These bogus arguments have lost their roar

These bogus arguments have lost their roar

Just in time for summer movies, but most likely headed straight for DVD:

Dick Cheney stars in Land of the Lost Arguments.

Also wearing loincloth in starring roles: Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, with not so much as a cameo by George W. Bush. He's not even mentioned in the credits.

This Land of the Lost is advertised as a horror tale. It is so overacted and contrived, however, that audiences asked to suspend belief are simply guffawing.

A signature of the movie is the once-fierce dinosaur Ignoramus, a creature that will fall for anything. No suspense: In the movie, it falls.

Cast into the wilderness with their clubs and politically worn appeals, the shrinking band of ideologues seeks to stir us with these warnings that once sold to target audiences:

* Waterboarding works (if we did it).

Hard to keep track: Did we torture, or didn't we? W. said we didn't. Cheney is saying we did, and we liked it! And the terrorists sang like canaries, only they didn't.

FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified to the Senate that he was having success interviewing Abu Zubaydah with traditional methods when CIA officers intervened and, against his protest, began "enhanced" means that, Soufan said, caused Zubaydah to clam up.

A CIA interrogator interviewed by ABC News disagreed, saying Zubaydah gave important information. However, former FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair he doubts the information prevented any attacks.

As to the veracity of admissions given under torture: One-time Navy Seal and ex-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura told Larry King, "You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

* Our methods saved thousands of lives.

See Mueller's comments above. Also ask Matthew Alexander, Air Force interrogator, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald did.

Alexander performed 300 military interrogations in Iraq. He said, "We heard day in and day out from foreign fighters that the No. 1 reason they came to Iraq to fight was the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

"When they saw pictures of other Muslims being tortured and abused by U.S. soldiers, it was enough to convince them to travel to Iraq and give up their lives for a noble cause," Alexander said.

* What we did to them is peanuts compared to beheadings they've done to others.

"Them" is the operative word, there.

A declassified report obtained by the ACLU about Abu Ghraib quoted a former military police commander on the scene: "It became obvious to me that the majority of our detainees were detained as the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were swept up by coalition forces as peripheral bystanders during raids."

He said that perhaps one in 10 of the security detainees "were of any particular intelligence value."

Yeah, but we really stuck it to "them."

* Closing Gitmo will put terrorists in our backyards.

You mean like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, World Trade Center bomber Zacarias Moussaoui, shoe bomber Richard Reid — each seen roaming our streets, er, confined for life, in Colorado's federal Supermax unit?

Of all bogus arguments . . .

The same people who told us we could invade two countries, occupy them, rebuild them, inoculate them with democracy and remake the Middle East are saying we can't safely incarcerate a few hundred men with names we can't pronounce.

Sapped of credibility though they are, the Land of the Lost Arguments warriors still plug on. But this is a new day. Thanks to their excesses, Americans once again are reminded why we have international law. It's not just so that sissified foreign interlopers can call ticky-tacky fouls.

In the last scene of Land of the Lost Arguments, Sean Hannity finally backs up his Fox News brag that he can withstand waterboarding. Unable to shut his mouth, he swallows his own words and drowns.

John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.

A sublime voice for choice

Honestly, I don't think they've been paying attention.

I speak of the folks who still appear to take President Barack Obama for a soft touch. Babe in woods. Doe in headlights. One step from the doorstep of "community organizer."

They haven't been paying attention. Maybe because they don't want to see what's evident. The guy is good. Reagan as The Communicator? Obama asCommunicator Salvation, voice of a more progressive nation.

He goes to Notre Dame. A cable news talker says, "A tough day ahead for President Obama." Oh, really? You mean because anti-abortion protesters will show? Heavens.

Well, in the phrasing of a previous White House passer-through, bring 'em on. Those who think a few graphic placards and slogans can win the day when this guy has the microphone are, once again borrowing a staple of bygone days, misunderestimating this guy.

Consider the anti-choice commentators, who, seeing only what they believed, gave Obama failing marks.

A "sign the pro-lifers are slowly winning," wrote Ramesh Ponnuru of Obama's Notre Dame speech. "He didn't try to make the case for his view on abortion and other issues. He just pled for civility and the search for common ground."

That's a concession? Obama spoke for a nation with a plea to "stop reducing those with differing views to caricature."

A caricature unto itself is "pro-life." Often it needs explaining when said "pro-lifer" is pro-war, pro-death penalty and anti-human rights as pertains to homosexuals.

Another caricature, in the same bag of propaganda tricks, is "pro-abortion," which we are told our president is.

Actually, he addresses the imperative to reduce the numbers of abortion through birth control and adoption.

Somehow, not wanting to foreclose the option through law makes one "radically pro-abortion." Not where I live.

This is like saying someone is "pro-kiddie porn" by supporting free speech.

In three words, former President Bill Clinton came closest to expressing America's communal sense about abortion: "safe, legal and rare." So has Obama, and in a voice that makes people appreciate that leaders can represent a diverse nation and do justice to diverging impulses.

Many who claim to be "pro-life" by and large don't really want to explain to what extent they'd interfere in a woman's reproductive rights or when they'd back off.

In cases of rape? How do you define rape? Statutorily?

Incest? That's some claim to prove and to place on the shoulders of a scared victim.

Medical necessity? What tribunal would judge a doctor's judgment call?

So even when a recent poll shows that 51 percent of Americans call themselves "pro-life," most have no idea what the term could or would play out in the real world in terms of policy. Most of those 51 percent of Americans probably say they believe in a less intrusive government. But no government policy could be more intrusive than to order a pregnant woman to gestate, no matter the circumstances.

Oh, no. Obama not only did well at Notre Dame, he rose above the moment. He embodied the respectful and knowing face of people who are pro-family, pro-morality, pro-children and pro-choice.

If you saw something else, well, you weren't watching.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald. E-mail: jpyoung@grandecom.net.

Another definition for 'crazy'

AUSTIN — Cherry is her name.

And once upon a time, well . . .

"I went crazy — really crazy."

She says it with a smile. She is tending the kitchen at Southpointe, a residence for people with various disabilities.

Once upon a time, she was a hard-working contributor to society. Then a chemical imbalance beset her brain. Her working rounds became the sidewalks of Austin.

Like so many others.

Fortunately, she had family that helped her. And she had some savings to go with Social Security disability. Because of that, she has an apartment here.

An indicator of Cherry's stabilized mental health is that she knows how lucky she is.

Others like her are sleeping on grates, or bunking in unlicensed boardinghouses. Many are in the two-fisted grip of a mental illness and alcoholism or illegal drug abuse. Every one of them could have her placid demeanor and optimism.

"This is really nice here," she says. "They need more of these." Yes, ma'am.

What we do, or don't do, for severely mentally ill individuals is a scandal. One of the rarely discussed scandals is the lack of housing assistance.

If you're born with a mental disability or injured severely, society is going to take care of you. The alternative? Um, freezing to death in a wheelchair on the street corner?

People with mental illness can be every bit as disabled — hiding in the shadows, or from them; speaking to specters.

One big difference, though: A mentally retarded person gets 100 percent publicly funded housing, support and training. A mentally ill person gets nothing beyond that $674 monthly Social Security check.

Indicative of this is the fact that Southpointe is an ICF-MR — an intermediate care facility for the mentally retarded. But seeing a need, the Mary Lee Foundation, which operates it, freed up a few units for the mentally ill as well. One problem: It comes without the public assistance available for other disabilities.

Rare is the publicly funded program like New York City's Project Renewal. The city and state jointly invest in housing and care for the mentally ill. Many stabilize, find jobs, live life.

Across the country: just the opposite. The mentally ill wander the streets. They end up behind bars and in mental hospitals — in and out and in again, over and over. Taxpayers' money down the drain.

Policy makers can't fathom paying for ongoing support and housing yet will spend gobs to jail and hospitalize them.

Two generations ago, rightful outrage was summoned about the warehousing of the mentally ill. People who were locked up in "snake pits" saw the light of day.

One problem, says Marilyn Hartman, whose son has a severe mental illness: Policy shifted "to the other extreme: no provisions for anybody." Confronting this matter is about more than medication, she says. Central to the issue is "long-term, permanent housing" with services like those at Southpointe.

Hartman's son, a Yale graduate, was hospitalized 13 times over three years after being diagnosed. In the six years he's been living at Southpointe, he hasn't needed hospitalization.

Actively involved in the Austin affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, she has urged lawmakers to see the savings inherent in helping the mentally ill keep out of jail and the mental hospital.

Southpointe has been a salvation for her son, Hartman says. It's the whole package of support for the mentally ill, including therapy that gets some back into the workforce. But it's not free or cheap.

When it comes to housing the mentally ill, most policymakers don't get it. They don't see that permanent housing, with support, for the mentally ill is cost-effective. It helps people recover. It reduces demands on jails and mental hospitals.

You've heard the old definition of insanity — doing something over and over again and expecting a different result. That's what we do when mentally ill people go from jail, to the mental hospital, and back to the street. Yeah, that's crazy.

John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.