More Compelling Evidene Against Torture

In my post last night, I neglected to mention yet another compelling counterpoint to the effectiveness of torture: while used as a key recruiting tactic for Al-Qaeda scouts, the most successful interrogations with Al-Qaeda operatives and other insurgents came when, to the surprise of the captive, the U.S. did not torture them, as previously suspected. They cooperated and helped when we didn't torture.

Former senior military interrogator Matthew Alexander further explains:

"As a senior interrogator in Iraq, I conducted more than three hundred interrogations and monitored more than one thousand. I heard numerous foreign fighters state that the reason they came to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Our policy of torture and abuse is Al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool. These same insurgents have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of our troops in Iraq, not to mention Iraqi civilians. Torture and abuse are counterproductive in the long term and, ultimately, cost us more lives than they save."

Bob Baer on 'Real Time'

Former CIA agent Bob Baer appeared "Real Time with Bill Maher" last night. While Maher is an adequate interviewer at best, Baer succinctly explains why torture doesn't work. Also, Baer reminds us of the most perturbing info of all: the CIA destroyed 92 interrogation tapes, acts of tampering that were considered necessary because they were so overwhelmingly brutal. Even with all we know, the worst is yet to come.

The United States DOES Torture

"WE DO NOT TORTURE."
—George W. Bush, November 7 2005

In what has become an administration of corruption par excellence, an assortment of criminals and hypocrites so devoid of legitimacy and so infected with power that Nixon's rotting bone marrow blushes, we still, unbelievable as it seems, sink further into the heart of darkness as more lies are exposed and more truths, horrific as they may be, surface.

It should come as no surprise that a presidency that lied about a faulty terrorist connection, lied about the justifications of war, lied about the unwarranted spying on its own citizens, lied about the firing of U.S. attorneys, lied about the politicizing of the Justice Department, and lied about the nuclear programs of Iran (and that's just a rudimentary run-through) would lie about its torture of detainees.

These past two weeks have been a flurry of affirmations, verifications of information any American with a conscience was already certain of: the United States did torture via waterboarding and other torture methods, did know what it was doing, and did gain absolutely nothing in the process.

The difficulty in assessing the Bush legacy is choosing what event will best epitomize these eight years of fear, embarrassment, and terror, but the four torture memos released by President Obama last week (an act of transparency and political bravery unmatched in modern times), along with the Senate Armed Services Committee, may just be the symbol we were looking for, detailing in shocking specificity different torture procedures, such as "Walling," which amounted to slamming a detainee's head into a wall, exact times and procedures for detainee sleep deprivation and cold storage, and, the piece de resistance of Bush administration war crimes, waterboarding, including specific times to waterboard detainees.

Further details are even more disturbing: as expected, the signing off on torture runs as high as Vice President Dick Cheney, with Donald Rumsfeld personally approving 15 tactics for Abu Ghraib and Condoleezza Rice signing off on waterboarding in 2002. The administration, though warned by previous memorandums that waterboarding was indeed torture, approved the interrogation measure in mid-2002, prior to the apprehension of Abu Zubaida and Kalik Sheikh Mohammad (and phone calls as early as December of 2001 strongly suggest conversation of torture then). And, most damning of all, the possibility that waterboarding and other "advanced interrogation methods" were used simply to provide faulty information for an illegal invasion of Iraq, and additionally, the Yoo/Bibby memos (the four released last week) as after-the-fact documents that desperately tried to legitimize the patently illegal practices of torture.

The facts are enormous and the evidence insurmountable: the United States tortured. But even beyond what we know, there are still ambiguities, such as the 100 or so detainees who died while in U.S. custody and the 30 or more who were tortured to death.

I should make one point, though: waterboarding is torture. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the international standard on detainee treatment, says so. The Red Cross, who investigated U.S. treatment of detainees and is, per the Geneva Conventions, the official authority on what constitutes as torture, says it is torture. Bush officials, writing pre-Yoo/Bibby memos, says it is torture. Waterboarding is not "advanced interrogation," as Fox News euphemistically dubs it. It's torture. There is no debate.

And, in closing, torture does not work. A common defense of torture is the supposed "ticking time bomb" situation, that we must resort to illegal measure in the face of daunting catastrophe. Kalik Sheik Mohammad was waterboarded 183 times in one month. That's six times a day. Abu Zubaida was waterboarded a mere 83 times in one month. The widespread use of the treatment denies any such emergency usage. Furthermore, the very information derived from the torture—information Dick Cheney still claims saved American lives—was garbage. Zubaida, for example, told the CIA everything he knew—prior to being waterboarded 83 times. Then, in the face of excruciating suffering and near death (including urinary dysfunctions he still suffers from today), Zubaida said ANYTHING to stop the pain, resulting in misleads and faulty information that cost millions of dollars.

Interrogators during World War II, in legendary sessions with Nazi soldiers, learned of invaluable information regarding Axis plots and saved thousands of lives in their efforts. How did they do this? How did they wrestle such key information from their subjects? German-speaking U.S. interrogators played chess with the Nazi soldiers.

Torture is morally reprehensible. Torture is wrong. Torture does. not. work.

I am ashamed.

The Overwhelming Stoopidity of the Republican Anti-Tax Tea Party

Oh the stoopidity. Leave it to the radical right-wing fringe of the Republican party to concoct a publicity stunt so ludicrous, so contradictory, and so grounded in ignorance that it gains national media attention.

April 15th, for the majority of Americans—e.g. the sane—is Tax Day, a time where we fulfill our inconvenient-yet-essential role of citizenship by supporting our government and paying our taxes. For a the lunatic fringe of the GOP, though, the day serves as the "Anti-Tax Tea Party," a national protest allegedly taking place in 115 cities where Americans (mostly white and paranoid) gather at seaside to cast packets of tea into the water, a move reminiscent of the famed Boston Tea Party (more on that later).

Since being spearheaded by Rick Santelli—the CNBC clown whose rant on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade made Jim Cramer look like Gandhi—the event has been hyped by Fox News, particularly Glenn Beck, as a call to arms, a vicious protest of populist rage at the unfair tax-and-spend policies of President Obama! The outrage! Michelle Malkin, the idiot pit bull of movement conservatism, has written that "Revolution is brewing."

The ignorance and stoopidity of the "Anti-tax Tea Party" is so pervasive and extreme that it challenges me to know where to begin, but I'll consolidate the fatuous event into three simple points:

1. Don't know much about...the Founding Fathers!

The funniest thing about this ridiculous event is that it incorrectly assesses the very historical event it seeks to imitate. The Boston Tea Party, the famed colonial protest in which colonists, some in Native American garb, slashed and dumped the tea of the British East India Company into the Boston Harbor, was a protest against CORPORATE EXEMPTION. It was protesting a TAX HOLIDAY. In an act of severe self interest, Great Britain's Parliament passed a Tea Act that revoked the 25% tax rate that formerly applied to all East India Company tea sold in the colonies. The colonists, with the Tea Party, were protecting LOCAL BUSINESSES, the Mom & Pop shops whose businesses would be jeopardized by the tax-exempt products of the Company. The British East India Company, therefore, was the colonial equivalent of Wal-Mart.

Now, notice the insane hypocrisy here: the "Anti-Tax Tea Party," for one, is resisting supposed tax hikes (more on that in a moment), so the very essence of the protest is Topsy Turvy, but more importantly, it is funded by prominent right-wing think tanks (such as the idiotic Institute for Liberty), who are, of course, funded by right-wing, sweat-shop-utilizing corporations. An anti-corporate protest morphs into a corporate funded protest. Sweetness.

2. Don't know much about...Politics!

This obvious contradiction, though, would easily slip by the intellects of the people participating in the "Anti-Tax Tea Party," as these are namely the same groups of people who flocked to McCain/Palin rallies in October of 2008 with banners proclaiming Obama's socialism, his ties to Ché Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Muslim extremists, and other racist, inflammatory messages directly provoked by the McCain campaign. These are troubled, insecure people, puppets to the Mainstream Demented Media and willing to ignore any facts that challenge their deluded worldview.

The most prominent misconception regards taxes. The tax rates, aside from what you hear on Fox, have not risen for 16 years. The last time taxes were raised was when Bill Clinton raised the top tax to 39%. So currently, President Obama is functioning with tax rates directly organized by President George W. Bush, a man totally devoid of protest from this lunatic fringe regarding his own deficits and spending sprees. Even better, the top tax rate is still 10% LOWER than when Ronald Reagan, idiot actor and horrific president and idol to conservatives, was in charge. And what has Obama proposed to do to the top tax rate? Raise it an astonishing 4%.

Beyond taxes, though, the accusations that Obama is a socialist are childish at best. Medicare and Social Security, two of the more prominent social programs in the U.S., are not only products of past administrations, but they are overwhelmingly popular, effective programs. Furthermore, the very concept of modern socialism—the use of taxpayer funds to provide services to citizens—extends to our socialist police departments, our socialist fire departments, our socialist schools, our socialist libraries, our socialist roads, our socialist Food and Drug Administration, and so on and so forth. Clearly, we all engage in and benefit from some form of "socialism," yet the president who seeks to increase funding for these programs, to increase their effectiveness and harness a better America, is suddenly a socialist? Obama has not had a perfect 100 days (his issues with the banking crisis and Bush-era secrecy will be addressed in a future essay), but the arguments surrounding his supposed socialism is absurd on its face.

3. Don't know much about...GOP Propaganda!

This may be the most embarrassing point of all—the "Anti-Tax Tea Party" is nothing more than a propaganda campaign started by Rick Santelli and spread by GOP leaders and Fox News. It is no secret that the current incarnation of the Republican Party is in a bit of a crisis. Running on the heels of the most unpopular president in modern times and playing adversary to one of the more popular, the GOP is a party without a leader and without a message. John Boehner and Eric Cantor have both, by objective standards, been fairly horrendous party leaders, parading around the podiums with bizarre fabrications and humiliating anecdotes (Cantor, for example, missed a key Obama press conference (something he had criticized the week before) to attend...a Britney Spears concert). No coincidence, then, that Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, the heads of the Republican Party during its "Republican Revolution" in the 90s, have both implicitly backed the "Anti-Tax Tea Party."

This is not a grassroots campaign of protest. This is a carefully calculated propaganda campaign started by Rick Santelli (in a speech that was pre-determined, mind you) and seized by Fox News and Glenn Beck.

The saddest thing about this protest, though, are the groups of people suckered in to its ranks.
Ronald Reagan was labeled "The Great Communicator" for good reason: he effectively convinced scores of lower middle-to-working class Americans that despite all evidence to the contrary, his policies were making their lives better. Despite the fact that union membership was plummeting and wages becoming stagnant, despite the fact that an easing of tariff rates was beginning to transfer jobs from the U.S. to China (a process that would cripple our world-renowned manufacturing base and result in economies of fabricated wealth like today), and despite the fact, most notably, that Reagan was effectively transferring wealth from the poor to the rich by slashing taxes on the rich and easing regulations on their businesses while drastically raising income taxes on the lower class and payroll taxes—which only account for the first $90 thousand or so dollars of incomes—to account for the massive deficits his tax cuts created. Oh, and, on the advice from Alan Greenspan, Reagan also began taking money from the social security fund. How much wealth did Reagan transfer in this fashion? At least $3 trillion.

So Reagan, in a sense, was the most socialist president we ever had, though his brand of socialism directly aided the very groups of people socialism is supposed to combat. Reagan was able to convince the masses to the contrary; it seems they have still not gotten the message.

I Remember (and Don't Remember)

I remember...the experience of having genuine excitement about a profession, in my case as a four-year-old with civil engineering, or, as I called it, "a builder."

I remember...being ecstatic at the arrival of a new building book in the mail.

I don't remember...the supposed dinner routine of my sister and I at our old house in Franklin Park, Illinois. Apparently we would dance in the family room every night to Billy Joel's "52nd Street."

I don't remember...my Uncle Bud, who, this tiny anecdote will reveal, was a man of great compassion and insight: My father and his two brothers were attending the wedding of a distant cousin (probably for the food), and each one took notice of the unusually long hair the groom flaunted on the outskirts of his ill-fitting tuxedo. As the brothers strolled out of the cathedral, their Uncle Bud sneaked behind them and said, draping his arms around their shoulders, "Boys, if you ever grow your hair that long, I'll cut your balls off."

I don't remember...ever feeling economic despair while the middle class evaporated from American life.

Some Thoughts on the Essay

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself
at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will
express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image
fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two
more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is
avoidably ugly?

---George Orwell

I chuckled as I read meditation on writing because it succinctly described my own thought process as a writer, beyond the personal essay I wrote for class last week. While my convictions are clear and senses sharp, I am frequently burdened by the realization that words are nothing more than the best available option to communicate our thoughts. George Carlin summed it up best when he said:

I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have really.

We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue]. And we're stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words.

I had this experience when writing a short story/memoir about a trivia game my family plays every Thanksgiving. Playing the game for years, each one different and better than the last, and I need to rely on mere words to explain my emotions? It feels inadequate, and inevitably so.

Next, I wonder about the "image or idiom" of the finished work. I'm a self-conscious guy, and from the comment I leave on a Facebook page to which Ralph Lauren polo shirt I'll wear with what shorts, I always devote proper thought. Writing, though, is particularly important to me, as it has become not only a professional choice but a lifestyle.

Even with a Facebook comment, then, I want to be eloquent, I want to be witty, I want to say something of value that goes beyond "LOL!" This commitment to wit, or, some would say, superciliousness (and the very use of that word is yet another example of this complicated tendency), had landed me in some intellectual war zones with former peers of mine, but I have neither the time nor platform to address those memories at this time. Beyond external conflict, though, this devotion creates considerable internal conflict as well. I constantly question the effect of the piece and whether it can be communicated in a more concise manner. Can wit and bluntness go together? There is no truer dread than that of insignificance, and writing has the unfortunate tendency of welcoming such barracks with open, golden sunned arms.

I Remember Part Deux

I remember...writing the first essay for this class and wondering if the witty, self-conscious tone would instead come across as precocious.

I remember...writing that essay, and being amazed at the fact that I had never told my parents about any of the events I was writing about.

I remember...thinking, with quiet desperation, if there is any value to my essay, my major, my future profession as a journalist.

I remember...being naturally ambidextrous as a kindergartner. I would write with my dominant left hand, and upon that hand losing vigor, would switch to my right hand.

I remember...my kindergarten teacher forcing me to write with one hand. "Which hand do you write with?" she asked, her tone accusatory. "I write with both!" I exclaimed, plucky like my childhood hero, Thomas the Tank Engine. "No!" she exclaimed. "You must choose!" I chose left. That explains a lot.

I remember...having a growing hatred for the phrase "a lot" starting my sophomore year in college.

I remember...that same kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lion, and her odd, angular walking style, the result of a damaged leg from childhood polio.

I remember...my mother attending the first Parent/Teacher night for Mrs. Lion, an event where Lion demonstrated her "clapping" strategy to control the students—she would violently clap her hands, and the students stopped, instantaneously, in their spots. Lion beamed. My mom was horrified. Visions of totalitarian fascist sugar plums danced in her head.

I remember...loving my first grade teacher, Mrs. Berna, and as a fifth grader, taking part in a video we sent to her to commemorate her retirement. I began the video with, "Hi Mrs. Berna, I'm not sure if you remember me, but..." All the other students taking part mimicked this memory theme in their own addresses to the camera.

I remember...my utter obsession with Godzilla and dinosaurs as a second grader. My interest was so keen that at the first Parent/Teacher conference of that grade, the teacher, Mrs. Cain (who was a doll), specifically requested my mom to "tell Peter to write about something other than dinosaurs."

I remember...drawing a huge, four-foot-tall picture of Godzilla and giving it to Mrs. Cain as a present on the last day of school. Whenever I would meet students of Mrs. Cain's the following years as grade school student, they would always connect my name with the huge monster drawing proudly on display in the classroom.

I remember...the perfection that was the sixth grade. The inconsistent nature of the U.S. education system accomplishes, if anything, strong connections to great teachers, and my sixth grade teacher, Ms. Flaherty, was an academic dynamo. We had entire units devoted to Egypt, various Asian countries, medieval times (during which we constructed an entire castle from cardboard, labeling each individual section of the castle), astrophysics (we built rockets from two-liter pop bottles and launched them with compressed hair; the bottles housed eggs (our passengers)), and even a segment on acting where we wrote and acted our own one-scene plays. If only all levels of learning could be this riveting...

I would remember to send Dave the URL to my blog, except I already did so!

I remember...

I remember...running in the grass, the front yard of my house, wearing a tan jacket with brown lining that my mother affectionately called "the Indiana Jones" jacket. I fell, and grass stained the jacket. It burned.

I remember...Christmas eve. A cold, bitterly windy Chicago evening. A man dressed as Santa Claus entered the house, emitting faulty "Ho Ho Hos" like a coal plant emits greenhouse gases. The man was my Uncle Bob. "It's Uncle Bob! It's Uncle Bob!" I screamed with jubilation, proud of my ability to decipher the falsity of the fake Santa Claus, the impostor. I didn't look like this.

I remember...watching "The Godfather" for the first time with my father on the Fourth of July. We were sitting in our claustrophobic family room, along with my mother and brother and maybe sister (I have the odd feeling she lacked the interest to watch the film), the lights turned low, the screen on the television bright and bold, and the images of blood, loyalty, and finally, family drowning out of the picture in the brilliant and muted cinematography of Gordon Willis.

I remember...arguing with one of my more ignorant uncles on the merits of the Conflict in Iraq (I refuse to label it a war). After watching he and a fellow uncle spar on the validity of WMDs in the region, in which ignorant uncle argued against evidence suggesting WMDs were a fabrication of movement conservative imagination, I sprang into the conversation, mentioning how Iraq bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Vietnam. "No, it has no connection," the ignorant one violently exclaimed. "In Vietnam, we didn't know what we were doing." The inevitable response was that we did not know what we were doing in Iraq, but I was too stunned by the forcefulness of his attack to say anything. I often find myself speechless at the passion of men so wrong.

I remember...the funeral of my Uncle Don and Aunt Marlene. The overcast day at the graveyard. The stone, blank faces of the various family members in attendance, the crying outpourings of emotion from the others. I wanted to cry. I wanted to show emotion. In some ways, I desperately wanted to cry, to show that I cared for this man, so show that the death of him and his wife affected me. The tears did not come. After the caskets were buried, and I walked back to the car, I started crying. Uncontrollably. Strong. Unfiltered. Unexplainable.

I remember...only one conversation with Uncle Don. I had recently begun playing trumpet, and and he asked me how the experience was going. "I know someone who plays trumpet," he said, a twinkle in his eye, a glisten of his salt-and-pepper beard. "Well," I responded, "I know someone who plays trombone!" Uncle Don was a professional trombone player, alternating between gigs with a big band and an interesting tenure as a limo driver.

I remember...ripping the carpet out of the flooding basement of my Uncle Ed and Aunt Amanda. It was in this house that I had the one conversation with Uncle Don. The water rushed into the basement in a fast and furious manner, like Vin Diesel driving a Toyota Celica. My dad and I ripped carpeting out of the ground, exposing a rather hideous stone flooring the carpet had been covering. At the time, I thought it looked cool. "Hey Amanda," my dad said, "I think you should leave the carpet and use this floor." "Yeah, maybe I should," she responded. I couldn't understand their tongue-in-cheek tone.

I remember...New Years Eve at my Grandma's house, taking place in a ridiculous sideshow my sister and cousins would direct of song and dance and moments we blush at when parents tirelessly replay the events from the old dusty VHS tapes of the family camcorder. The tape shows me walking into the room, a pair of drum sticks in my hand, size 48 shorts that hung around my buttocks, and Hawaiian flowers draped around my neck. I began furiously kicking my legs in the air, imitating a dance move I recently saw in "The Mask," and I threw the flowers at the camera lens. I was trying to let the flowers launch off of my wrist like a rocket. Instead, I threw them like a mushy baseball.

I remember...my brother imitating "The Mask" when my mother's brother came to visit. He thought the brother was crazy.