Edward 'Ted' Kennedy (1932-2009)

For some people of a certain age, Ted Kennedy will always be the rich drunk who drove off the Chappaquidick Bridge and sent Mary Jo Kopechne to her watery death. For others like myself, he will always be the scandal tarnished baby brother who would never follow in the footsteps of Jack or Bobby but nevertheless did great good.

An extraordinary 300 laws bear Kennedy's name. In fact, his hands are all over virtually every major liberal Democratic legislative initiative of the past 46 years and a goodly number of bipartisan ones, as well.

These include the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 1972 Title IX Act, 1980 Americans With Disabilities Act, 1985 COBRA Act, 1997 State Children's Health Insurance Program, and President Bush's 2002 No Child Left Behind education initiative. (His first attempt to legislate universal health insurance came in 1969.)

While Kennedy had an outsized influence on domestic policy, he was outspoken about foreign affairs, as well. He opposed the Vietnam and Iraq wars, led congressional efforts to impose sanctions on South Africa and worked for peace in Northern Ireland.

He married for the second time in 1992 to Victoria Anne Reggie, a remarkable person in her own right because she did so much to stabilize a personal life long marked by scandal, and he was a surrogate father to his brothers' children.

While the stain of the death of Kopechne (whose birthday ironically was today) may have prevented Kennedy from ever becoming president, he arguably was more effective and got more done on Capitol Hill.

Although he was called "the Lion of the Senate," most of us do not remember Kennedy for his accomplishments because he was so self effacing, although there could be no more poignant a reminder of the greatness of this exemplar of noblesse oblige than when his Senate colleagues -- liberals and conservatives alike -- wept after it was announced that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer.

That disease has now taken the last of the Kennedy men in his 78th year. That he did not live to see his most cherished goal attained -- the reform of health care -- is sad, but there would be no greater tribute to a man who was born into one of America's wealthiest families but worked tirelessly for the downtrodden to pass it in his memory and in his name: The Edward Moore Kennedy Health Care Reform Bill.

Top photograph by Steven Crowley/The New York Times

Prosecuting Torturers: Heads Will Roll, But They'll Be the Heads of Scapegoats

For a journalist who has been involved in many big stories over four-plus decades and has reported extensively on the Bush Torture Regime, Monday was like covering a multi-alarm fire at the city's biggest lumber yard.

From the news in the morning that Eric Holder would name a special prosecutor to the release later in the day of a long classified CIA report, one alarm after anoher was rung as the revelations kept coming and the conflagration kept growing.
isBut so much for the personal stuff, because the big takeaways of this amazing day were global:

* Yet again even someone with my knowledge was surprised at the ferocity and extent of the torture regime.

Earlier this year it was the revelation that interrogators were instructed to torture detainees for evidence of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to bolster that key administration fiction for going to war. On Monday we learned that some of the abuses went well beyond what John Yoo and Steven Bybee rubber stamped in their so-called legal opinions.

* Yet again it was evident that despite Holder's actions and the tsunami of released reports, the Obama administration's interest in cleaning the Augean stables of Bush era filth is halfhearted.

In fact, obscured behind the big headlines was the news that the U.S. will continue to rendition terrorism suspects to third countries. I understand why Obama wants to look forward. It's called health-care reform, energy reform and other pieces of an ambitious agenda, but it never has been more evident that he can't have it both ways.

And most importantly:

* Yet again I had the opportunity to reflect on the odyssey of my family and our forebears in this great land and recall that I grew up believing that America does not torture.

But not only has America tortured, but it has tortured with an obsession that makes those usually overwrought Nazi analogies appropriate. One result is a Congress with one political party that endorses threatening people with power drills and the rape of their mothers and another that is almost as bereft of moral authority.

The best that I believe can be hoped for in the face of an ambivalent president and apathetic public is that the entire story of the torture regime eventually will dribble out and a few heads will roll. Sadly, these are likely to be the heads of scapegoats and not the people who are responsible for this darkest chapter in American history.

Image: Engraving from a painting by A. Steinheil

Cartoon du Jour

Michael Ramirez/Investors Business Daily

Voices In The Torture Debate

CIA TORTURE REPORT EXCERPTS (click on images to enlarge)

When the official announcement [of an investigation] came from Holder, it was still vague -- and probably deliberately so -- on where this is all heading. But there's still a suggestion that the main focus is indeed on the actions of the actual interrogators either from the CIA or private contractors, and I don't think that's right. . . . for the most part, the interrogators were following the path set out for them by their leaders, a path that was horribly wrong from Day One. The real conspiracy here is top officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and his high-level cohorts. . . .

The CIA and private interrogators should be in the witness stand, not in the docket. Even more so than Watergate, the next couple of years will determine whether some Americans are truly above the law.

-- WILL BUNCH

I guess what especially turns my stomach here is that the idea wasn't just to inflict mental anguish on a presumably odious man [Abd al-Nashiri] in order to extract information. It was to inflict that pain by exploiting, as a weakness, whatever flicker of nobility or love remained in an otherwise wretched soul. It was a method of torture that would have been effective only because and to the extent there was something human left in him. Maybe I'm being overly sentimental, but every cell in my body is telling me this is sick and wrong.

-- JULIAN SANCHEZ

Having read the CIA report in its entirety, I am struck once again by how humane our treatment of captured terrorists was intended to be, and generally was. The handful of incidents highlighted by press accounts of the report came to light precisely because they were reported as deviations from the treatment of detainees that had been authorized by DOJ lawyers.

-- JOHN HINDERAKER

Doesn't look like you'll see anything going beyond a few agents. I think the way this is going, and the general lack of outrage from Americans, says a lot about what we value. I really have no doubt that we could -- indeed would -- start torturing again, in the event of another terrorist attack. Maybe not under Obama, but certainly the take-away is that the executive is going to get a great deal of leeway on these cases.

-- TA-NEHISI COATES

One remarkable aspect of this entire tragic affair is just how extensively papered it is. Everyone was trying to cover themselves, and it created a lot of evidence. This paper trail is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it makes it easy for a Truth Commission (or some similar entity) to assemble all the information and then to investigate gaps, etc. Second, it shows just how directly all of these policies came from straight the top.

-- PUBLIUS

Are we to believe that the men who killed 3,000 men, women, and children were so sensitive that those [CIA] threats would leave them psychologically scarred for life -- but mass murder didn't? Will the DOJ now prosecute police officers who blow smoke in subjects' faces, either inadvertently or deliberately, during interrogations? Isn't this defining torture down to an absurd level? If anything, it shows that the statutes governing torture are ridiculously vague.

-- ED MORRISSEY

If more of the covert side of the U.S. government is not encompassed by legislation, then every time a right wing government gets in, it will just go back to Bushism. Or worse.

-- JUAN COLE

Dick Cheney's claims haven't stood up well to scrutiny. Imagine that.

-- STEVE BENEN

Is there another part of the government that we allow to just engage in wanton lawlessness, and then when the misdeeds are uncovered, the first priority in the investigation is the department’s "morale?" If IRS agents found a way to embezzle millions of dollars, when we discovered it and prosecuted them, would we worry about the morale of the IRS?

-- JOHN COLE

[A]s if we weren't arguing over enough things already, any development on this front is bound to bring a whole other set of administration critics out of the woodwork, led by Mr. Undisclosed Location himself, who will surely pop up soon to say that Holder's move weakens our ability to defend ourselves and proves that the attorney general is a freedom-hater. Just what Obama needs.

-- MICHAEL TOMASKY

Chris Cilizza said on Hardball that the White House is upset because the DOJ's tepid torture investigation is distracting from the health care debate.

Does anyone believe that?

I might believe that in other circumstances, but at this point I think the White House is thrilled to have Dick Cheney front and center.

-- DIGBY

Americans who want to justify or endorse the torture we engaged in should be required to know what was actually done -- not hide behind the comforting myth that "all we did was pour some water down the noses of 3 bad guys"

-- GLENN GREENWALD

[I]t need not be the end of the story. Indeed, it can be the beginning if we make it so. We cannot stop this sad and minuscule attempt to restore a scintilla of accountability to some individuals low down on the totem pole. Eric Holder is doing what he can. But we can continue to lobby and argue for the extension of accountability to the truly guilty men who made all this happen and still refuse to take responsibility for war crimes on a coordinated scale never before seen in American warfare, and initiated by a presidential decision to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions and refuse to abide by their plain meaning and intent.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

Seems To Have Lost More Than His Ball

President Obama golfs on Martha's Vinyard.
Photograph via Getty Images

Getting Stoned In The Animal World

Herbivorous birds supplement their high-fiber diets of nuts, seeds and fruit by swallowing grit, known in scientific terms as gastroliths, or stomach stones. This, it is believed, takes the place of certain strong muscles and bones, such as those associated with the jaw, which help to pulverize and process food.

Domestic fowl, crocodiles, alligators, seals and sea lions also are into gastroliths to help in food grinding, and so were dinosaurs. The remains of a ginormous Dolichorhynchops plesiosaur, a marine reptile, recently was unearthed in southern Utah. In its gut were 289 stones.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

A stray kitten turns on the charm at a London animal shelter.
Photograph by Dan Kitwood/Getty

Further Beyond The Pale: CIA Torture Exceeded Even Bush Regime's Own Policy

Mr. Al-Jamadi regrets that he will be unavailable to testify

From a moral and ethical standpoint, there never has been any question that the torture of terrorism suspects under CIA supervision was wrong. From a legal standpoint, there never has been any question that it violated domestic and international law. But for the Bush administration, which encouraged these abhorrent practices and then went to extraordinary lengths to deny and then justify the their use, it all was in the service of an agenda in which the fundamentals of American democracy were trampled.

And so after seven months of sending mixed signals, the White House yesterday sent a few more not coincidentally timed for President Obama to be out of town on vacation.

On the one hand:

* Attorney general Eric Holder is endorsing a recommendation from Justice's once disgraced Office of Professional Responsibility to reopen nearly a dozen abuse cases and has appointed a special prosecutor, as well as further investigate John Yoo and Jay C. Bybee. These are the two key Justice lawyer who declared torture to be legal in twilight-zone opinions reverse engineers to satisfied the fevered minds of Vice President Cheney and others.

* A classified 2004 CIA report that examined the agency's treatment of detainees finally was made public in response to a ACLU lawsuit. It stated that, among other things, interrogators threatened to kill the children of one detainee amd told another that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him.

On the other hand:

* A number of Bush era detainee-related policies are being continued, albeit with a veneer of accountability. (More about these later.)

Holder's special prosecutor will be John Durham, who has spent the last two years investigating the illegal destruction of CIA torture videotapes. His mandate will be relatively narrow: To look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation into any aspects of the labyrinthine case.

The AG's decision is at odds with Obama's oft-stated view that he would rather move forward rather than jeopardize his ambitious policy agenda. Obama says that the decision was the AG's to make, but you can be sure that the green light was cleared first with the Oval Office.

The decision also poses problems for the CIA, and agency Director Leon Panetta said in an e-mail to employees yesterday that he would "stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given."

* * * * *

The abuses detailed in the OPR report primarily took place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and in Afghanistan and generally involved lower-level detainees, and it is very important to note that some of those abuses even go beyond what Yoo and Bybee said was okey-dokey.

Among the more notorious cases being reopened are those of Manadel al-Jamadi and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Al-Jamadi, a suspect in the bombing of a Baghdad Red Cross office, died in 2003 in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib after being captured by Navy Seals and given what is known as a "Palestinian hanging" in which a prisoner's hands are secured behind his back and suspended by his arms. CIA officials paid a local taxi driver to take away Al-Jamadi's body, while a bloodied sandbag hood and other evidence was destroyed.

Al-Nashiri, suspected as the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole, was initially held at a black site where he was waterboarded and threatened with a handgun and a power drill if he did not cooperate. Al-Nashiri confessed to his role and in December was belatedly charged before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay. The charges were dropped in February pending an Obama administration review of all Guantánamo detentions.

In another case, a gun was fired in a room next to a detainee who was being questioned to convince him another detainee had been killed. Perhaps not surprisingly, threats of summary execution are against federal law.

The OPR report had been five years in the making, obviously was not a priority and had been bitterly criticized by Bush lapdog Michael Mukasey, the administration's third and arguably worst AG insofar that he had been a federal judge and should have known better.

When Holder took over, he cleaned house at OPR and appointed veteran federal prosecutor Mary Patrice Brown to head up the office, which in one of its most notorious Bush era actions concluded that although Monica Goodling had violated federal law by screening job applicants for career positions at Justice based on their political and ideological affiliations, as well as whether they might be gays or lesbians, her resignation "had been punishment enough."

The reopened cases may be difficult to prosecute if evidence was mishandled and witnesses and victims are unreliable or cannot be located.

A team of Justice lawyers investigating claims of CIA abuses toward the end of the Bush administration recommended seeking an indictment in only one instance: CIA contractor David Passaro, who was convicted of assault, but not murder, for beating a detainee at a military base in Afghanistan with a metal flashlight who died a short time later. Passaro's sentence was affirmed earlier this month by an appeals court.

There a big reason to not hold one's breath over even yesterday's positive developments, as well as a dash of hopefulness and a very big gripe.

The reason: As noted here, American troops tend to get a pass when it comes to bad stuff while CIA operatives are expected to reach for the old Black & Decker and do other really bad things.

The hopefulness: It seems to me that private contractors who were key players in the torture of suspects might be especially vulnerable, including Passaro and these two monsters.

And the big gripe: While it now seems possible that some of the operatives who were goaded on by important people with big offices may become fall guys, the Cheneys will skate and the American people won't give a rat's ass.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in related news:

* Just hours before the OPR report was released, Obama approved creation of a new elite team to question key terror suspects. The purpose is to bring together the different groups, including the CIA, military and FBI, that have handled interrogations.

* To the chagrin of human-rights groups, it also was announced that third-country renditions will continue, but supposedly with greater oversight to prevent abuses.

* In a reversal of Pentagon policy, the military (but not the CIA) is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of terrorism suspects being held at militants who were being held in secret at black sites in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The military had argued that disclosing details about detainees at the secret camps could tip off other militants and jeopardize counterterrorism missions.

The most famous of these America's Disappeared was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose false confession about a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was induced by torture methods that included a mock burial. Al-Libi is believed to have died earlier this year in Libya.

Meanwhile, the most anticipated report of all was not released.

That's the long-awaited report from Justice's Office of Responsibility that is said to conclude that at least Yoo and Bybee violated their ethical duties by producing legally fallacious conclusions. In other words, in bad faith.

Cartoon du Jour

Glenn McCoy/Universal Press Syndicate

An Index To Torture-Related Posts

Kiko's House has published dozens of posts on the Bush Torture Regime over the last two years. Among the highlights are:

Caught in a Big Lie, Cheney Backs Off (6/4/09) LINK.

A Newspaper's Cowardice, A Smoking Gun & More (5/13/09) LINK.

Washington & The U.S. Enter Uncharted Territory As The Torture Regime Dam Breaks (4/23/09) LINK.

Obama & The Bush Torture Regime: Howcum That Smell Seems So Familiar? (4/9/08) LINK.

The GOP Takes A Stand (1/24/09) LINK.

Heroes of 2008: Prosecutors & Lawyers Who Protested The Bush Torture Regime (12/3/08) LINK.

Should Obama Take The Easy Way Out On Bush Era Crimes? (11/19/08) LINK.

Why Were Psychologists Behind The Curve On Torture? (11/16/08) LINK.

Guantánamo Seems So Yesterday (11/7/08) LINK.

Opening A New Front In The War On Law (10/6/08) LINK.

Why John McCain Really Wasn't Tortured (9/8/08) LINK.

Guantánamo Trials: Castles Built Of Sand (8/18/08) LINK.

Should Torture Regime Architects Be Tried As War Criminals? (8/11/08) LINK.

Nuremberg Gravity, Guantánamo Folly (8/8/08) LINK.

David Addington: A Patriot Or Traitor? (7/25/08) LINK.

Mukasey Changes His Tune But the Song Remains the Same (7/22/08) LINK.

'The Dark Side,' Or How The War on Terror Became a War on American Ideals (7/15/08) LINK.

'What I Tell You Is Three Times True' (7/2/08) LINK.

Obama & Those Bush Era Legal Skeletons (3/11/09) LINK.

The Willful Ignorance of Professor John Yoo (6/19/08) LINK.

Taking a Cue From the Bataan Death March (6/6/08) LINK.

Mukasey's Dangerously Disingenuous Defense (5/28/08) LINK.

U.S. Tortured Gitmo Detainees For Beijing (5/22/08) LINK.

Another Setback For the Torture Regime (5/14/08) LINK.

Welcome To Italy, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Hereby Under Arrest For War Crimes (4/25/08) LINK.

Following The Torture Trail: Were War Crimes Committed? (4/18/08) LINK.

Why We Should Go Slow on Prosecuting Bush & His Torture Helpmates (4/17/08) LINK.

'No Torture, No Exceptions' (3/15/08) LINK.

Yet Another Dark Day For America (3/8/08) LINK.

The Shame of Mukasey, Schumer, Feinstein, Scalia & McCain (2/15/08) LINK.

Why a Constitutional Showdown Is Necessary In the Torture Tapes Scandal (1/11/08) LINK.

Torture: The Day of Reckoning At Hand? (10/30/07) LINK.

So What's With All the Nazi Analogies? (10/16/07) LINK.

Would Jesus Have Tortured? (10/7/07) LINK.

Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Blackest of the Bush Administration's Black Marks (10/6/07) LINK.

Images by Matt Mahurin

Did Cash For Clunkers Program Work?

Of course it did, but its success has to be measured against who benefited.

When the program ended at midnight Monday, the entirety of the $3 billion program had been gobbled up by upwards of 600,000 buyers who were given $4,500 to exchange old gas guzzlers for new vehicles that get at least 22 miles to the gallon.

The primary purpose of Cash for Clunkers was to jump start the ailing American auto industry, and that it has done -- to an extent. July sales were up 2.4 percent and judging from the crowds in showrooms, August sales will be, too.

Five of the most traded-in cars were Fords while two of the five most popular new cars were Fords. The other three were Japanese makes, and this has everything to do with the fact the General Motors and Chrysler offer few fuel-thrifty cars.

There is an additional downside: People attracted to a program such as Cash For Clunkers or any of the popular rebate schemes that have kept Detroit on life support probably were going to buy new vehicles anyway, so the program actually cannibalizes from future sales.

Lights Out Lee: A 5-0 Record & 0.63 ERA

As Will Bunch nicely puts it, he's the most unflappable Lee to wear a grey road uniform since Manassas.

This Cud's For You

Some of my best friends have been goats. Seriously. This is because I lived on a dairy goat farm for many moons and came to love these irrascible ruminants for their quirky personalities, independence and off-the-wall antics. This included a fondness for the canvas roofs of convertibles, including the rag top of a Bentley driven by a millionairess who would stop by because she had a child who couldn't tolerate cows' milk.

Among goats' many talents is the ability to chew their way through the most dense underbrush. Don't believe me? Check this out.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

WORLD WATCHER
By Jack Spencer
Hat tip to Woods' Lot

The Afganistan-Pakistan War: What Good Is It For? (That's A Trick Question.)

A MARINE COMES UNDER FIRE IN AFGHANISTAN

Barack Obama inherited two wars. The war in Iraq should never have happened, of course, but it did and George Bush kicked the bloody can down the road and into the lap of the new president. After 9/11, the war in Afghanistan inevitable, but Bush starved it of boots and resources to feed the neocon beast that had pushed him into the first war.

The upshot is that despite the military successes of the Surge, Iraq is thisclose to descending into another orgy of sectarian violence as U.S. troops pretty much remain in barracks and prepare to withdraw.

It is probable that the country will devolve into chaos when the last troops are gone, leaving the situation in the Middle East more chaotic than before the ill-fated invasion to topple Saddam Hussein became the Occupation From Hell and wasted over 4,300 American lives. Thanks, neocons.

If possible, the situation in Afghanistan (and neighboring Pakistan) is even more volatile as the U.S.-led NATO force death toll ticks ever upward. There have been 1,330 deaths since the post-9/11 invasion, small potatoes compared to Iraq, but the pace has picked up considerably and August will have been the bloodiest month by far and 2009 the bloodiest year by far.

As was the case with Vietnam, public opinion has been observed in the breech when in other post-World War II conflicts, but it is kind of sad that a majority of Americans now oppose the Afghan war when you consider that it is the main theater of the War on Terror. Two reasons for this: Americans are a distracted and war weary people and it's pretty obvious that the Taliban are winning.

If NATO forces are ever to succeed in Afghanistan it will be through a counterinsurgency campaign. While the U.S. military learned belatedly in Iraq that traditional symmetrical warfare was a non-starter and the Surge strategy was built on the classical tenets of asymmetrical warfare, such a campaign in Afghanistan will take years and there simply may not be the money, let alone the will power.

Add to this the fact that seeming signs of progress such as the national elections last week, growth of the Afghan army and infrastructure improvements are illusory.

There is deep contempt for a central Afghan government that is abjectly corrupt and incapable of defending its people. Afghanistan remains a safe haven for the Taliban and other terror groups that are expanding their turf. There are too few troops, they are too widely dispersed, do not have the support of the locals, and too slow to adapt to counterinsurgency tactics, and then there is presence of those Iraq war bogeymen, the hired thugs of Blackwater.

There is another seldom remarked on aspect of the bathos of Afghanistan: Unlike Vietnam, which had rubber and oil during that war, and Iraq, which has oil and more oil, Afghanistan has zero natural resources to export. (Opium doesn't count.)

If Afghanistan is a failed state, then what does that make Pakistan? A failed state with nuclear weapons and an intelligence service that works hand in glove with the Taliban and other terror groups.

The AfPak policy shared by President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose British troops are only outnumbered by Americans, is democracy building and a strong Afghan state. If that sounds depressingly familiar, as well as a recipe for making the same mistakes all over again, it is.

Top photograph by Goran Tomasevic

Tuning In To The AfPak Channel

Changing times have prompted a change in the Kiko's House blogroll. The "Iraq & Mideast" blogroll has been renamed the "Iraq & AfPak" blogroll and now includes the best website I've seen on the war in South Asia, Foreign Affairs magazine's AfPak Channel. It's bit wonky, but you're not going to be reading this stuff in the mainstream media.

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

Joe Biden: No Mere Placeholder He

It was a year ago yesterday that Barack Obama picked a big senator from a little state to be his running mate. While I cheered the selection as a fellow Delawarean who had sort of grown up with Joe Biden and thought he'd be a great fit, how have things worked out?

Damned well.

Biden has not significantly curbed his proclivity for saying awkward things at inopportune times. Nobody really thought he would. But he hasn't inadvertently started any wars and has been a breath of fresh air after Darth Cheney.

In other words, he has restored a balance to the office that it has been easy to forget.

Biden has been loyal but not been afraid to tell Obama when he thinks he's wrong, has put his foreign policy chops to good use and has been a point man -- or trial-balloon floater, if you will -- on a number of issues.

A worthy start.