Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as part of his efforts to assure the acceptance of Turkey into the European Union has backed off plans to criminalize adultery in Turkey.

All references to proposals to outlaw adultery, which were inserted into the legislation by conservative members of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), would be dropped.

"No item which is not already included in the draft of the Turkish criminal code will be included and I mean by that the issue of adultery," Mr Erdogan told a news conference.

The European Union is now widely expected to give Turkey approval to begin formal talks for Turkey's entry into the EU. Once the approval for those talks has begun it is unlikely that the EU would back out of accepting Turkey as a member.

European diplomats are now seriously doubting the intentions of Turkey's ruling Islamic political party.

Newspapers said Erdogan had taken the side of conservatives in his Justice and Development Party, a conservative group with Islamist roots which was deeply divided over outlawing adultery.

Diplomats say Erdogan's face-off with Brussels, which roiled Turkish financial markets this month, has raised doubts about Erdogan's political judgment and his real intentions.

These diplomats are slow learners.

Turkey's government could just hold back from putting more Islam into Turkish law until after Turkey becomes an EU member state.

The European Parliament's conservative faction even suspects that Erdogan will hold back controversial laws until EU membership negotiations actually begin next year.

Only then, when there is no turning back for the EU, will the Prime Minister show his true face and put the brakes on societal reforms: Erdogan as an Islamic submarine, so to speak.

Well duh guys. Do you really think you can change Turkey into a secular European country by making it part of the EU? Snap out of your dreams. The real world doesn't work that way.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin publically supports Tukey's membership in the EU and yet Raffarin sounds very unenthusiastic and worried about the idea of a Muslim state joining formerly Christian now secular states in a political union. (same article here)

"We don't think we should tell Turkey that the doors of Europe are forever closed to it," Raffarin told the newspaper, but then said: "Do we want the river of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?"

I think it darkly humourous that the European elites saw the US invasion of Iraq as a really bad idea that the US should have refrained from and yet the EU mandarins are intent on going down a road with another Muslim country that they have deep doubts about. The elites of the Western nations all seek to commit cultural suicide with their choice of folly while pointing fingers at the follies of others.

The European peoples may yet save their elites from elite follow. The one distinct possibility for stopping Turkey's accession into the EU is the prospect that the majority in many EU member states may vote against the new EU federal constitution.

The EU's new constitution represents another effort to preserve and deepen European unity, but it too could backfire. For the constitution to come into force, it must be approved by all 25 EU countries. At least 11 of them are likely to hold referendums, and in a few of those, notably Britain, the verdict is likely to be negative. Such an outcome could well provoke a crisis within the Union.

This survey will conclude that the EU may indeed split. But a split need not be a disaster. It could lead to a multi-layered EU in which different countries adopt different levels of political integration and experiment with different economic models. If the EU were preserved as an over-arching framework, it could actually benefit from such diversity. But there is also a darker, if less likely possibility. A split in the EU could cause Europe once again to divide into rival power blocks. That could threaten what most agree is the Union's central achievement: peace in Europe.

The EU could break up into pieces before Turkey manages to join. That is the best hope for Europe at this point. The editors of The Economist who wrote that previous excerpt see an EU break-up as a dark possibility. But I see that possibility as a ray of hope for the survival of Western liberal democracy in the gathering gloom.

UK Tory (Conservative) Party leader Michael Howard comes out in favor of a reduction in immigration and an end to political asylum immigration.

MICHAEL HOWARD: We will start by cracking down hard on illegal immigration.

LISA MILLAR: If he manages to defy the opinion polls and oust Tony Blair's Labour Government, Michael Howard says he will pull the UK out of the international convention on refugees, set an annual upper limit for immigration and shake up the work permit system.

The bulk of the claims for political refugee status are pretty bogus. Most of the world is poorly ruled. Most of the world is poor. The bulk of the poor people who want to escape poverty, corrupt cops, and lawlessness are not suffering from persecution aimed specifically at them. They just happen to live in societies that are failures when compared to Western societies. If they are eligible for asylumn then so are a few billion other people. But letting them all in is crazy. Britain's rate of asylum immigration has grown literally by orders of magnitude in the last couple of decades and could grow by orders of magnitude more unless the government cracks down and puts a stop to it.

The anti-immigration position of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its significant gains in elections have put pressure on the UK Conservative Party to accommodate the demands of its base for a crack-down on immigration.

Tory strategists also believe that immigration is a key issue for many voters who deserted the party for the UK Independence Party in the European elections in June and whom the Conservatives must win back before the next general election.

The UKIP says the Tories are stealing UKIP ideas.

Robert Kilroy-Silk, a UKIP member of the European Parliament, said Mr Howard had "plagiarised" one of his speeches earlier this month when he called for immigration to be capped at 100,000 people each year and pledged to withdraw from the UN convention.

"He is actually parroting virtually what I said," Mr Kilroy-Silk told Radio Four. "He has got to steal UKIP’s clothes because we are stealing their votes."

There is a lesson here for the United States: A third party focused on immigration and the National Question could potentially force the two major US parties to shift their positions on immigration in a restrictionist direction.

Well, it has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Though one can doubt whether Michael Howard sincerely likes his own newly adopted policy position on immigration.

By contrast, the Labour Government's Home Secretary (kind of like the US Health and Human Services Secretary) is opposed to numerical limits on immigration.

For his part, Home Secretary David Blunkett last year nailed his colours to the mast when he declared he saw "no obvious upper limit to legal [economic] immigration".

The British now have the luxury of choosing between 5 parties with three for differing levels of immigration restriction (Tories, UKIP, BNP), one trying to have it both ways (Labour), and fifth (Lib-Dems) probably in favor of continued high levels of immigration. Whereas Americans have a choice between two parties whose top leaders compete with each other for the honor of helping an influx of illiterate peasants ruin the country.

Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki, states the obvious when he argues that Africa was better governed under colonial rule than it is today.

The average African is worse off now than during the colonial era, the brother of South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has said.

Moeletsi Mbeki accused African elites of stealing money and keeping it abroad, while colonial rulers planted crops and built roads and cities.

Of course, no Western nation wants to take on the burden of ruling Africa. It would be a totally thankless job. Therefore conditions in Africa will continue to deteriorate.

Mbeki fears a further decay in South Africa.

Addressing the local branch of the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) here last night, SAIIA board member Moeletsi Mbeki said in his view African leaders were not serious about the economic welfare of their own people and South Africa had to guard that it did not become another Burundi.

Mbeki pointed out, however, that he was not arguing for a return to colonial rule.

The decay is going to continue and South Africa will eventually become as bad off as some of its neighbors.

Moeletsi Mbeki appears to be a free market kind of guy. He opposes what are called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deals in South Africa where powerful connnected blacks are granted shares in white-owned business enterprises. Moeletsi Mbeki says South African blacks ought to be more focused on wealth creation instead of wealth redistribution.

MINEWEB: Handicaps it?

MOELETSI MBEKI: Yes, because it takes – and I have lots of friends who were involved in black economic empowerment deals – it takes the brightest among the black people who -- instead of devoting their energies to creating new companies, to creating new products, to providing and creating employment -- tend to spend most of their time, if not all of their time, looking for redistributing mechanisms to get shares in pre-existing companies. So what you are actually getting is that the brightest among the black people in this country, instead of creating wealth, building up their own companies, are becoming secondary fiddle players to the existing companies – and that in my view is not what is going to save our country.

Moeletsi Mbeki says the ruling party in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe has destroyed the country.

Mbeki said: "Zanu PF have also so destroyed the core of their own economy, which was commercial agriculture and peasant agriculture. They have destroyed that part of the economy. I was reading that the tobacco crop is only a quarter of what it was in 2000, so in a way Zimbabwe is finished, it is almost dead and the people who are in power are determined to stay in power."

Of course this is true. But what is interesting in all this is that a wealthy and well-connected South African black man is saying it.

The Mbeki brothers stake out very different positions about Zimbabwe and about African economic development and political rule.

Mr Mbeki's analysis of Africa's history and of its predicament today differs fundamentally from that of his brother. Thabo Mbeki has pointedly refrained from criticising Mr Mugabe's excesses. Instead, he opposed Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth and he blames the legacy of British colonialism for the country's crisis.

Eventually biotechnology will advance to the point where Western nations will be able to supply Africa with treatments to cure its major diseases. Also, genetically engineered agriculture ought to be able to reduce and even eliminate hunger if only populations would stabilize.

But some African countries are not experiencing a decline in fertility to replacement levels and so Malthus may yet be proven right in Africa. Niger has a mind-boggling 8 children born per woman and has a fertilty rate as high as it was in the 1970s. Many African countries have high absolute levels of fertility with either only slow declines in fertility or even stagnant or rising fertility. (and that link has some great world demography graphics) More recent research (which I learned about a few months ago watching a think tank seminar on population on C-SPAN but now can't find after hours of googling and would welcome relevant links) argues against the inevitability of fertility declines toward replacement rates. Fertility rate declines in some instances are halting and reversing. The poorest countries in Africa may maintain high levels of fertility for decades to come. If Africa's total basket case countries maintain high levels of fertility the result will be disastrous for Africa both in human suffering and in environmental damage (say good bye to some big cat species, primates, and other species). This will also create environmental, political, and economic problems for the rest of the world.

Update: For $3.9 billion per year Western nations could prevent 23 million births of incredibly poor people per year. That'd reduce poverty for those who are born, reduce pollution, and reduce damage to the environment. It would cost a couple of percent of what we are spending deconstructing Iraq. Seems like a bargain.

Here's my weird conclusion before I present the argument for it: The Iraq War debacle is benefitting Bush. Why? Because Kerry looks weak on foreign policy and national security. Democrats generally look weak on foreign policy and the military to most American voters and Kerry is no exception. The mess in Iraq is accurately recognized by the American people as being a serious problem. Here is where the Iraq mess works to George W. Bush's benefit: The American people know the United States is in a serious military and political mess in Iraq and therefore want a strong aggressive masculine figure in the White House. A clear majority see Bush as possessing more of the masculine and aggressive qualities than Kerry. You don't win a US Presidential election based on perceived higher intelligence.

An Associated Press/Ipsos poll asked registered voters to assess the character of each nominee. Nearly 75 percent said Bush was "strong"; only 54 percent said that of Kerry. Three-quarters called Bush "decisive"; a measly 37 percent applied that term to Kerry. Bush was seen as more likeable. The only character face-off in which Kerry led Bush was intelligence. Eighty-four percent considered Kerry smart; 63 percent reported they believe Bush is "intelligent."

Kerry is hobbled by all sorts of things. First of all, he has a voting record in the Senate that is not pro-military spending or even pro-military action in conflicts such as the first Gulf War that the American people supported. He has his record of early 1970s anti-Vietnam War and anti-US soldier (supposed war criminals) rhetoric weighing against him. Plus, and this is a subtle point that most commentators miss, Kerry is wealthy because he married wealthy. That is just not a masculine real man way to riches in America. Whereas Bush made his money in baseball (never mind that he did it through politics and a bond issue for a sports stadium). Baseball is for real men.

More people trust Bush on terrorism than trust Kerry.

Fifty per cent had "a lot" of confidence Bush could protect the United States from terrorism, up from 43 per cent last month. Just 26 per cent expressed such confidence in Kerry, down from 32 per cent in August.

Never mind that Bush is not pursuing many different border control and visa policies that would reduce the ability of terrorists to get to the United States in the first place. Never mind that the second Iraq war has increased Muslim anger toward the United States and probably made Al Qaeda recruitment easier even while it drew US forces away from the Afghan-Pakistan border where there are plenty of Al Qaeda members. Most people are not thinking thoughts that complex.

To the extent that terrorism is a worry Bush benefits.

In CNN/USA Today/Gallup Polls conducted this month, Bush moved ahead in Ohio and several other key swing states, though voters favored Kerry by major margins on the economy, health care and Iraq. But on the issue of terrorism, Bush was ahead by stunning margins, including by 87 percent to 9 percent among registered Ohio voters who cited that issue as key.

Kerry might be able to do a better job of explaining Bush's Iraq mistakes. But he is not going to offer a convincing and honest case of what he'd do instead (not that Bush is being honest about his own intentions in Iraq at this point - Bush might be getting ready for a US withdrawal from Iraq next year). Also, Kerry is not going to come out and advocate more effective policies against terrorism on the home front because ethnic immigration lobbies would object and privacy rights advocates would oppose more effective use of information systems against terrorists.

If Bush wins reelection it will be because the American people are more focused on foreign poilicy than on domestic policy. They will vote for Bush in spite of his big foreign policy and domestic security mistakes. Personally, I think Bush has a 65:35 chance of winning reelection. He will manage to win reelection in spite of a failure of his imimgration policies to pull any more Hispanics to the Republican ticket and in spite of the degree to which he has angered his base on immigration.

Steve Sailer lays out a number of reasons Americans, Turks, and Europeans should want to keep Turkey out of the EU.

It's simply not in America's economic interest to encourage Turkey to submerge into a trading bloc designed to maximize trade within the EU while penalizing imports from America.

Nor is it in America's strategic interest to make more feasible Brussels' dream of a European military force separate from NATO. So far, such plans have largely foundered on the anti-martial feelings of Europeans unwilling to sacrifice their precious 1.3 children. But Turkey would make a separate EU strike force much more feasible by providing cheap, brave cannon fodder.

Objective hardball points about American interests are too often ignored while attention is given to unrealistic and idealistic imaginings about how some policy proposal will promote freedom or democracy. Enough such unrealistic imaginings have blown up in our faces that we ought to be more willing to make more hard-headed realpolitik calculations of our interests. The recognition that a single united EU covering all NATO countries is going to obsolesce NATO is certainly a realpolitik acknowledgement of the obvious.

By analogy imagine the United States forming a political merger with Mexico and allowing Mexicans to legally travel across the border in unlimited numbers. The EU has a lower per capita income than the United States but Turkey has a lower living standard than Mexico. Measured in purchasing power parity Mexico's per capita GDP is $9000 whereas Turkey is even lower at $6,700. The EU will have to spend large amounts of money on Turkey and also on increased levels of social spending on all the Turks who would flood into Europe.

If Turkey is really capable of rising to Western European levels of productivity and living standards (and I do not believe it can - see Steve's article for some arguments why) then it should be able to accomplish that economic rise without joining the EU. After all, even some small countries that are not part of large trading blocs have managed to achieve absolutely amazing standards of living without the help of highly valuable natural resources. Located right in the heart of Europe and without EU membership Switzerland has managed to achieve a very impressive $32,000 per capita GDP.

Some people argue that if the EU "turns its back on Turkey" then the Turks will turn toward Islamism. Well, if the Turks are that easily offended into going down that path the Europeans should be very reluctant to take the risk that the Turks may go down that path even as part of the EU. There is no reason that the EU's mandarins should feel rushed to decide the Turkey question. Let the Turks show that they can raise their living standards, that they are not going to join the rest of the Muslim world in the increasing trend toward embrace of fundamentalist Islam, and that they really have settled their internal problem with the Kurds.

Update: What I find ironic about the EU mandarin push for Turkey's membership in the EU is that those same mandarins tend to look down on Christian fundamentalism in the United States. The EU elites generally despise and distrust Americans with strongly held religious beliefs and do not like to see religiously devout people in high positions in the US government. Yet what is the EU embracing by entertaining political union with Turkey? A country that will become politically more Islamically fundamentalist once the soldiers are told they have to permanently butt out of politics. In fact, this is already happening. The effect of Turkey's entry into the EU will be to undermine the Turkish military's role as guardian of the secular nature of Turkey's government. American Christian fundamentalism poses very little threat to the EU and yet it is that fundamentalism that attracts critical elite European commentary even as the elites in Europe are probably too foolish to avoid letting a far more dangerous fundamentalism become a much larger presence in Europe. What folly.

Zimbabwe leads South Africa into its future.

Ambulances are drawn by oxen. Hand-guided cattle plows have replaced farm machinery. The state railroad uses gunpowder charges on the tracks to warn trains of danger ahead.

The often-violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for reallocation to black Zimbabweans, coupled with erratic rains, has decimated Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy. President Robert Mugabe argues that the land seizures have corrected ownership imbalances from British colonial days that left one-third of the country's farmland in the hands of about 5 000 white farmers.

Many seized farms went to Mugabe's cronies and lie fallow.

The decay takes many forms.

Doctors say midwives are now sealing off the umbilical protrusion of newborns with string, and dentists say many of their patients are using salt instead of toothpaste.

This all reminds me of an argument some comment posters have made on this blog about low skilled immigration: Their argument is that if we let the welfare state become big enough then supposedly it will eventually collapse. The reasoning is that letting matters get worse will somehow automatically bring on the correction or (if you want a more historical analogy) a Thermidorian Reaction that will fix things and usher in a libertarian golden age. But Zimbabwe is just one of many historical examples that demonstrate that in politics some changes are just plain bad and produce no opposing response big enough to yield a net benefit. Another example is the Russian Revolution and such low points of Soviet rule such as the famines of early 1930s in Ukraine and Russia under Stalin. Even today Russia is still a dysfunctional place that has clearly suffered from having its more successful classes and brighter people systematically killed off. So some political disasters are just that: disasters. At best they can serve the purpose of teaching a historical lesson. But what lesson needs to be learned today that doesn't already have lots of historical examples to illustrate it?

Rhodesia under white minority rule was a better place for both blacks and whites than Zimbabwe is today under black majority rule. South Africa, having a much larger portion of whites, has a longer road to go down into decay, corruption, and despotism. But it surely is going down that road.

Who would have suspected that there is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia if the US State Department hadn't said so?

The United States for the first time named Saudi Arabia yesterday as a country that severely violates religious freedom, potentially subjecting the close U.S. ally to sanctions.

"Freedom of religion does not exist" in Saudi Arabia, the State Department said in its annual report on international religious freedom. "Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country's laws and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam," the report said, adding that "non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture."

Did Saudi Arabia suddenly take a turn for the worse in the religious freedom department? Or has the place been a repressive Wahabbi Islamic theocracy since its creation?

More fundamentally, why should anyone take seriously any US State Department report on religious freedom by country?

President George W. Bush, a man who professes to believe that the spread of democracy is the cure needed to stop terrorism, looks at Vladimir Putin, a man who is systematically disassembling democracy and press freedom in Russia and sees a man to admire.

On Sunday, President Bush visited the Russian Embassy to pay his respects to the victims of last week's terrorist attack at a Russian school and to express his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Please pass on my very best wishes to President Vladimir Putin, a man who I admire," Bush told the Russian ambassador.

It is worth noting that Russia is one of the biggest oil exporting countries and that it has more energy reserves in the form of natural gas than Saudi Arabia has in the form of oil. Plus, the US military finds it helpful to be able to ship stuff across Russia to get to Central Asia and Afghanistan.

I've argued a lot for a great increase of the scale of federal funding for energy research in order to improve national security. Look at US policy toward Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser extent Russia as well) and see how much US policy has been bent by concerns about energy supplies. It took the 9/11 attack plus 3 years just to get the State Department to admit a glaringly obvious truth which it would not refrain from admitting about some country deemed less important to American interests. The world's dependence on oil is creating a distortion in US policy toward the Middle East that continues to damage US national interests.

Steve Fainaru reports for the Washington Post about the fighting around the Sunni Arab insurgency stronghold of Tal Afar (a.k.a. Talafar or Tall Afar).

"The village. He wants you to arrest all the men in the village," the interpreter told Army Capt. Eric Beaty, commander of Company C, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.

"They're all bad?" Beaty asked.

The interpreter consulted The Source. "Yes, all bad," he said.

"Well, what we'll do is we'll put you up on the top of the Stryker, and you can tell us where to go left or go right, okay?" Beaty said.

Reading the article I didn't feel much confidence that the Iraqi informant had such a firm grasp on who the insurgents were. Was he just eager to get paid money for sketchy intelligence he had accumulated? How'd he know who to pick out of groups? Had he seen these people before?

The fact that US soldiers have to use interpreters to communicate with dubious informants try to identify insurgents in villages shows just how futlie US efforts are at this point. Identification of just who is active in the resistance is an extremely difficult job and requires a large amount of local language and cultural skills and local knowledge of the sort that police investigators accumulate. The US military is not trained for counter-insurgency at the level it would need to be done in order to be done well.

Pfc. Mario Rutigliano, 19, of Clifton, N.J understands something that the neocons in the Bush Administration are too ideologically dense to figure out.

"We need to get some music in here," Rutigliano said as the Stryker rolled toward the village.

"Yeah, we do," Cate agreed.

"You lose your mind if you take this stuff too seriously," Rutigliano said.

Rutigliano said he thought the Stryker Brigade had defeated local insurgents, but he predicted they'd be back. "It doesn't matter how many we kill, they'll always keep coming back," he said. "They've all got cousins, brothers. They have an endless supply."

See also Insurgency In Iraq Like Self-Replicating Virus and John Tierney On Cousin Marriage As Reform Obstacle In Iraq and Steve Sailer's Cousin Marriage Conundrum.

Last night ABC News showed footage from within Najaf. Najaf was seriously trashed. Lots of multi-story buildings are torn to shreds. The Iraq post-war deconstruction is making a lot of progress in Najaf. To slightly paraphrase a Vietnam War quote, we have to destroy the city in order to save it. Except of course it hasn't been saved. There are plenty of insurgent Mahdists ready to fight another day. A couple of ABC reporters had embedded with the US military and gone around Najaf with them during fighting. The lady reporter (whose name escapes me) said that at this point there are few opportunities for reporters in Iraq to go into the field because it is too dangerous. So they have to embed.

The brothers and cousins are unemployed and the continued war is damaging the economy still further. Little money has been spent on reconstruction. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. The devil is busy. Saddam, not Chris, has Satan's ear on Iraq (anyone get the ref?). The Bush Administration wants to shift $3.5 billion in reconstruction aid toward security.

Including previous reallocations, the administration hopes to redirect more than 20 percent of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds to cope with an escalating insurgency and the glacial pace of rebuilding. With two weeks left in the fiscal year, and 11 months after Congress approved the money, only $1.1 billion of it has been spent, because of attacks, contracting problems and other unforeseen issues, according to figures released by the State Department.

John Derbyshire (who continues to support the original decision to invade btw) has written a speech for George W. Bush to deliver after the election to announce US withdrawal from Iraq.

I do not believe anyone could say that we have stinted in these efforts to help restore Iraq's ability to function as an independent nation. If, following our withdrawal, Iraq proves unable so to function, I do not believe the U.S. could be fairly blamed, nor do I believe the American people will blame their government. We have done our best for Iraq.

There is, however, a limit to what we can do, and a limit to the patience of our own people. If Iraqis cherish their nation, they must themselves be willing to sacrifice for it. If Iraqis wish to be citizens of a peaceful and prosperous country, they must themselves work hard to those ends. Many Iraqis, of course, are so willing, and indeed many have sacrificed their lives to those ends in this past year and a half. However, Iraq will only be a single nation, and at peace, if the overwhelming majority of Iraqis sink their differences and join together in a spirit of patriotic solidarity to preserve this nation. If Iraqis are not willing to do that, then there is no hope for Iraq, either under occupation or free from it.

We do not hear "Give me liberty or give me death" uttered by Iraqi fighters rushing to oppose tribal rule and theocracy. Instead we hear something that sounds more like "Give me victory over the infidels and revenge for the death of cousins Abdul and Akmed or give me martyrdom."

Seymour Hersh has a new book coming out Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

But the interrogations at Guantánamo were a bust. Very little useful intelligence had been gathered, while prisoners from around the world continued to flow into the base, and the facility constantly expanded. The CIA analyst had been sent there to find out what was going wrong. He was fluent in Arabic and familiar with the Islamic world. He was held in high respect within the agency, and was capable of reporting directly, if he chose, to George Tenet, the CIA director. The analyst did more than just visit and inspect. He interviewed at least 30 prisoners to find out who they were and how they ended up in Guantánamo. Some of his findings, he later confided to a former CIA colleague, were devastating.

"He came back convinced that we were committing war crimes in Guantánamo," the colleague told me. "Based on his sample, more than half the people there didn't belong there. He found people lying in their own faeces," including two captives, perhaps in their 80s, who were clearly suffering from dementia. "He thought what was going on was an outrage," the CIA colleague added. There was no rational system for determining who was important.

Two former administration officials who read the analyst's highly classified report told me that its message was grim. According to a former White House official, the analyst's disturbing conclusion was that "if we captured some people who weren't terrorists when we got them, they are now".

Mark Bowden (of Black Hawk Down fame) has written that experts on interrogation say that infliction of pain can be counter-productive and should be resorted to only as a last resort. One reason for this is that subjects of torture fear the threat of pain but that once they actually experience the pain manyfind they can handle it better than expected. Another reason to hold back on delivering pain is that patient and talented interrogators sometimes manage to turn the interrogatee to shift his loyalties so that he begins to provide accurate information voluntarily. Read all his links at that post of mine. One conclusion I reached from reading them is that if some facility is inflicting pain on large numbers of its inmates then it is a very unprofessonal operation. Well, that is what Donald Rumsfeld has set up and defended in Guantanamo Bay.

I am disgusted by the Bush Administration because they are more interested in inflicting pain out of a macho desire to get even than they are in actually defending us from future attacks. Take the most expert and experienced advice on how to set up professional interrogation facilities? That just doesn't feel tough enough to them - and who wants to do all the mental work required to think through complex arguments anyway? Or seal the Mexican border to prevent entry of terrorists? That flies in the face of Bush's quixotic and foolish gambit to get Hispanic voters.

Bush is not acting in our interests. I don't know that John Kerry would be any better. But even if you are a very partisan Republican for the sake of your country recognize just how many ways the Bush Administration's policies are harmful for our country and our security.

The 9/11 Commission's recommendations on visa and immigation policy represent a good starting point for a rational and effective response to the terrorist threat. Better immigration and border control policies would not only reduce the risk of future attacks but reduce the crime rate, reduce the demands for social spending, raise living standards for America's poorest, and reduce crowding and pollution.