Abdelbaset al Megrahi, the man convicted of carrying out the Lockerbie bombing, has left the Tripoli hospital where he was receiving treatment for cancer.
Officials in Libya on Monday reported that Megrahi had been discharged from Tripoli Medical Centre, the country’s most advanced public clinic, where he had received treatment since late August.
In August, doctors gave Megrahi just three months to live in a judgement that secured his release from a Glasgow prison. But he entered the Tripoli hospital to undergo an aggressive chemotherapy programme just days after Libyans celebrated his triumphal return.
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime publicly declared its hope that “a miracle from God” would preserve his life.
[G]iven that George Bush made a far more difficult choice that saved Iraq, it is hard to figure out why Obama cannot make a simple decision to send the troops requested by his commanders on the ground.
It is rapidly becoming obvious that the last 6 1/2 years of Democrats kvetching about focusing on Afghanistan instead of Iraq has been complete bull shit. They had no more intention of fighting in Afghanistan than they had of fighting in Iraq.
Some of us have understood this for years; the rest of the country is about to have a very rude awakening. And, I suppose it is worth mentioning in passing, millions of Afghanis will suffer because of it.
David Frum outlines the cynicism behind candidate Obama’s strategy that President Obama is now trying to weasel around:
There is very little that Barack Obama knows about Afghanistan today that he did not know in the summer of 2008. Obama paid a visit to Afghanistan in July of the election year. In-country, he received briefings on both the deteriorating security situation and the corruption and incompetence of the Karzai government. I know this because I visited Afghanistan just a few months later, and talked to many of the military and civilian figures who had briefed the candidate. They presented my group with an unrelievedly bleak assessment—capped by a call for tens of thousands of additional American troops. When asked, “Did you deliver this same message to candidate Obama,” they responded discreetly, but clearly: Yes they had.
In particular, everybody acknowledged the failings of the Karzai government—and the likelihood that it would tamper with the 2009 Afghan elections. That topic was so widely discussed that one has to wonder about the Obama administration’s decision to stand back as the government ran the election in exactly the corrupt way so many had predicted the year before.
I don’t blame the Obama administration for being reluctant to commit to Afghanistan. The war there has always been unpromising. That’s exactly why the Bush administration refrained from making the grand commitment demanded by candidates Kerry and Obama.
But here’s what Obama should be blamed for, and severely: Virtually every fact about Afghanistan that is discouraging him now was known to him (or anyway, told to him) 15 months ago. He extended the commitment anyway, repeatedly and emphatically. And now it seems he did so first for electioneering purposes, and again, once in office, for equally political ends—to position himself as “tough on terrorism.”
More than 60,000 Americans are fighting and dying in Afghanistan at this moment. Can it really be that they remain there not to win a war, but because pretending to support their mission was necessary to win Barack Obama the Democratic nomination and the presidency? And can it be that Obama is now preparing to reverse course on this unfinished war because, from his new point of view in the Oval Office, it’s already “mission accomplished”?
As a general rule, I’ve got no beef with the Patriot Act, but perhaps the fact that they put this guy in juvenile lockup should be a sign that he’s not really the sort of terrorist the law was designed to be used against.
Though he is being held several hundred miles away from his home. Perhaps it’s the juvi equivalent of Gitmo?
Charles Krauthammer’s column last week arguing in favor of torture under limited circumstances is far better than most on the subject. Not only is it well-reasoned, it’s actually willing to state clearly what it wishes to argue: that torture, without the quotation marks, can be justified under two circumstances:
The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent’s life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, “You do what you have to do.” And then take the responsibility.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don’t entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the “torture memos” noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist “chatter” had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how — and we can’t know that until we have information. Catch-22.
I whole-heartedly agree with his first argument and — for the same Krauthammer offers — would question the fitness of anyone who refused to waterboard or do worse under when confronted with a genuine ticking time bomb. As I have stated elsewhere, I am not aware of this situation ever taking place during the War on Terror.
I do not agree with his second conclusion that torture is (legally? morally? Krauthammer never quite says) permissible to torture or waterboard “a high-value enemy” simply by his virtue of being one. Why, for instance, should we not waterboard a medium-value prisoner, when his information could likely lead to the capture of his superiors? It’s too slippery, and it’s only going to got down hill. When it comes to torture, I think we should insist on the kind of black-and-white certainty Krauthammer mentioned earlier.
The most distressing aspect of the torture issue — worse, to my mind, than either the harm done to detainees or the intelligence that may have been compromised — has been our inability to debate the subject seriously and rationally. This is not a back-door way of criticizing those who disagree with me: 99% of the arguments put forward by both sides rely on the kind of circular logic that admits no honest disagreement. In short, the debated has been poisoned.
That we’ve been unable to discuss a subject this important — though for entirely different reasons, depending on whom you ask — for more than five years speaks very, very poorly for us; after 200 years of practice with republicanism, one would think our citizens could have an intelligent public debate about a controversial subject.
Jim Manzi’s post on the Corner is a genuine exception and something of an antidote: it frames the debate rationally, weighs arguments for and against, and then makes a reasoned judgment. It’s by no means a definitive statement, but it’s the kind of argument we need.
My thoughts are below the fold, but they’re less important than what Manzi wrote. Go read the whole thing.
Having satisfied its readers’ appetite for insightful commentary about the entertainment industry and popular culture, the fine folks at Big Hollywood treat us to this original and thoughtful essay on the torture controversy by one Jeffrey Jena:
So what is torture? There is no definition of torture anywhere that I can find. Is playing loud music torture? Then the kid next door to me needs to get a visit from the Attorney General so I can get some sleep. Bugs where you sleep? I always knew camping was torture! Cold and naked, that was my four years in college. Someone puts underpants on your head? Ever been to a kegger? Annoying voices saying things you find offensive, then Obama and Pelosi torture me every day.
How would the left extract information from terrorists? Sit them down in a well lit room with some nice Lazy-e-Boys and a cold soda, lean in close and say, “Do you have something to tell me?” Then lean back and wait until they are ready to open up? Maybe we could put them in therapy and in six or seven years they would have a breakthrough!
One wonders how Mr. Jena imagines policemen do their work. Do they torture murder suspects into a confession, or do they ask them nice questions while massaging thier feet and ordering Pad Thai? I can’t think of any other possibilities.
To write a highly sarcastic post arguing that the Bush administration has gotten soft in its old age, as evidenced by this article on CNN. “How do we know this family isn’t tied to al Qeada?” I’d write. “Shouldn’t we be willing to ‘take the gloves off’ on these people” I’d ask. “Why don’t we book them a one-way ticket to Cuba where they can enjoy an all-expenses-paid stay at Club Gitmo until this situation is, uh, resolved?” I’d suggest.
Unfortunately, such a post would be in extremely poor taste. What’s more, at least one commentator wouldn’t get the joke and would make some snidely approving post. I have no interest in reading that post and am, hence, refraining.
The Prophet applies broken window policing to geopolitics:
The solution, it largely turned out, wasn’t to become more tolerant of criminality by recasting it as a cultural or lifestyle choice or by invoking root causes (as The New York Times often did), but to become less tolerant of crime. In New York, turnstile jumpers, graffiti artists, even the infamous “squeegee men” were treated as the lawbreakers they were. One heartening moral of the story is that sometimes deviancy can be defined back up.
We learned a similar moral after 9/11. For years — starting around the time of Klinghoffer’s murder, as it happens — policymakers in both parties debated how to define terrorism. Is it a law-and-order issue or a military threat? If it’s a military threat, how do we define a “proportionate response” — this legalistic phrase entered the national-security lexicon back then, too. By the end of the 1990s, the best and the brightest of the Clinton administration found the answer in a lawerly kind of proportionality, blowing up empty office buildings as a way to “send a message” in response to attacks on America and her interests.
After 9/11, the gloves were off. The far left beseeched the government to retaliate with, at most, a proportionate response, but no one cared. We toppled the Taliban as a warm-up act. Terrorists weren’t criminals anymore, they were enemy combatants, ineligible for the Geneva Conventions. But the war in Iraq and reports of American zeal in the war on terror have left a sour taste in our mouths. That there have been no terrorist attacks on our soil only bolsters the sense that terrorism is manageable, even banal. Barack Obama leads a counteroffensive from a legal establishment that wants to treat terrorists like any other criminals. Terrorists in Mumbai or Jeddah are little more than the squeegee men of the New World Order.
It’s a great article, even if Goldberg is on the following edge of a few things.
Today’s progressives apologize to the world for America’s treatment of terrorists (not a single one of whom has been executed). Franklin Roosevelt, when faced with German saboteurs (who had caused not a single casualty), had them electrocuted and buried in numbered graves next to a sewage plant.
The counterpart to Republican incompetence has been a Democratic opposition warped by sentiment. The deaths of thousands of Americans in attacks upon our embassies, warships, military barracks, civil aviation, capital, and largest city were not a criminal matter but an act of war made possible by governments and legions of enablers in the Arab world. Nothing short of war — although not the war we have waged — could have been sufficient in response. The opposition is embarrassed by patriotism and American self-interest, but above all it is blind to the gravity of the matter. Though scattered terrorists allied with militarily insignificant states are not, as some conservatives assert, closely analogous to Nazi Germany, the accessibility of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons makes the destructive capacity of these antagonists unfortunately similar — a fact, especially in regard to Iran, that is persistently whistled away by the Left.
An existential threat of such magnitude cannot be averted by imagining that it is the work of one man and will disappear with his death; by mousefully pleasing the rest of the world; by hopefully excluding the tools of war; or by diplomacy without the potential of force, which is like a policeman without a gun, something that doesn’t work anymore even in Britain. The Right should have labored to exhaustion to forge a coalition, and the Left should have been willing to proceed without one. The Right should have been more respectful of constitutional protections, and the Left should have joined in making temporary and clearly defined exceptions. In short, the Right should have had the wit to fight, and the Left should have had the will to fight.
Seriously, it’s 2008 and we can’t stop pirates. Not “quit stealing my intellectual property” pirates – though we can’t stop them either – but “quit stealing my oil tanker, ya scurvy ridden sea mutts” pirates.
It’s bad enough that it’s 2008 and I do not have a flying car, but also the high seas are flooded with pirates. More Jetsons, less Mad Max, please.
OTIS, Ore. — An Oregon couple received a frightening phone call from their son in Afghanistan when he inadvertently called home during battle.
Stephen Phillips and other soldiers in his Army MP company were battling insurgents when his phone was pressed against his Humvee. It redialed and called his parents in the small Oregon town of Otis.
Sandie Petee, Phillips’ mother, and her husband, Jeff Petee, weren’t home at the time of the call. They returned home to find a three-minute voice mail on their answering machine.
“His friend died a year ago in Iraq and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, this may be the last time I hear my son’s voice on the phone,’” Petee said.
They heard shooting, swearing and shouted pleas for more ammunition on the phone call from their son.
“They were pinned down and apparently his barrel was overheating,” said Jeff Petee. “It’s something a parent really doesn’t want to hear. It’s a heck of a message to get from your son in Afghanistan.”
The three-minute call ended abruptly.
“You could hear him saying stuff like, he needs more ammo, or he needs another barrel,” said John Petee, Phillips’ brother. “At the end, you could hear a guy saying ‘Incoming! RPG!’ And then it cut off.”
As soon as the voice mail stopped playing, the Petees began trying to reach their son in Afghanistan. The family figured out Petee had tried to call home earlier that day, but he didn’t leave a message and the phone later redialed during battle.
They eventually reached their son.
“I finally got a hold of him,” Sandie Petee said. “He was embarrassed, he said, ‘Don’t let Grandma hear it.’”
Stephen Phillips is scheduled to return home next month, when his tour is complete, his mother said.