Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Compassionate Conservatism on Tour: text
While loyalists dominated the Ohio crowd, one question was noteworthy. A forelorn woman referred to having experienced a health care cut. Then:
Bush: Was it cut at the Federal level?
Woman: Yes.
Bush: (chuckle) Well, that's the price you pay when you're trying to cut the deficit in half.
New Progressive Research-Information Center
Media Matters for America is a “new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” This effort was started by David Brock, the author who trashed Anita Hill, then developed a conscience, chronicled in his Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. http://mediamatters.org/
Howard Stern Achieving Respectability? URLs of the Globe and The Nation.
These days, Stern's broadcasts are divided between his usual schtick -- interviews with strippers, off-color song parodies, jokes about celebrities -- and rants against the president. Stern will never be mistaken for a policy wonk, but tune in to his show and you'll hear him cogently attacking administration positions on an impressive range of issues: stem-cell research, abortion rights, gay marriage, media consolidation, the handling of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Stern's revamped website looks more like Mother Jones magazine than Maxim: It features articles about the administration's trade violations in Burma and includes a link to the contributions page of the John Kerry for President site. Indeed, Stern has become an ardent Kerry advocate. "I call on all fans of the show to vote against Bush," he said on a recent broadcast. "We're going to deliver the White House to John Kerry."
Some might dismiss this as bluster, but Stern's words should send a shiver up Karl Rove's spine. Stern has a record of successful election-year activism; political observers in New York and New Jersey remember how his on-air endorsements delivered key votes to George Pataki and Christine Todd Whitman in past gubernatorial races. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/03/peril_in_the_air_for_bush/
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040517&s=jarvis
Sharon Defeat: Follow-Up
Sharon is not giving up, after his own party rejected his surrendering some settlements while holding on to others. As for the upshot for the U.S.- this dispatch from the Washington Post (Glenn Kessler)
Likud Vote Against Plan a Blow to U.S. Credibility
President Bush took a huge diplomatic gamble two weeks ago when he forcefully embraced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and handed Israel key concessions on a final peace deal. The backlash in Arab and European countries was especially intense, but administration officials argued Sharon's plan carried the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled peace process.
Now, the Likud Party's overwhelming rejection of that plan has left the administration's credibility in the Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not soon be forgotten by the Arab world, but it will be harder for the administration to claim that Bush's support of Sharon has made a difference. Moreover, the Likud vote comes when the image of the United States is already greatly damaged by accounts of psychological and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61482-2004May2?language=printer
What’s Happening, Iraq:
The Abuse. Rarity or Systemic problem?
Now that the secret is out, Rummy is outraged, Bush is shaken, or sickened, etc. Some Democrats had the guts to use the term “cover-up”. There are, reportedly, as many as 35 investigations (CNN).
Iraqi prisoners were murdered by Americans and 23 other deaths are being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States revealed on Tuesday as the Bush administration tried to contain growing outrage over the abuse of Iraqi detainees. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040504/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_usa_dc
From Seymour Hersh, interviewed by Ray Suarez:
Well, one of the things that Major General Taguba said was that the problems in the prison go back to the previous fall. His report also made clear that there had been two prior investigations by the high command in Iraq, beginning in late summer. So now you have three separate reports being done about problems in a prison, and you have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying on television the other day we're going to deal with this problem. It seems clear to me that if there hadn't been photographs, Janis Karpinski would still be running that prison and there wouldn't be any investigations.
Hersh basically noted that this was a policy for intelligence gathering: …what you're seeing is the result of a decision made somewhere up high up in the line that we're going to turn our prisons essentially into... Guantanamos, they're all going to become factories for eliciting intelligence..." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june04/photos_5-3.html
From Juan Cole
Several of the scenes show an American woman in uniform, gesturing lewdly and prancing before the hooded, nude Iraqi prisoners. One wonders if she is playing out her insecurities as a woman in the U.S. Army, looked down on by some of her male colleagues, by lording it over Iraqi prisoners of war. Was she compensating by playing dominatrix to Muslim men she imagined to be the ultimate male chauvinists? Although the main purpose of the abuse was to soften up the prisoners for interrogation, the precise forms of humiliation appear to have been shaped by the insecurities and prejudices of the reservists, who had been given no training in the Geneva Conventions. The reaction to the photographs in the Arab world was, predictably, fury and humiliation…”
The point here isn't that the president is stupid, but that he seems blithely indifferent to what is a huge setback to American goals and standing in the Middle East and indeed throughout the world.
There's an echo here of his response to the pre-9/11 warnings streaming up through the government bureaucracy. It hasn't landed on his desk yet, with an action plan, so what is he supposed to do? He talked to Rumsfeld who says he's on top of it. So what more can be done?
This isn't a matter of the aesthetics of leadership. It is another example of how this president is a passive commander-in-chief, how he demands no accountability and, because of that, allows problems to fester and grow. Though this may not be a direct example of it, he also creates a climate tolerant of rule-breaking that seeps down into the ranks of his subordinates, mixing with and reinforcing those other shortcomings.
The disasters now facing the country in Iraq -- some in slow motion, others by quick violence -- aren't just happening on the president's watch. They are happening in a real sense, really in the deepest sense, because of him -- because of his attention to the simulacra of leadership rather than the real thing, which is more difficult and demanding, both personally and morally. www.juancole.org
Abuse? Torture? From the official Taguba Report: (A repeat)
"Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee." http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
Rummy: “I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word."
Bush apparently has not even read the basics about this, let alone the Taguba Report. Undoubtedly he can’t understand that this further destroys the Administration’s position in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Troop Levels: Even though the options seem to be to either to get out or to drastically raise the number of troops, the official line is ‘same number, another 18 months or more.’
The decision acknowledges Iraq is much more unstable and dangerous than U.S. generals had hoped earlier this year, when they planned to cut the number of troops occupying Iraq to about 115,000…
The troops coming into Iraq will be more heavily armed than the forces they replace, with more tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored Humvees, said Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-US-Military.html?ex=1373169600&en=841e1fbaf514c3e3&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Pakistan: Failed Amnesty
The Christian Science Monitor report (Gretchen Peters) on Pakistan’s amnesty that had zero response.
Suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban militants hiding out in this country's semiautonomous tribal belt have ignored an April 30 deadline for foreigners to register with the government and lay down their arms.
Pakistani authorities this weekend quietly extended the amnesty offer, expressing hope that an extra seven days would convince the militants to live in harmony with the federal government here, and to cease attacking US troops over the Afghan border. Officials also encouraged local tribal leaders to vouch for the safety of those foreigners who cooperate.
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0503/p07s01-wosc.html
Cheney Under the Gun? While U.S. media do not portray Cheney as in such difficulty, others do. From a Brit (Andrew Buncombe):
Pressure mounts on Cheney over smears against diplomat and 'outing' of CIA wife; Row that began with 'IoS' interview deepens as Vice-President's officials are accused of serious felony
Vice-President Dick Cheney was under mounting pressure last night after he and his senior officials were accused of smearing a former ambassador and outing his wife as an undercover CIA officer in a deliberate act of revenge hatched inside the White House.
In a row which began with off-the-record comments he made to The Independent on Sunday last year, a former diplomat, Joe Wilson, said Mr Cheney oversaw a group of neo-conservatives who decided to try to damage his reputation. Because of Mr Wilson, the White House was forced to admit that a key claim. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=517287
Selective Service- Update:
More sounds as to the return of the Draft. From the Seattle Post Intelligencer (Eric Rosenberg)
The chief of the Selective Service System has proposed registering women for the military draft and requiring that young Americans regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche specialties needed in the armed services.
The proposal, which the agency's acting Director Lewis Brodsky presented to senior Pentagon officials just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34 years old, up from 25.
Some of the skill areas where the armed forces are facing "critical shortages" include linguists and computer specialists, the agency said. Americans would then be required to regularly update the agency on their skills until they reach age 35. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/171522_draft01.html
-R
While loyalists dominated the Ohio crowd, one question was noteworthy. A forelorn woman referred to having experienced a health care cut. Then:
Bush: Was it cut at the Federal level?
Woman: Yes.
Bush: (chuckle) Well, that's the price you pay when you're trying to cut the deficit in half.
New Progressive Research-Information Center
Media Matters for America is a “new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” This effort was started by David Brock, the author who trashed Anita Hill, then developed a conscience, chronicled in his Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. http://mediamatters.org/
Howard Stern Achieving Respectability? URLs of the Globe and The Nation.
These days, Stern's broadcasts are divided between his usual schtick -- interviews with strippers, off-color song parodies, jokes about celebrities -- and rants against the president. Stern will never be mistaken for a policy wonk, but tune in to his show and you'll hear him cogently attacking administration positions on an impressive range of issues: stem-cell research, abortion rights, gay marriage, media consolidation, the handling of Iraq.
Meanwhile, Stern's revamped website looks more like Mother Jones magazine than Maxim: It features articles about the administration's trade violations in Burma and includes a link to the contributions page of the John Kerry for President site. Indeed, Stern has become an ardent Kerry advocate. "I call on all fans of the show to vote against Bush," he said on a recent broadcast. "We're going to deliver the White House to John Kerry."
Some might dismiss this as bluster, but Stern's words should send a shiver up Karl Rove's spine. Stern has a record of successful election-year activism; political observers in New York and New Jersey remember how his on-air endorsements delivered key votes to George Pataki and Christine Todd Whitman in past gubernatorial races. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/03/peril_in_the_air_for_bush/
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040517&s=jarvis
Sharon Defeat: Follow-Up
Sharon is not giving up, after his own party rejected his surrendering some settlements while holding on to others. As for the upshot for the U.S.- this dispatch from the Washington Post (Glenn Kessler)
Likud Vote Against Plan a Blow to U.S. Credibility
President Bush took a huge diplomatic gamble two weeks ago when he forcefully embraced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and handed Israel key concessions on a final peace deal. The backlash in Arab and European countries was especially intense, but administration officials argued Sharon's plan carried the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled peace process.
Now, the Likud Party's overwhelming rejection of that plan has left the administration's credibility in the Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not soon be forgotten by the Arab world, but it will be harder for the administration to claim that Bush's support of Sharon has made a difference. Moreover, the Likud vote comes when the image of the United States is already greatly damaged by accounts of psychological and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61482-2004May2?language=printer
What’s Happening, Iraq:
The Abuse. Rarity or Systemic problem?
Now that the secret is out, Rummy is outraged, Bush is shaken, or sickened, etc. Some Democrats had the guts to use the term “cover-up”. There are, reportedly, as many as 35 investigations (CNN).
Iraqi prisoners were murdered by Americans and 23 other deaths are being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States revealed on Tuesday as the Bush administration tried to contain growing outrage over the abuse of Iraqi detainees. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040504/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_usa_dc
From Seymour Hersh, interviewed by Ray Suarez:
Well, one of the things that Major General Taguba said was that the problems in the prison go back to the previous fall. His report also made clear that there had been two prior investigations by the high command in Iraq, beginning in late summer. So now you have three separate reports being done about problems in a prison, and you have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying on television the other day we're going to deal with this problem. It seems clear to me that if there hadn't been photographs, Janis Karpinski would still be running that prison and there wouldn't be any investigations.
Hersh basically noted that this was a policy for intelligence gathering: …what you're seeing is the result of a decision made somewhere up high up in the line that we're going to turn our prisons essentially into... Guantanamos, they're all going to become factories for eliciting intelligence..." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june04/photos_5-3.html
From Juan Cole
Several of the scenes show an American woman in uniform, gesturing lewdly and prancing before the hooded, nude Iraqi prisoners. One wonders if she is playing out her insecurities as a woman in the U.S. Army, looked down on by some of her male colleagues, by lording it over Iraqi prisoners of war. Was she compensating by playing dominatrix to Muslim men she imagined to be the ultimate male chauvinists? Although the main purpose of the abuse was to soften up the prisoners for interrogation, the precise forms of humiliation appear to have been shaped by the insecurities and prejudices of the reservists, who had been given no training in the Geneva Conventions. The reaction to the photographs in the Arab world was, predictably, fury and humiliation…”
The point here isn't that the president is stupid, but that he seems blithely indifferent to what is a huge setback to American goals and standing in the Middle East and indeed throughout the world.
There's an echo here of his response to the pre-9/11 warnings streaming up through the government bureaucracy. It hasn't landed on his desk yet, with an action plan, so what is he supposed to do? He talked to Rumsfeld who says he's on top of it. So what more can be done?
This isn't a matter of the aesthetics of leadership. It is another example of how this president is a passive commander-in-chief, how he demands no accountability and, because of that, allows problems to fester and grow. Though this may not be a direct example of it, he also creates a climate tolerant of rule-breaking that seeps down into the ranks of his subordinates, mixing with and reinforcing those other shortcomings.
The disasters now facing the country in Iraq -- some in slow motion, others by quick violence -- aren't just happening on the president's watch. They are happening in a real sense, really in the deepest sense, because of him -- because of his attention to the simulacra of leadership rather than the real thing, which is more difficult and demanding, both personally and morally. www.juancole.org
Abuse? Torture? From the official Taguba Report: (A repeat)
"Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee." http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
Rummy: “I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word."
Bush apparently has not even read the basics about this, let alone the Taguba Report. Undoubtedly he can’t understand that this further destroys the Administration’s position in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Troop Levels: Even though the options seem to be to either to get out or to drastically raise the number of troops, the official line is ‘same number, another 18 months or more.’
The decision acknowledges Iraq is much more unstable and dangerous than U.S. generals had hoped earlier this year, when they planned to cut the number of troops occupying Iraq to about 115,000…
The troops coming into Iraq will be more heavily armed than the forces they replace, with more tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored Humvees, said Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-US-Military.html?ex=1373169600&en=841e1fbaf514c3e3&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Pakistan: Failed Amnesty
The Christian Science Monitor report (Gretchen Peters) on Pakistan’s amnesty that had zero response.
Suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban militants hiding out in this country's semiautonomous tribal belt have ignored an April 30 deadline for foreigners to register with the government and lay down their arms.
Pakistani authorities this weekend quietly extended the amnesty offer, expressing hope that an extra seven days would convince the militants to live in harmony with the federal government here, and to cease attacking US troops over the Afghan border. Officials also encouraged local tribal leaders to vouch for the safety of those foreigners who cooperate.
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0503/p07s01-wosc.html
Cheney Under the Gun? While U.S. media do not portray Cheney as in such difficulty, others do. From a Brit (Andrew Buncombe):
Pressure mounts on Cheney over smears against diplomat and 'outing' of CIA wife; Row that began with 'IoS' interview deepens as Vice-President's officials are accused of serious felony
Vice-President Dick Cheney was under mounting pressure last night after he and his senior officials were accused of smearing a former ambassador and outing his wife as an undercover CIA officer in a deliberate act of revenge hatched inside the White House.
In a row which began with off-the-record comments he made to The Independent on Sunday last year, a former diplomat, Joe Wilson, said Mr Cheney oversaw a group of neo-conservatives who decided to try to damage his reputation. Because of Mr Wilson, the White House was forced to admit that a key claim. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=517287
Selective Service- Update:
More sounds as to the return of the Draft. From the Seattle Post Intelligencer (Eric Rosenberg)
The chief of the Selective Service System has proposed registering women for the military draft and requiring that young Americans regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche specialties needed in the armed services.
The proposal, which the agency's acting Director Lewis Brodsky presented to senior Pentagon officials just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34 years old, up from 25.
Some of the skill areas where the armed forces are facing "critical shortages" include linguists and computer specialists, the agency said. Americans would then be required to regularly update the agency on their skills until they reach age 35. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/171522_draft01.html
-R
