The ticking bomb

Anonymous Liberal wrote an outstanding essay on the ever popular "ticking bomb" scenario for torture justification.

The second, far less relevant question is this: are there certain hypothetical scenarios under which the use of torture can be morally justified? If you construct the right scenario (nuclear bomb about to go off, suspect knows the target, etc.) just about anyone will answer yes to this question. But that's not at all surprising or informative. After all, it's possible to construct a hypothetical scenario where you'd be morally justified in shooting a little girl in the head (you're in a cave running out of air, there are four other younger children, they'll all die unless you off yourself and the oldest kid, etc.). The bottomline is that all of us are capable of simple utilitarian moral reasoning. If you are presented with a choice between something very bad and something even worse, the moral logic is pretty clear.

But this is all an exercise in irrelevance because that's not how rational people make policy decisions. Just because you can construct a hypothetical scenario w[h]ere shooting a girl in the head is the "right" thing to do, that doesn't mean that we should do away with the legal prohibition against murder. When it comes to acts that are sufficiently bad--such as murder and torture--you need categorical rules.

[highlighting is mine]

The so-called "ticking bomb scenario" is simple-minded nonsense. It assumes two things that never happen in real life: 1) that you know for certain that a bomb is about to be detonated, and 2) that you're positive the person you have in custody has information that will allow you to stop that bomb from going off. I'm fairly certain that in the entire history of mankind, that scenario has never yet presented itself. Moreover, even if it did, the odds are slim, at best, that the suspect would divulge the necessary information under duress (as opposed to simply giving you disinformation).

As McCain and others have pointed out, if a sufficiently dire situation presents itself, those officials who would contemplate the use of torture need to do so with the knowledge that it is a practice so disgusting and heinous that we have seen fit as a society to ban it categorically. If they are to engage in torture, they need to know it is illegal and that they are likely to be punished if they are wrong. Then and only then can we have any hope that our soldiers and intelligence officials will be sufficiently judicious in their use of this horrible practice.

It still amazes me that we even need to be having this debate in this country. Where are our values? The part that really makes my brain hurt is that American Christians are more likely than non-religious Americans to approve of torture, with Catholics favoring torture in much higher percentages than all other groups. You can't help but wonder, do most Christians know anything at all about their savior? I suppose this makes sense when you consider that this group went to see "The Passion of the Christ," the bloodiest movie about Jesus and by far the highest grossing, for entertainment purposes literally by the bus load.

Christianists own today's Republican party. They also own each and every Republican running for President. If John McCain is the only one who thinks torture is the antithesis of the most base beliefs held by this country until George Bush came along, then we are in serious trouble if any one of them becomes the next president.

What has happened to this country?

This is one of the most disturbing articles I've read in a long time. Please read the whole story, but here is the short version. A 43-year old woman was brought to the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles by LA County police complaining of severe abdominal pains. This was her third trip in two days. The other two trips resulted in essentially "take two aspirin and call me in the morning". The woman collapsed on the floor from the pain she was experiencing, yet the hospital staff ignored her. A janitor even mopped the floor all around her. The whole scene was recorded on the hospital's closed circuit camera system. Her boyfriend showed up and repeatedly tried to get the hospital staff to help her, but they ignored him. Within 90 minutes, the woman was dead from a massive infection resulting from a perforated large bowel.

What kind of country have we become that something like this could happen? This is absolutely disgusting. It would be one thing if this were an isolated occurrence, but incidents like this are becoming more common especially in LA where hospitals routinely dump indigents in the gutters. I hope this poor woman's family owns that hospital and everyone working there who ignored her after the lawyers are done with them. This is precisely why tort law is needed.

Saturday Funnies

Bob Geiger's weekly political cartoon roundup.

Wolfowitz out

Paul Wolfowitz has finally resigned as president of the World Bank. The man had no business being in charge of a poverty fighting institution to begin with. The only reason Bush put Wolfowitz in charge was to ensure that the neocon agenda was realized. Their goal was to use the World Bank as yet another weapon to bully countries that are hostile to US interests, while protecting and rewarding those that are friendly. His corruption fighting agenda was just a bogus excuse.

Even though he is being forced to resign, Wolfowitz still makes out pretty well. He accepts no responsibility for his willful manipulation of the rules and the bank is blaming their own. How typical for a member of the Party of Responsibility^®. They always manage to find someone else to blame for their screw-ups. I suppose it's a small price to pay to get him out the door, but it's still ridiculous considering everyone knows it's bullshit. Also, he was to receive a $400,000 bonus if he held onto his office for 2 years, which would have been June 2^nd. Since he is holding out until June 30^th, I'm guessing he will still get his booty although none of the mainstream outlets have reported on this that I am aware of. I would point out that that money could have been much better spent helping poor, starving children somewhere in the world, but the World Bank throws away so much money on themselves that $400K doesn't even register with them.

Now if only Gonzales, Cheney, and Bush can be convinced to follow suit, we can finally look to begin heading down the long road to recovery from too many years of Republican rule.

Nice face lift, Rush

Limbaugh never looked so good. TRex has the skinny.

Saturday Funnies

Bob Geiger reviews this past week's political cartoons.

On approval ratings

Chapter 39 of Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" begins with a paragraph describing the results of a poll conducted in Iraq the week of November 11 to 18, 2005 that measured the approval rating of various Iraqi leaders. The interesting part of this is in the footnote where Woodward notes that Saddam Hussein had a 22%/78% favorable/unfavorable rating in that poll. After everything he had done to his country, he still had a 22% approval rating. When you consider that the most recent Newsweek poll of George Bush peg him at 28%/64% with 8% undecided, what does this say about Bush and his supporters, not to mention the Iraqis?

We now officially have a king

George Bush coronated himself king today when he signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.

See this post at Fire Dog Lake. Be sure to watch the video. Then read Glenn Greewald here. Then please call your Congressman and both Senators. I'm lost for words.

It's not terrorism if you're white, part deux

It was just last week that I was discussing the corporate media's complete lack of interest in home-grown terrorist, Tyler Joseph Froatz. Froatz was held without bail after authorities found a sizable weapons cache in his Jeep and apartment following his arrest for assaulting the organizer of an immigration rally in Washington, DC. Details can be found here. At the time, I speculated that the case might have attracted more attention if his name had been more exotic and his skin browner:

Imagine if Tyler Joseph Froatz was named Tayib Jamal Farahani and was of Middle Eastern decent. To say that this would have generated some national interest is a bit of an understatement. This would have been splattered all over CNN for hours. Fox would have had a field day. The wingnut blogs would have been on this like ugly on an ape for weeks. Michael Chertoff would have made a public statement raising the terra level to blinking red. Dick Cheney would've booked all the Sunday talking head shows. And Dubya would've said something incredibly stupid. But since it was just Bubba from Podunk, the MSM and assorted right tards not only couldn't care less, many of them wish he would've succeeded.

I just never expected my theory to be tested quite so quickly. All we need now is the official response from the White House.

I also want to point out that none of our civil rights were harmed in the making of these arrests. George Bush didn't have to listen to our phone calls, open our mail, monitor our Internet activity, or check our bank transactions. Hell, he didn't even need to torture any of the detainees at Gitmo. Nope. This case was blown wide open with good old fashioned police work based on a tip from a concerned citizen.

It will be interesting to see if the details currently being reported stay consistent over time or if this is another case like the Miami terrorists. In any event, this case proves that there are still some competent, hard-working people in the executive branch. The FBI are to be commended for taking any and all appropriate action here.

Oh, and since the terrorists are indeed following us back here, does that mean our soldiers can come home now?

Dems wimping out

(Updated below)

I had high hopes for this Democratic Congress. They occasionally seem to show awareness that the main reason they displaced the rubber-stamp, Republican-controlled Congress is because the American people are sick and tired of the war in Iraq. The only thing that's changed since then is that even more Americans are sick and tired of the death and destruction being wrought in their name while the coffers are being siphoned into the bank accounts of corporate interests and foreign governments that are only too happy to fund our suicidal spending spree.

Congressional Democrats were all fire and brimstone about not giving our clueless leader a blank check on Iraq. The first time he said "boo" to them, however, they all turned into a giant puddle of piss.

House Democratic leaders are preparing a new version of the Iraq war funding bill that would pay for the war in two stages.

The first stage would give the Bush administration about half of the $95.5 billion it seeks for U.S. troops and military operations. Congress would vote on authorizing the second half of the funds in July, but only after it reviews a report from President Bush on a series of benchmarks measuring the Iraqi government's progress.

[...]

[A leadership aide] said that by "fencing off" the second installment of war funding, Congress would get more detailed information about how the money would be spent and how much more is needed. The aide described the plan as "being responsive to concerns of members who really want us to keep the pressure on Bush, and at the same time we are making sure we are funding the troops and making members comfortable with that."

Shorter version: they're going to give him the fucking money. After all the tough talk, they're going to do exactly what Bush said they would do: they're going to pussy out and give him the money. By attaching the bullshit language about "benchmarks," they are trying to give the appearance of holding Bush accountable, but it's a farce because he gets $50 billion up front, no questions asked and later gets to go back to the well after he writes his "who I killed on my summer vacation" report at the conclusion of the next Friedman.

Our military has been occupying Iraq for four years, but today we can't even identify who the enemy is (besides the 17 al Qaeda members who immigrated after we invaded), what our objectives are, or how we define success. In short, there is no plan whatsoever and there never has been. Yet knowing all this, our duly elected Democratically-controlled Congress is going to just hand over another $50 billion to George Bush so he can keep getting his rocks off. Jesus tap-dancing Christ this is so stupid.

It's even worse than it appears, though. Real people are being used as pawns in a big political game. When these pawns die, though, it's real lives being snuffed out way too early and entire families being ripped apart. And this for some bullshit ideological war on an undefinable enemy. The Democrats will not take a meaningful, principled stand against this insane war for fear of losing out in the next election. It doesn't matter how many people have to die or how much damage is done to either Iraq or the United States. It's all about power. This is just par for the course for the Democrats, though. They talk the talk, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, they fold like cheap patio furniture.

The truly mind-boggling part to this whole funding debate, though, is that Congress can end the war very easily if they really want to. There's no need to rush to present a bill to Bush at all. To end this war, all they have to do is emulate the last Congress by not doing a goddamn thing. They just don't pass a spending bill and the war is over. The Republicans did exactly that to Clinton in Somalia. And what did Clinton do once the funds were cut off? He pulled the troops out!

Our national debt is 9 trillion dollars and growing. That's $9,000,000,000,000. That's $30,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. The interest alone on that debt is over $400 billion each year. Where is the money going to come from to pay for this and why do none of our leaders seem to think we have a problem?

Republicans may be full of shit whenever they open their mouths, but at least you always know where they stand on any given issue. I think that's why so many people vote for them: they want strong, decisive leaders. Democrats love to tell us how they are for the common good and that they represent the common man, but it's all bullshit. Every time they start to grow a pair of balls, their highly paid and highly useless "consultants" convince them that it's bad to stand up to the man whose only supporters are people who make money by doing so, and people who believe The Rapture is upon us.

Maybe I'm wrong about the Democrats on this, and believe me, I sincerely hope I am. If so, I'll gladly issue a huge mea culpa. Until that happens, though, I will remain skeptical and mad as hell. And they wonder why we're the "angry left?"

UPDATE:

Digby just said it better than I ever could:

This interesting post from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything takes us back to 1820 and reminds us that brutish conservatives are nothing new:

William Hazlitt explained the nature of it in his 1820 essay, "On the Spirit of Partisanship."

Conservatives and liberals play the game of politics differently, Hazlitt wrote, because they have different motivations. Liberals are motivated by principles and tend to believe that personal honor can be spared in political combat. They may, in fact, become vain about their highmindedness. Hazlitt condemns the mildness as a mistake, both in moral reasoning and in political strategy. "They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse." [highlighting is mine.]

The conservatives, on the other hand, start with a personal interest in the conflict. Not wishing to lose their hold on power, they are fiercer. "We"---i.e., the liberals, or the "popular cause," in Hazlitt's terminology---"stand in awe of their threats, because in the absence of passion we are tender of our persons.

Hazlitt was right. And never more than today when the stakes are so high...History proves that bad things do sometimes happen. Being barely left standing to say "I told you so" will be no compensation.