Monday, May 03, 2004
Latest Re-Deployment: Cuba as greater threat than Osama!
We know from David Cay Johnston that the IRS was shifted from auditing the very wealthy to targeting those of modest income. Then we hear via that we pulled many resources from Afghanistan to prep for invading Iraq, one year prior to the invasion. Now we learn of the Treasury’s shifting resources, that the blocking of financial resources of terrorists took a back seat to investigating Cuban embargo violations. In fact, five times as many agents were assigned to work on Cuba than to track Osama bin Laden’s resources. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040429/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terrorism_financing
What’s Happening, Iraq: Abusive Treatment of Prisoners. Oh, how we have lost the battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Iraqis. And, 11 American deaths reported.
Seymour Hersh on the Abuse
A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
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
Was the Abuse and Isolated Incident? They’ve known about these incidents since January, yet have taken no action against the officers who were identified or against the intelligence personnel who looked the other way. And then there’s the unaccountable civilian “contractors” who joined in. More at: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Prisoner-Abuse.html?ex=1084507887&ei=1&en=2c6bd9fb2a5755db
The Guardian’s Luke Harding, reporting from the prison, notes that these reports were not new to local Iraqis.
For the families standing in the dusty car park of Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, the revelations of torture and abuse came as no surprise. Every morning, relatives of Iraqi detainees inside the US prison, just west of Baghdad, gather in the hope that their loved ones might be released. They rarely are.
The photos of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees may have provoked outrage across the world. But for Hiyam Abbas they merely confirmed what she already knew - that US guards had tortured her 22-year-old son Hassan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1208408,00.html
How to Deal With Terrorists
Michael Ignatieff had a thoughtful article in Sunday’s NY Times’ magazine. He calls for us to go beyond merely advocating for or against the “war on terrorism”.
When democracies fight terrorism, they are defending the proposition that their political life should be free of violence. But defeating terror requires violence. It may also require coercion, secrecy, deception, even violation of rights. How can democracies resort to these means without destroying the values for which they stand? How can they resort to the lesser evil without succumbing to the greater?
Putting the problem this way is not popular. Civil libertarians don't want to think about lesser evils. Security is as much a right as liberty, but civil libertarians haven't wanted to ask which freedoms we might have to trade in order to keep secure. Some conservative thinkers, like those at the libertarian Cato Institute, come down the same way but for different reasons: for them, the greater evil is big government, and they oppose measures that give the executive branch more power. Other conservatives, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, simply refuse to believe that any step taken to defend the United States can be called an evil at all.
But thinking about lesser evils is unavoidable. Sticking too firmly to the rule of law simply allows terrorists too much leeway to exploit our freedoms. Abandoning the rule of law altogether betrays our most valued institutions. To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war. These are evils because each strays from national and international law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without due process. They can be justified only because they prevent the greater evil. The question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions. If we can't, any victories we gain in the war on terror will be Pyrrhic ones. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/magazine/02TERROR.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Bremer, 2001 on Bush / Terrorism:
In 2001, Bremer too had noticed that the Administration was not concerned with terrorism.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said in a speech six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration was "paying no attention" to terrorism.
"What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this,'" Bremer said at a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001.
Bremer spoke at the conference shortly after he chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan body formed by the Clinton administration to examine U.S. counterterrorism policies.
The remarks drew attention on the same day Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before the Sept. 11 commission to explain the precautions they took to prevent a terrorist attack after taking office in January 2001.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not comment on the Bremer remarks directly.
But he said, "The actions we took prior to Sept. 11 demonstrate that we took the terrorist threat seriously. The first major foreign policy directive was a comprehensive, aggressive strategy to eliminate al-Qaida." http://info.mgnetwork.com/printthispage.cgi?url=http%3A//ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAOIRPJNTD.html&oaspagename=www.tbo.com/ap/story.htm&image=tbologo80x60.jpg
Setback for Sharon?
Sharon’s party is not happy with his plan for withdrawal from some settlements while making others “permanent.” While some think the weekend vote endangers the Sharon government, Conal Urquhart of the Guardian sees Sharon as secure.
Last night Ariel Sharon was smarting from defeat, but the vote is unlikely to derail his plan for disengaging from the Palestinians.
Instead, he may well adopt the pragmatist's approach to democracy: if the first vote goes against you, call another one that won't. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1208545,00.html
Bush, I:
Catch this gambit? Now it’s claimed that if you oppose him, you’re a racist!
Bush: “There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.”
And with his approach in Iraq criticized by some political opponents in the United States and by some foreign governments, the president suggested that racism fuels the belief of some who don't think Muslims can handle self-government.
''You know, there's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free, can self-govern," Bush said. ''I reject that. I reject that strongly."
The president continued on that theme, saying, ''I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/05/01/on_anniversary_bush_defends_carrier_speech/
Bush, II: The Regular Guy Tour
When George W. Bush gets on a bus Monday to head into the American heartland for a series of "Ask the President" events and even a pancake breakfast or two, he will be making a deliberate statement to voters: I am not an imperial president.
Unlike all his fundraising trips around the country over the past many months, aimed at intersecting with as many wealthy donors as possible, the president's bus tour seeks to generate maximum media exposure and project a regular-guy likeability that his campaign believes contrasts favorably with his Democratic opponent, John Kerry. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0503/p01s01-uspo.html
Anti-Kerry talk
The media have regular articles on Democrats criticizing the campaign. It’s difficult to distinguish between helpful criticism (in the press?) vs the customary Democratic process of trashing their own…while the Republicans run a tight, loyal ship. Last time I noted James Ridgeway’s piece in the Village Voice. Here’s one from syndicated columnist Cal Thomas which reminds us of Hillary’s availability.
Often when John Kerry is referred to in the media, it is with the modifier "presumptive" before the word "nominee." Kerry has enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination in Boston in July, but will the delegates stay with him if it appears by summer, or even sooner, that he can't beat President Bush?
Democrats' hatred of the president is so strong they might be willing to return to the days of the smoke-filled room and stage a coup in order to run a stronger candidate in November. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas1.asp
[Another] Environmental Statement
Carl Pope and Paul Rauber, in the Globe:
In only three years of Bush oversight, one-10th of our nation's surface area -- 234 million acres -- has been stripped of environmental designations that protected these lands from exploitation and destruction.
America is at a fork in the road -- one path leads backward toward the 19th century, the other forward into the 21st. The Bush administration is intent on taking us backward. But its brand of willful negligence has been bested before, and our union of air breathers and water drinkers, not to mention students, can beat it again. After that, the future will be ours to make. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/01/backsliding_on_the_environment/
-R
We know from David Cay Johnston that the IRS was shifted from auditing the very wealthy to targeting those of modest income. Then we hear via that we pulled many resources from Afghanistan to prep for invading Iraq, one year prior to the invasion. Now we learn of the Treasury’s shifting resources, that the blocking of financial resources of terrorists took a back seat to investigating Cuban embargo violations. In fact, five times as many agents were assigned to work on Cuba than to track Osama bin Laden’s resources. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040429/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terrorism_financing
What’s Happening, Iraq: Abusive Treatment of Prisoners. Oh, how we have lost the battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Iraqis. And, 11 American deaths reported.
Seymour Hersh on the Abuse
A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:
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
Was the Abuse and Isolated Incident? They’ve known about these incidents since January, yet have taken no action against the officers who were identified or against the intelligence personnel who looked the other way. And then there’s the unaccountable civilian “contractors” who joined in. More at: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Prisoner-Abuse.html?ex=1084507887&ei=1&en=2c6bd9fb2a5755db
The Guardian’s Luke Harding, reporting from the prison, notes that these reports were not new to local Iraqis.
For the families standing in the dusty car park of Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, the revelations of torture and abuse came as no surprise. Every morning, relatives of Iraqi detainees inside the US prison, just west of Baghdad, gather in the hope that their loved ones might be released. They rarely are.
The photos of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees may have provoked outrage across the world. But for Hiyam Abbas they merely confirmed what she already knew - that US guards had tortured her 22-year-old son Hassan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1208408,00.html
How to Deal With Terrorists
Michael Ignatieff had a thoughtful article in Sunday’s NY Times’ magazine. He calls for us to go beyond merely advocating for or against the “war on terrorism”.
When democracies fight terrorism, they are defending the proposition that their political life should be free of violence. But defeating terror requires violence. It may also require coercion, secrecy, deception, even violation of rights. How can democracies resort to these means without destroying the values for which they stand? How can they resort to the lesser evil without succumbing to the greater?
Putting the problem this way is not popular. Civil libertarians don't want to think about lesser evils. Security is as much a right as liberty, but civil libertarians haven't wanted to ask which freedoms we might have to trade in order to keep secure. Some conservative thinkers, like those at the libertarian Cato Institute, come down the same way but for different reasons: for them, the greater evil is big government, and they oppose measures that give the executive branch more power. Other conservatives, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, simply refuse to believe that any step taken to defend the United States can be called an evil at all.
But thinking about lesser evils is unavoidable. Sticking too firmly to the rule of law simply allows terrorists too much leeway to exploit our freedoms. Abandoning the rule of law altogether betrays our most valued institutions. To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war. These are evils because each strays from national and international law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without due process. They can be justified only because they prevent the greater evil. The question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions. If we can't, any victories we gain in the war on terror will be Pyrrhic ones. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/magazine/02TERROR.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Bremer, 2001 on Bush / Terrorism:
In 2001, Bremer too had noticed that the Administration was not concerned with terrorism.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said in a speech six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration was "paying no attention" to terrorism.
"What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this,'" Bremer said at a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001.
Bremer spoke at the conference shortly after he chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan body formed by the Clinton administration to examine U.S. counterterrorism policies.
The remarks drew attention on the same day Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before the Sept. 11 commission to explain the precautions they took to prevent a terrorist attack after taking office in January 2001.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not comment on the Bremer remarks directly.
But he said, "The actions we took prior to Sept. 11 demonstrate that we took the terrorist threat seriously. The first major foreign policy directive was a comprehensive, aggressive strategy to eliminate al-Qaida." http://info.mgnetwork.com/printthispage.cgi?url=http%3A//ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAOIRPJNTD.html&oaspagename=www.tbo.com/ap/story.htm&image=tbologo80x60.jpg
Setback for Sharon?
Sharon’s party is not happy with his plan for withdrawal from some settlements while making others “permanent.” While some think the weekend vote endangers the Sharon government, Conal Urquhart of the Guardian sees Sharon as secure.
Last night Ariel Sharon was smarting from defeat, but the vote is unlikely to derail his plan for disengaging from the Palestinians.
Instead, he may well adopt the pragmatist's approach to democracy: if the first vote goes against you, call another one that won't. http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1208545,00.html
Bush, I:
Catch this gambit? Now it’s claimed that if you oppose him, you’re a racist!
Bush: “There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.”
And with his approach in Iraq criticized by some political opponents in the United States and by some foreign governments, the president suggested that racism fuels the belief of some who don't think Muslims can handle self-government.
''You know, there's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free, can self-govern," Bush said. ''I reject that. I reject that strongly."
The president continued on that theme, saying, ''I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/05/01/on_anniversary_bush_defends_carrier_speech/
Bush, II: The Regular Guy Tour
When George W. Bush gets on a bus Monday to head into the American heartland for a series of "Ask the President" events and even a pancake breakfast or two, he will be making a deliberate statement to voters: I am not an imperial president.
Unlike all his fundraising trips around the country over the past many months, aimed at intersecting with as many wealthy donors as possible, the president's bus tour seeks to generate maximum media exposure and project a regular-guy likeability that his campaign believes contrasts favorably with his Democratic opponent, John Kerry. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0503/p01s01-uspo.html
Anti-Kerry talk
The media have regular articles on Democrats criticizing the campaign. It’s difficult to distinguish between helpful criticism (in the press?) vs the customary Democratic process of trashing their own…while the Republicans run a tight, loyal ship. Last time I noted James Ridgeway’s piece in the Village Voice. Here’s one from syndicated columnist Cal Thomas which reminds us of Hillary’s availability.
Often when John Kerry is referred to in the media, it is with the modifier "presumptive" before the word "nominee." Kerry has enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination in Boston in July, but will the delegates stay with him if it appears by summer, or even sooner, that he can't beat President Bush?
Democrats' hatred of the president is so strong they might be willing to return to the days of the smoke-filled room and stage a coup in order to run a stronger candidate in November. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas1.asp
[Another] Environmental Statement
Carl Pope and Paul Rauber, in the Globe:
In only three years of Bush oversight, one-10th of our nation's surface area -- 234 million acres -- has been stripped of environmental designations that protected these lands from exploitation and destruction.
America is at a fork in the road -- one path leads backward toward the 19th century, the other forward into the 21st. The Bush administration is intent on taking us backward. But its brand of willful negligence has been bested before, and our union of air breathers and water drinkers, not to mention students, can beat it again. After that, the future will be ours to make. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/01/backsliding_on_the_environment/
-R
