Commoners

Corp. Charles Graner, an MP at Abu Ghraib, will be charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for woefully failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, assaulting detainees, committing indecent acts, adultery and obstruction of justice. Adultery. Trust the military to put things in their proper perspective.

Bush supports edukashion: “See, if you can't read, these jobs of the 21st century are going to go begging.” Fortunately for Bush, his job was created in the 18th century.

On the CIA’s central role in the International Union of Torturers, and the American archipelago, read this (link will work until approximately next Friday):
http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

The Independent notes that the crown princes of Spain and Denmark have just both married commoners, which is what happens when you let them marry whomever they want. I wouldn’t mention this except as a hook for saying that the Danish prince married an Australian, and you can’t get any commoner than that. They met in a bar, but you knew that when I said she was an Aussie, didn’t you?

Probably coerced / I'm a survivor / snot from the nose of the Great Buddha

“OH YES, HERE IS JOHNNY, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME.”: Just what India needs: an Italian widow as prime minister. Still, better a corrupt dynasty than the Hindu-supremist BJP party, which ran on the slogan “India’s Shining,” presumably intended to refer to India’s recent economic success rather than to invoke the image of a Bollywood remake of the Stanley Kubrick film of the Stephen King novel, only this time with a lot more signing and dancing. One of the congresscritters who saw the prison photos, Rep Trent Franks (R-Ark), who doesn’t know much about art but knows what he likes, disapproved of a photo of a prisoner sodomizing himself with a banana. “My conclusion,” Rep Franks concluded, “is that that was probably coerced somehow.” Ya think? The London Times has a headline that encapsulates an irony I might have missed: “Rumsfeld Visits Prison at Centre of Storm to Tell Troops 'I'm a Survivor.'” Of course he never had to survive--for instance--being coerced, somehow, to sodomize himself with a banana. I think. The Indy article on this just drips sarcasm. One detail I hadn’t heard: when the US reopened Abu Ghraib, they hung a sign “America is a friend of all the Iraqi people.” I guess it’s better than Arbeit macht frei. I imagine we’ll find out that those troops survived an ideological screening process. Certainly their questions to him were at the trivial or Larry King level. Link, but don’t bother. Rummy also says that if it were up to him, he’d certainly release all the pictures, but those darned lawyers won’t let him. Lynndie England is claiming that she was ordered to pose for those photos. She’s not a callous sadistic bitch, she just plays one on television. The European Commission’s envoy to Slovakia, a Dutchman, suggested that Roma children be removed from their parents and placed in boarding schools so that they learn “normal social values.” Like racism. The Dutch tv interviewer asked about the morality of this; and Eric Van der Linden said that the parents could be given a few bucks to overcome their resistance. He has been reprimanded, but not fired. From the Telegraph: “Priests at one of Japan's most famous temples have taken steps to block the sale of a sweet marketed as the "Snot from the nose of the Great Buddha". Tuesday Texas is due to execute a paranoid schizophrenic, whose yelling during his trial caused him to be excluded from most of it, and who will not speak to his lawyer because he does not understand “hell law” (is there any other kind?) and thinks he has received a pardon from Satan, not understanding that Satan is no longer governor.

A voice of reason who’s killed, like, 20 dudes

Who is John Kerry?

Bush: “we're not backing down” from No Child Left Behind. It’s always a test of manhood with him, isn’t it?

Cheney defending stonewalling the inevitable release of more prison torture pics: “It's not just a matter of sort of whetting people's appetites to see sensational stuff here.” Congresscritters who saw them today said they’re icky, but no one mentioned pictures of guards doing “inappropriate things” with, to, near, on, under, over or next to a dead body.

We now know that the inquisitors were allowed to use sensory deprivation, “stress positions,” “dietary manipulation” (is that like eating with your fingers?), threatening with dogs, etc. Rummy says these techniques are ok because they’ve been checked by Pentagon lawyers. Yes, if you want to find out if something is wrong, you ask the most moral people you know. Lawyers. Who work in the Pentagon. Other legal opinions allow outright torture if the prisoner can be said to be in the custody of another country (does that include Guantanamo?).

One thing about all this focus on torture, is that we’ve completely forgotten all those soldiers getting killed.

Science at its finest.

General Wiranto, under indictment for crimes against humanity in East Timor, is, as you know, a candidate for president in Indonesia. Today he chose as his running mate the deputy chief of the Indonesian human rights commission. Very Oscar and Felix.

I wish some blogger would transcribe the Daily Show every day, but here’s a bit from Tuesday:

Jon Stewart: Stephen, what do you think about this idea that we are hearing from Rumsfeld, and now Sen. Inhofe, that the press was somehow irresponsible for releasing these photos of abuse?

Stephen Colbert: Jon, I agree entirely with Secy Rumsfeld that the release of these photos was deplorable, but these actions of a few rogue journalists do not represent the vast majority of the American media.

Stewart: The journalists did something wrong?

Colbert: I'm just saying those journalists don't represent the journalists I know. The journalists I know love America, but now all anybody wants to talk about is the bad journalists--the journalists that hurt America.

But what they don't talk about is all the amazingly damaging things we haven't reported on. Who didn't uncover the flaws in our pre-war intelligence? Who gave a free pass on the Saddam-al Queda connection? Who dropped Afghanistan from the headlines at the first whiff of this Iraqi snipehunt? The United States press corps, that's who. Heck, we didn't even put this story on the front page. We tried to bury it on "60 Minutes II." Who's on that--Charlie Rose and Angela Lansbury?

Stewart: Stephen, what do you think is at play here?

Colbert: Politics, Jon, that's what. Pure and simple. I think it's pretty suspicious that these tortures took place during a Presidential campaign. This is a clear cut case of partisan sadism. You know, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure those Iraqi prisoners want Bush out of office too. You know I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a pile of hooded, naked Iraqis has a job waiting for them in the Kerry Administration.

Camp Slappy??? / Outraged by the outrage

One of the private companies that DOD contracted with to provide inquisitors for Abu Ghraib, CACI International, also sells the Bush admin ethics training tapes.

Nick Berg’s death will be used as an excuse not to release the rest of the photos of Iraqis being tortured. One possible obstacle to this tactic: his parents, who are blaming not the guys who cut his head off but the US government, which arrested him for no particular reason (more to come on this, I’m sure) until they filed suit, at which time they released him and he disappeared. The story is odd in many details, as is his appearance in an orange prison-type jumpsuit in the film, and a 12-hour gap in the tape. And they’re lying about who beheaded him. The beheading-on-video thing, by the way, while new to Iraq, is common in Chechnya. Video-CDs of Russian soldiers being killed in that manner are common on the streets of Baghdad. For whatever that’s worth.

No one is giving the URL for the site with the video of the beheading. I wouldn’t have watched, but I want the option.

At the risk of joining a partisan version of the dump-Rummy movement, I “signed” the Kerry petition anyway.

Sen. Inhofe is outraged by the outrage. Well, I’m outraged by his outrage at the outrage. I don’t see what he could possibly say in response to that...

There is an undersecretary of defense for intelligence, did you know that? It’s a new position under the Bush admin. He’s Stephen Cambone, and he said today that military intelligence was given command of the facility of Abu Ghraib, but not the guards, so don’t blame him. Cambone was the one who sent the commandant of Stalag Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to instruct them in how to soften up prisoners. Both should be fired, but won’t be, any more than Rummy, who as Bush said yesterday is a very good secretary of state, yes you are, who’s a good secretary of state, you’re a good secretary of state, would you like a Milk Bone?

Speaking of stalags....Camp Slappy? (Kandahar)

Joe Conason asks an interesting question: “When George W. Bush grudgingly apologized for the crimes committed in our name, who believed that he was sorry?” Think about this seriously for a second--do any of you believe he was actually sorry? Answers on a postcard please.

I do enjoy a good parliamentary sketch. Monday the minister of defense went before Parliament. The Guardian’s sketchwriter, Simon Hoggart, said this: “Short of pulling a hood over his head and jeering at the size of his genitals, the Commons could not have been much more humiliating to Geoff Hoon.” “He became the latest minister to offer an apology - for this administration "sorry" seems to be the easiest word, whether for the Irish potato famine, slavery or the Dome.”

The sound of freedom

The world’s tallest building will be built in Dubai. One of the contractors bidding on it is Osama bin Laden’s father. In the business world, they call that vertical integration.

Putin appoints as deputy leader of the Chechnya the 27-year old son of the guy who was just blowed up. Ramzan Kadyrov is already in charge of the secret police and so is quite the shit in his own right. His appointment is thus a double fuck-you to Chechnya.

Another quote I missed, in February, Mark Kimmitt, M.M., asked by an Arab reporter about low-flying US helicopters frightening Iraqi children [for best effect, play Ride of the Valkyries while reading the following]:
“What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom. ... We would recommend that you tell the same thing to the children of Iraq, that that helicopter noise you hear above you ensures that they don't have to worry for the future.”
That could be taken two ways.

Tony Blair met with the Chinese premier today. Guess who got all the questions about human rights abuses?

Sometimes you err to one extreme: According to US News & World Report, last April (which could mean 2004 or 2003), the FBI accidentally put on the daily “threat matrix” one Don Emilio Fulci, a millionaire who formed a terrorist group. He turned out to be a character in a video game.

And sometimes you err to the other extreme: This was front-page news in the Sunday Times, but oddly no one else seems to have picked it up, not even British papers. You’d think it would have raised the shitstorm to end all shitstorms. I give it unedited.

Sunday Times (London)
May 9, 2004

Briton trained as 9/11 hijacker
Christina Lamb

A FORMER waiter in a Manchester curry house was recruited by Al-Qaeda and trained as a hijacker in preparation for the September 11 attacks.

The British Muslim was enlisted at a mosque in Oldham and attended terrorist training school in Pakistan. But he had second thoughts about his suicide mission as he flew to America and surrendered to the police after gambling away thousands of pounds given to him by Al-Qaeda.

The FBI’s counter-terrorism taskforce questioned the 29-year-old man for three weeks at Newark, New Jersey, in the spring of 2000. There, agents refused to believe his claim that terrorists were planning to fly passenger jets into buildings, even though he passed lie detector tests.

Other hijackers were entering the United States at about the same time and enrolling at flight schools to learn the skills that they would need, only 18 months later, to carry out the world's most audacious acts of terrorism.

The failure to investigate the Briton's claims was one of a startling series of missed opportunities that have emerged in inquiries by a US commission examining the September 11 attacks. His case has now been reopened amid wrangling between the FBI and British authorities.

The man, whose name is being withheld by The Sunday Times because his life is under threat from militants, was brought back to Britain in 2000 by two FBI agents and handed to British security officials at Heathrow airport.

He was then questioned by Special Branch and released. The FBI believes that the British authorities failed to follow up the case or to pass on any relevant intelligence. An urgent request to find the man after September 11 was ignored, although Special Branch officers have said they went back to him and took "appropriate action". The FBI has now asked for him to become a witness in its investigation.

Born in Britain, he grew up in his family's home village in Pakistan before returning to Oldham when he was 16. After sixth-form college he worked at a restaurant but became addicted to gambling, running up debts of £15,000.

He was approached at his local mosque by a recruiter who offered him money in return for carrying out "a job". He accepted, even when he realised what was involved.

"If your life has no colour and a mullah says you can be a hero by dying, why not?" he said in an interview. "I think there are a lot of frustrated Muslim youths in Britain who feel the same way."

He travelled to Lahore, where he was taught how to carry out a hijacking and was familiarised with the inside of a Boeing cockpit. "I knew they wanted me to do some kind of operation in which I would die, but my life was such a mess that in my mind I was already dead," he said.

"At that time, if they had told me to strap a bomb to my body and blow myself up I would have done it as easily as taking a glass of water to drink."

On his return to Britain he was given a further £5,000 and then sent to New York, where he was told that he would be met at the airport.

But he had got married and during the flight thoughts of his wife and baby helped to change his mind. He gave his contact the slip and instead of going through with his mission, he took a bus to Atlantic City, where he lost his money in casinos and then gave himself up.

Debt of gratitude

I commented a couple of days ago about Rumsfeld tarring the critics of torture with his own pragmatic amorality. I didn’t really expect the same from the Rev. Dubya, but: “Those responsible for these abuses have caused harm that goes well beyond the walls of a prison. It has given some an excuse to question our cause and to cast doubt on our motives.” An “excuse?”

Bush has clearly decided to keep Rumsfeld, praising him before journos. “Our nation owes you a debt of gratitude,” he said. Uh, yeah, the check is in the mail. Another example of Bush inflexibility creating a no-win situation. In office, Rumsfeld is damaged and damaging. But throw him out, and look weak and faltering. Either decision calls into doubt Bush’s judgment, which it wouldn’t if he were capable of even hinting that his judgment is less than god-like. Billmon notes that the decision to do, basically, nothing concrete to deal with the scandal means that the Bushies have to keep repeating how shocked, shocked, they are to find that gambling is going on, keeping the story going (and giving journalists the official permission they now seem to need to follow such stories) rather than downplaying it.

A letter in the WaPo suggests that the Pentagon’s request that CBS delay broadcasting the pictures was done because of the Supreme Court cases on indefinite detention of “enemy combatants,” depriving oral argument in those cases of some much-needed relationship to reality. The justices did ask what would prevent torture, and were told, “where the government is on a war footing, you have to trust the executive.”

Katherine Harris forgot to sign her absentee ballot in March’s local elections. Harris said she’s never had trouble before. “I know how important voting is.”

thepoorman.net clears up some of those nagging questions about responsibility (edited): “Here are some interesting facts about the President of the United States... 1) He is the President of the United States. 2) His job is to do the job that the President of the United States would do. ... He's not the National Brush-Clearer, he's not the Official Mascot of Sturdy American Manhood, and he's not a little kid you need to protect from mean partisan bullies. He's a grown man with all of the responsibilities of the President of the United States. ... A lot of people like Lindsey Graham are now complaining "oh, you just want to damage the President." That's not true, because it's impossible. Before I make up my mind about damaging a President, I want there to be a President. I want someone who is actually responsible for national policies and their successful execution. I have been led to understand that George W. Bush is handling this job these days, and often - when an aircraft carrier flight deck needs prancing on, for example, or when gay marriage threatens to rend the fabric of space time asunder - it appears that he may, indeed, be the President I am looking for. Sometimes, the signals are mixed, such as when he appeared in front of the 9/11 commission on the day the President of the United States was scheduled to testify, but had to be accompanied by Dick Cheney, who, as Vice-President of the United States, has been granted by the Constitution official responsibilities rivaling my own. And other times - times when things aren't going so well, usually - questions about what George Bush has done or is doing about things a President would be responsible for are met with scandalized protestations that we should not be politicizing the process. If George Bush is not, in fact, the President, he needs to stop squatting in the President's house.”

Isolated pockets of international hyperventilation

Cheney: “Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defence the United States has ever had. People ought to get off his case and let him do his job.” As for the 1st sentence, there have been 20 and it certainly isn’t the most savory group of characters ever.

For the second, have you ever heard such disdain for the notion of accountability, such contempt for Congressional oversight?

Karl Rove was the commencement speaker for the lucky graduating class of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Rove, the “boy genius” who never graduated from any of the 3 colleges he went to, received an honorary doctorate in the humanities. Rove has a true outsider’s perspective on the humanities. His advice to the...holy shit, 2,041 graduates, is when you go on job interviews, "don't act like you're smarter than the person you're interviewing with. Even if you are." No comment.

Sy Hersh has another piece on Abu Ghraib, with another photo. Drip drip drip. Can’t wait to see what the inappropriate thing was that someone did with or to a dead Iraqi. Hersh has a quote from Rummy from early 2002, describing complaints about US treatment of prisoners as “isolated pockets of international hyperventilation.” I’m sorry to say I missed it in ‘02.

A bomb snaps the puppet strings of the Chechen “president.”

Kamen at the Post has an amusing story about a DOD memo telling staffers that the prison abuse report is still considered classified, so they shouldn’t download it from the internet. It’s unclear when the Pentagon plans to declassify it.

The true nature and heart of America

AP: “Danes sent emergency relief to their Nordic neighbours in Norway yesterday to help eliminate a toilet paper shortage.” I dunno, seems to me the Vikings have become a little...dainty.

Perspective.

Specialist Sabrina Harman, responsible for the guy-standing-on-a-box-with-wires-attached-to-his-genitals thing, says the problem is they never showed her a copy of the Geneva Convention to read. Before going into the military, Harman was assistant manager of a pizza parlor. You don’t want to know what she did to employees who put too many pepperoni on the pizzas.

A French writer has produced a novel without verbs. 233 pages.

TORTURE, WHAT TORTURE? WaPo: “Mark Jacobson, a former Defense Department official who worked on detainee issues while at the Pentagon, said that at Guantanamo and the Bagram facility in Afghanistan, military interrogators have never used torture or extreme stress techniques. "It's the fear of being tortured that might get someone to talk, not the torture," Jacobson said. "We were so strict."” Strict may not have been the best word to use. But here’s my point: if you threaten torture, you are using torture, just like if you point a gun at someone and threaten to shoot them unless they do what you want, you are using a gun. The story is on Pentagon’s approval of a specific program of abuse.

Someone dragged out this Bush quote, 3/23/03, addressed to Iraqis: “I expect them to be treated, the POWs, I expect to be treated humanely, just like we're treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”

A Bush quote I missed: “I told His Majesty I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners. I told him I was as equally sorry that people seeing those people didn't understand the true nature and heart of America.”

Eric Idle comment on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: “I gather Mel doesn't handle the comedy too well, and he seems to totally ignore the singing opportunities of the crucifixion.”

The problem at that point was one-dimensional

The Daily Show’s take on Bush’s “not the America I know” semi-apology non-apology, is that maybe we should have invaded Iraq with that America, because the America we did use is something of a prick. Bush said that Iraqis “must understand” that this doesn’t represent America; they have 48 hours to understand this, or we’ll light them up again like a Christmas tree. The US shouldn’t be judged on the actions of a...well, we shouldn’t be judged on actions. It’s our principles that matter, our inspiring abstract notions. Just because torturing prisoners is something we did, doesn’t mean it’s something we would do.

Which is all pretty much what I wrote Wednesday, but funny.

Watched some of Rumsfeld’s testimony. Goes much faster if you don’t watch the questions, although I gather I missed an especially egregious performance by Holy Joe Lieberman. The Rumster wasn’t all that forthcoming, despite having been “softened up” by being dragged around on a leash, naked, with a hood over his head, by a young woman, but of course that’s just a typical Thursday for Rummy (it’s the optimal way to watch “Friends”).

I think he was the first Bushie to apologize to the tortured detainees themselves. Their response: “We can’t hear you. There are hoods over our heads.”

He says he won’t resign as long as he can remain “effective,” which is a completely amoral standard for what constitutes a resigning offence, the same sort of standard, in fact, that led to the use of torture to extract information. He said, “I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it.” Don’t know if anyone asked him who he was accusing of this, but they should have. I’d appreciate if he didn’t ascribe his own pragmatic amorality to his opponents’ reactions to the torture that occurred under his watch.

Actually, at times he seemed much more miffed about the fact that the pictures were released and the (illegally) classified report leaked, than about their contents. And he didn’t bother informing Bush because “The problem at that point was one-dimensional. It wasn't three-dimensional. It wasn't photographs and video.” The images mattered; the reality by itself wasn’t even worth mentioning (or maybe Shrub just doesn’t pay attention unless there are pictures; we know he can’t read). Rummy has admitted in as many words that had there been no pictures, nothing would have happened. Although so far the only thing that has been changed is that they put signs up all over Abu Ghraib: no cameras.

Rummy also said worse pictures were to come, without making it clear that they would come over his dead body--the Pentagon intends to sit on the pictures, but with CDs floating around, figures it won’t work. But the policy is still to stonewall.

The FDA, overruling its advisory panels for political reasons, decides not to allow the morning-after pill to be sold over the counter, claiming that under-age girls couldn’t be trusted to follow the instructions. The media (at least the NYT) failed to do the obvious and tell us what those instructions are, so I just had Long’s print me out a copy. Take a pill. Take another pill 12 hours later. If you can’t be trusted to follow those instructions, good luck raising a baby.

Divorce is legalized in Chile (in 6 months, anyway).

Maybe he's reading as fast as he can

More Abu Ghraib photos. There are over 1,000, but not here.

Today is National Prayer Day (and International Tuba Day)(no, sorry, that’s tomorrow), honorary chairman Oliver North. His theme is “freedom,” by which he means prayer in schools, the 10 commandments in public buildings, etc. North owes his freedom less to God than to an ill-considered grant of qualified use immunity by the Congress.

Pull-quote for Maureen Dowd’s column: “Fire Rummy, or make him read faster.”

The NYT reports that one of the Abu Ghraib guards who appears in the photos was recruited from a Pennsylvania prison renounced for beating....and humiliating...its prisoners. Whether this guy participated in that is kept secret by privacy laws, would you believe, although the fact that he beat and stalked his wife, threatened her with guns, etc, not so much. He had 3 restraining orders issued against him, but that raised no red flags for the US military, or indeed the state pen, which continued to employ him. Abu Ghraib isn’t the only American-run prison system with serious problems.

So Bush finally apologizes for all the, ya know, torture and sodomizing prisoners and such. He apologizes to the king of Jordan, in private, and then tells everyone he did so, because he just can’t bear to apologize in public. Why apologize to the king of Jordan? I’m not actually sure if it’s because Abdullah is a Muslim, and one Muslim is the same as any other Muslim to Shrub, or because Abdullah is an Arab, and ditto. “Hey, you’re from Muslimia, you must know Akbar...”

So if Rummy does have to go--heh, heh--who replaces him? You could ask the same question about Powell, and realize how badly this war has tarred the reputation of everyone associated with it. Condi can no longer be secretary of state--can you imagine the confirmation hearings? Wolfowitz of Arabia can’t be secretary of war. And so on. You can see this over in Britain, where Blair just appointed the guy who compiled the “dodgy dossier” on Iraq as the next head of MI6, to universal condemnation, for which, if you care, click.

Here’s a lovely Indy story: “Sexual slavery involving girls as young as 11 has grown into a massive industry in the Balkans, because of demand for their services from the 40,000 international peacekeepers from Nato and the United Nations in Kosovo.”

The UN voted 140-6 (4 Pacific Island states, Israel, and yes of course the US) that Palestinians have a right to sovereignty.

A guy is on trial in Australia for killing a guy, and eating his leg and penis. (Near Darwin, by the way) The trial answers the age old question: penis tastes like...chicken. If any of you already knew that, I don’t wish to know.

The America that I know

Bush goes on Arab tv, says the torture thing does not represent “the America that I know.” Like Bush knows anything about American from inside “The Bubble.” As we understand from a million stories, including this week’s, which you must have seen, about the World War II veteran turned away from a Bush rally after being questioned about who he’d voted for in 2000, the America that Bush knows has been very carefully screened (Kerry’s crowds are also screened, according to www.campaigndesk.org).

Of course the America that most of us are allowed to see is increasingly being carefully screened. Disney has blocked the release of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 911 (of course that name derives from a Ray Bradbury book about a future in which all books are burned to screen the people from subversive ideas) because Jeb Bush might retaliate against the tax breaks Disney World (speaking of carefully screened realities) gets. Really, that’s too much irony packed into a story for even my tastes. What isn’t clear to me is whether Disney can also block it being released by any other distributor.

Some of the rhetoric used by Bushies, focusing on “rules,” must be especially annoying to Iraqis. An example: Powell: "What they did was illegal, against all regulations, against all standards.” Considering that it was done to people who were herded into Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for Manzanar) according to no particular standards or regulations, this talk is downright insulting (even the internal US Army report says that 60% of the prisoners are innocent). It also focuses on how things work on paper, rather than in the real world. Iraqis know about nice words on paper meaning nothing; Saddam’s constitution (1990, I think) is quite a nice little document. Actually, all this language shows an un-Bushlike trust in rules and regulations. Of course that’s all he had to give the Iraqis, an investigative process, since he wasn’t willing to fire Rumsfeld or anyone else. In fact, he had nothing. He went to them, on Arabic-language satellite services, and didn’t bring so much as a bundt cake, much less someone’s head on a platter.

Sometimes a piece of rhetoric nags at me, and I’m not quite sure why, then 3 days later I’ll write 250 words on a six-word sentence uttered by Chimp Boy (see my 2002 essay on “No wonder I think they’re evil,” which anticipated that LA Times piece a few days ago on Bush’s management style by 2 years). Today, it’s the line from Bush and others that the Abu Ghraib pictures “do not reflect,” “do not represent” the American people (or as Bush characteristically put it, the “hearts” of Americans). All I can think is that it has something to do with the Bushies’ obsession, much stronger than Clinton’s, with image, or more accurately images, like the flight deck landing, the statue toppling and all the other carefully stage-managed moments, as if they’re constantly auditioning for a postage stamp. It was often said of Reagan that once he had made a good speech on a subject, he thought he was done; Bush, who is less fixated on words, for obvious reasons, thinks that once he has the right visual, he’s fixed in place the meaning of an event. Ironically, it was the two words Mission Accomplished that really turned Flight Suit Boy’s million-dollar photo op into a sick joke, and it was the photos of the prisoners that made torture into a live issue.

Bush also referred to torture and sexual humiliation as “mistakes,” as in “It is also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy everything is not perfect; mistakes are made.” You know how it is when you accidentally put a bag over a prisoner’s head and force him to masturbate. I suppose we should just be thankful that Bush finally found a mistake, although not one he made, of course, nor yet one he felt obligated to apologize for, or refer to in the active voice (I know it was Reagan who said “mistakes were made”--can anyone remember the context?).

There’s a good analysis of the Bush interviews at Slate. It notes that he spoke consistently from a position of arrogant superiority. “It is not Bush's place, especially when speaking humbly on Iraqi television, to claim that American soldiers are doing "great work on behalf of the Iraqi people." That's for Iraqis to decide.” “Too often, the president began a sentence with the words, "People in Iraq must understand ..." or "The Iraqi people must understand …" or "People in the Middle East must understand … ."” The piece also notes that the report on Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for the Black Hole of Calcutta)(I’m now officially retiring that one) was classified, although it is illegal to classify an official investigation into illegal conduct.

From the Guardian: “The US-led coalition in Afghanistan has distributed leaflets calling on people to provide information on al-Qaida and the Taliban or face losing humanitarian aid. The move has outraged aid organisations who said their work is independent of the military and it was despicable to pretend otherwise. Medécins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity which passed the leaflets to the Guardian, said the threat endangered aid workers. Fourteen aid workers were killed in Afghanistan last year and 11 so far this year.”

Guess what, there’s more film. I haven’t seen it, but here’s Robert Fisk’s description: “As a wounded Iraqi crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air attack. "Someone wounded," the pilot cries. Then he received the reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him." As the helicopter's gun camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the wounded man, vaporising him in a second.” Evidently the footage has been shopped around for 2 weeks, and only ABC, the CBC and Canal Plus in France have run it. Shooting a wounded man is a war crime under the Geneva conventions. The incident occurred last December. There is no evidence in the film that the 3 dead men were doing anything remotely suspicious.

Technically different from torture / The system works

Tom Tomorrow has posted something on his blog that only occurred to me after turning off the computer after sending my last, juxtaposing the Powell quotes about our troops being in Iraq “to help, not hurt” with his assertion in his My Lai massacre cover-up report that “relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent”.

Today Rumsfeld referred to the actions at Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for Bastille) as “un-American.” Un-American, huh? That shows a singular lack of understanding of American history, to say nothing of our penal system. Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was on McNeil-Lehrer today on this very subject, but was not asked to enlighten Rummy as a Southerner who “used to think the Klan was all right until I learned they smoked marijuana.” Rumsfeld also said that what happened was abuse, “which I believe technically is different from torture... And therefore I’m not going to address the torture word”. So that’s all right then.

Condi Rice told Al-Jazeera today, “We have a democratic system that holds people accountable for their actions...The president guarantees that those who did that be held accountable.” Uh, yeah, funny thing, about that accountability: we found out today that a soldier was convicted for shooting a prisoner to death last September (the shooting, I think, it’s unclear when the court martial was), and was discharged from the service with no jail time. And a prisoner was killed by a private contractor in Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for Lubyanka), for which no action was taken because the military didn’t have jurisdiction (it can lock up thousands of Iraqis it just grabbed off the street, but when one of them is killed suddenly they’re worried about jurisdiction). As Rummy said today, “The system works.” Actually, given that neither he, nor Gen. Myers, nor Shrub, have actually bothered reading the report on the abuse-not-technically-torture, which was released in February, “work” may not be a word you want to use, you lazy sanctimonious [word that would make Chris’s work computer pull up its petticoats, squeal loudly, and faint]. A bunch of other prisoners died in custody (25, including in Afghanistan), some “natural causes,” some still under investigation. Britain has had 6 prisoners die.

Berlusconi has become the longest-serving Italian prime minister since World War II. Too bad he’s a crook.

You can just see the body language between them

Ah, Germany, Germany: “German plans to fine firms that fail to hire apprentices will also apply to legalised brothels. The legislation drafted by the Social Democrats and their coalition partners, the Greens, will fine companies that do not have one apprentice for every 15 workers.”

According to the WaPo, the secret of eternal life has been discovered. Either that, or their headline writer is an idiot. “Breastfed Babies Less Likely to Die, Study Finds.”

Ok, this is hilarious, now the Pentagon is actually denying that it pulled the Marines out of Fallujah, something every reporter could see happening, and handed it over to Gen. Saleh. Saleh has now been replaced with another of Saddam’s generals, who they think was exiled by Saddam, but again, they’re not entirely sure. But that’s ok, because the Marine commander says, “He is very well thought of, very well respected by the Iraqi general officers. You can just see the body language between them. And if I had to guess at this point, when we have this brigade fully formed, he demonstrates a level of leadership that tells me that he could become that brigade commander.” Body language. Good enough for me.

I’m curious: when Bush gave Sharon’s little plan his 100% approval, did he realize that Sharon intended to put it to a vote of Likud party members? Because a) leaving the fate of Palestinians up to a vote of right-wing Jews would have looked bad no matter how the vote went, b) such a vote was obviously always intended to fail, meaning that Bush got out-smarted yet again. The alternative is that Sharon didn’t tell him, and was allowed to get away with it, which is almost worse.

To help, not to hurt

Massachusetts is working on a new death penalty. The important thing about it, which has so far gone unremarked, is that it calls for a higher standard of proof than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It requires no doubt. To me this sounds like an admission that the criminal justice system in Mass. isn’t good enough.

CBS delayed its report on Abu Ghraib 2 weeks (and who knows how much longer it would have waited had Sy Hersh not been about to break the story). Anyone tortured in that period should sue Dan Rather. There were actually hints of torture here and there on the web over the past few months, and of course that military report, but it took just one idiot with a camera to make sure attention would be paid. I’m telling you, investigative reporters are all very well in their place, but the moron who wanted some pics to show around the bars back home did more good accidentally than Hersh did.

The problem in Abu Ghraib was structural: military police guarding the prisoners were put under the authority of military intelligence, which made human rights violations inevitable and predictable. Anyone could have looked at the organizational chart and said “Here there be torture.” What I’m saying, to make it very plain, is that what happened was so predictable that it had to have been intended, except maybe the pyramid thing. Contra Monty Python, everybody expected the Spanish Inquisition. The command structure pretty much proves it, to a life-imprisonment-in-Massachusetts standard if not to a death-penalty-in-Massachusetts standard. If more proof were needed, we’re told that several Grand High Inquisitors were sent from Guantanamo to instruct the MPs in the finer points.

Colin Powell says, “the acts of a few, I trust, will not overwhelm the goodness coming from so many of our soldiers,” who are there “to help, not to hurt.” No response of mine could be as sarcastic as that happy horseshit deserves.

Sharon responds to his “defeat” in a referendum, which he did not have to call, of the 2% of the Israeli population that is the Likud party membership by promising to scale back his plans to slightly reduce settlement activity while permanently grabbing a large proportion of the West Bank. Quel surprise! It’s now official: George Bush was rolled. I knew it when the referendum was announced. How naive are all those news sources claiming Sharon was “rebuffed” or “snubbed” by his party? Did anyone think Likud would vote to withdraw from Gaza? Of course not.

Kerry doesn’t have to be rolled, he rolls all by himself. "The security of Israel is paramount. . . . We will also never expect Israel to negotiate peace without a credible [Palestinian] partner. And it is up to the United States in my judgment to do a better job of helping the Arab world to help that partner to evolve and to develop." Now we have to wait for some sort of evolutionary process, developing Palestinians that can fit into 40% of the space? So it’s not really “targeted killing,” it’s just helping along the Darwinian process, survival of the fittest and all that?

Like, what am I going to miss? The chicks?

AP headline: “Yale Taps Kidney Expert to Lead Med School.”

From a London Times story on the Fallujah pull-back: “"Yeah, goodbye Fallujah!" a California gunner exclaimed brightly. "Like, what am I going to miss? The chicks?"”

Diebold machines are banned from California, finally, but The Nation suggests that the racial purge of the electoral rolls we saw in Florida is now mandatory for the other 49 states.

Seymour Hersh on Abu Ghraib. You’ll be surprised to hear it’s worse than the photos suggested.

On the other hand, the pictures of British troops beating and urinating on an Iraqi are very probably fakes.

I’m not entirely sure the military actually knows who that Iraqi was to whom they just turned over Fallujah. Mark Kimmitt, M.M., says, “I don’t know his background.” Yesterday I said he showed up in his old uniform. It was a Republican Guard uniform. Which is a subtle hint about his background. Incidentally, generals are not exactly uncommon in Iraq; Saddam gave out promotions instead of money and there are...I just read the figure a couple of days ago...something absurd like 10,000 generals. (Later:) Hah, I called that one, all right. The Sunday NYT says that Pentagon officials wrongly told reporters yesterday that Saleh wasn’t even ever in the Republican Guard, and today the Pentagon pretty much had to admit they’re not sure who this guy is.

Secretary of War Rummy Rumsfeld: “It's never been an easy road to go from a dictatorship to a free system. It's bumpy. It's hard. And it isn't going to be a straight path.” Insert your own penis joke here.

OK, so we invaded Iraq to disarm it of weapons it didn’t have, and this week we can’t even get Fallujans to give up rocket launchers they certainly do have. I’m sure there’s an ironic juxtaposition in there somewhere, but it’s allergy season, so you’ll have to come up with that for yourself too.

Really, who would have guessed we’d be this bad at occupation. I mean, how many countries has the US occupied over the decades? You’d think all that experience would have been worth something. And, to quote Patrick Cockburn in the Sindy, “Saddam should not have been a hard act to follow.” He notes how completely the US has backed itself against a wall. “Despite having an overwhelming military force available to take Fallujah and Najaf, the US did not dare do so. It had become evident even in Washington that to crush the resistance in either city - not a difficult task against a few thousand lightly armed gunmen - would spread rather than end the rebellion.” Cockburn has another detail about Gen. Saleh--his car waved the Old Coke flag.

As you will no doubt have heard, Deputy Secretary of Warmongering
Paul Wolfowitz gave a figure for dead US soldiers in Iraq that was low by 200. Every member of the military and their families should be demanding his head. Personally, I think we should make it easier for him to keep track, by carving a notch on his person for each one, while Ted Koppel reads out the name. I’d tune in to Nightline to watch that.

That's not the way we do things in America

In how many speeches did Bush bitch about Saddam building palaces while his people starved? And then he diverts money from restoring clean water to build a huge embassy. And in general diverts billions from rebuilding to “security.” Iraq will have the best-guarded rubble in the world.

AP: “The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money”. Since 1994 it has collected $8m in fines from people who sent money to Cuba or traveled there, and $9,425 in fines for financing terrorism. Which makes you wonder just how low the fine for financing terrorism is.

Bush, today: “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.” He said that while standing next to the whitest world leader he could find, Paul Martin of Canada. No reporter has yet asked Bush to tell us who all these racists are. You will also have noticed his evident belief that Americans are all white (“skin color the same as ours”). Also, self-govern is not a word.

Indy: “Police in Macedonia said yesterday that the killing of seven alleged terrorists two years ago was staged to win US support and that the victims were simply illegal immigrants.” Pakistanis.

Bush says about those photos of Iraqi prisoners being made to play Twister, “That's not the way we do things in America.” It wasn’t in America, you idiot, it was in a funny place called The Rest of the World.

And today, pictures are also released of British soldiers beating and peeing on Iraqis prisoners.

The story still hasn’t picked up much in America. The Guardian, which often has a “what the newspapers say” section about various events, has a “What the US papers don't say” piece about this. Evidently the Pentagon pressured CBS not to run the pictures; I’d like to hear more about that.

So we’re sending in the commandant of Stalag Guantanamo to put things right in the vast detention camp that is Iraq. And we’re sending in that Saddam general, who showed up in his old uniform, and was cheered by Fallujans. OK, NOW are we finished?

If we had something to hide, we would not have met with them in the first place

Something called Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 8 ABCs (and 60 other tv stations) and is evidently run by partisan Republicans, has decided not to run the Nightline Friday, which will consist solely of Ted Koppel reading the names of dead soldiers. Sinclair claims the program promotes a political agenda. I repeat, it’s just the names of dead soldiers. Evidently, acknowledging that people are dying is something only Democrats do, or something. Sinclair points out that Koppel’s not reading the names of people killed in terrorist attacks, now is he? Huh, what do you say to that, Mr. Liberal Media Guy, huh, huh?

Gosh, did I say “at least they’ve picked a new flag” for Iraq? Well, two words: New Coke. It’ll be replaced soon.

The state of Nebraska hired a convicted thief to run its anti-smoking program. He was actually serving his sentence at the time, and was paid $55,200 a year, which is more than the warden gets. Insert obvious joke here about him being paid in cigarettes. Oh, and he did illegal stuff at this job too.

Turns out there won’t be a Ronald Reagan University after all, which relieves me of the duty of making a lot of tedious jokes about it.

If you haven’t seen those pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and whatnot, here they are. They’re POWs, guys, not posable action figures. Does anyone know what word was written on that POW’s chest?

Oh, this is good: “One of the six, Sergeant Chip Frederick, who plans to plead innocent, asserted on CBS that he and his colleagues had had no proper guidance from commanders on how to treat the prisoners.” But you figured the human pyramid thing was just about what they had in mind? I’m guessing “Chip”’s previous job was stacking cans in a supermarket. More seriously, the Chipster reports that they were never told about the Geneva Convention. More seriously still, private “contractors” were put in charge of interrogations. And to cap it off, they were using an old Saddam prison known for torture. Incidentally, those “rape rooms” Bush likes to talk about--one (male, mid-teens) prisoner was indeed raped. By one of the mercenaries, so he hasn’t been charged with anything, ‘cause he’s not under military jurisdiction--his punishment, if any, will be left up to his company.

THE CHARLIE McCARTHY HEARINGS: Bush finally met the 9/11 Commission, saying, “If we had something to hide, we would not have met with them in the first place.” OK, “in the first place”? This was about the 23rd place, after months and months of stonewalling. Also: behind closed doors, with no recording made, and nobody present allowed to talk about it. No, nothing to hide. (Personally, I think they didn’t even bother asking him any questions, they just all sat around for an hour and got drunk. Under the circumstances, what would have been the point of doing anything else?) On showing up with Cheney: “I think it was important for them to see our body language, as well, how we work together.” Yeah, that was the important thing.

Follow-up: The Utah woman who refused her doctors’ orders to have a C-section is sentenced to probation, including 100 hours community service (what does that have to do with anything?), is expelled from the state, and, although the surviving baby was given up for adoption and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have any other children, is ordered to take parenting classes, which just seems cruel.

All people are seeing is the minaret hit by American fire and falling

So how many North Koreans do you think really did lose their lives trying to save portraits of the Dear Leader, or searched for them before trying to rescue their own children? I mean if you had a really good collection of porn, that’s one thing... Seriously, I don’t know what’s worse, the possibility that this isn’t a myth or that the NK media are holding this up as model behaviour.

The UN Security Council votes to ban the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. Who knew that was ok before? Well, Pakistan obviously, which was only coaxed into voting for it when told that it wasn’t retroactive.

The US is trying, again, to get Qatar to censor Al-Jazeera. According to a US official quoted in the NYT, “All people are seeing is the minaret hit by American fire and falling.” I repeat, sometimes a minaret is just a minaret.

The Supreme Court has decided to allow partisan gerrymandering, stating in a case re Pennsylvania that no “judicially manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged”. That’s lawyer-speak for We’re too lazy to figure out how to do our job, so we won’t, or possibly it’s lawyer-speak for, As long as the R’s are winning, it’s all good.

The US is claiming that most of the insurgents in Fallujah are former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. Also, the US will pull back from Fallujah and send in a new force, the Fallujah Protection Force, led by former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. I’m sure there’s a flaw in all this somewhere.

Military Moron Kimmitt says “there is still a determined aspiration on the part of the coalition to maintain a ceasefire and solve the situation in Falluja by peaceful means,” and says that the air strikes which are reported to have destroyed at least 25 buildings were “limited,” targeting only naughty buildings.

A lot more sovereignty than they have right now

Rumsfeld press conference today, about Chalabi: “well, on anyone, we're not in the position of ruling people in or ruling people out, and have no intention to. Clearly, there's a vetting process that's taking place by the United Nations representative, Mr. Brahimi, and by the Iraqi people and by the Iraqi Governing Council, and certainly by the Americans. And they all look at these people, and at some point there will be consensus developed, I suppose, in a manner possibly not dissimilar from that we saw in Afghanistan, where there may be some meetings, whether they're public or formal as opposed to informal or not, but the names will be up, and someone will rise to the top and – some bodies, plural, undoubtedly, given the nature of the country. And that then will be the interim government for a period, until the constitution is fashioned and then elections are held sometime next year or the year thereafter, I guess.”

Oddly enough, those are almost the exact words of Madison’s first draft of the Constitution.

And John “Death squads? What death squads?” Negroponte told the Senate, in his confirmation hearings, that after June 30, Iraqis will have “a lot more sovereignty than they have right now,” which is also taken from that draft: “We the People, in order to have a lot more sovereignty than we have right now...”

At those hearings, Chris “Death squads? What death squads?” Dodd and Barbara “Death squads? What death squads?” Boxer said that they would put aside their previous differences with Negroponte over his role in Reagan’s Central American policy out of personal respect for him.

Kamen at the WaPo asks the question, ambassador to what? Normally, the receiving country has to agree to an ambassador before they are confirmed by the Senate.

Possibly that’s just one more thing that happened in the black box that is Iraqi governance. I’ve been meaning to ask for some time, who is on the Iraqi Governing Council right now? One was killed, several are supposed to have resigned, but if they were replaced, I’ve never heard about it. And how many haven’t set foot in Iraq in, say, the last 3 months? And where are they?

Expert guidance or assistance

BLOOPER REEL: Mark Kimmitt, military moron, on why the US, which just called in air strikes to level a minaret in Fallujah (and don’t be gettin’ all Freudian about it either, sometimes a minaret is just a minaret), is the real victim: “Many times it would appear that these provocative actions on the part of the enemy are intentionally inspired for the purposes of trying to get a tank into the camera lens, an airplane in the camera lens.” The sneaky bastards!

China rules out full, free elections in Hong Kong again, but I have yet to hear it explain exactly what’s wrong with universal suffrage. The electorate for the chief executive will remain 800 people.

Iraqis holding 3 Italian hostages (security guards) name their conditions: an anti-war protest to be held in Rome within 5 days. I don’t think they quite get what civil protest means, do you? Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a demand from hostage-takers. Anyone?

We may not know what form the fake Iraqi government will take in a little over 2 months, what powers it will have if any, and who will be in it, but at least they’ve picked a new flag. White, 2 blue stripes, 1 yellow stripe, a crescent. Gone are the words “God is great,” possibly because a year of American occupation would make anyone question just how great She really is. The blue stripes represent the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the yellow represents the Kurds, possibly all being drowned in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

From a piece by Peter Galbraith in the NY Review of Books:

While telling Iraqis it wanted to defer constitutional issues to an elected Iraqi body, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority could not resist trying to settle fundamental constitutional issues in the interim constitution. The US government lawyers who wrote the interim constitution, known formally as the Transitional Administrative Law, made no effort to disguise their authorship. All deliberations on the law were done in secret and probably fewer than one hundred Iraqis saw a copy of the constitution before it was promulgated. To write a major law in any democracy—much less a constitution—without public discussion should be unthinkable. Now that Iraqis are discovering for the first time the contents of the constitution, it should come as no surprise that many object to provisions they never knew were being considered.

Roman Polanski is filming a version of Oliver Twist, with Ben Kingsley as Fagin, the charismatic head of a gang of impressionable...uh oh.

The joint patrols in Fallujah have been postponed, perhaps because the Iraqis found out that not only were they not getting any body armor, but they were going to *be* the body armor for the Americans.

Note to the president of Westminster College: what, you’re surprised that Dick Cheney made a political attack on John Kerry rather than giving a dispassionate analysis of geopolitics? Dick Cheney? Dick Fucking Cheney??

NYT article on a trial of a Saudi computer sciences grad student in Idaho under provisions of the Patriot Act criminalizing the provision of “expert guidance or assistance” to terrorist groups. It was of course meant to deal with expert assistance relating to anthrax or dirty bombs, but the Saudi helped a Muslim group put up a website. Period. So would it be “expert guidance or assistance” if someone were to send out the URL of that website?
http://www.iananet.org/