Daniel Pipes noticed last week’s arrest of a Saudi couple in Denver for keeping a slave. In a new FrontPage article, Pipes says it’s business as usual for Saudis and mentions half a dozen similar instances involving Saudi diplomats and members of the royal family. They’re the tip of the iceberg. Pipes links to a 2003 Joel Mowbray article documenting that Saudis in the U.S. are merely continuing the practices of their homeland (emphasis added):

More than 8 million of Saudi Arabia’s 21 million residents are foreign nationals who work in largely menial or blue-collar positions. About 1 million work as domestics, such as gardeners and maids. The vast majority of the 400,000 maids are women from Asia, with most of them hailing from extremely poor countries. …

Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962, but it treats domestic servants in much the same way fugitive-slave laws treated blacks in pre-Civil War America. Saudi newspapers run bounty ads announcing the "escape" of domestics and requesting the help of fellow Saudis in the return of this "property." Women who do not find their way to government-run shelters-themselves viewed by human-rights experts as largely a PR ploy-face a harsh fate. Notes Amnesty International’s Brian Evans: "Women who go to the police station seeking help actually get locked in jail until their employers come and pick them up."

Saudi "abolition" of slavery in 1962 was purely a PR move. The laws around the handling and transfer of slaves are still in place and govern what happens to the "escaped" servants discussed by Mowbray. Pipes notes that the radical Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia defend slavery:

… Although slavery was abolished in the kingdom in 1962, the practice still flourishes there. Ranking Saudi religious authorities endorse slavery; for example, Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan insisted recently that “Slavery is a part of Islam” and whoever wants it abolished he called “an infidel.”

Pipes describes why Saudi slaveholders usually face little risk of punishment in the U.S.:

The U.S. State Department knows about the forced servitude in Saudi households and laws exist to combat this scourge but, as Mowbray argues, it “refuses to take measures to combat it.” Finally, Saudis know they can get away with nearly any misbehavior. Their embassy provides funds, letters of support, lawyers, retroactive diplomatic immunity, former U.S. ambassadors as troubleshooters, and even aircraft out of the country; it also keeps pesky witnesses away.

Given the U.S. government’s louche attitude toward the Saudis, slavery in Denver, Miami, Washington, Houston, Boston, and Orlando hardly comes as a surprise. Only when Washington more robustly represents American interests will Saudi behavior improve.

Back in April, when Crown Prince Abdullah was feted in Crawford, I expressed my disgust at our ongoing sucking up to the Saudis:

In between the schmoozing, the sucking up, and the US promises to make it easier for Saudis to come here (!), did anyone on our team think to express some freakin’ OUTRAGE that these clowns are still sending Wahabbi Islamofascist literature to American mosques and teaching hatred of Christians and Jews in their madrassas?

At that time, my first concern was ongoing Saudi support for Islamofascists in this country. But the Islamofascist religious and political philosophy that completely controls Saudi Arabia and permeates — no, constitutes — its culture is an abomination in so many ways.

Daily Pundit has it about right:

Saudi Islam is a curse on the world. Its hold on the Saudi government needs to be destroyed. If we have to destroy the Saudi government in the process, that wouldn’t bother me much, either.

Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and radical Islam in general should be all the evidence anyone needs to demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of the leftist multicultural BS about no culture being better than any other. These people still defend and practice slavery, and we’re supposed to worry that making a jihadist uncomfortable might bring us down to their level??

Yes, we had slavery in this country. And our society is still paying the price today. But look at the historical context: Slavery existed and was accepted as normal in every human society throughout history — until the 18th century, when voices in the United States and Great Britain were raised against it. Those voices spoke of liberty and natural rights and free will, and they proclaimed slavery to be a moral outrage.

In a hundred years, those ideas and moral values had swept through the Western world and made people ashamed of a practice they’d accepted for thousands of years. Those ideas and values are part of — are fundamental to — Western culture. And, by damn, it IS morally superior to the barbaric 8th-century culture that still enslaves people, that declares women property, that flays people’s flesh for dancing, that imprisons Christians for praying in their homes, that saws people’s heads off with a dull knife for being Jewish.

No, it doesn’t bother me that interrogators at Gitmo may have failed to show sufficient respect for the beliefs of their jihadist captives. It bothers me that they haven’t expressed contempt for those barbarous beliefs.

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Executive summary: I’m sick of people speaking in criminal justice terms about the detainees at Gitmo and other camps. They aren’t "suspects," they’re enemy soldiers. They’re not entitled to lawyers, they’re entitled to minimally humane confinement for the duration of the war.

Let’s start with a perfect example of what’s wrong with the Republican Party in general, its senators in particular, and most specifically, Sen. John McCain. This is how he supports the administration and counters the absurd rhetoric on Gitmo that the anti-American left and mainstream media (but I repeat myself) have been spewing (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON (AP) – Prominent Senate Republicans said today that closing the Guantanamo Bay prison would not fix a U.S. image tarnished by allegations of U.S. troops mistreating terrorism suspects.
…

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said there’s no doubt that the United States has an image problem because of allegations of abuse and torture at the prison in Cuba.

However, he added: "The key to this is to move the judicial process forward so that these individuals will be brought to trial for any crime that they are accused of rather than residing in Guantanamo facility in perpetuity."

Aaaaargh! Right there, in one incredibly stupid sentence, McCain has embraced the premises and values of the anti-American left! This is something Republicans do time and time again: they accept the premises and values of their opponents and thus end up defending their supposed principles half-heartedly and apologetically, if at all.

For crying out loud, the guys at Gitmo weren’t apprehended sticking up a convenience store or forging checks! On June 5, regarding Amnesty International and the mainstream media, I wrote:

They want us to treat captured jihadists as suspects to be arrested and tried instead of as enemy combatants to be held for the duration of the war; they want to return to the pre-9/11 Clinton policy of viewing the Islamofascists as a criminal justice problem. This is insane.

A week earlier, I pointed to an important National Review article that made this point forcefully:

But the real meat of the Rivkin and Casey article is their discussion of the war we’re in, the left’s rejection of it as a state of war, and the status of those who wage it against us. They begin by noting that the Amnesty report applies a "criminal-law model," speaking of the Guantanamo detainees as "held without charge or trial…" Nonsense, they say, and make an important point — at least, it ought to be important to a human rights group (emphasis added):

Of course, the men held at Guantanamo Bay are not political dissidents. They are captured enemy combatants. Under the laws of war, they can be detained until the conflict, or at least actual hostilities, are concluded. This has been the practice of the United States, and of every other major power in Europe and elsewhere, for centuries. It is not illegal; it is not immoral. In fact, this rule is one of the first and most important humanitarian advances made in warfare. The right to detain is the necessary concomitant of the obligation to give quarter on the battlefield, to actually take prisoners alive.

It ought to be obvious that the soldiers of al Qaeda and the Taliban captured during battles in Afghanistan aren’t criminal suspects, but prisoners of war. But, they’re not entitled to formal POW status under the Third Geneva Convention because they failed to meet its requirements. For instance, they didn’t meet various conditions imposed on militias and resistance movements, including wearing a uniform or "distinctive sign" and "conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war." Furthermore, the Convention prohibits certain acts against "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities," including:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

Signatories aren’t bound by the Convention in conflicts with a party that doesn’t adhere to its provisions. Clearly, al Qaeda and the other Islamofascists spit on the customs of war and the prohibitions of the Geneva Conventions on a daily basis. We don’t owe them the courtesies outlined in the Third Convention, which must be earned by reciprocity. In fact, one can argue that we would be justified in shooting all combatants instead of accepting their surrender (I don’t advocate or condone this, by the way).

So, the vast majority of detainees at Gitmo and other camps are prisoners of war, not criminal suspects, but they aren’t entitled to the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention. We can and should detain them until the war is over, and we owe them nothing. For the sake of ourselves and our values, we should give them basic humanitarian treatment, including refraining from torture. As I’ve argued before, the documented Gitmo interrogation techniques aren’t torture, either as defined in the 1987 Convention Against Torture or by any common-sense interpretation of the word.

Are there difficult or unclear cases? Of course there are — this is an unconventional conflict against an unconventional adversary. A non-state entity is waging war on us. We’re charting new territory here.

In a conventional war, POWs are held until the war is over — until one side surrenders or there is a truce, armistice, or other defined and agreed-upon cessation of hostilities. How will we know when this war is over?

In a conventional war, we have a pretty good idea of who is a combatant and what constitutes the battlefield. In this war, both concepts are vague, ambiguous, and subject to unilateral, surprise redefinition by our adversaries.

Given these difficult — unprecedented — circumstances, there’s plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree over the tough cases and judgement calls.

I’m inclined to think that Jose Padilla deserves an attorney and a day in court, although I admit that I haven’t delved deeply into the case. But I don’t see an arrest at O’Hare as equivalent to capture on the field of battle.

On the other hand, I think Richard Reid is a captured enemy combatant. After 9/11, is there any doubt that the cabin of an airliner can be, at the combatant’s option, part of the field of battle?

By all means, let’s discuss and debate the tough cases and difficult questions. And let’s continue to uncover and punish (as the military has been doing) the violations of our documented standards for interrogating prisoners. But enough of the overwrought handwringing over a few unfortunate lapses in what has been, by historical standards, the most humanely fought war ever.

And no more nonsense about lawyers, trials, and due process for prisoners of war!

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Way back on April 20th, I blogged about the "too many choices" crowd and recommended a TCS column on the topic:

If "libertarian paternalism" strikes you as one of the most moronic (both the regular and oxy kind) phrases you’ve ever seen, you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s being promoted by some leftist busybodies who think that we’re suffering from too many choices and that the government ought to do us a favor and limit our choices more.

If you can stand to learn more about these horse’s asses, check out the sound thumping that Pejman Yousefzadeh applies in his new TCS column, Choice and Its Enemies.

Well, despite Pejman’s thumping, the anti-choice whiners are still at it. Radley Balko points out a guest column by Stacy Schiff in the NY Times (log in with BugMeNot) decrying niche marketing and too many choices. Balko reminds us that he, too, tackled this topic at TCS back on April 22nd. His analysis is succinct and bears repeating:

I’ll say it again: Critics of capitalism once predicted that free markets would wreak mass starvation, depletion of resources, pollution, and death.

They’re now reduced to bitching about too many flavors of mustard.

We’ve won the debate.

BTW, there’s one really positive bit of news in that NY Times column. It’s at the bottom, where we’re informed why Stacy Schiff is a guest columnist: 

 Maureen Dowd is on book leave.

Suggestions for lengthening Dowd’s "book leave" are most welcome.

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Austin Bay is blogging from the Persian Gulf. Col. Bay, who served a tour in Iraq, is on a free-lance reporting mission to the region. His blog has some thoughtful and interesting commentary on the war, foreign relations, and military matters. I wish I had more time to explore his archives.

Today’s post is a quick overview of what he’s been up to since arriving in Bahrain on the 11th. It’s full of cool naval info and acronyms:

I caught a helo flight from the USS Vinson to the USS Kearsarge –an LHD, amphibious warfare ship with helos, Harrier jets, and a USMC Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) on board. (A MEU has around 1200 Marines. It’s a Marine battalion landing team with tanks, artillery, helicopters, and Harrier jets.) I spent the night on board the LHD and in the morning watched as the ship recovered an LCAC ( hover-craft used to transport heavy Marine equipment). The Marine unit had been training on land at a site in Kuwait. The LHD is the centerpiece of an Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG). The ESG is partrolling the northern Persian Gulf.

On the morning of June 13 I flew by helicopter to the USS Normandy (the Aegis cruiser). The ultra-hi-tech missile-carrying Normandy now sports M-2 heavy machine guns and 25 millimeter chain guns (the type on US Army Bradley infantry vehicles and USMC LAVs). They are “add-ons” for close-in defense from potential attack by small boats. … The Normandy’s captain pointed out that most of his crew is now “dual-hatted.” A sailor may be assigned as a cook or logistics specialists, but he or she is also assigned a gun position, or may participate in boarding parties using the cruiser’s RHIBs (rigid hull inflatable boats).

I spent the afternoon of June 13 scooting around the Persian Gulf on a Coast Guard RHIB and on the Normandy’s RHIBs. I was in the stand-off boat when a couple of dhows were boarded. These boardings were “information boardings” where local boat operators receive information in Arabic, Farsi, and English about the exclusion zone around the oil terminals. …

I’m looking forward to more, especially from within Iraq. Meanwhile, I’ve hit his tip jar and encourage you to do likewise. Let’s encourage original reporting from the new media.

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The Senate passed a resolution last night apologizing for its failure to pass anti-lynching legislation. The House passed bills making lynching a federal crime three times between 1904 and 1968, but in the Senate, Southern Democrats blocked the bills with filibusters. Don Surber noted that filibuster defender Robert Byrd had no comment:

But not one of these reports carried the name of Bob Byrd. Not one. The Conscience of the Senate was a no-show when the Senate finally apologized for being an accessory to murder. The protector of the Right to Filibuster was silent when the filibuster’s darkest days were acknowledged. The Grand Kleagle of the Raleigh Kounty Kavern was ignored when his organization’s favorite tool of terrorism was denounced.

But David Hardy at Of Arms & the Law is right. If federal anti-lynching legislation had passed, it would have been unconstitutional under one of the most abominable Supreme Court decisions of all time:  

In 1875, the Court ruled in U.S. v. Cruikshank that lynching a person (actually, a hundred people) did not deprive anyone of the privileges and immunities of national citizenship. (It’s relevant to Second Amendment history in that the Court also ruled that disarming people and preventing their assembly were not violations of the 14th Amendment, either). … 

It’s the Supreme Court that owes an apology, for Cruikshank has never been overruled:

What makes Cruikshank particularly appalling was that it arose out of the worst racial violence in American history. Sheriff Cruikshank had been a leader of a mob that attacked a group of freedmen occupying a courthouse, burned the courthouse to force them out, disarmed them and murdered over a hundred of them. … Under the Supreme Court’s ruling — this was no violation of the 14th Amendment and could not be federally prosecuted.

Highly relevant to this issue is my earlier post about Condoleezza Rice and gun rights. She remembers her father and his friends taking up arms to defend their community against nightriders in 1962 and 1963. Proving that, when push comes to shove, it’s better to be prepared to defend your own life and liberty than to plead with others to defend them for you.

See also David Hardy’s review of Negroes with Guns by Robert Williams. It’s the story of how Williams and other black veterans formed an NRA chapter, armed themselves, and defended their community against the Klan:

When the Klan came shooting, it soon found that its targets shot back. A Klan cavalcade (sort of a mass drive-by shooting) came to shoot up the home of the vice-president of the chapter, and found a number of members in sandbagged positions with rifles. After a gunfight, the Klan abandoned that approach (and the City Council, which had never done so before, required the Klan to get a permit for future appearances — this was in 1957, remember).

Sounds like an alternately chilling and inspiring book. And I just love the idea of a black NRA chapter in North Carolina in the 50s — so much for the "NRA is a bunch of rednecks" meme.

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Thinking of going hiking in the Rockies? Remember — just because the calendar says June, that doesn’t mean you won’t encounter winter conditions:

Two men, reported missing after failing to return from a hike, withstood extreme winter conditions Sunday night before being found Monday morning.

Yeah, I’d say an 80-mph wind, heavy snow, and a wind chill of minus 20 degrees Farenheit qualify as extreme winter conditions. How did they survive?

Authorities said the two men spent the night in a restroom on the mountain. Monday morning they found the door blocked by a 4-foot snow drift.

"They said if they hadn’t found that restroom they probably wouldn’t have survived," one official said.

The only restrooms high on the mountain would be at the parking lot just below the summit (Mt. Evans has a road to the top, like Pike’s Peak). There may be pit toilets at other pulloffs along the road.

The men, Cory Justice, 27 and Dan Welle, 36, are not experienced hikers. The two planned to climb their first 14,000-foot peak, Mount Evans through Sawtooth Ridge and then over to Mount Bierstadt.

Well, that’s poorly worded by someone not familiar with the area. I’m guessing they started at Summit Lake. From there, the Mt. Evans summit is a relatively short but steep trudge (about 2 miles and 3000 feet vertical, IIRC). The Sawtooth Ridge connects Evans to Bierstadt (another fourteener), and it’s dangerous, difficult, and semi-technical climbing (ropes and protection recommended). How do you think it got its name?

Inexperienced hikers who’ve never climbed a fourteener would be nuts to attempt the traverse along Sawtooth Ridge. I didn’t attempt it, I climbed Bierstadt from the other side (on snowshoes in April).

These guys may be lucky the weather turned bad — it kept them from venturing into a place where a thousand-foot fall is a real possibility.

Even if you’re just driving through the mountains, June can sometimes get, um, interesting:

The winter-like weather that stranded the hikers also closed Colorado 82 over Independence Pass for about two hours early Monday as a late spring storm brought snow, sleet and high winds to the high country.

Wind and drifting snow had stranded cars and blocked traffic over the 12,000-foot-high pass between Aspen and Leadville. It reopened at about 5:30 a.m.

Eastbound lanes of Interstate 70 through the Eisenhower Tunnel closed for about two hours Sunday night because of a rash of collisions blamed on ice and wind. Westbound lanes were closed for about 10 minutes.

But, hey, in a few hours, it’s all over. The sun’s out, the sky is an incredible blue, and you’re starting to get too warm and have to take off your sweater. That’s Colorado!

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No, this blog won’t have any news, analyses, opinions, or humor about the outcome of this year’s Trial of the Century. You’ll have to get those somewhere else. Almost anywhere else would be my guess.

UPDATE: OK, I can’t resist reporting that Saddam Hussein’s legal team is requesting a change of venue to California.

But that’s it. No more.

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Jason at Liberty and Culture pointed out this article by Dr. Jack Wheeler about fans of She Wore A Yellow Ribbon in the administration. They’re fans of the John Wayne line, "Never apologize, son. It’s a sign of weakness." They want something like this in an upcoming Presidential address:

“I want to make it very clear that neither this Administration nor the American military nor the American people owe an[y] apology whatsoever to the religion of Islam and its believers. The American people have every right to take enormous pride in the respect [with] which our military treats believers in Islam, and in the fact that the American military is not just the most powerful but the most humanitarian fighting force in the history of humankind. It is the Islamic terrorists and their followers who owe us an apology for making war on us, and owe an apology to their fellow believers in Islam for making war on them.”

It needs a couple of edits (which I’ve added in brackets), but it’s just about right. And I agree with Wheeler:

The day the President of the United States announces that Moslems owe an apology to us and not the other way around will be the day we truly begin to win this war.

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The clamor about Guantanamo has reached the stage of absurdity with Time’s cover story on the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the "20th hijacker." The story is based on "a secret 84-page interrogation log" that Time describes as "sometimes shocking" and "a rare glimpse into the darker reaches of intelligence gathering" by "teams that specialize in extracting information by almost any means." Really? What are these shocking, darker, "almost any means" interrogation techniques?

Well, they’re the 16 "more muscular" strategies approved by Rumsfeld for "a select few detainees, including al-Qahtani" on Dec. 2, 2002:

… Now the interrogators could use stress strategies like standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, playing on “individual phobias” (such as dogs) and “mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing.” According to the log, al-Qahtani experienced several of those over the next five weeks. … 

… After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.” He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. …

My God! Poking in the chest! Christina Aguilera music! Satirical puppet shows! What barbarism! Have we no decency??

Go read Lileks. Now. He does this sort of thing so much better than I can, and he dissects the Time piece practically line by line in the most marvelous fashion.

Words have meanings. As I noted in an earlier post, the Convention on Torture defines torture as inflicting "severe pain and suffering" under specific circumstances. The anti-American left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) argue that making someone stand for hours, poking him with a finger, and playing Christine Aguilera music are acts of torture. This is nonsense on stilts, and as I noted in that earlier post, it insults the victims of real torture.

Even worse, the critics maintain that by engaging in such acts, we’re descending to the level of our enemies. As if shaving someone’s beard, pouring water on his head, and subjecting him to the drill called "Invasion of Space by a Female" were morally equivalent to crashing airliners into buildings, shooting children in the back, blowing up marketplaces, and sawing people’s heads off with dull knives.

I’m appalled that some in the administration are said to be considering closing Gitmo. That’s exactly the wrong thing to do, for it would lend credence to the claims of the critics. Instead, the critics’ arguments should be given the ridicule they deserve. And the critics should be told to get a grip.

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I’ve added a "Remember Rick Rescorla" link to my sidebar. Clicking it takes you to a post at Mudville Gazette. Originally from 2003, Greyhawk reposted it this past Memorial Day weekend.

It’s long. It’s a must read. Be prepared for tears.

I discovered Greyhawk’s account of the Rick Rescorla story thanks to a post by Blackfive about the America-haters’ plans for Ground Zero (which I blogged about here). Rescorla is the soldier on the cover of the book We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, on which the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers is based. The Mudville Gazette story of this hero begins with his role in the Ia Drang Valley battle described in the book. But it doesn’t end there.

On September 11, 2001, Rick Rescorla was the vice president of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, with an office on the 44th floor of the World Trade Center south tower. He was responsible for the safety of more than 2600 Morgan Stanley employees on 22 floors, and he took that responsibility seriously. Minutes after the first plane struck the north tower, he called his old Army friend and former associate, Dan Hill:

"Are you watching TV?" he asked. "What do you think?"

"Hard to tell. It could have been an accident, but I can’t see a commercial airliner getting that far off."

"I’m evacuating right now," Rescorla said.
…
Rescorla came back on the phone. "Pack a bag and get up here," he said. "You can be my consultant again." He added that the Port Authority was telling him not to evacuate and to order people to stay at their desks.

"What’d you say?" Hill asked.

"I said, ‘Piss off, you son of a bitch,’ " Rescorla replied. "Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse, and it’s going to take the whole building with it. I’m getting my people the fuck out of here."

Rescorla got over 2600 Morgan Stanley employees out of the building safely. Only five died, including Rescorla and two of his security officers. Minutes before the building collapsed, Rescorla headed back up the stairs to search for stragglers.

Greyhawk was right — this Shakespeare quote is appropriate:

"His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world ‘This was a man!’"

Go read the whole story. Be sure to sign the online petition Greyhawk links to asking President Bush to award Rescorla the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Spend some time in the comments, too; Rescorla’s widow and a number of men who served with him have commented. Many others have left eloquent and touching remarks, such as this:

A country isn’t its lakes or forrests.
A country isn’t the colour of its citizen’s skins.

A country is the values from which it sprang.
A country is the values it upholds.
Patriotism is the defence of those values.

Rick Rescorla was a english.
Patriot and american in spirit and in action.

I hope that in some small way, despite being swedish, I too may some day claim that I have been a patriot american. Because those are the values and the spirit I fight to uphold.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful story about Rick Rescorla, the hero.

Posted by: Xipe at September 9, 2003 04:28 PM

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I’ve been thinking about an "alternate-universe" post where I take a bunch of things Howard Dean has said lately, recast them a bit (right becomes left, etc.), put them in some Republican’s mouth, and then ask what the reaction would be.

Great minds think alike, I guess. Dale Franks at QandO points out that Peggy Noonan has already done this:

[L]et’s do a thought experiment. Close your eyes and imagine this.

President Bush is introduced at a great gathering in Topeka, Kan. It is the evening of June 9, 2005. Ruffles and flourishes, "Hail to the Chief," hearty applause from a packed ballroom. Mr. Bush walks to the podium and delivers the following address.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I want to speak this evening about how I see the political landscape. Let me jump right in. The struggle between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is a struggle between good and evil—and we’re the good. I hate Democrats. Let’s face it, they have never made an honest living in their lives. Who are they, really, but people who are intent on abusing power, destroying the United States Senate and undermining our Constitution? They have no shame.

But why would they? They have never been acquainted with the truth. You ever been to a Democratic fundraiser? They all look the same. They all behave the same. They have a dictatorship, and suffer from zeal so extreme they think they have a direct line to heaven. But what would you expect when you have a far left extremist base? We cannot afford more of their leadership. I call on you to help me defeat them!"

Imagine Mr. Bush saying those things, and the crowd roaring with lusty delight. Imagine John McCain saying them for that matter, or any other likely Republican candidate for president, or Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican National Committee.

Can you imagine them talking this way? Me neither. Because they wouldn’t.

Of course, the purple phrases are Howard Dean’s and the green ones are Hillary Clinton’s, with the appropriate (left/right, Dem/Rep) substitutions.

Noonan says Republicans wouldn’t talk that way because they’d realize it’s extreme, damaging to the country, and unworthy of a leader. Maybe. Bush, at least, wouldn’t do it because he’s a genuinely nice guy about such things — compare what he said about the Clintons at their White House portrait unveilings or at the Presidential Library opening with what Sen. Clinton said about him at a New York fundraiser this week. I don’t think all, or even most, high-level Republicans are either genuinely nice guys or too noble and high-minded to indulge in name-calling.

But there’s a more fundamental reason why no Republican in his or her right mind would ever indulge in the name-calling that’s routine for Dean, Reid, Clinton, and others: they’d be toast!

If a Republican leader said that Democrats all looked alike and thought alike, never did an honest day’s work, lied all the time, and were evil people intent on destroying the country, can you imagine the media firestorm? Remember, the mainstream media accused the Republicans of practicing "the politics of personal destruction" for suggesting that Kerry had a liberal Senate voting record.

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Captain Ed notes that everyone was so preoccupied with Amnesty Irresponsible’s "gulag" remark that not enough attention has been paid to something even more outrageous: a call for foreign governments to ignore diplomatic immunity, seize traveling US officials, and put them on trial. Here’s part of the AI press release:

If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998. …

Amnesty International’s list of those who may be considered high-level torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo Bay; William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel who wrote that memo, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is cited in the memo as concurring with its recommendations.

AI goes on for two more lengthy paragraphs listing other, lower-level, targets that foreign governments should kidnap and put on trial for "crimes against humanity." Most are military officers, all the way down to the Captain level. AI briefly describes the "torture" that constitutes each one’s "crime against humanity." The same few are repeated again and again — stress positions, isolation, use of dogs.

As I noted (and quoted) in this post, the 1987 Convention Against Torture defines torture as the infliction of "severe pain or suffering" under specific circumstances for specific purposes. Whether the actions AI cites fit that description is, as I said:

… at the very least debatable. I think it’s absurd, and it’s a slap in the face of those who’ve undergone real torture, of which there are plenty in Iraq.

As Captain Ed noted, Amnesty Indefensible has never called on foreign governments to seize and put on trial people who really do practice honest-to-gosh torture as a matter of policy, such as Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe, etc., etc., etc. In fact, has AI ever used a phrase such as "high-level architects of torture" in reference to third-world leftist dictators or communist governments? Of course not — that would be undiplomatic, inflammatory, and counter-productive. But for the eeeevil Bush administration, who cares?

This is so patently a hate-filled anti-American screed, so blatant a demonstration of a double standard, that all decent and fair-minded Americans, regardless of political leanings, should reject it unequivocally and withdraw all support for or connection to this contemptible organization. But it’s worse than outrageous and contemptible. Captain Ed explains (emphasis added):

… Moreover, when we send our leaders abroad to interact with leaders of other countries, we expect those countries to extend normal diplomatic status, or to warn in advance when that status will not be extended. Violating that status by imprisoning our leaders and diplomats is an act of war against the United States. Those joining in Amnesty International’s call for other nations to commit an act of war against us should be held politically accountable for their position.

Damn straight.

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Over at Daily Pundit, David M. Brown has posted the definitive (fake) interview with Howard Dean. Here’s a taste:

DP: Are you too harsh?

HD: Look, I’m not into the glad-handing thing. When I get challenged I get combative. I call ’em as I see ’em. Some people don’t like straight talk; for example, the morons who don’t shower or work for a living. Still living in their parents’ basements. Republican types. I don’t know what their problem is. Was the welfare check late or something? That question is stupid. You’re stupid. Me for President. Bring the boys home, dipwad.

Spot on. RTWT.

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An oil industry research firm released a study comparing the price of gasoline to other liquids. You’ll be shocked, I’m sure, to learn that an oil industry research firm concluded that gasoline is a bargain:

"On a per-barrel basis, gasoline is America’s bargain liquid: 10 percent cheaper than bottled water, a third the cost of milk, a fifth the cost of beer, and less than 2 percent the cost of a bottle of Jack Daniels," the study said.

That’s really wonderful news. Now, if cold cup of gasoline were only as refreshing as a Sam Adams… Or if a fifth of BP would last me as long as a fifth of JD…

OK, I’m being a bit snarky and cynical. After you get past the absurd, meaningless comparisons with a random set of liquids (why no comparison with Chanel No. 5?), there actually are some interesting numbers in the study:

Compared with other standard expenditures, the increase in gasoline prices since 1982 is 25 percent lower than the increase in food prices, 50 percent lower than the rise in housing costs, 70 percent lower than the rise in medical costs and a whopping 80 percent below the rise in college tuition, the study found.

Now, that’s a more meaningful comparison, although there is a caveat: their starting point, 1982, must be somewhere near the all-time high (in real dollars) for gasoline, coming at the tail end of the energy crisis caused by the abomination known as the Carter presidency. I’d like to see how gasoline price increases compare over other periods — say, since 1965 or 1990.

I was struck by something else about those numbers, though: look how much variation there is in the rate of price increase from one category to another. And notice that prices are rising fastest in the categories with the most government involvement. Gas and food (relatively free markets) have been pretty stable compared to health care and college costs (both heavily subsidized and regulated). Housing (increasingly impacted by land use restrictions, environmental regulations, etc.) is somewhere in the middle.

Back to the oil industry research firm’s rosy picture of the gasoline situation, they do manage to put the recent price hikes into perspective. For most people, it’s not that big a deal:

Also, average annual gasoline usage has been holding at about 10 gallons a week per vehicle over the past 10 years, the study said.

So a 50 cent increase in gasoline costs the average driver an extra $5 a week — about the cost of a glass of Pinot Grigio or a healthy shot of Jack Daniels.

Of course, I’d hate to have to give up yet another weekly shot of Jack in order to stay within my budget. But I may not have to:  

U.S. drivers will see gasoline prices at the pump rise during June, but could get a break in July and August, the government said Wednesday.

The federal Energy Information Administration said retail gasoline prices will increase over the next few weeks to reach the agency’s projected June average of $2.16 a gallon.

The EIA said gasoline prices “may stabilize and even decline slightly” during July and into August.

I’ll drink to that.

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