged with crimes.
At the same time the majority justices adopted a narrow view of the Congress's 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The administration had argued that the AUMF authorized more than just military operations, it also authorized military detentions and special military trials.
The majority justices did not rule that the president was unable to conduct military commission trials, only that the procedures set out for those trials did not comply with US and international law.
The court ruled that the procedures violated a portion of the Geneva Conventions. The ruling invalidates a presidential determination that Al Qaeda suspects by virtue of their terrorist activities are not covered by the Geneva accords.
"There is at least one provision of the Geneva Conventions that applies here," Stevens writes, referring to Common Article 3 of the conventions which appears in all four of the accords.
He quotes one part of the accords as prohibiting: "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Mr. McBride called this part of the court's ruling "startling."
He adds: "Given the strictures of Common Article 3, it's just outrageous to say that a terrorist organization whose sole purpose is to violate the laws of war should be given the protection of the Geneva Conventions."
In addition, the court said its review of the matter was not preempted by passage in December of the Detainee Treatment Act. The DTA bars federal courts from hearing cases filed by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, but permits appeals to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. The Justices said the law did not apply to pending cases like Hamdan's.
Paul Kamenar of the Washington Legal Foundation said the ruling will not necessary end the commission process at Guantánmo. "The court struck down the military tribunals in terms of their procedural defects," he says. "The Bush administration can fix that by reinstituting the procedures that the court indicates lacked safeguards."
David Remes, a Washington, D.C., lawyer representing 17 detainees at Guantánamo, says the decision has broader implications. "It repudiates the broad assertion of unilateral power by the president to take any action that he considers to be justified in the name of fighting terrorism," he says.
Mr. Remes adds, "This was a case about presidential power - the power to break free from our system of checks and balances, the power to declare the law, the power to act as judge and jury and prosecutor and rulemaker. He is not a king. That is the meaning of this decision."
The decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld stems from an attempt by military prosecutors to try Hamdan for allegedly conspiring to commit terrorism. Prosecutors at the terrorism prison camp at Guantanámo Bay said Hamdan was a member of Al Qaeda who served as Mr. bin Laden's personal driver. He helped deliver weapons to other Al Qaeda members and was trained in the use of rifles, handguns, and machine guns at the group's Al-Farouq camp in Afghanistan, according to commission documents.
Defense lawyers say Hamdan was just a hired driver who was captured by Afghan forces while trying to return to his family. In addition to arguing that their client had not engaged in terrorism, the lawyers also attacked the legality of the military commission process.
Hamdan's trial was halted in November 2004 when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that Hamdan's trial by military commission violated US and international law. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed that decision, ruling in the Bush administration's favor last July. In November, the Supreme Court agreed to take up Hamdan's appeal.

How Doctors Got Into the Torture Business

Andrew Sullivan

FROM TIME MAGAZINE BOOK REVIEWS

Soldiers are trained to kill and doctors to heal. At least that's how we usually understand those two professions. But wars can often distort reality, and the war on terrorism has turned into a test case. An inspiring example is that of Colonel Kelly Faucette, M.D. He recently wrote about caring for a new patient at the intensive-care unit of the 47th Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, Iraq. The patient was a terrorist insurgent, a man who planted hidden roadside bombs to murder civilians and Faucette's fellow soldiers. Faucette wrote in his local paper: "Something inside me wants to walk up to this guy ... and just clobber him." But Faucette didn't. Instead he healed him before sending him to a jail, and by that act of healing he helped heal Iraq.
That's the America I know and love. But it is not, alas, the only face of America in this war. One of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's first instructions for military interrogations outside the Geneva Conventions was that military doctors should be involved in monitoring torture. It was a fateful decision — and we learn much more about its consequences in a new book based on 35,000 pages of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The book is called Oath Betrayed (to be published June 27) by medical ethicist Dr. Stephen Miles, and it is a harrowing documentation of how the military medical profession has been corrupted by the Bush-Rumsfeld interrogation rules.
One of those rules was that a prisoner's medical information could be provided to interrogators to help guide them to the prisoner's "emotional and physical strengths and weaknesses" (in Rumsfeld's own words) in the torture process. At an interrogation center called Camp Na'ma, where the unofficial motto was "No blood, no foul," one intelligence officer testified that "every harsh interrogation was approved by the [commander] and the Medical prior to its execution." Doctors, in other words, essentially signed off on torture in advance. And they often didn't inspect the victims afterward. At Abu Ghraib, according to the Army's surgeon general, only 15% of inmates were examined for injuries after interrogation.
Some of the medical involvement in torture defies belief. In one of the few actual logs we have of a high-level interrogation, that of Mohammed al-Qhatani (first reported in TIME), doctors were present during the long process of constant sleep deprivation over 55 days, and they induced hypothermia and the use of threatening dogs, among other techniques. According to Miles, Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani — while he was strapped to a chair — and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in the hospital. They then returned him to his interrogators. Elsewhere in Guantánamo, one prisoner had a gunshot wound that was left to fester during three days of interrogation before treatment, and two others were denied antibiotics for wounds. In Iraq, according to the Army surgeon general as reported by Miles, "an anesthesiologist repeatedly dropped a 2-lb. bag of intravenous fluid on a patient; a nurse deliberately delayed giving pain medication, and medical staff fed pork to Muslim patients." Doctors were also tasked at Abu Ghraib with "Dietary Manip (monitored by med)," in other words, using someone's food intake to weaken or manipulate them.
Of the 136 documented deaths of prisoners in detention, Miles found, medical death certificates were often not issued until months or even years after the actual deaths. One prisoner's corpse at Camp Cropper was kept for two weeks before his family or criminal investigators were notified. The body was then left at a local hospital with a certificate attributing death to "sudden brainstem compression." The hospital's own autopsy found that the man had died of a massive blow to the head. Another certificate claimed a 63-year-old prisoner had died of "cardiovascular disease and a buildup of fluid around his heart." According to Miles, no mention was made that the old man had been stripped naked, doused in cold water and kept outside in 40° cold for three days before cardiac arrest.
Other doctors just looked the other way, their military duty overruling the Hippocratic Oath. One at Abu Ghraib intervened to ask guards to stop beating one prisoner's wounded leg and quit hanging him from an injured shoulder. He saw it happen three times. He never reported it. In Mosul, according to Miles, one medic witnessed guards beating a prisoner and burning him by dragging him over hot stones. The prisoner was taken to the hospital, treated and then returned by doctors to his torturers. An investigation into the incidentwas closed because the medic didn't sign the medical record and so he couldn't be identified.
After a while, you get numb reading these stories. They read like accounts of a South American dictatorship, not an American presidency. But we learn one thing: once you allow the torture of prisoners for any reason, as this President did, the cancer spreads. In the end it spreads to healers as well, and turns them into accomplices to harm.

Gay men may be born, not made: Canadian study
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-27 11:21:04
BEIJING, June 27 (Xinhuanet)-- Gay men may be born and not made, a Canadian study published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Tuesday has concluded, adding that having several elder brothers increases the likelihood of a man being gay.
Although the link has long been established, the study of 944 men in Canada indicates that the link appears to have nothing to do with whether a man is brought up with his elder brothers, and is therefore psychologically influenced by them.
Instead, the increased chance of being homosexual seems to be the result of whether or not the mother has already given birth to boys - in other words, a biological link from the womb rather than psychological links from childhood.
"It's likely to be a prenatal effect," said Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catharines. "This and other studies suggest that there is probably a biological basis for homosexuality."
But it remains a mystery why for every elder brother a boy has, his chances of growing up gay increase by about a third.
Bogaert looked at gay men who had not been raised with their elder brothers, but still found that there was a link between homosexuality and the number of elder male siblings they had.
One explanation, Bogaert suggests, could be a maternal immune response to succeeding male fetuses. Mothers may produce antibodies against a male foetus's Y chromosome while in the womb, and these antibodies have an accumulative effect on subsequent pregnancies, which could affect the sexual orientation of boys.
Marc Breedlove, of Michigan State University, a colleague of Bogaert, wrote a commentary in the journal: "[Sigmund] Freud thought a distant, emotionally cold father might prevent a boy from identifying with dad and steer him to homosexuality. How much stranger it will be if, instead of the father's psychological rejection, it is the mother's immunological rejection that inadvertently but actively makes her son gay?"
The research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Enditem

Official: 7 arrested in Sears Tower plot

KELLI KENNEDYAssociated Press
MIAMI - Inside a city warehouse, authorities believe, a group was hatching the early stages of a widespread terror plot - one that targeted Chicago's Sears Tower, an FBI office in Miami and other U.S. buildings.
On Thursday, authorities swarmed the warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, removed a metal door with a blowtorch and arrested seven people, a federal law enforcement official said. Authorities in Washington and Miami were expected to release more details in separate news conferences Friday morning.
Neighbors who lived nearby said young men, who appeared to be in their teens and 20s, slept in the warehouse, running what looked like a militaristic group. They appeared brainwashed, some said.
"They would come out late at night and exercise," said Tashawn Rose, 29. "It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."
The law enforcement official told The Associated Press the seven were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the news conferences.
"There is no imminent threat to Miami or any other area because of these operations," said Richard Kolko, spokesman for FBI headquarters in Washington. He declined further comment.
Residents living near the warehouse said the men taken into custody described themselves as Muslims and had tried to recruit young people to join their group. Rose said they tried to recruit her younger brother and nephew for a karate class.
She said she talked to one of the men about a month ago. "They seemed brainwashed," she said. "They said they had given their lives to Allah."
Residents said FBI agents spent several hours in the neighborhood showing photos of the suspects and seeking information. They said the men had lived in the area for about a year.
Benjamin Williams, 17, said the group sometimes had young children with them. At times, he added, the men "would cover their faces. Sometimes they would wear things on their heads, like turbans."
A man who called himself Brother Corey and claimed to be a member of the group told CNN late Thursday that the individuals worship at the building and call themselves the "Seas of David."
He dismissed any suggestion that the men were contemplating violence. "We are peaceful," he said. He added that the group studies the Bible and has "soldiers" in Chicago but is not a terrorist organization.
Xavier Smith, who attends the nearby United Christian Outreach, said the men would often come by the church and ask for water.
"They were very private," said Smith, 33.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, questioned about the case on CNN's "Larry King Live," said he couldn't offer many details because "it's an ongoing operation."
"We are conducting a number of arrests and searches" in Miami, Mueller said, which were expected to be wrapped up Friday morning.
Managers of the Sears Tower, the nation's tallest building, said in a statement they speak regularly with the FBI and local law enforcement about terror threats and that Thursday "was no exception."
Security at the 110-floor Sears Tower, a Chicago landmark, was ramped up after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the 103rd-floor skydeck was closed for about a month and a half.
"Law enforcement continues to tell us that they have never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that has gone beyond criminal discussions," the statement said.
The warehouse owner declined comment. "I heard the news just like you guys," George F. Mobassaleh told the AP. "I can't talk to you."
Several terrorism investigations have had south Florida links. Several of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived and trained in the area, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, and several plots by Cuban-Americans against Fidel Castro's government have been based in Miami.
Jose Padilla, a former resident once accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb in the U.S., is charged in Miami with being part of a support cell for Islamic extremists. Padilla's trial is set for this fall.
---
Associated Press Writer Mark Sherman in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Torture's Long Shadow
By Vladimir BukovskySunday, December 18, 2005; B01
CAMBRIDGE, England
One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it."
This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John McCain's amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.
This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.
Apart from sheer frustration and other adrenaline-related emotions, investigators and detectives in hot pursuit have enormous temptation to use force to break the will of their prey because they believe that, metaphorically speaking, they have a "ticking bomb" case on their hands. But, much as a good hunter trains his hounds to bring the game to him rather than eating it, a good ruler has to restrain his henchmen from devouring the prey lest he be left empty-handed. Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.
So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.
Even talking about the possibility of using CID treatment sends wrong signals and encourages base instincts in those who should be consistently delivered from temptation by their superiors. As someone who has been on the receiving end of the "treatment" under discussion, let me tell you that trying to make a distinction between torture and CID techniques is ridiculous. Long gone are the days when a torturer needed the nasty-looking tools displayed in the Tower of London. A simple prison bed is deadly if you remove the mattress and force a prisoner to sleep on the iron frame night after night after night. Or how about the "Chekist's handshake" so widely practiced under Stalin -- a firm squeeze of the victim's palm with a simple pencil inserted between his fingers? Very convenient, very simple. And how would you define leaving 2,000 inmates of a labor camp without dental service for months on end? Is it CID not to treat an excruciatingly painful toothache, or is it torture?
Now it appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's "show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even understanding what he had signed.
I know from my own experience that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it is about self-respect and human dignity. If I break, I will not be able to look into a mirror. But if I don't, my interrogator will suffer equally. Just try to control your emotions in the heat of that battle. This is precisely why torture occurs even when it is explicitly forbidden. Now, who is going to guarantee that even the most exact definition of CID is observed under such circumstances?
But if we cannot guarantee this, then how can you force your officers and your young people in the CIA to commit acts that will scar them forever? For scarred they will be, take my word for it.
In 1971, while in Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB interrogation jail), I went on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice (the KGB wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead). The moment was most inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court, and they had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.
The feeding pipe was thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up. They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the morning and did it all over again, for 10 days, when the guards could stand it no longer. As it happened, it was a Sunday and no bosses were around. They surrounded the doctor: "Hey, listen, let him drink it straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too, you silly old fool." The doctor was in tears: "Do you think I want to go to jail because of you lot? No, I can't do that. . . . " And so they stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out of my nose. On the 12th day, the authorities surrendered; they had run out of time. I had gotten my lawyer, but neither the doctor nor those guards could ever look me in the eye again.
Today, when the White House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.
If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?
Finally, think what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend itself without resorting to torture. . . . "
Off we go, back to the caves.
Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities, is the author of several books, including "To Build a Castle" and "Judgment in Moscow." Now 63, he has lived primarily in Cambridge, England, since 1976.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

The Name Is Kafka . . . Franz Kafka
By Michael KinsleyFriday, June 16, 2006; A25
"So put aside your Captain Crunch decoder ring," recommends the Central Intelligence Agency, "for the moment." This is on the Internet site of the CIA's legal department. It's part of a pitch for recruits so startlingly moronic -- even as an attempt at adorable self-mockery -- that you think it must be some subtle comment on the double meaning of the word "intelligence." In good hall-of-mirrors fashion, it's lifted from some book, but the book quotes supposedly real CIA employees. Whatever, this is the agency's self-presentation on its own Web site.
"If the theme music from Mission Impossible runs through your head," it says, "or you get the urge to order a martini 'shaken, not stirred,' at the mention of the letters 'CIA,' '' -- why, then, you're just the kind of lawyer we want!
"We've been a major player in developing the law of national security vs. the First Amendment," the agency deadpans. "Or the Fourth Amendment. . . ." When "Americans [abroad] come across on our screen, they've got constitutional rights we've got to think about . . . . Or electronic surveillance . . . . In areas like that, we're helping to create the law, and that's a real rush."
And it's all true. The CIA is in the forefront of efforts to make sure that democracy, individual rights and stuff like that don't get in the way of our crusade for the spread of democracy, individual rights and stuff like that.
For years, all the intelligence agencies have been tussling with the American Civil Liberties Union over documents about the innovative Bush administration policy of locking people up in foreign countries where they can be tortured without the inconvenience of anyone knowing about it or bringing up, you know, like, the Constitution. It is not yet clear -- though there is little reason for optimism -- whether the courts will let them get away with it, but the official position of the executive branch under President Bush is that the U.S. government can lock you up anywhere in the world, torture you and tell no one about it. And if someone does find out and starts talking trash like "habeas corpus" or "Fourth Amendment," too bad: It's all okay under the president's inherent powers as commander in chief. Congress -- unbeknownst to Congress -- approved it all in its resolution shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, urging the president to fight terrorism. And the president deputized the CIA and other agencies to go forth and use this authority, in documents that you can't have and that may or may not exist.
In a twist fully worthy of Kafka, or at least Joseph Heller ("Catch-22"), the very suspicion that bad things are going on is a reason you can't find out. As a CIA legal document explains: "CIA confirmation of the existence of [evidence] would confirm a CIA interest in or use of specific intelligence methods and activities." After all, the agency gaily reasons, the "CIA would not request . . . authorization from the president for intelligence activities in which it had no interest."
Meanwhile, in another federal court, the ACLU has been arguing with the National Security Agency about the wiretapping of international phone calls to and from the United States. The 1978 intelligence reform law made clear as cellophane that these agencies had no authority to wiretap citizens of this country and in this country without permission from a judge. So clear, in fact, that the president doesn't deny that his wiretapping program violates the 1978 law. Instead, he says that Congress overruled that law in its 2001 resolution to oppose terrorism. That, plus the usual inherent powers of the presidency.
What's more, government lawyers say, they can prove all this. Or at least they could, but they can't, because the evidence must remain secret for national security reasons. And what are those reasons? Well, the reasons why the reasons why the program is okay are also secret. And without this evidence, there cannot be a trial. Sorry.
It's true that you and I are not being grabbed on the streets and sent to a former secret police torture-training camp in Godforsakistan. Nor is the government eavesdropping on your international phone calls or mine. Probably. Because I like you, I'll forgo the usual ominous warning about how they came after him and then they came after her and then they came after you. I'll even skip the liberal sermonette about how even bad guys have rights.
But your rights and mine are not supposed to be at the whim of the government, let alone the president. They are based in the Constitution and the willingness of those we put in power to obey it -- even as interpreted by judges they may disagree with. The most distressing aspect of this story is the apparent attitude of our current rulers that the Constitution is an obstacle to be overcome -- by conducting dirty business abroad or by wildly disingenuous interpretations of laws and the Constitution.
Just look at what these supposed worshipers at the shrine of "strict constructionism" and "original meaning" have done to the 2001 anti-terrorism resolution. Did any senator who voted for this resolution have any idea that he or she was, in essence, voting to repeal all the protections for individuals against government agency abuse that Congress enacted in 1978?
The fact that there are countries in this world where the government can torture people in secret and without fear of courts is supposed to be a tragedy -- not a convenience.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Swift evacuations urged as Alberto approaches
By MARTIN MERZER AND GARY FINEOUT

From The Miami Herald
Tropical Storm Alberto, pushing a dome of sea water toward shore, quickened its assault on North Florida this evening. Officials urged coastal residents to swiftly evacuate the area.
''Its arrival on our shores will be much quicker than we were anticipating a few hours ago,'' Gov. Jeb Bush said shortly after 5:30 p.m. ``They need to get to high ground and they need to get safe.''
The 2006 hurricane season is just 12 days old.
''Good God, who would have thunk it,'' Bush said.
During the past two seasons, eight hurricanes struck or brushed Florida.
Meanwhile, South Floridians were advised to expect heavy rain and gusty winds as squalls roam through the area.
Farther north, forecasters hurriedly issued a precautionary hurricane warning from Longboat Key near Sarasota through the Big Bend area to the Ochlockonee River south of Tallahassee. That means hurricane conditions -- wind stronger than 74 mph and heavy rain -- are expected within 24 hours.
The greatest danger: an eight- to 10-foot storm surge, the dome of water that rushes ashore as the storm's center approaches.
''It's the storm surge that will be a problem,'' said Stanley Bair, owner of The Island Hotel on Cedar Key, an island just off Florida's Big Bend. ``It won't get into the hotel, but it will surround it, and people won't be able to get on or off the island.''
Bair said every room is booked, largely by news crews, and ``we'll have rollaways in the lobby.''
The hotel was built in 1859 and has survived every hurricane since.
Officials in six coastal counties, from Franklin County to Citrus County, told more than 20,000 residents to leave.
''It's not worth losing your life . . .,'' Bush said earlier today. ``Property can be rebuilt.''
Several of those counties, including Wakulla, Taylor and Dixie, have been hit in the past with flooding due to storm surge from large storms.
Last year, Hurricane Dennis unexpectedly created a backwash of water into Wakulla County, while the infamous no-name storm of 1993 killed unsuspecting residents of Taylor County in the middle of the night.
''This is a part of the state where it doesn't take a big storm to cause a significant amount of flooding,'' said Craig Fugate, the state's emergency management chief.
Fortunately, the area is sparsely populated and can be quickly evacuated.
State officials said that local communities were gearing up to deal with the storm and that 17 shelters would open. An estimated 7,500 National Guard were on alert and ready to be deployed if needed.
''We're used to catching those first storms here in North Florida,'' said Chris Floyd, emergency services director of the Capital Area Chapter of the Red Cross in Tallahassee. ``We've got a lot of experience. Not that we necessarily want it to happen here, but I believe we're as prepared as we can be.''
The 5 p.m. EDT forecast called for the center of Alberto to make landfall in the Big Bend area Tuesday morning as a borderline Category 1 hurricane with winds of about 75 mph, but most of its weather reached land long ahead of the center.
Isolated tornadoes were possible throughout much of the state, particularly in Central Florida and the Panhandle.
''Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,'' said forecaster Richard Pasch of the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade County.
Bush issued a state of emergency for the entire state, an action that triggers laws against price gouging and gives him the power to waive tolls, activate the National Guard and close state facilities.
''This is a serious storm and we're taking it seriously,'' he said.
In South Florida, commuters traveled to work under gray skies, occasional showers and a heavy blanket of humidity. They were advised to expect soaking rain later in the day.
Forecasters also reinstated concerns over the possibility of severe thunderstorms, waterspouts and tornadoes, particularly in Central Florida and along the lower Gulf Coast, but also possibly in and near Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
A tornado watch was issued for Glades, Hendry and Collier counties.
Alberto grew out of the year's first tropical depression Sunday, an ominous sign of things to come during the hurricane season -- which was only 11 days old.
The storm initially struggled to keep itself together, but it coalesced and grew stronger overnight.
''The storm has been interacting with the warm Gulf of Mexico loop current, which has likely been a contributor to the intensification,'' Pasch said.
It then moved over cooler water and encountered hostile crosswinds, two factors that inhibited significant additional strengthening, he said.
Portions of Central and North Florida could absorb eight to 10 inches of rain, a prospect welcomed by firefighters who have been battling wildfires in those regions.
Farther south, Alberto produced 10 to 20 inches of rain over the western half of Cuba, with isolated totals of 30 inches over higher terrain
The six-month hurricane season, which began June 1 and ends Nov. 30, is expected to be another unusually active one.
The government's official outlook calls for 13 to 16 tropical storms that would become eight to 10 hurricanes, including four to six intense hurricanes with winds above 110 mph. Government experts expect two to four hurricanes to hit the United States this year.
Herald staff writers Elinor J. Brecher and Stephanie Garry contributed to this report.

Bush Legacy!

Zeyad offers news of what is happening to the Iraqi capital:
Baghdadis are reporting that radical Islamists have taken control over the Dora, Amiriya and Ghazaliya districts of Baghdad, where they operate in broad daylight. They have near full control of Saidiya, Jihad, Jami’a, Khadhraa’ and Adil. And their area of influence has spread over the last few weeks to Mansour, Yarmouk, Harthiya, and very recently, to Adhamiya.
All of these districts, with the exception of Adhamiya, are more or less mixed or Sunni majority areas. They make up the western part of the capital, or what is known as the Karkh sector (the eastern half of Baghdad is called Rusafa)...
So far, enforcing the hijab for women and a ban on shorts for men are consistent in most districts of western Baghdad. In other areas, women are not allowed to drive, to go out without a chaperone, and to use cell phones in public; men are not allowed to dress in jeans, shave their beards, wear goatees, put styling hair gel, or to wear necklaces; it is forbidden to sell ice, to sell cigarettes at street stands, to sell Iranian merchandise, to sell newspapers, and to sell ring tones, CDs, and DVDs. Butchers are not allowed to slaughter during certain religious anniversaries. Municipality workers will be killed if they try to collect garbage from certain areas...
According to their sick creed, it is not against Islam to detonate a car bomb at a bustling market or to shoot a kid twice in the head because he had gel on his hair. No, that is okay in Islam.

The horrors really are your America, Mr Bush
ANDREW SULLIVAN
'This is not America." Those words were President George W Bush's
attempt to explain the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison on the Arabic-
language network Alhurra in 2004. He spoke the words as if they
were an empirical matter, but a cognitive dissonance could be
sensed through them.
If the men and women who tortured and abused and murdered at Abu
Ghraib did not represent America, what did they represent? They
wore the uniforms of the United States military. They were under the
command of the American military. In the grotesque, grinning
photographs they clearly seemed to believe that what they were
doing was routine and approved.
And we now know from the official record that Donald Rumsfeld, the
defence secretary, had personally authorised the use of unmuzzled
dogs to terrify detainees long before Abu Ghraib occurred, exactly as
we saw in those photos. Does the secretary of defence not represent
America?
Almost two years after the torture story broke Congress finally
roused itself and passed an amendment to a defence appropriations
bill by John McCain that forbade the use of any "cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment" of detainees by any American official anywhere
in the world. It was passed by veto-proof margins and Bush signed it.
But he appended a "signing statement" insisting that, as
commander-in-chief, he retained the right to order torture if he saw fit.
And so on May 18 the nominee for CIA director, Michael Hayden,
was asked directly by Senator Dianne Feinstein whether he regarded
"waterboarding" as a legitimate interrogation technique. Hayden
replied: "Let me defer that to closed session, and I would be happy
to discuss it in some detail."
Huh? Why a closed session? Isn't the law crystal clear? Isn't
strapping a person to a board, tilting him so that his head is below
his feet, and pouring water through a cloth into his mouth to simulate
drowning a form of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment? And
isn't that illegal? In America? Or is that not America either?
I ask these questions because so few in power in Washington want
to go there. When I have brought up the question of these atrocities
in front of senators and senior administration officials in private, I
have noticed something. Their eyes flicker down or away. Some
refuse to discuss the matter, as if it is too much to contemplate that
the US has become a country that detains people without trial or due
process, and reserves the right to torture them.
Or they tell me that however grotesque the charges Bush would
never approve of them. It's always someone else's responsibility.
"This is not who American servicemen are," Richard Armitage, the
then deputy secretary of state, insisted after Abu Ghraib. Or in the
words of the secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, in an interview
with Al Arabiya: "Americans do not do this to other people."
I know what these people are saying or trying to say. The vast
majority of American soldiers are decent, brave, honourable
professionals. The America I love and the Americans I know are
among the most admirable and open-hearted people on the planet.
But this much must also be said: the words of Bush and Rice and
Armitage are still untruths. That much we know. And last week, we
had to absorb another dark truth: that in a town called Haditha, US
Marines appear to have murdered women and children in cold blood
and covered it up.
There is also a new claim of a similar kind of massacre at a place
called Ishaqi. Last week the American military issued fresh ethical
guidelines for soldiers in Iraq. One marine commander told Time
magazine: "If 24 innocent civilians were killed by marines, this will
put a hole in the heart of every single marine."
I believe him. But I do not believe that this president has ever
acknowledged his own responsibility for the atrocities committed by
Americans on his watch and under his command. He simply cannot
process the fact that his own hand provided the signature that
allowed torture to spread like a cancer through the military and CIA.
He cannot acknowledge that his own war policy — of just enough
troops to lose — has created a war of attrition in Iraq in which
soldiers are often overwhelmed and demoralised and stretched to the
limit, and so more than usually vulnerable to the psychic snaps that
sometimes lead to atrocities.
His obdurate refusal to change course, to provide sufficient troops, to
fire his defence secretary, to embrace, rather than evade, the
McCain amendment has robbed him of any excuse, any evasion of
responsibility.
And yet he still evades it. Last week he spoke of Abu Ghraib as
something that had somehow happened to him and to his country,
almost as if he were not the commander-in-chief or president of the
country that had committed such abuse. When the evidence is
presented to him, he displaces it. He puts it to one side. In his mind
America is a force for good. And so it cannot commit evil. And if he
says that often enough it will somehow become true. In this way his
powers of denial kick in like a forcefield against reality.
It is, I think, an integral part of his own world view, which is that of a
former addict whose life was transformed by a rigid form of
fundamentalist Christianity. "[My faith] frees me to enjoy life and not
worry what comes next," he told the reporter Fred Barnes. When you
know you have been saved, when you know your motives are pure,
when, as Bush so often puts it, your "heart" is a good one, then it
follows that you cannot commit evil. Or if you do, it doesn't attach to
you. Somehow, it isn't yours, even when it is.
In this sense fundamentalist Christianity can enable evil by
promoting the lie that some humans have been saved from it. It
misses the deeper Christian truth that even good people can do bad
things. It forgets that what is noble about America is not that
Americans are somehow morally better than anyone else. But that it
is a country with a democratic system that helps expose the
constancy of human evil, and minimise its power through the rule of
law, democratic accountability and constitutional checks.
That system was devised by men who assumed the worst of people,
not the best, who expected Americans not to be better than any
other people, but the same. It was the wisdom of the system that
would save America, not the moral superiority of its people.
What is so tragic about this presidency is that it has simultaneously
proclaimed American goodness while dismantling the constitutional
protections and laws that guard against American evil. The good
intention has overwhelmed the fact of human fallibility. But reality —
human reality — eventually intrudes. Denial breaks down. The
physical evidence of torture, of murder, of atrocity, slowly
overwhelms the will to disbelieve in it.
I am sorry, Mr President. This is America. And you have helped
make it so.

Politics of Pandering!
President Bush radio address 3 June 2006

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Next week, the United States Senate will begin debate on a constitutional amendment that defines marriage in the United States as the union of a man and woman. On Monday, I will meet with a coalition of community leaders, constitutional scholars, family and civic organizations, and religious leaders. They're Republicans, Democrats, and independents who've come together to support this amendment. Today, I want to explain why I support the Marriage Protection Amendment, and why I'm urging Congress to pass it and send it to the states for ratification.
Marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious, and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.
In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives. And in a free society, decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people -- not by the courts. The American people have spoken clearly on this issue, both through their representatives and at the ballot box. In 1996, Congress approved the Defense of Marriage Act by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate, and President Clinton signed it into law. And since then, voters in 19 states have approved amendments to their state constitutions that protect the traditional definition of marriage. And today, 45 of the 50 states have either a state constitutional amendment or statute defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. These amendments and laws express a broad consensus in our country for protecting the institution of marriage.
Unfortunately, activist judges and some local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage in recent years. Since 2004, state courts in Washington, California, Maryland, and New York have overturned laws protecting marriage in those states. And in Nebraska, a federal judge overturned a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
These court decisions could have an impact on our whole Nation. The Defense of Marriage Act declares that no state is required to accept another state's definition of marriage. If that act is overturned by activist courts, then marriages recognized in one city or state might have to be recognized as marriages everywhere else. That would mean that every state would have to recognize marriages redefined by judges in Massachusetts or local officials in San Francisco, no matter what their own laws or state constitutions say. This national question requires a national solution, and on an issue of such profound importance, that solution should come from the people, not the courts.
An amendment to the Constitution is necessary because activist courts have left our Nation with no other choice. The constitutional amendment that the Senate will consider next week would fully protect marriage from being redefined, while leaving state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage. A constitutional amendment is the most democratic solution to this issue, because it must be approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and then ratified by three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures.
As this debate goes forward, we must remember that every American deserves to be treated with tolerance, respect, and dignity. All of us have a duty to conduct this discussion with civility and decency toward one another, and all people deserve to have their voices heard. A constitutional amendment will put a decision that is critical to American families and American society in the hands of the American people, which is exactly where it belongs. Democracy, not court orders, should decide the future of marriage in America.
Thank you for listening.

The Great Paradox of Iraq

FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN
It has been there from the start and it still, frankly, confounds me. We were told by the president that the Iraq war was the critical battle in the war on terror, an effort of enormous stakes that we couldn't possibly lose. And then he went to war with half the troops necessary to win, with no plan for the aftermath, and refused to budge even when this became obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain. He says there is no greater friend or supporter of the troops, yet he sent them to do an impossible task, with insufficient numbers or support or even armor to accomplish the job. He said we face the equivalent of the Third World War and yet he has done nothing to increase the size of the military to meet the task. He said the invasion was to advance the principles of freedom and democracy, and yet he immediately abandoned those principles in our detention policy and has done more damage to the moral standing of the United States than anyone since the Vietnam war. He says he wants to build democracy, and yet he has gutted reconstruction funds, and withdrawn support for building democratic institutions. He said he will keep troops there until the job is done, and yet sustains a policy to draw down the troops as soon as possible.
There has always been a military solution to Iraq. There still is, as Fred Kagan recently showed in a long article in the Weekly Standard. It just required resources to achieve it, to pacify a post-totalitarian society, provide order and the context in which politics can happen. The American public would have approved the resources necessary, and made sacrifices if asked. And yet Bush has deliberately and by conscious choice allowed anarchy and terror to decimate Iraqi civil society. None of this helps the war; and none of it helps him. There are many times when I am simply baffled by the whole farce. Is he this stupid? Is he this blind? Or was this never a serious venture? Did Cheney and Rumsfeld never want to build a democracy in Iraq, just reduce it to rubble and chaos, while ensuring that Saddam could get no WMDs? Even now, I have no idea. But something here doesn't add up. Incompetence doesn't quite capture the enormity of the failure or the incoherence of the project. And so we stagger on, desperate for hope, but forced to confront the worst-managed war since Vietnam. Except the stakes are far, far higher than Vietnam. And the consequences of failure close to existential. I know that in part because Bush keeps telling us. Is he lying? Or is he just drowning in a job that he is simply unable to do?