Weiner still in the wringer

Following up on this post at the Forvm, the Anthony Weiner story still has legs, caused in part by Anthony Weiner himself. It should be fairly basic that if you want a story to go away, answer all questions directly and truthfully, and do not call the police to arrest the reporters covering you. The irony is that Weiner has not called the police on the "hacking" of his Twitter account.

At the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz was willing to give Weiner the benefit of the doubt, but no longer.

But after listening to Weiner bob and weave and talk about how photographs can be manipulated, and how he’s called in experts to determine whether that is or isn’t his junk, I have to say: he’s not acting very smart. The explanations seem increasingly bizarre. In the court of public opinion, at least, Weiner has forfeited the presumption of innocence.
His continued insistence that some hacker had sent the photo is a bit more suspect in light of his non-denial denials of the other details. The Twitter exchange he had with a porn star sounds a little more incriminating.

Weiner is an intense partisan, so the right-of-center crowd is going to be fairly merciless with him. The more interesting reactions are from the Left and the left-leaning. The editorial board at the Los Angeles Times does not believe Weiner's answers on the provenance of the photo. At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait is similarly disbelieving, mainly because he knows Anthony Weiner and he knows what the culture is like among Congressmen. Jon Stewart is a friend of Weiner's, and his latest segment is equal parts hilarious and damning.

The Daily Show - Circumcision 2011 - Between a C*#k and a Hard Place
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George Gooding has more on YFrog, and so does the Daily Dot, neither of which support the thesis put forward by "Case Closed!" Cannonfire. And on this day, John Edwards was indicted for conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions and false statements. It's a target-rich environment today.

An introduction

Having been banned at various other blogs, I thought I'd have a place where the only person who can ban me is myself.

My moniker is Bird Dog, and I've been blogging here and there since late 2003, first at Tacitus, then at Redstate, Obsidian Wings, Swords Crossed, and most lately at the Forvm.

My political leanings are moderate conservative. I'm not a Democrat and am barely a Republican, hence the name of this domicile. I didn't make friends with the front-pagers at Redstate, losing front-page privileges and eventually all privileges. I didn't make friends at Obsidian Wings. The commentariat was (and is) so politically one-sided that blogging there became an unpleasant chore.

I'm no fan of Obama and likewise no fan of the Tea Party. These days, I consider myself an independent more than anything. Fiscally conservative, socially libertarian, economically free market, politically pro-freedom, religiously pro-Christian and intolerant of intolerance.

Do I have a commenting policy? Yes, assuming anyone comments. No profanity. Be reasonably civil. As the benevolent dictator of this site, I get to decide on both.

If what Hayden said was true, was it worth killing bin Laden?

The short answer: No.

Michael Hayden makes the case that (1) enhanced interrogation techniques and torture worked, and (2) valuable intelligence came from those detainees who underwent those methods.

So that there is no ambiguity, let me be doubly clear: It is nearly impossible for me to imagine any operation like the May 2 assault on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that would not have made substantial use of the trove of information derived from CIA detainees, including those on whom enhanced techniques had been used.

This directly contradicts the many assertions from the Left that those techniques don't work. When multiple CIA directors have attested to their effectiveness, and when Leon Panetta affirms that valuable information was obtained from those interrogations, I tend to believe them.

But might doesn't make right, and just because we can does not mean we should. Our nation is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that requires the people serving under our flag to treat its prisoners and detainees humanely. Because we fell well short of this standard, the Bush administration committed war crimes, aided by legal counsel who enabled the principals to give the CIA the green light. In addition, we paid a political price, losing goodwill in the Muslim world and among our allies.

Conservatives and Republicans should uphold the principle that--even though we may disagree with this and that--we are a nation that respects the rule of law. In the case of the detainees, many, if not most, in my party pissed on that principle. I'm glad bin Laden is dead, but this does not excuse the manner in which we found his location. No, it wasn't worth it.