Radio Nowhere
I agree with Kevin Drum. It’s befuddling that the weekend’s news about the Higazy decision and the FBI’s attempt to censor the details of their conduct in the case out of the judges opinion has gone largely unremarked. Meanwhile I realized today that many of the links back to my early Higazy-case blogging from Dynamist and Illuminated Donkey posts I cited below are dead, so here’s a fresh list. This was me working through the first phase of the “torture argument” in the media and blogosphere in the weeks after the September 11 atrocities. At the time we feared it was something that might happen if we weren’t vigilant. We had only hints that it was already happening, and were largely unwilling to credit them in any case. At the time I stressed the “practical” case because it seemed . . . practical.
The pieces date from the years I self-identified as “right wing,” too, which colors my thinking and my conception of the audience. There were plenty of “right-wingers” in those days pleased to be against torture because Alan Dershowitz was for it, and because it was as yet an abstract question (so far as we knew). Also, I later realized, it dovetailed with the desire to launch a war against Iraq. “Saddam’s torture state” was a common epithet for the place in hawkish blog and legacy-media circles throughout 2002 and 2003. You were supposed to hate Saddam Hussein because he tortured, and to want to stop torture in Iraq by toppling Saddam Hussein.
Later, we all had to choose whether to be against actual existing torture or to enable it in various now-familiar ways. Options included, redefine the term so that whatever we knew the US was doing fell outside the new definition; theatrically declare the whole question of “What is torture?” frightfully complicated; simply stop talking about the issue altogether; argue that torture is, in fact, awesome when we do it.
Also, er, I still wrote in the third person back then. Sorry.
The UO Higazy links:
No Comprende It’s a Riddle (early 2002) - Not about torture, but an excerpt from an early Washington Post article on Higazy’s release from custody. Just me wondering what was going on.
Wilderness of Radios (early 2002) - I think we see the early blogosphere at its worst in this post. I was almost too ashamed to link it. It’s a lot of words to say, “Hunh! Strange . . . ”
The Shadow of the Torturer (early 2002) - Yeah, title’s a bit on-the-nose. But there’s an actual argument here. (”These arguments [in favor or torture] assume that government investigators know what they are doing.”) It’s not one I saw being made then in the, um, mainstream media. Or made much now. I’ll hang my hat on this paragraph:
The right question is not, Are terrorists ordinary criminals? They question is, Are terrorist suspects terrorists? Clearly, the answer will be Yes sometimes and No some other times. Note that this is exactly congruent to the question of whether criminal suspects are criminals. Investigations and fair trials are the best ways we’ve come up with for determining acceptable answers.
Every mealy-mouthed justification for vicious captivity coming from NRO and the GOP debates wants to pretend either that the answer will never be No, or that it doesn’t matter if it is.
Clever Hans and Doctor Jeste (early 2002) - Arithmetical horses and the Doomsday Scenario. Back then I still hadn’t figured out how to think past the ticking-bomb scenario, so I took it at face value for the sake of argument. Note how smart the Donk was though, writing of the Higazy case, “it appears that coercive interrogative methods approaching torture were used to elicit some sort of confession.” No flies on him. I hope he’s doing well.
Where Are They Now Dept. (early 2002) - I overcomplicate the guilty plea of the fellow who lied about finding the radio in Higazy’s room. Reading the bookend pieces from that time is a painful reminder of just how much I too, like everyone else in the country, was spooked by the events of that time, and inclined to grasp after shadows. Near as I can tell five years later, the simple explanation was closest to the truth: one guy lied to “help” finger a guy with the wrong accent and skin tone for a massacre. In my defense, this was not long after the CIA had abetted Pakistan in flying untold numbers of ISI officers safely away from their Taliban clients in Afghanistan, and months after the US government had allowed various relatives and associates of Osama Bin Laden to depart the United States days after the massacres in New York and Washington.
And in retrospect, what should we have done with OBL’s relatives instead? Held them hostage? Tortured them?
Radio Radio (mid-2007) - A recent retrospective. Takeaway: “It’s important to note that the circumstantial evidence against Higazy was good . . . And he was innocent.”
Comment by ogged —
October 22, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
I don’t understand why you’re befuddled. Why is this so much worse than anything else? Aren’t most left-ish bloggers living in post-outrage America? Now the debate is about whether or not to have hope.
Comment by Nell —
October 22, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
in retrospect, what should we have done with OBL’s relatives instead? Held them hostage? Tortured them?
Sent teams of FBI interviewers/interrogators to their homes for extensive chats.
Or, if the government was going to indulge them in their “let’s get the fvck out of here as a family” project because of the Special Relationship, make use of having them all conveniently in one place by sending a big team of FBI interviewers make the question and answer sessions with them worthwhile instead of perfunctory.
Comment by Nell —
October 22, 2007 @ 11:23 pm
ogged: Now the debate is about whether or not to have hope.
Comment by Nell —
October 22, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
Screwed up that last comment, sorry.
ogged: Now the debate is about whether or not to have hope.
Been having that debate with myself a lot in the last six months. On one level, it seems ridiculously overdramatic not to.
On another, I can see so clearly how wrong and evil decisions and missed opportunities in the 1970s and 1980s may have made it too late now… But maybe that’s just me getting old.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 22, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
And in retrospect, what should we have done with OBL’s relatives instead? Held them hostage? Tortured them?
Well, I’m reluctant to punish anybody for the deeds of relatives, but I would like to think (hope?) that somebody at least tried to take advantage of the chance to talk to the relatives of the terrorist mastermind in the aftermath of the 9/11. If anybody would know where he is, or know somebody who knows, or at least know which bank accounts he uses, or know somebody who knows, it would be then.
If the special flights out had been part of a deal where they give info and we do a favor, that would be quite understandable. It might not be 100% fair in some cosmic sense (shouldn’t you report on a murderer because it’s the right thing to do, not just because you’re getting a favor?), but it would be understandable, practical, and harmlss in the grand scheme of things. OTOH, if the special flights out were simply a matter of helping rich people because that’s how it’s done, then it was reprehensible.
But, honestly, Jim, don’t you know that talking about Bin Laden is SOOOOO 2001? Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror, after all.
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
October 23, 2007 @ 6:22 am
The government lies. They are lying about some of the 9/11 stuff, too.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 23, 2007 @ 6:26 am
Guys, if you read the Snopes piece, the report claims that the FBI did interview about 20 of the 26 people on the “Bin Laden flight” - extensively. Maybe they’re lying, but prima facie, the did some investigation before letting these people go.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
October 23, 2007 @ 6:58 am
Despair is just what Dick Cheney wants you to have. Some days, that’s enough.
It really all depends on how we untangle ourselves from Iraq, and how the cards play out for the jihadi minority. If we have a peace dividend of some kind in the early ’10s, maybe the war will look like the huge mistake we think it is today. If, instead, we end up with misery index like conditions, and get hit again, you have to start seriously worrying about beer hall stuff.
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that for a substantial core of the Republican base, the greater enemy is and has always been Liberalism. Even given a stark choice — with Hillary or with Bin Laden on some thing — the right is going to throw in with the latter. Not explicitly, of course, but all the howling about derangement has been projection. Rightists might think this a calumny, but sometimes the shoe just fits: we already saw what they chose to do in the wake of the Africa bombings, and how they reacted to Somalia. They’ve chosen the near enemy over the far enemy before, and I can’t imagine they won’t again.
It’s not much, but then what, really, are the alternatives?
Comment by Peter Principle —
October 23, 2007 @ 9:34 am
It’s befuddling that the weekend’s news about the Higazy decision and the FBI’s attempt to censor the details of their conduct in the case out of the judges opinion has gone largely unremarked.
Don’t worry, TASS and Pravda, um, I mean the Times and the Post will get around to reporting it when they feel the time is right — say, about 12 months after the next election.
Comment by Nell —
October 23, 2007 @ 9:46 am
You’ll pardon me if I don’t join you in characterizing the FBI ’screening’ of the departing Saudis as extensive. The Bin Laden household flight was the only one where passengers were actually questioned.
It’s a sign of the depth of the “special relationship” that no one above Richard Clarke was even told that the Saudis were leaving the country.
I’d have preferred that the Saudi ambassador receive a call from the Secretary of State or the president at noon on September 11, saying that for the moment no one would be leaving the country without first having a long talk with the FBI.
I’d also have intercepted as much of their communications as humanly and technologically possible in the meantime.
One hell of a lot more useful intelligence would have been gained than by hurling Pakistani immigrants into jail in Brooklyn to be beaten to a pulp.
Comment by Nell —
October 23, 2007 @ 9:58 am
The 9/11 commission’s take on the event is not definitive, given who was on those flights.
The cooperative research account goes into a bit more detail. Let’s just say that others have been thrown into prisons and held for five years for far weaker connections to the events of September 11.
Comment by Daddy-O —
October 23, 2007 @ 11:15 am
“…I too, like everyone else in the country, was spooked by the events of that time, and inclined to grasp after shadows.”
Not me.
Don’t include everyone else in your statement. Not me. Not a lot of people.
You are to be commended for your mea culpas, Jim, but like a lot of liberals, you include too many people in the crimes of George W. Bush and his henchmen. They do it all the time; ascribing what he has done and is still doing to a royal “we”.
Bad writing. Consider that sentence copy-edited.
Comment by Katherine —
October 23, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
I understand where the hopelessness comes from, but I don’t think most liberals have earned it. It’s more “This is depressing, I’d rather think about something else”, than “God, I’ve done everything I can, it’s not working & I just can’t do it anymore.”
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 23, 2007 @ 1:43 pm
Daddy-O: It would be awesome if you would fuck yourself with your own self-righteousness. Sideways.
Comment by Mr Blifil —
October 23, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
I don’t understand. Are you saying that as early as 2002 and prior, some people had awareness of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism without the benefit of “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week?”
Doesn’t sound right.
Comment by Nell —
October 23, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
Despair is just what Dick Cheney wants you to have.
That often works for me. Thanks, Charley. ;>
This, on the other hand: If we have a peace dividend of some kind in the early ’10s
Hard to see how that’s going to happen if we still have umpty-ump thousand troops in Iraq, as HRC plans. And/or are at war with Iran, as Cheney plans…
Comment by Joe Strummer —
October 23, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
and because [torture] was as yet an abstract question (so far as we knew).
I blame the liberal media. Paraphrasing Colbert from last year at the Press Dinner: there was no torture, as far as we knew, and the press - back then - had the good manners not to tell us.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
October 23, 2007 @ 5:48 pm
Nell, I don’t think anything HRC says about the future of Iraq (post 2009) means anything at all. We’re completely at the mercy of events, and when we’re not propping up the government there, we’re going to be asked/told to leave. This is not going to be South Korea.
As noted, and as you recall from prior episodes, the Right will be baying for withdrawal from Iraq at the first sign of trouble with any HRC policy; all the better to humiliate her. It’ll be shocking to our Broders to see how quickly the Right abandons the project when it no longer validates Neo-conservatism, but that’s how it’s going to work.
Just like FISA. On Iraq, FISA, and plenty of other issues of this type, HRC will have the support of 60-70% of the Dem caucus, and none of the Rep caucus. And if HRC can’t get a conviction of KSM, because the current administration has tainted all the evidence, it’ll be the fault of HRC, Earl Warren, FDR, and the twin arch-fiends Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore.
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
October 23, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
Daddy-O: It would be awesome if you would fuck yourself with your own self-righteousness. Sideways.
TouchEE! Daddy-O is self-righteous, but he has a point. No spooked shadow grasper here neither.
Trackback by Political Animal —
October 23, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
Higazy and Torture…
HIGAZY AND TORTURE….Jim Henley, who has been blogging longer than me, and therefore dealing with the right-wing blogosphere longer than me, posts a few links today to pieces he wrote back in 2002 about the Abdallah Higazy story. But first,……
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 23, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
Dave: Daddy-O may have a point. Until he points us to a trail, we can’t verify the grounds for his own self-approbation, which still wouldn’t excuse the self-approbation as such. You, though, Dave, while you have your various virtues, are an established 9/11 Truther. By definition you’ve been grasping at shadows for 6 years now.
NOTE: This is NOT an invitation to turn this into a Truther thread.
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
October 23, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
Well, I do think Flight 93 was shot down. And I do think WTC7 was purposely demolished. However, I thought that in order to be a “Truther” you had to believe that the government had killed some people who weren’t necessarily going to die anyway.
Oh, wait, the anthrax. Yeah, I guess I qualify on that. Minor point: 5 years, not 6. I didn’t become suspicious until 2d half of 2002.
Comment by James Killus —
October 24, 2007 @ 1:53 am
In November 2001, my wife and I took a trip across the country, seeing old friends, etc. I can report that a fair number of people at the time distrusted the Bush Administration’s rhetoric and plans, even as early as that. My wife’s niece, who lived about 6 blocks from the WTC site, and who had just been allowed to move back into her apartment, saw one of Bush’s speeches on television and threw her shoe at the television set.
In-laws aside, most of my friends are in my age cohort, which is to say Baby Boomers, and I’ve come to understand that in some quarters we are considered to be part of the problem not part of the solution (to use a once fashionable and stupid phrase). But we lived through the Vietnam era, and I take a little pride in my fellows by noting that, in the summer of 2002 at my college reunion, there wasn’t a single person I spoke to (and I went to a pretty conservative engineering school) who believed a single thing that Bush and his cronies were saying. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the Vietnam thing, and yes, I’m including those of my college buddies who went into the military, some for entire careers.
But I will also note this: demainding a paper trail, documentation, etc. of any of this would be something of an effort, because another thing that we all learned pretty well was that when the greater mass of your countrymen have gone bugfuck insane, it’s a good idea to keep your head down. To borrow a phrase from a still earlier era, “premature anti-fascism” can really fuck up your life.
Folks like Barbara Lee, Paul Krugman, Richard Clarke, and the Wilsons were authentic heroes, and for their efforts, they are still attacked as “partisan extremists,” liars, traitors, or worse. Maybe those of us who only spoke in private and bided our time can be accused of being “spooked by the events of that time, and inclined to grasp after shadows,” but we were spooked by a different perception of where the real dangers lay, and I think that history has shown that it wasn’t shadows that we were afraid of. Just ask Valerie Plame Wilson.
So Daddy-O may be a self-righteous asshole, but he’s certainly right about some people not having bought into the post-9/11 ghoul-fest. Some of us turned off our televisions and refused to let ourselves be driven insane. I might engage in some version of “liberal guilt” (or maybe “survivor guilt” is a more accurate term) and occasionally wonder if I could have done more to try to halt the juggernaut, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let someone claim that I helped build the damn thing.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 24, 2007 @ 6:31 am
Which is all very nice, but if you’re taking what I wrote back then as trusting “Bush Administration rhetoric and plans,” then you either didn’t click through or didn’t read carefully. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with liberal guilt because at that time I was at my most anti-liberal.
Comment by Barry —
October 24, 2007 @ 7:54 am
” “Saddam’s torture state” was a common epithet for the place in hawkish blog and legacy-media circles throughout 2002 and 2003. You were supposed to hate Saddam Hussein because he tortured, and to want to stop torture in Iraq by toppling Saddam Hussein.”
It’s the same as ‘freedom’ and ‘mass murder’: those who support the Empire have rarely had problems whiht Our SOB’s
doing, this. We all know the exuses: it’s different there, those people only understand force, we’re actually moderating their behavior, etc.
The minute that one of Our SOB’s steps off the reservation and becomes a liability, it all reverses, and (some) of his abuses become causes of the day. Those who opposed the guy for years will be called hypocrites by those who actively supported his abuses, and who actively support the abuses of the Our SOB’s who are still in good graces.
The real situation is, of course, that the right-wingers were and always will be good with such things (occasional glitches aside, such as torturing/killing a few inconvenient individuals). Their only real b*tch is that they can’t do it here.
Comment by the talking dog —
October 24, 2007 @ 8:06 am
We’re completely at the mercy of events, and when we’re not propping up the government there, we’re going to be asked/told to leave. This is not going to be South Korea.
The good news about our surrogate colony in Iraq is that events are probably not going to stabilize enough for decades to the point where the current “government” dares allow the occupying power to leave, lest its own collaborationist members instantly fall victim to the angry mob. So while many above correctly note the unpredictability of the future, we can reasonably expect that future to include a sizeable U.S. presence (including the world’s biggest “embassy” and a dozen or so permanent bases) in Iraq.
I was in my former office across the street from the WTC on 9-11; while I didn’t lose any relatives, I did lose people I know, and given the venue of my office, I did lose my job. No one was angrier than I, for a time,about the events of 9-11. Let me just say that many in NYC have been galled at everything from creating a homeland security boondoggle based on sending us “homeland security” cash which mysteriously made its way to Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc., to 5% of our population turning out to protest the Iraq war only to have our local “paper of record” re-print the Neo-Republican mayor’s pres release that it didn’t happen, and to St. Rudy’s running for President on the blood of people he probably had some hand in getting killed by failing to heed warnings re: defective radios, and perhaps by locating the emergency response center in the target (so he could have a love-shack with a view, according to at least one account).
It seems that the craziness re: how to overreact to terror strikes is inversely proportional to the likelihood of suffering an actual terror attack.
Did I say that out loud?
Comment by Barry —
October 24, 2007 @ 8:09 am
“It’ll be shocking to our Broders to see how quickly the Right abandons the project when it no longer validates Neo-conservatism, but that’s how it’s going to work.”
I think that the best analogy to shocking Broder is shocking a very experienced worker in the, um, ‘informal client personal entertainment business’.
It’s possible, but highly unlikely, as long as one has the cash in hand. In this case, we’re talking about what the true elites in society want; they always have the cash in hand. And although Clinton II will undoubtedly suffer a limited ratcheting-back of some of imperial presidential powers, the powers-that-be, with Broder cheerleading, will eagerly restore those to the next GOP president.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
October 24, 2007 @ 10:04 am
CharleyCarp 18: I’m not 100% sure any more - I was previously convinced that the US in Iraq would end up like Israel in S. Lebanon in the 80s and 90s — slowly bleeding until forced to withdraw, leaving in place a more hostile government than we’d started with.
Now, it seems very possible that we’ll be able to follow the Syria-in-Lebanon model instead: funding all sides of a multi-part civil war; where the people hate us, but all the leaders of the major armed factions have accepted us as their paymaster.
Whether this is something worth aspiring to (and paying multiple billions of dollars a year to maintain) is left as an exercise for the reader.
Comment by James Killus —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
“Distrust of rhetoric and plans” does not translate into “not trusting” the Bush Administration; it translates into (as I thought I made plain later) thinking that they were lying at every step of the way.
And obviously I should have avoided using The Word that Clouds Men’s Minds, i.e. “liberal,” even in quotes, as you seem to have missed the point entirely.
So okay, the point: anyone who purports to speak for everybody in the damn country with phrases like, “how much I too, like everyone else in the country, was spooked by the events of that time, and inclined to grasp after shadows,” can bite me. You want to wrap your angst in 9/11, go right ahead, but have the decency to do it for your own self and not drag a lot of other people in on it. I would have thought that someone with your own self-avowed political and philosophical leanings would get that, but apparently you don’t.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 24, 2007 @ 11:03 pm
I’ve actually known Jim Killus, albeit glancingly, distantly, and slightly, for more than a couple of decades, and I’ve gotten to know Jim Henley’s views pretty well in the last six years, and I think both you gentlemen are on the same side here, and that there’s no need for taking words in less than the most charitable fashion, and then responding in kind.
Gentlemen, the cycle of violence needs to come to an end. Focus on more important tasks: it’s Islamo-Fuschia Awareness Week!