Further On Up The Road

By now, we've become inured to the grotesque spectacle of Bush Regime appointees behaving as if the rules of reality can be suspended at the whim of the Grand and Glorious Decider. Thus it is with a dull sense of soul-weary duty, rather than with an acute sense of outrage freshly whetted against a novel form of evil, that we examine the casual ratification of the practice of “waterboarding” -- that is, controlled drowning – resulting from Senate confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey.

Mr. Mukasey was advertised as a sober, independent jurist not beholden to the Bush Regime's dictatorial dogmas. Yet on the razor's-edge question of a defining claim of dictatorial power – that is, can the president authorize torture, in the specific form of “waterboarding”? -- Mukasey revealed himself to be a Bu'ushist in full.

Replying in writing to a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry, Mukasey insisted that he personally finds waterboarding “repugnant” but not necessarily illegal.

“I said at the hearing that torture violates the law and the Constitution, and the president may not authorize it as he is no less bound by constitutional restrictions than any other government official,” wrote Mukasey. He also acknowledged that military personnel are expressly prohibited from subjecting a detainee to “waterboarding” under the Detainee Treatment Act and the Field Manual on Intelligence.

If you hear a Limbaugh-sized “but” in the offing, you're absolutely correct.

With respect to the use of that technique by civilian interrogators, such as CIA officials, Mukasey engaged in a prolonged exercise in omphaloskepsis, refusing to rule out the practice of waterboarding since it is not specifically described as “torture” in an existing statute. The same is true, of course, of myriad other sadistic exercises currently in use or yet to be invented by the perverse ingenuity of fallen man, any of which could be pressed into service by the Bu'ushists or their successors.

There is no ambiguity here as to whether waterboarding is torture. It was identified as such for the purpose of prosecuting as war criminals those Japanese military police who practiced it as an intelligence and counter-insurgency measure. African warlords found it useful in sowing terror and despair among their opponents. The Khmer Rouge, who didn't flinch from using every depraved and barbarous tool devised by their singularly resourceful imagination, found waterboarding to be their most effective torture protocol.

In a letter of their own (.pdf) to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, former Judge Advocates General for all four branches of the military wrote: “Waterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances. To suggest otherwise -- or even to give credence to such a suggestion -- represents both an affront to the law and to the core values of our nation.” (Emphasis added.)

And yet, those loyal to the cult of the Dear Leader affect a puzzled agnosticism when asked if waterboarding is illegal torture, rather than a permissible form of “enhanced interrogation.”

Mukasey, faithfully following The Decider's example, took refuge in circular reasoning: Torture is illegal; the administration practices waterboarding; therefore, waterboarding can't be illegal, because the administration practices it.

Acting like an idiot – and a dishonest one, at that – for public consumption was a relatively trivial sacrifice for Mukasey. Daniel Levin, former acting assistant Attorney General, made a more substantial sacrifice in the service of The Decider's torture prerogative.

A diagram illustrating a waterboarding technique favored by African warlords during a conflict in Chad.

In 2004, Levin voluntarily underwent waterboarding at a US military facility in order to determine whether it constitutes torture. Even though he was in friendly hands that withheld the worst from him, and surrounded by medical personnel ready to administer help to him, Levin found the experience utterly terrifying.

And yet ... even then he couldn't bring himself to say that the practice “amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances,” as the JAG officers observed. Instead, he wrote that it could be regarded as illegal torture unless carried out in a highly limited way under appropriate supervision.

Levin's December 2004 memo on interrogation, which described torture as “abhorrent,” contained a footnote pointedly denying that the previous Bush Regime legal opinions on the subject were incorrect. Levin was instructed to revise his memo to highlight the substance of his footnote – namely, that torture was still legal, whether or not it was expressly forbidden by law. But Levin was forced out by other Regime officials who caught the scent of heresy and apostasy wafting from the first draft of his memo.

With the connivance of key Democrats – chiefly the execrable Charles Schumer – Mukasey appears headed for confirmation. Meanwhile, John Bellinger, the chief legal aide to Secretary of State Rice, has pointedly refused to describe waterboarding of US citizens as illegal – even when carried out by foreign intelligence agencies:

Philippe Sands [BBC reporter]: Let me put it in yet another way. Could you imagine any circumstances in which the use of water boarding on an American national by a foreign intelligence service could be justified?

John Bellinger: One would have to apply the facts to the law, the law to the facts, to determine whether any technique, whatever it happened to be, would cause severe physical pain or suffering.

Philippe Sands: So you're willing to exclude any American going to the international criminal court under any circumstances, but you're not able to exclude the possibility of water boarding being used on a United States national by foreign intelligence service? I mean, that just strikes me as very curious.

John Bellinger: Well, I'm not willing to include it or exclude it, I mean, these are issues that our justice department as a matter of interpreting both the domestic law on torture and international law, has concluded that just don't want to get involved in abstract discussions of applying the law to any set of facts.

How should the question of US citizens suffering torture at the hands of foreign interrogators be considered “an abstract discussion”? So zealous is the Bush Regime to protect its self-issued license to torture that it has now validated the arguments used by Japanese war criminals six decades ago to justify their own torture of American servicemen.

As the song says, “You're gonna reap just what you sow – that old sayin' is true ... Just like you mistreat someone, someone's gonna mistreat you.... Further on up the road.”

Bush and his claque aren't likely to suffer for their criminal policies (although hope endures). But they have now openly admitted that, where waterboarding is concerned, Americans are quite likely to catch the hell our rulers have sown.

Video Extra

There was a time when conservatives denounced “situational ethics,” rather than pioneering new frontiers in the same. Even though it might be too much to ask conservatives to keep their categorical imperatives in line, couldn't they at least understand the elemental logic of payback?

There's wisdom in the lyrics of the blues standard performed below by the immortal Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. The performance is (appropriately enough) from a 1981 London concert called “The Secret Policeman's Other Ball,” a fundraiser for Amnesty International's commendable efforts to combat torture.

Mssrs. Clapton and Beck swap 24-bar leads. Clapton's are elegant. Beck's are incendiary

Dum spiro, pugno!

Fabricating Felonies: Idaho v. William N. Grigg?

Felony, n.

1. One of several grave crimes, such as murder, rape, or burglary, punishable by a more stringent sentence than that given for a misdemeanor.

2. Any of several crimes in early English law that were punishable by forfeiture of land or goods and by possible loss of life or a bodily part.

“What the hell is it now?” I exclaimed, my uncharacteristic lapse into vulgarity provoked by the sight of a police officer striding across our front lawn.

It was the afternoon of a day whose dawn I had welcomed while treating a migraine headache. Few things are more effective at inflicting that condition upon a head of a household than the combination of a young family with expanding needs, a steadily depleting bank account, mercilessly rising price inflation, and the approaching specter of Income Tax Day. And there's nothing quite so aggravating as waking up with a headache -- except perhaps a day that steadily deteriorates from there, as yesterday did for me.

By the time the police officer, without showing a warrant or judicial writ of any kind, had invaded our home, my day had already been disfigured by the breakdown of a major appliance and our antiquated mini-van. So my mood was thoroughly poisonous by the time I strode into our backyard to find out, as it were, what the hell it was now.

“We received a report that there is an abused or neglected animal at this address,” the she-police informed me in what she mistakenly believed to be an authoritative voice, pawing at Chief, our 6-month-old German Shepherd. Chief, who is a little on the skinny side but not otherwise in unusual condition, responded to this news by looking at me worshipfully and wagging his tail. My reaction wasn't nearly as cheerful.

“From whom did you receive this `report'?” I asked in firm but level tone.

“It was an anonymous call,” replied the officer, briskly changing the subject as if it were closed.

“How old is this dog?” she asked. “He appears to be about twenty pounds underweight.”

“Chief is about six months old,” I replied, mentally bookmarking the business about an anonymous “report.” “We got him about a month ago.”

Does this dog look emaciated to you? No, it's not Chief -- but the resemblance is amazing.

“What are you feeding him?” persisted the officer, who as far as I could tell had provided no justification for her presence in our backyard, let alone for her attempt to interrogate me and Korrin (who had joined me by this time).

“I've met you before,” the officer told Korrin, going on to mention that she had seen Korrin and our children with the dog at a local park less than a week earlier, and noticed that the dog seemed a little thin but was well-behaved and content. I bookmarked that fact as well, and tried to answer the question the officer asked before this digression.

“We've been giving him first year puppy chow,” I replied, not seeing how this information could be construed as self-incriminating.

“Ah, well he's grown out of that by now,” the officer declared, proceeding to tell me a specific brand of dog food she considers suitable, and offering the suggestion – no, actually a species of order – that we treat him with a de-worming medicine.

This was all very useful advice, of course, and would have been most welcome had it not been provided by an armed agent of the State who proceeded to threaten me with prison.

“You need to get some weight on that dog,” she said. “I'll have to write this up, because we did receive a report. And I'll have to check back in a few weeks. He seems to be all right; his coat looks fine, and I can tell from the way he acts that he hasn't been abused. But if he's still severely underweight when I come back, we're looking at an animal abuse and neglect charge which is a felony.”

“It is possible to charge me with a felony on the basis of an anonymous `report'?” I asked in a voice that could freeze magma. “Who, exactly, reported the supposed abuse of our dog?”

“I don't know,” the officer replied, as if this were a trivial point, which it isn't. “It was a Fruitland phone number” -- Fruitland being a small town about three miles away. “But since we received a report I was sent here, and now I'm the one who has to make the evaluation.”

“Actually, I have a right to confront my accuser,” I pointed out as politely as I could, which was more than the situation deserved. “And you didn't have probable cause. You pointed out that you saw Chief in the park a few days ago, and he appeared perfectly fine then. Which means that you received a spurious report, and your visit is the `fruit of a poisoned tree.'”

She reiterated her contention that it didn't matter how or why she was there, or what her earlier assessment of Chief's condition may have been.

At this point, Poe's Imp of the Perverse alighted on my shoulder and whispered a transgressive thought in my ear:

This officer is a bear-hug away from a hostage situation – or eternity.

True enough: She was a woman in her late 40s, maybe 5'4” and around 150 pounds. I'm a male in my early 40s who is 5'11” and about 280 pounds (vanity compels me to point out that I'm describing 280 pounds that can be forced through 150-straight Hindu pushups, which I did later in the day to de-toxify from the accumulated rage and frustration). She was armed with a Taser and a handgun. She was, however, within arm's reach. Had I been an actual felon, she would have been in mortal jeopardy.

She knew I wasn't a criminal. And she admitted, at the end of her visit, that there was nothing wrong with Chief that a de-worming and decent diet wouldn't fix. But she was compelled by what she was pleased to call the “law” to treat me as a potential felon, and leave me in a state akin to probation: She is scheduled to return May 1 to see if Chief has put on weight, at which time she would “close the case.”

Let it be said that this officer was not an unpleasant person. She was professional and reasonably friendly, as well as admirably candid. But the system she serves is utterly malignant.

We are discussing, let us not forget, my property. Chief does not belong to the City of Payette, the State of Idaho, or some ephemeral abstraction called “society.” He belongs to me: I bought him with money earned through my productive labor. Yet on the basis of what must be considered a spurious tip from an informant who is as malicious as he is anonymous, I confront the possibility of being tried for a felony for the purported abuse of my own property – the “abuse” in question being low canine bodyweight.

If convicted of a felony, I would lose the right to vote (until my “citizenship” is “restored”) and, more importantly, the "legal" right to armed self-defense – the latter being the most important distinction between a citizen and a slave.

Please indulge me while I illustrate how my situation would be much worse were I living in another community – say, Wilmington, Delaware, where police have been known to gun down innocent people, including a recently married Iraq veteran, for no discernible reason.

Last February, Delaware announced an initiative called “Operation FED-UP” (Federal Enforcement and Detention coupled with Urban Policing), which will be carried out by a joint local/state/federal task force (the sort of alliance from which proceeds no good thing). This venture in Wilmington grew out of a statewide undertaking called “Project Disarm.”

As of February 9, according to the official announcement from the U.S. Attorney for the State of Delaware, “all felons in possession of firearms arrested by Wilmington Police officers will immediately be transferred to the ATF and detained in federal custody pending an initial appearance before a federal magistrate.” Detention in federal custody will continue until a trial before a federal judge. “In effect, the United States Attorney's Office will serve as the local prosecutor for all felon-in-possession cases in Wilmington.”

I'm not acquainted with the laws governing animal cruelty in Delaware, but let's posit – and why not – that they are similar to those in Idaho. Were I a Wilmington resident accused and convicted of the supposedly felonious offense of having a skinny dog, and then found in possession of a firearm (no sane and moral person would ever relinquish the right to own one), upon arrest I would be taken into federal custody – and most likely end up serving hard time in a federal prison.

Yes, initiatives like “Operation FED-UP” supposedly target hard-core criminals. But they are always driven by statistics, and nothing pads an ambitious federal prosecutor's record quite like scooping up non-violent, law-abiding people who have run afoul of some arcane provision of what our rulers insist on calling the “law.”

Aggravating as my experience has been, it's likely to turn out relatively well. But it is a tangible illustration of how easily any resident of the embryonic garrison state in which we now live can have his freedom extinguished, despite doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Do you have a horror story about a run-in with some agent of the State? Sure -- we all do! Please visit The Right Source and share your experience on our message board. While you're there, check our Kevin Shannon's radio show, the Pro Libertate e-zine, and the daily Liberty Minute audio commentaries, too. And be sure to tell your friends!

Submit, Or We'll Kill You

It must never be forgotten that every directive issued by the State and enforced by its agents is coupled with the threat of lethal violence against those who fail to comply. This principle applies to trivial infractions of petty ordinances, such as those dealing with pedestrian conduct and smoking.

Consider the tag-team assault by two policemen on Suren Chukhadzhyan that took place in Pittsburgh a few days ago.

Chukhadzhyan, an Armenian national who resides in Glendale, California, is described as being roughly 6 foot 5 inches in height and weighing in excess of 250 pounds. During a break in a very long bus trip he lit up in what was designated a no-smoking area at a Greyhound bus terminal. This attracted the attention of an employee, who complained to police officer Walter Carlson.

In his report, as related by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Carlson described how he told Chukhadzhyan to move to a designated smoking area. The large man “ignored me and made a cocky smirk to me and was very arrogant,” whined Carlson in his report. “[He] turned away from me an continued to smoke.”

After Carlson ordered him to turn around, Chukhadzhyan did so, blowing smoke “in the direction of the officer” -- hardly a surprising result, since he was now facing that direction. At this point, per the newspaper account, the officer “grabbed the man's arm” -- that is, he caused the situation to escalate to one of physical coercion -- “and said he would be cited.” The Armenian's response – and this is significant – was to de-escalate by extinguishing his cigarette and walking away.

At this point, if Walter Carlson had been a peace officer rather than a juvenile poseur with secret insecurities about the size of his wedding tackle, he would have smiled, shook his head, and walked away. The problem, such as it is, was solved: Chukhadzhyan was no longer smoking in a forbidden zone. That would be the proper reaction of a practicing adult who had chosen to make a living as a peace officer.

Regrettably, nobody fitting that description was on hand at the time. Carlson, like many (quite possibly most) of those now employed by the Homeland Security State, had to assert his Authoritah. He acted on what I've identified as the tacit credo of checkpoint guards and others employed to enforce the State's decrees:

You must show them control.

You must make them submit.

Noticing that Chukhadzhyan had taken a seat inside the terminal and, visibly agitated, was muttering to himself “in what appeared to be Russian,” the officer pursued him inside and “attempted to issue the citation” -- which wasn't necessary to maintain order, and actually created a potential danger to others who hadn't been involved in the matter.

Let's click the pause button on the story at this point to recap and italicize a few things.

Chukhadzhyan's reactions to this point are entirely understandable. He is fifty years old. He was born and lived most of his life in a country ruled by the Soviet secret police. This might explain his contemptuous reaction to Carlson's imperious demand. I know what I would have been thinking: “I lived for decades in the shadow of the KGB, and could have been dragged off to Lubyanka for any of a thousand reasons, and this little gelding thinks he can intimidate me because I'm having a smoke here rather than over there? Well, I'll just take one last drag and then throw the cigarette away; no point in making a big deal out of this.”

I don't know if that's what Chukhadzhyan was thinking, but it would have been in line with his actions, as they were described in Carlson's report.

Chukhadzhyan, confronted by Carlson, walked away peacefully.

By pursuing the matter beyond this point, Carlson is the one who became the aggressor.

That fact is not nullified by the costume he wears or the shiny little shield he was given.

OK – let's hit the “play” button, and resume the Post-Gazette's account:

“Officer Carlson again attempted to issue the citation, but said Mr. Chukhadzhyan stood up suddenly and approached him aggressively. The officer said he pulled out his Taser and warned, `This doesn't have to go this way.'”

Oh, good grief. This guy may not be a “pig,” but he's a Shatner-caliber ham – an honors graduate of the T.J. Hooker Academy for Drama Queens in Blue.

Chukhadzhyan allegedly replied to Carlson's unnecessary threat to use deadly force by saying, “arrest me” and pushing the officer. The Taser was fired by Carlson, but failed to operate because of the Armenian's heavy coat. At this point, according to Carlson, “Chukhadzhyan charged.”

Chad Stevens, an off-duty police officer from out of town, pitched in to help Carlson. Eventually the two of them were able to bull-rush Chukhadzhyan, pinning him against a vending machine, forcing the cuffs on his wrists, and tripping him to the floor. This melee “knocked over seats and sent other travelers scrambling,” notes the paper, offering a rather bland description for a needless episode of violence that placed innocent people at risk. As I noted above, avoiding situations of this sort would be the chief priority of a genuine peace officer.

Chukhadzhyan was placed under arrest for “disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and aggravated assault on Officer Carlson.” How an unarmed man commit “aggravated assault” on a heavily armed individual – who summons his buddy to help him out – is a question that could be profitably pondered by people not hopelessly held hostage by statist assumptions.

He was also reported to the local Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Here's an interesting possibility: If this is treated as a “terrorist” incident, Chukhadzhyan could be held indefinitely, since as a foreign national the habeas corpus guarantee doesn't apply to him as of October 17, 2006 – the day the Bushling signed the Military Commissions Act and the Homeland Security Death Star became fully operational.

Here's something else to consider: Is there any rational reason to doubt that if Carlson the Blue Knight and his equally heroic side-kick hadn't been able to subdue Chukhadzhyan, they would have resorted to lethal force? In fact, given the growing body count racked up by officers using the “non-lethal” Taser, Carlson actually did use potentially lethal force against Chukhadzhyan.

For smoking a cigarette.

After he had put it out and walked away.

And the real outrage is that this episode is not an aberration. This is how law enforcement operates in the era of Homeland Security.

Another beautiful day in the Land of the Free! (Thanks to Infowars.com for the photo.)

Former congressional candidate David Brownlow experienced that reality last December 9 when he and his family (including his 12-year-old daughter) were accosted by Oregon State Trooper Ken Moore and threatened with arrest for the supposed offense of holding up an anti-war protest sign on a sidewalk near a Portland shopping mall.

Brownlow, whose son Jared is serving in Iraq, has described how Trooper Moore was among the motorists who saw the family's sign, which read “Support the Troops – Bring Them Home!” Moore, “visibly agitated,” stomped over to the family, accused them of “breaking the law,” and ordered them to “leave the area immediately.”

Constitution Party of Oregon activist (and suspected Thought Criminal) David Brownlow.

When Brownlow asked politely what law he and his family had broken, Moore bellowed: “When a trooper tells you that you are breaking the law, that's all you need to know,” and that if they didn't move immediately, they would be arrested. Brownlow's wife Suzanne pointed out that they weren't blocking the road or the sidewalk; this prompted the (storm)trooper to jab a finger at her and hiss: “If you do not stop talking, I will arrest both of you for disorderly conduct!”

This would have meant taking into custody the couple's 12-year-old daughter, who by this point was terrified and hiding behind her mother.

The trooper seized the banner – which is to say he stole the family's property at gunpoint – and ordered them to meet him in a nearby parking lot. Once the group had reassembled, the officer – still breathing out various threats to do unpleasant things to the Brownlows – demanded that David produce his driver's license and asked if he was carrying a weapon (he wasn't, despite the fact that he had a concealed carry permit). When Suzanne Brownlow asked where they could “legally” protest if they weren't permitted to do so on a public sidewalk, the officer snarled: “In your front yard.”

At this point, Brownlow recalls, Trooper Moore's rage subsided and he became civil, returning their banner and offering apologies for terrorizing their daughter. “I wondered if this trooper was bipolar or something,” he comments.

While that's a possibility – and an unsettling one at that – I suspect the reason for the officer's change in demeanor is this: He had succeeded in carrying out his mission by controlling the Brownlows and making them submit to his supposed authority.

The Brownlows have filed suit against Trooper Moore, who – like any other armed terrorist – deserves at least to be driven into financial ruin (although his family, if any, would be non-combatants not deserving the same fate).

Thousands or tens of thousands of officious armed bullies like Officer Carlson and Trooper Moore infest our communities. They are not the “local police” who are fondly remembered by many of us (myself emphatically included) with respect and gratitude. Back then, of course, it was possible to find corrupt and abusive police officers, a fact sometimes washed out by the sepia-toned sentimentality that colors our recollections. But we're not dealing with simple corruption, or occasional abuses of power; we confront the product of a social transformation that has taken place over several decades, and that has turned the police into a literal army of occupation.

Law enforcement consultant Tony Cooper, an instructor in terrorism negotiation skills at the University of Texas-Dallas, warned about that transformation more than a decade ago. "I see the formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally,” he told the Washington Post in 1995 “It's an exaggerated concern that they are facing a nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it is stamped out at a very early stage."

While Cooper was chiefly concerned with that mindset among federal agents, his students included many state and local officers attached to SWAT teams and other tactical units, who helped propagate that mindset more widely among police units. With the aid of federal subsidies and material aid from the Pentagon, many “local” police agencies are rapidly taking on the traits of occupying armies.

Bad as this situation already is, it can always be made worse by gun-toting adolescents on the State's payroll who are dressed up like Village People wanna-bes and eagerly looking for an opportunity to push people around. What's really alarming is the extent to which that personality type is increasingly over-represented in our Homeland Security Apparatus.