Are you sure Instapundit is the world’s most popular blogger?

Moare popular than Daily Kos? Well, they’re a group blog. More polpular than Eschaton? Are you sure?

Yeah, I guess it all depends on the definition of “popular.”

I’ll say that Kos and Atrios are much more of chat communities than they used to be (Atrios’ many open threads get filled with comments at a ridiculous rate). Insty doesn’t allow comments, but if he did, I’d bet his traffic would be right up there with Kos and co.

like my granddaddy always used to say, “shitting in a bucket is wrong, but crapping in a pail is god’s way.”

“does he think it includes things like fake menstrual blood, and being wrapped in the Israeli flag?”

Let’s find out. Wrap Insty in a Palestinian flag and poor mentrual blood from ovulating poor people on him and see what happens. I bet his head explodes.

Wrap Insty in a Palestinian flag and poor mentrual blood from ovulating poor people on him and see what happens. I bet his head explodes.

Heh. Indeed.

hmmmm…

Instapundit’s not doing to well over at the weblog awards.

Michelle Malkin has more than twice as many votes as he does and she’s only got about two-thirds the votes of Daily Kos or Eschaton.

Incidentily, Sadly No is up for Best of the Top 251 – 500 Blogs.

Let me plug Jesus’ General for Best Humor/Comics Blog.

Also Law Dork is the only liberal blog in the Best Law Blog category and is beating out Volokh Conspiracy.

GET THE TO VOTE!!!

InstaJackAss is what you get at a third rate law school in the South. I am sure his students are grateful that his time is spent in a right wing circle jerk rather than actually teaching.

Just goes to show that they’ll let any ol’ idiot into Yale Law.

I’d be happy to give the Ol’ Perfessor a couple of days of “questioning” to find out what he knows about right-wing militias and how connected he is with them, you know, the kind that blow up federal buildings and horde assualt weapons. After all, it’s OK to use this type of treatment on people who are suspected of being terrorists or assisting terrorists.

Call me callous, but as degrading as those practices are, I’m more concerned with what we don’t hear about.

I find it hard to believe that the CIA is having secret flights from Romania to Poland and back to Kossavo, just to smear some Ketchup on a face or two, gross out some jihadists and call it a day.

I have a feeling, years from now, that this era will be retroactivley known as the time that America lost it’s innocence. For reasons far darker than a cruel, religiously motivated prank.

There must be some odd sense of liberation to be able simply adopt the viewpoint that torture is acceptable and then argue about the details.

I guess when you’re that free, there are no limits to what you can potentially do. History is littered with examples of just what kind of consequences that brings.

Apropos of nothing, from an economic standpoint, slavery does makes a whole lot of sense. I’m disappointed the Pajama-bloggers are avoiding this topic. I’m detecting bias.

And I’d be happy to give the Ol’ Perfessor a couple of days of “questioning” about whether he receives any sort of compensation from WH or GOP operatives.

America has lost its innocence many times, Timmah. Watergate… Vietnam… in the back of France’s car after the prom… Unless you’re a dewy-eyed Bush fanatic, there’s nothing especially cherry-busting about this — and if you are a dewy-eyed Bush fanatic, this kind of crap is as chaste as a peck on the cheek.

(There. Have I stretched the metaphor to the breaking point, or beyond?)

No, This time really for real :).

Like the difference between heavy groping and sodomy, to stretch the metaphor even further.
I don’t know, honestly, because I was but a gleam in my father’s eye before 85, but it seems to me that unlike watergate, unlike vietnam, all checks and balances have just been tossed right out the window, pretty much the entire majority party have become apologists for everything from falsified intelligence, to paid and planted propoganda, use of illegal weapons, torture, not to mention all the fraud and embezzlement and shady backroom deals in the “New Iraq”tm . Wouldn’t this have been universally decried before?
Then again, that’s been a question that’s interested me for awhile now, how long have you been following all this Dan? Are the people who pine for a simpler day when politics wasn’t as cutthroat totally full of shit? Or has the discourse allways been this way?

Christopher Hitchens actually had something to say about this that I absolutely agree with:

One day, I am going to drop everything and think exclusively about America and its celebrated ‘loss of innocence’. I have read that the country lost said innocence in the Civil War, in the Spanish-American War, in the First World War, during Prohibition, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the McCarthy hearings, in Dallas, in Vietnam, over Watergate and in the discovery (celluloided by Robert Redford in Quiz Show) that the TV contests in the Eisenhower era were fixed. This list is not exhaustive. Innocence, we were recently and quakingly informed, was lost again at the bombing of Oklahoma City. Clearly, a virginity so casually relinquished is fairly easily regained – only to be (damn!) mislaid once more.

We’ve never been innocent. No country is innocent.

America has an excellent vaginal rejuvination surgeon.

Insty. Chumpstick. Someone make him drink a pint of spooge. I’m sure it won’t hurt him.

Even if you accept at face value insty’s problemaic assertion that we are hauling people away to old KGB facilities to wrap them in Israeli flags and squirt them with movie blood it still doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.

What sort of value would it have? Assuming this guy is actually a terrorist (of course they are, conservatives all know government beuracracies don’t make mistakes). What are they getting out of their “not-torture” practices? What’s that importantant about walking Arabs around on leashes naked (which of course was never government policy) that got insty to write that shit on his blog?

Worse, that’s not even remotely a fair characterization of what Sullivan said. It’s completely disingenuous.

See here:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_05_15_dish_archive.html#111644908581141656

The whore of Babylon rides again! Woo hoo! USA! USA!

When you say “most popular blogger” do you mean actually popular, or popular in the way that the quarter back of the football team is popular? You know, popular solely because of his position, despite being a giant asshole that nobody actually likes.

If you mean the latter, don’t worry. He’s gonna blow out his knee at homecoming, lose the free ride he had at State U., and wind up living over a gas station drinking all day. Eventually he’ll get arrested for hanging out by cheerleader practice in a creepy way and move out of town, never to be heard from again.

When you say “most popular blogger” do you mean actually popular, or popular in the way that the quarter back of the football team is popular? You know, popular solely because of his position, despite being a giant asshole that nobody actually likes.

I’m a Pats fan- our quarterback is actually popular 😉

Uh-oh. Li’l Glennda’s beginning to show symptoms of the “Besides That” Syndrome…

Is it wrong to think that none of us know what we’re talking about when it comes to these ‘interrogation techniques’?

The difference is, of course, that they want the United States to use them and we don’t. So, to that end, I propose we hold a real Fear Factor contest.

Those drooling dipshits who think that ‘making people uncomfortable’ is much ado about nothing should be subject to being uncomfortable.

Insty could get a little of the ‘air-conditioning’ treatment he so blithely dismisses. Lieks could get the full-on blaring rap music/sleep deprevation hilarity.

See which one cracks first and tells us when they’re going to bomb next.

Shit- we’ve been doing this kind of stuff for decades.
We did it against “commonists” back in the day (Che, anyone?)and we did it in Central America and the back before WWII. Granted, it was a differant flavor of abuse, but it’s kind of standard operating procedure against insurgent groups.
The differance here is we’re actually doing it somewhat in the open now (like we did in WWII, except with more abuse).
I don’t have a problem with certain forms which could be considered abuse by an average person (sleep deprevation, nakedness, contortions-to a point, that sort of thing), because they are effective forms of interrogation aids (unlike torture), and leave no permenant damage… but torture is a no-no, and more importantly, where I draw the line on what’s abuse and what’s torture is wayyyy differant than what Glen seems to have in mind.

I think I’m gonna hurl…

I don’t have a problem with certain forms which could be considered abuse by an average person (sleep deprevation, nakedness, contortions-to a point, that sort of thing), because they are effective forms of interrogation aids (unlike torture).

Bullshit, you get in one of those positions and I hold a gun to your head and you will have no doubt within five minutes that you are being tortured. People talk about “stress positions” and I don’t think they have any idea what they talking about. Cruicifixion is a stress position (and one used lethaly in Iraq).

Timmah420, all these people are going to HE double hockey sticks fer shure.

Guinness guy – I disagree about where the line is drawn here, I think, as a civilized, industrialized nation, there really is no excuse for certain kinds of information extraction methods. Agreeing to allow contortions and stress positions, I would think leaves too much leeway for the kind of shit we saw at Abu Garib. Weren’t most of those prisoners in “embarassing stress positions”?
As for the constant music and sleep deprevation, Well I might question the effectiveness of it, but I can’t see disallowing that kind of stuff. It’s my opinion that state interrogation should remain in the psychological realm, as there are plently of tools there to get what’s necessary, hell, If I was a prisoner, i’d be much more likely to give real information to a captor that treated me humanely.

Mr.X – Oh yah, Oh yah, eh? 🙂

Tim- the constant music is actually more sinister than it appears.

See here.

And just so I don’t sound like a crackpot conspiracy theorist, I don’t think that subliminal sound machines actually work- but if I had to guess, that’d be the purpose of the constant music being played. Our government spends money on a LOT of weird-ass shit.

Wow, Brad, here I was thinking they just put Night Ranger on repeat.

Brando-
They actually play different types of songs to induce different moods. Metallica and Eminem are generally used as harsh sounds, while they use Fleetwood Mac and Matchbox 20 to induce calm. (Playing Matchbox 20 would personally piss me off because I fucking hate them. Seriously, it wouldn’t matter what sounds they put in there.)

Discomfort, torture, humiliation, it’s all the same thing. They might as well kill them all because if they ever get out after being mistreated and get a chance for some payback you better believe they damn sure will.

The sickest thing about that photo, for me, is just how wholesome and 1940s Coca Cola ad that girl’s smile is. Seriously, she’s the all-American girl. And there she is, celebrating the death of some anonymous guy for some stupid reason.

That’s what bugs me the most. Little Sandra Dee over there, torturing insurgents.

Bullshit, you get in one of those positions and I hold a gun to your head and you will have no doubt within five minutes that you are being tortured. People talk about “stress positions” and I don’t think they have any idea what they talking about. Crucifixion is a stress position (and one used lethally in Iraq).

…Which is why I said “to a point”, didn’t I?
I am referring, to be more specific, to long term-contortions, uncomfortable sleep positions working in concert with deprivation of said sleep, which primarily inflicts “discomfort” as opposed to actual large amounts of pain, such as dislocations or stretching. Sorry for not being more specific (though I did specify contortions as opposed to the catch-all ?stress positions?, that was also not specific enough. My bad).
What the interrogatee thinks is not necessarily indicative to what the reality is. My pain/discomfort threshold determines how I react, but it doesn’t determine the actual medical or physical reality of what is going on. I couldn?t stand listening to hours and hours of nails-on-chalkboard- I suspect I?d spill my guts after an hour or two (if that). If I had a gun to my head, I would also probably strongly consider giving up the information in question. That doesn?t mean, however, that such treatment crosses the line into unacceptability and inflicts an unnecessary amount of physical or psychological damage.

Timmah- you bring up a fair point, and I would like to point out, however, that the Abu Ghraib stuff was exactly the sort of thing which constitutes torture.
No questions were being asked, and therefore there is no purpose for such actions and, more importantly, there was no possibility for the subject to end his distress. Moreover, such positions and methods are instead more likely to cause outrage (as we saw), as the abuses inflicted were primarily about causing shame and such as a group, which is not at all useful (though such could lower the psychological resistance, it could just as easily backfire). Sexual abuse, like deliberate inflicting of bodily harm, falls into a different realm of moral problems than the normal methods, and therefore falls into the “unacceptable” category.
It was gratuitous, just as (I suspect), most of the stuff at Gitmo is. Sadistic methods of keeping the prisoners in line and entertaining their captors- brutal and unnecessary (just like- it should be noted- such treatment in state pens all over the States).
My support or apathy (I.E. what do the experts say?) regarding the use of certain techniques is predicated on the prisoners in question being legitimate military or insurgent members, who are believed to have certain intelligence. It’s a waste of time and effort and, in general, unnecessarily cruel for Intel to go around applying these techniques to every prisoner or suspected insurgent, hoping they will spill their guts.
In order to be effective, the interrogators have to have some idea of what they are asking about, so that the answers to their questions will be able to be studied for clues afterward more effectively. You can?t go fishing and call it an interrogation- it could, theoretically, produce results, but more than likely, it will not (with, of course, certain exceptions). It, for me, is not so much about the techniques involved as the situation in which we deploy said techniques.
To put it shortly, our current policy is unacceptable in that the standard of who constitutes a “confirmed” enemy combatant is pretty shaky, and who has “usable” intel is even less refined. Indeed, we apparently can?t decide what precisely these individuals are- enemy combatants or criminals. That needs to be resolved (enemy combatants strikes me as perhaps more appropriate for those captured overseas, though it is difficult to determine what some of those persons in Gitmo are) before we can proceed, and allow me to say that, whatever statutes apply to the treatment of said prisoners in either situation, I believe we should be compelled to comply with them.
In addition, there is insufficient punishment for those who would inflict gratuitous and unnecessarily demeaning treatment upon prisoners- though I believe that that is something that goes without saying here.

We did contract-torture during Vietnam, too.

The American “military advisors” would stand behind the ARVN henchmen and watch while they did the car battery-electrode-testicle thing on captured Vietminh. This way, we never actually tortured anyone ourselves.

I suppose it’s arguably a “new” thing that we’re not only outsourcing the torture this time but also doing it ourselves.

Nothing new to see here, I fear.

Might I also add that I concur that the violating of certain major religious taboos (smearing pig/menstrual blood on Muslims, forcing a Hindu to eat cow, forcing a Christian to spit or defecate on a holy object etc.), also constitutes an unacceptable level of abuse

Jeez, we were just fuckin’ with ’em

What the interrogatee thinks is not necessarily indicative to what the reality is. My pain/discomfort threshold determines how I react, but it doesn’t determine the actual medical or physical reality of what is going on. I couldn?t stand listening to hours and hours of nails-on-chalkboard- I suspect I?d spill my guts after an hour or two (if that). If I had a gun to my head, I would also probably strongly consider giving up the information in question. That doesn?t mean, however, that such treatment crosses the line into unacceptability and inflicts an unnecessary amount of physical or psychological damage.

One of the most feared torture techniques in N. Korea is called “The clock”. You are forced to stand with your arms out and swing your leg as a pendulum. Nobody is getting hurt at all! As a matter of fact, the excercise is probably doing them good! Now try this for a few hours and tell me that forcing someone to do that isn’t torturing them.

I think you are also giving serious short-shrift to sleep depravation.

In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget….Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it?I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them. He did not promise them their liberty. He promised them?if they signed?uninterrupted sleep! And they signed….And having signed, there was nothing in the world that could move them to risk again such nights and such days….The main thing was?to sleep. (Menachem Begin, White Nights: The Story of a Prisoner in Russia, trans. Kafie Kaplan (Jerusalem: Steimatzky, 1977))

It depends on the context, obviously.
However, we’ve crossed into “extreme cases” in the latter, haven’t we?
It isn’t being used as an interrogation technique in that case, is it? It is being used simply to degrade prisoners or force them into (militarily useless) confessions.
The former- I would say it skirts the line, as such would likely result in intense pain for the subject after a certain period of time, and I don’t know how effective it would be as far as eliciting information.
As Timmah said, the best means of interrogation reside in the mind.
Interrogation shouldn’t involve techniques which degrade to the point where the subject will say anything to stop the treatment, as that is not only notoriously unreliable, but generally is unnecessarily cruel.
Subtle means to break down resistance so that subjects are off their guard shouldn’t be discarded out of hand (those which are overt, such as threatening death or severe stress positions are certainly beyond the pale).
How we define such techniques… I would like to see what some well-regarded psychologists (not Doc Sammich) and other experts have to say before defining it.

Brad, I would be getting riled up if they played any Metallica after And Justice for All.. “Reload?! Oh sweet Jesus, give me the paper, I’ll sign, I’ll sign!”

There was a really good article in The Atlantic about interrogation techniques and why torture and abuse don’t work. Everyone that supports this shit always brings up the 24 ticking time bomb scenario, but getting violent with a prisoner does not assure that you will be any closer to the truth. The prisoner is more likely to say what he thinks the interregator wants to hear to get the abuse to stop.

Vestal Vespa, that picture always makes me wonder if her parents have seen it, and how they feel if they have. And what kind of a person can do that, can smile so sweetly and so joyously while bent over a body-bag? Is this someone that we should allow to freely wander the streets?

GuinnessGuy – I think I can pretty much agree with you there, then again i’ll admit I have plenty still to learn about interrogation. (golly gee haven’t even been arrested yet, good thing cops here are ok with weed).
As per your other suggestion, I really would like to know what guidelines sammich would set. You know, as a psychologist… ahem.
Pipe up doc!!! Give us the goods.

I’ll admit I have plenty still to learn about interrogation.

I’m merely an interested amateur in the subject- I’ve read my fair share of books about the CIA’s history and procedure, and am giving a fair bit of thought to applying once I get my masters (they are quite interested in Middle East specialists, which is my current area of interest and study), though that time is a while off yet.

Timmah, I appreciate your question, but interrogation methodology was not one of the areas I specialized in while enrolled in graduate school. The only way one could say I’ve been involved in the psychological operations (psy-ops) of the military by any stretch of the imagination, is in an unofficial, indirect capacity, using my songs as weapons of mass construction in the war on terror.

So I’m no more an expert on the matter of interrogation than you are Timmah. Sidhe thinks I’m a Bush apologist on this matter (though Bush himself is now playing by McCain’s rules), and he also thinks I’m pro-torture. With all due respect to the man who refuses to show me my due respect, nothing could be further from the truth. Just as a person, (putting my day job profession) on the back burner for the moment, I’d have to say that any methods that produce lasting psychological and/or physical damage should be avoided at all costs. PTSD, for example is something you wouldn’t want to wish upon your worst enemy, and some of these prisoners most definately fall into the category of our own worst enemies. Still, we supposedly live in a civilized nation, so there must be certain safegaurds put in place so that we can fight terrorism and excercize a modicum of civility and humaneness in the process.

I hope that answers your question.

That picture makes me realize how much I’ve managed to advance past sexism, because I want to kick her in the face just as much as if she were a man.

Also, haven’t we beaten people to death? If that isn’t torture, what is?