Matt Yglesias

The Commission Option

Fred Hiatt has a pretty reasonable column arguing that rather than ad hoc and limited investigations, we need to look into the torture question through a comprehensive independent commission. That said, I have doubts about this part:

Such a commission would investigate not just the Bush administration but the government, including Congress. It would give former vice president Dick Cheney a forum to make his case on the necessity of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It would examine the efficacy of such techniques, if any, and the question of whether, even if they work, waterboarding and other methods long considered torture ever can be justified. [...] But a fair-minded commission — co-chaired by, say, former Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter — could help the nation come to grips with its past and show the world that America is serious about doing so. It could help Americans understand how this country came to engage in what many regard as vile and un-American practices. It might help the country respond better the next time it is frightened.

It’s hard for me to understand how we can outsource a decision about whether or not “torture ever can be justified” to an independent commission. That’s a policy decision that needs to be made by policymakers. And, in fact, it has been made by policymakers. That’s how torture came to be illegal in the United States. The crux of the matter is that we came to have a bunch of policymakers who no longer believed in that principle and thus they broke the law. This leaves us with a legal issue about what to do with them. But it also leaves the policy issue hanging out there. The main position of the conservative movement at this point is that torture is excellent, and something we ought to engage in. It’s important to resolve that argument, but I don’t see any alternative to resolving it through the political process. A commission can’t do it.

The Minotaur Debate

Brilliant:

The use of National Review Online to identify one of the minotaur advocates is a sweet choice.

A Welcome Chill

(cc photo by furryscaly)

If you want a sense of how sick the torture debate in the United States has become, look no further than Robert Alt’s argument in the LA Times that we can’t investigate perpetrators of past interrogation abuses because it might have a “chilling effect.” But the chilling effect is a feature, not a bug, of investigations. When you set up an intelligence agency authorized to operate in secret, you’re creating a large potential abuse problem. Add a panicky national atmosphere and George W. Bush and next thing you know we’re torturing people.

What would be wanted to prevent this would be, you know, a chilling effect. A little bit of the old “I see what you’re saying boss, but that’s illegal!” This is what we have laws for. Meanwhile, read Chris Hayes on “The Secret Government”.

Padilla vs Yoo

John Yoo (Wikimedia)

Ady Barkan has a great piece in Slate about the case of Padilla vs Yoo which he characterizes as the best chance going to see some legal accountability for torture. The key point is that a week ago judge Jeffrey Wright rejected Yoo’s requests to dismiss the case, requests that had actually been supported by the Obama administration. Now we’re in a situation where an actual trial might take place, complete with a discovery process and some light being shined on what was going on. But what role will the Obama administration plan?

Barkan says they have three options:

First, it can accept the decision rather than appeal. This would allow Padilla’s attorneys to proceed with the evidence-gathering of discovery: reviewing Yoo’s classified memos, reading his e-mails, and even questioning him under oath. Although the government could try to keep what Padilla gleans from this confidential, Padilla’s lawyers will correctly argue that the public has a strong interest in seeing the material: The American people deserve to know which officials set our interrogation and detention policies. Scores of detainees would then use the evidence from Padilla’s discovery to establish their own plausible legal claims. The administration isn’t likely to go for any of this.

Second would be to continue down the path Obama’s trailed thus far, and keep on embracing the strong, Bush-style conception of the state secrets doctrine. This, he thinks, “would draw international condemnation and would surely give momentum to the Senate’s current effort to roll back the privilege by statute.” Last, they could simply argue that Yoo should be immune from prosecution which would likely wind up pushing this issue to the Supreme Court. In any essence that ought to lead to the torture accountability issue returning to the front pages.

Eric Cantor’s Selective Embrace of Human Rights

Torture for me, but not for thee.

Eric Cantor loves human rights:

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the minority whip who has put out blistering statements about the White House’s response, spoke loudly and emotionally about “America’s moral responsibility to speak out on the protection of human rights wherever they are violated” — hint, hint. “I urge President Obama to follow the lead of this House,” Cantor said.

Adam Serwer wonders where this commitment was when “Cantor voted against the military appropriations bill that banned cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of terror detainees.”

Specifically, according to the State Department’s official human rights brief on Iran:

Common methods of torture and abuse in prisons included prolonged solitary confinement with sensory deprivation, beatings, long confinement in contorted positions, kicking detainees with military boots, hanging detainees by the arms and legs, threats of execution, burning with cigarettes, sleep deprivation, and severe and repeated beatings with cables or other instruments on the back and on the soles of the feet.

Now to be clear, neither the scale of abuses nor the intent of the abuses is equivalent in the United States and Iran. But when it comes to techniques, it’s hard not to notice the fact that several of the methods condemned here, most notably including sleep deprivation, stress positions (”long confinement in contorted positions”), and shackling (”hanging detainees by the arms and legs”) were specifically authorized by the Bush administration. Many of the others, though not specifically authorized, appear to have become widespread in several detention facilities in part as a result of the administration’s general habit of throwing out the human rights rulebook. These bad actions don’t justify bad actions on the part of the Iranian regime. But whenever you read about these kind of techniques being applied in Iran or North Korea, it’s immediately apparent to everyone that it’s torture, it’s cruel, it’s inhumane, and it’s wrong. It’s also cruel, inhumane, and wrong when authorized by Dick Cheney.

Conservative Radio Host Has Himself Waterboard to Prove It’s Not Torture, Realizes He Was Wrong

Via John Chait, it seems that conservative talk radio host Eric “Mancow” Muller decided it would be a fun stunt to have himself waterboarded in order to prove that it’s not really torture. Didn’t work so well:

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,”Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face…I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’”

I’m not sure I understand why Mancow wasn’t willing to take Christopher Hitchens’ word for it when he undertook an identical experiment for the same reason and concluded “if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.” But as Chait says “I think the torture debate would be mighty different if more of the conservatives who scoff at waterboarding would try the same thing.”

The one guy who I want to see at the front of the line for this is Michael Goldfarb from the Weekly Standard who, I think, has really gone above and beyond the call of duty in terms of minimizing torture by referring to it as “dunking”.

Cheney is Unpopular, Not “Polarizing”

An interesting Politico piece about how folks charged with Republican Party politics in the real world aren’t so thrilled with the Newt/Cheney Comeback Tour is far too kind about public’s view of Dick Cheney:

After a one-two punch from Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, House Minority Leader John Boehner and other Republican lawmakers worry that their party has overplayed its hand on Nancy Pelosi.

The Republicans’ fear: Gingrich’s call for Pelosi’s ouster has set an unattainable goal, and Cheney’s jabs at her during a speech Thursday will allow Democrats to portray the controversy as a partisan attack by one of the GOP’s most polarizing figures.

“If the story becomes about us and not her, it’s a problem for us,” said a senior Republican lawmaker.

When I think of a “polarizing” figure, I think of someone about whom the public has strong, but closely divided feelings. Like if you were at 45 percent “strongly favorable” and 45 percent “strongly unfavorable” with only a few people in the middle. Cheney is just unpopular:

That’s different, I think, from being polarizing. And note that the poll from which I’ve taken that lower-than-Cuba favorablerating for Cheney gave him an unusually high rating. It’s possible that strident public advocacy of torture and law breaking has, in fact, raised his popularity to within spitting distance of an impoverished Communist dictatorship. But it’s also possible that that poll was an outlier and that Cheney’s true favorable rating is considerably lower.

Quote of the Day

Benjy Sarlin, over email: “Dick Cheney, who brought us the phrase ‘enhanced interrogation methods,’ is currently railing against those who use ‘euphemisms’ to obscure the debate over national security.”

Arlen Specter Backs Pelosi

I appreciate that there are some basic political truths that are awkward for most politicians to actually utter. But one reason that it’s good to have some politicians around who are worried about their left flank, is that you can get this sort of thing from Arlen Specter (D-PA):

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes … to honesty. It goes back a long time,” Specter said in a speech before the American Law Institute at a Washington hotel.

The Republican-turned-Democrat listed a handful of examples in the past where the CIA has withheld key information from Congress.

“It’s a real problem as to how you get the information,” he said.

Right on. Not that we should be acting like the CIA is just somehow full of dishonest people. But it’s an agency that’s well-equipped to do things in secret. Sometimes presidents like to use it because they want to do something legitimate that requires secrecy. But the secrecy capabilities are also useful if you want to do something that’s illegal or immoral. Like torture people. But when the CIA is being asked to do illegal and immoral things in order to keep them secret, that naturally tends to extend toward keeping congress in the dark. There are many historical instances of this, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the CIA’s briefings on the Bush torture program turn out to have been less-than-thorough.

Good for Specter.

Cheney Tortures, Lies About Torture

It is, of course, borderline treasonous to suggest that anyone would mislead anyone about their barbaric and illegal torture activities:

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn’t true.

Cheney’s 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

And this is the practical problem with torture. If you know what you want people to say, you can torture them into saying it. But that’s not a process that actually enhances the quantity of accurate information in your possession.

The Right’s Torture Backfire

In a new Daily Beast column I argue that even though the right’s effort to change the subject on torture away from “what did the Bush administration do?”, to “what was Nancy Pelosi briefed about?” has been an incredible tactical success, it stands a huge chance of backfiring:

And here’s where the right’s tactical acumen comes up short. Various conservative commentators have expressed their hope that gunning for Pelosi will blunt progressive calls for a “truth commission” to thoroughly investigate what really happened on Bush’s trip to the “dark side”. Fox’s Neil Cavuto said we might be in a “Mexican standoff” wherein Pelosi would agree to drop the idea of investigations to prevent herself from attracting scrutiny. Steven Hayes, Dick Cheney’s official biographer, said, “Democrats who have been so enthusiastic about truth commissions have to be stopping and saying, OK, wait a second.” What conservatives are missing here is that this is a fight they were winning before they started gunning for Pelosi. Their best ally in this fight was Barack Obama, whose desire to “move forward” rather than focusing on the past had been the subject of much consternation. Had conservatives simply reached out to grab the hand that was being extended to them, they could have gotten what they wanted.

But in their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we’re going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives’ insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can’t give in to moderate Democrats’ opposition to such a move without looking like she’s cravenly attempting to save her own skin.

I’ve seen polling which suggests that the public is reasonably sympathetic to the pro-torture position. But I’m quite certain the public isn’t generally aware of facts that would certainly come out in a truth commission process. For example, that the Bush administration’s torture techniques were specifically modeled on techniques employed by Chinese forces during the Korean War for the purpose of extracting false confessions. That the experts in the techniques whose advice was sought in designing the torture program warned interrogators that the methods were illegal and unlikely to produce reliable information. That one principle purpose of the torture program appears to have been to generate false information about links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Or that abusive detention practices occurred far beyond Abu Ghraib and have led to the deaths of many people.

Conservatives Hoping that Pelosi Attacks Will Keep the Truth About Torture Buried

The whole series of recent attacks on Nancy Pelosi has been a bit bizarre. Whether you love torture or despise it, and whether you believe Pelosi or not, there’s just no way of looking at the history of torture in America in which Pelosi comes out as anything other than a bit player. So it’s good to see what Faiz Shakir points out here, a montage of conservatives explaining that the point of this Pelosi mau-mauing is to try to intimidate progressives into abandoning efforts to investigate what, exactly, was done and why:

Pelosi, to her credit, has stood firm against this. She’s consistently not only defended herself, but defender her position in favor of establishing a truth commission to get to the bottom of all of this. But the right is hoping to scare her into tossing her principles overboard in an effort to keep herself out of controversy.

The Ticking Time Bomb Slippery Slope

Torture apologists invariably wind up invoking outlandish “ticking time bomb” hypotheticals to justify their barbarous behavior. Wouldn’t you torture someone to prevent the imminent nuclear destruction of Los Angeles? Then if you say “yes” quickly they leap to, “so obviously Dick Cheney is right to think we should torture people in order to produce false confessions of Iraq/al-Qaeda links.”

But it’s just really hard to see any examples of this “ticking time bomb” scenario playing out in real life.

Steve Benen observes that given two weeks to think up a concrete example of the utility of torture, Charles Krauthammer came up with some very weak sauce. It seems that at some point in the 1980s, the IDF took a captive who they thought had knowledge of the location of an IDF corporal who was being held prisoner. The captive was tortured, he coughed up the location, and the IDF found the corporal there, already dead.

What I think this primarily illustrates is how quickly and severely this particular slippery slope slips. We start out saying we would be willing to torture someone in order to save the lives of millions. We end up saying we would be willing to torture someone in order to maybe save the life of one soldier. Needless to say, however, there are lots of situations in which better investigative methods might save one person’s life. Which brings me back to the point that the logic of the conservative view is that we ought to be torturing routinely in all walks of life.

Bob Graham Says CIA Has Admitted to Errors in Breifing Records, CIA Not Talking

According to former Senator Bob Graham, who’s best-known for his incredibly meticulous note-taking, the CIA has made mistakes in its account of briefing sessions to him and has admitted the error: “On three of the four occasions, when I consulted my schedule and my notes, it was clear that no briefing had taken place, and the CIA eventually concurred in that. So their record keeping is a little bit suspect.”

Obviously, that raises the question of whether or not there might be mistakes in the CIA’s official record of its briefings of Nancy Pelosi. After all, if I had a legal mandate to brief people about something, but was also under orders from the President of the United States to participate in a cover-up of an illegal and barbaric campaign of torture, I might fudge my records. Spencer Ackerman tried to do some reporting: “I asked CIA spokesman George Little whether Graham is telling the truth and he declined comment.”

That’s very strange. Presumably the CIA either did make this concession to Graham, in which case their account of what transpired vis-a-vis Pelosi is suspect, or else the CIA did not make this concession and Graham is slandering them. Seems like the public ought to know which.

Bob Graham Says He Was Misled In Briefings

Nancy Pelosi’s allegations that she was misled by the Bush administration in the secret, you-can’t-discuss-this-with-anyone, briefings she was treated to as the ranking House Democrat on the Intelligence Committee has taken the torture debate to a new level. Greg Sargent has former Senator Bob Graham, who was Pelosi’s opposite number on Senate Intelligence, saying something similar:

Former Senator Bob Graham, who received a classified briefing on terror detainees during the same month in the fall of 2002 as Nancy Pelosi, was not briefed about the use of either waterboarding or enhanced interrogation techniques during the meeting, he claimed in an interview with me.

Graham’s assertion — his first public comments since the release of the intelligence document detailing torture briefings given to members of Congress — directly contradicts the document’s claim that he had been briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs. Graham is now the second Dem official to deny on the record the document’s contents and raises questions about its claim that Pelosi had been told, which she has denied.

You can see more along these lines from the award-winning Marcy Wheeler.

Can I say that in a larger sense I think the idea that congressional oversight can be established by briefing a number of members of congress that you can count on one hand seems a bit absurd on its face. The government sometimes needs to do something in secret. But if the reasons for keeping it secret are sufficiently un-compelling that operational security requires it to be kept secret from members of congress then that sounds a lot more like a cover-up than a legitimate national security concern.

On the Photos

I don’t have a great deal to say about this business of Obama refusing to release photos of detainee abuse. I briefly had myself convinced that this is a complicated issue, but it really isn’t. There ought to be an overwhelming presumption that the American people have the right to see the facts about what our government is doing in our name, with our money. There has to be some secrecy in the name of national security—it’s good that we don’t publish our nuclear codes or the details of the presidential security detail—but the notion that vague invocations of national interest or policy expediency should be permitted to sweep things under the rug is repugnant.

Of course if you want to think about why this is happening, ask yourself when’s the last time a politician lost an election because he was too deferential to the attitudes and institutional prerogatives of the national security apparatus of the United States. I don’t think it’s happened since the early 1970s. And it’s a not a coincidence that back then we got FISA and the Church Committee and so forth. But until it happens again, things will get worse and worse and worse in general even if there are spots of improvement.

Sleep Deprivation

Hilzoy cautions us against thinking that sleep deprivation is a kindler, gentler form of torture:

The various kinds of psychological torture, of which sleep deprivation is one, are just as disturbing as physical torture; possibly more so, since their aim is to induce regression and learned helplessness, which is a way of inflicting serious psychological damage. Keeping someone awake for long periods of time, or using sensory deprivation, isn’t awful in the obvious ways that, say, beating someone to a pulp is. But even though it does not leave visible scars, it’s profoundly wrong.

Another point I would make is that you’re obviously not going to use extended sleep deprivation in a “ticking bomb” scenario to prevent an imminent attack. Doing enough sleep deprivation to break down someone’s personality is a days-long process.

What If Torturers Go to Trial and Win?

Tyler Cowen says attempting to prosecute torture would be counterproductive:

At many blogs (Sullivan, Yglesias, DeLong, among others) you will find ongoing arguments for prosecuting the torturers who ran our government for a while. I am in agreement with the moral stance of these critics but I don’t agree with their practical conclusions. I believe that a full investigation would lead the U.S. public to, ultimately, side with torture, side with the torturers, and side against the prosecutors. That’s why we can’t proceed and Obama probably understands that. [...] Pushing for prosecution would more likely endanger rule of law than preserve it, which is a sorry state of affairs.

I don’t really consider myself an enthusiast for torture prosecutions. In part for reasons related to what Cowen says, I’m less interested in seeing the guilty punished than in seeing at least some of them and their political supporters admit that they were wrong and acting unwisely under the influence of the atmosphere of panic that prevailed in the aftermath of 9/11. How exactly you achieve that isn’t totally clear to me. But I think it’s plausible that some threat of prosecution, coupled with the ready availability of clemency for people prepared to come clean, plays a role.

I also think that, contra something else Cowen says, the fact that Democrats didn’t cover themselves in glory on this from 2002-2005 makes the case for action stronger. If it were the case that the torture system were just implemented by “a few bad apples” in the White House we could say, well they lost the election so now it’s time to move forward. But that’s not really the situation.

Implausible Hypothetical Cases Make Bad Law

Michael Scheuer sets about to prove that torture is awesome:

In surprisingly good English, the captive quietly answers: ‘Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God’s permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities.’ Startled, the CIA interrogators quickly demand more detail. Smiling his trademark shy smile, the captive says nothing. Reporting the interrogation’s results to the White House, the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: “What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?”

Of course all this really proves is that you can prove a lot when you get to stipulate facts. For example, I think that if I put forward a general proposition “allowing FBI agents to murder little girls is a bad idea” then few people would disagree with me.

But wait! Suppose we have Osama bin Laden in captivity and he says “Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God’s permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities and I will tell you in time for you to disarm them all but only if the FBI murders two little girls in cold blood first.” Now I guess I also get to stipulate that for some reason Osama is credible in making this threat and also credible in making the promise, and I also get to stipulate that it’s actually the case that little girl murdering is the only way to prevent the detonation of multiple nuclear weapons in American cities.

What happens then?

As it happens, qua former philosophy major I do think this is a powerful conception challenge to certain kinds of deontological ethical systems. But it’s obviously not a serious policy argument about whether or not we should write some kind of “it’s sometimes ago to murder innocent girls when doing so is an expedient investigatory tactic” provision into the law. To make a policy argument requires a whole different set of considerations to be put into play and the argument can’t crucially hinge on arbitrary sets of stipulated facts.

The Case for More Waterboarding

The orthodox conservative position at this point, it seems to me, is that waterboarding is not torture. Nor is having someone dangle from his shackled arms in a manner so painful as to prevent sleep for a period of days. What’s more, these non-torturous “harsh techniques” are highly effective at gathering intelligence. But if that’s true, and these are legal and effective means of securing reliable information, why are we doing so little of it?

After all, people doing organized crime investigations face a lot of challenges in terms of getting information from people. Maybe cops should do routine undercover drug buys, build a case against low level dealers, and then waterboard the guys they’ve arrested and move further up the food chain. Maybe waterboarding and “stress positions” should become routine treatment for battlefield detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not?

Well I would say because it’s wrong. And also because it’s very unlikely to work. And also because this is the mentality that gave us Abu Ghraib and abuses at Bagram and all kinds of other horrible problems throughout the system. But if you take the view that these “enhanced techniques” aren’t illegal torture, and that “enhanced techniques” are highly effective, and that systematized approval of torture doesn’t inevitably lead to abuse, then why not?

Do We Need a CIA?

I seriously doubt that anyone in the Obama administration or the congress is going to seriously consider abolishing the CIA, but I think John Judis is correct to say that the idea should probably get more consideration:

The question that Congress might ponder, but won’t, is whether the structure of our foreign policy apparatus – the power and responsibility vested in a secret branch of government — invites abuse. That was the position of the late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan who argued for abolishing the CIA. He didn’t want to eliminate intelligence, but he wanted to return it to the purview of the State Department, while giving the armed forces the responsibility for overseas intervention.

I’m not saying I favor this, but it’s certainly worth discussing. One need only consider George Tenet’s reign as CIA chief. Tenet came in with a reform portfolio; and he initially did well as a manager; but by the time he had been forced out of office, the CIA itself had committed more war crimes, and bollixed more critical intelligence inquiries than ever before. Was that because Tenet was deeply incompetent? Or was there something about the agency’s structure in government that invited presidents to twist it for their own sordid political ends? Could the armed services have as easily complied with these torture memos? I think not.

The CIA, as currently constituted, has basically two responsibilities—intelligence analysis and covert operations. But analysis is already being done at the State Department, and seemingly done better, so one could simply beef up the resources involved in the State Department. The military, meanwhile, already has the capability to do some covert operations and there’s a general consensus in favor of shifting resources out of heavy weapons platforms and toward special operations.

The picture of the torture situation that’s emerging counts, I think, as a strong point in favor of the Moynihan position. It’s not just that CIA personnel were involved in doing something bad, it’s that the specific institutional structure of the government really does seem to have played a role. After all, why were CIA personnel involved in this at all? Pre-Bush, the CIA didn’t have any interrogators. The FBI had interrogators, and the military had interrogators, but the CIA didn’t. But responsibility for interrogations wound up gravitating toward the CIA not because the CIA had relevant expertise but precisely because the CIA has an institutional history and track record of law-breaking and war crimes.

Muscle Fatigue

It’s shocking how easy it is to be shocked all over again by browsing through Jay Bybee’s memo. For example: “These procedures, as discussed above, involve the use of muscle fatigue to encourage cooperation and do not themselves constitute the infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.”

It’s not pain, it’s just muscle fatigue. And it’s not severe. It’s just bad enough to compel you to cooperate.

Epidemic of Hippie-ism Spreading Through the Ranks of Former Generals

Warren Strobel reports on the radical left’s continued march through the ranks of distinguished military officers:

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

With respect, I actually disagree that the “only” question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. The more important question is whether we can get prominent political figures who play an important role in the anti-tax or anti-abortion movements to accept a commonsense definition of torture and to say that torture is wrong and we shouldn’t do it. We could be living in a world in which Republican-friendly executives were calling up the politicians to whom they make campaign contributions and saying “I hate unions and environmentalists as much as the next greedy bastard, but you guys should really stop defending torture—I’m not comfortable with the idea of bloodthirsty madmen running the country.” Instead, such people seem mostly inclined to keep writing checks and hope that the politicians they support can use the torture issue to win elections and start delivering on the anti-union, anti-environmentalist agenda.

Since When Have Conservatives Opposed Banana Republics?

Steve Benen observes the absurdity of right-wingers arguing that America will achieve “banana republic” status unless we allow past crimes and human rights violations to go unpunished. But I think there’s something weirder about the specific decision to use this term, and about Karl Rove’s specific comparison of Barack Obama’s America to “a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses.” I mean, since when are Americans conservatives against Latin American countries being run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses?

The Summit of the Americas went down just a few days ago, and we were treated to the view that not only is bona fide leftist dictator Fidel Castro so horrible that we should attempt to starve the victims of his misgovernment into line, but also that essentially all the democratically elected left-of-center leaders across Latin America—from Rafael Correa to Daniel Ortega to Hugo Chavez to Evo Morales to Cristina Kirchner are America’s enemies. And to the end of defeating these guys, American conservatives have a long history of backing America-friendly military dictators. Just a few years ago the Bush administration backed a coup against Chavez. The Somoza regime that Ortega overthrew in the late 1970s had been backed for years by the United State. Many American conservatives were so in love with Argentina’s military dictatorship that they were inclined to support it even against Saint Margaret Thatcher.

Back to basics, the origin of the term is that a “banana republic” is a Latin American despotism being propped up by the United States government at the behest of US-owned fruit exporters. It’s a specifically left-wing form of derision for the sort of historical abuses of American power in the Western Hemisphere that conservatives can’t even bring themselves to acknowledge.

The Quality of Mercy is Not Stained, If the Perpetrator Is Elite Enough

An important point from Adam Serwer about the sudden outbreak of “forgive and forget” attitudes among political and media elites:

Cohen’s argument simply reflects the consensus among certain journalistic and political elites that the powerful simply shouldn’t be held accountable when they make mistakes, because, after all, we all make mistakes. This compassionate attitude naturally doesn’t extend beyond this small group. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, fully 1% of the population. I’m sure there are millions of people currently incarcerated who would like it if Cohen’s policy of absolution for crimes was extended to them.

More importantly, this entire philosophy has it backwards. Accountability is the burden of the powerful in a democracy. Those who are responsible for upholding our laws shouldn’t get a pass when they break them, precisely because they have that responsibility. Power without accountability is, by definition, tyranny.

I would even take this beyond prison. The United States isn’t run along Social Darwinist lines, but we’re closer than any other major developed country. To an extent that I find frankly astounding—and certainly unseen in other wealthy nations—people from modest backgrounds are expected to suffer the economic consequences of poor decision-making or bad luck, all in the name of personal responsibility. But when someone really important screws up, either in terms of provoking a financial crisis or overseeing a policy disaster or breaking the law or whatever, well then it turns out that we have better things to do than “look backwards” at who deserves what.

It’s absurd and it’s unfair. Meanwhile, at the exact time I was writing this post, Pandora put “Cheat” on—”Don’t use the rules / They’re not for you, they’re for the fools / And you’re a fool if you don’t know that.”