A Knight in Dragonland

Scott Horton provides us with examples of the “aggressive interrogation techniques” condoned and authorized by the Bush administration. An excellent but disturbing piece about the woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib in The New Yorker provided many of the details. Here’s a summary:
Enforced nudity. This technique is adopted for purposes of degrading [...]

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In this post, Andrew Sullivan reviews Charlie Savage’s new book, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency. Sullivan discusses how torture is not only immoral, but also so counter-productive that it threatens our national security.
The torture techniques that our government now use on terror suspects were designed to extract false confessions in totalitarian societies [...]

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Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] … I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a [...]

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Many centuries ago, during the disastrous reign of the corrupt Roman Emperor Domitian, Decimus Junius Juvenalis asked a famous question:
Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?

Translated: Who will watch the watchers?
In the modern era in America, we have the good fortune to have a free press (although corporate interests certainly intrude) and a potent blogosphere. In this [...]

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Yes, I realize that December 7 was last Thursday, but I just ran across some interesting posts related to the 65th anniversary of Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
I’ve been a frequent critic of comparisons between the current military situation and World War II. This post from Balkinization does not compare the two [...]

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