More on Torture

I do have a practical problem with it...and so does Obama, which is why he won't pursue this for a very good reason: there are much bigger things at stake.
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It would also mean a unilateral renunciation of powers that his office has acquired. Nobody can be trusted with these powers, and you cannot expect an executive to renounce them.
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it's good that you picked out the grid. that is the central, most important infrastructure investment to make. But for you to say that the media wants to pursue the torture story, well, I'll just point out, Joe, that you are one of a very few in the Village who will call torture by its name.
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that you find that column excerpt you've set out as exculpatory is insightful. That, in hindsight, you find it clear is fascinating. The Geneva Conventions are, painfully, clear. Inventing ambiguity in them is act of villains. These villains were enabled by elected officials who should have known better, and by media celebrities who were more committed to saying "Suck On This" than they were to any principles.
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IAC, Obama said a president should be able to do more than one thing at a time. Perhaps the way to get bipartisan support is not to cave at the outset, but to embark on both the national vilification of the Republicans who have have put their party ahead of the country and the constitution AND on the restoration of the economy they have destroyed.
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If you can't play hardball now, when can you do so?

well, you're right about Greenwald being overbearingly self-righteous.
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But you're dead wrong about prosecutions for war crimes being a distraction. If anything, they are needed because we face so many challenges abroad, and the Bush administration has so undermined US credibility. The only way to restore that credibility is show the world that the American people understand that what had been done in their name was unacceptable -- and the Democratic Congress sweeping these issues under the rug for the last two years, combined with Team Obama's willingness to also ignore these crimes against humanity, will send the world the message that the US is unrepentant -- and underserving of international support.
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Its also especially crucial insofar as our military is stretched so thin, and its going to take years (and massive amounts of money) to restore the military. War crimes trials are a time sensitive and cost-effective measure because they will restore the "soft power" of the USA.

Thanks for responding to the criticism, JK. And I see your point, understand it, and don't particulalrly like it, but suspect you're right - for the time being.
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What's the statute of limitations on war crimes? At some point, the bigger fish of saving the country from the bush years will be fried. At that point, we should re-examine this issue. No pardons. And in the meantime, Mssrs. Bush and Cheney, Addington and Yoo should be forced to keep the tale of General Pinochet in mind when making their vacation plans.

At the risk of inciting another attack by James Los Angelos, I am also concerned that in the clamor for criminal indictments we run the risk of taking our eye off the ball. Perhaps in the end they deserve ending up in the Hague, but I'm not willing to sacrifice our immediate and perhaps even long term future to satisfy a lust for revenge.

I think people have enough multi-tasking skills to investigate an administrations abuse of power and legitamization of torture and also deal with the economy, health care and environmental issues. Some of us can walk and chew gum at the same time. Torture sanctioned at the highest levels of government is not small potatoes.

"I had no idea how truly dreadful his Administration would become. I imagined Bush a conservative; I soon learned that he was a right-wing radical. Two years later, when the Abu Ghraib abuses were made public, I wrote this column, clearly denouncing his Administration. It is the sort of column that Greenwald never cites, never includes in what appears to be, but isn't, the exhaustive research he stuffs into his briefs."
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And you see no connection between your (and your elite peers) nonchalant attitude toward holding the powerful accountable to the rule of law and the “surprising” behavior of the Bush Administration?! That's why Greenwald, and many of us, take it so seriously. Everything starts there and you can have no responsive government without accountability. Pull your head out of your pride and reread the entire history of unaccountable governments and get back to me if you still think there are “bigger things at stake”.
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And, BTW, your “what do television producers want to book” test is as perfectly weak as your understanding of the relationship between accountability and good government and the needle of your moral compass.

Could not disagree more Joe. All military and elected personnel take an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The constitution has been clearly and blatantly violated for awhile now. Fixing the economy doesn't mean much if we lose our country in the process.
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There isn't a higher priority than beginning the investigations and prosecutions. That's not however, to say that we can't do both at once by assigning different people to each task. Should be pretty easy considering the skill sets don't overlap at all.

Also, you know, if the republicans were reaching out and seeking the best policy in the public interest, that would be one thing. But their reaction to utter repudiation by the public is to ratchet up the partisan nonsense. There's no compromise there, and to let a repudiated party, supporters of torture, shredding of the constitution and destruction of the US economy dictate terms is batsh!t crazy.

two other things..
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1) one suspects that the real reason that Bush and his cronies will not be held accoutable is that any effort to hold them accountable necessarily implicates the Democratic Congressional leadership -- people like DiFi, Pelosi, and Reid were "in the loop" even if they weren't giving the orders, and any kind of "truth commission" would make it clear that their acquiesence to torture and other war crimes make them completely unsuited for public office.
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Indeed, given the Obama/FISA debacle, one suspects that Obama's "inevitability" as the Democratic nominee was based on a deal with the Pelosi's and Reid's to sweep everything under the rug.
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2) Ultimately, its the media (i.e. the Joe Klein's of the world) that would make war crimes trials "too much of a distraction." Simply put, there should be no controversy over whether criminals are prosecuted, rather the media should treat it as a matter of course, and treat anyone who objects to the prosecutions as utterly amoral and so completely outside of the mainstream that any objections can be comfortably ignored.
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But its the amorality of the Village, and people like Klein, that result in what should be a no-brainer becoming a distraction. TORTURE IS UNAMERICAN, and no journalist or pundit should even question whether those who authorized torture should be held accountable.

While I'm forced to admit that it was a previous conflict between Glenn and Joe that brought me to Swampland in the first place, I'll refrain from trying to fan the flames. I will note that the difference between Glenn and Joe isn't the one described in the post. Glenn begins with espoused principles and the relentlessy follows where the logic leads even if its a politically unpopular or undesirable result. Joe on the other hand starts with the politically desirable result and then hand-picks the principles he will espouse in order to arrive at the desired conclusion. The difference is one of style but if I chose the second path I would be very hesitant to refer to someone else as intellectually dishonest.

I don't know, Joe. One man's monomaniacal is another man's consistent, know what I mean? You doth protest a lot.

The problem here is that most of you who dismiss the distraction angle are only thinking about things from the perspective of savvy political consumers. Please remember that you are the exception to the rule, even in this last year of unprecedented political engagement most of America is not in your league. You are the political junkies who breath this stuff so focusing on myriad issues is not at all problematic. Unfortunately, whether you are willing to admit it or not most of the country just can't keep up, if they could the Bush administration could have never inflicted the damage they did. Moreover, as Joe so readily admitted and we know for ourselves that the msm will get focus on a trivial albeit lurid aspect of the story and get stuck - its what they do. So rather than just say what Obama ought to be able to handle multiple things give some thought about what the country can handle.

@Dee
I'm reminded of the quote from Robert Wilson when discuss the funding for Fermilab:

Pastore: Is there anything connected in the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of this country?
Wilson: No sir; I do not belive so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has nothing to do with the military, I am sorry.
Pastore: Don't be sorry for it.
Wilson: I am not, but I cannot in honesty say it has any such application.
Pastore: Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?
Wilson: Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending.

So while the people who you note, don't pay close attention to politics worry about their jobs and their savings, I feel entitled to ask what it is about them that entitles them to their material comfort. If the answer is support for wars of aggression and a blind eye to torture, then perhaps we need to rethink the whole problem.

OT: Over at Newsweek, terrific May 2008 interview with Obama.

I will say this: I think less of both Klein and Greenwald for the juvenile need to put each other down all cool-like. Memo to them both: the issue is more important than your posturing.

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JK: Glenn Greenwald has now piled on.
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Oh dear. You've missed the larger criticism, Joe...from Greenwald's update:

That's the modern American journalist for you: reverence for politically powerful officials and criticism only for those perceived as powerless.

The way I see it, you're quibbling over Greenwald's use of the word completely and, well, have damned yourself with your own words:

I do not believe the aggressive interrogation of sociopaths does any damage at all to our glorious legal system, or to our moral values as a society.

So, was Bush's disregard for the Third Geneva convention "his single most callous and despicable act" standing "at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency" or was it not damaging "to our moral values as a society"?
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It's that disconnect, Joe, that causes people to accuse you of bandwagon-jumping. And what in the h3ll is 'aggressive interrogation' supposed to mean, anyway?

Greenwald, he is monomaniacal on the subject of civil liberties.
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And, of course, a high degree of concern over civil liberties is a sort of fetishism, "a hangover from the Vietnam era, when the Nixon Administration wildly exceeded all bounds of legality—spying on antiwar protesters and civil rights leaders." Greenwald "doesn't take into account the strict constraints placed on the intelligence community after the Nixon debacle, or the lethally elusive nature of the current terrorist threat."
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So the part I left out at the end was:
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I'm wondering if Joe feels that Nixon shouldn't have been investigated because, ya know, there were hot and Cold wars going on at the time...Also if Joe thinks that 41-year-old Greenwald is suffering a civil liberties 'hangover' from the Vietnam Era...

Oh good, this will be fun, like with the FISA issue. At least Joe is kind of on our side right now.
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Here's the heart of my problem with JK's views on this:
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which is why he won't pursue this for a very good reason: there are much bigger things at stake
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Joe, it's harder to get bigger than the issue of breaking the law and whether or not it's punished.
It affects everything from the environment to the military (ie no-bid billion dollar contracts) to education to the markets to the borders to everyday life (ie the War on Drugs and privacy issues).
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If lawlessness cannot be rectified at the highest levels of our society, then it cannot be rectified at all.

Hi, I'm the Fourth Amendment:
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Short Version: You can't take peoples' stuff or search them/spy on them without due process of law.
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Hi, I'm the Fifth Amendment:
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Short Version: No self incrimination AND no holding people to answer for serious crimes without an indictment from a grand jury.
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Hi, I'm the Sixth Amendment:
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Short Version: You have the right to a speedy and public trial.
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Hi, I'm the Eighth Amendment:
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Short Version: No torturing people.
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I realize that the enemy combatants (and innocent people) detained in Gitmo and Bagram aren't U.S. citizens, and strictly speaking, the constitution doesn't apply to them. Of course, that ignores this:
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
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That's from the Declaration of Independence, and the phrase "all men" isn't really applicable to only U.S. citizens.

@Paul dirks --
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I am not suggesting that desires of the masses carries more weight than any other segment of society, or that we should be concerned about them to point of continuing to allow detrimental behavior to occur. But in considering their perspective as well as numerous others, we consider the possible obstacles that must be dealt with on the road to recovery. The Obama administration must deal with a whole host of critical problems and in so doing they must also manage expectations and perceptions which will not only depend on what's actually happening, but also the media's angle and focus and the past experiences and knowledge of the electorate. Based on our choice to engage issues on various sites I suspect most of can handle everything being thrown at us and discern the subtle nuances between positions, strategies and tactics. However, past history has proved that if Obama is going to succeed he is going to have to control Congress which is never easy but will be even harder if those folks in the masses begin to get antsy and are persuaded that Obama is going too far, too fast. Hence to need to manage their expectations and perceptions. I am merely suggesting that putting too much on their plate might prove counterproductive and adding criminal investigations may prove too much considering how we know the msm will never be able to handle it like adults.

If this could be shunted off to some bipartisan commission I'd be all for it. But the distraction possibilities can be seen in the ridiculous circus over Roland Burris, whose headlines obscured the swearing in of 530+ members of congress.
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Furthermore, the media is so fickle that the story will change depending on who appears to be "up." So after excoriating Rahm Immanuel for having had a conversation with Blago, and implying that Obama was tainted too, the media then decided that people were picking on a poor frail 71 year old (where were the cries of "frail" when John McCain was running) turned out in the rain. Then last night Anderson C. decided maybe is was scandalous after all that the Senate was going to seat somebody who might have purchased his senate seat, rightly pointing out that Burris saying that of course he hadn't purchased a seat because "I don't have any money" didn't exactly inspire confidence in his veracity. Whichever way the wind blows the media seems obliged to say "on the other hand..." So it wouldn't take long, I suppose, before the cable news was defending the interrogation practices of the Bush administration, and complaining that Obama was trifling with the country's future by distracting us from the important business at hand.
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Why can't an international tribunal deal with this?

Bush is one of those people, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who simply gets a free ride through life. He is above the law, that the rest of us have no way of getting around, and a million excuses will be found to justify it.

"Glenn begins with espoused principles and the relentlessy follows where the logic leads even if its a politically unpopular or undesirable result. Joe on the other hand starts with the politically desirable result and then hand-picks the principles he will espouse in order to arrive at the desired conclusion. The difference is one of style but if I chose the second path I would be very hesitant to refer to someone else as intellectually dishonest."
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With all due respect, the difference is one of principle versus, so-called, practicality. But good principle - such as official accountability - is eminently practical, it's the only way to maintain good government. And practicality without principle leads to things like torture and official lawbreaking (and blind eyes to same).
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I expect that many journalists, Joe Klein included, understand this. But they are immersed in an elite bubble where guilt, denial and rationalization are the self-preserving psychology of the day.

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Cliff: If lawlessness cannot be rectified at the highest levels of our society, then it cannot be rectified at all.
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Just about anything can be rectified as long as you have enough money and influence...If a male bus driver brought a mail-order bride from Malaysia gets caught imprisoning and torturing her, he's going away for a loooong time. If you're a President who signs an executive order that causes hundreds to be kidnapped from their homes, imprisoned, and tortured, well, you get pundits making silly suggestions that they should get a slap on the wrist or be made to empty bedpans at Walter Reed, at most.
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What Sean said, in both posts.
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Joe, holding our elected officials accountable is probably the most important thing we can do, in this country. It's what separates this country from "also rans." We are not some third-world tin-pot dictatorship. If not us, who? If not now, when?