What's the Point of Having Karen Hughes Around? Posted by Shadi Hamid

We hear stories like this everyday. And, everyday, I lament the fact that this administration, through its unabashed devotion to police-state style torture, has destroyed so completely our credibility in the Middle East.

According to medical records obtained by TIME, a 20-year-old named Yusuf al-Shehri, jailed since he was 16, was regularly strapped into a specially designed feeding chair that immobilizes the body at the legs, arms, shoulders and head. Then a plastic tube, sometimes as much as 50% bigger than the type commonly used for feeding incapacitated patients, was inserted through his nose and down his throat - a procedure that can trigger nausea, bleeding and diarrhea.

What can you say to that, really ? I thought that  "they" hated us when I was living in Jordan last year. Well, I've spent the last couple weeks in Cairo and Amman, and it's gotten worse. Can you say "powder keg"? It's time for Karen Hughes to call it a day. Our public diplomacy operation is an absolute joke. When someone slits your neck, you don't get a band aid, you go to the freakin' hospital. Packaging is now pointless. What's the point of sending Karen Hughes out to the Middle East to "listen" and "engage," when all the while, the Bush administration does its best to kill the American ideal in the eyes of more than a billion Muslims?

When Egyptians bring up the fact that we use the same "interrogation" methods in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as the regime of President-for-Eternity Hosni Mubarak what am I supposed to say? All you can really do is nod your head in utter resignation and acknowledge that it will take us at least 20 years to undo the damage that the Republicans have inflicted.

Are the Democrats up to the challenge? I'm not entirely sure. John Kerry somehow managed to NOT bring up torture, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib in his televised debates with Bush in 2004. Get Bob Schrum out and keep him out. Get rid of these consultants who destroy the soul of our party and make us unable to stand up for anything, even something so basic and obvious as not torturing people.

Comments

[Zathras]

My dear fellow, the campaign consultants ARE your party. No nationally prominent Democrat would do anything important without consulting them. That surely says that consultants' influence is greater than it should be. It also says something about the politicians they work for.

At some point, Democrats have got to understand that they don't lose elections because their campaign tradecraft isn't good enough. They lose elections because their candidates aren't good enough. John Kerrey and John Edwards didn't shrink from mentioning Abu Ghraib -- perhaps the least ambiguous instance of detainee abuse -- during the 2004 campaign because they were led astray by wicked counsellors, but because they are moral cowards. Honestly, when you deliberately put up showhorse Senators for President and Vice President you shouldn't expect profiles in political courage.

Surely the point at which this realization ought to be reached is now, two and one-half years before the 2008 election. Consider this thought: none of the Democratic candidates for national office in 2000 or 2004 was as good a man or as accomplished a public servant as Walter Mondale, the party's candidate in 1984. Yet Mondale got swamped by Ronald Reagan, and the more recent candidates just barely lost to George W. Bush. What does that tell you?

It should tell you that your more recent candidates were no damned good. They both lost elections they should have won, especially Gore. The response to that from most Democrats has always been the weakest possible -- that even Gore and Kerry would be better than George Bush. Not exactly going for greatness there, are you?

And it looks like the Democrats are preparing to make the same mistakes all over again. Their frontrunner for 2008 is a Senator and national political figure because of who she married and for no other reason. Behind her are Gore and Kerry, who think their having lost campaigns they should have won qualifies them to be nominated again. And Russ Feingold, trying to show he can do something more than help pass John McCain's legislation. And John Edwards, putting to the test the idea that hair and teeth are enough to win the Presidency.

In the fall of 2008, Democrats may have to live with the argument that at least their guy is better than the Republican candidate. But it's only the late spring of 2006. Is this crowd really the best you guys can do?

[Eric Martin]

So Kerry and Edwards are weak because they won't step up and take a stand, and Democrats (like them and others in the Party) are too cautious and beholden to consultants, but then Russ Feingold takes several bold stands and he's....grandstanding?

Is there any possible position a Dem could take that would come out positive under those criteria?

Does the GOP use consultants as well, or are they the Party of "Teh Authentic"

[kb]

snort.

you really think anyone outside of the US actually cares which of the business owned parties is actually responsible for the war crimes being committed?

'oooh no, we didn't mean to torture people. it was just ,you know ,they were brown...'

'he killed himelf to annoy us', not because we'd locked him up without evidence for for 4 years.....,no surely not but just to make us look bad...., yeah thats right.

Yeah i can't understand why non americans regard the whole "WAR ON TERROR" with contempt.After all our attack on iraq 'THE CENTRAL FRONT IN THE WAR ON TERROR' has been so succesfull.

[Reality check]

Since when has such ridiculous conventional wisdom been allowed to pass as truth? Let's see, if I repeat a mantra over and over again - "the democrats are beholden to consultants...the democrats are beholden to consultants" it's not going to make it true. Give me a shred of evidence.

And if the democrats were lacking in popular appeal for so long, why have they WON THE POPULAR VOTE in the three of the last four presidential elections?

[rosignol]

When Egyptians bring up the fact that we use the same "interrogation" methods in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as the regime of President-for-Eternity Hosni Mubarak what am I supposed to say?

Well, first you need to recognize that what the person is doing is trying to deny you the moral high ground in the debate- essentially saying "your government is just as bad as ours".

Then ask for some evidence.

HRW says that Egypt uses beatings, blindfolding, electric shocks, sexual assaults, suspension by limbs, and threats to do all of the above as interrogation techniques.

http://hrw.org/campaigns/torture/methods/stress_duress.htm

For all the criticism of how the US treats prisoners, at least we have inquiries of complaints and send abusers to prison when they are found guilty. In egypt, well, things are different: "A high-level Ministry of Interior official confirmed to Human Rights Watch in February 2005 that the government had not conducted a single criminal investigation of SSI officials for torture or ill-treatment in the past nineteen years, or imposed any disciplinary measures, despite numerous credible allegations of serious abuse in SSI custody.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/egypt12212.htm

Compare that to what happened to Lynne England- it'll be a few years before she's out of prison.

All you can really do is nod your head in utter resignation and acknowledge that it will take us at least 20 years to undo the damage that the Republicans have inflicted.

You sound a bit burned out. The only real fix for that is a career change.

[Wewa]

Yes, you sound burned out. Don't ask KH to do the impossible, though that's what her boss did. She's listening to careerists tell her that the solution is more Fulbrights and other official exchanges, but they're only are minute part of the exchange reality; they have a loud constituency, however.

She's listening to her cronies say, "Give me a job at State. I know more than any striped-pants cookie-pusher ever will about communicating." So we get Professor Colleen Graffy, fresh out of the London "campus" of conservatism's own institutional version of political correctness, Pepperdine University School of Law, where suicide becomes PR.

It would also help if KH would stop saying her accidental birth in Paris, France, is really a qualification, when we all now it's her ability to report TV news to Paris, Texas, that has made her W's favorite crony.

But don't blame her for reflecting her boss's points of view.

[J Thomas]

"...the government had not conducted a single criminal investigation of SSI officials for torture or ill-treatment in the past nineteen years, or imposed any disciplinary measures, despite numerous credible allegations of serious abuse in SSI custody.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/egypt12212.htm

Compare that to what happened to Lynne England- it'll be a few years before she's out of prison.

You are wading chest-deep in a swamp and trying to claim the moral high ground because somebody else is neck-deep.

Oh yes. When the media publicises a torture scandal with pictures and videos, then we'll have an investigation and maybe punish somebody. They had video of the wedding-party airstrike near the syrian border; that time we did an investigation and said it was just terrorist smugglers, everybody did the right thing, we were right to bomb them and the women-and-children terrorist smugglers were right to die. They had photos and video of Abu Ghraib, so we started trials. They had photos-and-video from Haditha so we opened an investigation.

What great moral high ground. When we get caught red-handed with photos and videos and the whole world is watching the media about it, *then* we investigate and often punish enlisted men. If you try to sit down on this moral high ground your nose is going to be underwater.

"your government is just as bad as ours".

Then ask for some evidence.

The idea here is to convince *egyptians*, not republicans. Is Shamid supposed to pretend it isn't policy on our part? "Sure, we have a few bad apples who do just as bad as you do, but whenever we find them actually generating intelligence results we punish them for it."

If we want to have any ghost of a chance of actually persuading the egymption government to stop torturing people, we need a plausible argument that we can get useful intelligence without torture, and we're so sure that we actually don't torture for information (or for confessions, which is something that torture really does produce).

And the trouble is, a whole lot of americans don't believe it. They believe that it's OK to torture people when you really need the information, provided the media don't find out. They think it ought to be OK when the media do find out. They think the people getting tortured are the enemy, and it doesn't matter what happens to the enemy. If we have to torture a thousand enemies and the result is that we prevent one US casualty, then OK, just remember that the red terminal is the hot one, and for best effect you clip them on opposite sides of the scrotum.

The only moral high ground we have left here comes if Bush actually gives up the Presidency in 2008. Mubarak would probably be killed if he ever stepped down. His successor couldn't take the chance to let him live. But Bush can retire in perfect safety, he won't even be liable for war crimes trials at the World Court.

[Jorg]

Karen Hughes is great. She is sending kids from around the world to the World Cup.

That is fun for the kids and improves Germany's image.

[n. nescio]

"For all the criticism of how the US treats prisoners, at least we have inquiries of complaints and send abusers to prison when they are found guilty."

Are you aware of any inquiries regarding abuses conducted at the secret CIA prisons in foreign nations that people have been getting extraordinarily rendered to?