Incite has a great piece on the great number of orphans created by the tsunami, and the resistance of the "culture cult" to letting these poor kids be adopted by would-be parents from other countries.

Apparently it's preferable to be a ward of of a somewhat-impoverished and dysfunctional state -- or recruited as a child-soldier into a paramilitary -- than to be raised by citizens of the Great Satan.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (7)
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Heather McDonald's piece has been out there for a week, but if you haven't read it (as I hadn't until now) it worth reading in full.

It didn’t take long for interrogators in the war on terror to realize that their part was not going according to script. Pentagon doctrine, honed over decades of cold-war planning, held that 95 percent of prisoners would break upon straightforward questioning. Interrogators in Afghanistan, and later in Cuba and Iraq, found just the opposite: virtually none of the terror detainees was giving up information—not in response to direct questioning, and not in response to army-approved psychological gambits for prisoners of war.

Debate erupted in detention centers across the globe about how to get detainees to talk. Were “stress techniques”—such as isolation or sleep deprivation to decrease a detainee’s resistance to questioning—acceptable? Before the discussion concluded, however, the photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison appeared. Though they showed the sadism of a prison out of control, they showed nothing about interrogation.

...

The need for rethinking interrogation doctrine in the war on terror will not go away, however. The Islamist enemy is unlike any the military has encountered in the past. If current wisdom on the rules of war prohibits making any distinction between a terrorist and a lawful combatant, then that orthodoxy needs to change.

...

But the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. “Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,” writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors “not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.”

Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture—a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

Even if a prisoner had not previously studied American detention policies before arriving at Kandahar, he soon figured them out. “It became very clear very early on to the detainees that the Americans were just going to have them sit there,” recalls interrogator Joe Martin (a pseudonym). “They realized: ‘The Americans will give us our Holy Book, they’ll draw lines on the floor showing us where to pray, we’ll get three meals a day with fresh fruit, do Jazzercise with the guards, . . . we can wait them out.’ ”

...

Many of the interrogators argued for a calibrated use of “stress techniques”—long interrogations that would cut into the detainees’ sleep schedules, for example, or making a prisoner kneel or stand, or aggressive questioning that would put a detainee on edge.

Joe Martin—a crack interrogator who discovered that a top al-Qaida leader, whom Pakistan claimed to have in custody, was still at large and directing the Afghani resistance—explains the psychological effect of stress: “Let’s say a detainee comes into the interrogation booth and he’s had resistance training. He knows that I’m completely handcuffed and that I can’t do anything to him. If I throw a temper tantrum, lift him onto his knees, and walk out, you can feel his uncertainty level rise dramatically. He’s been told: ‘They won’t physically touch you,’ and now you have. The point is not to beat him up but to introduce the reality into his mind that he doesn’t know where your limit is.” Grabbing someone by the top of the collar has had a more profound effect on the outcome of questioning than any actual torture could have, Martin maintains. “The guy knows: You just broke your own rules, and that’s scary. He might demand to talk to my supervisor. I’ll respond: ‘There are no supervisors here,’ and give him a maniacal smile.”

...

What emerged was a hybrid and fluid set of detention practices. As interrogators tried to overcome the prisonersÂ’ resistance, their reference point remained Geneva and other humanitarian treaties. But the interrogators pushed into the outer limits of what they thought the law allowed, undoubtedly recognizing that the prisoners in their control violated everything the pacts stood for.

The Geneva conventions embody the idea that even in as brutal an activity as war, civilized nations could obey humanitarian rules: no attacking civilians and no retaliation against enemy soldiers once they fall into your hands. Destruction would be limited as much as possible to professional soldiers on the battlefield. That rule required, unconditionally, that soldiers distinguish themselves from civilians by wearing uniforms and carrying arms openly.

Obedience to Geneva rules rests on another bedrock moral principle: reciprocity. Nations will treat an enemy’s soldiers humanely because they want and expect their adversaries to do the same. Terrorists flout every civilized norm animating the conventions. Their whole purpose is to kill noncombatants, to blend into civilian populations, and to conceal their weapons. They pay no heed whatever to the golden rule; anyone who falls into their hands will most certainly not enjoy commissary privileges and wages, per the Geneva mandates. He—or she—may even lose his head.

...

The Kandahar interrogators reached the following rule of thumb, reports Mackey: if a type of behavior toward a prisoner was no worse than the way the army treated its own members, it could not be considered torture or a violation of the conventions. Thus, questioning a detainee past his bedtime was lawful as long as his interrogator stayed up with him. If the interrogator was missing exactly the same amount of sleep as the detainee—and no tag-teaming of interrogators would be allowed, the soldiers decided—then sleep deprivation could not be deemed torture. In fact, interrogators were routinely sleep-deprived, catnapping maybe one or two hours a night, even as the detainees were getting long beauty sleeps. Likewise, if a boot-camp drill sergeant can make a recruit kneel with his arms stretched out in front without violating the Convention Against Torture, an interrogator can use that tool against a recalcitrant terror suspect.

Did the stress techniques work? Yes. “The harsher methods we used . . . the better information we got and the sooner we got it,” writes Mackey, who emphasizes that the methods never contravened the conventions or crossed over into torture.

Absolutely, without reservation, Read the Whole Thing.

More:

Even more than Afghanistan, Guantánamo dissipated any uncertainty the detainees might have had about the consequences of noncooperation. Consistent with the president’s call for humane treatment, prisoners received expert medical care, three culturally appropriate meals each day, and daily opportunities for prayer, showers, and exercise. They had mail privileges and reading materials. Their biggest annoyance was boredom, recalls one interrogator. Many prisoners disliked the move from Camp X-Ray, the first facility used at the base, to the more commodious Camp Delta, because it curtailed their opportunities for homosexual sex, says an intelligence analyst. The captives protested every perceived infringement of their rights but, as in Afghanistan, ignored any reciprocal obligation. They hurled excrement and urine at guards, used their blankets as garrotes, and created additional weapons out of anything they could get their hands on—including a sink wrenched off a wall. Guards who responded to the attacks—with pepper spray or a water hose, say—got punished and, in one case, court-martialed.

This isn't the Knightsbridge Ladies Bridge Auxilliary we're dealing with here, guys.

And More...

Gitmo personnel disagreed sharply over what tools interrogators could legally use. The FBI took the most conservative position. When a bureau agent questioning Mohamedou Ould Slahi—a Mauritanian al-Qaida operative who had recruited two of the 9/11 pilots—was getting nothing of value, an army interrogator suggested, “Why don’t you mention to him that conspiracy is a capital offense?” “That would be a violation of the Convention Against Torture,” shot back the agent—on the theory that any covert threat inflicts “severe mental pain.” Never mind that district attorneys and police detectives routinely invoke the possibility of harsh criminal penalties to get criminals to confess. Federal prosecutors in New York have even been known to remind suspects that they are more likely to keep their teeth and not end up as sex slaves by pleading to a federal offense, thus avoiding New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Using such a method against an al-Qaida jihadist, by contrast, would be branded a serious humanitarian breach.

Top military commanders often matched the FBI’s restraint, however. “It was ridiculous the things we couldn’t do,” recalls an army interrogator. “One guy said he would talk if he could see the ocean. It wasn’t approved, because it would be a change of scenery”—a privilege that discriminated in favor of a cooperating detainee, as opposed to being available to all, regardless of their behavior.

Ridiculous. "Tantamount to torture"? Give me a break.

The peaceniks/terrorist-coddlers call even the most humane of "harsh" interrogation techniques a denigration of American values.

Well, I disagree. To not employ some "harsh" techniques is stupid and suicidal, and stupidity and a longing for national suicide are not the sort of American values I wish to champion.

I recognize, however, that these "values" do have their admirers in broad swaths of the leftish-leaning public.

Related: My Pet Jawa attempts to explain, through VERY GRAPHIC PHOTOS, the difference between genuine torture (what they do) versus practices "tantamount to torture" (what we occasionally do).

I don't expect Excitable Andy to get interested. Right now he's taken a sudden and all-consuming interest in the Great Liberator.

Why? Who knows. Maybe he just really likes the Gettysburg Address.

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 AM | Comments (12)
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GNFA-- Good news from America:

U.S. industrial output grew strongly last month while producer prices fell at the sharpest rate in 1-1/2 years amid tumbling energy prices, according to reports suggesting healthy, noninflationary growth.

U.S. factories, mines and utilities boosted production by a more-than-expected 0.8 percent in December, leading to a 4.1 percent gain for all of 2004, the best annual showing in four years, a Federal Reserve (news - web sites) report showed on Friday.

Remember: worst economy since Hoover.

Separately, the Labor Department (news - web sites) said producer prices dropped 0.7 percent last month, a sharper-than-expected decline and the biggest since April 2003. Prices were also well contained when excluding volatile food and energy costs, with the core producer price index advancing a mild 0.1 percent.

...

"It looks like the economy is still quite healthy and the Fed is probably following the appropriate course," said Gary Thayer, chief economist at A.G. Edwards and Sons in St. Louis. "The economy doesn't need low interest rates."

..

The Fed's report on output at the nation's factories, mines and utilities showed shrinking economic slack.

The production ramp-up, which handily outstripped Wall Street's expectations for a 0.4 percent rise, led producers to tap 79.2 percent of their productive capacity, the most since January 2001, shortly before the economy fell into recession. Analysts had expected a figure of just 78.9 percent.

Ride, Vinny, Ride!

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (2)
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Sigh.

What I wouldn't give for a contested Republican primary.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (20)
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"If everyone would just admit that Abraham Lincoln was desperate to have himself a little man-pooter, then most of the social problems confronting homosexuals would vanish like half-price Italian ties at Barney's."

Wait a minute, wrong quote, wrong site.

Nick sends along another good Mencken quote. Not as good as mine, of course, but it'll do. Some more violent imagery, too!

If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah-jongg factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost half. — H.L. Mencken

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 PM | Comments (34)
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RatherBiased asks a good question: When, exactly, did Dan Rather learn about Bill Burkett's rather colorful past?

He first maintained his source was "unimpeachable."

RatherBiased says that the script he had prepared for his September 10 defense of the story included that word. But then, strangely, Rather changed the script, to say the story had been confirmed "by what we consider solid sources." [Emphasis added.]

Why the change? And if Rather knew at all about Bill Burkett, how could he maintain he was even a "solid" source?

Another unanswered question. Jeepers, it sure would have been nice to have a blue-ribbon independent panel checking into these things, wouldn't it have?

Related: The American Thinker speculates (a bit unclearly, alas) as to who actually made the forgeries.

The Thinker puts some emphasis on possibly erroneously-interpreted passages from an online "Bush AWOL" piece resulting in the forgeries' error as to when Bush was required to take his physical.

Which is interesting. Because as I, err, "reported" here some time ago, the forger may have stated that Staudt was exerting pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's record -- despite the fact that he had been retired for more than a year at the time -- because he trusted the Boston Globe to get Staudt's retirement date correct, which it did not.

The Globe erroneously reported he retired much later than he actually did.

Ah, the perils of being an "Internet Detective," relying only on web-searches and on-line essays when "reassembling" someone's military files.

Posted by: Ace at 12:01 PM | Comments (5)
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Madonna's fake-British accent and loopy devotion to Hebraic mysticism-- is there anything they can't do?:

AN undercover BBC reporter who infiltrated a London Kabbalah group witnessed Madonna and Guy Ritchie chanting mystic spells to cleanse Chernobyl, the site in Ukraine of the nuclear disas ter in 1986. Tony Donnelly, who used a hidden camera, claims the Kabbalah dinner turned into "a weird religious service, which started with prayer readings and chanting that culminated in everyone turning to the east, pushing the air with their hands, and crying out 'Cher-er-er-er-nobyl' at the top of their voices. They thought they were curing Chernobyl of radiation, using the power of Kabbalah to drive away the evil."

In a related story, forty devotees of Magic: The Gathering attempted a complex six-card play to erase the Madonna album Bedtime Stories from our spatio-historical timeline.

There were not, alas, successful.

But Madonna's ever bit the savvy businesswoman as she's hyped to be. She's now cadging cancer patients out of serious jack in exchange for her superfragikabbalistic services:

Donnelly, a recovering cancer patient, says he was charged $1,500 for the dinner with Madonna and her husband, some "healing water" and several Aramaic texts — the Zohar — he was unable to read. He was told that just running his hands over the text and drinking the water could cure his cancer.

The cure, alas, also did not work. He was comforted, however, by the knowledge that, while he still had cancer, it was very unlikely that Shanghai Surprise would be re-released in a "special edition" containing additional CGI stormtroopers and "digital censoring" of Madonna, replacing her in every scene with a five-foot six walkie-talkie in a corset.

(Actually, that last bit sounds like a good idea.)

But it just gets better. Because it turns out that the Holocaust all could have been avoided, had those dumb Jews simply had a couple of more Ouija boards and crystal unicorns:

He also had a session with Rabbi Eliyahu Yardeni, who told him, "Just to tell you another thing about the 6 million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. The question was that the Light was blocked. They didn't use Kabbalah." Donnelly wrote in the London Telegraph, "It sounded as though he was blaming the Holocaust on its victims . . . "

Yardeni went on to explain that the Jews could have "taken out the trash" in Germany on their own had they only been students of his own self-created mystical martial-arts style, called "Tae Kabbalah Do," also known as "Jew Fu."

Celebrities. Every time I begin to think they just can't get any stupider, they pull something like this, and completely redeem themselves!*

* Where? Should be a gimme.

A Bit More:

Kabbalah followers also include Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Demi Moore.

Nominees all for the Zelda Fitzergald Award for Emotional Stability.**

**Who? I know who, but I forget where.

The Original Telegraph Story... can be found here.

Thanks to Nathan.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (29)
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It's one thing to punt on the question of political bias-- one can understand that even had Dick Thornburgh felt he had evidence of such, he was also working in partnership with a registered Democrat, and furthermore such a charge might simply be taken as partisan, resulting in the factual content of the report being more dismissed and ignored by the Legacy Media than it alread is.

But as Jonathan V. Last explains, there's no excuse possible for the report to shamelessly wank out on the central question of the documents' falsity.

As the Panel's expert (and all other experts) have concluded:

... the documents appear to have been produced in Times New Roman typestyle. . . . Times New Roman was only available on typesetting and other non-tabletop machines until the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s. Therefore [Tytell] concluded that Times New Roman could not have been available on a typewriter in the early 1970s and the Killian documents must have been produced on a computer. [emphasis added]

Which brings us back to Joseph Newcomer. After all of his examinations, Peter Tytell had reached exactly the same conclusion as Newcomer. And, like Newcomer, Tytell's judgment to the panel could not have been more forthright. The panel reports, "Tytell concluded that the Killian documents were generated on a computer."

So how did Thornburgh and Boccardi manage to walk away from their own expert's decisive verdict? The answer is hidden in footnote 16 on page 7 of Appendix 4:

Although his reasoning seems credible and persuasive, the Panel does not know for certain whether Tytell has accounted for all alternative typestyles that might have been available on typewriters during that era.

That's very much like saying we can't be certain Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy because no one searched Rosie Greer and other members of RFK's entourage for a weapon at that fateful rally.

At whose behest was this ludicrous agnosticism on the documents' obvious falsity included in the report? Boccardi's? Or was it perhaps at the direct request of the CBS News organization, from which the Panel was ostensibly "independent"?

If the Panel still had questions about whether all possible hypothetical magical typewriters had been examined, why didn't they simply ask their expert to examine these outlandish possibilities, and provide a definitive answer?

Oh, wait, he did provide a definitive answer:

Therefore [Tytell] concluded that Times New Roman could not have been available on a typewriter in the early 1970s and the Killian documents must have been produced on a computer.

An answer ignored by the Panel in its effort to allow Dan Rather's position -- maybe they're real; who can know for sure? -- to continue standing.

Related: Roger Simon is outraged enough to accuse Thornburgh of lying.

I can't say the charge is out-of-bounds.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (2)
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This doesn't excuse the egregious journalistic sin of Armstrong Williams, of course. The poor man has basically thrown his career away, and he'll likely never work in the media again (at least not much, and never again prominently). And that's probably well-deserved, alas.

But it is always interesting to note how the legacy media is supremely interested in conservative scandals. In similar liberal scandals-- not so much:

News that radio host/columnist Armstrong Williams was on the Bush administration payroll had liberals and even a few conservatives outraged last week, with critics saying there's no way they can trust that the pro-Republican commentator's comments hadn't been bought and paid for.

So we're wondering where their outrage was last year when radio host Ed Schultz - the much celebrated "liberal Rush Limbaugh" - admitted he was on the air thanks to the generosity of the Democratic Party.

Here's the March 2, 2004 exchange between Schultz and "Today Show" interviewer Jamie Gangel - which seems to have escaped the notice of media critics everywhere.

GANGEL: It is no secret that you are on the air for the next two years because Democratic donors have put up $2 million to launch this. Can you really say what you think?

SCHULTZ: Well, I had it written in our agreement that I'm not beholden to anybody.

Oh, well, it was "written" in their "agreement." Case closed.

I'm just hearing about this now, of course. I wonder why. And I don't wonder at all why this will be the last time I hear about this.

Question: Will Oliver Willis accuse Schultz of "shucking and jiving" at the behest of "massively-funded organizations"? (See the comments for his quote, and my rebuttal.)

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (13)
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Man, I've been wanting to do a Corner parody for-ev-er. Always was on the "things to do" pile, though; never made it to the "doing it now" pile.

Wuzza Dem beats me to the punch with his own parody.

BREAKFAST [Wuzz]

Had oatmeal this morning, used milk instead of water. Makes it a little more creamy, and, I suspect, more nutritional.
Posted at 10:29 AM

RE: BREAKFAST [JFW]
Pop-Tarts for me - and don't you mean "nutritious?"
Posted at 10:32 AM

BAD MORNING [John]
Damn! I buy brand new pair of shoes with a deep, waffle-style sole, and the first time I walk out of the house with them on my feet, I step right into a huge pile of dog crap.
Posted at 10:35 AM

RE: BAD MORNING [JFW]
Hey, do you mind? We're talking about breakfast.
Posted at 10:37 AM

JUST GOT WORSE [John]
Well, turns out that *stepping* in the huge pile of dog crap wasn't the worst part. I ended up having to use my toothbrush to clean my shoe, probably have to buy a new toothbrush now.
Posted at 10:39 AM

RE: RE: BAD MORNING [John]
JFW, just read your post from 10:37 - actually this happened right *after* breakfast, so I was on topic.
Posted at 10:40 AM

RE: JUST GOT WORSE [Wuzz]
What do you mean *probably* have to buy a new toothbrush?
Posted at 10:42 AM

LAZY READERS [John]
Just got this e-mail from a reader:

What do you mean *probably* have to buy a new toothbrush?

Here's my response:

I suggest you re-read my post. If you do you'll see that I had just used that toothbrush for something pretty unsanitary.

Posted at 10:43 AM

RE: LAZY READERS [Wuzz]
John, I think he was questioning your use of the word "probably".
Posted at 10:46 AM

RE: RE: LAZY READERS [John]

Right. Sorry, my bad. Just sent this e-mail to him:

Sorry, my bad.

Posted at 10:48 AM

Good stuff. Read the whole thing.

Points subtracted for no mentions of Marmite, crunchy-cons, Star Trek, "immanentizing the Eschaton," or Cosmo the Wonder Dog.*

* Corrected: I said "immanualizing the Eschatology," whatever the hell that could mean (if anything). Thanks to my commenters for riding me hard like Vinny Falcone.

Posted by: Ace at 04:55 PM | Comments (18)
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