Not The Bad Idea It Might Seem

[According to Wikipedia, this is the Trinity explosion 0.016 seconds after ignition. Image credit Los Alamos National Laboratory (via Wikipedia).]

I got a chuckle out of this article by Michael Shermer in Scientific American:

There are certain characters in science who stand out for their larger-than-science characteristics: Galileo and his conflicts with Papal authorities; Albert Einstein and his political dabblings and pacifist overtures; Richard Feynman and his safecracking, storytelling antics; Stephen Hawking and his ethereal brain trapped in a frozen body. Biographies, documentaries, films, and even plays have attempted to capture the essence of these giants (see QED, for example, the play starring Alan Alda as Feynman). But to my knowledge, none have had an opera produced in their likeness.

Enter Doctor Atomic, a look at the meaning behind the making of the atomic bomb from the perspective of its paterfamilias J. Robert Oppenheimer and his disparate struggles: with nature to reveal her secrets, with his conscious to ease his guilt. He also struggles with General Leslie R. Groves, the titular military head of the Manhattan Project, and with fellow physicist and future father of the H-Bomb, Edward Teller.

Oppenheimer the Opera: A review of Doctor Atomic

That's right, someone made an opera out of a bunch of scientists and engineers building a highly explosive technological gizmo out in the desert. As daft as this idea sounds, apparently it turned out to be a good one:

If you’ve not experienced an opera in modern English, it takes some getting used to. Mundane conversations take on significance when set in a foreign language, but lose that here. The gravitas of this opera, however, is in the haunting music, the dramatic sets, and especially in the subject matter itself, for seemingly commonplace dialogue is rapidly elevated when the topic is whether uranium or plutonium will kill the most people. The libretto, in fact, was pieced together from numerous historical sources, including Edward Teller’s Memoirs, historian Ferenc Szasz’s The Day the Sun Rose Twice, Robert Norris’s Racing for the Bomb, and others. When Doctor Atomic lets us in on conversations that the Los Alamos scientists had about the possibility that the test shot might set the atmosphere on fire, and gambled on the TNT equivalency of the bomb, we are listening in on history itself.

Oppenheimer the Opera: A review of Doctor Atomic

You have to admit, it's a story with some drama all right. They were literally talking about, and betting on, end of the world stuff out there at Los Alamos. I'm glad no one offered me a bet on whether an opera about it would flop or not, though. I would have bet wrong.

Oppenheimer is one of the great personal stories of our time. He was a brilliant physicist, of course. He was troubled by the implications of the weapon he was developing, but as an ethnic Jew whose parents immigrated from Germany, he had reason to hope that the Allies would develop an A-bomb before the Nazis did. After the war was over, he refused to support further research into atomic weaponry:

After the war, Oppenheimer was appointed Chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), serving from 1947 to 1952. It was in this role that he voiced strong opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies, and his security clearance was taken away. The scientific community, with few exceptions, was deeply shocked by the decision of the AEC. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to redress these injustices by honoring Oppenheimer with the Atomic Energy Commission's prestigious Enrico Fermi Award.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967)

Oppenheimer didn't limit his intellectual pursuits to physics and nuclear engineering. He learned Sanskrit, I read long ago, simply for the sake of learning the language. It was he who quoted the Bhagavad Gita at the Trinity test:

Recalling the scene, Oppenheimer said: "A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. There floated through my mind a line from the "Bhagavad-Gita" in which Krishna is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty: "I am become death: the destroyer of worlds."

American Experience: Race For The Superbomb

He died at a relatively young age. It's hard to know whether the pressures of building the bomb, his guilt over his role in that effort, or his subsequent persecution contributed to his early death. They certainly could have. In any event, I suppose if there were an American scientist about whom an opera could be written, it would be he.

Honoring The Memory

Image credit: The Naval Aviation Museum The caption for this picture reads:

No longer able to fight the enemy with bombs and missiles, these men were instead forced to wage war on other fronts. They endured miserable living conditions and resisted sadistic torture employed against them by the North Vietnamese in attempts to gain confessions of war crimes or break their spirit.

A lifetime ago, American pilots were sent to bomb North Vietnam as part of the Vietnam War. Some were shot down and captured. They endured years of captivity under some of the most horrible conditions imaginable. Like the current residents of Guantanamo Bay, they couldn't be sure if they'd ever leave.

Over at FireDogLake, Chacounne, also known as Heather, has written this:

As some of you know, my husband, Dan, was Vietnam vet who, I believe with all my heart, was a POW who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors.

When he got back to the United States, doctors removed his toenails three times, in an attempt to irradicate the bamboo poisoning from where they had inflicted pain to try to get him to tell them the information he wanted. He never got a full night's sleep and his screams still haunt my nights. On the nights he didn't scream, sometimes he would be speaking Vietnamese, urgently pleading with someone. There was never enough food in the house to fill the psychological hole left by the food deprivation he had suffered. This became an especially large hole when he ended up on dialysis for the last two years of his life.

On June 12th, 2005, Dan had a heart attack and didn't come back, but he left me a legacy to fulfill.

When I see photographs or read news from Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, or the dark sites around the world, all I see is my Dan naked and curled in a crumpled ball on the floor of a dirt cell, bloody and bruised and broken, incoherent with hunger and exhausted with sleep deprivation, unable to tell his family or his country where he is.

I cannot let torture be the law, policy and practice of the United States without standing up as strongly as I know how, in Dan's name. It is NOT what Dan fought for! It is NOT what Dan gave his physical health for! It is NOT what Dan gave his mental health for!

A Humble Invitation: Speaking at Harvard Against Torture

It shames me to think my country has come to this, and that it continues to elect politicians who won't put a stop to it.

Heather's been out there doing something about it, though, as have many good people in this country. She'll be speaking at Harvard University on November 24, 2008. If you can be there, pop on over to her article at FireDogLake and give her a shout.

What About This Surprises You?

Joe Lieberman kept the job he wanted today. He is, once again, the completely useless chairman of the committee that oversees the largely useless Department of Homeland Security.

Chris Cilliza observes:

Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question."

The Lieberman Vote: What It Means and Why

That's it in a nutshell. We don't have the power to hurt them, so they don't care. I've made this observation for years, only to be met by some variation of "we don't want to waste our votes" or "it's too close right now". And yet, each time, as a group we only realize belatedly, and dimly, that none of it got us anything. Given the chance, the Democrats in Congress will urinate on us until their bladders are drained, and then go out for an extra large coffee.

Here's what we have to do, liberals. We have to be willing to vote strategically. Target one of these assholes, or several. Make them pay with their jobs, even if it means replacing them with Republicans. Until you prove that you can hurt them, these people will never respect you. They only respect power, and right now we haven't got any. That's why they piss on us and kiss up to the G.O.P. even though what those people have done to the country is the last things most Americans want any more of for a while.

I'm just going to keep repeating this message until you get it. I'm tired of losing, even after seemingly winning. When you decide you're tired of it, too, get back to me.

Meanwhile, I'm done with more useless pledges. When you're really willing to get rid of some of these assclowns, I'll be there. Until then, I'm sure there's something else I can be doing with my time.

Mr. President-Elect, A Word?

Image credit: Good Housekeeping, who are in no way responsible for this article.

When I wrote this open letter, I really wasn't excusing the sort of lapses I was afraid you might be capable of. What I was doing was trying to get you to do the right thing. I think maybe you didn't get that message:

It's just a fact that there are all sorts of people close to Obama who have enabled those Bush policies and who are mobilizing now and attempting to ensure that nothing meaningful occurs in these areas. It simply is noteworthy of comment and cause for concern -- though far from conclusive about what Obama will do -- that Obama's transition chief for intelligence policy, John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity. It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore that and to just adopt the attitude that we should all wait quietly with our hands politely folded for the new President to unveil his decisions before deciding that we should speak up or do anything.

The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 Haven't Gone Anywhere

[my emphasis]

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a later article, John Brennan has spent much of the last four years justifying the rendition policies of the Bush Administration. You might say he's one of the reasons we no longer call it extraordinary rendition. It's a normal way to do business now. He has also cooked the books for them, as Larry Johnson pointed out in this 2005 article from the Counterterrorism Blog:

Brennan asks the media and the American people to believe that the rise in attacks is simply the result of better counting by more people. Not true. An independent data source from RAND-MIPT shows a similar dramatic rise in attacks and deaths. This is not an artifice of methodology. Something bad is going on out there.

Two countries account for a major portion of the increased terrorist activity—the Kashmir region of India and Iraq. With respect to Kashmir it is important to note that since 1998 this area has consistently appeared in the appendix in Patterns of Global Terrorism that described significant incidents. I have used this data in briefing for foreign governments during that period to point out that not only was India being repeatedly attacked by Islamic jihadists (who were funded and trained by Pakistan), but that the people of Kashmir repeatedly suffered one of the highest death tolls of any country in the world from terrorist attacks. The sad fact is that media, and to a lesser extent the U.S. Government, tended to ignore these attacks.

Terrorism: Why The Numbers Matter

The article sounds technical and somewhat opinionated (this is probably the least opinionated excerpt of this size I could have drawn from it), but the basic point is that Brennan tried to make it seem as though the rising terrorism in the world was some sort of statistical glitch, not the trend it actually was.

Brennan has been one of your advisers for some time. He's mentioned in this article as being part of the Obama foreign policy team back in May.

There are several people on that list whose past work I could take issue with, like Anthony "Rwanda, where's that?" Lake and Susan "I hear they have nice hotels" Rice. But few of them would countenance an illegal practice that spirited other countries' citizens away to be tortured, nor would they lie to defend the record of an administration that was actually not doing a good job of fighting the thing it was saying it was fighting.

Yet, you not only hired this guy, you have now put him in charge of transitioning that intelligence community to a new administration. What on earth are you thinking?

I'll tell you what I'd be thinking if I were a foreigner observing our country's behavior over the last eight years, and then watching as you name an apologist for that behavior to fill a key position on your team. I'd be wondering what happened to the country that practically invented the idea that murder and torture weren't OK even in a war. If I were a citizen of Japan or Germany, I'd be wondering what happened to the country that held the Tokyo and Nuremberg trials, and in so doing removed many of the criminals and sadists from my governments. Mostly, though, I'd be wondering this:

Are you crazy?

We've just seen one of the ugliest periods in our history. It's a time when we said it was OK to kidnap an innocent citizen of our closest neighbor and turn him over to be tortured by another government for ten months:

Mr. Arar’s case attracted considerable attention in Canada, where critics viewed it as an example of the excesses of the campaign against terror that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. The practice of rendition has caused an outcry from human rights organizations as “outsourcing torture,” because suspects often have been taken to countries where brutal treatment of prisoners is routine.

Canadians Fault U.S. for Its Role in Torture Case

Right now, I think most Canadians assume this was just the action of an out-of-control President, not the sort of thing that they can expect from us as a matter of routine. Do you really think that will still be true if you hire the apologist for that decision as part of your administration?

It's also been a time when the government did this to its own citizens and neither you nor the rest of the Democratic Party raised so much as a whimper. How long do you think it's going to be before we're so afraid of our own government that we decide "why should I support these assholes? At least the Republicans are honest about wanting to screw up the country."

So, are we clear now? I sure hope so, because as crusty as it is, this is the better side of my personality. The other side? We don't want to go there.

Militant Atheism

Updated Nov. 14

There's been lots of discusion about "militant atheism" of late. Much of it, of course, is from the sorts of religious fanatics who want to make the world in their narrow-minded image. Others, unfortunately, have a different reason. In an interview promoting his recent book I Don't Believe In Atheists, Chris Hedges said:

In May of 2007 I went to L.A. to debate Sam Harris, and then two days later I went to San Francisco to debate Christopher Hitchens. Up until that point, I hadn't paid much attention to the work of the New Atheists. After reading what they had written and walking away from these debates, I was appalled at how what they had done for the secular left was to embrace the same kind of bigotry and chauvinism and intolerance that marks the radical Christian right. I found that in many ways they were little more than secular fundamentalists.

I Don't Believe In Atheists

I haven't read much of Sam Harris' work. I'm familiar enough with Hitchens to know that the guy is an opinionated jerk. I've read enough of Richard Dawkins, the biologist whom Hedges lumps in with these two, to know that he is not. Hedges' first mistake is simply lumping all these people together, but it's worse than that:

[Salon:] So you think that Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris are just shills for a neocon agenda?

[Hedges:] Well, Dawkins is a little different, because he's British. But looking at our own homegrown version of new atheism, yes. Hitchens and Harris do for the neocon agenda in a secular way what the religious right does in a so-called religious way.

I Don't Believe In Atheists

Dawkins isn't different because he's a scientist or because it's just his way, it's because he's British. Now who's being a bigot?

Ironically, in The God Delusion, Dawkins compared the tenor of his criticism of religion with the tenor of restaurant critics. People who find Dawkins strident need to check out some food columns.

What's worse, neither Hitchens nor Dawkins are actually trying to impose their point of view on their society. What they're trying to do is express theirs, and point out why much of what religious people believe about both their religions and themselves isn't necessarily true. To equate that with the people who insist that this is a "Christian nation", and that anyone who doesn't believe in their religion should sit down and shut up is absurd.

OK, so maybe Hedges isn't such a great spokesman for this great "middle ground" in the struggle between religious fanatics and non-believers. Over at En Tequila Es Verdad, commenter Progressive Conservative gave it a try:

'Liberal atheist blogs' ?

I wasn't aware you were so militant in your atheism that you added it to the description of your blog Dana. If so, that's unfortunate because it's such a waste of time. Why not stick to politics where you might actually be able to make some progress? If you or 'Woozle' got the impression that I care about your atheist leanings, go back and re-read my comments. I'm no defender of Christianity. I'm just someone who dislike evangelism from religious folks AND atheists.

Comment on: Break Out the Bubbly! Barack Did It!

In a way, it's odd that I'm even writing about this, because I've never been an "evangelist" for atheism. To me, it's boring to discuss things I don't believe in, or think are so preposterous that I can't think of a good reason why anyone would believe in them. Nevertheless, I find myself talking and writing about it anyway. Here's why:


[image credit McHenry County Blog]


[image credit: leisamarie]


[image credit: Journeyman at Just Passing Through]

In a country where much of the population seems to insist on telling you about their religion and why you should believe in it, discussion is inevitable. By Hedges' and PC's standards, the folks who put up these signs are "militants". To me, they're just outspoken, at least as long as they limit themselves to friendly persuasion.

Sadly, many folks don't limit themselves to friendly persuasion. There are Christians in this country who genuinely deserve the term "militant". Here's one such individual:

I think they missed the point of the outrage. Losing Labor Day as a holiday was not the issue that infuriated Americans nationwide. It was instead the catering to Muslims.

This is America, a Judeo-Christian nation. Why should any employer accommodate the religious preferences of Muslims? If these Muslims are not content with the American holidays that their employers offer, they are free to go back to whatever Muslim nation they came from. And you know what, we won’t miss them or their whining for Islamic religious rights or all their lawsuits.

Tyson Foods Reinstates Labor Day for Employees

My preference is that there are no religious holidays, but I'm reasonably sure that as long as people enjoy Christmas (and the winter solstice) as much as they do, that's not going to happen. On the other hand, I think that if Muslims are willing to exchange one of the standard holidays for one that they really want to celebrate, then their companies should try to accommodate them somehow. That doesn't seem like too much to ask. Society isn't going to break down if two percent of the population are on holiday for a day while the rest of us are working. Yet this clown takes offense at such a notion to the point where he demands that they go back "where they came from" if they don't like the way Christians are running things.

These aren't just isolated nut cases. The First Amendment Center notes:

Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation's founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the “State of the First Amendment 2007” national survey released Sept. 11 by the First Amendment Center.

'07 Survey Shows Americans' Views Mixed On Basic Freedoms

One of the things this poll demonstrates is that the majority of Americans have little or no idea what their Constitution says. The other thing it demonstrates is that the idea that the rest of us are not really full-fledged Americans is a popular one. President George H.W. Bush is on record as having said so about atheists.

Dana Hunter has a good list of reasons why we argue so vociferously at times with some of the Christians around us:

We atheists can't ignore religion and let you go on about your worship for a simple reason: your religion impacts us. It threatens us, and it often harms us. We can't live quietly in a world full of religion because religion won't let us.

Deeply devout Christians believe they have a mandate from God to tell me what I can do with my body. They believe they should be able to control my reproductive choices. Not only do they believe their morality dictates whether I can or cannot have an abortion if such becomes necessary, but they believe they have the right to deny me access to birth control. They believe they can tell me whom I can and cannot marry. They believe I must believe the way they do in matters of sexuality, and if I disagree, they believe they have the right to force my compliance. They are trying to get laws passed that will limit my access to birth control, abortion, and marriage. Religion threatens me as a woman, and it is a real and immediate threat.

Deeply devout Christians believe God has told them all they ever need to know about science. They are actively trying to introduce creationism into science class under a number of guises - Intelligent Design and "teach the controversy" are great favorites just now, and when those are defeated, they'll come up with other euphemisms. I have no children, and I graduated from school a long time ago, so you might think this isn't my battle to fight. But it is. All of modern medicine is based on the proven theory of evolution. Without a thorough understanding of evolution, students can't go on to become medical researchers who will find breakthrough cures for the diseases that will destroy my mind and body. And it's not just that. Science underpins everything in our lives: the energy that powers my appliances, the computer I'm writing on, the phone I call my mother with, and endless other examples. If Americans allow religion to water down science, we will no longer be on the cutting edge of science. Our economy and quality of life will suffer the consequences. Religion threatens me as a beneficiary of science, and it is a real and immediate threat.

Deeply devout Christians believe they know what is morally pleasing to God. They believe God tells them what music is appropriate to listen to, what books are appropriate to read, movies to watch, and themes to explore in art. They launch crusades to censor things they find morally offensive. They constantly try to craft legislation that will defeat the First Amendment in order that things offensive to them cannot be created. Religion threatens me as an artist, and it is a real and immediate threat.

Progress Report: Ooouuuucccchhhh

People who tell us that they know how we should live our lives, and can't offer more than a 2,000-plus year-old religious text as justification ought to expect hostility. Of course, just about anyone stupid enough to try probably isn't smart enough to know that, either.

It's not intolerance to tell people who think of you as a second-class citizen to shove their attitudes. It's refusing to be marginalized.

It's not bigotry to point out that the only two places the Constitution mentions religion is to say that there will be no requirement to belong to a particular religion, and that Congress can't make laws establishing a religion or limiting peoples' choices regarding religion. It's calling stupidity and ignorance for what it is.

So, if you don't like how "militant" atheists sound when we talk to you, it probably means you need to learn what you're talking about, or consider how it would feel if you were in the minority.

UPDATE: Added the longish quote from Dana Hunter, because it fits in so well here. She's listed many of the reasons we sound hostile when discussing religion.

I Love This Picture

I wish I'd found this picture on Veterans' Day.

UPDATE: I love this one, too. Watertiger has an eye for comedy.

Veterans' Day

This is the Canadian cemetery at Beny-sur-Mer. It holds some of the dead from one country in one battle of the Second World War. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

It's November 11, or 11/11, which is an easy date to remember. It was first celebrated in 1918, when the guns fell silent in Europe on what would come to be known as Armistice Day. It ended what was, at least up until that time, the worst war Western civilization had ever fought. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announced that World War I would be the "war to end all wars". If his optimism had been justified, that's what we'd still be calling this day. No doubt, we'd be sadly shaking our heads at the folly and the sad, futile loss of life in some event from long ago.

Instead, we now call the day Veteran's Day. In Canada and much of the English Commonwealth, it's now Remembrance Day, and in much of the West it has similar names. The changes of name reflect the fact that we've fought an even more destructive war since then, and many more before and after.

At his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis today, Patrick Lang quoted this bit of dark humor from a Captain Wilfred Owen, who served in the British Army in World War I:

For 14 hours yesterday, I was at work-teaching Christ to lift his cross by the numbers, and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine he thirst until after the last halt. I attended his Supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.

Veteran's Day - "Only the dead..."

Capt. Owen died a week before the Armistice. John Kerry's words before Congress during the Vietnam War are as sadly relevant to that long-gone war as they are today:

How Do You Ask a Man to be the Last Man to Die for a Mistake?

How do we ask anyone to die for a mistake, once we realize we've made one? Clearly, wars can't be gotten out of as easily as they were gotten into. That's fairly obvious - the "war to end all wars" is a classic example of that fact. Still, you have to ask yourself why, thirty years later, Kerry didn't heed his own words when it was his turn to decide whether another generation of American kids should go to war. In the end, Kerry at least tried to stop the madness. There are plenty of worthless bastards, on both sides of the aisle, who did precisely nothing to stop this thing. They acted as if it was some terrible burden to risk political repercussions to stop a foolish war.

I wish they'd take a hard look at this cemetery and tell me who is bearing the real burden.

It's a day to remember our veterans, and thank the ones who are still alive to thank. It's also a day to remember the ones who now need our help. But I'd like to ask one more thing of all Americans. Please, the next time some "leader" insists that we must go to war against some enemy who hasn't attacked us, and who seems to represent little real threat, can we ask them "Why?" As in, "Why do we need to risk the lives of our soldiers in some place we've never heard of, so they can kill people they have no argument with? Why must we believe you without you having presented a shred of real proof?" And if the answer is "We know more than you do. Trust us.", tell them "Go down to Arlington - find the biggest, tallest flagpole there, and fuck yourself with it."

That's how I'd like to see us celebrate Veterans' Day. With a little well-placed skepticism.

UPDATE: Bob Geiger adds this thought: Don't pretend to "support the troops" and then refuse to support the G.I. Bill. (h/t Eli)

My Version of The Ten Commandments

[Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter discuss the scriptures in the Stargate SG-1 episode "The First Commandment" - Image credit: Screenshot by Cujo359]

Dana Hunter is really busy these days trying to write a book that explains atheism to theists. That sounds like quite a challenge, and I wish her luck. While discussing her progress today, she referred to the Ten Commandments. She also mentioned that many Christians don't know what the commandments are, yet are willing to make us look at them in public buildings.

Since there still seem to be people who insist that the only way to morality is through their religion, I thought I'd have a little fun rewriting the Ten Commandments for a secular audience. As you may remember, I discussed the subject of how the First Commandment, "I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other gods before me" could be applied to a secular understanding of morality. Of course, four of the Ten are about religion, including the First. So we'll deal with those first, in a suitably bold font:

1. You will worship no gods. Don't get the idea you should be worshipped, either. Above all, think for yourself.

2. Worshipping idols is just as bad as having gods. If you worship some thing more than your own life or the people you care about, get some counseling.

3. Take a day off once in a while. All work and no play is not a good lifestyle. If it's always Sunday or Saturday, that's OK by me.

4. Be careful what you say. Some words can't be taken back.

And now, what I often refer to as the Bottom Six, since those are rules that it would probably be a good idea to try to live by anyway. Since no one understands what "coveting" is, and "adultery" and "thy neighbor's ass" have a slightly different meaning than they did three thousand years ago, we need a little bit of updating:

5. Don't kill people or animals unless you have to in order to survive. If you have to, keep the carnage and pain to a minimum.

6. Don't steal from them, either.

7. Don't be envious of your neighbors or friends. They have their own problems. They're just not yours. If you borrow their stuff, give it back.

8. Someone who will leave their partner for you will probably leave you, too. Do you want to break up a friendship for a quickie?

9. Honor your mother and father. Call them once in a while.

10. The truth is often harder to speak than a lie, but it's also easier to remember. People will usually trust you more if you tell the truth. So start early. Make it a habit.

Let's see if Lynn Westmoreland is willing to put these up in the Capitol Rotunda. Bet he can't remember them, either.

More On Obama And Guantanamo

Over at Folo, Lotus quoted an Associated Press article from today about how the Obama transition team is thinking of handling Guantanamo:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

Obama Wants US Trials for Gitmo Detainees

The first and second group I have no problem with. That's what I suggested a few days ago. What I didn't suggest was the third group, which strikes me as having no real reason for existing. What could possibly be so secret that it couldn't be handled by the Federal courts using Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which is designed for the purpose of vetting and handling classified information needed for trials? This act has been used to try many people where classified information was involved, including spies, White House aides, and even terrorists.

As regular Folo commenter Mary writes, that's not the problem they're trying to solve at all:

I’d say NOT having a “new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases” would be the foremost step.

Courts have handled national security information during times when we had hundreds and hundreds of nukes primed to go off at the shoe drop of a nutcase like Kruschev - they can handle the national security aspects of the guys living in caves cases. The only reasons to handle it otherwise are to engage in coverups, which [in my opinion] Obama will be likely to want to do, [because] it is certainly going to harsh his mellow to get his hands dirty with [t]he real messes.

Comment 1: Obama’s plans for the Guantánamo detainees

By the way, at the blogs I frequent, there are several bloggers or commenters who go by the handle "Mary". For me, this is the Mary, the one who writes eloquently and knowledgeably about torture and the law, as she did here, in answer to a comment by another commenter:

“Perhaps the Gitmo related issues are not as simple as some suggested?”

Depends on what “issues” you mean. The issue of what you do about the war crimes committed against all the “mistakes” (i.e., non-combatants shipped out of country in severe breaches of the Geneva Conventions) isn’t very simple at all, [especially] if you put the victims on US soil. That’s the reason the Bushies haven’t wanted to do it - despite the fact that the WH got a direct briefing by the fall of 2002 indicating that a minimum of 1/3 of detainees not only had no ties to al-Qaeda or the Taliban at all, but had never even had any ties to any of the Mujahideen groups.

”We’ve been in uncharted territory dealing with these enemy combatants in the war against terrorists”

Nope - this is actually charted territory. Charted under the decades of dealing with pirates and anarchist destructionists and saboteurs - - - and with protected persons.

...

“Obama is a constitutional scholar, so I am sure that he will get this mess straightened out in a constitutionally acceptable way.”

I’m not. Obama won’t be acting as a removed and objective constitutional scholar - he’s going to be acting as a man who is being given all kinds of power and who has all kinds of interests groups now, including the men and women who are the Executive Branch torturers and the many soldiers who were rooked into acting at Bagram, GITMO, the South Carolina brig, and elsewhere and who have been engaged in war crimes under every reasonable definition of same. There’s no way Obama, who couldn’t even stand minimally straight through the FISA telecom immunity votes, is going to give up power and alienate intelligence communities and military communities by doing the right thing. It hasn’t been in his make-up so far and I don’t believe in a scenario where backbone and integrity will spring from his forehead, fully wedded, like Athenian twins.

He was a better choice than McCain, but he never was going to be a man who did the right thing when it came to not just GITMO, but the tens of thousands of detainees in our other detention facilities. The sad new for this country is that we just don’t really have much in the way of people who will stand and do the right thing anymore, and where once they would have been admired, now the Moras and Swifts and Tagubas get sent by both political parties to sit on the back of the bus and the asinine and enablers get feted.

Comment 5: Obama’s plans for the Guantánamo detainees

As you may recall that last response echoes what I wrote in the open letter, but I couldn't have come up with that phrase about Athenian twins to save my life.

I don't make a habit of just reprinting comments like this, but until Mary starts her own blog, or starts publishing at someone else's, this is the best alternative. Head on over to Folo to read the rest. It's worth the time.

UPDATE (Nov. 11): Mary dropped by in the comments, and left a bit of horror to contemplate:

Yet [Barack Obama] more recently voted for a White House-backed law to expand eavesdropping powers for the National Security Agency. Mr. Obama said he opposed providing legal immunity to telecommunications companies that aided warrantless surveillance, but ultimately voted for the bill, which included an immunity provision.

The new president could take a similar approach to revising the rules for CIA interrogations, said one current government official familiar with the transition. Upon review, Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.

Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact

I think the headline says it best - an out of control intelligence policy is likely to stay that way, with maybe a little bit of oversight.

I'll note that this is early policy discussion, but it's also being done in the open, which means that they're trying to find out how acceptable it is. Who "they" is may also be open to question. "They" may have less power to influence policy than they'd like you to think. However, as the WSJ article I quoted says, reversals like this are certainly in character for Obama. If you don't find it acceptable that we're kidnapping people and torturing them, particularly our own citizens, then maybe you should let them know, and sign the AVAAZ petition if you haven't already.

An Interesting Online Petition

Image credit: Screenshot of SEIU online petition map by Cujo359


It's more of a map, really. Taylor Marsh explains:

Health care is a major financial issue for every family in America. It was a top priority for voters in this election. It crossed every political aisle.

SEIU has put together a map that allows you to sign on to a nation wide movement to send a message to President-elect Obama. "Health Care Now" is the slogan. It is meant to remind the incoming administration of the importance of doing something concrete on national health care.

Take a moment to sign the map and send a message. President-elect Obama needs to hear from all of us, no matter what side of the aisle you sit.

Sending A Message on Health Care

No need to restate what Taylor said just fine.

I haven't written a whole lot about health care, but affordable, universal access to health care has to be a priority and soon. We can't allow our health care system to shrink to the size where it can only support the two thirds of the country who still have adequate health insurance.

If you haven't signed the Avaaz petition on human rights, please stop by there before you leave.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign In One Picture

Watertiger has captured the essence of the 2008 election in one picture caption.