Light Posting

I'm doing some reporting on the politics of Indian casinos this week in Southern California's Coachella Valley. Posting will be light over the next few days.

CIA Battled FBI And Condi (!) Over Torture Tactics

On Day Two of the Post-Reagan Period, the Abu Ghraib torture story, as predicted, is back where it merits at the top of the news agenda. Newsweek’s just-released story on the scandal by Michael Hirsh, John Barry and Daniel Klaidman reveals bloody turf battles inside the Bush Administration. Shortly after 9/11 White House lawyers proposed implementing specific interrogation techniques including “water-boarding” (drowning) and “mock burials" (simulated executions).

This is quite depressing, shameful material. The only silver lining here is reading how the FBI and – believe it or not—Condi Rice – reportedly offered stiff resistance to the policy of abuse which was spearheaded by the CIA, and lawyers for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. According to Newsweek, the bitter struggle can be traced back to November 2001 when a senior Al Qaeda operative, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was captured in Afghanistan:

At the time of al-Libi's capture on Nov. 11, 2001, the questioning of detainees was still the FBI's province. For years the bureau's "bin Laden team" had sought to win suspects over with a carrots-and-no-sticks approach: favors in exchange for cooperation. One terrorist, in return for talking, even wangled a heart transplant for his child…With al-Libi, too, the initial approach was to read him his rights like any arrestee, one former member of the FBI team told NEWSWEEK. "He was basically cooperating with us."

…The handling of al-Libi touched off a long-running battle over interrogation tactics inside the administration. It is a struggle that continued right up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April—and it extended into the White House, with Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council pitted against lawyers for the White House counsel and the vice president...

After CIA Director George Tenet reportedly intervened directly with Bush on behalf of his agency taking over the fate of such high-profile prisoners, al-Libi was handed over to the CIA and then “rendered” to Egypt i.e. shipped out to Hosni Mubarak’s goons for some torture sessions:

al-Libi was handed over to the CIA. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)… So [the CIA] began experimenting with methods like water-boarding and open-handed slapping. The CIA also asked to use "mock burial," in which a top Qaeda captive would be led to believe he was going to be buried alive.

As I wrote a few weeks ago on this blog, dunking prisoners until they risked drowning and staging mock executions were two torture techniques routinely used by the secret police of Latin American military dictatorships. Nor are they methods unknown to U.S, personnel. Way back in 1979 the great journalist A.J. Langguth published his classic "Hidden Terrors" that masterfully revealed the “training” role that American police advisors like Dan Mitrione played in popularizing such methods in Brazil and Uruguay (and which wound up costing Mitrione his life after he was kidnapped and executed by leftist guerrillas).

I strongly recommend you click on this link where some used copies of Langguth’s book are still available. This is the best $10 you’ll ever invest. I don’t want to give away the story, but Langguth – 25 years ago—penetrates deep into the American psyche and the way Mitrione, his friends and family, rationalized or simply blinked at his role in this dark chapter of history.

History now repeats itself. And I am standing by my prediction that this scandal will continue unfolding right through to the November election. My own experience in Latin America has taught me that there is something very haunting, disturbing and indelible about torture. It evokes emotions that cannot be easily laundered out in a few routine news cycles.

The Washington Post, which has been way out in front on this crucial story, has now secured and published the entire 50-page August 1, 2002 memo from White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez "legalizing" proposed torture methods. Read it here , it's going to be an historic document. If nothing else, it blocks forever any possibility that Bush-pet Gonzalez will be named to the Supreme Court!

Is It Safe?

"Is it safe?" One of the great lines from the film Marathon Man as Laurence Olivier, a Nazi "dentist" (and hunted war criminal) relentlessly tortures innocent Dustin Hoffman. "Is it safe?" Olivier asks as he rips out Hoffman's teeth -- wanting to know if it's safe for him to show up at an espionage drop.

I want to know if it's safe to come out publicly now and talk about something other than what a genius, humanitarian, statesman, benefactor, visionary and sweet old uncle Ronald Reagan was? I hope so, because one more day of the fawning, supine, downright embarrasing, whoring coverage of his funeral and I would have been ready to jump into the grave right on top of him.

After an entire week of this state-financed campaign commercial for the Republican Party can we finally deep-six the whole subject and declare Reagan definitiely dead and gone? Slap his mug where it belongs, on a $3 bill, as crusty Jimmy Breslin suggests and promise, cross our little hearts, to never dig up the matter again?

I hope so...

But wait, oops. I have one last thought on the funeral. George H.W. "Poppy" Bush got all choked up during his eulogy saying the greatest lesson he learned from Reagan was "kindness." Ok. So when Bush 41 was sworn in January 1989, to whom was he comparing himself when he promised a "kinder, gentler" America? Mommy Nancy? Winner of this contest gets a six-pack of little squeezy ketchupy-thingies as a memento of that whole past Golden Era when every day burst with sunshine and every city on a hill, from Detroit to East Saint Louis shined bright.

Ok... as I said, back to The Real World where critical thinking is still permitted. I think it obvious that whatever bump Bush got from the funeral orgy will expire sometime around sunset on Sunday (after the network gas bag shows have re-aired). The big question for me is: Will the UN resolution, the June 30 hand-over to the Iraqis and the apparent backdown of Mullah Sadr allow Bush to politically turn the corner on the war? Or will the messy facts on the ground, coupled with the deepening torture scandal signify continued rough going for Dubya?

I've got friends on both sides of this question. I tend to believe it's the latter -- that the torture story has long legs and Bush is still in danger of getting stomped. Here's today's WashPo revelation that Army General Ricardo Sanchez personally approved "high pressure" tactitcs for use against Iraqi prisoners:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents... The documents obtained by The Washington Post spell out in greater detail than previously known the interrogation tactics Sanchez authorized, and make clear for the first time that, before last October, they could be imposed without first seeking the approval of anyone outside the prison. That gave officers at Abu Ghraib wide latitude in handling detainees.

Hmmm... "wide latitude." That's a humdinger example of newspaperese, isn't it? Sort of like the wide latitudes Olivier took with Hoffman.

Funeral Shlepping [UPDATED]

My full meditation over Ronald Reagan’s corpse remains posted at L.A. Weekly.

It still seems pointless to talk much about any other subject like the White House memos justifying torture, or the admission by the commanding U.S. general that he has failed to train an effective Iraqi police force, or how the Kurds –once again—got hosed by the new UN resolution on Iraq.

So it’s back to the new national past-time of reflecting on Reagan’s demise. Watching the crowds that snaked through the Reagan library yesterday and that lined the funeral route today in Washington D.C. I had the following epiphany:

Never before in human history has the funeral of any Head of State been attended by SO many people clad in tennis shoes, jeans or shorts.

I’m not being snide. I honestly believe this has some significance. If you wouldn’t dream of going to a second cousin’s funeral dressed as if you’ve just come from a midnight shlep down to the local 7-11, why on earth would you show up like a slob to mourn a former President of the United States? I have attended many political funerals in my life (mostly in Latin America and too many, by the way, as a product of the Reagan Doctrine). I have gone out of respect for the deceased. And I made sure that I fully and somberly demonstrated that respect. I didn't go while licking a candy apple or pulling up my running shorts.

I think it obvious that while a lot of folks have shown up for Reagan because they were sincerely moved by his passing, a whole lot of the other "mourners" shuffling before us aren’t, in fact, mourning at all. They’re merely cruising one more pop culture happening. They might as well be window-shopping at the mall. Or watching the O.J. chase roll down the freeway. Or tuning in to the Peterson trial blabberage. Or standing in line all night to catch a Lord of the Rings premiere. Or dragging their kids to a Gipper wake. What’s the difference?

Perhaps shlepper attire is the most fitting, anyway, for a Reagan funeral. The Gipper had his own difficulties at times distinguishing between facts and films. I suppose his admirers can be allowed to confuse his funeral for a day at the mall. Here’s the always worthy John Powers' new column on Gippermania:

Reagan is the only president who’s been a true child of pop culture — at once a performer and avid consumer. Pop shaped his consciousness whether he was quoting Dirty Harry’s “Make my day,” evoking Star Wars or entering into one of those Philip K. Dick–style alternative realities in which he claimed to have done things he’d actually only seen in movies — like helping open World War II concentration camps. Fittingly, perhaps, American popular culture orbited him as no other president. In the 1980s, seemingly everything reflected the pull of his presidency, be it Indiana Jones’ breezy retro-heroism, Rambo’s desire to refight Vietnam or Roseanne’s hilariously angry blue-collar riposte to The Gipper’s talk about America as a “shining city on a hill…
…Reagan’s lifelong flight from introspection offered relief to millions who rebelled against the soul-searching induced by assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate and the bummer presidency of born-again Jimmy Carter, who projected his own dismal sense of Original Sin onto the whole country. Untouched by a sense of sin, his own or America’s, Reagan offered the electorate the absolution of optimism, national greatness, Morning in America, forgetting.

Then again, if ketchup was really a vegetable, can’t we pretend that flip-flops and OP cut-offs are really formal wear?

UPDATE: I feel so smug being an official opinion leader. Both Matt Drudge and Wonkette have also now picked up on the flip-flop and flopping belly fashion parade around the Gipper's bier. (So at the top of this posting I picked up some of the pix from their sites). Here's some sass from Wonkette:

Most of the people there to view the casket are in shorts and flip-flops -- maybe they're Kerry supporters or something, but if we ran the Capitol, we'd be handing out jackets and ties and turning people away if they had a visible panty line. And, you know, putting a flag on an article of clothing doesn't make "nice." Sheesh. At least they seem to have left their beer helmet hats at home.

Amen.

The Reagan-Dubya Gipper Graft? [UPDATED]

The prolonged funeral games of Ronald Reagan continue stretching through this week as if Old Dutch was, in reality, Princess Diana. But you knew that already. The electronic media continues its non-stop beatification. The print media, predictably, is giving a generally more balanced picture. But not completely. The L.A. Times today went right into the tank for the Gipper, allowing itself editorial liberties that under different circumstances would earn an editor’s reprimand. Today’s above-the-fold screamer headline reads better as a caption in museum exhibit of Stalin’s funeral than as the masthead of what claims to be a world-class newspaper: “Adoring Public Says Goodbye.” Roll over, Uncle Joe!

The editors allowed the lead of this newsprint treacle to suggest that God Himself was forlorn over Reagan’s passing and had appropriately shrouded the Simi Valley horizon:

Under mournful skies, a motorcade carried former President Reagan along miles of cleared freeways from a Santa Monica funeral home to his presidential library near Simi Valley on Monday, the first step in a weeklong journey to the nation's Capitol and back.

On the hilltop campus where he eventually will be buried, a grieving Nancy Reagan pressed a cheek to her husband's flag-draped coffin, and thousands of other mourners arrived by the busload to shuffle past the bier.

Oh, give me a break! What’s next? “The aggrieved masses demanded that the authorities maintain vigilant defense of the free-enterprise regime so wisely and resolutely constructed by our Fallen Leader?” I mean, can grown-up editors handle this sort of copy with a straight face? I teach some basic journalism courses every year and I struggle to impart a simple maxim to my young students raised on a steady diet of tabloid TV: “Just the facts, ma’am.” If you want to say anymore, get a column – or start a blog!

Fortunately, the L.A. Times mixed some real news into its Tuesday edition. This piece outlines how G.W. Bush’s advisors hope to cash in on Reagan’s death. Gosh, can you imagine? Nattering nabobs like Ed Meese and Peggy Noonan were all over the cable nets today blatantly whoring for the Prez, solemnly suggesting that Reagan’s soul has, indeed, already passed into Dubya’s body.

I think it’s a tall order for a mediocrity like Bush to successfully pull off the incarnation stunt. So does Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly who has the best analysis of the attempt to graft the Gipper. An excerpt:

The problem with comparing Bush to Reagan is that Bush comes off as a mediocre painter trying to emulate Picasso. He sees the brushstrokes on the surface and knows how to copy them, but because he doesn't understand their underlying purpose he ends up being only a clumsy and ultimately damaging imitation when he tries to craft a painting of his own.

No analogy is perfect, but in a lot of ways Bush strikes me as being to Reagan what LBJ was to Roosevelt. It's true that LBJ made some powerful and original contributions to the country, particularly in the area of civil rights, but in the end his legacy has been overshadowed by a pair of signature failures. The Great Society and the Vietnam War, consciously modeled on FDR's New Deal and his leadership during World War II, adopted the surface characteristics of FDR's great achievements but ended up as failures because LBJ didn't have Roosevelt's instinctive feel for public opinion or his grasp of why some things worked and some didn't.

Much the same can be said of George Bush. He learned Reagan's lesson that tax cuts could be powerful political symbols, but then turned that lesson into a blind rule that tax cuts are the answer to every economic problem. Likewise, on foreign policy he saw that Reagan was admired for his steadfast anticommunism, but failed to learn when and where to turn down the volume. As a result, he's a man with only one gear, overreliant on military solutions whether they're appropriate or not.

Like LBJ, Bush is a man who knows the notes but not the song. He learned the surface lessons of Reagan's presidency — tax cuts, hawkishness, unyielding rhetoric — but because he doesn't have the political sensitivity to understand what to do with them he has no choice except to simply offer more tax cuts and more hawkishness, whatever the problem. As a result, he overreaches in a way Reagan never did and will likely be the prime cause of the one thing he most fears: a liberal backlash. Welcome to the club.

Let me know when this spectacle is over. I’m going fishing until normal broadcasting resumes.

UPDATE: "Operation Incarnation" is now officially underway. The Boston Globe reports:

WASHINGTON -- After three days of suspended political activity, the Bush campaign began openly incorporating Ronald Reagan's death into its reelection message yesterday, revamping its website to give Reagan a dominant role and distributing official campaign letters that invoke the former president.

Since Reagan's death Saturday, Bush has repeatedly offered glowing praise of the 40th president in ways that echo his own reelection efforts, but were not overtly political.

Yesterday, his campaign took the refrain into the political realm. Bush officials sent an e-mail inviting supporters to add to a "living memorial" on the campaign website -- one click away from the page that solicits campaign donations and recruits volunteers. Visitors to the official campaign site were automatically redirected to the Reagan tribute, paid for by the Bush/Cheney committee. It replaced the spot usually occupied by the campaign home page...

Shocked, just shocked to learn this. As I said above: ain't gonna work,