I don’t much like Christopher Hitchens. I do like the study of torture.

Those interests are joined in this video, wherein he subjects himself to waterboarding to highlight the agonies of our detainees:

If that does not put you off your appetite for human discomfort, another fine bit of journalism on torture is below.

This is an article by Naomi Wolf about the sexualization of torture. Its thesis, in a nutshell, is that since sexual torture was not explicitly forbidden prior to the Bush administration, officials saw it as a loophole to exploit.

The result, Abu Ghraib and the gruesome stories of nude, male bondage coming out of Gitmo.

Evangelical Reverend Jim Wallis called on the Obama camp yesterday to make reduction of abortions a plank in this election, and so extended an olive branch from the pro-life community that Obama should seize for the good of his campaign and the good of the country.

“Abortion reduction should be a central Democratic Party plank in this election,” Wallis told ABC News. “I’ll just say that flat out.”

This gives Obama an opportunity unique for Democratic candidates for nearly thirty years, and critical to his mission of overcoming bi-partisanship: The chance to demonstrate that Democrats and the pro-choice community are not only not in favor of abortions, but that they have the best solutions at reducing them.

The former concern is important because for too long, pro-choice has been painted as some kind of malignant “anti-life,” with Democrats seemingly heartless to the genuine moral discomfort held by many about abortions. As the opponents of Roe v. Wade shower all those they can with the worse excesses of abortion - from unnecessarily brutal procedures, twisted bureaucracies and callous expectant mothers - the Democrats have done nothing to prove them wrong. They have instead robotically defended the absolutism of the system as it stands - not only of choice, but of every aspect of the current system.

This has, arguably rightly, made them seem entirely divided from the concerns of those who want something to be done to limit either the forms or frequency of abortions. And that has not only widened the divide between the right-wing and the left. For some voters, it is the very essence of the divide.

How many Catholics or Evangelicals resolve their struggle with the issue of abortion by turning from the doctrinaire left? In turn, the right has used this wedge issue to win votes for all manner of causes that have nothing to do with abortion - many of which could be argued as contrary to a genuine concern for all life being cared for by the state.

Thus the right has been able to claim, with some credence, that the left does not care about people’s qualms about abortion. And the left has been able to claim, with some credence, that the right does not care about life once it’s born.

Obama’s embrace of the challenge to reduce abortions can mend that divide, and so mend one of the deepest and most significant schisms in the modern political terrain.

Beyond the matter of healing the American body politic, there is the additional advantage that the Democrats’ platforms actually can reduce abortions more effectively than the GOP’s stock solutions.

Nothing prevents abortions better than preventing unwanted pregnancies - a solution even superior to simply making the procedure illegal. And nothing prevents unwanted pregnancy better than birth control.

Abstinence-only education has been a hallmark of the Bush administration and the Religious Right, and it has been a disaster. For those not versed in these programs, the vast majority (of the top thirteen programs, eleven, serving 158 out of 168 educational facilities) are not only are sporadically riddled with scientific inaccuracy and barbaric gender notions, but all must also actively discourage contraception. Such as, under the HHS grant system, ‘SPRANS,’ which has received the most funding:

“Under the SPRANS requirement, abstinence-only education programs are not allowed to teach their participants any methods to reduce the risk of pregnancy other than abstaining until marriage. They are allowed to mention contraceptives only to describe their failure rates.”

Given that they do nothing to limit actual frequency of teen sex, that means these programs aren’t scaring kids away from sex, just from condom use and disease-free sex.

The numbers bear this out, as small states and southern states with the most conservative social attitudes top the chart for teen pregnancies, six of them even passing California in terms of gross total. Should Obama bravely and intelligently link these facts with the cause of a common will to reduce abortions, we’ll not just see a healthier political climate, but a healthier nation as well.

He should make condom distribution and sex education hallmarks of this new “pro-life” movement. He should rally those “in it for the babies” to start fighting for rights, funding and programs for single mothers, young mothers, struggling mothers. He should advocate adoption while expressing respect for the personal liberty of the woman as an American citizen, informed and capable of making her own decisions about her body.

He should, in essence, turn the powers of the federal government and the will of the pro-life cause to the effort of truly improving and respecting all life, in all stages: The expectant mother as well as the unexpected child; the sexually active woman as well as the financially helpless single mother; the mothers who are barely more than children themselves as well as the children of those who society must bear the cost of supporting.

Only this would qualify as a true American pro-life movement. And right now, only Obama can create it.

Obama responded to McCain’s snide accusations that he didn’t know about Iraq because he hadn’t been there in two years with customary grace and vision - by rising above them, and announcing he will not only be visiting Iraq, but Afghanistan as well.

Obama has said before he was considering a trip, but his comment to reporters Monday was his first clear confirmation. He said more details will be announced shortly, and that he also plans a visit to Afghanistan.

The inclusion of Afghanistan is politically wise for a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is that it raises the stakes with McCain. I considered it a foolish expectation that a candidate visit a war zone, but now that expectations game plays in Obama’s favor, demanding that McCain announce a trip to Afghanistan in order to keep pace.

More importantly, it underscores Obama’s message and strategic outlook that Afghanistan is as critical - if not more so - as Iraq in the War on Terror.

It has always struck me as somewhat ironic that the very personification of the War on Terror’s objective, Osama bin ladin, has been able to cool his heels and operate with virtual impunity in Afghanistan’s border regions outskirts, without raising the ire of the most fervid supporters of the war. Considering the tendency - even the eagerness - to invoke the specter of 9/11 when challenged in their foreign policy beliefs, the right-wing has been stunningly numb to Osama’s continued prosperity.

This best change. It has to. And yet, we do not see it changing with McCain.

First off, we don’t hear McCain’s rhetoric changing from the Bush administration’s standard saws. Just today, his campaign criticized Obama for a “September 10th mindset.” That is a profoundly empty statement, not only relying that the listener react emotionally rather than rationally, but requiring they not question it.

For instance, the particular issue McCain contrasts with Obama on was the matter of whether Guantanamo detainees should have Constitutional legal protections or not. Now mind you, all of our prisoners customarily do, foreign or not. And the administration has made plain that the Gitmo crowd were not covered by the Geneva Convention like an enemy army would be. Mind you, the majority of detainees have been found to have had no links to terrorism, instead having been turned in for money by mercenaries or rival governments.

So in essence, Obama was criticized for giving the captives some form of legal rights, whereas McCain considered the smart, proper thing to do was to give them no rights at all.

If this position wasn’t cynical and stupid enough, McCain’s comments on Afghanistan raise further questions as to how sensible he is about matters of war. Asked by conservative media figure Michael Smerconish why we couldn’t invade the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas to pursue bin Ladin, McCain tried to sound erudite and reasonable:

“…there is a reason why [the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region] hasn’t been governed since Alexander the Great. They are ruled by about, as my understanding, 13 tribal entities and nobody has ever governed them.”

Unfortunately for McCain, that explanation is neither erudite or reasonable. In the first case, it’s not erudite because that area has, in fact, been effectively pacified, by rulers from the aforementioned Alexander, to Mahmud, to Tamerlane. In one form or another, it has proven it can be stable and prosperous.

Even more to the point is why it’s not reasonable: For while Afghanistan’s factious, backward and corrupt rulership might be a good reason not to invade in the first place, we passed that decision point awhile ago. Now we’re there, and we have a job to do.

That job is narrowly defined: Get Osama, and cut off the head of al-Qaeda. But even on that matter, McCain complains that we can’t just violate Pakistani sovereignty. To that, I ask, why not? The War on Terror was predicated on the notion that we couldn’t let little things like international law keep us from zapping the terrorists before they hit us with “another 9/11.” And while I actually refute most of that, I have to ask the question:

“If we marched some troops quietly into Pakistan’s border region for the sole purpose of hunting Osama, would Pakistan really complain all that much?”

Given that doing so would only make us isolate them further, cut off the oodles of aid money we fountain them in, and inspire us to beef up India, I doubt it. Obama does too, which is why, though McCain sneeringly accuses him of being out of touch with military matters, he remains firm on his policy that we would put boots on the ground in Pakistan whether they like it or not if it would bag us Osama.

Who’s got “September Ten Head” now, McCain?

This is precisely the kind of leadership we don’t need - the kind that so clouds the actual events of the war with the smoke of emotional drama that we don’t see that they, and not their critics, are the ones standing in the way of victory. For years under Bush, complaining about a lack of troops, armor or an exit strategy in Iraq was declared tantamount to treason, and a wide population of the American public accepted that. Now McCain is doing the same to mask his own mistakes.

He needs to get the facts right. First off, lacking a permanent troop presence in Iraq isn’t “surrender,” it’s obeying will of the government we installed and saving us hundreds of billions. Secondly, the War on Terror’s answer isn’t to hem and haw about how many tribes Afghanistan has - it’s to see its mission through by getting Osama no matter what the cost. And in that second case, it would be high time, what with the Taliban hitting back hard as ever.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that between 300 and 400 militants _ many of them foreigners _ took over the Arghandab region 10 miles northwest of Kandahar. The offensive Monday came three days after a Taliban attack on Kandahar’s prison that freed 400 insurgents.

Facts seem obscured by McCain at every turn, though; not just the military affairs he seems so vapid about. His latest answer to the agony of soaring gas prices was to beat the old drum of off-shore drilling.

Whether you oppose the moratorium or not, hoping to increase America’s 3% share of world oil to 3.25% or even 4% at the expense of our ailing oceans is not going to affect oil prices much. Furthermore, it would be ten years before any major output from offshore drilling could be expected.

Waiting a decade to shift our control of the market by 1% isn’t a plan to help the economic pain of today. It’s pushing an agenda through a gimmick while letting people continue to get screwed.

That - on the Iraq he wants to occupy despite its people’s will and so claims no less will be victory; on the Afghanistan he ignores even though our greatest enemy lives there and attacks with impunity; on Constitutional rights, economy, immigration - seems McCain’s only strategy.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama will be heading for the war front, with a lead in the polls and the solutions to make it worthwhile.

I almost entitled this post, “Collective Punishment Hits Gaza,” but decided that wouldn’t be news. The matter involved is the cancellation of Fulbright Grants, a clear instrument of furthering the integration of foreign students into American culture and academia, to Palestinian students in Gaza, so it certainly constitutes collective punishment. But Israeli senior officials were surprised to learn of this, putting the blame on the American State Department that handles the dispensing of the grants.

They said they did, in fact, consider study abroad to be a humanitarian necessity and that when cases were appealed to them, they would facilitate them.

They suggested that American officials never brought the Fulbright cases to their attention.

Neglect seems at fault. But this is just another example of how publicly stated US policy runs counter to the actual policy.

While professing to support the advancement of moderate elements in the Arab world, the US instead has adopted a hardline “siege state” more in line with conservative attitudes in America and Israel. After goading Israel and the Palestinian Authority into holding free elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006, the US has been all too happy to just lock the uncooperative Palestinians in the desert and starve them out.

This is the very model for heightening tensions and crushing the hope for progress, as many Israelis are well aware.

“We correctly complain that the Palestinian Authority is not building civil society, but when we don’t help build civil society this plays into the hands of Hamas,” said Natan Sharansky, a former government official.

Hamas’ hands overflow these days. Their popularity was born of a dysfunctional environment that had Israel starving the Palestinian people of any opportunity save grassroots institutions like Hamas. As it now stands, Israel and the West deliver no promise of prosperity, only persecution.

Examples of the latter abound, like the 60 year-old woman killed by Israeli fire into Gaza today.

At least 487 people, nearly all Palestinians and the majority of them Gaza militants, have been killed since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks restarted in November at a US-sponsored conference, according to an AFP count.

Compared to 487 people, each of them with family and friends thrust closer to an abyss of vengeful nihilism by their death, eight students losing study grants may seem irrelevant. But these are both parts of a single message to the Palestinians: That they cannot look to Israel and the West for hope, but they can count on them for death.

In what is for a dogged Albanian majority a day of freedom, and for the rest of the world is a day to celebrate the notorious Balkans settling the Hell down, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia and was recognized.

This has been a raw knuckled process since the starting line - Kosovo’s first chirp for autonomy back in early 90s when Yugoslavia collapsed - this last year’s flat rejection of the call for independence by Serbia and Russia showed how fragile it was. When the Russian Bear put down its paw to say the Kosovars and UN would have to go back to the drawing board on the independence process in 2007, it looked like it would be years before the drafting of ways to placate Serbia while partitioning Kosovo as an autonomous entity could trudge back to the step it had been at - likely only to be slapped away by Russia again.

Now, taking a page from Israel’s playbook, Kosovo simply declared its existence and dared the world to take sides - a risky move considering that, unlike Israel, Kosovo’s chief opposition is an ascending superpower getting its old chauvanism back in spades, Putin’s Russia. But sides were taken, and with the exception of Spain and a few more less influential hold outs, the United States and the EU joined in their recognition of the nascent Republic of Kosovo.

Kosovo’s parliament has unanimously endorsed a declaration of independence from Serbia, in a historic session.
Celebrations went on into the night after Prime Minister Hashim Thaci promised a democracy that respected the rights of all ethnic communities.

Serbia’s PM denounced the US for helping create a “false state”.

A split later emerged at the Security Council, when Russia said there was no basis for changing a 1999 resolution which handed Kosovo to the UN.

Seven Western countries said it was quite clear the situation had moved on.

I support this move for a variety of reasons. One, as the sweeping Western support, demographics of Kosovo and economic realities indicate, it was about damn time. Kosovo is 92% Albanian, which under Serbia’s nationalistic system means about 92% second class citizens. Granted, this number was reached by a smidge of ethnic cleansing, up from about 89%. Kosovo’s freedom fighters were pals with al-Qaeda; they are hardly choir boys - staunch, nationalistic killers. However, given a massacre-rife history of Serbian oppression that extends into the Bush II presidency and a massive Albanian population, they are also right in demanding independence.

Secondly, I like tossing mud in the Bear’s eye and watching it stick. All pretense that Russia was going to be a liberal capitalism long ago went down the tubes with Boris Yeltsin’s regurgitated breakfast of vodka, and Putin is using Russia’s possibly-unparalleled oil wealth to shove other great powers around. A choice playing piece in his political game board was Kosovo, which he always liked to make noise about subjugating or marginalizing whenever we brought up nuclear disarmament or his shady petro-chemical dealings. Upping the ante like this when Russia is weaker than it will be the next time it could have rejected talks over Kosovo independence was wise. It will not shut Putin up - or the Serbs; there are already bombs being thrown by Serbian nationalists - but it will expedite the settling of this issue before Russia gets truly mighty and belligerent.

At the end of the day, Kosovo’s independence was not a clean process. It is not a resolved issue. But it is a cause to celebrate the freedom of a people from centuries of domination and the hope for the future that made it possible.

Not to be outdone by comparison to the Hussein regime in /any/ category, the US in Iraq has shown that it will even give a college try at matching the infamous rape rooms - as the abduction, drugging, gang-rape and sex-slavery of a young Texas woman by Americans in Iraq demonstrated this week.

The culprits in this case were American Private Military Contractors - that esteemed slice of our private sector that’s been making so many headlines lately - employed by former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a “construction firm”. According to the victim, her family and her concerned Congressman:

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.

“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve been raped. I don’t know what to do. I’m in this container, and I’m not able to leave,’” she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones’ camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by “several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally.”

KBR, champion of many a non-competitive bidding war for defense work and darling of many a Texas politician, has quite a few controveries under its belt - ranging from overcharging for food they failed to deliver our troops, to the violation-ridden “Restore Iraqi Oil” project. Now they’ve kicked it up a notch.

That it was an American woman, and a KBR employee, was the real nail in this case’s coffin. There’s no real telling if any Iraqi women are suffering the same fate - only that prostitution is so endemic in Iraq since the war that, according to CNN, the price of a woman is a steal at only $8. Of course, in the case of Ms. Leigh, KBR decided she would literally be a steal, simply paying for the shipping and handling of getting her out to Baghdad before subjecting her to drugging, imprisonment, isolation and abuse. Additionally shocking is that they thought they’d get away with it.

I can do you a better shock - they did!

Just like in the shooting incident where over a dozen Iraqi civilians were gunned down by Blackwater, but a Blackwater-run investigation resulted in no grounds for charges and a promise of legal immunity from the State Department, KBR found no evidence when it was hired to investigate KBR:

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped “both vaginally and anally,” but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers. [ed. note: Emphasis mine]

Oopsie! Funny how rape kits just kind of disappear when you put them in the hands of the party who’s going to be held legally punishable by their findings. And just as much a head-scratcher is why on earth the administration that’s been pouring taxpayer money down KBR’s throats regardless of whether it vanishes, and protects them at all costs, wouldn’t rush to investigate this clear cover-up.

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones’ alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

“It’s very troubling,” said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. “The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don’t have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice.”

Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.

“There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven’t been prosecuted,” Poe told ABC News. “But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted.”

Well, it breaks my heart to tell you, Mr. Poe, but I would not hold my breath. And for those of you who think this KBR thing is a fluke or isolated incident, I’m sad to say I’m going to have to burst your bubble too. For a few years ago in another stretch of bad country notorious for its sex abuses - the Balkans - America’s Private Military Contractors got involved in a big way in the sex slave trade. And not just any Private Military Contractor. Yes, you guessed it, conspiracy buffs: It was a Halliburton subsidiary - in this case, “construction firm” DynCorp.

At least 13 DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia — and at least seven of them fired — for purchasing women or participating in other prostitution-related activities. But despite large amounts of evidence in some cases, none of the DynCorp employees sent home have faced criminal prosecution.

Because of a combination of international treaties, jurisdictional loopholes and bureaucratic confusion, employees of private military companies such as DynCorp can escape prosecution for crimes they commit overseas. Most common crimes committed outside the United States are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, and the burgeoning local law enforcement systems in war-torn regions such as Bosnia are often insufficient or unwilling to police U.S. contractors. [ed. note: Again, emphasis mine]

I would be painting with a broad brush if I closely identified the DynCorp case with KBR, but the similar quality in both cases is the significant one: That in both cases, American Private Military personnel knowingly and extensively involved themselves with the long-term sex abuse of women, and were in no way suffered legal consequences.

If we are to make any claim of morality from here on, we best start holding ourselves accountable. Otherwise, the deeds of violence we commit in order to prevent the atrocities of others will be no more than atrocities themselves. And, at least in the case of KBR, the nation’s vision for Iraq will be little better than what its worst critics claim it to be - a rapine exercise by lying, exploitative profiteers who care so little about the law that they act above it and do nothing to give their subjects its luxury of safety and recourse.

_________________________

Further Reading:

For those of you who want to read more about the landmark, nuanced and thoroughly tragic “Johnston” case, involving DynCorp in the Balkans, check out Robert Capp’s extraordinary Salon.com expose’: Outside the Law

Jun 26, 2002 | Ben Johnston recoiled in horror when he heard one of his fellow helicopter mechanics at a U.S. Army base near Tuzla, Bosnia, brag one day in early 2000: “My girl’s not a day over 12.”

The man who uttered the statement — a man in his 60s, by Johnston’s estimate — was not talking fondly about his granddaughter or daughter or another relative. He was bragging about the preteen he had purchased from a local brothel…

In International Law and Defense classes in years to come, this will most definitely be among the most photocopied of reports.

It is sometimes easy to do the right thing at the right time; it is a different thing altogether to do the right thing when it’s the wrong time, the inconvenient time, the hard time. The notion of sacrificing for one’s values is the foundation of proving one’s values. From the classic example of Abraham and Isaac, to the modern famous figures of Pat Tillman and Rachel Corrie, it’s when values are held to be more important than one’s life that they take on the aura of immortality. Now the Congress has another opportunity to prove that America’s values of declaring for human rights conquer convenience and transcend the concerns of the moment.

This opportunity is a measure recognizing the Armenian Genocide - the massacre and expulsion of up to 1.5 million Armenians, and at least 300,000 Armenians, by the Ottoman Empire, predecessor to the modern state of Turkey. Just to be clear, recognizing this genocide isn’t like believing in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: It is well-documented, with some survivors around to this very day, and has been acknowledged as a genocide by most of the civilized world. Despite its obviousness, the USA has consistently refused to call it a genocide.

The reason why is because Turkey might, under some international law, be held responsible for the human rights violations. This may mean, at least on a small scale, reparations. It would certainly mean greater - and due - attention paid to their ancestor’s barbarities. And Turkey is, in the words of President Bush, a vital ally:

“This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror,” Bush said at the White House before the vote.

The bulk of supplies for troops in Iraq pass through Turkey’s Incirlik airbase, and Turkey provides thousands of truck drivers and other workers for U.S. operations in Iraq. Supplies also flow from that base to troops in Afghanistan.

As a consequence, all resolutions for the USA to officially recognize the genocide have been killed by Republican-dominated Congresses. Now, with the Democrats in charge, the measure goes to a vote. It seems an intriguing coincidence that Turkey, just yesterday, resumed talking about their military invading northern Iraq.

This is undoubtedly a hard time to stand for our principles - that we will not hesitate to confront injustice with censure. It is most likely that, as I noted in my remarks about Ahmadinejad, speaking with civility and candor will not lead to greater conflict, but towards resolving it. Still, the possibility that Turkey will be provoked to incendiary activity in this potentially explosive region remains.

We should set that concern aside. We need to be ready to abandon comfort for principle, not principle for comfort. We expect it of our troops abroad. We should give them no less in return.

The New York Times announced yesterday that two more legal opinions written by the Bush Administration Justice Department endorsed the legality of certain forms of torture by deciding they did not constitute actual “torture” under international laws. Both of these memos from Attorney General Gonzales came after the White House declaration renouncing torture, which itself only came after the Abu Ghraib scandals. Congressional Democrats have already begun plotting an investigation into these memos, surely sending some weary of these hearings into groans.

I sympathize. But at the heart of most of these investigations is a serious wrong decision and a flat refusal by the Administration to provide evidence and be held accountable for it. The problem isn’t so much that Congress keeps launching these annoying investigations, it’s that the Administration keeps doing these bad things. Complaining about Congress’ investigations is like an insubordinate child stamping their feet about their parents being too strict: If you didn’t break the rules in the first place, little Jimmy, we all wouldn’t have to waste so much time making you sit in the corner.

The White House has already replied that “it is a policy of the United States that we do not torture,” but this is just as juvenile as formulation. Bill Clinton may have inspired the world to collectively roll its eyes when he argued what the definition of “is” is, but the Bush Administration has anybody with an eye on them staring in shocked horror when at their definition of torture:

…torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death

Under that definition, practically any torture technique - including most employed by the Hussein regime and Iran - is not “torture”. And so, under that definition, White House spokesperson Dana Perino is right - the United States does not torture. That is why, as these newly revealed memos show, the Justice Department issued specific instructions in 2005, after a public renunciation of torture:

The new opinion…provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

As any thug-in-the-know will inform you, “head-slapping” is not so “domestic incident” as all that - it refers to a technique of constantly knocking a victim about the head to keep them disoriented and off balance. And perhaps that still sounds benign when inflicted on a grizzled martyr for Osama’s cause, but the sad fact is that isn’t exclusively who we’re interrogating. If we knew who those targets were, we wouldn’t have to interrogate anyone - we could just lock them all away and be done with it. Instead, we sweep up detainees for interrogation with what information we’re provided, which is initially pretty sparse - grabbing everyone in the immediate vicinity of an attack that owns a black Honda if the attack involved a black Honda, for instance.

The point, at this point, is only partly the end result of this kind of policy. That’s a tragic equation to be sure - detentions plus legalized torture equals innocent people tortured in mass numbers. The other significant point of this seesaw on torture policy is that it’s another sickening indication that the Administration can’t be held accountable.

During the years of the Republican-led Congress, any and all attempts to investigate the torture memos, the domestic surveillance program and the use of Private Military Contractors were so thoroughly quashed that a casual observer from the citizenry would hardly know they had been issues. Now that the Democrats are in control, we have hearings, but hearings with ignored subpoenas and direct orders from the White House not to comply that go unchallenged.

Perhaps the Congress is making some headway - some slow, rather vague headway. Most certainly, they are exhausting our patience. But at least the facts they are bringing to light are also exhausting what false pretension to competence and nobility the Administration maintains.

One of the gravest evils in the world today is the practice of human trafficking, and today the US government took a brave move in bringing binding censure against these modern day sex slavers. They did this by leveling criticism that could be turned into harsh action against not only its traditional enemies but to traditional allies as well.

The scope of the problem is massive. Any and all efforts to raise awareness on the issue and to lay the grounds for action are worthy efforts. According to US State Department figures, “estimated 600,000 to 820,000 men, women, and children [are] trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 80 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors. The data also illustrate that the majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both state that even those figures are but the tip of the iceberg.

Let me frame this catastrophe in the proper gut-ripping terms. Those child sex farms they are rumored to have in Southeast Asia are real. The rape video sites from Russia on the internet are likely broadcasting real rapes, real torture. The harems of the Middle East are full of women from around the world, kidnapped from their homelands, often as children, maimed and brutalized, for the rest of their lives. This happens in countries across the globe, even in the US and Canada.

And now, setting other matters aside, the US has accused its allies in the Arabic world - Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman - of taking not even the slightest action to prevent this atrocity. Kuwait’s total compliance with our military agenda is critical. Oman and Bahrain consistently help us with intelligence in the War On Terror. But this does not - morally and now officially - prevent them from being taken to task. They have been called out, as good friends should be, to mend their bad behavior.

Now action should follow words. For words to mean anything, they must be followed with consistent and resolute action. In many ways, the US has succeeded at this - with Kennedy’s call for the Peace Corps, with Reagan’s support of the socialist Solidarnost movement that still has us beloved by Poland today, and with Clinton’s actions against the Serb aggression in the Balkans in the 90s. In many ways, the US has failed. From Small Arms, to land mines, to the conditions of women in the chaos that has become Afghanistan, we have spoken strongly for rights that we then failed to secure.

This cannot be one of those exceptions. The means for the censure of governments that neglect or even facilitate the problem of the global slave trade exist. They are the “United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children” and the “United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime” among others. The provisions in them are brutally fierce and the inspections a solid, necessary first step. Now that we’ve spoken, it’s time for us to act.

Joe Biden spoke to this essential factor in politics - one that, in a political climate that’s increasingly frustrated and increasingly defined by empty rhetoric, is all the more important and endangered. At the CNN debates, the Democratic candidates were debating the convoluted and hypothetical political channels that might or might not bring an end to the daily butchery in Darfur. Biden then spoke up.

He had said, “You could send 2,500 troops and wipe out the janjaweed“, the militias instrumental in the genocide. He is right. Even with the US military ‘bogged down’ in extended conflicts, we do retain those ready men, capable of doing immediate and final harm to clear targets like the janjaweed. And as the other Democrats talked of years and years of diplomacy that had to be done delicately, Biden retorted:

“These people will be dead! They’ll be dead!”

Darfur is an unparalleled butchery and misery in our current age. It is going on right now. If it stopped right now, lives would be saved. If it is not stopped right this minute, more will be raped, mutilated, killed.

Biden called for military force, applied with speed and direction, to stop a crime we know will happen. “There’s your moral authority.” He said.

There is the same imperative and the same principle in the case of the global slave trade. With the declaration today, we have identified who we and the world need to act against to stifle it. Now comes the hard part, the important part, the only part that matters:

We know how to act. We can act. We should.