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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (177764)	12/11/2005 6:43:30 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Unfortunately there clearly is NOBODY like Howard Baker in the Senate today. -s2@NobodyInAGOPLeadershipRoleTodayWouldDareToPutTheInterestsOfOurCountryAheadOfTheirPartyInterests.com

To: geode00 who wrote (177764)	12/11/2005 6:55:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Weaselly Rice Tortures Facts _____________________________________________________________ Does the secretary of state think anyone is buying her spiel? by Maureen Dowd* Syndicated Columnist Published on Sunday, December 11, 2005 by the Toronto Star Our secretary of state's tortuous defence of supposedly non-existent CIA torture chambers in Eastern Europe was an acid flashback to Clintonian parsing. Just as Bill Clinton pranced around questions about marijuana use at Oxford during the '92 campaign by saying he had never broken the laws of his country, so Condoleezza Rice pranced around questions about outsourcing torture by suggesting that President George W. Bush had never broken the laws of his country. But in Bill's case, he was only talking about smoking a little joint, while Condi is talking about snatching people off the street and throwing them into lethal joints. "The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees," she said. It all depends on what you mean by "authorize,'' "condone,'' ``torture" and "detainees.'' Rice also claimed that the United States did not transport terrorism suspects "for the purpose of interrogation using torture." But, hey, as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likes to say, stuff happens. The president said he was opposed to torture and then effectively issued regulations to allow what any normal person — and certainly a victim — would consider torture. Alberto Gonzales et al. have defined torture deviancy downward to the point where it's hard to imagine what would count as torture. Under this U.S. administration, prisoners have been hung by their wrists and had electrodes attached to their genitals; they've been waterboarded, exposed to extreme heat and cold and threatened with death — even accidentally killed. Does Rice think anyone is buying her loophole-riddled defence? Not with the Italians thinking of rounding up CIA officers to ask them whether they abducted a cleric in Milan. And with Vice-President Dick Cheney slouching around Capitol Hill trying to circumvent John McCain, legalizing torture at the CIA's secret prisons, by preventing Congress from requiring decent treatment for U.S. prisoners. As The New York Times's Scott Shane reported Wednesday, a German man, Khaled al-Masri, says he was kidnapped, beaten and spirited away to Afghanistan by CIA officers in an apparent case of mistaken identity in 2003. He is suing former CIA chief George Tenet and three companies allegedly involved in the clandestine flights. Masri, a 42-year-old former car salesman, was refused entry to the U.S. last Saturday. He had intended to hold a news conference in Washington last Tuesday, but ended up talking to reporters over a video satellite link, telling how he was beaten, photographed nude and injected with drugs during five months in detention. Masri said through an interpreter: "I don't think I'm the human being I used to be.'' When Rice was a Stanford professor of international relations, she would have flunked any student who dared to present her with the sort of wilfully disingenuous piffle she spouted on the eve of her European trip. Maybe she figures that if she was able to fool people once with doubletalk about weapons of mass destruction, she can fool them again with doubletalk about rendition. As chatter spreads about Rice as a possible presidential contender, we are left wondering, once more, who this woman really is. Is she doing this willingly, or is she hemmed in by the powerful men around her? As a former national security adviser who has had the president's ear for five years, did she try to fight the appalling attempt to shred the Geneva Conventions, or did she go along with it? Is she doing Cheney's nefarious bidding on torture, just as she did on ginning up the case for invading Iraq? As Rice used weasel words on torture, Hillary Clinton took a weaselly position on flag-burning. Trying to convince the conservatives that she's still got a bit of that Goldwater Girl in her, the woman who would be the first woman president is co-sponsoring a Republican bill making it illegal to desecrate the American flag. The red staters backing this measure are generally the ones who already can't stand Hillary, so they won't be fooled. The senator doing Clintonian triangulating is just as transparent as the secretary doing Clintonian parsing. All in all, a bad week for women — sheer torture to watch. ________________________________________________________ *Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for The New York Times Magazine. Ms. Dowd joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter in 1983. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for The Washington Star, where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter and feature writer. When the Star closed in 1981, she went to Time magazine. Born in Washington D.C., Ms. Dowd received a B.A. degree in English literature from Catholic University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973. Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. commondreams.org

To: geode00 who wrote (177764)	12/11/2005 9:27:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The New Machismo _____________________________________________________ by Joan Vennochi* Published on Sunday, December 11, 2005 by the Boston Globe It's macho time in America. When Democrats challenge the Bush administration regarding its policy in Iraq, Republicans challenge their patriotism and toughness. On Friday, the Republican National Committee released a new Web video. It features a white flag of surrender and this theme: ''Our country is at war. Our soldiers are watching, and our enemies are too. Message to Democrats: Retreat and Defeat is not an option." The video highlights recent critical comments about the Iraq war made by Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Senator Barbara Boxer of California. In essence, to the GOP, ''staying the course" is a measure of strength and masculinity, whether or not the course proves to be successful. And some top Democrats buy into the thesis. ''When people feel uncertain, they would rather have someone who's wrong and strong than somebody who is weak and right," Bill Clinton said in a much-quoted speech to the Democratic Leadership Council in December 2002. This ''wrong and strong" theory helped George W. Bush win reelection in 2004. This ''wrong and strong" theory continues to help Bush at a time of great doubt about an unpopular war in Iraq. When it comes to national security policy today, only the most macho of men can afford to show their ''sensitive" side. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, can call for the country to renounce torture because of his personal credentials -- a POW who was tortured by the enemy during the Vietnam War. Others are labeled as weaklings and cowards if they suggest that stooping to the enemies' tactics is poor policy that so far achieved poor results. Democrats who question administration policy regularly find their manhood under attack. It happened to Kerry during the last presidential contest, even though he was the Vietnam War veteran running against an opponent who served stateside in the National Guard. Just last month, Vice President Dick Cheney thought nothing of questioning the backbone of Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat whose speech calling for a speedy withdrawal of troops set off a national debate. But Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, did not take Cheney's attack quietly. He shot back angrily: ''I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done." Bush, sensing who had more machismo in this matchup, ended the hostile exchange by calling Murtha a fine man and a supporter of the military. But Democrats remain afraid of looking weak if they sound too antiwar; and the GOP is masterful at exploiting that fear, as the new RNC video demonstrates. Take Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, whose position on Iraq is no immediate withdrawal, no open-ended commitment to remain there. Her stance infuriates Democrats on the left, a consequence which delights centrist Democrats. Standing up to the peaceniks is not only cool, it's tough. It's another variation of the Clinton-Bush credo: Wrong and strong beats weak and right. Charles Knight of the Commonwealth Institute, a public policy research center in Cambridge, has spent time analyzing what he calls the ''toughness discourse" in American politics, especially after 9/11. When it comes to national security, he says, ''tough" means ''using violence as a priority tool for international relations." Backed into a corner by conservatives who equate ''liberal" with unmanly and weak, Democrats are buying into their opponents' definition. Accepting it means agreeing that a punch is the answer to every insult, that violence solves every dispute. It is believing brawn always beats brains, a conclusion that defies logic, reason, and reality. Toughness defined in a strictly physical way does not always achieve victory. Might does not make right, nor does it always make everything right. And it is not unmanly to say that. Might makes right is the credo of the warrior. But there is simple power in right as might. It is the power of great leaders in religion and politics, from Jesus Christ to Martin Luther King. Throughout history, brave men and women have taken the high moral ground. Only in America today do we dare call them wimps. __________________________________________ *Joan Vennochi writes regularly about national and local politics, and also covers issues relating to business, law and culture. Before joining the op-ed page, she wrote a column on the Globe's business page. She was City Hall bureau chief, State House bureau chief and covered national politics for the Globe. She began her career at the Globe as a researcher on the Spotlight Team, the newspaper's investigative reporting unit. She shared in a Pulitzer Prize awarded to the team for local investigative reporting. She is a graduate of Boston University and Suffolk Law School. commondreams.org