Last night, right-wing blogger (and law professor) Glenn Reynolds promoted this media analysis from right-wing blogger (and Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney) Patterico regarding coverage of the Fort Hood shootings.  Patterico wrote:  "Whenever there is breaking news, it’s good to keep a few things in mind: . . . Always follow Allahpundit" -- referring to one of the two bloggers at Michelle Malkin's Hot Air site.

Upon reading that, I went to Hot Air to read what he had written, and it's actually quite revealing -- not in terms of what it reveals about Hot Air (that topic wouldn't warrant a post) but, rather, what it reveals about major media coverage of these sorts of events.  Allahpundit's post consists of a very thorough, contemporaneous, and -- at times -- appropriately skeptical chronicling of what major media outlets were reporting about the Fort Hood attack, combined with his passing along of much unverified gossip and chatter from Twitter, most of which turned out to be false.

It's worth focusing on what the major media did last night, and one can use the Hot Air compilation to examine that.  I understand that in the early stages of significant and complex news stories, it's to be expected that journalists will have incomplete and even inaccurate information.  It's unreasonable to expect them to avoid errors entirely.  The inherently confusing nature of a mass shooting like this, combined with the need to rely on second-hand or otherwise unreliable sources (including, sometimes, official ones), will mean that even conscientious reporters end up with inaccurate information in cases like this.  That's all understandable and inevitable.

But shouldn't there be some standards governing what gets reported and what is held back?  Particularly in a case like this -- which, for obvious reasons, has the potential to be quite inflammatory on a number of levels -- having the major media "report" completely false assertions as fact can be quite harmful.  It's often the case that perceptions and judgments about stories like this solidify in the first few hours after one hears about it.  The impact of subsequent corrections and clarifications pale in comparison to the impressions that are first formed.  Despite that, one false and contradictory claim after the next was disseminated last night by the establishment media with regard to the core facts of the attack.  Here are excerpts from Allahpundit's compilation, virtually all of which -- except where indicated -- came from large news outlets:

Number of shooters

The fact that at least three gunmen are involved already has Shuster and Miklaszewski mentioning similarities to the Fort Dix Six plot on MSNBC . . . two of the gunmen are still at large and one has fired shots at the SWAT team on the scene . . . . New details from CNN: One gunman "neutralized," one "cornered," no word on the third. . . . Whether there are two shooters or three seems to be in dispute at the moment, but there’s certainly more than one:  The second shooting on the base evidently occurred at a theater. . . . Fox News says there are reports that the men were dressed in fatigues. . . . MSNBC TV says two shooters are in custody now. . . . it sounds like both shooters are military . . . According to MSNBC, there were three shooters. . . In case you're wondering whether the other two soldiers in custody were actual accomplices or just being questioned because they knew Hasan, Rick Perry just said at the presser he’s holding that all three were shooters. . . . Hearing rumblings on Twitter right now that Perry was wrong and that the two other "suspects" have now been released. Was Hasan, in fact, a lone gunman? . . . . According to the general conducting the briefing going on right now, he appears to be a lone gunman.

The fate of the shooter

One of the shooters is dead. . . One is dead, two more are in custody. Has there ever been a case of "battle stress" that involved a conspiracy by multiple people? . . . So poor and fragmented have the early media reports about this been that only now, after 9 p.m. ET, do we learn that … Hasan’s still alive. He’s in stable condition.

The weapons used

M-16s involved: . . . From the local Fox affiliate, how it all went down. Evidently McClatchy’s report of M-16s was wrong:

The shooter's background

According to Brian Ross at ABC, Hasan was a convert to Islam. . . . Contra Brian Ross, the AP says it’s unclear what Hasan’s religion was or whether he was a convert. . . . Apparently, one of Hasan’s cousins just told Shep that he’s always been Muslim, not a recent convert. . . .

I’m hearing on Twitter that Fox interviewed one of his neighbors within the last half-hour or so and that the neighbor claims Hasan was handing out Korans just this morning. Does anyone have video? . . . . "Brenda Price of KUSJ reported to Greta at 10:33: 'also, the latest I am hearing, this morning, apparently according to his neighbors, he was walking around kind of giving out his possessions, giving away his furniture, handing out the Koran…'" . . .: Evidently CNN is airing surveillance footage from a convenience store camera taken this just morning showing Hasan in a traditional Muslim cap and robe. . . "A former neighbor of Hasan’s in Silver Spring, Md. told Fox News he lived there for two years with his brother and had the word ‘Allah’ on the door."

Miscellaneous claims

Good lord — there’s a report from BNO News on Twitter that new shooting is being heard on the base. . . . For what it’s worth, an eyewitness report of Arabic being shouted during the attack: . . .Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats. . . . The $64,000 questions: What was he doing at Fort Hood among the population if he thought suicide bombers were heroes?

Isn't it clear that anyone following all of that as it unfolded would have been more misinformed than informed?

The New York Times' Robert Mackey did an equally comprehensive job of live-blogging the media reports, and his contemporaneous compilation reflects many of these same glaring errors in the coverage:  "CNN reports that two military sources say that the second gunman at Fort Hood is 'cornered' . . . Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison told Fox 4 News in Texas that one shooter was in custody and 'another is still at large' . . . CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reports that 12 people have been killed and up to 30 wounded. One of the dead is said to have been one of the gunmen. . . . Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, just revealed that earlier reports that the suspected gunman, Major Nidal Hasan, had been killed were incorrect. Major Hasan was wounded but remains alive."

Perhaps most irresponsible of all is the unverified claim that Hasan had written on the Internet in defense of suicide attacks by Muslims, even though the origins of those writings are entirely unverified.  Similarly, certain news organizations -- like NPR -- used anonymous sources to disseminate inflammatory claims about Hasan's prior troubles allegedly grounded in activism on behalf of Islam.  Much of this may turn out to be true once verified, or it may not be, but all of the conflicting, unverified claims flying around last night enabled many people to exploit the "facts" they selected in order to create whatever storyline that suited them and their political preconceptions -- and many, of course, took vigorous advantage of that opportunity.

I'm obviously ambivalent about the issues of media responsibility raised by all of this.  It's difficult to know exactly how the competing interests should be balanced -- between disclosing what one has heard in an evolving news story and ensuring some minimal level of reliability and accuracy.  But whatever else is true, news outlets -- driven by competitive pressures in the age of instant "reporting" -- don't really seem to recognize the need for this balance at all.  They're willing to pass on anything they hear without regard to reliability -- to the point where I automatically and studiously ignore the first day or so of news coverage on these events because, given how these things are "reported," it's simply impossible to know what is true and what isn't.  In fact, following initial media coverage on these stories is more likely to leave one misled and confused than informed.  Conversely, the best way to stay informed is to ignore it all -- or at least treat it all with extreme skepticism -- for at least a day.

The problem, though, is that huge numbers of people aren't ignoring it.  They're paying close attention -- and they're paying the closest attention, and forming their long-term views, in the initial stages of the reporting.  Many people will lose their interest once the drama dissolves -- i.e., once the actual facts emerge.  Put another way, a large segment of conventional wisdom solidifies based on misleading and patently false claims coming from major media outlets.  I don't know exactly how to define what the balance should be, but particularly for politically explosive stories like this one, it seems clear that media outlets ought to exercise far more restraint and fact-checking rigor than they do.  As it is, it's an orgy of rumor-mongering, speculation and falsehoods that play a very significant role in shaping public perceptions and enabling all sorts of ill-intentioned exploitation.

"I know many readers, particularly liberals, feel we have too many conservative voices on the page. On the other hand, I hear from a lot of conservative readers who think we have too many people they consider too liberal (Dionne, Robinson, Meyerson, Marcus, et al.).  We try to provide a range of views--no matter who is in power" - Fred Hiatt, Washington Post Editorial Page Editor, October 14, 2009.

_______

The Washington Post published a total of 8 Op-Eds and opinion columns today, from these individuals:

* Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey (bashing Obama for wanting to try 9/11 defendants in an actual court)

* Neocon Charles Krauthammer (heralding the resurgent GOP fueled by "Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt")

* Newt Gingrich and GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Obama's health care plan would destroy America)

* Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (Obama has lost the American center and his health care plan will destroy Democrats)

* Conservative economist Martin Feldstein, former chief economic adviser to Reagan ("Obamacare" will raise premiums and increase the number of uninsured)

* Honduran coup defender Edward Schumacher-Matos (blaming Honduras' democratically elected President for "instigating mob rule" and criticizing both the American Right and Left for "extremism," while defending the administration-backed compromise)

* CEO of BP (British Petroluem) Tony Hayward (dismissing efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption as "simplistic" and advocating changes to cap-and-trade bill that would benefit BP)

* Liberal Eugene Robinson (warning of the takeover of the GOP by the intolerant, ideological Right)

_____

So, to re-cap:  The Post today has two former Bush officials, one former Reagan official, two right-wing politicians, a Fox News neocon, the CEO of America's largest oil and gas producer, a defender of the right-wing Honduran military coup leaders, and one liberal columnist.  That overwhelming right-wing presence on the Post Op-Ed page is anything but unusual (the day after it fired Dan Froomkin, The Post published Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Hayden, Charles Krauthammer and an Iran-hawkish screed from David Ignatnius, preceded by Glenn Beck, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Ramesh Ponnuru).  And that's to say nothing of the always-pro-war Editorial Page itself, which typically advocates for those same positions. 

The Post is obviously free to publish whatever it wants, but, wth some very rare exceptions, its Op-Ed page under Fred Hiatt now really is the leading outlet for neoconservatve and related right-wing advocacy.  It is one of those outlets typically counted as part of the "Liberal Media" by right-wing self-victimizers and their media amplifiers, yet The Post's claimed devotion to airing a "wide range of views" is scarcely more credible than Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan.

(updated below - Update II)

The criminal conviction of 22 CIA agents (and 2 Italian intelligence officers) by an Italian court yesterday -- for the 2003 kidnapping of an Islamic cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, off the street in Italy and his "rendition" to Egypt to be tortured -- highlights several vital points:

First, illustrating how these matters are typically distorted by the U.S. establishment media, note that CNN -- in the very first paragraph of its story -- claims that the CIA agents were convicted "for their role in the seizing of a suspected terrorist in Italy in 2003."  What did Nasr allegedly do that warrants that "terrorist" label?  Did he participate in the 9/11 attacks, or plan attacks on "the American homeland" or U.S. civilians?  No.  According to CNN, this is what makes him a "suspected terrorist":

He was suspected of recruiting men to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So the West invades, bombs and occupies Muslim countries, and when Muslims attempt to find people to fight against the West's invading armies, those individuals are deemed "terrorists."  Or consider this quite informative 2005 Washington Post article, which details how the CIA's kidnapping derailed the Italians' criminal (i.e., legal) investigation of Nasr; that article explains:

Nasr was wanted by the Egyptian authorities for his involvement in Jemaah Islamiah, a network of Islamic extremists that had sought the overthrow of the government.  The network was dispersed during a government crackdown in the early 1990s, and many leaders escaped abroad to avoid arrest.

The Egyptian government, long propped up by the U.S., is one of the most tyrannical and brutal in the world.  But Egyptians who work to overthrow that government are deemed "terrorists" by the U.S., and we're apparently willing to kidnap them from around the world -- including from countries where they've received asylum -- and ship them back to our Egyptian friends to be imprisoned and tortured. 

For many Americans -- probably most -- the word "terrorist" conjures up images of the people responsible for the 9/11 attack.  For that reason, labeling someone a "suspected terrorist" can justify doing anything and everything to those individuals (after all, other than civil liberties extremists, who could object to the "seizing of a suspected terrorist" -- or their indefinite detention or torture?).  It's therefore unsurprising that the U.S. Government would use the term "terrorist" so promiscuously and selectively (see John Cole's excellent contrast between what we deem to be "terrorism" when it happens to the U.S. versus what we deny is "terrorism" when done by the U.S.).  It's a powerful term that can justify almost any government action.

But the U.S. media's willingness to mindlessly apply the term "terrorist" in exactly the subjective, self-serving way the U.S. Government dictates -- starkly contrasted with their refusal to use the far more objective term "torture" on the ground that the term is in dispute (i.e., disputed by the U.S. Government torturers) -- illustrates the establishment media's principal function:  to serve American political power and justify whatever our government does.  That's a major reason -- perhaps the primary one -- why the U.S. Government has been able to get away with everything it's done over the last decade.  Those unseen victims of torture, rendition, indefinite detention and other government crimes are all just "terrorists," so who cares?  In reporting on these convictions, CNN immediately and helpfully proclaims Nasr to be a "suspected terrorist" in a way that guts any meaningful definition of that term and -- in many minds -- justifies whatever was done to him, no matter how illegal.

It's worth asking this question:  which sounds more like actual "terrorism":  (a) kidnapping people literally off the street and shipping them thousands of miles away to be tortured with no legal process, or (b) what Nasr is "suspected" of having done?

Second, this incident underscores -- yet again -- that our political and media elite simply do not believe in the rule of law or accountability for high government officials.  To the contrary, they explicitly believe that such officials should be entitled to break the law and be exempt from consequences.  As but one example, here's a discussion on CNN last night about this matter between Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Toobin:

TOOBIN:  This is a real criminal conviction in a country where we tend to honor reciprocal legal arrangements. So they are in a -- they are in no jeopardy as long as they are inside the United States, but, if they were to leave, they are potentially at risk for being jailed and brought to Italy.

BLITZER: Because even if they went to a third country, like England, let's say, or France, Interpol could have a warrant out for their arrest. They have been convicted by an Italian court.

TOOBIN: That's why this is such -- so troubling. It would one thing if they only had to stay out of Italy, but, because of Interpol, because of the reciprocal nature of these agreements, they are potentially at risk almost anywhere they go. 

So according to Toobin, this is all "so troubling."  Why?  Because the people who were found by a duly constituted court to have committed a serious crime are faced with the risk that there might actually be consequences.  After all, these are Americans who were part of the U.S. Government, and consequences for lawbreaking are simply not meant for them.  Echoing Joe Klein's infamous Orwellian claim that torture shouldn't be prosecuted because the CIA is "asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation," Toobin added that "one of the things you do when you are a CIA agent, at least in part, is break the law of other countries" -- Toobin says that as though they have the right to do that without accountability, and without mentioning that causing people to be tortured is also a violation of U.S. law (after Nasr's kidnapping, the chief of the CIA's Milan office traveled to Egypt for three weeks to participate in his "interrogation").

Third, the glaring contrast between (a) the United States and (b) countries that (at least partially) adhere to the rule of law and precepts of accountability continues to grow.  As we saw earlier this week, a U.S. appellate court ruled that American government officials are immune from consequences even when they abduct an innocent man and knowingly cause him to be tortured -- even after the Canadian government publicly disclosed its detailed investigation of that matter, publicly apologized to the victim, and paid him $9 million.  Spain continues to pursue the possibility of criminal prosecution of our high government officials for war crimes even as our own government insists that our war criminals (at least all those but the lowest-level ones) should be immunized and we should look forward, not backwards.  Our attempt to compile a "hit list" of Afghan citizens we intend to murder because we suspect them of drug trafficking prompted angry objections from Afghan officials that our plan violated due process and the rule of law.  

And now an Italian court demonstrates actual judicial independence and adherence to equality under the law by holding American and Italian government kidnappers liable for their complicity in torture -- something our own government institutions have repeatedly failed and/or refused to do (Harper's Scott Horton has much more on the glaring contrast between U.S. and Italian political values that is reflected here).

Finally, this isn't about the past -- at least not exclusively.  The U.S. Government continues to refuse even to comment on what it did here.  The State Department yesterday expressed "disappointment" with the Italian court ruling -- just as it did when a British High Court recently ordered the disclosure of evidence of American torture.  The DOJ continues to insist that no American courts can examine past rendition and torture cases on the grounds of secrecy.  The Obama administration has explicitly decided to continue the "rendition" policy which led to Nasr's illegal kidnapping, albeit with the addition of  anti-torture "safeguards" similar in language if not effect when compared to those in place under Bush (it remains to be seen to which countries these "rendered" suspects will be sent, and whether the renditions will be the illegal kind practiced by Bush/Cheney or the arguably "legalized" form that took place before that, beginning with Reagan through Clinton).  And most notably of all, we continue to be a country which -- in the name of secrecy and national security -- insists that the rule of law and accountability simply do not apply to our highest government officials when they break the law.  Fortunately, other countries -- slowly and incrementally -- are rejecting that pernicious view.

UPDATE:  One of the convicted CIA agents admits to ABC News that they "broke the law" when kidnapping Nasr and claims, credibly, that everything they did was approved back in Washington.

This is as good a time as any to post this new and important 9-minute video from the ACLU (with whom I consult), in which you hear from numerous individuals who were abducted and held for years at Guantanamo with no charges or trial of any kind -- only to be released with no explanation, apology or accountability.  This is really worth watching; like the absence of civilian deaths caused by our wars, it's the key missing piece from typical media coverage that really illustrates what we've been doing:

UPDATE II:  Peter Bergen traveled to Italy to review all the court documents in this case and then to Egypt to interview Nasr.  For the March/April 2008 issue of Mother Jones, he wrote an excellent and very detailed account of what was done to Nasr, who was responsible, and what lead the Italian prosecutors (who had been investigating Nasr) to pursue the case against the CIA agents (h/t Adam Serwer).  It is well worth reading.

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Michael Ledeen of National Review & American Enterprise Institute, writing in "Pajamas Media," January 4, 2007:

BREAKING NEWS --Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, is dead.

Associated Press, January 7, 2007 -- 3 days later:

Khamenei addressed hundreds of citizens of Qom, a holy city 80 miles south of Tehran, who gathered outside his residence in the city center.

Michael Ledeen of National Review & American Enterprise Institute, writing in "Pajamas Media," October 13, 2009:

Khamenei Said to be in Coma

Khamenei has had previous medical emergencies in the past, and recovered, but the source is excellent . . . Here is what he/she says: "Yesterday afternoon at 2.15PM local time, Khamenei collapsed and was taken to his special clinic. Nobody -- except his son and the doctors -- has since been allowed to get near him. His official, but secret, status is: 'in the hands of the gods'. . . .

Outlook is uncertain but speculation is -- considering that he is in coma since more than 24 hours -- that he may not come out of his coma and/or that he may die very soon. . ."

UPDATE (Wednesday Oct 14th):  According to a bulletin from the Greens (Moussavi/Karroubi et al), there are widespread rumors in the Tehran Bazaar that Khamenei has died. The Greens say they cannot confirm it, but that there is an "abnormal atmosphere" in the streets, which almost certainly means there are more security people than usual.

The bazaar will apparently be closed tomorrow, and perhaps Friday as well, pending developments.

George Stephanopoulos, ABC News, October 14, 2009:

Khamenei in Coma?

Rumors rampant. Have been wrong before. If right, will ruling regime close ranks or break apart? Rafsanjani's moment? Necessitate a stall in nuclear talks?

Here's more from Michael Ledeen.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 30, 2009:

Several Iranian websites, including the official site of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have published details of an unusual encounter between Khamenei and a student who publicly criticized the Iranian establishment.

The encounter took place in an October 28 meeting between Khamenei and students in Tehran, during which the supreme leader said that questioning the disputed June 12 vote was the "biggest crime."

According to the reports, a student from Sharif University, named by some websites as Mahmud Vahidnia, criticized the Iranian leader, state broadcast media, the post-election crackdown, and the closure of the reformist press -- for a whole 20 minutes.

This was beyond predictable.  Michael Ledeen is one of the most dishonest and ludicrous jokes on the political scene.  Will that stop George Stephanopoulos from using Ledeen as an expert source on Iran?  No, of course not, because once one obtains Seriousness credentials in Washington, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct (other than petty sex scandals), and journalism is the most accountability-free profession that exists (which is how the person who did this, this and this can still be considered one of the nation's leading "experts" on the Middle East).  If I spend the next 20 years announcing every six months that super-secret sources have confirmed the death of Kim Jong-il, will I be celebrated as a prescient and well-connected expert on North Korea once it finally happens?

One other thing:  re-read what Stephanopoulos wrote and remember:  establishment journalists are vital and irreplaceable because -- unlike bloggers -- they're deeply responsible and reliable, subject to rigorous fact-checking, and don't traffic in irresponsible gossip and rumors that they find on the Internet.

* * * * *

Two unrelated notes:  (1) Jamie Killstein and Allison Kilkenny are two young, aspiring political commentators who have an excellent podcast show from New York; I was interviewed by them last week and that can be heard here (they spend a few mintues at the beginning discussing the interview, but the interview itself begins at roughly the 24:00 mintue mark); and (2) CBS News has an interesting article on the rapidly changing drug policy debate, featuring the report I did on drug decriminalization in Portugal.

UPDATE:  Twitter gets results and credit where it's due:  after I suggested to Stephanopoulos that he should be a bit more judicious about who he uses as an expert source for Iran, he posted this:

Just to underscore the point, The Guardian had an excellent article from a couple weeks ago dissecting what happened here, with this headline:  "Ayatollah Khamenei dead? How rumours start -- Word that Iran's supreme leader had collapsed was soon amplified, embellished and picked up by news organisations."  It notes:

Yesterday Ledeen repeated rumours that have been going around the Tehran Bazaar that Khamenei had died.

But Ledeen has a track record in spreading misinformation, according to the US magazine Vanity Fair, which claimed he was linked in the false reports that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger – one of the main pretexts for the invasion of Iraq.

And in January 2007 he falsely reported Khamenei's death.

Nevertheless, his latest rumour about Khamenei's possible death has been picked up by a number of respected bloggers and media organisations including ABC's George Stephanopoulos, the Jerusalem Post, and Pravda.

That's exactly the track record Ledeen has -- and has long had -- and yet he continues to be employed by National Review and was long employed as a "Freedom Scholar" by The American Enterprise Institute, which should be deemed dispositive in understanding what those organizations actually are.  The fact that he's still deemed a Serious Expert by many news outlets speaks volumes about how they function, too.  The broader point here is that Ledeen has plenty of company in that regard:  other than Judy Miller, has the credibility of even a single media enabler or "expert" advocate of the attack on Iraq and its numerous lies been diminished in any way? 

UPDATE II:  From The New York Times, yesterday (h/t lysias)

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lashed out at the United States in a speech on Tuesday, criticizing what he called an arrogant American attitude toward nuclear talks and saying the Obama administration had not followed through on its promises of change.

What an impressively rapid recovery from his protracted and life-threatening coma -- almost as miraculous as that time three years ago when he quickly bounced back from his own Ledeen-confirmed death.  For the 2007 death announcement, even Michelle Malkin's Hot Air pronounced, in advance, that it would be a "major embarrassment" for Ledeen and "Pajamas Media" if it turned out the report was false.  But Malkin's commentators forgot -- understandably so -- that there is no such thing as a "major embarrassment" when it comes to Serious neoconservative propagandists "analysts."  What else could explain this?

UPDATE III:  The New York Times has a discussion of the meaning (or lack thereof) of last night's election.  My contribution is here.

(updated below)

From Ben Smith's Politico article on the surprisingly narrow victory by Michael Bloomberg in the New York mayoral race:

Bloomberg’s meager five-point win left Democrats pondering what might have been if New York’s Democratic donors hadn’t turned their back on Thompson, if its politicians had worked for him, and most of all if President Barack Obama had offered anything more than the lamest words of praise.

"Maybe one of those Corzine trips could have been better spent in New York. Who knows?" remarked New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who weighed his own run for mayor, referring to the White House’s devout attention to the New Jersey contest.

"Maybe Anthony Weiner should have manned-up and run against Michael Bloomberg," shot back a White House official, who attributed the night’s results across the board to anti-incumbent fervor.

A White House official who is too cowardly even to attach his own name to his comments -- who has to hide behind Politico's permanently extended fetal wall of anonymity in order to criticize a member of Congress -- simultaneously accuses Anthony Weiner of being a coward and failing to "man-up."  I've written extensively on what the promiscuous use of anonymity says about Beltway journalism, but the unwillingness of so many of the most powerful political officials to speak for attribution reflects how deceitful, manipulative and -- most of all -- fearful they are.  Beltway mavens love to deride "bloggers" for writing anonymously, but at least even anonymous bloggers create pseudonyms that enable ongoing accountability; moreover, many of those anonymous bloggers are just ordinary citizens, with no power, who are too vulnerable to write under their real names.  But powerful political officials who will spew insults and criticisms only while protected from accountability are just frightened and weak.  The fact that one of those cowards, in this case, has to hide who he is while boldly accusing Weiner of being a coward -- the same Weiner who is willing to step up and criticize Obama with his name attached -- is unintended irony so extreme it's hard to express.

One other note:  isn't it interesting how Washington elites love to condemn as authoritarian dictators certain political leaders in other countries who try to repeal term limits in order to stay in power (see Venezuela and Honduras -- but not Colombia), yet here we have one of America's richest oligarchs using his bottomless personal wealth to repeal a voter-enacted term-limit referendum, and then using that same wealth to win a third term and stay in power, and that's treated as a glorious expression of American democracy?  Indeed, it was not all that long ago when Broderian trans-partisan fetishists were holding up that same oligarch as the ideal presidential candidate who would finally and single-handedly vanquish America's messy and unpleasant political disputes.

UPDATE:  The New York Times has a discussion of the meaning (or lack thereof) of last night's election.  My contribution is here.

It's not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday's ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft (.pdf).  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing.  I've appended to the end of this post the graphic description from a dissenting judge of what was done to Arar while in American custody and then in Syria.

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada."  By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves "state secrets" and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved.  What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how "democratic," "accountable," and "open" the United States is?

Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 --  agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety.  It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him.  Why?  Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39).  In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.  

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them.  Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have.  As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement:  it "means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury" (p. 27; emphasis added).

The commentary about this case from Harper's Scott Horton perfectly captures the depravity of what our Government has done -- and continues to do -- to Arar.  His analysis should be read in its entirety, and he concludes with this:

When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it.

I want to add one principal point to all of this.  This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war.  So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror.  The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration -- even including basic liberties and the rule of law.  Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe.

This is exactly why I find so objectionable and dangerous the ongoing embrace by the Obama administration of these same secrecy and immunity weapons.  Obama had nothing to do with the Arar case -- all the conduct, and even the legal briefing, occurred before he was President -- but he has taken numerous steps to further institutionalize the core injustice here, including in cases that are quite similar to Arar:  namely, that the Executive can use secrecy and national security claims to shield himself from the rule of law, even when he's accused of torture and war crimes.  That's exactly what happened here, yet again.  As Judge Parker wrote in dissent (click image to enlarge)

Identically, Judge Calabresi -- one of the most respected and non-ideological appellate judges in the country -- accused the majority of "utter subservience to the executive branch."  Surely that's true, but it isn't only the Arar majority that is guilty of that.  It is the nation as a whole -- drowning in infinite claims of "state secrets" and executive immunity and war necessity and the imperatives of "looking forward" -- that has meekly acquiesced to the pernicious idea that the President in an allegedly national security context must never have his actions disclosed, let alone judicially scrutinized and held accountable, no matter how criminal, brutal and inhumane those actions are.   

**********************

Here's Judge's Sack's description of what was done to Arar in Syria, which accords perfectly with what the Canadian investigation found -- this is what our Government (both the executive and judicial branches) has continuously insisted it can purposely cause to happen without any accountability or even transparency (pp. 13-15):

Judge Sack's equally horrific description of exactly what the U.S. did to cause all of that to happen to Arar is here.

(updated below - Update II)

The latest Haaretz column by the outstanding and courageous Israeli columnist, Gideon Levy, is entitled "America, Stop Sucking Up to Israel," and it highlights one of the most bizarre political facts:  criticism of Israeli actions is far more tolerated and permitted in Israeli political discourse than it is in America's.  It's simply inconceivable that any establishment journalist or national politician would ever echo Levy's scathing indictments of Israel's conduct and his calls for the U.S. to apply serious pressure and even threats to coerce changes in Israeli behavior.  After describing the increasingly conciliatory actions towards Israel by the Obama administration in exchange for nothing but obstinance, Levy writes:

Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in Washington consider begging Saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait?

But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment. Another massage to the national ego in one video, more embarrassing praise in another.

Now is the time to say to the United States: Enough flattery. If you don't change the tone, nothing will change.  As long as Israel feels the United States is in its pocket, and that America's automatic veto will save it from condemnations and sanctions, that it will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from Washington, killing, destroying and imprisoning without the world's policeman making a sound, it will continue in its ways.

Illegal acts like the occupation and settlement expansion, and offensives that may have involved war crimes, as in Gaza, deserve a different approach. If America and the world had issued condemnations after Operation Summer Rains in 2006 - which left 400 Palestinians dead and severe infrastructure damage in the first major operation in Gaza since the disengagement - then Operation Cast Lead never would have been launched.

It is true that unlike all the world's other troublemakers, Israel is viewed as a Western democracy, but Israel of 2009 is a country whose language is force. . . . When Clinton returns to Washington, she should advocate a sharp policy change toward Israel. Israeli hearts can no longer be won with hope, promises of a better future or sweet talk, for this is no longer Israel's language. For something to change, Israel must understand that perpetuating the status quo will exact a painful price.

Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything and that it has the power to make a fool of America and the world. The United States has engendered this situation, which endangers the entire Mideast and Israel itself. That is why there needs to be a turning point in the coming year - Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous, presidential no.

It's simply impossible to imagine that sort of harsh and blunt critique being voiced by any establishment political commentator or national politician in the U.S.  In fact, one finds the exact opposite trend of the one Levy advocates.  As Levy suggests, and as Spencer Ackerman insightfully documents and condemns, the Obama administration appears to be rapidly retreating on what was once its promising and commendable demand that Israel cease all settlement growth.  The U.S. is unwilling merely to demand from Israel a cessation of activity which is illegal in the eyes of the entire world and destructive to American interests. 

Even worse, the U.S. Congress appears poised -- yet again -- to enact a meaningless though odious Resolution that has no purpose other than to shield Israel from criticism; place ourselves squarely on Israel's side no matter what it does; and once again obstruct war crimes investigations.  That Resolution -- co-sponsored by two members of Congress from each party, including supreme AIPAC loyalist Howard Berman, the Democratic Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee -- would advance the repellent through all-too-familiar personal smears against U.N. investigator Richard Goldstone by urging that the U.S. "oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration" of Goldstone's report -- which found both Israel and Hamas likely guilty of "war crimes" in the war in Gaza -- on the ground that the Report was biased, flawed, one-sided, pre-ordained and false.

It's apparently not enough that the U.S. Government block all efforts to investigate its own war crimes while immunizing its own war criminals.  Now the U.S. Congress has decided that they were elected to do the same for Israel.  The reality is that Goldstone's report found that both Hamas and Israel committed war crimes in the war in Gaza, but the focus of the report was on Israel because the number of civilian deaths it caused was -- as usual -- many times the magnitude caused by Hamas.  Just to get a flavor for what the U.S. Congress is poised to endorse and protect, here is Goldstone himself, being interviewed by Bill Moyers, describing what he saw as part of his war crimes investigation (h/t Siun):

BILL MOYERS: I mean, there are allegations in here, some very tough allegations of Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed civilians who pose no threat, of shooting people whose hands were shackled behind them, of shooting two teenagers who’d been ordered off a tractor that they were driving, apparently carrying wounded civilians to a hospital, of homes, hundreds, maybe thousands of homes destroyed, left in rubble, of hospitals bombed. I mean there are some questions about one or two of your examples here, but it’s a damning indictment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, right?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, it is outrageous, and there should have been an outrage. You know, the response has not been to deal with the substance of those allegations. I’ve really seen or read no detailed response in respect of the incidents on which we report.

BILL MOYERS: Why is that?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, I don’t know. I suppose people hate being attacked. There’s a knee-jerk reaction to attack the messenger rather than the message. And I think this is typical of that. And of course, a lot of the allegations, I certainly don’t claim anything like infallibility. But I would like to see a response to the substance, particularly the attack on the infrastructure of Gaza, which seems to me to be absolutely unjustifiable.

BILL MOYERS: What did you see with your own eyes when you went there?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, I saw the destruction of the only flour-producing factory in Gaza. I saw fields plowed up by Israeli tank bulldozers. I saw chicken farms, for egg production, completely destroyed. Tens of thousands of chickens killed. I met with families who lost their loved ones in homes in which they were seeking shelter from the Israeli ground forces. I had to have the very emotional and difficult interviews with fathers whose little daughters were killed, whose family were killed. One family, over 21 members, killed by Israeli mortars. So, it was a very difficult investigation, which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

Any decent human being would react with horror and disgust at such a report and demand a full investigation and accountability.  But the members of Congress in both parties -- predictably -- are doing the opposite:  they're condemning the report itself, demonizing those who prepared it, and demanding that investigations be suppressed.  As Levy says, why would Israel ever feel constrained to stop any of its behavior when it knows that the U.S. Government is unwilling and/or unable to do anything but subserviently cheer it on?

Just to underscore how permissive Israeli political debates are as compared to the U.S., consider the recent actions of the often admirable J Street, which is supposed to be devoted to challenging the AIPAC-imposed orthodoxies of U.S. policy towards Israel. In his rather cringe-inducing attempt to convince The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg of his Seriousness credentials, J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami dutifully affirmed to Goldberg numerous requisite "pro-Israel" claims -- among other things, equating Walt/Mearsheimer with anti-Semites and categorically opposing any use of America's military aid package to induce changes in Israeli behavior.  As Andrew Sullivan correctly observed about that:

What's interesting here is that J-Street's head insists that the only serious lever the US has over Israel should be taken off the table before any deal is even negotiated. This is the lefty, peacenik, goddamned hippie position! Military aid, mind you, is already formally illegal because of Israel's secret nuclear bomb program (which no American president can, you know, mention), but is retained because, well, because it would never be repealed by the Congress. And so Netanyahu knows he can do anything he wants without any real blowback from the US. And he has about as much interest in a two-state solution as I have in marrying a woman.

This leaves the US with no leverage over a central party in critical discussions which indeed affect the national security of Americans. In what other case does that apply?

J Street even recently issued a rather mealy-mouthed statement on the Congressional Resolution to condemn the Goldstone Report.  I have almost nothing but good things to say about J Street -- they are fighting a difficult and largely noble battle -- but the fact that not even this group, devoted to orthodoxy-busting, is willing to get anywhere near what Gideon Levy advocates illustrates how constricted American debates over Israel continue to be compared to Israel's.

As this highly revealing exchange between Hillary Clinton and Pakistani journalists over the meaning of "terrorism" reflects, nothing destroys our efforts to improve our image in the Muslim world as these blatant double standards do (blatant, that is, to virtually everyone outside of the U.S. and much of Western Europe).  Even Iran's dissident leaders point to America's double standards on Israel to justify their own government's conduct.  It's so obvious as to require no explanation that we cannot and will not be taken seriously in our campaigns against "terrorism" and "war crimes" when we are not only willing, but eager, to exempt ourselves and Israel from those sermons.  But after some initial, impressive steps from Obama, we are continuing to do that as much as ever, probably to Israel's detriment and certainly to our own.

UPDATE:  Obviously related to all of this, Matt Yglesias and Mother Jones' Nick Baumann document a defamatory and reckless (though quite typical) smear campaign led by neocon character assassins Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard and Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, against National Iranian American Iranian-American Council founder Trita Parsi.  Parsi is guilty of the crime of opposing punitive military actions and harsh sanctions against Iran and therefore must be impugned and discredited.  America's Israel-related orthodoxies are always enforced by individuals like these -- the most discredited neocons among us, uniformly advocates of the attack on Iraq, and fixated on one issue only:  Israel (one of the most vile examples was the recent, blatantly racist attempt by a former AIPAC and Israeli official to impugn J Street on the ground that it has supporters who are Arab and Muslim).  Few things are more urgent than putting an end to their destructive tactics.

UPDATE II:  On an unrelated note:  Alan Grayson has received much attention for his unusually aggressive political rhetoric, but more important, he has been very innovative in highlighting critical substantive issues, many of which I've written about here -- from the Fed's opaque transactions to oozing lobbyist influence and defense contractor corruption.  As a result of all of that, and due to his being in a difficult district, he has become one of the GOP's prime targets for defeat in 2010.  Today, he is holding a "money bomb" to assist in his re-election, and those who wish to participate can pledge to his campaign here.