Biscuit Variety Pack

Ted over at Crooked Timber writes an open letter to The New Republic, asking them why they think that Amnesty International's use of a word is more important to talk about than the Bush administration's use of torture.

Digby talks about tasering, and, eek, police applying pepper spray to the inside of nonviolent protestors' eyelids to force them to cooperate:

There are reasons why it is a bad idea for police to be allowed to inflict pain on people who are uncooperative or disagreeable --- the most important being that this means police are sanctioned to commit violence on the public under color of law in instances where their safety is not at issue. That's one of the hallmarks of a police state not a free society. (And yes, I realize that Saddam pulled the legs off of puppies on Christmas morning and I'm damned lucky not to be living under that kind of hellish nightmare. But every lil' totalitarian has to start somewhere.)

It's not just Gitmo. Sophisticated torture techniques are becoming common policing and interrogation methods in America. I remember watching the excrutiating video of police meticulously applying q-tips dipped in pepper spray to the inside of logging protesters' eyelids when they refused to unchain themselves from one another. It was explained that because they weren't actually blinded or permanently harmed, this was really the humane way to get them to cooperate. The most chilling thing about this was the dry, benign way the police calmly went about methodically pulling the immobile protesters' heads back and then their eyelids, to carefully daub the painful chemicals directly into the eye as they screamed in agony. Don't ever think that the systematic "banality of evil" regime couldn't happen here. The police didn't seem to be enjoying themselves, nor were they bothered. It was just all in day's work.

Did you know police did that right here in the U.S. of A.? Cuz I sure did not.

Oh, and on the Downing Street Memo, via Salon:

Jim Cox, USA Today's senior assignment editor for foreign news, offers up an explanation in his paper today that would do George W. Bush proud: "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source," Cox says. "There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."

Bush and Blair on the Downing Street Memo

President Welcomes British Prime Minister Blair to the White House:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Steve.

Q Thank you, sir. On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the
policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And
let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.

But all the way through that period of time, we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict. As it
happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I -- you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in
the middle of his race. I'm not sure who 'they dropped it out' is, but -- I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. (Laughter.)
And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.

My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took
place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of
didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in
combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.

And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully, take a -- put a united front up to Saddam Hussein, and say, the world speaks, and he ignored the world. Remember, 1441 passed the Security Council unanimously. He made the decision. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

No follow-up questions allowed, of course. So that's all we get. The memo was released to make Tony look bad, it was written before we went to the UN, it's wrong, and the world is better off now without Saddam Hussein in power. End of story.