UPDATED:
Month: March 2008
McCain Again Supports Torture
John McCain voted to uphold Bush’s veto of the latest anti-torture legislation to pass Congress.
McCain also voted against the initial version of this law that would ban waterboarding by U.S. government agents.
McCain also voted for the final version of the Military Comissions Act in September 2006. By giving Bush boundless discretion to define torture, this law effectively guaranteed that the U.S. government would continue torturing.
Has anybody compiled a list of all the times the media has praised McCain for opposing torture, despite his groveling at Bush’s demands for absolute power to punish detainees however he pleases?
Everything You Need to Know About Alan Dershowitz
From the continuing series “A Terror Tour of Israel” at Slate.com:
[A]t another stop on the tour, we were introduced to Haim Ben Ami, a former head of interrogations at Shin Bet. He strolled across the stage like a movie director explaining a difficult scene to his audience. […]
Ben Ami likes stories and has a flair for drama. Asked by a member of our tour what he would do if his own daughter’s life were at stake, he tapped his prosthetic leg, noting that he had already been a victim of a terror attack (a grenade was thrown at him). But Ben Ami’s best stories are about times when it might be useful to torture terrorists, like in the case of a pair of terrorists captured while crossing into Israel to set off a bomb in Tel Aviv. They were tortured during interrogation and gave up information on their comrades. Then what?
“So, I made a suggestion,” Ben Ami said. “After the interrogation, we should bring these two guys back to the water, we put their head in water—bloop, bloop, bloop!—and let them float to Dead Sea. In the morning, two bodies in the Dead Sea, it happens.”
Ben Ami’s story, it turns out, was made up, a scenario meant to provoke discussion. Like a good TV show, it was often hard to tell where Ben Ami’s stories crossed over into fiction. In his own version of a “ripped from the headlines” story, he recalled giving a lecture to law students at Harvard at the invitation of well-known professor Alan Dershowitz. He recounted to the students Shin Bet’s involvement in delivering a suspected terrorist to the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in 1983. The Israelis, Ben Ami said, had knowledge of a planned attack on the United States, but they knew no details. As Ben Ami recalled, the Israelis told the Americans: “Take him, make an interrogation, and we wish you success.”
Except the suspect wouldn’t talk. “He said: ‘Look, I wish to talk, but I’m very tired. I’d like to fall asleep for at least two hours.'” The suspect was taken, at his request, to a nearby apartment to sleep. The next day, the embassy was destroyed.
The story is a powerful argument in favor of torture—or at least enhanced interrogations—except for one problem: Like Ben Ami’s other story of the drowned terrorists (and most stories involving a “ticking time bomb”), it’s apocryphal. It never happened. Real life is never that clean-cut. Ben Ami, however, forgot to reveal that to the Harvard law students.
Realizing his mistake later that day, Ben Ami panicked. “I called Alan Dershowitz and said, ‘It’s wrong.'” As Ben Ami recalled, Dershowitz told him not to worry: “He said, ‘No, it’s a good story, leave it.'”
Monday’s entry is also worth a read. More on Dershowitz here, here, and here.
Eliot Spitzer — Martyr? I Don’t Think So …
Did Eliot Spitzer commit a victimless crime? I don’t get to talk about juicy stuff like that on Antiwar.com, so get on over to Taki’s Magazine and I’ll tell you why I don’t think so …
Obama Appeals to Libertarians
From the Wall Street Journal [via David Boaz]: Barack Obama, campaigning in Wyoming, appeals to libertarians:
“Tailoring his message to the state’s antigovernment streak, Sen. Obama put new emphasis on his criticisms of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretaps and other heightened law-enforcement activities implemented as antiterror measures. ‘You can be liberal and a libertarian, or a conservative libertarian,’ Sen. Obama told a crowd of about 1,200 at a recreation center here. But ‘there’s nothing conservative’ about President Bush’s antiterror policies. ‘There’s nothing Republican about that. Everybody should be outraged by that,’ he added.”
Boaz, a bigwig over at the ostensibly libertarian Cato Institute, qualifies his bouquet with a brickbat, claiming that Obama also said he wants to “undermine trade agreements” (i.e. NAFTA), but as the late Murray Rothbard and Paul pointed out, NAFTA isn’t “free trade,” it’s an exemplar of managed trade. As for all those “goodies from the Treasury” he says Obama wants to hand out — well, as I pointed out in my column, this morning, Obama is no Ron Paul. But, then again, Paul didn’t measure up to Boaz’s stratospheric standards, either ….
Paul’s Missed McCain Knockout?
John McCain survived the New Hampshire primary thanks to receiving the support of the bulk of Republicans opposed to the Iraq war. McCain also did much better with the antiwar voters than other GOP candidates in the crucial Florida primary.
Ron Paul, who announced he was dropping out of the race last night, never made his opposition to the Iraq War the key theme of his own campaign. (He did superbly when asked about this issue in debates or interviews, but most voters never saw the debates or interviews).
After McCain had emerged as a near-frontrunner before the Florida primary, a single 30-second ad highlighting his warmongering could have had a huge impact. Even if the Paul campaign only paid to have it broadcst a single time, it would likely have gotten picked up and frequently rebroadcast as a new story (the same tactic other candidates used).
Stressing an antiwar message probably would not have allowed Ron Paul to capture the GOP presidential nomination. But educating voters about McCain’s record could have made all the difference.
Losing the antiwar vote to McCain is like losing the chastity vote to Bill Clinton.
It is perplexing that a candidate who voted so courageously against the war in Congress would siderail this issue in his presidential campaign – and thereby possibly miss a chance to block the biggest GOP Senate warmonger from the nomination.