The Bush administration has defended secretly detaining some suspects as a necessity of the fight against terrorism because officials do not want to tip off terrorist groups that their operatives are in custody.

Pretty weak argument. If someone is actually important to a terrorist group, and they're unaccounted for, then said organization will assume they've been compromised.

They say the comparison with past Latin American regimes is unfair, because those seized by the Americans are not killed and their whereabouts will eventually be revealed.

Shorter: if you like due process and habeas corpus, then you hate America.
Shorter shorter: trust us. Heh.

At this point, are stories like this even a little bit of a surprise to anyone? I don't even get upset at stories like this anymore, because I'm assuming all this is happening anyway -- the news stories are just unearthing the details. Which is good news, not bad. At this point I don't view this stuff as anything more than additional documentation to be used as evidence against Bush & Company in their eventual war-crimes trial.

Pretty much. I'm just trying to maintain the outrage.

I hate the cycle where when a story breaks everyone agrees it would be a huge important deal if it were true, but the administration's defenders swear it isn't true. Then by the time it becomes undeniable, everyone's so sick of it that it isn't a huge deal.

It is somewhat disconcerting watching, though. How quickly it happens. The slide, I mean.

4 is so true and so sad.

3 is so, so, so true, and so frustrating.

I volunteered on this project for HRW last year, btw, compiling press reports etc....I'm fairly out of the loop now, but their counterterrorism researchers are teh awesome. The published reports they do are the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not surprised anymore at revelations that things are worse than I thought, but I'm always taken a little off guard -- probably just a failure of imagination on my part -- by how these things seem stolen directly from the playbook of infamous dictatorial regimes. So while I'm sure the slide will continue, I have no idea how. What's next, mass graves?

Something that I'm still holding to is that our numbers are pretty small by the standards of criminal regimes. Mass graves would genuinely surprise me.

"What's next, mass graves?"

See mass funerals at military bases now.

Mass graves would surprise me now. After I've been conditioned by another year of revelations, who knows? At any rate, with the civilian toll as heavy as it is, whether or not people get piled anonymously in mass graves doesn't make much difference.

This grosses me out. I don't know if that counts as surprise or not.

in their eventual war-crimes trial

Religious man, eh?

The CIA program is bigger than some people would claim, but still tiny when compared to other regimes.

Of course, the techniques were also authorized and/or bled over into the military in Afghanistan and Iraq and that affected far more people. But mass graves would still shock me, yes.

You know, the opposition to this can be extremely disheartening, but it actually has been pretty surprisingly effective on some fronts considering the administration in power & Congressional unwillingness to confront them...I don't know of a single case where a GTMO detainee has been freed by court order, but the litigation has unquestionably led indirectly to many releases. The CIA has apparently not been using the worst techniques for a little while, though that may change with the new exec. order. The military is taking a stronger line against torture--the process by which these technqiues bleed from the CIA prisons to all sorts of detainees has started running in reverse.

There have been some successes. Not enough, but some.

I hope they don't do the mass graves before suitable buildup has deadened my ability to be surprised by it.

"At this point I don't view this stuff as anything more than additional documentation to be used as evidence against Bush & Company in their eventual war-crimes trial."

This would require lots of people to start doing stuff.

14: It's really all in the timing, isn't it.

do any of you really expect a war crimes trial? comparatively, the people on this blog care about this news considerably more than the general population. but our primary concern is in not being depressed.

I don't. As of now, I would be more surprised by war crimes trials involving people in policy making position than I would be by the discovery of mass graves of people we'd murdered. I'd be very surprised by the latter, but less so.

I don't really expect a war crimes trial. Or any sort of trial or formal condemnation or anything else of that nature. 12 gets it right.

It's pathetic either way.

do any of you really expect a war crimes trial?

Good Lord, no. The supposed opposition won't even consider the question of impeachment. Bush will pardon the culpable policymakers, just as his father did with Weinberger, and then he'll hide behind a wall of executive privilege until everything blows over.

I don't think trials of high level people are likely but I'm not ready to concede that they're impossible. Self-fulfilling.

I'd settle for full investigation, civil verdicts against them, public shaming, etc. A truth commission a la South Africa, perhaps. Even that will be a tremendous uphill battle.

I've thought of trying to lobby Edwards or Obama policy people about this....I've gotten further in figuring out who the people to talk to at the Obama campaign are, but Edwards actually seems more likely to be receptive.

Who is the more loathsome creature: willfully ignorant bush supporters, or fully aware but ultimately uncaring us?

I think 23 is the wrong question. Individuals aren't really individually responsible for broader ideological or political problems--we're creatures of history too. It would be noble and heroic to dedicate one's life to addressing this problem--as, e.g., Katherine's done in a pretty major way--but then one could ask, "isn't it loathsome that she's not doing even *more*" or "isn't it loathsome that she's not addressing the problem of global poverty."

I think it's also a moral requirement to accept our limitations. Which isn't an excuse to ignore problems or shrug one's shoulders. But worrying about blame isn't really very important, I don't think, unless it spurs one to action. And I do think that even small actions--calling one's representatives, writing letters, writing blog posts, talking about this stuff to one's coworkers--are good.

Speak for yourself, text. Katherine's doing useful work. The "Oh, we're just as bad" routine for people who are at least paying attention and opposed just encourages people to forget about it completely.

23 is way off, and not because of anything I've done. There's nothing especially loathesome about either choosing to focus your energies elsewhere, or not really knowing where to start. It's not easy for citizens to influence the gov't these days, and not immediately obvious how to get involved in issues you care about in a useful way. I spent quite a long time in the pacing and muttering stage. And being informed, caring, and talking about on weblogs is not nothing. Why are the Democratic primary candidates ALL saying they will close Guantanamo? In part because they're decent--but it's also because they think primary voters care.

I wrote 23 before I read 22. LB, I don't mean to disparage anyone's actual efforts, and would never presume to say that someone wasn't trying to do useful work, without knowing anything about them. I was reacting to the passivity directly expressed in these comments.

Individuals are ultimately responsible for what they do and for what they don't do. I didn't mean to direct 23 at Katherine, but I stand by it in general. If people who are informed don't do anything, what good are they?

Who is the more loathsome creature: willfully ignorant bush supporters, or fully aware but ultimately uncaring us?

The willfully ignorant, obvs.

I usually think that caring and talking on weblogs is not nothing. But how much above not-nothing is it? I'm not sure.

text: self-hating bullshitter.

22:Who is Samantha Powers working for?

For me, Powers kinda puts to question war crimes trials, because of an argument that they will make war criminals in power more intransigent and dangerous, and the more important project is to stop what is happening now, and prevent future occurrences. If that has anything to do with Powers;I have read others advocating that position.

It is troubling for me in so many ways.

PS:With the renditions and detentions and "interrogation techniques", of course some prisoners have died and their deaths covered up.

Maybe I am, but if you're not self-hating, you should be.

btw, before people make me into ms. goody two shoes model citizen: I am not registered to vote & haven't been for close to two years. I'm busy, sure, but the secretary at my office spent 3 hours shlepping to her polling place & voting on election day last month with pneumonia.

If you've ever worked for a campaign you know how inefficient it is. I remember days spent in NH thinking: did a single vote change as a result of what I did? Casual conversations w/ people you know are going to change a lot more minds than any amount of canvassing and cold calls from strangers and tv ads. So being informed is very important.

Powers is still w/ Obama, right? But I doubt she'd take my calls...In general, I don't know how much emphasis prosecutions deserve or where to come down on issues like immunity for Joseph Kony as a condition for a peace agreement. My instinct is to say: stop the worst abuses now, and I'm skeptical of the ICC but people whom I have a whole lot of respect for think prosecutions are very important. I don't think the downsides for prosecution are especially present in the U.S. context. But my inclination is focus more on learning the full story & getting an "official version".

And yes, I would not be surprised by unmarked graves & torture deaths in detention we don't even know about. But our body count is still relatively low as these things go, so mass graves would surprise me.

Though I suppose it depends on how many graves makes a "mass" grave--there may be more Hadithas we don't know about, but the level of higher level complicity is much, much lower there than at Abu Ghraib.

What I wonder is how much we had to do w/ anti-Sunni death squads in Iraq. I don't think we're the primary cause there by any means, but I don't think Rumsfeld zealously opposed it either--there have been hints of ugly stuff & we just don't know much about it at all. Especially difficult to investigate w/o getting yourself killed, I think.

30: The word "epsilon" was created for times like this.

...well maybe not created, but at least co-opted.

Actually, the bodycount isn't that low if you consider that best estimates are that on the order of 650,000 or so Iraqis have died as a cause of the invasion. Now most of those have not died in concentration camps or anything like that, but at the same time various death squads have been very active, with morgues unable to handle the inflow of corpses (showing obvious signs of torture, like drill holes and such)...

The official line is that these death squads have nothing to do with the Occupation as such, but I doubt that's really the case.

Yes, 18 is a good description of the logical way to think about things.

I think that text may not be exactly right, but that he/she has an important way to look at things. I mean, not to go all hippy-dippy, but the important thing now is not to drag Bush up on war crimes or to blame and marginalize his supporters, but to make sure that this never happens again (and extricate ourselves as quickly as possible from the places where it's still happening). And I don't think that casting all blame on others decreases the possibility that it will happen again.

Don't get me wrong, I'd cheer a Bush war crimes trial on, but it'd be icing on the cake. The cake is a popular commitment to basic human decency/civil rights, and vigilance against future descents into hysteria like what happened after 9/11. I don't think that that cause is served by externalizing all blame.

In order for this not to happen again, people have to know about & condemn what happened. Quite honestly, my primary interest in a trial is as a mechanism for that. I have a much more visceral desire to know what happened & have the public widely know it than to see whichever officials prosecuted.

Looks like the Council of Europe investigation is about to break new ground.

A lot of that info. is completely new to me, whereas the first report was largely a compilation of info. that had been public for years.

I've heard that the reason that investigation started getting somewhere is that they hired a good investigative staff to dig up dirt as opposed to just senators holding hearings. Imagine what a serious investigation by a Democratic administration could uncover--with a good, experienced staff; access to classified information; & the power to declassify if necessary for public interest reasons. Between the OLC going around doing its best to immunize everyone; Congress pitching in with the MCA; lack of DOJ jurisdiction over the military; and the sheer passage of time, prosecutions may not be possible. But a thorough factual investigation ought to be.

It may be taken as more self-hating bullshit, but to clarify, I am in favor of holding Bush accountable for whatever crimes he has committed, and I am in favor of marginalizing his supporters. I don't see those goals as separable from stopping the torture. I'm just saying, it takes effort. To those who are extending effort, brava. But those who recognize the problem and do nothing are not much better than Bush supporters.

Bringing the info into light at all is of course necessary and, therefore, I should thank LB, without whom I would have remained ignorant of today's news and would not have engaged in this stimulating discussion.

toodles, all.

I still want to argue that there's an incredible difference between "not good enough" or "not doing enough" which I would agree describes probably everyone reading this (including Katherine. Once she registers to vote, though, that puts her over the edge into doing enough) and "not much better than Bush supporters". Public opinion means something -- attention means something. It's nothing like enough to let us all off the hook, morally, but paying attention is still worthwhile.

The people extending the effort would have a hard time maintaining morale if they thought they were the only ones who paid attention or cared, I think. Human rights organizations' whole m.o. is putting pressure on gov'ts by making abuses public & mobilizing political opinion against them. That assumes--no, requires--engagement by members of the public who aren't human rights lawyers or researchers to actually work.

If Human Rights Watch thought it was useless for people to read the names of 39 disappeared people, why would they put so much effort into finding out those names, issuing press releases about it, and trying to convince newspapers to cover it? If reading an article is completely useless, then so is writing it.

So one last time: paying attention to these stories, caring, talking about it, & occasionally calling Congress is not nothing. Convincing people it is nothing is arguably actively harmful.

The reason it's important to get the information out there, for people to read the names, etc., is presumably to inspire those people to perform some small action, right? Maybe not right away. Witnessing is an action, I guess, but isn't it the lowest form of action? Calling congress, etc., is not nothing. But nothing--refusing even to get upset--that is nothing.

I think we've basically been talking past each other here.

Probably...

I think you may be underestimating the political efffect of ordinary conversation. If people read the article & then never speak of it to anyone ever again, then no, it doesn't accomplish much. But most people are actually likely to mention their feelings about in conversation at least once (not a given article). Saying: "God, it's so awful, and I don't know what to do about so I just tune out" is actually a form of doing this.

It might mean less than calling your Senators. Then again, it might not. Calling Dick Durbin and Barack Obama; or Tom Coburn and James Inhofe, about habeas restoration doesn't stand much chance of affecting how they're going to vote. The number of Senators whose vote is up for grabs on these issues is relatively small. So if your Senator's not a swing vote, forwarding a news article about these issues to a friend of yours in Maine, or Nebraska, or wherever the swing votes are from, which might cause him to call his Senators, might actually have more effect.

And, in any such conversation, whether it's a letter to Congress or a conversation at lunch, you're going to be far more persuasive if you know what you're talking about.

This all sounds minimal, I know. But I think it's actually more effective than some more conventional means of 'being involved'.

Sort of OT, but not really. The other day, my daughter told me they were reading a book in her reading group about a Jewish girl during the Holocaust. I was stunned -- while her reading ability is certainly advanced enough, I would have thought the topic a bit beyond her grade level (2). And as she's recounting for me the stories about forced marches and the ghettos and (dear God she's too young for this!) the showers, she says, "But that kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore, luckily."

And I'm sort of floored, because the truth is certainly not a comfortably thought for a little kid. But still, it's the truth. And I told her that the Holocaust began slowly, bit by bit, and that things not unlike it continue to happen around the world -- Kosovo, Darfur -- and that it's important to pay attention because it's easier to stop the ball rolling before it's gathered too much momentum.

And then we watched Harry Potter, which was far more age-appropriate.

Convincing people it is nothing is arguably actively harmful.

I agree.

hilzoy has another post on the disappeared, this one focusing on the detention and interrogation and unknown whereabouts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's very young (under 10) sons.

I could link, but y'all know where she is.