"Chicago is up in the house!"/"He's never nipped at anybody but he barks and growls"/"I wanna be your dog"...

... "Everyone left is from Chicago"/"It's the love-in of a lifetime"/"People are going to be really embarrassed some day to look back and realize that they had joined in on something that was really a mistake and they chose the wrong side and that they joined it with such fervor"/"Did you ever do that when you were young?"



All this video was recorded yesterday... except the flashback. (That was originally blogged on February 17th.)

And here's the NYT article on "self-compassion" that I talk about in the car.

"The biggest hero of the Vietnam War" has died.

Vang Pao was 81.

The Hmong are a tribe in the fog-shrouded mountains separating Laos from southern China, and they were natural allies for the C.I.A. because of their enmity toward Laotian lowlanders to the south, who dominated the Communist leadership.

General Vang Pao quickly organized 7,000 guerrillas, then steadily increased the force to 39,000, leading them in many successful battles, often against daunting odds. William Colby, C.I.A. director in the mid-1970s, called him “the biggest hero of the Vietnam War.”

Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of Refugees International, in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 2008, put it more bluntly, saying General Vang Pao’s Hmong were put “into this meat grinder, mostly to save U.S. soldiers from fighting and dying there.”

According to Bush, Abu Zabeta wanted all "the brothers" to be waterboarded until they broke so they, like him, would get "the chance to be able to fulfill their duty."

I think this is the most interesting thing George Bush said in the interview with Matt Lauer that aired on NBC last night. The topic was waterboarding, which Bush said he believed was legal "because the lawyer said it was legal." The technique was used to get information from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who, they had good reason to think, had valuable information, it worked to "save lives," and his job was "to protect America and I did." Then Matt Lauer brought up "another guy you write about in the book, Abu Zabeta, another high profile terror suspect":

LAUER: He was waterboarded. By the way, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, according to most reports, 183 times. This guy was waterboarded more than 80 times. And you explain that his understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation up to a certain point and waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold and fulfill his religious duty and then cooperate. And you have a quote from him. "You must do this for all the brothers." End quote.

BUSH: Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

LAUER: Abu Zabeta really went to someone and said, "You should waterboard all the brothers?"

BUSH: He didn't say that. He said, "You should give brothers the chance to be able to fulfill their duty." I don't recall him saying you should water-- I think it's-- I think it's an assumption in your case.

LAUER: Yeah, I-- when "You must do this for--"

BUSH: But…

LAUER: …"All the brothers." So to let them get to that threshold?

BUSH: Yeah, that's what-- that's how I interpreted.

What do you think really happened? Was Abu Zabeta's quote fabricated? Was it real, but some kind of sarcastic taunt? Perhaps it was his way to justify himself, after he'd caved to pressure, by saying that under his principles, he'd done his duty. Bush seems to interpret it to mean that the detainees would appreciate being waterboarded until they broke so they could fulfill their duty.

That got me thinking about John McCain. This is from his 2008 speech accepting the GOP nomination:

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

No one would wish to be tortured/subjected to enhanced interrogation, but, after the fact, human beings find ways to process the experience. It's generally known — isn't it? — that at some point everyone breaks, and the standard answer to the shame of breaking is that you held out as long as you could. Both Abu Zabeta and John McCain understood their experience that way. I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. How much of the rest of McCain's thoughts were mirrored in the mind of Abu Zabeta?

The new Miss World is a United Statesian.

Alexandria Mills.

What's her favorite book? "'Guess how much I love you,'my mom used to read it with me." Don't laugh. I'll bet most of the people you know, if they were being honest, would name a children's book as their favorite book.

Tell us a little something about your Country?

The USA is a melting pot for all cultures. My home town is famous for the Kentucky Derby Horse Race.

Yeah, the USA, la la la... let me tell you about Louisville! Louisville, Kentucky:

"... Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you.... Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin... If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace."

That reminds me. The Rally to Restore Sanity is happening today. Are you there? Are you watching it on C-SPAN? Sanity. Are you up for sanity today? I've got the sanity rally recording on the DVR and I'm going to scroll through it — I say "scroll through" these days, not "fast-forward" — later. Meanwhile, remember when the smart reaction to politics was insanity, back when we read Hunter S. Thompson essays?

A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off, you worthless [censored]! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren't sick I'd kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green--you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without your kind in Kentucky."

"I was there when it happened, asleep in an apartment about eight blocks east of Sterling Hall."

Michael Haz writes about the bombing that took place here in Madison 40 years ago today:

The blast threw me out of bed. I scrambled into the dark hallway and ran into others; we all thought that a bomb had been detonated in the basement of our building. We ran apartment-to-apartment making certain everyone was awake and okay. Then we helped the grad students get their notes, manuscript drafts, computer data cards, etc. out of their apartments in into cars for safe keeping.

We heard the approaching sirens of emergency vehicles, and were astonished when they went past rather than stopping. It slowly dawned that the explosion hadn't been in our building, but was somewhere on campus.

More and more emergency vehicles raced past. They were heading in the direction of the (old) University Hospital. A neighbor said "My God, did a boiler at the hospital explode?" We got dressed and ran toward the hospital, partly from curiosity, and partly to offer help evacuating patients from the hospital.

The street was filled with glass three blocks away. We got to Sterling Hall, which was across a narrow street from the hospital, and saw that it's front had been blown off. One side of the hospital had been severely damaged; its windows were gone. Nearby buildings were heavily damaged and buildings several blocks away lost their windows. There was a crater where the explosion had occurred.

My roommate asked a fireman "What happened?" He answered "It was a bomb." That answer was shocking. How could it have been a bomb? You mean someone did this on purpose? How can that be? the peace movement isn't about bombs, it's about peace?!

A cordon was set up and we were pushed back. Standing near a fire truck so I could hear its radio I heard a fireman report finding one body in Sterling Hall. Stunned, I stood for a few more minutes than walked back to my apartment.

Two days later I cut my shoulder length hair and notified my landlord that I wouldn't remain as a tenant for the fall term.

I was done with UW and Madison, except for completing my studies. I rented and apartment west of Middleton and commuted, spending as little time on campus as possible. I didn't attend my graduation.

The anti-war movement was a sham; a cover for violent anarchists. It wasn't actually anti-war; it was mostly anti-draft, and nothing more. It was over-indulged white males who didn't want to be conscripted. It would never have happened if there hadn't been a draft.

I don't have a romantic version of the late 60s in my head. I lived through it, it was horrible. Sure, the music was good, the weed was abundant, "liberated" coeds eschewed underwear, and contraceptive sex had no risk. It was still an awful time.

Karleton Armstrong was lucky. He should still be rotting in prison.

"They all had small red spots on the back of their ears. The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience told me that these men did not have sex before."

The acupuncturist's virginity test that Vietnam has used to exonerate convicted rapists.

"As he drove the getaway car carrying the four men, Dwight Armstrong abruptly pulled over. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'You have to look.' And there, above campus, was this huge fireball going up."

Karl Armstrong, remembering his brother, who is dead now, at the age of 58. Dead at the age of 33, in 1970, in Madison, Wisconsin, was Robert Fassnacht.

"Here, it's tie-dye and marijuana. It's just like the 1960s, with the Vietnam War still to protest."

John Yoo, back at Berkeley, endures his environs.

"I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of Marxism," Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan smile registering the discomfort of colleagues walking by en route to the bar.

He sees his neighbors as the human figures of "a natural history museum of the 1960s," the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a graying, long-haired, pot-smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology's half-century-old heyday.

He's happy in Berkeley, he says, and that's something I understand.

A teach-in. Are you going to this 60s flashback?

Here in Madison.

I went to a big teach-in at the University of Michigan circa 1969. What I remember most vividly is one speaker lobbing the vivid insight that it wouldn't be so bad if North Vietnam won the war. The crowd cheered. I can't picture a present-day crowd of students cheering at the idea of the Taliban winning in Afghanistan. I can't even picture much of a crowd attending a teach-in on Afghanistan. Especially, now that Obama is President.

On the day that the Supreme Court struck down a U.S. statute as a violation of free speech, Hillary Clinton was promoting free speech on the internet...

... criticizing other countries.

Here are some excerpts... that is: everything she said about blogs:

Blogs, emails, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas, and created new targets for censorship....

[V]iral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day....

Some nations.... have co-opted the internet as a tool to target and silence people of faith. Last year, for example, in Saudi Arabia, a man spent months in prison for blogging about Christianity....

QUESTION: Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang with BPSOS. We serve Vietnamese Americans and work with Vietnamese in Vietnam. While your initiative will take some time to take effect, just recently, in recent months, the Vietnamese Government sentenced several bloggers to five years all the way to 16 years in prison. So what does your office plan to do, and how the U.S. Government can confront such an emergency situation in Vietnam?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we have publicly spoken out against the detention, conviction, and imprisonment of not only the bloggers in Vietnam, but some of the Buddhist monks and nuns and others who have been subjected to harassment.

Vietnam has made so much progress, and it’s just moving with great alacrity into the future, raising the standard of living of their people. And we don’t believe they should be afraid of commentary that is internal. In fact, I would like to see more governments, if you disagree with what a blogger or a website is saying, get in and argue with them. Explain what it is you’re doing. Put out contrary information. Point out what the pitfalls are of the position that a blogger might be taking.

So I hope that Vietnam will move more in that direction, because I think it goes hand in hand with the progress that we’ve seen in the last few years there. ...

Governments should not be afraid of commentary that is internal. If government doesn't like what people are saying get in and argue with them. Explain what it is you’re doing. Put out contrary information.

Yes. We not only have a First Amendment here in America, we believe in the rights it guarantees. We think other countries' governments ought to embrace the same principles. Come on, everybody! It's great! The marketplace of ideas.

Meanwhile, over at the White House, the President of the United States had a statement, released immediately upon the issuance of a new Supreme Court opinion strengthening free speech rights:

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington--while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That's why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

A forceful response to a Supreme Court decision recognizing the importance of free speech. It would have been even more painfully funny if Hillary Clinton had also, in her speech yesterday, promoted the American values of separation of powers and an independent judiciary.

Here's the ending of Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court in Citizens United v. FEC:

When word concerning the plot of the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington reached the circles of Government, some officials sought, by persuasion, to discourage its distribution.... Under Austin [the case the Court overrules], though, officials could have done more than discourage its distribution—they could have banned the film. After all, it, like Hillary, was speech funded by a corporation that was critical of Members of Congress. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington may be fiction and caricature; but fiction and caricature can be a powerful force.

Yes, ironically, the Citizens United case was about a movie called "Hillary" that criticized Hillary Clinton.

Modern day movies, television comedies, or skits on Youtube.com might portray public officials or public policies in unflattering ways. Yet if a covered transmission during the blackout period creates the background for candidate endorsement or opposition, a felony occurs solely because a corporation, other than an exempt media corporation, has made the “purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit, or gift of money or anything of value” in order to engage in political speech. 2 U. S. C. §431(9)(A)(i).

Congress criminalized some political speech. But Hillary would like to apply moral pressure to countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam who imprisoned people for political speech.

Speech would be suppressed in the realm where its necessity is most evident: in the public dialogue preceding a real election. Governments are often hostile to speech, but under our law and our tradition it seems stranger than fiction for our Government to make this political speech a crime. Yet this is the statute’s purpose and design.

I added that boldfacing.

Some members of the public might consider Hillary to be insightful and instructive; some might find it to be neither high art nor a fair discussion on how to set the Nation’s course; still others simply might suspend judgment on these points but decide to think more about issues and candidates. Those choices and assessments, however, are not for the Government to make. “The First Amendment underwrites the freedom to experiment and to create in the realm of thought and speech. Citizens must be free to use new forms, and new forums, for the expression of ideas. The civic discourse belongs to the people, and the Government may not prescribe the means used to conduct it.”....

And our government is developing a forceful response to that. Brilliant. Idiots.

"Has any single American of this century done more harm than Robert McNamara?"

"No one comes readily to mind. Yes, Lyndon Johnson bears greater responsibility for the damage done the nation by the Vietnam War. But McNamara is a Renaissance man. Before he helped ruin the American polity, he helped ruin the American economy, pioneering at Ford the bloodless, numbers-oriented management methods that helped bring so many corporations to their knees. After Vietnam, as head of the World Bank, he helped ruin the entire world's economy, shoveling out billions of dollars to fund failed 'development' projects. It's a tough record to match."

So wrote Mickey Kaus, in 1995.

Via Jac, who — like me in yesterday's McNamara obit-post — praises the Errol Morris documentary, "The Fog of War."

Robert S. McNamara, dead at 93.

"The war became his personal nightmare. Nothing he did, none of the tools at his command — the power of American weapons, the forces of technology and logic or the strength of American soldiers — could stop the armies of North Vietnam. He concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life."

Here's an excerpt from the great Errol S. Morris documentary "Fog of War":