This does not change the fact that his politics are deeply, deeply scary. John Ashcroft earned his nickname "the Deacon" not just because he is (or at least was? not sure if he still is) a deacon in an Assemblies of God church, but because in some ways, that's all he is. It is almost the entirety of his personality. When John Ashcroft uses the phrase "the founding fathers," he doesn't mean guys like Tom Paine and Ben Franklin and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, he means guys like John Winthrop and John Cotton and Roger Williams and John Endecott, people that most Americans have never even heard of -- the Puritan founding fathers, the organizers of the 1620-1640 Puritan Migration that provided North America with its first truly large-scale white population. No, contrary to what he feels obligated to say, Ashcroft's level of commitment to founding US principles like the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights is nominal, at best; this is a man who believes that the only point in there even being a United States of America is to be New Jerusalem, Christianity's global capital, one nation entirely under Jesus Christ. He pays lip service to the idea that nobody should be forced at gunpoint to be a Christian, but he sees absolutely nothing wrong, or even out of the ordinary, about all levels of government tilting the playing field that way as hard as possible. He is the absolute epitomé of the Taliban wing of the Republican Party, an absolutely dangerous man and we are all much safer now that he is retired from public office, hopefully this time for good.
But all of that being said, even people who understand everything about why the man's politics are so scary, those among them who know him personally are without exception huge fans of his friendliness, his personal manners, his personal style, his sincerity, his legendary honesty, and his long reputation for personal kindness. And knowing all of that makes this widely-linked headline over at Daily Kos all the more interersting: Elsinora, "John Ashcroft Yelled at Me Tonight. No Joke," under "State of the Nation," 4/22/08. Capsule summary: on a very liberal college campus, the 6-person Campus Republican club raised enough money from the surrounding town, $15,000, to pay John Ashcroft's speaker's fee to come and address an open meeting of the Campus Republicans. What they couldn't have known when the issued the invitation and he accepted was that he would be appearing only a couple of weeks after ABC News broke the story that John Ashcroft is a war criminal: Jan Crawford Greenburg et al, "Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'," ABC News, 4/9/08. So when he walked onto a very liberal college campus, it is entirely unsurprising that almost all of the questions he faced in the Q&A session after his talk were about torture. And something truly remarkable happened: he lost his temper, completely lost it. And that's something that John Ashcroft is legendary for never doing, certainly never for so long, and absolutely certainly never in public.
Something very weird is going on here. And if John Ashcroft remembers his time as a prosecutor, and reflects honestly on how his own behavior resembles that of suspects he's held in custody before he rose to the top, even he must recognize something about himself: if any of the co-conspirators is going to crack, going to confess and testify against the others, it's him. He is clearly losing it. So I'm hoping that those of us who'd like to see almost the entire top ranks of the Bush administration brought up on charges somewhere, ideally at Nuremberg or The Hague but at the very least in front of a US federal court, on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, not just liberal activists but some very serious and non-partisan constitutional scholars, I'm hoping that we manage to keep the pressure on him about this. He is, after all, the one who is also reported, in the same news coverage, to have been the only conspirator to express moral qualms about this at the time. And now he's the one who's acting out, emotionally, in ways he's never done before. Any police interrogator, any prosecutor, would tell you what that means: for now, stop questioning the rest of them; lean on him, because he's the one who's about to crack. And if he cracks, it'll blow the whole case wide open.
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bradhicks- J. Brad Hicks
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I see a meltdown, or things that were never meant to be revealed spoken in a court.
Or will the fear of that result in his being involved in an 'accident'?
He should probably avoid flying - the administration might decide to "Wellstone" him.
No nation victorious in war has ever been charged with a war crime. And while it's a cold laugh in hell to call what the U.S. is doing to Iraq "victory," the U.S. can at least walk away from it.
That aside, I'd settle for a thorough and absolute discrediting of the religious / neocon wing of the right, so this is still good news.
"Oh, Mr. Ashcroft, you're so brave! I pray each night that God will give you the strength to stand for the truth. Oh, here, I baked you these snickerdoodles, they're my grandsons' favorites..."
His office staff was decent, but he himself, no i'm sorry he was a creep. You can call me a liar, and i can call shenanigins, but i was within 6 feet of him routinely for 1 1/2 years.
... but i never shorted his office in all that time, he may be a creep but i got standards ;)
Conspiracy theories make weak arguments because they fall victim to Occam's razor- that the simplest explanation is the most likely.
Which seems more likely, a group of evil men sitting in some freemason lodge plotting to destroy the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, or that a series of ignorant politicians, incompetent bureaucrats, and engineers hesitant to voice their concerns together manufacture the destruction of a significant portion of a major US city? Which is more likely, elaborate conspiracy or plain incompetence? Occam's razor strongly suggests the later.
Belief in elaborate conspiracy- by its very nature- remains irrational.
John Ashcroft is not going to be any sort of later-day Daniel Ellsberg. For the following simple reason: he is not going to crack and expose this great conspiracy because there is no conspiracy to expose.
One has a series of ignorant politicians, inept bureaucrats, and hesitant experts over-reacting (to a very real threat) and crafting a deeply immoral and flawed practice. Whether this rises to the level of criminality is an entirely different conversation... and objections to the contrary display little more than a dearth of thought and a certain weakness of mind.
The only thing standing between that story and jail sentences for those involved is one prosecutor, and one inside witness willing to testify under oath. As to whether it's true or not, that is literally no longer in question.
On a serious note, there is a difference between
"planning" and "authorizing." I think you confuse the former with the latter, which consists of merely passing the buck down the line to the actual interrogators. The lack of specific information, in my opinion, merely adds fuel to overactive imaginations... and one gets false stories about menstrual blood and various forms of koran-flushing.
As for jail terms, I think my scenario above more likely.
You're free to ban me if you wish, but if the ideas presented here cannot withstand critical scrutiny- how is this my fault?
- At literally the highest levels of government, decisions were made to authorize "enhanced interrogation techniques" that included waterboarding. This is not in dispute.
It may be argued (as Brad suggests) that there was in fact active attempts to insure this information was not released to the general public. I think it would be fair to call that a conspiracy, but frankly that's all beside the point at the moment.
- Despite attempts to lawyer around the subject, waterboarding is unquestionably torture, and the authorization of such torture is illegal and is quite explicitly proscribed in multiple treaties signed by the USA, which according to the Constitution are by definition the law of the land.
- The conspiracy in question being perpetuated by the administration is one of denial. They deny that they are bound by the laws in question (all evidence contrary in fact, to the point of basically saying "it's legal because we say it is"), and they deny that waterboarding is torture. This is not (any longer) a secret conspiracy: it is right out in the open. It relies on all the principals involved sticking to their stories, maintaining their denials.
- If one of the principals breaks with the others, and admits that waterboarding is torture, and admits that yes, the law of the land was broken and yes, what was authorized by is can be defined as a war crime, then the spell is broken, and the door to charges being laid is opened.
That as I understand it is the conspiracy that Brad is hoping Ashcroft will betray, that his moral nature will require him to face and expose.
Regardless of what semantic games are played here to try and redefine "torture", regardless of what legal tricks are played to define these 'detainees' in a way that gives them no legal rights, regardless of what crimes those being questioned may or may not have committed, these people okayed and instructed agents of our government to torture people.
It's morally wrong. It's illegal. It is not unreasonable that these people be called to account. It is not unreasonable that they be charged with the crime that they already admit they committed.
If you find flaw in this argument, I invite you to show it.
I'm calling it a conspriacy because Brad calls it a conspiracy. A conspiracy that was "planned." This is patently absurd.
And frankly, you're quite right. This is inflciting pain and discomfort to obtain information. It is torture. It is morally reprehensible.
But reaching to the level of criminal conspriacy?
Like I said above, whether it constitutes criminal activity or not is another conversation, one that's complicated and I, frankly, do not know enough about the law to argue either way. There are enough lawyers arguing back and forth for me to certainly concede that it is in a legal grey zone... but I don't want to get into that. I'm content to say that it shouldn't be done in the first place and it should stop. (Which is McCain's position, oddly enough.)
My point is that there is no conspiracy here. WHat we seem to have- or what we think we have- is a government panel approving certain kinds of torture- in consultation with attorneys. There is no secret cabal.
My point above is that there is a simpler explanation. Governmental incompetence. It caused the Katrina disaster and it caused this torture scandal. The result being that Ashcroft has no one to testify against. What's he going to say, "We really didn't know what the hell we were doing?"
Which is the truth. There is no conspracy. There is marginally a case. For Ashcroft to "crack"? He'll be waiting a long time...
Now, I get to see if I've been banned or not.
Columbia Encyclopedia: "conspiracy, in law, agreement of two or more persons to commit a criminal or otherwise unlawful act. At common law, the crime of conspiracy was committed with the making of the agreement, but present-day statutes require an overt step by a conspirator to further the conspiracy."
(And actually, in terms of moderator status, you're moving back in the safer direction, now: you're engaging the topic in a meaningful manner, without attacking the people you disagree with or otherwise trying to be disruptive or dismissive. Is the difference really so hard for you to understand?)
But now we get into the grey area again. Is it still a conspiracy if they don't think what they are approving is illegal? Which they, apparently, do not. And, since the Supreme Court seems, more oftne than not, to side with Bush et al., I doubt anyone is going to be charged. So, since we going back to semantic argument, if there's no crime, according to the definition you posted, there is no conspriacy. While perhaps a bit tautological, it is nevertheless not a conspiracy.
In terms of a working definition, two gusy getting together to roib a bank is a criminal conspiracy. A roomful of inept politicians, consulting lawyers to see what they can and cannot do- is not. No conspiracy.
As for the moderator thing, I think I understand now. If I disagree with you, there is necessarily a higher standard of what constitutes "abuse." Okay, I can deal with that... "The more you know and all that..."
The only question that has remained, as in the free-fire zones of My Lai, is who were the actual torturers, and from how far up did the orders come? ABC News' unnamed sources insist that the orders came from the Principals Group, from a group of people lead by Dick Cheney. But so far, nobody has been fingered who will testify under oath to this. If they do, then there will be no remaining question, legal or political; contrary to what you may think, the law on this is entirely clear and unambiguous.
To be quite honest, I don't know. I read impassioned editorials by legal scholars, in the New York Times saying that such and such laws apply and here's why and I think, "Yeah, of course, sounds reasonable."
Then, a week later, I read another editorial in the Wall Street Journal by legal experts saying such and such laws do not apply and here's why... and I think, "Well, that sounds pretty good, too."
And my final position, albeit not entirely comfortable, is that with legal scholars debating very technical issues, and cases continually going all the way to the Supremes- it's, legally, uncharted territory. If it was as legally clear-cut as you suggest, I don't think there would be this much dissemination on all sides- and not just by self-interested administration lawyers.
In a quick aside, that doesn't make it moral or ethical- not at all. But, then again, there's a lot of shit I find morally objectionable that is perfectly legal...(advertising targeted at children, the death penalty, pop music, etc....)
I am saying, and my point still stands, that simple incompetence and lack of any oversight can more effectively craft such a policy than any line of direct authority stretching from Abu Ghraib to the Oval Office. Since, we already know the Bush administration has, shall we say, "competence issues," this is clearly the most likely explanation.
Bybee, Yoo, and Gonzales are all documented giving their sought-after opinions on things like child-testicle crushing and pronouncing the Geneva conventions "quaint." So, why is it "legislating from the bench" when the Judicial branch does their job and interprets the law, but it's suddenly "very technical issues . . . uncharted territory" when the Executive branch does it? There's a whiff of apologism in your posts, sir, and giving wider latitude to those who do not deserve it.
On the other hand, I'm glad you're not a torture apologist. Listening to people defend that nearly makes me ill. And very, very angry.