"I am becoming increasingly convinced of the necessity of what seems to be a very crude intentionalist method in literary interpretation: that in many cases, the attitudes reflected by characters (or, to a lesser extent, situations) in various texts are in fact direct statements of the author’s own views.

Sophisticated readers tend to reject such a notion absolutely, and the reasons for this are usually good. Many attempts at creative writing start from what might be called the idealized projection of the self, or the creation of an environment in which certain wrongs might be redressed. Or where certain ideas find a more logical or consistent home, for that matter. The Mary Sue phenomenon is a reliable proxy for what I am talking about here.

I was reminded of this interpretive gambit, or problem, or however you want to construe it, when reading this NYT article on children kidnapped in Argentina’s “dirty war.” I was at first appalled that you won’t find the name “Kissinger” in the article, or any other mention of how the United States—driven by such nuanced reasoners as Jeanne Kirkpatrick—did nothing to intervene in such atrocities. I then thought of my long-held suspicion that the origin of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, which is a long first-person narrative of a torturer in a far-future South America who ends up redeeming humanity, was inspired by the news accounts from South America during the mid-to-late 70s. That’s not particularly interesting or novel, I suppose, but the fact that Severian offers up in the course of the novels an apologia for his profession has always struck me, in the care with which the argument is presented, as being endorsed by the author. (The argument is that essentially it’s more humane to torture people for crimes rather than to imprison them, and that also it is the only way to maintain order when threatened by external subversion. This last element—reprehensible as it is—is not argued as strongly in the text, to be fair.)"

"Dick Cheney was a self-aggrandizing criminal who used his knowledge as a Washington insider to subvert both informed public debate about matters of war and peace and to manipulate presidential decisionmaking, sometimes in ways that angered even George W. Bush. 
After his early years of public service, he capitalized on connections he made while being paid by taxpayers to earn tens of millions of dollars presiding over Halliburton. While there, he did business with corrupt Arab autocrats, including some in countries that were enemies of the United States. Upon returning to government, he advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail."

Lots to say here... For the moment, cf. Gellner on procedural justification as part of the core of liberalism.

"Did You See John Yoo's Easter Sunday Op-Ed? In the Washington Post: "Crucifixion is legal when ordered by the president in his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.""

"My gut reaction on reading Marc Thiessen's new book ... was: "Why is a speechwriter who's never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?" Certainly, everyone is entitled to a voice in the debate over the lawfulness and efficacy of President Bush's abusive interrogation program, regardless of qualifications. But if you're not an expert on a subject, shouldn't you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals. Nowhere in this book will you find the opinions of experienced military interrogators who successfully interrogated Islamic extremists.... Courting Disaster is nothing more than the defense's opening statement in a war crimes trial."

A. Serwer on the analogy between Yoo and the other torture-memo lawyers and Fadl and the others who cooked up "apostasy" as an excuse for Muslim terrorism.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing I have read this year.

"You know, were I the guy whose unit failed to capture a seventy-year-old, two meter tall man on kidney dialysis, I wouldn’t be mentioning that as proof of my skills in intelligence gathering."

The "mosaic philosophy" bit in particular is so crazy that "utter stupidity" is hardly adequate.

Who hasn't been thinking this?

"McClatchy is truly the most badass MSM crew there is. Marisa Taylor actually wrote a piece that will appear in newspapers across this great country about prosecuting Bush for war crimes."

Yes: "I’m half inclined to say there should be neither truth nor reconciliation. Instead, George W. Bush should be kidnapped, drugged, flown to Spain in an unmarked plane, and wake up on the streets of Madrid tied up with a bunch of files and evidence pinned to his chest so Judge Garzón can sort the whole thing out. If anyone asks how that happened, deny knowledge and mention “executive privilege.” "

Is it still a witch-hunt if they really are witches?

"If you had asked me in 1998 what I thought the consequences would be if the United States government was revealed in public to have officially sanctioned torture ... I would have said that this revelation would be an enormous scandal with catastrophic po

"a completely forseeable consequence of Guantanamo Bay is the creation of terrorists"

Impeach them. Impeach them now.

"We have now the Attorney General of the United States telling Congress that it's not against the law for the President to violate the law if his own Department of Justice says it's not."

An actual ticking time-bomb scenario from the first world war.

" If we’re going to start doing this, let’s add special statutory provisions for what the President is empowered to do in case of attack by extraterrestrials, in the case that supervillains seize NORAD, or in the case that intelligent Nazi gorillas ar

White House Office of Legal Counsel lawyer has _himself_ water-boarded to see if it is in fact torture; concludes that it is; writes opinion to that effect; gets fired by Gonzalez.

More on universal jurisdiction for war crimes: "the pirate can always cry 'state sovereignty!' as he walks the plank."

"As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately."

Filing torture charges against Rumsfeld in France is good; filing them against him in America would be better.

Cruelty and unrestrained power are _features_, not bugs