My first attempt

Sorry I've been incommunicado. The combination of work, applying to new jobs, and of course all things weddings have kept me from participating actively. Anyways, here are just a few things for everyone:

For Justin:

I read as much as I could of your lost email. However, I did not read each of the articles that you inserted. I assume that they all have a the same theme though - stress on the troops, low morale.

Now the articles that I read (both news and opinion) don't seem to reflect the same attitudes from the troops that the Guardian, NY Times, and LA Times do. I don't know why that is. Also the independent inbedded journalist like Yon, Totten, Smith, and others always seem to be with units that have no morale problems (in fact usually quite the opposite). I'm not disputing the NY Times or the LA Times, but there seems to be a disconnect between the people that I read and rely on and the people that you read and rely on. Perhaps it partly has to do with the significant changes that occurred all over the country over the last three months. Even some more mainstream news sources seem to be reporting on it:

Reuters -- http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSCOL24813120071022?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Newsweek -- http://www.newsweek.com/id/57358

For Rachel:

I am so sorry that I never responded to your wonderful post on interrogations. I really did intend on doing so, and then it kind of got lost behind.

I first meant to ask if you took excerpts from the paper you wrote about interrogations? Whether you did or not I would love to read it sometime.

Anyways I had an interesting conversation with a person I know who works with a former Guantanamo Bay interrogator. This guy worked at Gitmo for most of the War on Islamofascism (I wonder if you like that name better than War on Terror). As you can guess he never thought that anything that he or his colleagues did could be considered torture. He also said, interestingly enough, that most of the al-Qaida prisoners at Gitmo had been trained to overcome interrogation tactics during their time at training camps in Afghanistan. And that their goal after being captured was to use the US justice system as a mouthpiece to garner support from other extremist (and this was supposed to be done in American courtrooms). The idea that the US would hold them indefinitely, and not allow them court appearances did not occur to them, and in many ways threw a wrench into their plans (that is holding them as any other country would, for the duration of the conflict).

The other curious thing that was relayed to me was the way that interrogations are conducted now after all the brew-ha-ha over perceived torture. The guy said that under the old system they gathered some of the most valuable information ever collected from any source, and that they had a very high rate of successful interrogations. And that once prisoners let their guard down, they tend to give up huge amounts of info, as if they wanted to brag about their accomplishments to someone. The guy said that normally their hardest task is figuring out what is real and what is bravado.

But now they operate very differently. Today if they want to interrogate a prisoner they have to go to the prisoners cell and ask the prisoner if he wants to talk to them. If the prisoner refuses then they just leave the prisoner be. So basically we can't get any information from anyone anymore. This one particular guy quit because he was fed up with the situation (and he apparently claims that many other trained interrogators are also quiting).

This brings up my questions for you. If stress and duress techniques are no longer acceptable to you, then how would you conduct interrogations of prisoners in the future? Which sorts of techniques, if any, would you approve of, and how would you square the need for intelligence, and the desire to treat these unlawful combatants properly? And how would you want a potential Hilary Clinton/Barack Obama administration to tackle this issue?

There is so much more from the last email you sent about this that I would like to discuss, but it'll have to wait until next time.


For the environmentalists:

Do you guys remember my old roommate Anthony? Anthony graduated from Johns Hopkins with a masters in Environmental Policy. He and I had constant (constructive) arguments about all things political, all the time. However when it came to questions of the environment I normally gave way to him, since he knew so much about it. The only time that I ever really challenged him is when we switched from talking about the circumstances of environmental problems to what should the government do about those problems?

My concern is more about the effects of environmental policy on the American economy, and less about the affects of global warming on the earth. That's not because I don't take global warming seriously, because I do. But I just don't want us to do something that will inhibit economic growth for a science that seems to change rather frequently.

Also the politics global warming seem to me to have more to do with positioning, than it does with science. The Kyoto Treaty, for instance:

Normally Democrats liked to beat up Republicans over not Kyoto, saying something like Bush has "refused to sign Kyoto." However, Bush refused to sign Kyoto for a very good reason: he can't. The previous President already signed Kyoto, however he never sent it to the Senate for ratification because he knew it would fail. There are differing constitutional rationales behind this. Some say that the Senate can take it up an time it wants to, while others say that the President actually has to send it over. Either way Harry Reid isn't clamoring to get going with it. He knows that every Democratic Senator would see their union support running for the hills if he brought the treaty up for a vote.

And besides its better to leave the matter unresolved so that you can use it to beat up a Republican President and Republican Senators. Until the science gets really firm, the politicians are going to play around with the policy to suit their political goals (Al Gore included).

T