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?