Is there any other way to read this?:

Today the Council of Europe makes it official: Poland and Romania hosted secret detention facilities on behalf of the CIA.

In a just-released inquiry approved by the Council, investigator Dick Marty of Switzerland confirms Dana Priest’s Pulitzer Prize-winning report for the Washington Post that unnamed Eastern European countries allowed the CIA to hold suspected al-Qaeda detainees on their territory, without access to legal protections or the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time, the Council on Europe’s report names some of the detainees in the secret facilities: they include 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and former al-Qaeda military committee chief Abu Zubaydah. Both, Marty writes, “were questioned using ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’” making his report the first documentation by any public official to state definitively that such techniques have in fact been employed. In 2005, ABC News reported that such techniques include waterboarding, in which a detainee is forced to believe he is drowning.

Previous inquests by the European Parliament, most recently in February, stopped short of reporting definitively that the prisons existed, thanks mainly to lack of cooperation by U.S. and European intelligence officials, allowing the U.S., Poland and other suspected countries to maintain deniability over the prisons. In April, CIA Director Michael Hayden chastised the Parliament for what he called its “unbounded criticism” of CIA detentions, renditions and interrogations, which he and the CIA have consistently defended as both legal and necessary to combat al-Qaeda.

People of faith have something to say against torture. Let’s say it. Here’s a start by the PCUSA (pdf of Resolution Against Torture: Human Rights in a Time of Terrorism, A Call for a Commission of Inquiry adopted by the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).)…

The Episcopal Church‘s House of Bishops has responded anew yesterday to the crisis in its worldwide communion. Here’s the sum and substance:

It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships. We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children,
including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God’s truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.

I’m impressed with their faithfulness and their stand on this matter.

Josh Marshall has some pointed things to say about the trial and, it seems, moments-hence execution of Saddam Hussein. I think it deserves some consideration, so here is his post:

It’s a hornet’s nest.  But I’m game.  So why not jump in.

“Bush administration officials” are telling CNN that Saddam Hussein will be hanged this weekend. Convention dictates that we precede any discussion of this execution with the obligatory nod to Saddam’s treachery, bloodthirsty rule and tyranny. But enough of the cowardly chatter. This thing is a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation has been. Bush administration officials are the ones who leak the news about the time of the execution. One key reason we know Saddam’s about to be executed is that he’s about to be transferred from US to Iraqi custody, which tells you a lot.  And, of course, the verdict in his trial gets timed to coincide with the US elections.

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn’t come close to cutting it — the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the ‘secular arm’. Try pretending it’s a war crimes trial but it’s just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they’re up to now.

The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren’t grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.

These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it — for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic ‘So There!’

Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one — claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.

Marty Peretz, with some sort of projection, calls any attempt to rain on this parade “prissy and finicky.” Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we’re reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do.  Hang Saddam Hussein because there’s nothing else this president can get right.

What do you figure this farce will look like 10, 30 or 50 years down the road?  A signal of American power or weakness?

Rhetorical question, sure, but I’d say weakness. But all of us are responsible for this. It really doesn’t matter if you are a democrat or republican or libertarian or green or anarchist: this is our military; this is our  president; this is our government, whether we like it or not. And we’ll bear the responsibility–for our mess in Iraq, for our new policy of handling (and torturing) detainees and our fudging of Geneva protections, and for failing to pursue a genuine strategy to neutralize a radical Islamist threat through engagement and smart military application–for generations.

Its frustrating to me when an argument is advanced that, while the republicans might have botched Iraq, the democrats don’t have articulated a viable plan for the struggle against Islamic terrorism. I concede that the dems need to better voice such an alternate vision, but I disagree that there is “no plan.” There are competing alternate plans, and the democratic leadership has been slow to adopt one or the other of them. But there is a competent democratic vision for more than a year now that has articulated re-engaged diplomatic, social, economic and educational efforts in the Muslim world in conjunction with a re-deployed, targeted military application (and a withdrawal of some sort from the debacle that is Iraq). There is internal disagreement about how to handle Iraq, but my view is that we’ve made a mess and have a moral obligation to work to fix it if it can be fixed, and that we might not be the best ones to do the military part of that fixing any more. Our army there, at the moment, is making it worse, not better.

That vision is opposed to in conjunction with a Republican view of ‘stay the course:’ we must win, we in fact are winning, and we don’t need any real change to get the job done. At least, that’s been the vision up to recent days. The frustrating part is how vapid that vision is, and how politically inspired it has been: this is the strategy for optimal political success in the US (since it makes those dems look like weak flip-floppers!), so lets stick with it.

Only now, when huge numbers of the American public are waking up to our inability to sustain our current course in Iraq, to what our military involvement there means for our limited military application elsewhere in a troubled world (read: Korea, Iran, Syria, Sudan, &c), to month after month of “deadliest months for US troops” caught in the middle of a Civil War we can’t stop or adjudicate, only weeks before an election which, polls suggest, might well spell disaster for the Republican party, only then are we told that, no, that vision articulated earlier was not really the vision. In truth, the vision is something different, and actually a bit more like what the democrats have been saying.

John Stewart:

And here is the president’s own backtracking: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/22/bush-stay-the-course/

So tell me: what is left of the republican “vision” for the global war on terror? How are we going to succeed in this struggle that we really must succeed in, if those who are leading us are not really leading at all, but are working on keeping their power at home? I’m honestly struggling to give Bush and co. as much benefit of the doubt as I can, but come on, the evidence is right there, in video and in transcript. I just hope that we don’t bite it hook, line, and sinker…

I really feel for our military on the ground, who are on the front lines of this thing. Egads.

(…Note: edited Tuesday PM to add an extra hyperlink.)

For those Presbyterians who are following the portrayal in the popular press of the publication by Westminster John Knox of David Ray Griffin’s Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, I’d commend Bill Tammeus’ commentary “Christian Publishers, Beware” in today’s Kansas City Star. Tammeus is the Star’s Faith columnist, a Presbyterian, and a rather astute observer of religion and public life. (His Typepad blog is called Faith Matters)

Tammeus’ money quote:

But the book, which I’ve now read, does not measure up. In fact it’s just a mess. It’s a volume of spurious scholarship by an emeritus philosophy professor who says the Bush administration planned and orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks to further its goal of world domination by America.

The book’s many failings call into question the decision to publish it. Indeed, the controversy over that decision prompted the Presbyterian Publishing Corp., which oversees Westminster John Knox, to issue a statement saying the denomination does not endorse the book.

And while that’s true, it’s also true that the decision to print this poisonous book may have done damage to the idea that religious publishing houses should sponsor books by authors who offer credible, if often harsh, critiques of the world.

…

Griffin, however, tries to tie his discussion of empire in biblical times to his idea that the American empire, as he calls it, is “evil” and “even demonic.” Again, it’s scholarship indentured to serve polemical purposes.

The Bush administration deserves much criticism of its post-9/11 actions and policies. But it was a baffling error of judgment for the publishing arm of my denomination to release a volume caught up in unsubstantiated, wild-eyed accusations. It now will be more difficult for books containing legitimate critical religious scholarship to be seen as serious.

The Presbyterian Publishing Corporation continues to push this book hard. I’m not sure why, really. Its on the front of their main webpage today as their featured book. Look, I’ve spent a lot of time in the academic community. I value the free exchange of ideas, and think we really really need to protect it and even defend the existence of unpopular books of scholarship, or those that we disagree with. The light of day, the power of reason and argument, is strong enough to withstand even this screed.

So if Tammeus is right, its a shame. Religious communities, and others who are contibuting to the public discourse, should trust their ability to provide strong critique, even of books that they decide to publish. So Tammeus’ concern that “it now will be more difficult for books containing legitimate critical religious scholarship to be seen as serious” to me speaks much more about our comfort at doing the hard work of critique and differentiation between good scholarship and bad scholarship, whether it is religious scholarship or secular.

And I think that this point needs to be considered in the quite justified critiques of the PPC to publish Griffin’s loony argument. Ultimately, I’ll support this texts publication by the PPC, because the argument needs to be made to be refuted. This is their argument for why they published it: that it is scholarship that deserves a public hearing. (I’m not sure from these statements whether they think the arguments are boneheaded or spurious, or if they actually think they have good merit). The fact of the matter is that the consipracy theory is out there, and it needs to be exposed to the light of day to be debunked. I wouldn’t have decided to publish it, but ultimately I don’t mind that a publishing house sharing the name Presbyterian has done so, though it has many quite hot under the collar (and there’s a long history behind that, to be sure: see good posts here, here, here and here).

Books are books; I worry about the currency of the ideas, who holds them and what purchase they have in the wider world. I’d much rather have more books with controversial thought than fewer books with the same thought. Orthodoxy, if it is robust and rooted in the grace and truth of God, can withstand this and other texts. We might even be stronger after doing so…

What I don’t get is why the PPC is pushing this as its featured book. Its one thing to publish a text that is boneheaded. Its another to push it hard as the beacon of the publishing house’s works. That is just plain stupid.

One of my favorite shows on tee-vee has harsh words for Republicans and Democrats:

Jordon Cooper points us to these conversations between Dr. Martin Assad, Academic Dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. David Gushee in Christianity Today: Another Point of View: Evangelical Blindness on Lebanon, We Risk Not Just Suffering, But Annihilation, and ‘Who is My Neighbor‘ in the Lebanon-Israel Conflict? Very interesting reading…

Hans Jonas, in his Imperative of Responsibility, presents the argument that advances in human technological capability have fundamentally altered our capacity to affect the earth’s ecosphere, such that the future of humanity is at stake in a way previously unknown to us. Jonas argues, as a consequence, that a new imperative of responsibility now exists that requires human beings to act to protect the very existence of humanity.
Jonas wrote this in 1979. Al Gore attempts to make a similar argument in his An Inconvenient Truth, which I went to see this afternoon. Michael Kruse is correct that this is indeed a political movie, in some sense, insofar as Gore may well be positioning himself for 2008 or beyond, and to convince the viewer to take seriously the proposed environmental crisis. And, further, the issues are sharply politicized in our country. That’s unfortunate, since I’ve not heard anyone successfully refute Gore’s claim that there is a consensus (not unanimity, consensus) that Global Warming is real, is a problem, and is causing deleterious effects to our environment. And even though Kruse isn’t convinced, the movie at least changed pundit Andrew Sullivan‘s mind (his other jabs at Gore, to some folks’ chagrin, notwithstanding). Sullivan is right that most that know the science believe Gore is authentically presenting a consensus view. That is, the forest view is right, even if a tree here or there isn’t presented in its full complexity (such as that there are likely multiple causes to the decreased snowcaps on Mount Kilimanjaro.) (Kruse presents some good counterpoints, so make sure you read his post too, though I think case for the human causal connection is the human affects are strongly made and largely agreed upon).

So, I found the movie compelling, and it inspires me to try to learn more about Global Warming. Please, go see it if you haven’t yet. And while some try to make it out to be a self-obsessed, self-serving farcical tome (thus the reference in this post’s title to ManBearPig, the creature to the right from a Southpark episode.), to dismiss the science that way, and the overwhelming  position of the scientific community (noting the rare exception) that this is a real problem, is the true farce. At least right now it looks like, for the most part, Gore gets the science right.

I particularly think we need to think about the parallel Gore makes between the warnings about smoking’s link to lung cancer and the nay-sayers about global warming. I’m not saying that An Inconvenient Truth is gospel, but the science about the warming and human contribution to it is strong and is ignored at our peril.

While there is not consensus among ‘Evangelicals,’ it is noteworthy that many prominent evangelical leaders issued an Evangelical Call To Action on the environment. There is a role for the religious community to play in articulating the moral dimension of Gore’s argument. I hope we play it.

At the end, Gore argues that we know enough and have the capacity to do something serious about the crisis. Samuelson’s skeptical, and I’m not sure that all of what Gore proposes will do it. Likely more is necessary. But the base-line requirement is political will, either to change what we can or to direct energy to find out what to do. My hope is that this movie is a catalyst to change that political will. We might really need, as Samuelson argues, to solve the engineering problem, but it is the moral argument that will provide the impetus to do so. So go see it, and decide for yourself if, like me, this is a really important movie. Some even call it necessary.