1115.org

Michael Froomkin at discourse.net (via The Daou Report) writes:

Barton Gellman’s Washington Post review of Ron Suskind’s new book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” makes it clear who we have to thank for the nation’s new torture policy: George W. Bush himself. The revealing anecdote concerns the much-touted capture of Abu Zubaydah, whom Bush himself touted as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States” — a statement made two weeks after being briefed that this was not in fact the case. Bush’s reaction? Let’s torture the guy to see if he’ll live up to his billing.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.
…
“I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

[…]
Impeachment, the nuclear bomb of politics, is a terrible idea, one which, whether it succeeded or failed, would be very bad for the country both in the short term (the kleptocratic wing of the GOP will fight it like a rat in a box) and in the long term (too many impeachment attempts in a short period of time make it seem too available). And were impeachment to succeed, it would only replace one bad man with another bad (worse?) man.

Yet, regrettably, the time has come where we must search our consciences and ask if any lesser remedy than impeachment can be sufficient for this sort of behavior. Is anything less a form of implicit complicity, or at least acquiescence? What is the right way to not just protest but punish torturing someone in order to justify lies told to the American public?
[…]
What are we to do? Where is the national consensus against this sort of behavior?

The punishment would have to be symbolic. And I think it’ll have to come from the women.

What I have in mind is that from now on, every true patriot who comes within arm’s reach of President Bush should say “Shame on you for everything you have done to shame America!” and then either spit in his face or give him one tight slap.

Of course, the first man to do that would be writhing on the floor in agony in 3 seconds. Unless the Secret Service decided to shoot him instead and ask questions afterwards, which is perfectly possible in the regime of “Dear Leader”. A woman would probably get away with it, though. And at least her life wouldn’t be at risk. Writhing would probably not be on the menu, either.

It may sound like I’m kidding, but I am actually dead serious. At the very least, we need to shame this man. And this seems to be a perfectly reasonable way to go about it. Imagine if Bush can’t go anywhere without running the risk of being slapped by a woman who says “Shame on you for everything you have done to shame America!” He’d have to just hunker down in the White House, afraid to make public appearances. Stepping out of the White House only in a bubble that allowed no one to come within slapping distance would make him look ludicrously wimpy. Stepping out of the White House without that bubble of protection would make him look ludicrous as he got slapped by women all over the place. I think that’s exactly what we need to create. A no-win situation where he gets shamed if he does, and he gets shamed if he doesn’t.