There has been plenty of justified praise for President Obama as he slowly but surely closes the Gitmo Gulag. It is by well known that the Bush Regime used this prison, as well as others, to torture men who committed the “crimes” of resisting the American desert-killing fields in Mesopotamia and having Arab names. We later learned out from Blitzkrieg Rumsfeld that these “terrorists” were actually beaten, starved, deprived of sleep, and tortured with insects in an attempt to produce a false 9/11-Iraqi link.

Photo: Craig Seals

But what about the lesser known, and even crueler, military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan? What goes on at Bagram makes Gitmo look like a day-care center. According to a 2,000 page U.S. Army report, two prisoners were chained to the ceiling and then beaten to death. Autopsies later revealed extreme trauma to both of their legs, describing it as similar to being run over by a bus. The International Red Cross Report found massive overcrowding, harsh conditions, threats of HIV-infection and sodomy, weeks of complete isolation, routine beatings, and stress positions (a favorite at Abu Ghraib).

It went nearly unnoticed, but Obama’s “Justice” Department stated that it agreed with the previous Administration that the over 600 detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. Courts to challenge their detention, and it only took two sentences. That’s it. No investigations, no hearings, no discussions. Bush’s Military Commissions Act of 2006, one of the scariest pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen, was used to justify these indefinite imprisonments, and Obama’s silence on Bagram can only mean he condones this Caesar-esque power.

Why is Obama closing one U.S. Gulag but keeping open another? Well, Gitmo is 90 miles off the shore of Florida, so its stain hits closer to home, and it’s a way of throwing a bone to his anti-war base while he pulls new war levers like a debt-ridden gambler at a casino. You might not know it from any of the Pharoah-fanning media, but Obama is doing his best Alexander the Great Slaughterer impression in Afghanistan as his 21,000 troop “surge” is beginning to arrive. In fact, the bombing of Afghanistan has increased every single month Obama has been in office. There’s going to be a lot more detainees headed Bagram’s way thanks to O-bomber (and his equally bloodthirsty Sec. of State Hillary the Hawk) as he spends $200 million dollars a day bombing the Afghan countryside.

I bring up Obama’s torture two-face because tomorrow, June 26, is the International Day of Support for Victims of Torture. The CIA, FBI, and the Pentagram Pentagon might be up for weeks if they thought about all of their victims of torture, as well as the other rarely-discussed victims: the 5th and 8th Amendments of the Bill of Rights. The 8th protects against “cruel and unusual punishment,” and the 5th declares that no one “shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.” Obama, like Bush before him, is willing to use tortured (false) confessions to prosecute detainees, and Obama’s civil liberties axe is just as sharp as Bush’s.

On Torture Day, Obama’s White House will continue to be haunted by the ghosts of Bagram.

Whether competing in a world famous shore-to-shore footrace or the desperate domain of Republican politics, running with your dick out won’t win either in 2009.  As San Francisco police signal a crack down on the infamous public nudity on the 12K of bedlam known as Bay to Breakers, Republican insiders are anticipating a public smack down to the naked criticism of the infamous Dick Cheney.

Photo: Remy Steinegger

The entirely former Vice President has been on a media blitz since the Obama administration’s release of the “torture memos,” campaigning in defense of the enhanced interrogation tactics he had a direct hand in crafting.  Making the rounds all month on the Sunday television shows and dropping by every conservative radio host of sizable audience at least twice, Cheney has broken the long standing White House protocol of abstaining from the public criticism of one’s executive successor.  One of Cheney’s main goals of his public streak got squashed by the CIA today, denying the declassification of documents he suggests would justify the waterboarding now synonymous with the Bush administration.    The other obvious goal – the vindication of the legacy of him and his boss – seems to be falling on equally deaf ears.

Just as naked hippies pissing on the front lawn at two in the afternoon seems an order of magnitude less funny this year than last, so too does the fear, uncertainty and doubt that served Cheney so well while in office.  With the obvious failure of Cheney’s neo-conservative fiscal and foreign policies seen in the last 365 days, the prospect of hearing another minute of Dick Cheney’s opinion on anything is as welcome as the sun shining on a hairy San Francisco runner’s cornhole.  This shit just isn’t funny anymore.

A relevant minority is as important to Democratic honesty as it is to Republican survival.  Any one left to feast only on his/her own bullshit will eventually be unable to distinguish the dinner from the doo-doo.  So too will it be for the Democrats if the Republicans continue to insist on the Bush/Cheney brand of ideological purity.  The left unchecked can be just as dangerous to our long term well-being as the right.

In 2009, FUD is as out of style as a three-button jacket and a fauxhawk.  If the GOP wants to be competitive in 2010, it needs to zip its Dick up before it runs.

Intending to put a dark chapter in the history of America behind us, the Obama administration’s release of the torture memos may be the first real miscalculation of his first 100 days.  If Obama’s goal was to move the country forward and conclude the issue as definitely wrong but also definitely over, the wake of this week evidences failure.  Instead of turning over a new leaf, it seems Washington is turning back the page with the familiar who knew what and when game looking to play over an uncomfortable summer of special probes and commission hearings.

How did Obama’s usual golden touch go awry with this move on an issue that can only serve to distract from his agenda?  He may have misidentified his enemy.  By declassifying the memos, it seems Obama’s intent was to placate his base with enough disclosure to satisfy their outrage without letting it forment into a fully rabid thirst revenge.  Thinking that the most vocal advocates for keeping the issue in the national spotlight would come from his side of the aisle, the Democrats acted mostly according to plan, with Speaker Pelosi being the only leader calling for heads arranged neatly on platters.  For the most part, the left majority was willing, however reluctantly, to move on.

Where Obama went wrong was expecting a non-loco response from the right.  Of the dozens of different reactions likely gamed out in the West Wing, I can’t imagine anyone anticipated a full-throated defense of torture as a possible outcome.

Dick Cheney came out immediately declaring that the torture techniques produced intelligence that prevented another 9/11.  Minority Leader John Boehner wants to know if the juice was worth the squeeze.   Former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer declared on CNN that “waterboarding was pretty close to the line” but that he had no problem with sleep deprivation.  Bill O’Reilly diminuated the technique of waterboarding, saying “Torture, my ass.”

Across the Republican board, where public position on the use of torture hasn’t been entirely defensive, it has been a tempered refusal to dismiss its usefulness entirely.  Such a position is entirely untenable, particularly as more of the graphic details of these techniques become public.  The month of 183 waterboardings of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is just the tip of the iceberg, and the Republican Party is nearly tumbling over themselves to sign up as pro-torture.

Did they learn nothing from abu-Ghraib?  This is a position that completely devoid of win.  Even if it is disclosed that waterboarding led to information preventing a terrorist attack on the Golden Gate Bridge, fair-minded people are going to ask if drowning a man for 35 minutes every day for a month was necessary to get that information.  The longer they defend these techniques, more details are going to get released.  The more details come out, the more apologetic for the Bush administration Republicans who come out in support of these techniques are going to look.  And, obviously, the more Republicans are framed as Bush apologists, the more damage done to their hopes of finding political bottom in 2010.

How are they getting steered into this losing battle?  The Democrats only stand to lose from the distraction of the probes and investigations, but certainly nothing in the way of real political capital.  By even having a stance on the question of torture, they are implying their own complicity.

The torture issue, more than any other in these first 100 days, raises the question of who is running the Republican Party.  A fun exercise is naming the top five most recognizable conservatives in the public eye.  John McCain’s leadership exhausted from last year’s failed bid, the right’s “brain trust” is filled with names like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Joe the Plumber.  Rush Limbaugh has demonstrated greater clout than the party’s own chairman.  And on this issue, a hurdle that can be easily cleared with even cursory coordination, Republicans are stoking their own pyre.

Who is responsible for charging headlong into this torture battle that is unwinnable?  Who is the general of this retard army?

That day I was reminded why I’m in law school. With bile in my throat and revulsion in my stomach I watched as one human being tortured another human being. It was a simulation, it was on video, but it broke my heart all the same.

The man giving the presentation, Mike Ritz, used to be an Army interrogator. Now he makes a living by conducting “survival training” courses for people willing to pay for the privilege of being tortured. When asked what the line is between torture and not, he responded that CIA officials use to say “if the subject dies, you know you’ve gone too far.” This type of logic is on par with that old world chestnut, “if she floats, she’s a witch. If she drowns, she’s innocent.” Yet this was, until very recently, the extent of the legal logic our nation employed in regards to the definition of torture. Water-boarding, the technique of holding a person down, stuffing a wet rag in their mouth, and pouring water over them to simulate drowning, is but an “advanced interrogation technique.” Like the Spanish Inquisition was an “advanced investigatory panel.”

How does the human mind form these horrors? How do we create such madness? Do we honestly think men like the ones responsible for 9/11, ones who are not only willing but eager to suffer and die for their cause would crack under such pressure? And how is it possible that the person performing such procedures, such cruel and malicious practices, isn’t himself made that much less human? How else can we explain people inviting this kind of punishment as form of sick entertainment? We become so numb that only extremity deserves a response.

This is what the Bush administration has done. By engaging in a legal, semantic battle, they have made all of us, every American in whose name torture is performed, significantly less human.