A Disgraceful Law: The Surrender of Basic Rights
Keith Olberman was on a roll last night. Crooks and Liars has the video up.
Olberman – rightfully – attacked Bush for signing the torture law. As should be obvious to anyone who reads TMV at a regular basis, all of us at TMV greatly oppose this law. Those who are supporting it should be more than ashamed of themselves. The world is watching how America deals with terrorism, whether America is able to hold on to the principles it is founded on while fighting Islamists at the same time… and the world can only conclude that America has – in this regard at least – lost track. That America is willing to surrender basic rights, in order to feel ‘safe’.
Watch the entire clip.
As should be obvious, I do not oppose Bush as fiercely as many others do, but this law is more than just disgraceful.
22 Responses to “A Disgraceful Law: The Surrender of Basic Rights”
Even more frightening is the fact that most people don’t seem to know or care that we went to sleep in one country and woke up in another one–where we can be “disappeared”–at least in theory, as the Argentines could in an earlier decade. Instead of being a model of democracy for the world, we’re following the model of the Argentines and the Soviets. It’s the lack of concern that’s most terrifying.
Did you notice that Senator Olympia Snowe was at a funeral and so could avoid casting her vote for the death of habeas corpus? I have to believe she deliberately fudged the thing–She perhaps has more of a historical sense than the others. . .and realized that history won’t be kind to the signers.
Fritz Stern, professor emeritus of German history at Columbia University whose family fled Hitler in the 30s and who has a new book out, wrote:
“. . .the rise of National Socialism was neither inevitable nor accidental. It did have deep roots, but the most urgent lesson to remember is that it could have been stopped…A key lesson is that civic passivity and willed blindness were the preconditions for the triumph of National Socialism, which many clearheaded Germans recognized at the time as a monstrous danger and ultimate nemesis.
I came to realize that no country is immune to the temptations of pseudo-religious movements of repression such as those to which Germany succumbed. The fragility of freeedom is the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work.
Also, I realized more and more that the lessons I had learned about German history had a frightening relevance to the United States today.”
Keith is right, and im so happy i live in a time when such a fascinating thing is about to occur.
If I weren’t so angry that we (the U.S.) could have allowed the passage of such a law, I would be abjectly ashamed.
Actually, I am both ashamed and very angry.
World, I’m sorry about us … we no longer have any claim to the high ground.
Europe, can you hold the fort while we get our sh*t together?
Sylny,
Do you have a link on that about Olympia Snowe? I find it highly cynical to think that she arranged for someone she knew to die conveniently so that she could avoid an uncomfortable vote! Since I hadn’t heard that she missed the vote, I’m curious about whose funeral she was attending (I assume a slightly less cynical view would be that it was a funeral that she would not have been likely to attend if it were not a convenient excuse).
I find her an interesting potential GOP candidate for pres in ’08 so I’d like to know more about this; in a way I’m glad if she avoided the torture vote so that it can’t come back to bite her.
That is a good point, but I cannot really get into it. You should remember that I am Dutch, so I am not tasting the atmossphere in the US, so to speak. What I read seems to imply that many people do worry about it. The problem, of course, is that the ones you read about are the ones speaking out. Not the ones ‘not caring’.
MvdG:
I would say that reading blogs like this one definitely would give you a skewed impression of a level of “caring” about this issue much more so than the reality on the streets of America.
To C Stanley:
From the Portland Press Herald, Oct. 2.
“Sen Susan Collins voted against the amendment. . .Sen Olympia Snowe didn’t cast a vote, as she was in Lewiston at a funeral.”
I’m not suggesting she engineered the death of a relative who, I believe, raised her, I’m suggesting it must have been an enormous relief not to have to get counted.
To me, New Englanders have always seemed a little more thoughtful about civics and politics than the rest of the country–with the exception of those who are voting for Lieberman (the man who stirred up the factional pot when he was running as vice president in 2000 by saying:”George Washington warned us never to indulge the supposition ‘that morality can be maintained without religion.’”
At that time, even the Anti-Defamation League was imploring him to back off and stop stoking the church-and-state issue.
I am too computer illiterate to post a link here (I have tried and can’t get it to work), but I goggled Olympia Snowe funeral senate vote and found out her aunt who raised her passed away and she was attending that funeral.
Thanks for the references and answer to my question. As I mentioned, I’m actually glad that she had a way out to remove herself from the voting on this because now neither party can turn it against her. I wonder what her vote would have been though.
I’m certainly not in line with all of her views but she seems like someone I might be able to support for president and certainly it would be interesting if the Republicans were either first to put up a woman, or if they ran one against Hillary if she ends up getting the Dem nomination.
I personally expect the first president(s) of non-white male status to be conservatives, not liberals. Sure, liberals may be more likely to nominate non-white males to the presidency, but a conservative woman or african-american or hispanic will make their non-white male-ness less threatening to the masses.
Brian Angliss,
I think you may be right, but also I think that it would be great if both parties nominated a non-white male at the same time. I feel that way because I would prefer for the debate to be color and gender blind, to remove those factors and really have people vote for the best candidate. As long as it’s a woman vs. a man or a black (or other minority) against a white, those are going to be the foremost issues in the minds of many people and will obscure the real issues.
Personally I don’t care if the nominee is green, pink or purple. . .provided he or she or transgendered-person has some smarts, respect for debate and differing points of view, doesn’t distort and trash science, makes better use of America’s soft power (prestige and influence in the world), and so forth, and views military intervention as a first–not a last resort.
CS- I agree with you about Olympia Snowe. But unless the party undergoes a major transformation, she is more likely to get drummed out by the conservative wing than nominated for the presidency. I do think the Republican party will have to eventually moderate its views, but I don’t see them going that far. The conservative base would really have to splinter apart.
What is disgraceful is weaklings like Charlie Rangel who refused to answer O’Reilly’s question a few nights ago concerning the fact that waterboarding produced actionable intelligence from KSM. In fact, he ducked every single one of O’Reilly’s questions (and even referred to KSM as a “so-called terrorist”).
That is OK. The entire left hasn’t wanted to confront the issue: coercive measures can and do produce useful intelligence in a timely manner in many circumstances. To avoid using them is to reduce the amount of intelligence we will be able to gather about terrorist activities. Is that acceptable? Is it acceptable to risk future terrorist attacks in our country (and against our interests abroad) in the name of not waterboarding, belly slapping, or “cold rooming” the likes of KSM? Don’t give me this ridiculous “torture doesn’t work” meme because it is a lie, as KSM’s example demonstrates. Confront the issue, liberals. Either say you are willing to risk those attacks to avoid using coercion on al-Qaeda personnel or not.
Tommy,
I feel that the problem is that such methods sometimes produce good, actionable intel while other times they produce garbage and it isn’t always possible to tell the difference. We have been misled, with serious consequences at times, by information gained through tough interrogation methods. That said, I agree with you that some people ignore the cases where it has led to capture of additional terrorists or prevention of plots in order to make their case that “torture doesn’t work”. Personally I still draw the line on some methods though as being beyond ethical and moral standards.
Tommy- If these methods are so effective, why do most of our military leaders reject them?
The same could be said of standard interrogative procedures. All intelligence must be vetted. I suppose by the same measure, we could extend the meme to read: “interrogation doesn’t work.”
How many of these military leaders have any personal experience with interrogation, let alone the techniques in question? Why don’t we ask the CIA if waterboarding KSM worked? I’ve yet to hear anyone claim it didn’t.
Olbermann? Who is Olbermann? Oh, that is right! He is guy who is regularly falling behind Nancy Grace, of all people, in the ratings. Haven’t they sent him packing to CNBC yet?
Olbermann is Limbaugh from the other side.
Er, no, what I’m saying is that there is reason for the intel obtained through torture is more likely to be false because people will make things up in order to stop the torture. Take the argument to the extreme to see the fallacy: We *theoretically* could torture every person on earth. A subset of those people would actually know some information to aid in countering terrorism. A subset of those people would give up the information they know in response to the torture. Then another subset of those people would make up information in response to the torture, and a third group would resist and not talk no matter what. Then we have the very large group of people who don’t actually have any information on terrorist plots. Of this group, some would make things up and some would resist talking.
The tougher the torture techniques, the larger the groups of liars become.
So now, you have the whole world’s population being subjected to inhumane treatment, and what have you gained? A very small group of people who have given you useful information, and a very large group of people who have given you lies. Obviously this extreme example is a bit silly but still, a similar outcome of distribution would occur with any subgroup of the total global population.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against tough interrogation techniques and I certainly don’t think we have to be nice to detainees. The criteria that I do think we should stick to though, include a good process for having reasonable suspicion to detain someone, and interrogation techniques that aren’t inhumane. I do see some grey area in things like sleep deprivation (I don’t know the facts about how well that works but I’m not inclined to say it crosses the line of inhumanity). But waterboarding is in effect, simulated death, which is inhumane and likely to lead to false confessions (you only have to look to the Salem witchcraft trials to see how similar conditions led to mass confessions)
And again, I grant you that it is false to make the argument that “torture doesn’t work” without acknowldeging that in some cases it DOES work; but I think that the combination of the high degree of error and the inhumanity of certain techniques make it unacceptable.
But is it more likely to be false if a suspect is already dissembling (or simply isn’t talking at all) under ordinary interrogation? It isn’t an either/or situation. Undoubtedly, they attempt to see what they can get via standard interrogation with a suspect before moving on to more coercive measures. Furthermore, things like waterboarding are towards the end of the line of those measures.
Olbermann? Who is Olbermann? Oh, that is right! He is guy who is regularly falling behind Nancy Grace, of all people, in the ratings. Haven’t they sent him packing to CNBC yet?
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Go to TVNewser.com, Tommy. They post the nightly cable news ratings as they come in. Olbermann is now beating both CNN and Headline News in his time slot more often than not. On the nights when Countdown doesn’t beat Grace, it’s a virtual tie. Nobody’s moving to CNBC; NBC is moving MSNBC’s operations to Manhattan, to its own headquarters. So there you go. No need to worry about Olbermann; he’s more secure in news now than he’s ever been.
-Dorrie