Friday, May 07, 2004
Iraq Nightmare: Sy Hersh:
Hersh, our Treasure, is doing follow-up to his story-breaking New Yorker article. Hersh’s many articles have chronicled the unethical, the outrageous, the incompetence, the lies of this Invasion/Occupation. decision to go to war based on falsehoods, exposed the Pakistan nuclear connection (w/ North Korea, amongst others), and broke this story.
From an interview w/ Bill O’Reilly:
First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Juan Cole, Middle East expert at the U. of Michigan, offers:
The prison abuse scandal has deeply harmed the political standing of the Americans, who have been campaigning against Muqtada and his movement on the grounds that they are thuggish and abuse people and harm Iraqi human rights. Hamza Henawi reports. ''For those who thought the United States respected human rights and championed freedom, the picture should be very clear now,'' Abbas al-Robai, a close al-Sadr aide, said about the Abu Ghraib scandal. Iraqis' aversion to the United States, he added, was somewhat reduced after Saddam's removal but ''now, it's stronger than any time before.'' '
Meanwhile, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned the Americans via al-Hayat not to invade Najaf. He said if the Americans would agree to leave Iraq, Iran would pledge to cooperate in ensuring stability as it had done, he said, in Afghanistan. www.juancole.com
Comment from Sidney Blumenthal:
Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It stretches from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantánamo to secret CIA prisons around the world. There are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq, 1,000 in Afghanistan and almost 700 in Guantánamo, but no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies to them is whatever the executive deems necessary. There has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union. The US military embraced the Geneva conventions after the second world war, because applying them to prisoners of war protects American soldiers. But the Bush administration, in an internal fight, trumped its argument by designating those at Guantánamo "enemy combatants". Rumsfeld extended this system - "a legal black hole", according to Human Rights Watch - to Afghanistan and then Iraq, openly rejecting the conventions. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1210588,00.html
Rummy-
Though the Acting Pres should’ve been impeached, (whoops, that’s Nader’s position), for now, the call is for Rumsfeld to resign. Some conservatives have deserted him, war advocate Tom Friedman called for resignation in Thursday’s Times.
Bush, though, has a quandary. The Democrats would hopefully use a confirmation process for a new Secretary to be an opportunity to review the whole sickening policy failure- the lies, the lack of preparation /incompetence, etc. So, Bush-Cheney may want to ‘tough it out.’
Republican congressional “action”
It was almost humorous to see the House of Representative being pushed to pass a resolution that would condemn “those few” who mistreated/abused/tortured Iraqi prisoners. So much for investigations!
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives hoped to pass a resolution condemning "those few" who mistreated Iraqi prisoners, said U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio, a member of the Republican leadership. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Z3KZOO0BQ5YS0CRBAEKSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=5051590§ion=news
White House and the Press
Former sports journalist Keith Olbermann, now of MSNBC’s Countdown, reports that the White House has sought to shape his program by dispatching questions that should be asked of his guest, Joseph Wilson, new author and former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA agent by as yet undetermined Administration figures. (The investigation continues.)
Olbermann asked Wilson if he was surprised that such interference had occurred.
No, I‘m not surprised at all. I tell you this administration has tried to manage and direct the news from the very beginning. As I point out in the book, they have made the lives of journalists very unpleasant. One journalist said he was afraid to go to print because he might end up in Guantanamo, which I take to be a metaphor for being cut out. Another journalist said, "I‘ve got kids in a private school and a mortgage to pay." So I‘m not surprised at all. http://www.suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2004_05_02_suburbanguerrilla_archive.html#108378937009777210
One Such Prisoner, Amer al-Saadi
Jonathan Steele of the Guardian chronicles what happened to one noteworthy captive. Amer al-Saadi is the British-educated scientist who had been Iraq’s link to the UN inspectors prior to the invasion. When captured, he stated that the Iraqis had destroyed its WMDs in the 1990’s. Since then he’s been held in solitary confinement.
Yet, astonishingly, Dr Saadi does not know of their change of mind or of the political fallout their views have caused in western countries. He is like a lottery winner who is the last person to be told he has hit the jackpot. Held in solitary confinement in an American prison at Baghdad's international airport, Dr Saadi is denied the right to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1209418,00.html
Expensive (Peaking) Oil-Krugman
Columnist Krugman begins to address the oil issue, pointing out that growing demand and peaking production means trouble. He doesn’t address what must be done to avoid major world-wide disruption, only noting that oil will be more expensive.
The collision between rapidly growing world demand and a limited world supply is the reason why the oil market is so vulnerable to jitters. Maybe we'll get through this bad patch, and oil will fall back toward $30 a barrel. But if that happens, it will be only a temporary respite.
In a way it's ironic. Lately we've been hearing a lot about competition from Chinese manufacturing and Indian call centers. But a different kind of competition — the scramble for oil and other resources — poses a much bigger threat to our prosperity.
So what should we be doing? Here's a hint: We can neither drill nor conquer our way out of the problem. Whatever we do, oil prices are going up. What we have to do is adapt. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=
To learn more about the realities of what’s coming, Terry Gross [Fresh Air] had a revealing interview with the informative Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Listen at http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml;jsessionid=LB3T141OQARLNLA5AINSFFQ?todayDate=current
Rising Cost of Utilities:
Buried in the business section of Friday’s Washington Post comes this warning of significant rises.
The electricity bills that arrive at many large offices, condominium and apartment buildings in the Maryland suburbs in August will carry stunning price increases of 30 to 50 percent, adding to the region's burden of higher energy costs, utility and industry officials confirm
The sharp rise in electricity rates is adding to a general escalation in energy prices over the past two years that has shown up most obviously at gasoline pumps. The cost of fuels purchased by U.S. consumers in March was 39 percent higher than in March 2002, with no immediate relief in sight, economists say. The reasons include war-fed tensions in the Persian Gulf, a stressed energy infrastructure of pipelines and transmission networks, and shrinking output from aging U.S. natural gas reservoirs. No corner of the energy market has escaped the rising tide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6893-2004May6.html
9/11 Oddity:Taped ‘testimony’ destroyed
What to make of this? Fodder for paranoia, or just incompetence?
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.
The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as "the Bat Cave" and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events a few hours earlier.
But officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
The tape had been made under an agreement with the union that it would be destroyed after it was superseded by written statements from the controllers, according to the inspector general's report. But the quality-assurance manager asserted that making the tape had itself been a violation of accident procedures at the Federal Aviation Administration, the report said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/national/06CND-TAPE.html?hp
Polls and Spin: It’s not been as bad as in 2000, but the double standard- the press being more kindly to Bush than Kerry, is most evident. Remembering that, one might be surprised to see that Kerry is not in such ‘trouble’ as has been portrayed.
The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll has had Kerry ahead for the past four days, unprecedented in these weeks. The Quinnipiac national poll has a dead heat, the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has Bush’s negatives at an all-time high, etc.
It’s only May.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB108380597660303603-IJjeoNmlaN3mpupanmGbquGm4,00.html http://www.dailykos.com/user/Paleo
Advice for Kerry:
(1) Stop targeting the tax cuts for those with incomes of $200,000 and up. Instead, chase the super rich, the top 1/10 of the top 1%.. That’s where the real theft has occurred. http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/pages/howthemegarich.html
(2) Iraq: If you mirror Bush’s ‘stay the course’, then you encourage support for Nader or any other alternative voice that recognizes this policy to be a failure; if you call for less troops, you are a ‘quitter’. So, recall 1952 when Eisenhower promised to end the Korean stalemate- ‘I will go to Korea’.- with incumbent Truman about 10 points below Bush’s level of approval, and opponent Stevenson trapped into merely echoing Truman.
Briefs:
Disney did Michael Moore a favor by refusing to release his new movie. However skillful his Fahrenheit 911 is (cataloguing the links between the Bushes and some notable families in Saudi Arabia, including the bin Ladens), it now has additional buzz.
Pat Tillman: A football player quits to go to Afghanistan and Iraq. Call him noble (not a typical footballer), call him naïve (fodder for the Bush policy based on lies), but don’t make him a hero. As his brother noted at his service, "Pat isn't with God. He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.'' And, as Charles Pierce (msnbc.com) noted, “iconization can be the worst form of forgetting.”
-R
Hersh, our Treasure, is doing follow-up to his story-breaking New Yorker article. Hersh’s many articles have chronicled the unethical, the outrageous, the incompetence, the lies of this Invasion/Occupation. decision to go to war based on falsehoods, exposed the Pakistan nuclear connection (w/ North Korea, amongst others), and broke this story.
From an interview w/ Bill O’Reilly:
First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Juan Cole, Middle East expert at the U. of Michigan, offers:
The prison abuse scandal has deeply harmed the political standing of the Americans, who have been campaigning against Muqtada and his movement on the grounds that they are thuggish and abuse people and harm Iraqi human rights. Hamza Henawi reports. ''For those who thought the United States respected human rights and championed freedom, the picture should be very clear now,'' Abbas al-Robai, a close al-Sadr aide, said about the Abu Ghraib scandal. Iraqis' aversion to the United States, he added, was somewhat reduced after Saddam's removal but ''now, it's stronger than any time before.'' '
Meanwhile, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned the Americans via al-Hayat not to invade Najaf. He said if the Americans would agree to leave Iraq, Iran would pledge to cooperate in ensuring stability as it had done, he said, in Afghanistan. www.juancole.com
Comment from Sidney Blumenthal:
Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It stretches from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantánamo to secret CIA prisons around the world. There are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq, 1,000 in Afghanistan and almost 700 in Guantánamo, but no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies to them is whatever the executive deems necessary. There has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union. The US military embraced the Geneva conventions after the second world war, because applying them to prisoners of war protects American soldiers. But the Bush administration, in an internal fight, trumped its argument by designating those at Guantánamo "enemy combatants". Rumsfeld extended this system - "a legal black hole", according to Human Rights Watch - to Afghanistan and then Iraq, openly rejecting the conventions. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1210588,00.html
Rummy-
Though the Acting Pres should’ve been impeached, (whoops, that’s Nader’s position), for now, the call is for Rumsfeld to resign. Some conservatives have deserted him, war advocate Tom Friedman called for resignation in Thursday’s Times.
Bush, though, has a quandary. The Democrats would hopefully use a confirmation process for a new Secretary to be an opportunity to review the whole sickening policy failure- the lies, the lack of preparation /incompetence, etc. So, Bush-Cheney may want to ‘tough it out.’
Republican congressional “action”
It was almost humorous to see the House of Representative being pushed to pass a resolution that would condemn “those few” who mistreated/abused/tortured Iraqi prisoners. So much for investigations!
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives hoped to pass a resolution condemning "those few" who mistreated Iraqi prisoners, said U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio, a member of the Republican leadership. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=Z3KZOO0BQ5YS0CRBAEKSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=5051590§ion=news
White House and the Press
Former sports journalist Keith Olbermann, now of MSNBC’s Countdown, reports that the White House has sought to shape his program by dispatching questions that should be asked of his guest, Joseph Wilson, new author and former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA agent by as yet undetermined Administration figures. (The investigation continues.)
Olbermann asked Wilson if he was surprised that such interference had occurred.
No, I‘m not surprised at all. I tell you this administration has tried to manage and direct the news from the very beginning. As I point out in the book, they have made the lives of journalists very unpleasant. One journalist said he was afraid to go to print because he might end up in Guantanamo, which I take to be a metaphor for being cut out. Another journalist said, "I‘ve got kids in a private school and a mortgage to pay." So I‘m not surprised at all. http://www.suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2004_05_02_suburbanguerrilla_archive.html#108378937009777210
One Such Prisoner, Amer al-Saadi
Jonathan Steele of the Guardian chronicles what happened to one noteworthy captive. Amer al-Saadi is the British-educated scientist who had been Iraq’s link to the UN inspectors prior to the invasion. When captured, he stated that the Iraqis had destroyed its WMDs in the 1990’s. Since then he’s been held in solitary confinement.
Yet, astonishingly, Dr Saadi does not know of their change of mind or of the political fallout their views have caused in western countries. He is like a lottery winner who is the last person to be told he has hit the jackpot. Held in solitary confinement in an American prison at Baghdad's international airport, Dr Saadi is denied the right to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1209418,00.html
Expensive (Peaking) Oil-Krugman
Columnist Krugman begins to address the oil issue, pointing out that growing demand and peaking production means trouble. He doesn’t address what must be done to avoid major world-wide disruption, only noting that oil will be more expensive.
The collision between rapidly growing world demand and a limited world supply is the reason why the oil market is so vulnerable to jitters. Maybe we'll get through this bad patch, and oil will fall back toward $30 a barrel. But if that happens, it will be only a temporary respite.
In a way it's ironic. Lately we've been hearing a lot about competition from Chinese manufacturing and Indian call centers. But a different kind of competition — the scramble for oil and other resources — poses a much bigger threat to our prosperity.
So what should we be doing? Here's a hint: We can neither drill nor conquer our way out of the problem. Whatever we do, oil prices are going up. What we have to do is adapt. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/07KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=
To learn more about the realities of what’s coming, Terry Gross [Fresh Air] had a revealing interview with the informative Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Listen at http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml;jsessionid=LB3T141OQARLNLA5AINSFFQ?todayDate=current
Rising Cost of Utilities:
Buried in the business section of Friday’s Washington Post comes this warning of significant rises.
The electricity bills that arrive at many large offices, condominium and apartment buildings in the Maryland suburbs in August will carry stunning price increases of 30 to 50 percent, adding to the region's burden of higher energy costs, utility and industry officials confirm
The sharp rise in electricity rates is adding to a general escalation in energy prices over the past two years that has shown up most obviously at gasoline pumps. The cost of fuels purchased by U.S. consumers in March was 39 percent higher than in March 2002, with no immediate relief in sight, economists say. The reasons include war-fed tensions in the Persian Gulf, a stressed energy infrastructure of pipelines and transmission networks, and shrinking output from aging U.S. natural gas reservoirs. No corner of the energy market has escaped the rising tide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6893-2004May6.html
9/11 Oddity:Taped ‘testimony’ destroyed
What to make of this? Fodder for paranoia, or just incompetence?
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.
The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as "the Bat Cave" and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events a few hours earlier.
But officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
The tape had been made under an agreement with the union that it would be destroyed after it was superseded by written statements from the controllers, according to the inspector general's report. But the quality-assurance manager asserted that making the tape had itself been a violation of accident procedures at the Federal Aviation Administration, the report said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/national/06CND-TAPE.html?hp
Polls and Spin: It’s not been as bad as in 2000, but the double standard- the press being more kindly to Bush than Kerry, is most evident. Remembering that, one might be surprised to see that Kerry is not in such ‘trouble’ as has been portrayed.
The Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll has had Kerry ahead for the past four days, unprecedented in these weeks. The Quinnipiac national poll has a dead heat, the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has Bush’s negatives at an all-time high, etc.
It’s only May.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB108380597660303603-IJjeoNmlaN3mpupanmGbquGm4,00.html http://www.dailykos.com/user/Paleo
Advice for Kerry:
(1) Stop targeting the tax cuts for those with incomes of $200,000 and up. Instead, chase the super rich, the top 1/10 of the top 1%.. That’s where the real theft has occurred. http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/pages/howthemegarich.html
(2) Iraq: If you mirror Bush’s ‘stay the course’, then you encourage support for Nader or any other alternative voice that recognizes this policy to be a failure; if you call for less troops, you are a ‘quitter’. So, recall 1952 when Eisenhower promised to end the Korean stalemate- ‘I will go to Korea’.- with incumbent Truman about 10 points below Bush’s level of approval, and opponent Stevenson trapped into merely echoing Truman.
Briefs:
Disney did Michael Moore a favor by refusing to release his new movie. However skillful his Fahrenheit 911 is (cataloguing the links between the Bushes and some notable families in Saudi Arabia, including the bin Ladens), it now has additional buzz.
Pat Tillman: A football player quits to go to Afghanistan and Iraq. Call him noble (not a typical footballer), call him naïve (fodder for the Bush policy based on lies), but don’t make him a hero. As his brother noted at his service, "Pat isn't with God. He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.'' And, as Charles Pierce (msnbc.com) noted, “iconization can be the worst form of forgetting.”
-R
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
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
