At the Daily Beast, Benjamin Sarlin reports on "The New Jack Bauer Republicans", namely a couple of would-be GOP congresscriters looking to turn war crimes charges into a political goldmine:
Two Iraq veterans who left the military after surviving charges of crimes against detainees are running credible campaigns for Congress. And far from minimizing the incidents, both candidates have put the accusations front and center in their campaigns, attracting rock-star adulation from conservatives nationwide in the process. But critics, including human-rights activists, veterans, and now even defeated primary opponents, warn that their records should disqualify them from office.
Yes, the good news here is that a GOP war vet who lost the primary is willing to sacrifice any potential political future to make sure one of these war criminals doesn't get to Congress:
Last week, Ilario Pantano won the Republican nomination in North Carolina's 7th District, setting up a challenge to incumbent Democrat Rep. Mike McIntyre in November. In 2001, immediately following the 9/11 terror attacks, Pantano, a veteran who had previously fought in the Gulf War, left his career as a successful producer and media consultant in his native Manhattan to rejoin the Marines and was eventually deployed to Iraq. In April 2004, Pantano killed two unarmed Iraqi detainees, twice unloading his gun into their bodies and firing between 50 and 60 shots in total. Afterward, he placed a sign over the corpses featuring the Marines' slogan "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" as a message to the local population....
Far from minimizing the incident, Pantano has made his biography central to his appeal. His book, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy, which recounts the ordeal, features blurbs not only from the Michelle Malkins of the world but from Democratic politico James Carville. Pantano received sympathetic treatment from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show as well for his moving account of the complexity of war.
But Pantano's defeated primary opponent, Will Breazeale, doesn't buy it. Breazeale, himself a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves who served in both Iraq wars, is not only refusing to endorse the Republican candidate, he's planning to do everything in his power to ensure his defeat, whether it takes a write-in campaign or a publicity tour.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, he said that Pantano's actions in Iraq were so severe that his election to Congress would be "dangerous."
"I've taken prisoners in Iraq and there's no excuse for what he did," Breazeale told The Daily Beast. "To shoot two unarmed prisoners 60 times and put a sign over their dead bodies is inexcusable. And once people know the real story, he has no chance of winning in November."
Breazeale, who was the GOP nominee in 2008, said he knows his actions will likely destroy his political career with the GOP. But he views continuing his opposition to Pantano past Primary Day to be a matter of principle. On Tuesday he is scheduled to hold a press conference with a third candidate in the primary, Randy Crow, to announce a joint effort to push Pantano out of the race.
"I know people think it's sour grapes, but I have nothing to gain by opposing him except clearing my conscience and fighting for good government," he said. "I've already announced I'm never running for anything again in my life. I'm putting everything on the line."
For all the talk, there are damn few actual "principled conservatives" in the world--at least in the electoral realm. Breazeale appears to be one of the rare exceptions. I don't imagine that I agree with him on very much, but he's certainly got some sort of moral core, and that's not only important in its own right--it's increasingly rare in these all-too-desperate times.
A new book from a former political speech writer for President George Bush makes a number of wild claims in an effort to "correct the record" about the CIA enhanced interrogation program that featured the use of such "techniques" as waterboarding and slamming detainees heads into walls. The book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by Mark Thiessen, hit book stores today. An excerpt which ran on The National Review web site calls the CIA interrogators who used these abusive techniques the "real Jack Bauers" but explains that their work was nowhere near as violent as the interrogation scenes depicted on the hit FOX TV program.
The Guardian published an interview on February 2 with Kiefer Sutherland that focuses on his perspectives on how torture is portrayed on 24 and the influence it has had on the views of its audience. Evidence collected by my organization (Human Rights First) and journalists show that soldiers in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay have copied Jack Bauer's brutal interrogation techniques.
There is an ongoing debate over the closing of America's most notorious detainment/torture center at Guantanamo and the legality and efficacy of using torture to extract "information" from detainees in that and other facilities.
In a piece in this morning's Washington Post titled Torture? Prosecute Us, Too Richard Cohen leads with this:
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." So goes an aphorism that needs to be applied to the current debate over whether those who authorized and used torture should be prosecuted. In the very different country called Sept. 11, 2001, the answer would be a resounding no.
Contrary to what has become the accepted noise, "the world" did not "change" on 9/11. Our laws, our treaties and international agreements as well as our values remained. We did not become a "very different country" on September 12, 2001 despite Mr. Cohen's (and others) claim.
STATE BLOGS
There is an ongoing debate over the closing of America's most notorious detainment/torture center at Guantanamo and the legality and efficacy of using torture to extract "information" from detainees in that and other facilities.