@tedb
Even more chilling is the fact that Bauer is shown as a morally-responsible man. “The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few” is not a good approach to human rights issues.

Posted by: Keith | Feb 17 2006 3:15 utc | 4

Back on the plane crashing routine, it has always puzzled me that the 4th plane was brought down by an EMP device plot didn’t get much traction from amongst the conspiracy theorists.
I seem to remember at the stories of clocks, computers, garage openers failing to work in the vicinity of the crash site but they never came to anything.
In some ways that would be an easier sell than the whole deal being a BushCo plot, but because the ‘legends of the fall of the widebody has been heavily pushed by BushCo and the rethugs, it would be a revelation that couldn’t be shrugged off.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 17 2006 9:07 utc | 6

@ DM – not yet….. (they’ll be after my bumper stickers first)

Posted by: beq | Feb 17 2006 14:12 utc | 8

the Normalization of Torture
The Normalization of Torture, Death Squads and Contempt for the Rule of Law
By Edward Herman
The U.S. political establishment keeps reaching new levels of hypocrisy, deception (including self-deception), and open immorality as the empire expands in the pursuit of “freedom,” militarism and war become more institutionalized, and rightwing political power is consolidated. The appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney-General is the most dramatic illustration of these developments, as he epitomizes the institutionalization of a regime of torture on the U.S.’s own Devil’s Island (Guantanamo), at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Kabul (the “pit”) and elsewhere in the empire, along with the official contempt for law. (Human Rights First lists some 44 disclosed and 13 suspected detention centers in the gulag: see, Ending Secret Detentions, Deborah Pearlstein et al., Human Rights First, June, 2004:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/rpt_disclose_intro.htm [Media Material]
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/PDF/EndingSecretDetentions_web.pdf [Complete Report]).
Gonzalez’ appointment was an announcement that the United States under Bush is now openly and proudly an outlaw regime in which torture is acceptable and a feature of state policy, and was to be used further (as it has been), despite its illegality in a host of international agreements (and U.S. law) and the widespread view that it is deeply immoral. As Amnesty International noted in its 1974 Report on Torture, “One of the shared values of the humanist tradition was the abolition of torture. This principle found its way into the post-war declarations on human rights and laws of war without any dissent of debate” (p. 30). In elevating Gonzales, the Bush administration has officially rejected that humanist tradition and associated human rights and laws of war principles, not without dissent but with little or no debate.
It should be emphasized that U.S. involvement in torture is far from new. In the frontispiece to The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, published back in 1979, Noam Chomsky and I showed that 26 of the 35 countries that used torture on an administrative basis in the mid-to-late 1970s were clients of the United States, and there was solid evidence that torture technology and training flowed out from the “sun” to all its “planets.” But this was not overt and openly defended in important segments of the media (as it is with Limbaugh, O’Reilly et al. today), and it was done largely by proxies working over their indigenous dissidents and labor organizers. With the usual cooperation of the mainstream media, the U.S. public was spared knowledge of these activities.
Today the United States is heavily into torture directly as well as via “renditions” and proxy operations (e.g., the U.S.-employed Iraqis are now torturing with great zeal: see Human Rights Watch,, The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody). And Gonzales, the principal legal apologist for this torture outburst, is rewarded with appointment as the highest law enforcement official in the United States. Could there be a more brazen statement of a country’s leadership’s contempt for basic morality and the rule of law?
Of course, another brazen statement was the invasion of Iraq itself, a clear case of aggression in violation of the most fundamental principle of the UN Charter and declared at Nuremberg to be the “supreme crime.” Even though this was based on Big Lies in the Goebbels style, the establishment media and moralists have never considered this supreme criminality a point worth mentioning, let alone the basis of moral condemnation.

Posted by: hanshan | Feb 17 2006 15:58 utc | 10

@Feelgood (about yourself?):
I think your scenario, which is very similar to that posed by the arch-Zionist, Alan Dershowitz after 9-11, is fairly preposterous.
How can they, the authorities, know, with absolute certainty, anything? How can they know that the “terrorists” aren’t bluffing? How can they know that, by shooting down the plane, they won’t also set off these devices and cause more harm?
And who gives them “authority,” and over what? Are the helpless people to be saved aware of this?
Do they need to know this knowledge well enough to stand up in a court of law? With certainty, or beyond a ‘reasonable doubt’, or simply “the preponderance of evidence”, or maybe just ‘probable cause’? Or, can they later claim that they had to make rapid decisions, when it turns out they were wrong.
But, the main reason I see this whole scenario as fairly preposterous, is that I just don’t buy the “planes crashing into buildings” meme as anything but government driven propaganda meant to scare and manipulate the sheeple into giving up their rights, in the name of larger shopping malls;)
Why wouldn’t the same terrorists not drive a truck? It has a much higher proven rate of success, as we can see by the marine barracks in Lebanon, Oklahoma City, and the UN headquarters in Iraq. Why wouldn’t they go to a terrace or the roof of any non-descript 45 story building, hundreds of which exist all over the world, and are not guarded, and disseminate their WMD from there?
The point is, the more you really analyze the situation and not follow the government “push-poll” tactics of leading your mind, the more you see how there are millions of ways of very easily creating “terorism”; that is, harming people and demonstrating that they are ultimately unsafe and have no control over their lives and the policies their government takes which might provoke these acts, for that is what “terrorism” ultimately is meant to accomplish.
Therefore, buying into these memes, is buying into your own lack of control over yourself or your goverments actions. According to William Pfaff, “Yet even if you include the 9/11 casualties, the number of Americans killed by international terrorists since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting them) is about the same as that killed by lightning – or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts.
‘In almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States’ wrote John Mueller of Ohio State University in last autumn’s issue of the authoritative American journal Terrorism and Political Violence.”
Far better to accept the infinitesimally small risk that “terrorism” will claim your life, much as we accept the fact that we could easily die in a car accident (is there anyone reading this who doesn’t know someone who was killed or horrendously maimed in one?), and spend our energies working actively to change the policies of our and other governments which spawn the will to commit these acts.
For me, there is no debate that the issue is not that “they hate our freedoms,” but that they hate being invaded, killed, having their assets stolen and their ways of life forcibly changed; and they hate being treated by double standards (as the cartoon hoopla demonstrated), and as somehow less human, less valuable, and less worthy of respect because they are less willing than the elite western leaders to engage in the demonstrably destructive Washington Concensus world ‘free’ market economy–where some countries are assigned the role of enforcers and consumers, and others as raw material providers. Ward Churchill notes how even so-called ‘well-meaning’ liberal anthropologists refer to people as “pre-industrial,” denoting that they are somehow less advanced than us on a universally determined and agreed upon path towards utopian progress for all, a notion which is tragically laughable given the problems we have created in the world. A less racist viewpoint would be to look upon the few tribes still left in Papua-New Guinea as “non-industrial”, industrialization being a path they choose not to take. Similarly, if we westerners would like to overcome our racial (and economic) prejudices, we might choose to see some societies as non-market, non-‘free trade’, by choice and right. But we in the west can’t accept that anyone could have anything under the ground they stand upon, or growing in the soil where they live, that could not become ours in exchange for a few lousy banknotes.
What do you call a large guy who keeps making passes at women who are not interested in him? What do you call him when, after many rebuffs–ranging from polite to increasingly firm and finally hostile–he takes the women and has his way with them. I would call that man a rapist. When we in the west overcome our ‘rape’ problem, I’m certain those in the south and east will overcome their ‘terrorism’ problem.
But I digress. If I truly wanted to change U.S. policies through the use of violence–for that is what the more liberal, more reasonable representatives of the elite concensus, grudgingly concede the goal of terorism may be–I would find many less spectacular, but far more effective ways to do this.
Let us, merely as a thought exercize, for I personally believe in non-violent activism, examine some of the ways:
Instead of planting IEDs in the roads of Iraq, why not plant a few on the roadways of our cities, after all it’s a huge country and every inch can’t be monitored, and set them off at rush hour. That would change our way of life in an instant. (Probably more towards fascism and violence, rather than accomodation, though.) Or, why not planted 100 explosives in the trash cans of our 20 largest downtown areas and set them all off at lunchtime. It might only kill 20-30 people, but it would also change our way of life forever. Than, there’s our movie theatres–can’t have our entertainment taken from us now, can we?
But there is a far more effective, if less spectacular, way to change American policies, if a nation really wanted to. Station about five elite sniper teams surreptitiouly in the US and then methodically, one by one, proceed to pick off Billionares, and make it clear through private channels why you are doing it. Make Aspen unsafe, and all the playgrounds of the wealthy. The public would never know, but policies would change faster than you could say “boo.”
This demonstrates to me that the purpose of “terrorism” is more show than substance, or as Dear Leader might say, “All hat and no cattle.” It is about controlling the populace, not the acheiving the desires of an antagonistic nation or group.
So, again, let me reinterate for those who might not have grasped the point of this post. Don’t aggitate over terrorism: the individual risk is too small. Group together with other concerned people and educate, organize, lobby, and work in any way you can think of, to change the policies of your government that subjugate other people and cause them to suffer. Work to change the policies of endless, mindless, growth which necessitate the subjugation of others for their wealth. And work for a sustainable ecological planet, respectful of all beings, human and otherwise, so that we can see a future for our children, seven generations out, without hoping for some ‘miracle’ from science to save us.
If, as you purport, you are really concerned with ‘saving lives’, this will save far, far, far, far, far, far more lives than worrying about a chimerical, crazed, consciousless, conspiratorial, kamikazi killer.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 17 2006 16:43 utc | 12

The point you make sounds very reasonable, but, to turn it around, it leaves the option open for someone to do nothing and watch the many die because the law forbid him/her to help effectively.
As you said, we are really talking hypotheticals, but thats what writing law is to a large degree, the “what if” question is fundamental to formulating what is right and what is not. Especially in german law, which is not like common law based on ‘case law’ and we cross the bridge when we get to it, but where the judges (and fuzzy German burokrats who do everything by the book) have to follow the written statues, or wait for the parlament to change the law.
I don’t disagree with you, to know that a trigger happy Generalmajor has the power to shoot down a passenger aircraft because some ‘so called’ evidence has emerged that it could have been hijacked is indeed worrying, if not to say very worrying. But a law that expressly forbids this, can also have disastrous consequences.
The Luftwaffe during the cold war was instructed to shoot down any threating WP military planes intruding into German airspace. According to a friend of mine, who back then was a ranking airforce officer, incidents like that occured sometimes. When one is travelling at Mach 2 or so it does happen that pilots miss the border by a few miles, it only takes 5 seconds and you’ve done 50 of them. If the German airforce pilots and commanders back then would have shot down the Migs, the chances of a war or retaliation would have been relatively high, which then would have endangered also the civilian population. Back then, despite by law having been entitled to shot down those planes, the commanders never gave the order to down those Migs. The German Militaers kept a cool head every time and, if the WP pilots didn’t realise their mistake by themselves and disappeared, chased them back across to where they belonged.
I guess what I want to say is that the German airforce command, since its rebirth at the end of the 1940’s, is not known to be trigger happy, if anything then to be more on the “think twice” side of things.
I wouldn’t want to give them a Freifahrtsschein to shot down civilian air crafts, but the chance that those people who at the end would have to make such awful decisions, wouldn’t react when the straw pulled for the few on board was the shorter one, because the law says no, end then Thousands die as a result, is also something I wouldn’t want to experience.

Posted by: Feelgood | Feb 17 2006 17:02 utc | 14

@ Dr. Strangelo.., um, Feelgood:
First, let’s talk about opportunities to save lives:
In my country 40% have no health insurance. Lack of care and medical malpractice are the single largest killers in this country.
Millions are starving in Africa, hundreds of thousands are being killed in Darfur.
Over one hundred thousand innocents have been killed in Iraq, and DU threatens to kill millions, should they be lucky enough to survive the brutalies of war, before falling prey to the inexorable determinism of radiation.
State sanctioned terrorism kills exponentially more lives than non-state terrorism. If you want to save lives in Germany, then work to close down the US bases there which are used to support the so-called “Long War”, formerly the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE)”, formerly the “War on Terror”, formerly the artist called “Prince.”
I don’t disagree with you, to know that a trigger happy Generalmajor has the power to shoot down a passenger aircraft because some ‘so called’ evidence has emerged that it could have been hijacked is indeed worrying, if not to say very worrying. But a law that expressly forbids this, can also have disastrous consequences.
Far more lives have been lost by shooting at things, then by not shooting. To quote Chomsky, about someone who, fortunately for the world, had much more sense than you:

Now the most extreme example was in 1962, the Cuban missile crisis. That itself was a consequence of major terrorist operations that the Kennedy administration was carrying out against Cuba, which looked as though we–and Secretary McNamara concedes this–looked as though they were building up to an invasion. That led to the placement of missiles, that led to the confrontation.
We, in fact, only learned just last year at a summit meeting that the world was literally one word away from nuclear war then. Russian submarines were under attack by US destroyers. It was learned last year that they had nuclear-tipped torpedoes and two of the commanders authorized their use assuming a nuclear war was going on. A third one countermanded that order, and that’s why you and I are talking right now.
That’s the most dangerous moment, but there have been plenty of others, and more are coming, almost certainly, because of not only the nature of the policies, which are increasing the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and also increasing the threat of terror, as is openly acknowledged, but also the associated military planning is going in extremely dangerous directions, which if you look at it closely, is very likely to lead to massive destruction probably by accident.

The point you make sounds very reasonable, but, to turn it around, it leaves the option open for someone to do nothing and watch the many die because the law forbid him/her to help effectively.
As you said, we are really talking hypotheticals, but thats what writing law is to a large degree, the “what if” question is fundamental to formulating what is right and what is not.
You are a rascist, a neo-con fool, and a troll! You have no concern for what is “right and what is not” in the world. This is evidenced by the limits you choose to put on what are legitimate rational concerns. Your legitimate rational concerns are in giving your government the right to kill its own citizens. The law itself, as you sanctimoniously imply, is not some holy bible exclusively concerned with social justice, but by equal measures, a document that preserves the perquisites of the privileged, and proscibes limits upon the less privileged.
You state, “it leaves the option open for someone to do nothing and watch the many die…” You don’t care about how many people die in the world, that’s just a red herring to allay your conscience. There is much you can do to prevent death, if you choose to, without crafting laws which allow your country to kill its own citizens. These are Trojan Horse laws with immensely harmful ramifications.
Again, from Chomsky:

The world has come extremely close to total destruction just in recent years from nuclear war… There’s case after case where a nuclear war was prevented almost by a miracle. And the threat is increasing as a consequence of policies that the administration is very consciously pursuing…As you know, it’s not a high probability event, but if a low probability event keeps happening over and over, there’s a high probability that sooner or later it will take place.
If you want to rank issues in terms of significance, there are some issues that are literally issues of survival of the species, and they’re imminent. Nuclear war is an issue of species survival, and the threats have been severe for a long time.
It’s come to the point where you can read in the most sober respectable journals warnings by the leading strategic analysts that the current American posture—transformation of the military—is raising the prospect of what they call “ultimate doom” and not very far away. That’s because it leads to an action-reaction cycle in which others respond. That leads us to be closer and more reliant on hair-trigger mechanisms, which are massively destructive.

So you go ahead and legislate more “action-reaction cycles” which make us “more reliant on hair-trigger mechanisms, which are massively destructive.” Better work fast if you want to be the neo-con nutjob who gets credit for destroying his country, or if you are really successful, the whole world.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 17 2006 19:29 utc | 16

Once the state, well not the state a few self appointed people within the state apparatus, have the power to make decisions of life and death over the population on a numbers game, do you think it will end there?
The example Feelgood quoted was extreme pointed towards an obvious resolution one way or another, when the odds are that in a terrorist situation, the numbers being ‘sacrificed’ vs the numbers being ‘saved’ are not going to be so clear cut and are likely to be much closer to each other.
Then the decision wouldn’t be based on quantity it would be based on ‘quality’, pretty much what happened to the 4th flight on 9/11. The lives of the ordinary people who had taken no part in the circumstances which led up to 9/11 were sacrificed in case the plane was going to be aimed at ‘important people’ like Dick Cheney or other members of the executive branch.
Those people had been intimately involved in the circumstances leading up to the frustration felt by Middle Eastern people, which had gotten so bad that the crazies had come up with this horrific plan. Dick Cheney had been arrogantly making decisions that had adversely effected the lives of millions of people, most of his life. He had managed to avoid facing the consequences of his actions by staying away from the ‘pointy end’ of imperialism. When the ‘pointy end’ came looking for him, what did he do? He made characteristically unconscionable decision to kill the citizens on the plane, just in case, his life may be endangered.
It would be mistaken to consider this as an exception, a choice made by a particularly nasty administrator. Remember the Cold War? These ninnies used to talk about mutually assured destruction while they had the weaponry to destroy most life on earth, many times over.
A decision was made to ‘save’ some people in a giant fallout shelter. Instead of young people those picked were old, there were only enough farmers to grow food for these old men who happened to have caused all the trouble, only enough medical staff to treat them. Once they had lived their 3 score and 10 that would be it. Probable death of the human race. And we should give this mob more power to make these decisions?
Now I’m prepared to accept that contemporary German State is more anti-authoritarian than many other developed democracies, but this has not always been the case.
I’m not going to be obvious and tiresome here and go back to the middle of last century, because until the post WW2 generation took power in the 80’s the German state still had far more authoritarian regimes than I would care to live under. In fact Helmut Kohl lasted into the 90’s although as far as I can see he didn’t reflect the attitudes of other German State and Federal leaders of that time. More like the authoritarian’s last gasp–for a while.
How did 3 successful one failed but permanently impaired members of the Baader Meinhof mob or more correctly red Army faction manage to commit suicide at the same time on the same day when they were all locked up in different maximum security gaols?
Did you know in Germany some state governments were sterilising teenage women who ‘got into trouble’ through the ’70s?
When laws especially laws which acceded as much power to the already powerful as this one does, are contemplated, it is a mistake to only consider how they would be implemented under the current regime. What happens if people are persuaded that life is better ‘when the trains run on time’. By the time they realise they have been ‘sold the dummy’ the regime has abused their trust easily and without even having to amend legislation.
I don’t follow any ‘higher power’ or whatever but if I was on the plane or at the ‘target’, I for one would be much happier leaving the decision about my future up to chance, rather than leave it up to the Machiavellian machinations of a Dick Cheney.
@Feelgood welcome to the debate. However it is wise to strap on the carapace especially when first climbing into the cockpit, so the other barflies may test your mettle. Malooga has always struck me as a gentleman and his lunges may startle you but they’re not designed to wound.
Lastly @DM I suspect I would not have used that link had it not come to the top of the list of a google search for ‘EMP device’. As per usual I read the text of the article and paid no attention to the junk each side, a habit I had better cease because that is the second time this has happened. The fact it had alla of that stuff in and came top of the search makes me wonder a little.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 17 2006 20:42 utc | 18

A bar brawl on a friday night? Well, that is just like the real world. Anyway, welcome Feelgood.
My take on the ruling and your hypothetical situation: If you would that situation and you have an officer in charge who believes that is the real thing, why should he or she only risk the lives of others and not their own freedom and career? If they truly, truly believe millions will die unless they shoot, is that not worth going to jail for?
And if they do not feel that way, if they are not willing to take risks for others even if means breaking the law, I really, really do not want them to have the authority to shoot down airplanes.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Feb 18 2006 0:50 utc | 20

@Feelgood:

I can’t speak for Germany, but in the U.S. your “what if” scenario making the act legal wouldn’t particularly help things. Let’s assume that the infamous centrist terrorist group United Guerillas for the Liberation of Yodelling (known as UGLY) has the weapons, and flies a plane towards, oh, New Podunk (pop. 5 million). The two UGLY agents have taken not just one but ten hostages, a male and a female of each of five ethnicities. (There — now we have removed the bits that would generally cause bias.) Maj. Whoozit discovers the plan, and orders Sgt. Whatsisface to stop it. Sgt. Whatsisface notifies the police, who are unable to do anything, and finally goes out in a military plane. The terrorist plane is shot down, and everyone aboard dies, but the weapons are not triggered.

Now, let’s suppose that Maj. Whoozit and Sgt. Whatsisface are then sued by the ten hostages’ families. Do you really imagine that, if there were real uncontestable proof of UGLY’s intentions and equipment, and the attempts to stop the plane by other means, there wouldn’t be a pardon for the two involved, even if they lost?

Maybe in Germany it’s a lot harder to get pardoned. But by making it legal in the first place, the main effect would be to make a lot of would-be Whoozits and Whatsisfaces get trigger-happy without first making certain what was going on or making the non-military attempts to stop the plane. What we need are more people in the military who actually think about the rules and why they exist, rather than just blindly following orders. Unfortunately it is practically impossible to make someone think, even in a situation like the military where their life is largely under someone else’s control.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Feb 18 2006 3:58 utc | 22

Interesting post, Bernhard. (I have read only half of the posts above.)
I understand the reasoning of the German court. However it is a typical civilian type ruling based on a lofty view of ‘human rights’ and fear of misuse / bad consequence. (A mix of ethics and pragmatics, but isn’t is always so?)
It ignores the (legitimate, as instituted..) power of the military and of Gvmts. and the decisions that they can, and btw do, take, in situations where Scylla and Charibdis (sp?) loom and the greater good is hard to figure.
An undercurrent (as I see it) in the decision is a basic denial of the ‘plane terrorist’ scenario. A kind of view point that says we live in a stable world where these kinds of attacks do not exist – so shooting down planes in x or y or z situation is not a good idea, or not an action that is morally defensible. In that, of course, as referring to 9/11, the lawmakers are correct.
However, usual rules and procedures in most countries give fighter pilots the right, after all ‘proper procedures’ have been implemented, to shoot down planes. No permission from higher authority is required. All the BS about Cheney or whomever allowing or ordering the shoot down of 93 – which maybe even never took place – is just that, BS – a distraction –
Devolving the decisionary powers to those on the ground, or rather here, in the air, makes sense, and boils down to a question of trust.
At some point, at the end of the road, individuals must make decisions, and do so on the data available. No laws can regulate their behavior at those forks in the road. And the laws in place must protect actors – make room for mistakes, for misjudgment – so that they are are seen as having done their best (again, trust) in a bad situation. No other arrangement makes any sense, and sensible legislation takes that into account.
All this brings up the legal distinction between a state of ‘war’ and a condition of ‘not war.’ The US Gvmt. has made hay out of being ‘at war’; Germany seems to (at least for the public) be insisting on the non-war condition.

Posted by: Noisette | Feb 18 2006 18:11 utc | 24