Titanic, Hindenburg, Iraq...

The United States claims a vested interest in the success of the Independent state of Iraq. It has become conventional wisdom that withdrawal of US troops would result in chaos and, in the worst case scenario, a possible disintegration of the entire Iraqi country. It is this supposed worst case scenario that is presented as being so unacceptable a result of a US troop withdraw that said withdrawal should not be conducted without otherwise guaranteeing the success of the Iraqi state…

Even accepting that, it still leaves one BIG question. What is so bad about Iraq disintegrating?

Iraq was cobbled together by the British in 1921 from Mosul, Bagdad, and Basra in a manner that was imagined most likely to serve British interests. That is, 85 years ago, the British slapped together a state of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites, knowing full well that the state was of dubious viability because it was not designed to serve the needs of its citizens but rather to help the British keep control of the area and the resources and commerce therein. It is worth considering that, because the state of Iraq was created by British artifice rather than some sense of internal community, it may not be a viable independent democratic state.

The people of (in?) Iraq didn't unite to form a state, it was forced upon them. It was maintained at first by a brutal pro-British monarchy. After the Iraqi military murdered the royal family in 1958 and a distressingly short and abortive attempt at a Republic, the Baathists came to power in a 1963 coup and held it together through equally brutal means over the next 40 years until the 2003 US invasion. There is absolutely no history or other evidence that, absent brutal treatment, Iraq will remain cohesive. If brutal treatment of its people is required to hold Iraq together, it is not only acceptable if Iraq disintegrates, it may be inevitable.

Financial Planning

One of the great tragedies of our social system is that we treat our incarcerated criminals better than we treat our law-abiding poor.

Consider the cost to taxpayers for incarceration. As a swag consider that, "[t]he system wide average operational cost for housing inmates in North Carolina prisons in Fiscal Year 2000-2001 was $63.43 per day." http://www.doc.state.nc.us/DOP/cost/cost2001.htm
At 365 days per year, this cost is greater than $23,000 annually. The national average cost per year for each incarcreated individual for 2001 was more than $22,000. http://www.nicic.org/StateCorrectionsStatistics/OH.htm

Compare this to the cost of supporting the poor:
"In 1995, the [average] federal…[and]… state costs…[for each person receiving welfare benefits was… $21,092 per child in foster care versus $2,499 for each person receiving a welfare check. http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:p3IdON0r-scJ:www.state.sd.us/dhs/ada/Publications/SD%2520Impact%2520Treatment3.pdf+%22cost+per+person%22+welfare+average&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5

Even without considering the fact that child care is (for the government) far more expensive service than adult care, we're spending more on criminals than poor children and far more (almost 9 times more!) than on poor adults.

What does it imply about our priorities that we are more then willing to pay $22-23000 per person per year to house, feed, and socially supervise our criminals but we don't do the same for our poor? For a nation that has a majority sub-section of its people claiming to be Christians (almost 80%, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States ),
a religion noted for its care of the poor, the treatment of the poor in America is a stunningly far lower priority than our treatment of criminals if our spending is any kind of metric. This disparity has reached the point that otherwise law-abiding people are committing crimes in order to gain access to the resources of the prison system. http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/10/12/robber.retirement.ap/index.html

Why aren't we willing to do for our law-abiding citizens at least as much as we're willing to do for our citizens who break the law?

Military Omissions Act

There are very serious problems with the recent HR 6166. The concerns with the bill authorizing torture or suspending Habeas Corpus, or trashing the Federal Rules of Evidence, or not permitting the accused to confront accusers has been addressed ad nauseam. That's not what I'm addressing here. No, if those unsettled issues don't convince you that there are problems with this bill; If you can accept a law that introduces that kind of uncertainty into the standard of treatment of the (presumed innocent) accused in the smoldering crater that was once our American justice system and still sleep at night, then I submit there is nothing substantive in the bill that I can present that will give you pause.

That still leaves legal issues with the bill itself to be considered. The problem I want to draw attention to is the simple fact that this bill, advertised as giving US agents the legal clarity needed to be sure that they were compliant with the law, does nothing of the kind. It is easily one of the most cryptic, obfuscatory, convoluted pieces of legislation I have ever read… In nearly every instance in the bill where a bright-line rule would be helpful, the drafters dropped the ball in one of two ways.

The first common way it fails to provide a bright-line was by appeal to authority. The bill frequently says things having the form "X is the rule UNLESS a military judge finds otherwise". HR 6166 Sec 948(r)(c), Sec 948(r)(d), Sec 949(a)(2)(A), Sec 949(a)(2)(D), Sec 949(d)(f)(2)(A), etc. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-6166
These appeals to authority rob the bill of certainty since it leaves the reading party wondering how a judge would rule. That is, those nice civilians interrogators can't really tell whether keeping a man naked in a 48" by 48" by 20" room at 59 degrees for 23 hours a day is legal or not based on this bill. They risk being second guessed by a judge. This is exactly what the bill was supposed to prevent. A second and arguable more important problem is that such appeal to authority creates a "rule by men" in substitute to the time honored "rule of law". The accused and the accusers both really should be able to point to some law and say, "See! This supports my position." This bill undermines the rule of law.

The other common failure is the way the bill sends the reader on a wild goose chase through antecedant laws and treaties to find out what, if anything, it is trying to say. There are no answers in this spaghetti-code bill, only cross-references. For sake of illustration, consider the most important question this bill was supposed to answer, "what treatment of persons to obtain a statement rises to an unacceptable level of coercion?" Well, looking at HR 6166 Section 948r(c) and (d), the answer depends on (I'm not making this up) whether the statement in question was obtained before, on, or after December 30, 2005. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-6166
If obtained on or after December 30, 2005, HR 6166 references the definition of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment " from section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 describes "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment " in section (d). http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/gazette/2005/12/detainee-treatment-act-of-2005-white.php
What does that say? The definition refers the reader to the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984. http://www.ohchr.org/english/countries/ratification/9.htm
These cross-references just keep going…

This bill is not just poor in its substance, it is drafted badly in a way which raises more questions than it answers.