Clippings for 12 September 2010

September 11 Happened to All of Us

Marcia Alesan Dawkins writes for Truthdig.com: "Tensions are high in Tennessee, as they have been all over our nation, in anticipation of the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Controversies abound. Mosque-building, book burning and threats of violence are making it increasingly difficult to separate what pastor/author Rick Warren is calling 'church and hate.'"

The Self-Inflicted Wounds of 9/11
Melvin A. Goodman, Truthout: "Nearly twice as many Americans have died fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than were lost in the 9/11 attacks. The total cost of these long wars will be in the trillions of dollars. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the cost of oil was less than $25 a barrel; the price reached $140 a barrel in 2008 and, currently, the price is still three times the 2001 levels. The entire national security system has suffered as a result of the wrong-headed actions of the Bush administration in Iraq and the Obama administration in Afghanistan."

Hate Takes Center Stage
Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, Tanya Somanader, and Max Bergmann write the Progress Report for Think Progress: "Hate pastor Terry Jones and his small Dove World congregation are planning an event to burn the Quran in Gainesville, FL on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. His plan -- dubbed "International Burn a Quran Day" -- has now become a global story that, according to top American commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus, could endanger the lives of American forces and American foreign policy goals. While similar acts from Jones and others went widely ignored in the past -- in 2008 the incendiary Kansas-based Westboro church burned a Quran on a Washington D.C. street --  today they are front-page news. So what changed? Jones' event comes at the end of a hate-filled summer in which the right wing fostered anti-Muslim vitriol has risen to unprecedented levels. This has led to a growing sense both in the U.S. and around the world that perhaps Jones' hateful plan is not just an isolated incident, but is reflective of an increasingly intolerant America. If  Jones follows through, it will inevitably further endanger our troops and increase animosity toward the United States. But this act of hate -- just like the burning of a cross, or painting of a swastika -- is also about the response it elicits. The response in the form of public statements and counterprotests will likely demonstrate the strengths, not the weaknesses, of American values: a country that not just protects the freedom to demonstrate, while showing that hate-filled individuals such as Jones in no way represent America."

How Much "Success" Can Afghans Stand?

Nick Turse provides the following analysis for TomDispatch: "Almost a decade after the US invasion, life for Afghan civilians is not a subject Americans care much about and so, not surprisingly, it plays little role in Washington's discussions of 'success.' Have a significant number of Afghans found the years of occupation and war 'successful'? Has there been a payoff in everyday life for the indignities of the American years - the cars stopped or sometimes shot up at road checkpoints, the American patrols trooping through fields and searching homes, the terrifying night raids, the imprisonments without trial, or the way so many Afghans continue to be treated like foreigners, if not criminal suspects, in their own country? For years, American leaders have hailed the way Afghans are supposedly benefiting from the US role in their country. But are they?"

Calls for Change of US Strategy in Afghanistan Grow Loude
Jim Lobe reports for Inter Press Service: "In a new report released here Wednesday, a bipartisan group of some three dozen former senior officials, academics, and policy analysts argued that the administration's ambitious 'nation-building' efforts in Afghanistan are costing too much in U.S. blood and treasure and that, in any event, '(p)rospects for success are dim.'"

Soldiers With Brain Trauma Denied Purple Hearts, Adding Insult to Injury

T. Christian Miller, ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR, report: "The U.S. Army honors soldiers wounded or killed in combat with the Purple Heart, a powerful symbol designed to recognize their sacrifice and service. Yet Army commanders have routinely denied Purple Hearts to soldiers who have sustained concussions in Iraq, despite regulations that make such wounds eligible for the medal, an investigation by NPR and ProPublica has found." Photo: Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images - A U.S. Marine runs to safety moments after an IED blast in Garmsir district of Helmand Province in Afghanistan on July 13, 2009.

Why Peaceniks Should Care About the Afghanistan Study Group Report
Robert Naiman, The Huffington Post: "Peace activists can't be satisfied with being right; they also are morally compelled to try to be effective. And part of being effective is giving consideration to, and seeking to publicize, arguments are likely to end the war sooner rather than later. This is why it is important for as many people as possible to read and digest the short and accessible report of the 'Afghanistan Study Group' which has been publicly unveiled this week. The assumptions and conclusions of the ASG report should be the subject of a thousand debates. But there are a few things about it that one can say without fear of reasonable contradiction. The authors of the report oppose the war and want to end it."

Racialized Memories and Class Identities - Thinking About Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's America

Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "Echoes of racism now present themselves in multiple forms and are spreading across the country like a highly contagious virus. This is obvious in terms of a racist cultural pedagogy spread largely through a right-wing cultural apparatus. But its traces and effects can also be found in acts of real violence that now run like a highly charged electric current through the mainstream media, which both reproduces representations of racist violence while failing to comment on it critically." Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Gage Skidmore, Karl Schmeck 1, 2

The Tortoise Economy
Robert Reich comments for Robert Reich's Blog: "Word from the twelve Federal Reserve Banks, summarized in the Fed's so-called 'Beige Book,' shows the economy slowing in July and August. Duh. But the Fed is quick to point out the economy overall is still growing - even though it's growing more slowly than in the spring. Can we have a moment of realism here, please? In 2008 and 2009 the economy fell into the deepest hole it's been in since the Great Depression. Since then we've been struggling to get out. We're failing big time."

The United States of Inequality - The Great Divergence 2010: What's causing America's growing income inequality?
Timothy Noah writes the first in a six-part series for Slate: "In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The United States was displacing Great Britain as the world's wealthiest nation, but detailed information about its economy was not yet readily available; the federal government wouldn't start collecting such data in any systematic way until the 1930s. One of King's purposes was to reassure the public that all Americans were sharing in the country's newfound wealth."

Other titles is this series:

• The Usual Suspects Are Innocent
• Did Immigration Create the Great Divergence?
• Did Computers Create Inequality?
• Can We Blame Income Inequality on Republicans?
• The Great Divergence and the Death of Organized Labor

Here's What's the Matter With Kansas
Kevin Drumm writes for Mother Jones: "Why has income inequality grown so explosively over the past 30 years? Why do so many working and middle class voters cast their ballots for a party that's so obviously a captive of corporations and the rich? Why is there no longer any real sustained effort to improve the lot of the middle class?"

It's the Mortgages, Stupid

Robert Scheer comments for Truthdig: "This week's proposals by the Obama administration to deal with the persistent economic crisis will be, as with previous plans that involved trillions of taxpayer dollars, little more than salt in the wounds. Once again the strategy is to stimulate the economy by funding projects and tax cuts while ignoring the root cause of the problem: a housing foreclosure meltdown that has chilled the spending of a majority of American consumers."

Illegal immigration: What's the real cost to taxpayers?
Edward Schumacher-Matos comments for the Washington Post: "In 1909, at the height of the last great immigration wave, when immigrants reached a peak of almost 15 percent of the U.S. population, they made up about half of all public welfare recipients. They were two-thirds of welfare recipients in Chicago. In the country's 30 largest cities, meanwhile, more than half of all public school students were the children of immigrants. They were three-fourths in New York."

A Chance for Supreme Court Damage Control
E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes for Truthdig: "Imagine that your neighbors started getting letters describing all sorts of horrific deeds you had allegedly performed. Wouldn’t you feel you had the right to know who was spreading this sleaze—especially if the charges were untrue?"

The Neoliberal Bait and Switch
David Sirota writes for Truthdig.com: "In simplistic, Lexus-and-Olive-Tree terms, the neoliberal economic argument goes like this: Tariff-free trade policies are great because they increase commerce, and we can mitigate those policies’ negative effects on the blue-collar job market by upgrading our education system to cultivate more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) specialists for the white-collar sector."

Why Is College So Expensive? The War on Public Universities
Amy DePaul writes for AlterNet: "With 220,000 students, 10 campuses strung across America’s most populous state, five medical centers, three national science laboratories and groundbreaking academic research, the University of California (U.C.) has long symbolized excellence in public higher education. But all that may be changing as a result of budget cuts, reduced access and tuition hikes plaguing public colleges in California and across the country."

Tea Party vs. U.S. Social Forum: Mass movements that matter for media—Round 2
Julie Hollar writes for Extra!: "When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have established clear standards: Numbers don’t count nearly as much as politics do. Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the similarly sized, largely corporate-funded Tea Party protest in Washington just a month earlier (Extra!, 12/09). So it came as little surprise that the Tea Party Convention this February would get more coverage than the June U.S. Social Forum, five days of strategizing, organizing and activism inspired by the World Social Forum launched in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001. What was a little shocking, though, was just how stark the difference was."

Right-Wing Republicans vs. Corporate Democrats vs. Progressive Populists
Norman Solomon comments for Truthout: "Progressives need to fight back - today, tomorrow and every day. The electoral struggle is just one part of what's needed to build effective social movements, but it's an important part. And that effort should include primary battles to elect real progressives to Congress. One such election is coming up Tuesday in Rhode Island, where progressive populist David Segal is running against corporate Democratic insiders to fill the seat of retiring Congressman Patrick Kennedy."

Koran-Burning Pastor Was Once The GOP's Poster Child For German Intolerance Of Christians

Megan Carpentier writes for Talking Points Memo: "Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center who plans to burn Korans on Saturday to the chagrin of many anti-Islam and anti-mosque advocates, has a long history of claiming that he is the one subjected to discrimination. Before he moved to Florida in 2008 to take the helm of the DWOC, he had a small church in Cologne with some pretty big problems -- and plenty of prominent Republicans had his back."

Two Multibillionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit
Jim Hightower comments for Truthout: "Do you buy Northern tissue, Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups or Vanity Fair napkins? These well-known brands are owned and produced by Koch Industries (pronounced 'coke') in Wichita, Kan. Koch is also a major producer of oil, gas, timber, coal, cattle, refined petroleum, asphalt, polyethylene plastic ... and much, much more.... Charles and David Koch, who control this family-owned empire, have a net worth of $14 billion each, ranking both in a tie for the 19th richest person on the planet.... Charles and David have used the wealth they draw from Koch Industries to fuel a network of three Koch Family Foundations, which have set up and financed a secretive army of political operatives dedicated to achieving the brothers' antigovernment, corporate-controlled vision for America."

Fox Calls for Repeal of the 20th Century
Matthew Gertz provides the follow news analysis for Media Matters: "Since President Obama's election, Fox personalities have expressed opposition to or called for the repeal of virtually every progressive achievement of the 20th century, including Social Security, Medicare, the Americans with Disabilities Act, portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution."

GOP Recruits Homeless People to Run as Green Party Candidates

Marc Lacey reports for the New York Times: "Benjamin Pearcy, a candidate for statewide office in Arizona, lists his campaign office as a Starbucks. The small business he refers to in his campaign statement is him strumming his guitar on the street. The internal debate he is having in advance of his coming televised debate is whether he ought to gel his hair into his trademark faux Mohawk." Photo: Joshua Lott for The New York Times - Steve May, right, a Republican, recruited three street people, from left, Thomas Meadows, Anthony Goshorn and Benjamin Pearcy, to run as Green Party candidates in Arizona.

Right-Wing Tilt on Sunday Morning: The conservative records of talking-head lawmakers
Jim Naureckas and Alyssa Figueroa write for Extra! : "Lawmakers talking about U.S. policy issues are the bread and butter of the Sunday morning news shows—NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday. An Extra! study of the lawmakers who appear on these shows finds they have voting records that tilt to the right. Extra! studied the guests on these four programs from January 25, 2009—the first show after Obama’s inauguration—until April 25, 2010, more than a year into his administration. Guests who were current members of the Senate or House of Representatives, or former members since 2001, were tallied by voting record (in the 111th Congress or, for former lawmakers, the most recent available) according to the VoteView system."

The Military's Media Megaphone and the US Global Military Presence
Tom Engelhardt writes for TomDispatch: "To grasp the changing nature of military influence domestically, consider the military's relationship to the media.... Generals and admirals now mouth off regularly on a wide range of policy issues, appealing to the American public both directly and via deferential (sometimes fawning) reporters, pundits, and commentators. They and their underlings clearly leak news repeatedly for tactical advantage in policy-making situations. They organize what are essentially political-style barnstorming campaigns for what once would have been 'foreign policy' positions, and increasingly this is just the way the game is played."

Clippings for 13 November 2008

Click on title to read complete articles.

Goodbye and Good Riddance
Paul Waldman writes for The American Prospect: "After eight years of President Bush, we almost don't know how to function without him - almost. But before we move on, we should pause to remember just what we're leaving behind. Goodbye, we can say at last, to the most powerful man in the world being such a ridiculous buffoon, incapable of stringing together two coherent sentences. Goodbye to cringing with dread every time our president steps onto the world stage, sure he'll say or do something to embarrass us all. Goodbye to being represented by a man who embodies everything our enemies want the people of the world to believe about America - that we are ignorant, cruel, and only care about foreign countries when we decide to stomp on them."

A Closer Look at Obama's Energy Plan
Mark Clayton writes for The Christian Science Monitor: "If President-elect Barack Obama enacts the energy plan he laid out during his campaign, American taxpayers will each get a $500 rebate check - funded by a windfall profits taxes on big oil companies. But that's just for starters. Besides taxing oil giants more, Senator Obama's detailed 30-point energy agenda calls for big changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency for vehicles, and domestic and renewable power and efficiency."

Cold War Hawks Nesting With Obama
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "So, Vladimir Putin was right: It was Georgia that started the war with Russia, and once again it was President Bush who got caught in a lie. As The New York Times reported last week, 'Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the long-standing Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.'"

Obama's Toughest Challenge: America's Energy Crunch Comes Home
Michael T. Klare writes for TomDispatch: "Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy. After all, energy policy -- so totally mishandled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration -- figures in each of the other major challenges facing the new president, including the economy, the environment, foreign policy, and our Middle Eastern wars. Most of all, it will prove a monumental challenge because the United States faces an energy crisis of unprecedented magnitude that is getting worse by the day."

Guantanamo Closure Called Obama Priority
Peter Finn reports for The Washington Post: "The Obama administration will launch a review of the classified files of the approximately 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately after taking office, as part of an intensive effort to close the U.S. prison in Cuba, according to people who advised the campaign on detainee issues. Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect."

The New Liberalism: How the Economic Crisis Can Help Obama Redefine the Democrats
George Packer reports in The New Yorker: "Barack Obama's decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932. It brings to a close another conservative era, one that rose amid the ashes of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties, consolidated its power with the election of Ronald Reagan, in 1980. Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan's incantations, failed to work, and the need for some 'new machinery' is painfully obvious. But what philosophy of government will characterize it?"

America the Illiterate
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. "

College Loan Slavery: Student Debt Is Getting Way Out of Hand
Nan Mooney writes for AlterNet: "Raya Golden thought she was handling college in a responsible way. She didn't apply until she felt ready to dedicate herself to her studies. She spread her schooling across five years so she could work part-time throughout. She checked that her school, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, had a high post-graduate employment rate. But there were two things she hadn't counted on. The first was the $75,000 in nonsubsidized federal student loans she'd have to take out for tuition and those living expenses her part-time jobs selling hotdogs and making lattes couldn't cover. The second was that she'd graduate into a workforce teetering on the edge of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression."

The Midnight Deregulation Express
Matthew Blake writes for The Washington Independent: "It's something of a tradition - administrations using their final weeks in power to ram through a slew of federal regulations. With the election grabbing the headlines, outgoing federal bureaucrats quietly propose and finalize rules that can affect the health and safety of millions."

In Final Days, Bush Pushes for Iraq's Oil
Maya Schenwar writes for Truthout: "As the Bush administration rumbles to an end, it is pushing with increasing urgency for a commitment to a long-term US presence in Iraq. Though the military aspect of this 'commitment' has garnered substantial publicity, the administration is equally invested in the economic aspect: securing US control over Iraqi oil before Bush leaves office, according to experts in the field."

Probe Sought of Bush Handling of Alaska Oil-Spill Case
Renee Schoof reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "An environmental watchdog group asked the Department of Justice's inspector general on Monday to investigate whether the department had prematurely halted a criminal prosecution of BP for a 2006 oil spill in Alaska. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed the complaint on behalf of Scott West, who as the special agent in charge for the Environmental Protection Agency participated in the federal and state investigation of the spill."

Prescription Drugs Kill Three Times as Many Americans as Illegal Drugs
David Gutierrez, Natural News: "A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death. An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem."

Is Our Internet Future in Danger?
Galen Gruman and Tome KAneshige write for InfoWorld: "The digital Disneyland of the future -- where we freely work and play online -- may be at risk. Why? Because, some argue, broadband carriers can't support it. The Internet's "free ride" culture has led to more people downloading gigabytes of data at practically no cost. "

Obama Media Policy: Broadband and Breaking up Telecom/Cable/Broadcast Monopolies
Matt Stoller blogs for Open Left: "I've been blogging about media policy for a few years, so I have pretty good sources on net neutrality, the FCC and media policy. Whenever I have a really tough question, I'm usually referred to Harold Feld, a brilliant lawyer at the Media Access Project who blogs about communications policy and politics at his incomparably great site, Wetmachine. His work and knowledge has been essentially to the media reform movement that has successfully placed openness and the protection of the internet in an important position in the Obama administration's priority list."

What do "White Spaces" Mean for Public Media?
Jessica Clark writes for the Center for Social Media: "The FCC decision on white spaces could mean more than just broadband access for millions of Americans. It could hold the key to more evenly distributed access to the public airwaves. And the public won't just be consuming media on open networks, they'll be producing it, too. "

Alternative views to read...

The Elitism Thing

Tom Sullivan writes for Campaign for America's Future: "When character attacks make us uncomfortable and defensive, maybe we should pay more attention and not dismiss them immediately as unfair or overblown. Like Republicans being obsessed with money. I can often identify an acquaintance as a Republican by how quickly money dominates the conversation. With the activist left, it is how quickly the topic of voter ignorance arises."

For the complete essay, click here.

Stopping the War Machine: Military Recruiters Must Be Confronted

Ron Kovic writes for Truthdig: "As a former United States Marine Corps sergeant who was shot and paralyzed from my mid-chest down during my second tour of duty in Vietnam on Jan. 20, 1968, I am sending my complete support and admiration to all those now involved in the courageous struggle to stop military recruitment in Berkeley and across the country."

For the complete article click here.

Where Is the Outrage?

Also at Truthdig, Robert Scheer's writtes: "Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of a 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture."

For the complete column, click here.

“Pro-Military” Iron Man

Nick Truse writes: "Those who haven’t seen this summer’s biggest blockbuster (so far, at least—this weekend’s “Indiana Jones” sequel may well change that) “Iron Man” and are planning to hit the multiplex might want to take a gander at this review. The article points out how “Iron Man” is the latest in a string of “pro-military” movies served up for youngsters’ consumption—even as two disastrous wars rage on overseas."

For complete article, click here.

Post-Traumatic Stress Soars in US Troops

David Morgan of Reuters reports: "Newly diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among US troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan surged 46.4 percent in 2007, bringing the five-year total to nearly 40,000, according to US military data released on Tuesday."

For the complete article click here.

Voter Repression

The Winston-Salem Journal's editorial board writes: "The US Supreme Court has effectively reinstated the poll tax that once kept minorities and the poor from voting, and it did so for no justifiable reason."

To read the complete editorial, click here.

"Taxi to the Dark Side": How Did America Become a Country That Tortures?

By Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters
Wednesday 20 February 2008

Alex Gibney's Oscar winning film documents the Bush Administration's reckless disregard for human rights and the rule of law. They're a very frail people and I was surprised it had taken that long for one of 'em to die in our custody.
- Pfc. Damien Corsetti, Military Intelligence, Bagram If the FBI had felt that there was a case to answer for, they wouldn't have taken me into Bagram where I was held, heard the sounds of a woman screaming next door, had me hogtied and threatened to send me to Egypt in order to get me to sign this.
- Moazzam Begg, Now 2006 July 28

In December 2002, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar was picked up and delivered to the Bagram Air Force Base prison. Five days later, he was dead. Sgt. Thomas Curtis, one of the Military Police at Bagram, remembers, "There was definitely a sense of concern because he was the second one. You wonder, was it something we did?"

As detailed in Alex Gibney's devastating documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, Dilawar's demise was officially termed a homicide, like the first detainee to die at Bagram, Habibullah. Captured by a warlord and handed over to the U.S. just days before Dilawar, Habibullah as deemed "an important prisoner," hooded, shackled, and isolated, periodically beaten for "noncompliance." Autopsies showed that Dilawar and Habibullah suffered similar abuses, including deep bruises all over their bodies; according to the Army coroner, Dilawar suffered "massive tissue damage to his legs ... his legs had been pulpified." And yet, despite initial concerns among the guards and interrogators at Bagram over an investigation, instead, the officer in charge of interrogation at the prison, Captain Carolyn Wood, was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor and, following the Iraq invasion in 2003, she and her unit were sent to Abu Ghraib.

Methodically, relentlessly, Gibney's Oscar-nominated film assembles stories, evidence, and testimony from witnesses and experts (its deliberate structure recalls that of Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight, both films suggesting that, if the Bush Administration had not already put in place legal protections, more than one member might be subject to criminal charges). The many decisions and oversights that produced the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would be used at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and other sites have several points of departure, each chilling in its own way. Not least among these is the pronouncement by Dick Cheney that motivates Taxi's title, made during an appearance on Meet the Press during the week after 9/11. Describing imminent changes in interrogation policies, the vice president asserted,

We have to work sort of the dark side, if you will, spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in. It'll be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

This working of the "dark side" would be both notorious and secret, planned and haphazard, illegal and, in some instances, calculated to toe a seeming legal line. Above all, the film argues, the work was instigated and often overseen by military officers and administration officials, who created a "fog of ambiguity, coupled with great pressure to bring results," such that young, untrained soldiers were following orders that were not spelled out. Chief among these sources of confusion is the January 2002 torture memo" written by John Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, advising the suspension of the Geneva Conventions in cases deemed appropriate by the president. Taxi describes the memo as giving "legal cover for the CIA and Special Forces to embark on a secret program of previously forbidden interrogation techniques," including the use of dogs, nudity, stress positions, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. This even as military lawyers disputed such methods, especially as the use of such "extreme acts" left soldiers vulnerable to criminal charges - though, as it has turned out, those who directed them have not been subject to prosecutions.

Working the "dark side" demands such hierarchy, so that the U.S. can continue to put on a show of "justice" and fairness; as Donald Rumsfeld declared following the exposure of photos from Abu Ghraib, "The world will see how a democratic system a free system functions and operates, transparently, with no cover-ups." The trials that resulted, however, have covered up all kinds of responsibility, what with Pfc. Lynndie England sentenced to three years imprisonment (paroled after 521 days) and Spc. Charles Graner to 10 years. As the film notes in one of its resonant section titles, England and Graner were not only "bad apples." As Spc. Tony Lagouranis, of Military Intelligence in Iraq, puts it, "Obviously what they were doing in those pictures was not sanctioned by the military rules of engagement, and they weren't interrogators. So yes, I did think that they were bad apples. However, I also think that they were taking cues from intel."

While most charges associated with the Dilawar and Habibullah cases were dropped, several soldiers pled guilty or were convicted, including Pfc. Willie Brand, Spc. Brian Cammack, and Sgt, Anthony Morden (who notes in the film that this process allowed the Army "to get a public opinion that they were policing their soldiers"). But such cases, the movie submits, are only covering up broader policy. At Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantánamo, the "chain of command" has not subverted by the use of torture; rather, it has been reasserted. (here it's worth noting that, even as some experts and even some politicians are calling for Guantánamo's closing, Bagram is expanding.)

As Rear Admiral John Hutson describes it, "What starts at the top of the chain of command drops like a rock down the chain of command, and that's why Lynndie England knew what Donald Rumsfeld was thinking without actually talking to Donald Rumsfeld." All interviewees in Taxi assert that torture does not produce useful intelligence (the most egregious case noted here is that of Abi Faraj al-Libbi, whose coerced and inaccurate "confession" of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda found its way into Colin Powell's infamous speech at the United Nations in 2003). The film suggests that its pervasiveness in popular culture (exemplified by scenes from 24) has led to what Alfred McCoy (A Question of Torture) calls "a constituency for torture that allows the Bush White House to get away with the way it twists laws and treaties." Such twisting is denounced in the film by lawyers for detainees and former detainee Moazzam Begg, who recalls "one of the strangest requests" made to him during his two years detained, namely, that he identify soldiers who abused Dilawar and agree to testify against them in court (this while he was unable to get access to a lawyer or court proceedings for himself; he was released in 2005, under pressure by the British government).

The film includes examples of other, frankly astounding twists, including the designation of detainees as NEC (Not Enemy Combatants) or later, NLEC (No Longer Enemy Combatants), patently senseless labels that turn time and logic inside out. As Begg's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, says, NLEC means "We want to say they were guilty to begin with, but now we've had a change of heart, so they're not guilty anymore, but we were right in the first place." Detention hinges on lack of information: according to Rear Admiral James McGarrah, of the Office of Administrative Review for Detained Enemy Combatants, "[Detainees] may not ever know [the evidence against them], but that doesn't eliminate the opportunity they have to make a case for why if they were returned in the future, why they would not continue to pose a threat."

All this twisting lays ground for future problems. According to Jack Cloonan, FBI Special Agent from 1977-2002, "We don't know what revenge is coming down the road." Indeed, he says, the most effective way to "incite the faithful" would be to show the photo of England holding the dog leash, "and just point to that, and look at the young brothers and say you're duty-bound now to get revenge." While Cloonan here casts blame on the "extreme interrogators," he also alludes to what he later calls "a certain level of prejudice, that this religion and the people who have hijacked it have such a disregard for life that we turn around and say if they think so little of life - and clearly, 9/11 exemplified that - screw them. Anything goes."

Taxi to the Dark Side insists on an accounting for this "anything." And for all its brilliant dissecting of U.S. policy, practice, and cover-up, it closes with an effort to make Dilawar visible once again. Effaced from the trials in which some of his torturers were named, he is represented here by his family, embodiments of the "human dignity" and commitment to "inalienable rights" lost during this long, slow, ongoing journey to the dark side.

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