If you accept the psychological value of the threat of terror, then a debate about terror must address the issue head-on. When we talk about climate change as “more important”, it appears we are side-stepping the terror issue. When we talk about how the true nature of the AQ threat has been exaggerated, we are spot on but vulnerable to being blasted with images of 9/11. I suppose my point was that fighting the terror presidency frame with nuance and holism is difficult; and further as a political strategy it is risky. You give so much credit to the American public that the TRUTH will set them free…. I wish it were so:

“The facts of abuse are out there, but CNN and FOX and MSNBC etc. don’t play them the way they do Dancing with the Stars stories.”

“in an era when Kiefer Sutherland evidently portrays a ‘kick ass’ terror fighter weekly on teevee.”

I agree that the arguments must be made. We must continue to beat the drum for truth and righteousness and for the Constitution. But I believe we must deal with propaganda- we must understand why it has been successful and we must manipulate it to our own effect.

Agree that quantitatively, the Presidency has become a beast.
Whether the qualitative alterations (toward renditions, torture) are so sinister and revolting that they prompt saner heads in the courts and Congress to cull the beasts’s tentacles remains to be seen.

Either way, the way in which campaigns are financed and run — and covered by media! — is clearly not vetting the caliber of elected officials required to deal with the complex, nuanced issues that overwhelm both Bush and Cheney.

——–
Jeff, how’s this as a summary of your comments as I understand them?
1. Fighting terrorism is SO important that we have to do it much better than we have in the past.
2. Fighting terrorism means we have to build trust so that others will join our efforts.
3. Torture demolishes trust, provides unreliable information, and damages the people who do it — therefore, it sabotages our chances of successfully fighting the war on terror.
4. Re: Renditions, see item #3 above; renditions are self-defeating, therefore we won’t do them.
5. Violating our own laws dooms us, because the war on terror is partly a war on the rule of law; the only way to fight for the rule of law is to honor it as we continue to be vigilant.

——–
Hmmmm… fascinating synopsis. Thank you.
You make a good point — global warming may be more dangerous than terrorism, but terrorism is more psychologically salient. Agreed, and there’s the rub.

———
drational@176. Thanks, also.
So it would appear that a critical task lies in helping people understand why torture, rendition, etc are counterproductive — in an era when Kiefer Sutherland evidently portrays a ‘kick ass’ terror fighter weekly on teevee. Surely, Kiefer must provide a lot of psychological comfort, or people wouldn’t watch that show — so not only are we up against the Bu$hCo cabal, we’re also up against bad television. Bleh…

However, would Sutherland’s character ever burn tapes of torture, b/c he was afraid of being hauled off to court and put in prison? (I honestly don’t know — don’t watch that program, so my question is actually sincere.)
BTW: Don’t know that you are familiar with ‘mirror neurons’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons) Turns out they’re extremely important for learning how to behave. Shorter: Sutherland’s character behaves in ways that people mimic b/c they don’t have good alternatives that help them see better ways to approach complex problems.

Shorter: In addition to the legal cases, someone probably needs to get a better show on teevee — one that shows, week after week, only relationship building (rather than ass kicking). But that’s not a simple task, and not my forte. However, if I were assessing this from what I understand of mirror neurons, that would be a key aspect of addressing the problem you pose.

many here discount the threat of AQ,

I think that’s a straw man creation. I haven’t seen anyone here who discounts the threat of al-qaeda. They are responsible for the worst act of terrorism on our soil. I haven’t seen anyone discount or discredit that – just lots of discussion of other threats, good and bad ways to address threats, and the need to protect the constitution and our democracy in order to protect the country.

And while I think your points are very well thought out, I also think that no amount of propaganda will go as far as forcing discussion of facts and truth. As long as no major media consistently and correctly challenges with fact the statements about humane treatment, we don’t torture, etc. and as long as getting puff pieces on Bellinger and Goldsmith and Tenet and Comey and Gonzales and Mukasey is more common and prolific than the stories of their victims, and as long as the media buys into the new “defined terms” of waterboarding and years of being disappeared into isolation involving repeated abuse and torture as “humane treatment” without any real questioning and response, I think no amount of positive spin on why liberties are good will win the field.

I saw more people finally flinch and respond when the anti-torture interrogators like the ex-SERE instructor came forward with very specific, fact based, accountings of the drowning involved in “waterboarding” than a ream of articles on waterboarding that had made references to sprinkling water on the face or simulations of drowning, etc.

The facts of abuse are out there, but CNN and FOX and MSNBC etc. don’t play them the way they do Dancing with the Stars stories.

182 – thanks for the link Jeff.

“By that time,” Mr. Krongard said, “paranoia was setting in.”

If Krongard could see paranoia, couldn’t the rest of the admin see obsessiveness about this and other topics? Shouldn’t they have recognized it?

. . .But there is no going it alone in a system of divided constitutional powers. If not Congress, it will be the Court – or more exactly, as Benjamin Wittes has noted, the inconstant Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court’s swing vote – that endorses policy. In pursuing unfettered executive power to act alone, the administration has made Justice Kennedy its five-star general, its very own Douglas MacArthur in the war on terror. On the infrequent occasions when the administration has been forced by the Court to go to it for authority, it has been denied practically nothing. It has not so far mattered that the Bush administration is a lame duck, or whether Congress is in Republican or Democratic hands.

The administration seems not to have understood that what lives by executive discretion dies by executive discretion. If the Bush administration took counterterrorism as seriously as it took the abstraction of executive power, it would have thought ahead to its own departure from office. If it truly believed that its approach to counterterrorism was correct, then from the first day of its second term it would have engaged with Congress to create institutions to outlive any particular Presidency. It would have thought about the example of the Cold War and how a democracy deals with a genuine threat to a whole way of life. In retrospect, the democratic institutions of the Cold War did a remarkable job of balancing safety and liberty over decades; pure executive discretion cannot possibly promise the same. The administration having undertaken none of these things, US counterterrorism policy today flails without long-term strategic guidance or institutional stability. . .

[emphasis supplied.] this seems exactly right — cheney
was far less interested in protecting future presidents,
and far more focused on “not on MY watch” — to the
extent that he ultimately has weakened the presidency,
as an institution, for generations to come.

but these frat-boys ran the chartered “animal house“
the way they wanted for their twinned-four-year under-
grad stints. . . no matter that the plumbing, and sewer,
now overflows, as they prepare to leave campus, and take
jobs in their fathers’ businesses. . .

even so, i think the comments above are well-founded: we will
need to litigate several of the more-egregious usurpations to
have the courts repudiate them. we, it seems, will become
the plumbers, this time. will kennedy help run the roto-
rooter, or will he still be passed-out on the couch on
the porch, in a jack daniels haze, when that time comes?

we’ll have to see.

p e a c e

Steve Flynn, Author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (2007) and America the Vulnerable (2004).

Please do not forget, France lived through some very threatening years, terror-wise, and managed a policy over time, which did not compromise their politics and essentially ended terrorist bombings in France.

Yes, the threat is real but I personally believe in the need to confront the “fear” card every time. Additionally, bmaz addressed some of these concerns in a previous thread which is worth a read. Dialogue came up regarding the many FOIA cases since 9-11 which have been stalled because of the administration’s “below the table behavior”.

We’ll see a great deal of case law come out of these cases…

I think that is all very smart, and I basically agree with virtually all of it. I am rather more optimistic, fundamentally because I really do believe that a lot of the controversial measures the administration have taken, and the curtailment of liberties they have pushed, are unnecessary and sometimes even gratuitous – that is, they are not only sacrifices in freedom, they don’t work as effective counterterrorism. To take an example, there are ample arguments both on liberty grounds and on security grounds against a policy of torture. Those arguments just need to be made. And also any prospective successor to Bush needs to show that s/he takes the threat seriously, and that s/he will do everything s/he can and should to protect the American people. But again, that should be relatively easy, because it’s all true.

I know that their goals include not only directly helping the people harmed by our legal system but also reforming the bad laws and faulty legal system that led to the injustices.

I understand this is a simplistic question, but if a couple of attorneys could begin this project (it has grown to many more), then a few more might be able to find the cases which could challenge these precedents.

This is a very humble question asked to an extraordinary group of people. My deepest thanks for the work on this thread.