guts Posts

There's a reasonable expectation that intelligence agencies should be possessed of a certain degree of intelligence. The graphic pictures of U.S. military personnel torturing prisoners in iraq and Guantanamo Bay outraged Americans and brought condemnation from all corners of the civilized world.

The stories that came out of Badgdad's Al Grahib prison gave a boost to the iraqi insurgency, proof of the brutality of the American invaders that could be paraded across the screens of Al Jazeera. We've never heard that any reliable intelligence information ever came from the degrading interrogation practices employed at Al Grahib, which shouldn't be a surprise: torture has never been a particularly effective intelligence-collection technique (many of the detainees at Al Grahib were taxi drivers at the wrong place at the wrong time when a military sweep came through). Torture's real purposes are usually much baser: revenge, humiliation and base cruelty.

Lesson to the White House: Unless you want to stroke the insurgency (and get more U.S. soldiers killed), lay off the torture.

Unfortunately we have a White House that doesn't learn lessons very well. The U.S. Senate voted 90-9 last week on a John McCain-sponsored amendment to ban the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees held by the United States government. President George W. Bush is now actively lobbying the Senate to add a loophole that would allow U.S. intelligence agency to continue torture.

Yes, that's right, the President of the United States ("Beacon of the Free World," "The Light of Democracy," etc.) is officially going on record as a supporter of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners. It's a sign of a certain kind of inhumanity, or at least insensitivity, that Bush even had the guts to approach the author of the anti-torture amendment asking for the CIA exemption, for McCain spent much of his Vietnam War service being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison.

What kind of intelligence is needed to know Bush's lobbying is yet another gift to the propaganda arm of iraqi insurgency? It looks like we'll be getting to that 2,000th solider soon.

The Jordans Meetinghouse in England suffered a terrible fire a few days ago. Friends don't make icons of meetinghouses but if we did Jordans would be high on the list. Friends started meeting there in 1659. Isaac Penington, James Nayler, and Thomas Ellwood lived neighborhood; Penington is buried out front, as is William Penn. As if this isn't enough, the barn is said to be made from the timbers of the Mayflower--yes, that Mayflower: it was apparently common to recycle ships into buildings after a few trans-Atlantic trips (news reports don't mention the barn). Here are pictures from Bill Samuel's trip a few years ago, a thread on his discussion board and photos that someone took from a youth hostel retreat last week before the fire. One of the wardens (caretakers) of the meetinghouse was burned trying to put out the fire but later reports make it sound like he wasn't too badly hurt, thank God.

Update: the Guardian did a piece on the fire