_{Photograph By: Eugenio Garcia}

A couple days ago, I wrote a post about conservative journalist Richard Miniter’s bizarre trip to Gitmo, and his strange assertion that Gitmo detainees were being treated too well by their American captors:

“Food is strictly halal and averages 4,200 calories per day. (The guards eat the same chow as the detainees, unless they venture to one of the on-base fast-food joints.) Most prisoners have gained weight.”

The entire article is peppered with what appear to be government-provided talking points, which should have set off alarm bells. But it wasn’t until I read this post by Glenn Greenwald, and this update from commenter P. O’Neil, that the full story became clear. Apparently, Mark Steyn was there too:

And I must say, these are the fattest Afghans I’ve ever seen, because they’re on this kind of 4,700 calorie a day diet, which I don’t quite understand.

And so was Rich Lowry:

Detainees are offered 4,200 calories a day. U.S. combat troops get 3,800. The average detainee has gained 18 pounds.

Now, this PR tour seems to be aimed entirely at a right-wing, pro-torture audience. So why does the Bush Administration want to push the line that Gitmo is just like summer camp?

So says Justin Rood.

Last night I was walking my dog around our new neigborhood. And like any good aspiring blogofascist, I was trying to figure out a way to lighten up the content on my blog. Unless you’re our Torquemada-in-Chief or a troll on Political Animal, you just can’t talk about torture 24/7. Tbogg has the Pre-Friday Random Ten. My favorite blogger, Mr. Drum, invented cat blogging. Surely, I could think of something.

And that’s when it hit me, or rather walked past me. Alyssa Milano, holding a small furry creature under her arm, approached me in the opposite direction and proceeded to fawn over my one-year-old Rat Terrier, Lali. “So cute”, she said as we passed in the dwindling evening sun.

If it’s good enough for her, it should be good enough for all of us. And with that, I’d like to introduce my first regular feature, “Alyssa Milano thinks my dog is cute…Blogging”. Share and Enjoy.

This is a waterboard. When the Congress passes the Military Commissions Act it will become legal for American interrogators to strap terrorism suspects to such a device, whether they be foreigners or American citizens. Now you may be thinking that young women in bikinis eat meal worms while tied to these things every week on network television. You might even add in a “harrumph” for emphasis, but check out where this picture is from:

Via Sully*, David Corn writes:

Below are photographs taken by Jonah Blank last month at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities.

Yes, that Khmer Rouge. And before you ask, from Jonah Blank, the source of the photos:

Incidentally, the waterboard in these photo wasn’t merely one among many torture devices highlighted at the prison museum. It was one of only two devices singled out for highlighting (the other was another form of water-torture–a tank that could be filled with water or other liquids

Something tells me that on this version of Fear Factor the consolation prize leaves something to be desired.

_{* I know I said I would stop reading Sullivan, but I can’t help it. I hope my three readers(woot!) won’t hold it against me.}

© Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.

Habeas Corpus, when roughly translated from Latin, means “Your ass is mine.” At least that’s what it used to mean. Unless something extraordinary happens in the Senate this evening, what was once one of the foundations of our system of government, will be relegated to the status of a trivia question.

The House passed the Military Commissions Act by a vote of 253 to 168, with 34 Democrats voting with the majority. The Senate voted down an Ammendment that would have preserved Habeas by a vote of 51-48. As Matt Stoller says, this was the only real chance to put a stop the bill’s passage in the Senate.

So now we wait. I will update this post to mark the beginning of America 2.0.

Update: September 28, 2006, 06:37 PM. That’s the birthdate of America 2.0, where Mom and apple pie can be shoved in your rectum to make you talk.

Of all the ways to kill off a Democracy, we choose this?

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

It turns out that all you need to bring down a democracy is a Republican-controlled government and a handful of glow sticks.

(Photograph By: Mark Wilson)

Conservative journalist Richard Miniter penned [updated link] an op-ed in the New York Post on September 15 with the subtitle, “At Gitmo, PC Rules Let Qaedas Plot On”. The column’s main intent, besides making Rep. Duncan Hunter look like a reasonable man, is to assert that not only are Gitmo’s 440 detainees being treated too humanely, but that their soft treatment is actually putting American servicemen at risk.

Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it’s dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has developed in the camp. Military intelligence can’t yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for making weapons and so on.

That’s right America, Al-Qaeda isn’t just under your bed. Gitmo is crawling with them apparently. And just how dangerous are they?

The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005 to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.

Now that’s what I call a dirty bomb. All this, combined with the fact that many detainees have tried to commit suicide attacks against themselves, should give every American pause.

It does make you wonder though, since the Army can document everything from detainee misconduct to Al-Qaeda’s favorite food (It’s fillet-o-fish), why can’t the Army put these guys on trial and seperate the bomb-throwers from, well, the shit-throwers.

According to a report from Human Rights Watch, the following countries had documented cases of torture in 2004 & 2005:

China
Egypt
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Malaysia
Morocco
Nepal
North Korea
Pakistan
Russia
Syria
Turkey
Uganda
Uzbekistan

There’s no doubt that this list is not exhaustive. How long will it be before we take our place between Uganda and Uzbekistan?

Matt Yglesias, being far more eloquent than I, managed to sum up, in a few sentences, my reasons for starting this blog.

(Hat Tip: Atrios)

“It’s a grim future brought to us by grim and deranged men — by people who seem to have developed an unhealthy level of admiration for America’s enemies. (They want the country they run to transform itself into a facsimile of its evil adversaries.) It’s a future in which it may become increasingly hard for decent citizens of this country to say truthfully that they’re proud to be Americans.”

You can start bad wars. You can implement bad policies. You can make a myriad of mistakes as a nation and still retain your soul. Eventually good people come in and try to make things right. But this is different. This is the proverbial Rubicon. Sometimes the debate on the Left and the Right boils down to whether America is a “good” country or a “bad” country. But the institution of torture as policy will make that argument moot, because the fundamental definition of America will have changed.

I’ve had it with Andrew Sullivan. After months of lamenting, condemning, describing, and documenting the torture being carried out by this administration, he plays defense for his favorite Republican savior, Sen. John McCain (R-Wherever the Wind Blows).

McCain pocketed the torture issue for self-serving reasons, and when it came time to put his cards on the table, he folded. He could have left well alone, but let’s not forget what he said when Sen. Dick Durbin brought up the subject on the senate floor:

“I think that Senator Durbin owes the Senate an apology — I don’t know if censure would be in order — but an apology, because it does a great disservice to men and women who suffered in the gulag and in Pol Pot’s ‘killing fields.’ “

If you, like me, are drawn to the car wreck that is Andrew Sullivan, do yourself a favor and look away. I know I will.