It's not just me: BBC NEWS: Americas: Campaign column: Is no news good news?: "A curious thing is happening with Iraq. It is disappearing from the front pages in the United States." In recent days, when I open the web pages of the local and national commercial news media, I find... stories about baseball. Wildfires. Local politicians running for office. Chess champions in trouble.

The media in the U.S. is all about short term, domestic news. It's so hard to really look at the bigger picture, with this style of reporting. It's as if there are no problems in the Sudan right now. Or Iraq. Or anywhere beyond the new Will Smith movie, which gets front billing on the splash page of our local daily.

"Will Smith: more important than the Sudan or the economy."

The Scandal that Hasn't Broken: Women and Children Abused in Iraq

Back on July 8th, Bob Harris at thismodernworld.com linked to a German television report on children detained and abused by U.S. troops in Iraq. He provided a link to a machine-translation of a story summary (which isn't very successful in terms of smooth language), and to the video report provided by Report Mainz's July 5th feature, which provides firsthand witness accounts, including one of a child being abused to break his father's resistance to interrogation.

Harris was sure that, with this story breaking abroad and the rest of the world was beginning to express outrage, it would break big in the U.S. soon.

Have you heard of this story? No? Even though UNICEF, the International Committee for the Red Cross, and Amnesty International all provided information to the report, the mainstream U.S. press has been silent.

The story is available in English, but still in the foreign press. In Norway, Aftenposten's July 6th feature, "Norway protests child abuse in Iraq" (aftenposten.no) is one of the most detailed early translations of Norway's response to the revelations. The Norwegian government is demanding the release of all underage prisoners and an immediate end to the abuse. From Aftenposten:

In one case, a girl around age 15 was said to have been shoved up against a wall by a group of male soldiers who proceeded to manhandle her. They then started ripping off her clothes, and she was half-naked before military police broke in.

In another case, a boy aged 15 or 16 was stripped naked and sprayed with water before being placed in an open truck and driven around in the cold night air last winter. He then was covered with mud.

Information Clearinghouse now offers, "More Than 100 Children Imprisoned, Report Of Abuse By U.S. Soldiers," a translation of the July 4th 'der Spiegel' summary report. (informationclearinghouse.info)

Try a news search for this on one of the standard news search engines. I did so this morning, and got articles about Abu Ghraib is 'cleaning up its image,' and how different things are there now.

Next, try a search of the web. It's in the blogs. Individuals are doing research, and posting the links they find. Among the best: back on the 10th, The Leftcoaster asked "Will Our News Media Cover the Abu Ghraib Children's Story?" in a good, alarming summary of what was available as of that day, citing stories in English in the foreign press dating BACK TO MAY. Follow all of her links!

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[I sent links to the talented Edward Gomez, World Views columnist. He translates press accounts from multiple languages, and can likely provide even better coverage. I planned to send a link to Jeff Morley, World Opinion Roundup columnist at the Washington Post, but a reader pushed him on it, and his editor has linked back to thismodernworld at the bottom of this discussion. We'll see if he follows up on it.]

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I asked a similar question about the women abused by U.S. custody back on May 12th. The military's own internal investigation had come out May 4th, and mentioned soldiers having sex with female captives -- the soldiers had even taken photographs of such incidents.

Despite the source being the military itself, and the widespread dispersal of the report, I'm still waiting for mainstream coverage.

Focus shifts to jail abuse of women, by Luke Harding in Baghdad (guardian.co.uk, 05/12/04) has revelations which surely should have come out at about the same time as those about male prisoners.

Senior US military officers who escorted journalists around Abu Ghraib on Monday admitted that rape had taken place in the cellblock where 19 "high-value" male detainees are also being held.

Asked how it could have happened, Colonel Dave Quantock, who is now in charge of the prison's detention facilities, said: "I don't know. It's all about leadership. Apparently it wasn't there."

Journalists were forbidden from talking to the women, who are kept upstairs in windowless 2.5 metre by 1.5 metre cells. The women wailed and shouted.

They were kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, Col Quantock said, with only a Koran.

The Other Prisoners by the same author, dated May 20, 2004 (and inexplicably reprinted under a different title and date, What About The Women Prisoners? at countercurrents.org) is more substantive and alarming.

Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and photographed naked female detainees. The Bush administration has refused to release other photographs of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although it has shown them to Congress) - ostensibly to prevent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, but in reality, one suspects, to prevent further domestic embarrassment.

Earlier this month it emerged that an Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention centre after being arrested last July. Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who investigated the case and found it to be true, said, "She was held for about six weeks without charge. During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey."

This very worthwhile article continues to note that various women are being held illegally due to marriage or other relationships with men wanted for questioning, and that other detainees who had been raped can't speak about it outside the prison, since they will be killed by their families. The victim mentioned in Taguba's report is already believed to have been killed by her family, according to an Amnesty International spokesperson quoted.

[Yes, you should be reading the Guardian.)

I saw a pro-war poster stuck to the side of a dumpster on my way home today. It's a rare thing: pro-war folk tend not to be artsy.

It showed a skull-faced soldier toting heavy weaponry, and said something like, 'it takes more than tie dye and love beads to win the peace.'

At least, I think it was a pro-war poster. The image looked like it was from the Vietnam war. And we all know how well heavy weaponry brought about peace there.

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Yahoo! News - A Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq:

"As of Wednesday, July 14, 883 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq (news - web sites) in March 2003, according to the Defense Department. Of those, 653 died as a result of hostile action and 230 died of non-hostile causes."

Oh-oh. Maybe he was correct: Freedom (Harpers.org)

2002 Week of Feb 5: CNN aired a video of Osama bin Laden in which he gloated that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people and the West in general into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

A bigger pattern emerges, from Harpers.org:

[Reuters] Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq's new puppet government, signed a law giving him the power to declare martial law and ban seditious groups. Allawi hinted recently that national elections, which are scheduled for January 2005, might be delayed. [New York Times] President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was planning to delay parliamentary elections once again, and federal [New York Times] authorities in the United States were discussing the possibility of postponing the November elections in the event of a terrorist attack. [CNN] Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, warned that Al Qaeda might be planning an attack to disrupt the November elections, but he said that he was aware of no specific threat or details about the alleged plan. The color-coded threat level remained unchanged, and many observers suspected the announcement was made to distract attention from Senator John Kerry and his new running mate, Senator John Edwards, whom President Bush accused of being too inexperienced.

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't just read it: USATODAY.com - Counterterrorism officials look to postpone elections: "Newsweek said DeForest Soaries, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, wants Ridge to ask Congress to pass legislation giving the government power to cancel or reschedule a federal election. " (usatoday.com)

Why? An unspecified threat of terrorism near the elections.

Which, if it's unspecified, doesn't mean that it wouldn't affect rescheduled elections, does it? No.

Democracy: messy, difficult, and not our best export. Perhaps you remember the quiz listing the countries we've bombed in the last 50 years which have failed to become democracies. I was reflecting on that and considering the state of our own democracy. We aren't the priciple's best spokesperson.

Have you seen how low voter turnout is? Have you seen the plentiful evidence of corruption in the current system? Have you read the scandals associated with people who have been financing our government officials and persuading them to pass laws in their own favor? The way democratically elected governments abroad have always been replaced my repressive, U.S.-friendly regimes with U.S. covert assistance? At the moment, the system we have is distant from the ideals upon which it was founded, and more people seem to stop believing and participating in it all the time.

All the while, there is the active attempt to undermine our democratic freedoms with big-invasive-government laws which should be anathema to our beliefs, but which are being promoted by both lawmakers and panicked citizens alike. (toledoblade.com) It seems like, in a moment of national crisis, it is democracy that we would cling to and defend, rather than attempt to disassemble.

Those who would surrender liberty for security deserve neither.
-- Ben Franklin

It doesn't jibe that we are "fighting for freedom" without intending to protect freedom.

After some reflection, I don't think that's actually what ordinary, non-profiteering war promoters are fighting for. I have a modest theory.

Many of the folks quoted in newspapers are demanding 100% obedience to our leaders, offering to sacrifice the freedoms on which our country was to operate, decrying the accurate reporting of news and of the occupation's lack of progress, and providing awkwardly self-contradictory expressions of fealty to the country, right or wrong. Especially wrong. But what makes our system different from a monarchy or totalitarian state if we demand such complete and unquestioning obedience? What can we hope to accomplish through blind loyalty?

I think the answer is: a complete lack of responsibility for world events, combined with the self-satisfaction of absolute "truth."

If you look at Americans, especially those with fundamentalist leanings, you see a demand for certainty: announcements that there is only one way to live life, that there is only one church that has the right god and right message, that there is only one way to be patriotic, that there is only one way to serve your country, that there is only one nation that enjoys the one god's protection, we're number one, we have the highest standard of living of anyone (well, with numerous exceptions), our way is the best and only way... They're looking for an absolute model. The ambiguity of the real world - lying Presidents, soldiers who commit atrocities, persecution of brown people - is too much for them. They want ONE answer, and reassurance that it is the ONLY answer.

A colleague who has proposed that the American public would be well suited by a return to a monarchy system isn't far wrong. Monarchies are much better with absolutes: chosen by the one god to rule, demanding loyalty on par with the one correct god, always divinely inspired, always correct. It's a great model of ONE way - and excuses citizens from having to do the hard work required to support a democracy.

Democracy IS hard work. You need to stay informed of the issues! Choose between many candidates! Consider running for office! Vote! Attend hearings! Chime in on key subjects to be sure your representatives know your view! Organize your community! It's so much work! Obedience, especially the unquestioning kind, is FAR easier. Just sit and know that higher powers have decided it all for you, and you just have to obey.

Obedience and faith in absent ideals provides a consistent compass. Facts need not apply. It's nicer to think we're the richest nation on earth than work to solve poverty in our neighborhoods. It's nicer to think other nations are just jealous when we wield power for undemocratic purposes, and they don't benefit. It's nicer to think that we've overwritten the 10 commandments as a reward for our inherent greatness than that we need to really consider our actions. Doubt can be painful. Doubt can be divisive. It's harder to be convinced that your nation is absolutely good when you know what your government is really doing in your name - such knowledge creates some responsibility to repair the system. Which requires effort. It is MUCH easier to deny that there are problems, and to claim that everything is fine. When bad news surfaces, plead ignorance.

("Death camps? We had no idea. But we know we're number 1!")

An emotional need for an absolute position explains the zeal and defensiveness with which people defend undemocratic (and even un-Christian) activities our nation has embarked upon, which they don't understand and can't explain. They're already in their absolute construct, which in some cases is modeled on fundamentalist (absolutist) beliefs. They're just waiting for the rest of us to join in, are mystified that we haven't, and are hoping that we'll be quiet soon.

Unnatural causes: the impact of Abu Ghraib on families. It looks like ALL of the deaths of all prisoners in US custody should be investigated by an impartial, non US military entity.

A Death at Abu Ghraib: Family: Iraqi Was Murdered in Prison; U.S. Cites Natural Causes (npr.org, 07/09/04) provides the story of a family which suffered the loss of their family patriarch.

Their story isn't unique: the US military raided their home at night and took the men away. ("A soldier told the family that a neighbor had turned them in as suspected insurgents, for a $500 reward.") They were abused. Ultimately, none of the men abducted and held for more than a month were charged with any crime. This story has been repeated ever since the end of the war, and is sadly familiar.

In this case, the tribal leader of the family was tortured, denied medical care, and then died. The military "investigated" without investigating, concluding that the (not released) autopsy report concluding that heart failure was the cause of death, therefore the circumstances surrounding the death aren't relevant, and so this man died of 'natural causes.'

Refusal to provide care isn't considered "natural." But this shouldn't come as a surprise. The U.S. prison system is rife with abuse, and the prison agencies are found guilty of denying care again and again. The same mentality that dehumanizes convicts here, justifying all manner of abuse, has been exported. Some of the prison guards in Iraq were prison guards in the U.S., and some were at prisons were abuse had occurred and created domestic scandals. (phillyimc.org)