US Diary: Bush and benchmarks (is that anything new?) and why torture is an election issue

The latest explosion of op-ed comment about Iraq has abated a little. But Bush soldiers on: now he’s going to give the Iraqis “benchmarks.” The Washington Post says it’s just more of the same, and the Iraqi PM says BS (now Bush’s own stooge in Iraq is getting bolshy). From The Nation, a very good piece by Jonathan Shell about what this election should be about – torture, ladies and gents – and then a little insight in how Israel does the torture thing. We begin with a funny piece by Garrison Keillor, to start you off with a smile.

1. Bush Closes the Gap Between Freedom and Terror, but there is an Upside -- by Garrison Keillor/Baltimore Sun

We are engaged in a struggle between freedom and the forces of terror, and mostly I side with freedom, such as the freedom to look at big shots and stick out your tongue and blow, but of course terror has its place too. The dude strolling down our street at night does not break into our house to see what's available because he is terrified that if he's nabbed, his girlfriend Janine will run off to Philly with her ex-boyfriend Eddie, who's been hanging around. She's the best thing in Benny's life right now. So he walks on by and leaves our stereo be.

The terror of everlasting hellfire kept me away from dances until I was 12 years old and away from smoking cigarettes until I was 15. So that's good. Dancing was briefly thrilling, and then I caught sight of myself in a mirror and I haven't gone to a dance since. Fear of ridicule is powerful too.

A lack of terror may encourage crooks to operate brazenly, knock over the candy stand, trip the nuns, hurl garbage over the balcony, and that's why you have cops. But now the federal government is extending the frontiers of terror with the Military Commissions Act, legalizing torture and suspending habeas corpus and constructing a loose web of law by which you and I could be hung by our ankles in a meat locker for as long as somebody deems necessary.

"Any person is punishable ... who knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States," the law states, and when it comes to deciding what "knowingly and intentionally" might mean, or who is the enemy, that's for a military commission to decide in secret, with or without you present. No Fifth Amendment; hearsay evidence admissible; no judicial review.

People came to America to escape this sort of justice. The midnight knock on the door, incarceration at the whim of men in shiny boots, confessions obtained with a section of hose, secret trial by Star Chamber.

Not that this is a bad thing. Who am I to say? Maybe we've been too lenient with enemies of the state. A period of stark repression might be a rich and rewarding experience for all of us. But when the Current Occupant signed the bill last week, the difference between freedom and terror did suddenly shrink somewhat. It makes you wonder: What if Dick Cheney does not wish to give up power two years from now? Maybe he has other priorities. If an enemy of the United States - a Democrat, for example - appeared to be on the verge of election, perhaps Mr. Cheney, for the good of the country, will be forced to take the threat seriously and head for an undisclosed location and invoke his war powers and shovel a few thousand traitors into camps and call up his friends at Diebold and program the election results that are best for the country - or call the whole thing off.

OK by me if it's OK by you. I don't imagine that coffee sales will be affected or that Paris Hilton will be, like, "Whoa, this is so not cool," and, like, text-message her buds to join her on a hunger strike. The greeters at Wal-Mart will still smile, and the football season will go on. They might flash a bulletin at halftime, "Terror Threat Forces Postponement of Election," and most people would be OK with that. If Mr. Cheney thinks it necessary to suspend the Constitution for a while, surely he has his reasons.

They won't have to torture me to get a good confession. I am a professional writer of fiction, and if they turn the bright lights on yours truly, beans will spill by the bushel, names will be named. Everybody who ever done me wrong, I am going to implicate them up to their dewlaps. A trial with hearsay evidence allowed and no cross-examination is tailor-made for a novelist.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)


2. Bush's Proposal of 'Benchmarks' for Iraq Sounds Familiar -- by Thomas E. Ricks/Washington Post

The text of President Bush's news conference yesterday ran to nearly 10,000 words, but what may have been more significant were the things he did not say.

The president talked repeatedly about "benchmarks" for progress in Iraq , using that word 13 times. But he did not discuss the consequences of the Iraqi government missing those targets. Such a question, he said, was "hypothetical."

That response left unclear how the benchmarks would be different from previous times when the United States has set out intentions, only to back down. For example, the original war plan envisioned the U.S. troop presence in Iraq being cut to 30,000 by the fall of 2003. Last year, some top U.S. commanders thought they would be able to significantly cut the U.S. troop level in Iraq this year -- a hope now officially abandoned. More recently, the U.S. military all but withdrew from Baghdad, only to have to have to reenter the capital as security evaporated from its streets and Iraqi forces proved unable to restore calm by themselves.

President Bush also spoke several times yesterday about his flexibility, apparently as a way of countering critics calling for a major change in his approach to Iraq. But he made it clear that he was talking about tactical adjustments, rather than the kind of sweeping strategic revision being mulled by the Iraq Study Group led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton, and also being urged by a host of members of Congress and political pundits.

More briefly, he touched upon establishing Iraqi security forces. But he did not use his old favorite phrase about U.S. troops "standing down as they stand up." He mentioned the goal of training about 325,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers, but he did not address the paradox that as that goal is neared, violence has intensified and the insurgency appears as robust as ever. Nor did he note that after U.S. forces stood down in Baghdad, they had to stand back up again. Instead, without offering much explanation, he said that "we are refining our training strategy for the Iraqi security forces."

At the same time, the president's tone has changed markedly. Gone was the talk of past Bush administration news conferences about "steady progress" in Iraq and all the good news that the media was said to be ignoring there. Instead he began yesterday's session with a straightforward and even grim account of the events of the past month in Iraq. He noted the deaths of 93 U.S. soldiers over the past 25 days. "I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq," he said. "I'm not satisfied either." So, he said, the American effort in Iraq is "constantly adjusting our tactics."

Yet under his sober mien and a newfound insistence on adaptability, he appeared to be quietly digging in his heels. "Our goals are unchanging," he emphasized in his opening remarks. "We are flexible in our methods to achieving those goals."

His bottom line was that "we'll work as fast as we can get the job done." That open-ended commitment to an unchanging goal doesn't seem different from the answer being given by Bush administration officials three years and 2,802 U.S. military deaths ago -- that the U.S. effort in Iraq would last "as long as it takes."

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member on the Armed Services Committee and a member of the intelligence committee, said Bush "has dropped the rhetoric, but the policies are the same."

Kurt Campbell, a Clinton-era Pentagon official and co-author of a new book on defense politics, interpreted the president's comments as an effort to patch up differences within the Republican Party over Iraq and to aid candidates facing close elections in two weeks. "It was meant to appeal to both the 'stay the course' crowd and the 'we need a responsible change' crowd," he said. But Campbell said he expected a major strategic revision on Iraq soon after that vote, predicting that "the political dynamics are going to change radically after the election."

Vin Weber, a lobbyist and former Republican member of Congress with ties to the White House, said he thought the president more broadly was trying to appeal to the American public as it loses faith in his Iraq policy. "Basically, the bottom has fallen out," he said. "The public is on the verge of throwing up its hands over Iraq." He agreed with Campbell that the domestic politics of the Iraq situation are going to alter in a few weeks, perhaps in unpredictable ways that will be shaped by the outcome of the midterm elections.

But former New York governor Mario M. Cuomo (D) said he thought that the president actually was laying the groundwork for disengaging from Iraq. "I think the war is virtually over," he said. By emphasizing benchmarks, Cuomo said, "what he is saying is, 'We are going to leave it to the Iraqis.' "

Under a barrage of sharp questions from reporters, pointing again and again to contradictions and problems in his stance on Iraq, President Bush clung to his most basic line of defense -- his own faith and confidence in his approach. He used the word "believe" 21 times in the course of the hour-long news conference.

"I believe that the military strategy we have is going to work, that's what I believe," he said to one reporter.


3. Iraqi Premier Denies U.S. Assertion He Agreed to Timelines
Maliki Also Criticizes Sadr City Raid

By John Ward Anderson/Washington Post

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lashed out at the United States on Wednesday, saying his popularly elected government would not bend to U.S.-imposed benchmarks and timelines and criticizing a U.S.-Iraqi military operation in a Shiite slum in Baghdad that left at least five people dead and 20 wounded.

Maliki's comments came a day after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the prime minister had agreed to timelines for accomplishing several critical goals, including developing plans to deal with militias, amend the constitution and equitably distribute Iraq's oil revenue.

"I affirm that this government represents the will of the people, and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it," Maliki said at a nationally televised news conference Wednesday. "The Americans have the right to review their policies, but we do not believe in a timetable."

With less than two weeks to go before critical midterm elections in the United States, Maliki accused U.S. officials of election-year grandstanding, saying that deadlines were not logical and were "the result of elections taking place right now that do not involve us."

In a conference call with reporters, two senior Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee focused on Maliki's statements on the Bush administration benchmarks.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member of the panel, said, "I think the page we are on differs and is rewritten day to day to try to get past the elections here."

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate who just returned from Iraq, said Maliki's comment "deliberately repudiates what the president's saying." He called it "disheartening" but said it "might be a function of politics of Iraq as much as a function of politics of the United States. But it does not appear they're even at the level of how to talk about the problem."

Maliki's comments followed a deadly early-morning military raid in Sadr City, a teeming Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad with more than 2 million residents loyal to the charismatic anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The aim of the operation was to capture the leader of a Shiite death squad, according to a U.S. military statement. It was unclear whether the target was among the casualties.

Sadr heads a large Shiite political party that is a key member of Maliki's government. He also heads a powerful militia, the Mahdi Army, that has fought several prolonged battles against American troops. U.S. officials, Sunni Arabs and independent observers say that the Mahdi Army is a driving force behind death squads that have slaughtered thousands of Sunnis and that Maliki's government has done little to halt the attacks or disarm the group.

Although a U.S. military statement on the operation did not mention the Mahdi Army or Sadr by name, the implication that the target was a member of the militia was unmistakable.

Iraqi army special forces, supported by U.S. advisers, "conducted a raid authorized by the Government of Iraq . . . to capture a top illegal armed group commander directing widespread death-squad activity throughout eastern Baghdad," the statement said. It also said Iraqi forces came under fire during the raid and "requested support from Coalition aircraft, which used precision gunfire only to eliminate the enemy threat."

At his news conference, Maliki distanced himself from the raid, saying his government would "ask for clarification about what has happened in Sadr City" and "review the issue with the multinational forces so that it will not be repeated."

Sahib al-Amiry, a top aide to Sadr, denied that any of the casualties were members of a death squad, saying they were simple people trying to scratch out a living. Speaking in Najaf, where Sadr has his headquarters, Amiry accused the United States of trying to provoke a bigger clash with Sadr's forces, but he said the cleric had ordered his followers not to rise to the bait.

Sadr "gave an order to calm down and be patient, because the occupation forces want to drag the Mahdi Army into an internal fight, especially in Baghdad," Amiry said. He said Sadr "is calling for calm, but the occupation forces are insisting on escalating the situation."

Meanwhile, the office of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. military official in Iraq, issued a statement Wednesday clarifying that he has not asked for more U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq. The statement said reports of Casey's comments at the joint news conference with Khalilzad on Tuesday "inferred" that Casey said more troops might be needed to quell violence in Iraq. "Quite frankly, that is the wrong impression," the statement said.

"There is no intent to bring more U.S. troops into Iraq at this time," the statement said. "The General was merely saying, as he has said consistently since taking command of the Multi-National Force Iraq, that all options are on the table. He will ask for what is needed. He has made no such request to date."

In his remarks Tuesday, Casey said he did not want to go into specifics about how better security and services would be brought to Baghdad, adding: "Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe. And as I've said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis."

Casey elaborated later, saying that if he needed more troops, he could draw them from Iraqi forces, U.S. forces already in Iraq or U.S. forces outside the theater.

Despite Maliki's tough reaction to suggestions that his government would bow to benchmarks and timelines to rein in militias, the prime minister reiterated at his news conference Wednesday, for the second time in as many days, the government's intention to crack down on illegal armed groups.

"The state is the only one that has the right to carry weapons," he said. "We will deal with anybody who is outside the law. Everyone now realizes that the existence of armed groups and militias harms the stability and unity of the state."

He also appealed to Iraq's neighbors to stop meddling in his country's affairs, and he blamed foreign fighters and supporters of ousted president Saddam Hussein for fomenting the current violence.

"I would like to state here that the root of the battle we are fighting in Iraq and the root of the bloody cycle that we are undergoing is the presence of terror organizations that have arrived in the country," Maliki said.

Special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf and staff writer Walter Pincus in Washington contributed to this report.


4. The Torture Election -- by Jonathan Schell/The Nation

The Congressional campaign of 2006 slouches toward election day through a grotesque landscape of torture and excuses for torture, scabrous messages from a Congressman to young boys, a Congressional cover-up of the same, murder and countermurder every day in Iraq (a heart-stopping 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion, according to a Johns Hopkins study), and nuclear fallout from North Korea (of the political if not the literal kind).

The stakes, as President Bush likes to say--and on this point he is correct--could scarcely be higher. But they include one stake he never mentions: the future of constitutional government in the United States, which his presidency and his party have put in serious jeopardy. The old (lower case) republican system of checks and balances and popular liberties, you might say, is in danger of replacement by a new (upper case) Republican system of arbitrary one-party rule organized around an all-powerful presidency. That many-sided danger, of course, is the subject of this series of articles. It is simply impossible to know in advance when, in a great constitutional crisis, the decisive turning point--the irrevocable capsizing--might come. We are left wondering whether we are witnessing just one more swing of the familiar old American political "pendulum," bound by its own weight to swing back in the opposite direction, or whether this time the pendulum is about to fly off its hinge and land us with a crash in territory that we have never visited before. There are strong arguments on both sides of the question. Yet there can be little doubt that the election on November 7 will be an event of the first importance in the story. If, by handing one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats--something that current polls say is likely--the public breaks the Republican Party's current monopoly on government power, an important beachhead of resistance will have been gained. But if the public assents to the status quo--confirming and deepening the ratification of Republican one-party rule already conferred in 2002 and 2004 (we cannot count the election of 2000, since Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote that year), it will be hard to see where the path away from the precipice lies.

As the decision has neared, every important institution of the republican system--the Supreme Court, the presidency, the Congress, the press--has been swept into the crisis. Also critical is the President's bid to achieve global military dominance by the United States, presented to the public as a kind of colossal footnote to the war on terror. The interplay, enacted on the electoral stage, between the attempt at dominance abroad and one-party rule at home is probably the most important specific mechanism of the crisis. Its evolution so far has had many surprising twists, turns, sudden spurts forward and reversals; and some recent events, though each perhaps familiar in itself, reveal a striking new pattern. Of special note is a remarkable yearlong, step-by-step process of trial and error in which the Administration, far from concealing its abuses of power, including the torture of prisoners, wound up giving them top billing in its electoral strategy.

A Political Problem

For some time, the Republican Party has been aware that it has a political problem. All year, Bush has gotten unfavorable marks in the opinion polls on every issue but one--dealing with the terrorist threat. (In the most recent polls, even this measure has turned negative.) On everything else--for example, the state of the economy, healthcare, the environment, even "trust"--a majority or plurality of the public has consistently rated the Democrats higher. In such a situation the standard counsel of today's political technicians, whose unalloyed cynicism few scarcely bother even to notice anymore, is to attempt to "elevate" the single issue favorable to one's party at the expense of the other issues, thus "framing the election," or "controlling the agenda," as it is variously put. The aim is not to persuade the public that your party is right on any particular issue but to choose among many issues the one on which the election will turn. The technique is available mainly to the party in charge of the White House, possessor of a PR megaphone that all but drowns out opposition voices, leaving them to sputter in impotence or waste their energies battling on tilted rhetorical battlefields of the Administration's choosing.

As early as January White House chief strategist Karl Rove issued the template for the campaign to come in a speech to the Republican National Committee. "The United States," he said, "faces a ruthless enemy--and we need a Commander in Chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment.... Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats." (He should have said "fortunately," for he planned to use his accusation--amplified and distorted--to renew the Republicans' lease on power in the fall elections.) As evidence of the President's successes, he cited the Iraq War. He stated, "This past year, we have seen three successful elections in Iraq. The Iraqi Security Forces are increasing in size and capability. Iraq's economy is growing.... In the words of the Commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq: '2005 has been a historic year in Iraq, and it marks the rebirth of an ancient nation.'" He added, "To retreat before victory has been won would be a reckless act--and this President will not allow it." And the Democrats? "We now hear a loud chorus of Democrats who want us to cut and run in Iraq." It was not the last time we would hear this expression.

The tactic was hardly new. As Rove noted in his speech, it had led to success in 2002 and 2004. But a new problem arose and grew more acute during the year. The public turned, slowly but decisively, against the Iraq War. In January, when Rove spoke, polls showed on average that some 50 percent thought the war was a "mistake." By midsummer the number was up to 54. The words of the Commander of the "Multinational" Corps in Iraq had not been persuasive to the American electorate. Civil war was breaking out in the country, and the "rebirth of an ancient nation" was drowning in blood. (In the most recent round of polls, approval of the war has sunk to 40 percent.) Nevertheless, as the campaign season began, the public's support for Bush's handling of terror generally was still at 55 percent. This was the political gold that had to be refined from the slag heaps of low poll numbers on other issues.

Fighting the Caliphate

Clearly, a tactical if not a strategic shift in the election plan was needed. The political riddle that now needed an answer was how to exploit the war on terror when its alleged main front, the war in Iraq, was rejected by the public as a mistake.

A first answer to the riddle was found: Define the general, global war on terror so sweepingly that the specific war in Iraq dwindled to just one front on the epic battlefield. Around Labor Day the Administration rolled out its new political line.

The centerpiece of the campaign was a series of speeches by Bush. Billed as stock-taking on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, they were in fact campaign speeches. The most eye-popping one was given to the Military Officers Association September 5, the day after Labor Day, the traditional beginning of election campaigns. Too strange to be captured in soundbites (although many of these, too, were supplied and recycled in the media), much of the substance of the speech curiously eluded coverage. For one thing, Bush couldn't stop citing Osama bin Laden, devoting four paragraphs to direct quotations from him and another dozen to paraphrases and citations of his words. The result for listeners was a queer impression that one had stumbled into an Al Qaeda videotape statement that somehow was being read out by the President. One almost expected to see Ayman Al Zawahiri sitting cross-legged beside him. (And, in fact, a recently released GOP ad actually does show bin Laden making his threats.)

In effect, Bush took Osama's evaluation of his own powers at face value. In his words, "America and our coalition partners have made our choice. We're taking the words of the enemy seriously." Bin Laden was aiming, Bush said in his own voice, at a "radical empire," a "totalitarian nightmare." Then, quoting bin Laden, he intoned, "'The whole world is an open field for us.'" If the United States didn't stop them, the President said, again speaking in his own, concurring voice, Sunni extremists would "remake the entire Muslim world in their radical image." They would do it in four stages. First, they would "expel the Americans from Iraq"; second, "establish an Islamic authority...and support it until it achieves the level of caliphate"; third, "extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq"; and, fourth, initiate "the clash with Israel." And that was not all: "This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia."

But the Shiites were busy, too, in the President's portrait. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, made a cameo appearance with an anti-American speech, also amply quoted by Bush. Iran and its nuclear program were brought into the ranks of America's Shiite enemies by this route.

But could Al Qaeda and/or Hezbollah actually accomplish all--or even any--of this? There are a multitude of evils that might befall Iraq if American troops withdraw (and an equal or greater number if they stay), but no reputable Middle East scholar thinks the conquest of the country by Al Qaeda is one of them. Experts assess the current fighting strength of Al Qaeda at several thousand at most. The serious contenders for power in non-Kurdish Iraq are the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority. As for an Al Qaeda-led totalitarian caliphate stretching from Baghdad to Jakarta, the idea was so outlandish that for days after the speech it went almost undiscussed, pro or con. What is more, the Shiites and the Sunnis, blurred into one menace by the President, are historic rivals and, in Iraq right now, mortal enemies (with the United States weirdly fighting on the Shiite side). Would a globe-spanning Sunni "caliphate" have the bomb? Or would it be the rival, Shiite, Iranian empire? Or maybe both?

Bush supplied no factual material for answering these questions. Instead, he summoned the ghosts of Hitler and Lenin back onto the historical stage. Hadn't the world "ignored Hitler's words" and wound up with "millions in the gas chambers" and a "world aflame"? And hadn't the world overlooked the pronouncements of Lenin in Zurich, and let him "establish an empire" that "killed tens of millions and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war"? So it would be with Osama, who now implicitly was menacing the world not only with a multinational totalitarian empire, genocide and world war but also with a thermonuclear holocaust.

With these stakes on the table, who would bother to take notice of the deaths of a few thousand American soldiers or even some few hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in Iraq? Shortly, indeed, in a phrase that summed up the new strategy, Bush described that war as "just a comma" in history's grand sweep.

Such was the fare that the Bush Administration was offering as the election season began in September. The strategy had a historical pedigree that certainly was much on the minds of both parties. In 1972 Senator George McGovern had run against Richard Nixon on an anti-Vietnam War platform. At that time, too, a constitutional crisis was brewing--the one that turned into Watergate and Nixon's resignation of the presidency. The public agreed with McGovern about the war, yet returned Nixon to office in a landslide. It seemed that even as voters understood that the war at hand was a disaster, they didn't want to apply any lessons from the war to foreign policy as a whole. And so McGovern was successfully labeled "weak" and "soft"--a stain that the Democratic Party has tried to rub off for the past thirty-four years and still has not adequately dealt with. Indeed, calling Democrats weak and soft on this, that or the other thing became the stock in trade of Republicans for this entire period, including, of course, the 2002 and 2004 elections, and arguably was the chief reason for their successes.

Searching for a Rallying Point

Still, the unpopularity of the war in Iraq had left a gap in the formula that needed to be filled. For electoral purposes, the President's "caliphate" speech (he returned to the bizarre theme a few times in later statements, then dropped it) amounted to a framework without a content, a kind of splendid platter with no food on it. ("Stop the caliphate!" would make a bewildering bumper sticker.) Some specific rallying point for the campaign was needed, some concrete proposal related to the war on terror, but not to Iraq, on which Republicans would vote yea, the Democrats nay and the voters would side with the Republicans. Two candidates were found. One was the disclosure by the New York Times of the warrantless wiretapping of calls between Americans and foreigners, a program Bush had ordered in secret. This was in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by Congress in 1978, which set up a system requiring warrants for all such taps. Before the order's disclosure, Bush had flatly lied to the public about its existence. In April 2004 he had said, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires--a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." But when his new program was revealed and he was caught out in his lie, Bush, instead of expressing contrition, went on the offensive, asserting that it was not his act but the Times 's decision to reveal it that was "shameful" and announcing that he had not only ordered the warrantless wiretapping program but renewed the order some thirty times. The Administration's political calculation was that any public concern about his lying and secret lawbreaking would be trumped by its fear of terrorism. Karl Rove duly included a defense of the warrantless wiretapping in his election-year blueprint in January.

A pattern had been established. Actions taken in pursuit of the war on terror but in violation of the law would be exploited for political advantage.

The second and more significant candidate concerned the handling of detainees, including their abuse and torture. In the unfolding constitutional struggle, the Supreme Court, though containing a majority of Republican-appointed Justices, had struck out on an independent course in a series of decisions. In the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld , the Court ruled that the President had no right to designate someone an "enemy combatant" on his own authority but must accept the participation of courts in the matter. It was this decision that produced Sandra Day O'Connor's memorable declaration that "a state of war is not a blank check for the President." In Rasul v. Bush , the Court ruled that detainees at Guantánamo must be granted habeas corpus rights. Finally, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , the most important and sweeping of the decisions, the Court ruled that military tribunals that Bush had set up on his own, self-granted authority were unconstitutional. In arriving at this decision, the Court set forth a wholesale rejection of Bush's aggrandizement of his own powers. The Bush order had placed the detainees outside any existing framework of law, domestic or international. Now the Court ruled that he had no authority to set up the tribunals independent of Congress--thus restoring a traditional check on executive power. Second, it declared that, contrary to Administration claims, the rules for treatment of detainees contained in the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees in the war on terror. In other words, international law applied. Third, it ruled that "the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction," including the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which forbids torture as well as "cruel and unusual punishments." So domestic law applied too. It was by now well-known that in a program ordered by Bush, the CIA had used waterboarding and other tortures and abuses, all of which, though not mentioned specifically by the Court, now had presumably been forbidden by its decision.

When the Hamdan decision came down, many liberal hats were thrown in the air. But where liberals saw judicial rout, the White House again saw political opportunity. (Others, including David Brooks of the New York Times , agreed that the abuse issue could be used by the Republicans to gain advantage.) Now an extraordinary chapter in American politics began to unfold. According to the Supreme Court, the President had committed grossly unconstitutional acts. If anyone cared to notice, he had almost certainly committed impeachable offenses as well.

Constitutional rulings, not impeachments, are the business of the Supreme Court, but in the wake of its rulings, it was clear that the case that the President, even if judged by the strictest standards, has committed impeachable offenses was greatly strengthened. Articles of impeachment were drawn up against President Richard Nixon for illegal wiretapping and for lying to the public. Ordering torture and other abuses in secret, with self-given authority, would appear to fall even more clearly into the category of impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors." The legality of a war based on false evidence of danger, though not addressed by the Court, must be considered another prime candidate. But impeachment is a political process par excellence, and the fact is that a will to impeach President Bush, though increasing among the public, is still very weak in Congress, where impeachment must take place. Certainly one of the prime reasons for this is that the less drastic remedy for abuses, an election, is at hand. And one of the peculiarities of the present moment is that abuses for which impeachment of the President is the logical response are now to be faced by the oblique method of an election of members of Congress.

Yet once again, Bush, rather than expressing regret, or even defending himself, went on the attack. In obedience to the strategy of drawing a distinction between Republicans and Democrats on a non-Iraq issue relating to terrorism, he sought to make just these abuses, including the practice of torture, the core of his party's appeal in the Congressional election. If successful, it would be as if when President Nixon had been accused of illegal wiretapping, lying and obstruction of justice, he had, instead of being subjected to articles of impeachment and thrown out of office, beaten the charge by muscling Congress into legislative complicity with his high crimes and then gone on to lead his party to victory in the next Congressional elections. (In actuality, of course, the Democrats won in a landslide in 1974.)

Torture as Politics

Bush placed the detainee issue, with its de facto defense of torture, at the center of his attack. The White House hastened to send a bill to Congress before its adjournment so that the necessary distinction between the parties' votes could be dramatized in the campaign. In a press conference, the President pinpointed the heart of the issue. Whatever Congress did, it must protect "the program." The program was the CIA program he had ordered in which forms of torture, such as waterboarding, had been practiced. ("Unfortunately," he said, "the recent Supreme Court decision put the future of this program in question. That's another reason I went to Congress. We need this legislation to save it.")

If anyone doubted that Bush was standing up for the practice of torture (though of course without embracing the word "torture"), those doubts should have been put to rest by the following infamous exchange between him and NBC journalist Matt Lauer.

Lauer : But it's been reported that with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, he was what they call waterboarded.
Bush : Um, I'm not going to talk about techniques that we use on people. One reason why is because we don't want the enemy to adjust. The American people need to know we are using techniques within the law to protect 'em.

The President of the United States, given a chance to repudiate the practice of a form of torture, refused to comment. Apparently, the need to keep suspects confused regarding the degradations that awaited them was more important than the American people's right to know what outrages were being committed in their name.

But were the White House political strategists right? Would de facto advocacy of torture be an election-year winner? A debate followed. A phalanx of retired military leaders came out in favor of continued observance of the Geneva Conventions and against the abuses. So did Colin Powell. Unexpectedly, a trio of gallant-seeming Republican senators--Lindsey Graham, John Warner and John McCain--put up a fight against the White House. That resistance temporarily spoiled the political strategy, for a wedge between Republicans and Democrats had been wanted, not a wedge between two Republican camps. But as all the world knows, the trio folded, and the bills that passed in Congress, with the support of a sizable minority of Democrats in both houses (apparently fearful that Rove's electoral strategy would succeed), gave the White House almost all it wanted. Habeas corpus was denied to detainees; no appeal by prisoners to federal courts would be allowed. (Senator Arlen Specter said the denial of habeas corpus set back the rule of law "900 years," to the time before the signing of the Magna Carta. Then he voted for the bill.) No citation of the Geneva Conventions as a defense against abuses would be permitted. Violations of the law committed by officials, including the President, would be forgiven retroactively.

No sooner had this torture-baited electoral trap been set by the Congressional vote than it was sprung. The Republican Party stood up as one to accuse the Democrats of being soft on terrorists. Speaker of the House Denny Hastert charged that the Democrats were "in favor of more rights for terrorists," whom they wanted "coddled." (What the Democrats who voted for the bill were really soft on, really coddling, was the Bush Administration.) Republican House majority leader John Boehner found it "outrageous" that the Democrats "continue to oppose giving President Bush the tools he needs to protect our country." Soon Bush joined the chorus, charging that "five years after 9/11, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing." Then he once again sounded the familiar refrain that the Democrats were the "party of cut and run."

Acampaign fought out on this ground would at least have had the virtue of revolving around the questions that are actually the most important this year. For the torture question really does, in addition to its immense intrinsic importance, roll into one package many or most of the key features of the crisis of the Republic. There is the establishment of a globe-spanning system of secret offshore concentration camps, including those in "the program," serviced by CIA Gulfstream jets ferrying sedated, hogtied abductees from one place to another--say, from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to Guantánamo, or, as in one case, from Stockholm to Cairo. There was also the concentration of power in the executive, already mentioned. There was the abdication by Congress of its checking and balancing in obedience to Republican Party fiat, leaving the executive to do what it wanted unhampered or, when Congress was called on to act by the Supreme Court, passing compliant legislation. There was the many-sided assault on the rule of law, domestic and international. There was the assault on basic rights and the separation of powers in the name of the war on terror. There was the brutalization and the flouting of ordinary human decency by the highest officials, exemplified by the torture itself--and, to give just one other example, by the President's comments on the Geneva Conventions' prohibition on "outrages upon personal dignity." "It's very vague," he said in a mocking tone. "What does that mean, 'outrages upon human [ sic ] dignity'?"

In the form of the Congressional detainee bill, the crisis of the Republic thus did in fact move, just it should have, to the center of the election of 2006. But the opposition, still cowed by Rove's strategy, had scarcely dared to raise the issue. The malefactors had done so.

As it happened, however, at just the moment that this crucial debate was about to be joined (or might have been joined if the Democrats had been ready to take a stand), the media kaleidoscope twirled, and an item that Rove never wanted to see anywhere near the "agenda" flooded the media. This of course was the story of Congressman Mark Foley's salacious messages to House pages and the House Republican leadership's history of failure to stop the abuse. And then the kaleidoscope twirled again, and in a replacement of the trivial with the apocalyptic, North Korea's atomic test eclipsed Foley's follies. Everyone started saying that the President's voice had grown inaudible. For the time being, events had jostled the big megaphone from his hands.

By now, what is uppermost in the minds of the voters--as distinct from the news media--or what will be uppermost by election day, is hard to say. But let the record show that as the election season began, the leaders of the Republican Party, in charge of both the presidency and Congress, were trying to turn the election into a referendum on torture, which they favored. And let voters remember that record on November 7, when by pulling the right lever in the voting booth they can throw this party out of office.

Jonathan Schell, The Nation's peace and disarmament correspondent, is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (Metropolitan) and A Hole in the World , a compilation of his "Letter From Ground Zero" columns, which has just been published by Nation Books.)


5. Israel's experience with harsh questioning may provide guidance -- by Dion Nissenbaum/McClatchy Newspapers

JERUSALEM - Long before the Bush administration launched its war on terrorism, opened secret detention centers or debated the wisdom of harsh interrogation techniques, Israel wrestled with similar questions about what it could do to protect itself.

As President Bush prepares to decide what interrogation techniques the CIA can use to question suspects, Israel might serve as a road map that exposes potential pitfalls along the way.

Since Israel's Supreme Court curbed the use of extreme techniques in 1999, human rights studies suggest that interrogators are relying more on psychological tricks, informants and electronic surveillance to solicit information.

An unpublished survey of 600 Palestinian prisoners by the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture, based in Ramallah, West Bank, found a significant decrease in the use of some controversial interrogation techniques.

But some human rights groups complain that harsh interrogation still exists, and others worry that the reliance on psychological techniques may do more long-term damage than physical coercion.

Mahmoud Sehwail, the director of the Palestinian torture-treatment center, said Israel's newest methods had led to an increase in the number of detainees with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"They concentrate on psychological torture because it doesn't leave physical marks, and the harm is more severe and more long-lasting than the physical," he said. "What is the aim of torture? It's not to kill his body, it's to kill his spirit and kill his soul."

Mohammed Barghouthi - the labor minister for the Palestinian Authority, which is led by the militant group Hamas - was held and questioned for 48 days this summer before being released without charge. He said he was shackled to a chair in a painful position for hours at a time. But more painful, he said, were the threats against his family, the screams of interrogators and the humiliation of other Palestinian lawmakers that he was forced to witness.

"I am able to forget the physical torture, but not the psychological torture," Barghouthi said in an interview at his West Bank home. "It is engraved in my memory. I could take the treatment if I had done something wrong, but when the arrest is political, it is hard to take."

Israel's intelligence service declined to comment on specific cases and would say only that all of its interrogations are legal. It wouldn't address whether harsh tactics were effective in producing useful intelligence, a key dispute among U.S. officials, many of whom argue that information obtained from such questioning is unreliable.

Bush must prepare an executive order that will outline what methods the CIA can use under a law signed last week. Sponsors of the bill contend that their measure will prevent the use of the most contentious methods, such as "water-boarding," which makes suspects feel as if they're being drowned. But the law gives the president broad discretion to decide what tactics to approve, and Israel's experience could provide guidance.

Israel's modern debate over torture began after two Palestinians died in Israeli custody in 1984. An Israeli intelligence agent beat the two to death after they'd hijacked a bus in the Gaza Strip.

The head of Israeli's Shin Bet intelligence service and 10 of his agents tied to the scandal received a presidential pardon, and a state review concluded that interrogators had the right to use "moderate psychological and physical force."

When Palestinians rebelled during what's known as the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987 to 1993, Israeli interrogators used a variety of rough techniques on many of the 23,000 detainees, according to B'Tselem, an Israeli human-rights group. Interrogators violently shook suspects, causing brain damage sometimes and at least one death. They also forced suspects to lie backward over a chair in a painful position known as the "banana."

Human rights groups challenged the methods, prompting the 1999 Israeli Supreme Court decision that curbed the use of shaking and other more extreme tactics. But the ruling allowed interrogators to argue retroactively that they'd needed to use tough measures on so-called "ticking time bomb" suspects with crucial information about imminent attacks.

When the second Palestinian uprising broke out in 2000, intelligence officials found ways to work around the court decision. In the first three years after the ruling, they asked for permission to use tougher interrogation techniques at least 90 times, according to B'Tselem. Between 2002 and 2006, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel filed more than 1,000 complaints with the attorney general over interrogation methods and other allegations of abuse.

Still, some tough techniques were used considerably less often.

Before the 1999 ruling, three-quarters of those surveyed by the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture said they were forced to endure a much-criticized technique known as "shabah" in which suspects' hands are shackled behind their backs in uncomfortable chairs while dark hoods are placed over their heads and loud music is blasted into the rooms. After the ruling, less then 40 percent claimed to have been subjected to the method.

The use of shaking in interrogations fell from 45 percent to 25 percent, according to the survey.

Instead, according to human rights groups, Israel stepped up its use of psychological intimidation, informants, collaborators and electronic surveillance.

In a candid interview published last month in the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot, an Israeli interrogator named only as M. outlined techniques to elicit information without physically harming the suspect.

"You use tricks, fake documents, tell the interrogee that you just killed someone in the next room - and that's legitimate," the paper quoted M. as saying. "I don't tell him, `Be careful, I'll kill you,' but I am meant to create the psychological effect of fear without raising my hand on him."

Israel also has increased its use of "birds," informants who befriend suspects in their cells, persuade them to reveal their secrets, then pass them to intelligence officials.

Last month, Israel launched a public campaign to recruit more spies capable of using electronic devices to collect information. The Israel Intelligence Agency unveiled a Web site ( http://www.shabak.gov.il/mod ) to lure high-tech workers to help their country.

A recruiting ad on the home page shows a young man, his face electronically blurred, sitting by a computer.

"He was a software developer at Chromatis," the ad says. "His name was Gadi. Today his name is G, and he is preventing terror attacks."

In the first weeks of the campaign, the agency has received more than 3,000 resumes.

But it's the use of the most extreme methods that still concerns human rights activists.

Yehezkel Lein, B'Tselem's research director, conceded that the tactics may be effective in getting people to talk. But he said that if you tried to justify some forms of pain to get information from "ticking time bombs" you could end up approving the worst kinds of torture.

"When you take that position, there is no logical or ethical reason to limit it to moderate physical pressure," he said. "If you're trying to prevent killing 100 children, why limit it to moderate physical pressure? Why not severe physical pressure?"

In the newspaper interview, the anonymous interrogator said he worried that using painful methods could produce unreliable information from suspects who simply were trying to stop the pain.

"In the end, your goal is not to get an admission out of them but to get a reliable admission out of them," he said. "So yes, you can hang someone from their balls and he will release an admission, but how reliable will it be?"