just, just -- fuck...

via Digby:

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC.

Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse.

This is pretty big news and I'm gonna read it in a second, but I want to say a few words on that last part for a second. Nine former prisoners were held in the secret, shitty prison. It's always the former prisoners, isn't it? As in, they used to be prisoners. As in, they were let go. As in, they probably didn't even take a shit where they were not supposed to, yet they were held in the pound-me-in-the-ass prison. How many former prisoners are wandering out there in the world, free? Well, there are about 500 that were special enough to land in Gitmo. That's just the tip of the iceberg though. Many, many more went through Bagram, Abu Ghraib, the black sites, the blacker sites, etc... How many of them would be as pissed and unforgiving as I would be? That is to say, really, really unforgiving. Like, homicidal? How many are going back to broken homes and broken communities? How many have nothing? How many have no one?

Then think about this -- because it's fuckin' fun, that's why! -- think about how many people in the business of running this morally bankrupt government give a rat's ass. If you have not thought about that, you do not deserve to be a fucking dog catcher.

a crisis of probability is not a crisis

So I just heard a bloggingheads.tv discussion between David Frum and Glenn Greenwald. If you want to know what David Frum is thinking now, or how a reasoned discussion between liberals and conservatives is conducted, then I recommend it. What prompted this posting is something Frum said at the end of the discussion about bad things that leaders do during crises. Greenwald tried to get Frum to say whether he believed presidents ought to be able to break the law and be immune from the criminal justice system, but Frum evaded. In that back-and-forth, Frum said, "Bush may have done some things that ... everybody would have thought before [9/11?] were illegal ... that a lot of people think were immoral, and we don't do them anymore, the crisis has passed, the country has found a new footing." I'd like to focus on the "crisis has passed" part.

What I'm gonna say about this crisis of terrorism might sound a little neocon-ish, but to paraphrase one of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt, "I'm gonna bring you to Mordor and take you right back to the Shire, so stay with me!" I don't think the crisis has passed at all. Frum is saying what everyone else is saying, but everyone else does not know what the hell they are talking about. I think that the probability of a major, 1000-plus-casualty terrorist attack occurring in September, 2001 was similar to the probability of one occurring today. Of course, the probability was greater in September, 2001 because Richard Clark and other Clinton officials with knowledge of bin Laden's activities were warning the shit out of Bush that something would likely happen and Bush was sitting on his ass. But accounting for that major exception, the probability of calamity is the same today. I can say this because there is almost no data with which to calculate the probability of foreign terrorist attacks. This is up for some debate, because the definition of terrorism is usually in debate, but there have been only two relatively recent foreign terrorist attacks in the U.S. in which people have died: the first and second WTC attacks. Given those data, one could reasonably say that a U.S. citizen's probability of dying in a terrorist attack is ill-defined, but most likely the probability is vanishingly small. This near-zero probability existed in the eighties, the nineties, and the oughts, and it will probably continue to exist forever -- until someone blows up the universe.

My simple conclusion is this: It would be nice if -- in the period of time between now and the end of the universe -- we deal with the vanishingly small probability of terrorism in a rational way. We may do this by keeping the rule of law and democracy in tact.

The wingnut argument for nuclear restraint

Wait! Where are you going? Here me out, damnit! This is good. Jonah Goldberg, manchild of Lucianne Goldberg, sez:

Ultimately, when and how a country uses its nuclear weapons does not depend on treaties. It depends on the Commander-in-Chief. Sure, worries about violating a treaty might — probably would — make using nukes more "costly" in a president's cost-benefit analysis. But at the end of the day, using nukes is such a huge deal that I think most presidents, most human beings, would make the decision based on their core values and instincts. And, suffice it to say, I don't think Barack Obama would ever use nuclear weapons under almost any remotely plausible circumstances.

As promised, this blogger will ignore the notion that refusal to destroy the universe makes one a pussy. He will instead make the wingnut argument for not pushing the button: In the event of WWIII, our brave, grizzled survivors of nuclear Armageddon will need a land of milk and honey to brutally conquer and subjugate. Like the Jews of yore wandering in the Wilderness, they will need a land free of plutonium if they are to smuggle their exceptionally resilient (and undoubtedly conservative) seeds into the next generation. We shall need a virgin land, and this land shall belong to our enemies. And like zombies we shall descend upon the virgin land of our enemies and rapaciously consume it. We shall make our gluttony pleasing to our God Jehovah by gathering the choicest pieces of ass and cremating them inside the belly of the Wicker Man. We shall force the pagan warlords to watch as we rudely introduce their harem-women to our large, Western penises. We shall rebuild the Temple of David and place a large, gaudy crucifix atop it. We shall institute a ban on headscarves. We shall repeal universal healthcare and force everyone to buy shitty HMOs. We shall emulate the powerful moral governance of the Catholic Church and choose a pope who will order the weakest amongst us not to have buttseks.

In these ways we shall avenge our vaporized brethren and build anew atop the fertile corpses of our foes. And all because our president had the foresighted restraint not to push the button.

The Deal -- well, a deal

Here at Great Justice, we -- the royal we -- have several acquaintances who argue with us incessantly. We think of this as blogging practice. During a recent argument about geostrategery with someone who thinks FDR "gave away" the eastern bloc to the Ruskies, I made an interesting agreement: We get the fuck out of every country that plays "host" to our fine men and women in uniform and put the defense industry out of business for good, and conservatives get to have unemployed illegal immigrants deported and the border strengthened with moats and alligators and shit. I think it's a pretty good deal. Course, I'm not someone who could easily be confused as an illegal immigrant. Is that racist?