[JOURNALISM] Super Duper Q & A

Charles Kaiser lays out yet another failure on the part of The New York Times in his piece today in The Columbia Journalism Review. Vice President Dick Cheney admitted in an ABC interview that he approved the use of what the Bush Administration likes to call "aggressive interrogation techniques." That's a big story, and the Times ignored it.

Kaiser quotes Harper's Scott Horton as saying the following:

[Waterboarding] has been defined as torture by the United States since at least 1903, the first military court-martial. The United States views waterboarding conducted for intelligence purposes during wartime as a war crime, and it has prosecuted both civilian and military figures involved in the chain of approval of its use. Penalties applied have ranged up to the death penalty. The crime is chargeable under the War Crimes Act and under the Anti-Torture Statute. There is no ambiguity or disagreement among serious lawyers on this part...

The use of waterboarding (actually, a different technique) by some United States military personnel in the Philippines – you remember, when we were saving our "little brown brothers" from themselves – shocked the nation. Have we really slipped this far? Why are we not as horrified?

Oh, but that's just Harper's. You know, a bunch of liberals. Never mind that, as Kaiser points out, retired major general Anthony Taguba wrote, “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.” (As Kaiser says, "the Times also ignored that one.")

Oh, but Taguba clearly has an axe to grind. He led the investigation into Abu Ghraib, and was subsequently thanked for his efforts by being put out to pasture. Never mind that we prosecuted Nazis for their use of waterboarding as a war crime.

And never mind that the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a bi-partisan report that found that this Administration's efforts to gather information "on how to use aggressive techniques, [redefine] the law to create the appearance of their legality, and [authorize] their use against detainees...damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

And never mind that intelligence experts have repeatedly and unequivocally said that torture – or "enhanced interrogation techniques," or "super duper Q & A," or "questions on steroids," or "a gentle tickle under the chin," or whatever you want to call it – does nothing but get false information and hurt our cause.

Never mind all of these things. If politicians can be viewed as tough and get a boost in the polls, by golly, we should undermine our international reputation and ignore our principles.

Good thing for this Administration that The New York Times is the "newspaper of record." But the Times should understand that it's gunning for irrelvance by continually dropping the ball. Worse than that, it's aiding and abetting criminals.

[POLITICS] Responding to Distortions About Obama

In his piece on Newsweek’s website, “The Other Side of the Story: Rebutting Sean Wilentz on Barack Obama,” Charles Kaiser (full disclosure: my wife's uncle) explodes the kind of lazy – and often dishonest – criticisms of Obama that have been so prevalent these past two years. He calls out Wilentz for having written "a thinly disguised hatchet-job," and says, in part, that

Wilentz reinforces the canard that Obama's campaign is short on specifics, charging that his rhetoric amounts "chiefly to promising a dramatic break with the status quo"—and arguing that "millions of other Democrats still find his appeals wispy and unconvincing." The truth is, Obama has detailed positions on everything from Iraq and Afghanistan to universal health care and tax reduction—as was made clear by the cover story in the The New York Times magazine last Sunday dissecting his economic program. The Times concluded that of the two major candidates, Obama would be the real "tax cutter" for most Americans—except for the ones making an average of $9.1 million. That group would get a tax cut of $190,000 a year, from John McCain, versus a tax increase of $800,000 a year from Obama. So much for a lack of specifics.

I highlight this paragraph in particular because one of the biggest pieces of "received wisdom" of all this campaign season is that Obama is vague and lacks substance.

Some of Kaiser's arguments include references to other pieces that are also worth reading – esp. Ryan Lizza’s piece in The New Yorker last month, “Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama.” Lizza shows Obama to have sharp elbows and to be incredibly politically tough and astute.

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I have some beefs with Obama myself – his FISA vote among them – but to say that he’s radical, vague and touchy-feely, a tax-and-spender, &c., is to betray willful ignorance. There, I said it.

When friends of mine – people I deeply admire – mock Obama for being an empty suit, throw up their hands and complain that the man is not perfect, or earnestly say they're thinking of voting for McCain, I can only smile uncomfortably. Maybe it's more of a wince?

Even Obama's oratory, which is continually criticized for – get this – being too good, is sloughed off as vague. But anyone who actually listens to an entire speech – i.e., beyond the stuff played in clips the next day – will hear a display of a depth and breadth of knowledge and ideas that completely blow John "You Say 'Sunni,' I say 'Shiite' – Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" McCain out of the water. I'm as sick of hearing Obama's hackneyed "from the shores of [insert name of one state here] to the fields of [insert name of another state here]" lines as the next guy, but listen to a whole Obama speech or "town hall"-style forum, and then tell me that he lacks substance, specifics, or depth.

If you have any doubt about Obama, I encourage you to check these out and/or forward them:

• Obama’s Platform
• A review of Obama’s voting record: “I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype”
• Other pieces about Obama’s track record: “Barack Obama” and “Actually, I Think We Can”
• The "Know the Facts" section on the Obama campaign website