Mostly Safe For Work

Not Only Does Torture Not Work, It Also Prevents Tactics That Do

Jack Cloonan, who questioned AQ suspects as part of the bin Laden unit:

When we speak today of "breaking" a terrorist suspect, many people picture something grim—perhaps a subject curled up in a fetal position and begging for mercy. But it's not what I picture. I worked as a special agent for the FBI's Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 2002. During that time, my colleagues and I had the chance to question numerous operatives from al-Qaeda. We broke many terrorists. But we did it the right way: by being intelligent and humane.

One man we captured was Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed, an al-Qaeda operative behind the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Ali Mohamed had fully expected to be tortured once we took him in. Instead, we assured him that we wouldn't harm him, and we offered to protect his family. Within weeks, we had opened a gold mine of information about al-Qaeda's operations.

Ali Mohamed wasn't unique. We gave our word to every detainee that no harm would come to him or his family. This invariably stunned them, and they would feel more obligated to cooperate. Also, because all information led to more information, detainees were astonished to find out how much we already knew about them—their networks, their families, their histories. Some seemed relieved to reveal their secrets. When they broke, the transformations were remarkable. Their bodies would go limp. Many would weep. Most would ask to pray. These were men undergoing profound emotional and spiritual turmoil—the result of going from a belief that their destiny was to fight and kill people like us to a decision that they should cooperate with the enemy.

So, yes, it's wrong.  But it's also a profoundly fucking stupid way to get good information.     

One of the Stupidest Things I've Ever Read

Check out the quote attributed to Texas state Attorney General Greg Abbott at the end of this news item from Slate. It's appallingly stupid.

On Feb. 13, sex toy retailers in Texas rejoiced when a federal appeals court ruled—just in time for Valentine's Day—that a Texas prohibition against the sale of dildos and pocket pussies violated the 14th amendment.

According to the Texas (ahem) penal code, it is forbidden to sell or to advertise an artificial penis or vagina "primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." The statute makes an exception for instances in which the purchase meets a "medical, psychiatric, judicial, legislative, or law enforcement" need. Even so, in Reliable Consultants v. Ronnie Earle, the normally conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ban on the grounds that it violated the right of ordinary citizens "to engage in private intimate conduct in the home without government intrusion."

One of only four states banning sexual doodads (the other three are Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama), Texas is not about to take this insult lying down. Last week, state Attorney General Greg Abbott petitioned the appellate court to reconsider the matter en banc (see exerpts below and on the following three pages). Abbott wrote that, if permitted to stand, the court's decision may "invite … challenges to previously-uncontroversial criminal prohibitions" on sexual practices such as "consensual adult incest or bigamy" (Page 4).

Also, the article notes that exceptions to the old ban could be made for cases 'in which the purchase meets a "medical, psychiatric, judicial, legislative, or law enforcement" need.' I'm not sure which of those potentially urgent sex toy needs has the highest built in comedy factor. It could be a five-way tie.

-T

The Undecided Voter

That the undecided voters, those that make their minds up in the last few days who often really decide an election, are not informed or rational has been well-established in recent years.  I've seen a lot of recent links to Christopher Hayes's 2004 TNR piece on the subject - gleamed from his time as a canvasser for Kerry  - and it's worth a read. 
 

American Exceptionalism

Matthew Yglesias:

Tom Lantos, upon announcing his retirement from congress, offers up this bit of boilerplate: "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress." Jonathan Zasloff correctly notes that this isn't true: Leon Blum and Brun Kreisky survived the Holocaust and served as Prime Ministers of France and Austria respectively: "This reminds me of Joe Lieberman's self-congratulatory acceptance speech at the 2000 Democratic Convention, where he also said that his story could happen 'only in America.' That's just wrong."

There's something very strange about this particular brand of American exceptionalism that takes genuine, positive things about the United States (many opportunities for Jewish people!) and then falsely transmogrifies them into unique attributes of the United States. It's a strange tick, because it's clearly not really meant to be taken literally. At a minimum, I'm sure Lantos is aware that "Jewish refugee becomes politician" is something that could happen in Israel. And yet convention dictates that if one wants to refer to one's personal story as illustrating some good thing about the United States one must insist that only in America do these good things happen. Would it really kill us to acknowledge that good things happen elsewhere.

More of this sanity, please, on health care, social mobility, alloted vacation time and woman sunbathing topless in parks. 

Bhutto's Corruption

In between the media's mourning of Benazir Bhutto, you occasionally hear that she faced numerous charges of corruption when she was prime minister of of Pakistan.  John Burn's years-old definitive profile is here. 

It's About the Judges

Go read one of the guest posters at Ezra Klein's on the Robertson endorsement of Giuliani. 

Tamil Tigers

CNN is running a headline about Sri Lankan troops killing 30 Tamil Tigers.  I don't know much about the group other than they're a nationalist organization fighting for secession from Sri Lanka.  And that they, despite being a secular organization, pioneered suicide bombing. 

Isn't it weird that they get a mascot?  What if it was the al-Qaeda Bobcats? 

Educated Immigrants Choosing China Over America

Very interesting WaPo article about the educated and ambitious choosing China over the US.

Inequality

Over at TPM Cafe, they're discussing Daniel Brook's newish book on inequality, The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America.  I have not read the book, but check out this snippet from the author's post:

Take the legal profession: In 1972, the top corporate law firms in Manhattan paid their newly-minted lawyers $16,000, the federal government paid theirs $13,300, and Legal Aid paid $12,500. Today, the corporate firms pay their new hires four times as much as the government and non-profit sector pays theirs. As the latest figures show, there are tons of jobs for new lawyers that pay $35,000 and tons that pay $135,000 and precious few in between. The same is true of pay gaps between professions: in 1970, starting teachers in New York made just $2,000 less than those Wall Street lawyers; now they make $100,000 less. So when we talk about the polarization of the class structure we aren’t talking, as conservatives would have you believe, about college educated people pulling away from high school drop-outs or talented, hard workers being rewarded while dopey slackers fall behind. We’re talking about the corporate class—who often have the same educational credentials as many public servants and creative types—pulling away from everyone else.

A Pattern?

"I made my arguments and went down in flames. History will prove me right." -- Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush after voting against realignment and a new wild-card system during a Major League Baseball owners meeting in September 1993. Bush was the lone dissenter in a 27-1 vote.

My baseball fandom is at an all-time low, but it seems to me and this ESPN piece agrees that the new system's positives far outweigh the negatives.  History will still prove him right on Iraq, though, as he so often tells the liberal media.