Lets Not Sort it Out; Obama Considers Allowing Detainees to Plead Guilty With No Trial??? Impossible!!

OK, here we go; US Military law does not really allow for guilty pleas in cases where the death penalty is a possible outcome. According to the New York Times today, President Obama and his administration are looking at ways to make this law less ambiguous. The push to clarify this comes from military prosecutors who don't want to have to put on an entire case if a defendant pleads guilty....really?...Isn't putting on cases sorta what they do?

But American military justice law, which is the model for the military commission rules, bars members of the armed services who are facing capital charges from pleading guilty. Partly to assure fairness when execution is possible, court-martial prosecutors are required to prove guilt in a trial even against service members who want to plead guilty.

Why?
Well, what comes to mind immediately for me is that the military is a very controlling apparatus, just like, say, a terrorist group, in that there is a strong belief system so deeply held that one would gladly die for it, to keep a code of silence, or to become a martyr. When young recruits are broken down and built back up, they are imbued with a code that could maybe, in some off chance, in a system that has been proven time and again to be imperfect, falsely incriminate themselves.
If that part of the law was left "ambiguous" maybe it was so that cases could be decided on their individual merits and depending on the judge. I'm happy to have all of the evidence presented if we are going to put anyone to death, much less a soldier or an enemy combatant. There are certain standards of morality and ethics that have to be upheld, even if it seems like an exercise to these supposed prosecutors.

I'm no law expert, and I'm definitely no military law expert, but in the middle of a certain amount of confusing backpedaling by the Obama Administration, I find it incredibly disconcerting to hear that the idea is being kicked around to allow certain Guantanamo detainees to plead guilty to the 9-11 attack and therefore be executed without a full trial.

This is not because there is some 100% way to know they are guilty. Their stated intent has been to die as martyrs by execution, and because their confessions are completely the fruit of torture techniques that have been proven to elicit false confessions, it would seem to be a little counter intuitive to just give them what they want. It would, however, make the problem of what we did to them go away pretty nicely!

It appears to me that Obama has had to backtrack on the military tribunals because in a regular court these guys might just go free under the weight of how these confessions were coerced out of these very same detainees. The idea of cutting out the tribunal altogether is not only far fetched but pretty unbelievable! We may need a new set of laws and a new sort of prison to deal with this sort of detainee over the long term, but I've got to say that putting them to death on the strength of confession elicited by torture is not the way to go.

As much as the New York Times seems to be sure that this idea has legs in the administration, it seems like a long shot that it could ever work. The administration is, for some reason, going to great lengths to try to prevent the details of torture on the Bush watch from coming out, but in so doing they are implicating the Obama administration as more of the same. This is a slippery slope that none of us wants to start sliding down; and I'm afraid that we are already there.

It seems that alot of this revolves around the 9-11 case and our usual need for vengeance by death penalty. According to the Times:

Lawyers who were asked about the administration’s proposed change in recent days said it appeared to be intended for the Sept. 11 case.
“They are trying to give the 9/11 guys what they want: let them plead guilty and get the death penalty and not have to have a trial,” said Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, a Guantánamo defense lawyer.

I can just hear the wheels turning in the conspiracy theorists minds. But, if this is just about that pound of flesh, and also serves to cover up the crimes committed by the Bush Administration, its not worth the long term effect on the law and our constitution, which will be skirted in a way that will not serve anyone but the Bush folks, who really need to be at least investigated!

Further:

Cmdr. Suzanne M. Lachelier, a Navy lawyer for one of the detainees in the Sept. 11 case, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, said of the Obama administration, “They’re encouraging martyrdom.”

Which is exactly right, and a shortsighted band-aid on a long term problem, exacerbated by the very treatment that is now being glossed over in this way. The Bush answer to martyrs would be "Martyr This, You Asshole...Bring it On!" But that reverberates across the world and creates thousands of more of these same guys. Hiding what happened is not goign to prevent more terrorism; its going to incite it. The best thing that we can do is, if they want to plead guilty, have a trial and then keep them in a small cell forever; take the execution option off the table, at least. The need to make the torture facts go away is a crime in itself, and the need for a pound of flesh in regards to 9-11 is a big example of human weakness. What would Jesus do, after all?

I say that as a non-religious person trying to understand the methods and logic of how these things work in the minds of good religious and community minded people of all ilks. If heaven and martyrdom is the ultimate gift to some, and death is the ultimate punishment to others, where do logical people find a common ground?

Considering that we each live on this earth for a speck of time in the grander scheme of history, and considering that it seems like a relatively long time to us, during which we go through many changes mentally, doesn't it make sense that perhaps the better punishment for a criminal is to make them live out their lives in a high security facility with little contact with the outside world? Is our need to cover up our own misdeeds so strong that we would, in their minds anyway, let them go freely to their reward in heaven? And if there is the slightest possibility for these guys to ever fully realize the gravity of what they've done and to suffer the anguish of having to live with it, day in and day out, into old age, isn't that a worse punishment?
The real story may lie in the fear that we have of realizing the gravity of what was done in our names while we crumbled to the terra and went shopping. We are all guilty of that, but our system and our way of being should allow for us to look at that so that it never can happen again. The ruined cases of these alleged 9-11 conspirators will go down in history as a reason that we don't torture; you cant make a real case out of what you find out that way.



If President Obama is behind this misguided idea, I'm going to have a very hard time reconciling the image that he presents in his wonderful speeches around the world with this ass backward, Bushian idea. I never thought I would agree with President Obama on everything, but on the issue of torture and holding the previous administration accountable, its going to be very hard to get past what seems to be purposeful governmental roadblocks to justice! I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: We can not heal and learn from the past unless and until we look hard at what went on, the good and the bad; there is no moving on! There is only repetition of our mistakes until we fully understand what went into making them. Alot of that may be fear, and fear is an issue that human beings have alot of trouble looking at. But, if we don't look, we can be controlled by it; and thats exactly what happened!! So, face it, and move ahead; but do it in the right way, like real Americans, not scared and embarassed children.

My theory at this point is to wait and see, but I would hope that some sort of check and balance system would kick in in order to give the people a voice. In the meantime, I am heading over to the White House page to drop him a note.

c/p RIP Coco

Obama's Gesture; Tries to Block Torture Pictures That Are Already Out There. Nice Try...I Guess....

So, who is he blocking these pictures from? In the shadow of the looming snowball rolling down the hill behind him, President Obama seemingly caved today and decided to block the release of the new array of torture photos coming out of Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq. The pictures are more of the same series that we've seen already, and many have been already published in other countries. In a way, the President was able to play both sides of the fence in that the pictures had already been leaked anyway, and so he was able to appear thoughtful on the effect that these photos would have on our soldiers serving around the world, but also he could be sure that the outrage would be there because they, or some of them, would be out in a bigger way than they had been previously. The problem is that in trying to cover this up for whatever reason, we hurt ourselves more, in that anything short of demanding a thorough investigation of the torture program of the previous administration will not be enough to regain our worldwide moral standing.

In covering his bases, Obama maintains his legendary cool but can also find his outrage along with the people. He should, however, be careful in that there will be a point, if it hasn't come already, that he starts to seem disingenuous in his handling of the situation. There is really only one response to what has gone on; it has to be addressed, not buried. Whatever the reasons are for his decisions so far, there is no excuse for not appointing an independent prosecutor to look at this; especially in light of Nancy Pelosi's statements today...talk about disingenuous!I'm having alot of trouble buying that deer in the headlights exclamation of surprise! If I knew they were lying about everything then what did the likes of Ms. Pelosi need? We are supposed to believe that just now she put the dates of reported torture together with the briefings and realized that they lied to her!!? At least she has the power to demand an investigation, and it looks like she will. I think that we are going to see more and more of this, because the vortex of wrongdoing is going to suck everyone in who doesn't get on the right side of this thing. (and for a really disgusting experience, see Rove's article in the Wall Street Journal today about the Pelosi timeline, breaking down what she knew and when she knew it, according to the master manipulator himself!)



Lets recap, for those who have been watching the Cheney media circus this past week, and who might be a tad confused. First of all, contrary to the blathering of the Cheney machine, we know that torture doesn't work. This is a fact that has been proven by numerous experts over many years, and this example of torture has proved it again. Torture is only used to force captives to make untrue statements incriminating themselves and their countries or groups; this would be helpful only if one wanted to connect something like, say, 9-11 to Saddam Hussein...um...yeah.

The Bush/Cheneys decided to disregard all real expert opinion, and surround themselves with only those who would be blindly loyal to their plan, (Plan: the concept of which I use lightly in this instance,) and that meant that they had to find malleable fundamentalists or blind patriots who had less experience in these issues than they should have had and that would follow orders without question; as Bill Maher said "low hanging fruit."

So, how could this happen? The channels that are the checks and balances of this country were corrupted, so If the orders came directly from the oval office that this was an unprecedented national emergency, then I suppose that the spy agencies might lie to the congress, right? Who knows? It was such a mess and Bush/Cheney were rewriting the rules as they went along. The only example that I can think of as anything like this situation is, unfortunately, 24! That's all well and good, but the glaring sticking point is that it went on for so long. This wasn't a one shot deal, it was a program that reportedly came directly down from the Vice President's office.



Ultimately, all of that tin-foil-hat stuff that we were trying not to succumb to, turned out to be true. All along, I kept saying that next comes the dancing girls and elephants, because I couldn't believe that it could possibly get this much stranger than fiction. I have trouble still believing that all of this was done for the money and/or revenge for Bush one, but anything could be true....the only thing that resonates with me is that this is a sort of fundamentalist mental illness, and group-think of the kool-aid variety; cognitive dissonance. To break the very tenants that this country was founded on, and to perform acts that we tried and convicted others of in the past, thereby creating more recent law that we can cite along with the actual laws and the Geneva Convention, and to do it all so openly, leads me to believe that there is some sort of real deep mental problem here which we would could call any number of things, but the actions performed in it's service were clearly illegal and must be addressed.



Obama can block the images all he wants but they will see the light. The thing is that he must come out in favor of investigation of these crimes soon, regardless of any precedent he might set for prosecution of prior Presidents of the Untied States. He must assume that neither he or any other President would commit such acts and if they were ever implicated for actions in office, they would welcome at least an investigation. To not investigate and try to bury this is much more of a danger to our troops all over the world than looking at it in the light and punishing the criminals.


c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Third Time's a Charm? The Supreme Court Rules That Guantanamo Bay Detainees DO have rights! Again!

Here we go again.....For the third time, the Supreme Court has ruled that foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts in the U.S., and that they have been denied their right to habeas corpus, and all that silly stuff that the Bush administration would have us believe is less important than our "safety."

The 270 men held at Guantanamo as suspected enemy combatants have been in limbo, some for over 6 years, as the lack of due process, evidence, and justification for their imprisonment, has created a smokescreen preventing any realistic procedure or outcome. Many of these men have been tortured, and since the evidence gained by such treatment is not reliable, its been impossible for a full case to be made without the issues becoming bigger than the particular case trying to be heard.. But really, according to first hand accounts of the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo have left many of them in such states as to make it hard to release them to their home countries, much less any other country that might agree to take them. The longer this goes on, the more we look like the bad guys, (too late,) and if there ever was a case to be made, we have lost it completely ethically and morally, and we have lost the ability to punish the guilty in any reasonable way.

The emotional and physical fallout from this sort of imprisonment and torture will leave lasting effects that should not be underestimated. I guess that John McCain could be cited as an example of a POW who emerged seemingly unscathed from his ordeal, but then the stories of his vicious temper and his vile treatment of those around him, as cited by Cliff Schecter in his excellent book, The Real McCain, coupled with his seeming disconnect with reality and always changing beliefs and opinions, leads one to think that he is still deeply effected by PTSD, and driven by some deep anger to wage more and more war and to get some sort of revenge. Surely some of the detainees could walk among us with little sign of where they've been; like McCain, they will be time bombs ready to explode at any time.

Without due process, its been impossible to classify these prisoners as true "illegal enemy combatants." With no clear classification and with the republican led congress blocking the last 2 SCOTUS rulings on this by passing laws and limiting judicial oversight, a ripple effect has caused any cases that have made it to a court or tribunal to be sent back to lower courts to sort out the legalities. So, how can we know if this new decision will amount to anything at all before the next administration takes office? Since the designation of the detainees is decided by the president himself and his top cabinet, and is very confidential, its impossible to know what it is based on. Add to that the fear that hovers around the disinformation and/or PR campaign that has painted these prisoners as criminals, terrorists, and enemy combatants, and it's unlikely that they will ever see the light of day in any meaningful way. Its also unlikely that justice will be done or that any deterrence that might be fostered by America's ability to kick the collective asses of the bad-guys, will be evident at all.

America, as it stands, appears to be run by a bunch of heartless, bungling, idiots, with an administration that doesn't even follow our own laws or the rulings of our own court. If they don't like the rulings of the highest court in the country, they just go about circumventing them. With this kind of leadership and the track record of the last 7 years, we have no way ever again to claim the moral high-ground, or to claim that spreading our brand of freedom or democracy is superior to the individual evolution of any country.

The really troubling part of this mess is that the dissenting members of the court, being the usual suspects, joined Alito's written dissent which assumed the guilt of the prisoners and stated a political opinion about the danger that America is in (with the implication being that these prisoners who have not been charged or tried are the reason,) as noted in the Washington Post:

Justice Antonin Scalia took the unusual step of summarizing his dissent from the bench, calling the court's decision a "self-invited . . . incursion into military affairs," and was even stronger in a written dissent joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

"America is at war with radical Islamists," Scalia wrote, adding that the decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

I thought that the court was in place to ensure the sanctity of American laws and the way that we do things. If the reason why Scalia dissents as he does, (joined by certain of his colleagues,) is that he feels that these prisoners are, in fact, enemy combatants, with no evidence or due process stating such, or even alleging it, then he is stating mere opinion based on gut feelings and stories drawn out of tortured prisoners who have likely not seen the light of day or another human being, except their torturers, for months. Our justice system doesn't work this way and the highest court is not supposed to issue dissents or opinions based on personal feelings about issues that are clearly political, (and unproven, at that!)

I don't believe that the court's job is to tell us that their decision is based on the danger that America is in if certain prisoners happen to be what one or another of them thinks they may be. I believe that they are supposed to comment on whether the information presented and the treatment of those prisoners follows the LAW! isn't the Supreme court the last stop in decision making and a place where the information and evidence is looked at as already revealed and consideration is given to process? If not, then I would like to see where new evidence...real evidence...was introduced that might indicate that these people are combatants of any kind. If not, and if this is purely an oversight of law decisions, then why is the dissent written in terms of political opinion regarding the safety of Americans? The laws of our country are not in place so that we can cringe behind them, but rather so that we can stand boldly and die to protect them...right? This is just more of the Karl Rovian "Be Very Afraid" brand of fear-politics.

We can guess that these prisoners are bad guys. We can know that they are hardened and hateful, and even that some of them have been driven crazy. We can also guess that they come from a place where bad guys hide out, and we can go with the gut feelings of military interrogators that has filtered down through layers and layers of pundits, informers, and gossips, but unless these guys stand before an open court with independent lawyers, we've got nothing.

The fucking Bush Administration, in person as it turns out, have made the world incredibly less safe by not following the law as it stood. If they hadn't had a field trip to Guantanamo to witness actual interrogation techniques and take it upon themselves to shape a policy that has pieces of the TV show 24, and techniques that have been proven to not work within it, then we might have been able to prove if these guys are criminals or not; we wouldn't have to have them walking free among us if they are guilty. But I think that this whole thing really wasn't about combatants, or safety, or the law; it was about being macho and showing the world that they can change and defy American law anytime they want. That probably buys some sorta tough street cred in the higher echelons of power where the real dealing is done, just for the rush of the huge chess game that is Planet Earth.

So, forgive me if I am not counting my prisoners before they get their hearings. An administration that bends the law wherever they see fit, and a senate with Joe Lieberman leaning to the right, and that slim of a majority, will stand in the way of this too. Soon it will Be Obama's problem, and a mark on his record that he had this horrible war and had to house these poor guys forever because they had nowhere to go....I like to see as much of this as possible get on the record, but honestly, unless we impeach Bush and Cheney (and indict Gonzalez and Rumsfeld, and do something to Condi Rice, which I haven't figured out yet,) we've got nothing.

...except other secret prisons around the world, most notably in Afghanistan, that are doing the same thing, but reportedly worse....

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

I

We Don't Torture...That is Unless We Do...Oh Yeah, We Actually Do Torture!!

The concept of these assholes meeting to set the standard on torture is mind boggling. Who in that group has their doctorate in psychology and can speak to the truths told under certain physical stress? Who in that group even has the moral compass to make the decision for us in this matter, because what we do now is gonna effect us in the long run; especially if there is a draft that takes our kids and family members into a world that knows no Geneva Convention.

Its gonna be your kids and my kids who grow up in a world in which the likes of Condi Rice has decided how much to torture someone...and we know that TORTURE DOESN'T WORK! Not if you want reliable information. Torture works to force people to confess things they didn't do, to force them to renounce their country, and to force them to make up information in order to stop the torture. So, while our forces are tracking down those false leads, what else is going on that might have been extracted using other psychological and intelligence based tactics that actually work!
John Stewart jokes about this, but it is no joke...We all laugh because if we didn't laugh we would be crying. But, he delivers a very serious message within that funny. McCain will be the continuation of this policy, through the haze of a PTSD flashback brought about by the grotesque reality of the tactics and some sort of reality break/cognitive dissonance. We have to be very, very clear as we watch our two possible candidates try to ruin eachother and the party while they're at it, that its gonna be our kids who grow up in a world where we torture and we get tortured back.
Rock on, Jon...maybe someone out there will hear you....

What He Said!...President Bush Ordered Torture!

Brad Blog has a piece tonight on a story on MSNBC's Countdown, in which Constitutional Attorney, Johnathan Turley, states in no uncertain terms that even though the congress, and especially the democrats, refuse to look at the fact that the way in which we have been getting information was and is a "premeditated, carefully orchestrated, torture program," we are looking at a case of illegal torture planned by the Bush Administration.

So many top administration advisers actually visited and oversaw the goings on at Gitmo that "the only thing missing is a group picture" of top administration officials while torturing...
This is disgusting...what country do we live in, and who are these people representing us?



c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Malcolm Nance and Torture...A Sane Voice in the Crowd Flies in the Face of the Utter Bullshit Being Tossed Around Out There!

Ive been driving around for a week in a state of some sort of dejection about the idea that we are torturing people, and worse, but who knows for sure until all the horror stories come out from reliable sources. I fear that the information that is culled from these horrific acts is not reliable and so actually is dangerous in that our forces might waste time chasing down false leads while other real threats are growing...and then theres the ethical and moral dilemma that I am feeling in that as
a citizen of this country I don't want any part of what this administration has done. I don't consider most of it to be anywhere near the American way,and I feel like alot of what is wrong with this picture wont be fixed in my lifetime. I've always been proud to be American. I've always questioned authority, and worked for candidates that were liberal, like my family is. I even went to protests and all that as a kid.
I felt that I could bring change about by using my little voice, and that the balance of powers were an important part of how this thing works. Maybe thats something like hope....can't remember much about hope.
After so many years of this Bush crap...after seeing people stand on 12 hour lines to vote and insane voting machines that tallied wrongly...after watching the diplomacy and aide that America represented, be it truthful or not, it was at least a facade, be crushed to death by these horrible neocons, I just don't know how much fight there is left in me.
I feel incredible empathy for those who have been lied to and hurt. And I know that history will look upon people like Malcolm Nance as heroes, in that they stood up and told the truth. This is a truth that the Bush administration will not listen to, and information that flies in the face of all of the lies that have been propagated carefully for public consumption.

The subject is torture, and the expert is Malcolm Nance. There is no one better to tell us about what exactly is being done in our names than this guy. He is not a radical lefty, he has no stake in this besides his feeling that this information must get out there. He was charged with teaching soldiers who might find themselves in danger of torture what to expect. In that position of responsibility and in that the training of these soldiers sometimes requires that they experience the torture procedures, he has had personal experience with different forms, and in particular waterboarding. So please listen to and watch what he has to say...or not say...in that this guy knows when to step back and let the wingnuts dig their own hole.


CLICK HERE to play Streaming Audio of Malcolm Nance and Rachel Maddow from November 20th, 2007.

Then, of course, here is the full Dan Abrams throw-down...which is just incredible in that Pat Buchanan is talking out of his ass, like so many of these pundits do, and he has no idea of the law and that what they are talking about is, in fact, illegal. This is all too common among these guys. They are not used to being questioned sharply by the usual suspects like Russert, Matthews, and...er, sorry Dan, but Abrams...so when someone as sharp as Rachel Maddow gets on the case, (and bless Abrams and Olbermann and the whole gang at MSNBC for having her on so often, even if she challenges them to actually THINK and tell the truth,) we are shown just how out of our depth we are on issues of law and what is being done illegally in our names. This is a huge problem, and if not for ethical and moral reasons, then for the protection of our own soldiers, we have to change who is making these decisions. All too many people still get their information solely from Faux News, and this is an example of the disinformation floating around that crowd. If the constituents of republicans don't have the information with which to make their decisions, then how can they make decisions or even tell their representatives what they want to see their government doing?



And here is a clip from the senate testimony of Nance and Interrogator/Air force Reserve Colonel, Steve Kleinman,before the House Judiciary Subcommittee about waterboarding and torture on November 8, 2007...This is fantastic, and there should be no American out there who doesn't see this and understand what is involved in getting information from suspects:



AND this is why its so reprehensible to have to hear the nominee for the Attorney General job act like he has been living on a desert island with his head in the sand, regarding this stuff. He is just being a lawyer, in that he doesn't want to admit to knowing OF something because then he might have to take on some culpability and/or point the finger at those who he is really being sworn to protect: i.e. Bush/Cheney and their minions.
The fact that this guy is acting like a shifty lawyer is good in the sense that maybe he has tried a case or acted as a lawyer in his life, as opposed to Gonzo, who had very little real experience for the job. So, maybe we can hope that somewhere the root of the love of the law that these old shriveled farts once had, will still be active enough to make him balk at the insanity....that is, once he learns what waterboarding is and how its done.
Its hard to believe that he has never heard of waterboarding, and I take it as an insult to my intelligence and the intelligence of everyone in that room, and of the American people that he thinks we're gonna buy that line.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your new Attorney General:




Good Luck folks...Good Luck to us all....

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment...

What can you say about Keith Olbermann? He expresses our anger and outrage so fully, so completely, that you just want to shake his hand and say thank you. Tonight's comment covered Mukasey and waterboarding. Why we have to be discussing this is anyone's guess in this upside down administration. Its embarassing and horrifying that grown men claim to know nothing of this practice and yet continue to allow it to be practiced in our names.
Thanks Keith...History is going to remember you as the mouthpiece of a generation and a warrior against injustice.

Following is the transcript. Video to follow as soon as it is available.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment
11-05-07

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the meaning of the story of former U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin.

It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed:

The Presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.












All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity;

All the invocations of World War Three, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets;

All the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists...

All of it is now -- after one revelation last week -- transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the re-focusing of our entire nation, towards keeping this mock president, and this unstable vice president, and this departed wildly self-over-rating Attorney General -- and the others -- from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of this country.

"Waterboarding is torture," Daniel Levin was to write.

Daniel Levin was no theorist and no protestor.

He was no troublemaking politician.

He was no table-pounding commentator.

Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American, and a brave man.

Brave not just with words or with stances -- even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared -- or bought -- off.

Charged -- as you heard in the story from ABC News last Friday -- with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the Pandora's box that is the Orwell-worthy euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation," Mr. Levin decided that the simplest, and the most honest, way to evaluate them... was to have them enacted upon himself.

Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be water-boarded.

Mr. Bush -- ever done anything that personally courageous?

Perhaps when you've gone to Walter Reed and teared up over the maimed servicemen? And then gone back to the White House and determined that there would be more maimed servicemen?

Has it been that kind of personal courage, Mr. Bush, when you've spoken of American victims and the triumph of freedom and the sacrifice of your own popularity for the sake of our safety? And then permitted others to fire or discredit or destroy anybody who disagreed with you -- whether they were your own Generals, or... Max Cleeland, or... Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame… or Daniel Levin?

Daniel Levin should have a statue in his honor in Washington right now.

Instead, he was forced out as Acting Assistant Attorney General, nearly three years ago, because he had the guts to do what George Bush couldn't do in a million years: actually put himself at risk for the sake of his country, for the sake of what is right.

And they water-boarded him and he wrote that even though he knew those doing it meant him no harm, and he knew they would rescue him at the instant of the slightest distress, and he knew he would not die -- still, with all that reassurance, he could not stop the terror screaming from inside of him, could not quell the horror, could not convince that which is at the core of each of us -- the entity who exists behind all the embellishments we strap to ourselves, like purpose and name and family and love -- he could not convince his being… that he wasn't drowning.

Water-boarding, he said, is torture.

Legally, it is torture!

Practically, it is torture!

Ethically, it is torture!

And he wrote it down.

Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country's 43rd President: "The United States of America... does not torture."

Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.

Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.

Water-boarding had already been used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed and a couple of other men none of us really care about -- except, Sir, for the one detail you'd forgotten -- that there are rules, and even if we just make up these rules, this country observes them anyway, because we're Americans, Sir, and we're better than that.

We're better than you.

And the man your Justice Department selected to decide whether or not water-boarding was torture, had decided, and not in some phony academic fashion, nor while wearing the Walter Mitty poseur attire of flight-suit and helmet.

He had put his money, Mr. Bush, where your mouth was.

So, your sleazy sycophantic henchman Mr. Gonzales had him append an asterisk suggesting his black-and-white answer wasn't black-and-white, that there might have been a quasi-legal way of torturing people, maybe with an absolute time limit and a physician entitled to stop it, maybe, if your administration had ever bothered to set any rules or any guidelines…

And then when your people realized that even that was too dangerous, Daniel Le Vin was branded "too independent" and "someone who could (not) be counted on."

In other words, Mr. Bush, somebody you couldn't count on to lie for you.

So, Levin was fired.

Because if it ever got out what he'd concluded, and the lengths to which he went, to validate that conclusion, anybody who had sanctioned water-boarding, and who-knows-what-else… anybody -- you yourself, Sir -- you would have been screwed.

And screwed you are.

It can't be coincidence that the story of Daniel Levin should emerge from the black hole of this secret society of a presidency just at the conclusion of the unhappy saga of the newest Attorney General Nominee.

Another patriot somewhere, listened as Judge Mukasey mumbled like he'd never heard of water-boarding, and refuse to answer in words… that which Daniel Levin answered on a water-board somewhere in Maryland or Virginia three years ago.

And this someone also heard George Bush say "The United States of America does not torture"... and realized either he was lying or this wasn't the United States of America any more, and either way, he needed to do something about it.

Not in the way Levin needed to do something about it, but in a brave way nonetheless.

We have United States Senators who need to do something about it, too.

Chairman Leahy of the Judiciary Committee has seen this for what it is and said "enough."

Senator Schumer has seen it, reportedly, as some kind of puzzle piece in the New York political patronage system and he has failed.

What Senator Feinstein has seen, to justify joining Schumer in rubber-stamping Mukasey, I cannot guess.

It is obvious that both those Senators should look to the meaning of the story of Daniel Levin and recant their support for Mukasey's confirmation.

And they should look into their own committee's history and recall that in 1973, their predecessors were able to wring even from Richard Nixon, a guarantee of a Special Prosecutor (ultimately a Special Prosecutor of Richard Nixon!), in exchange for their approval of his new Attorney General, Elliott Richardson.

If they could get that out of Nixon, you -- before you confirm the President's latest human echo tomorrow -- you better be able to get a "yes" or a "no"… out of Michael Mukasey.

Ideally you should lock this government down financially until a special prosecutor is appointed -- or fifty of them -- but I'm not holding my breath. The "yes" or the "no" on water-boarding will have to suffice.

Because, remember... if you can't get it, or you won't... with the time between tonight and the next presidential election likely to be the longest year of our lives, you are leaving this country, and all of us, to the water-boards -- symbolic and otherwise -- of George W. Bush.

Ultimately, Mr. Bush, the real question isn't... who approved the water-boarding of this fiend Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two others.

It is: why were they water-boarded?

Study after study for generation after generation, sir, has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.

Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn't a problem, if you don't care if the terrorist plots they tell you about, are the truth... or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them.

If, say, a President simply needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep a country scared…

If, say, he needed phony plots to play hero during, and to boast about interrupting, and to use to distract people from the threat he**didn't** interrupt…

If, say, he realized that even terrorized people still need good ghost stories before they will let a President pillage the Constitution…

Well, heck, Mr. Bush, who better to dream them up for you… than an actual terrorist?

He'll tell you every thing he ever fantasized doing, in his most horrific of daydreams -- his equivalent of the day you "flew" onto the deck of the Lincoln to explain you'd won in Iraq.

Now if that's what this is all about -- you tortured not because you're so stupid you think torture produces confession -- but you tortured because you're smart enough to know it produces really authentic-sounding fiction -- well, then… you're going to need all the lawyers you can find… because that crime wouldn't just mean impeachment, would it Sir?

That crime would mean George W. Bush is going to prison.

Thus the master tumblers turn, and the lock yields, and the hidden explanations can all be perceived, in their exact proportions, in their exact progressions.

Daniel Levin's eminently practical, eminently logical, eminently patriotic way of testing the legality of waterboarding… has to vanish -- and him, with it.

Thus Alberto Gonzales has to use that brain that sounds like an old car trying to start on a freezing morning, to undo eight centuries of the forward march of law and government.

Thus Dick Cheney, has to ridiculously assert that confirming we do or do not use any particular interrogation technique, would somehow help the terrorists.

Thus Michael Mukasey, on the eve of the vote that will make him the high priest of the law of this land, cannot and must not answer a question, nor even hint that he has thought about a question, which merely concerns the theoretical definition of water-boarding as torture.

Because, Mr. Bush, in the seven years of your nightmare presidency, this whole string of events has been transformed…