Interesting: the U.S. seems to be able to provide very specific information on how many "insurgents" it has killed, but can NEVER provide ANY information on how many civilians have died.

Such selective knowledge doesn't get remarked upon much in the press.

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Najaf faces fresh US attack: Smoke rises near the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, Fighting continues near to the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf (bbc.com, 08/23/04). "Large plumes of thick, black smoke have been seen rising close to a holy Shia shrine in the city of Najaf where militia fighters are holed up...."

Talks have ended; U.S. forces have been attacking since last night.

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Reports on Sadr's forces, the Mehdi Army (bbc.com, 08/11/04) describe many of the fighters as "young and desperate Shia in Iraq's urban slums" rather than as political radicals. This has gotten some interesting play, but usually as an aside.

The idea that not everyone has benefitted from the occupation hasn't really been examined in the mainstream press.

(The idea that all Iraqis are NOT treated equally by every ruling government, foreign or domestic, is never critically discussed, either. It would aid international understanding of why some people loved Saddam Hussein and others hated him, and of why U.S. forces weren't greeted with flowers when they moved into Hussein's old palaces. We could use some added understanding...)

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BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Shia Iraq violence: Your reaction has a lot of interesting commentary from around the world on the current situation. (Note that the question is framed about violence by Shias, not by the U.S. military.) There's a VERY wide range of opinions, which makes it appear that many of the writers are getting wildly different information from those immediately before or after. I'm unsure if it's the news media's slants in different regions, or very selective listening/reading.

It's interesting to see the range of thoughts. It varies from 'Sadr is a terrorist' to 'Sadr is standing up to the corrupt U.S. puppet regime,' from 'he's a thug' to 'he's a thug, but he's defending our home,' to 'I blame everything on the Iranians,' to the curious spectacle of people from democratic countries calling for summary executions without trial to help move forward democratic reforms (!!).

A response I liked:

The answer is that not all Iraqis are the same. America is a friend to some and an enemy to others. Sadr himself is a friend to some Iraqis and a mortal enemy to others. In the end this situation is about power, not morality. Sadr wants a future for Iraq as a theocracy, preferably with himself in charge. Bush wants a future for Iraq as a state both friendly to and heavily influenced (if not actually controlled) by America. Neither side is particularly concerned how many innocent Iraqis are killed in the process. -- Colin Wright, UK

I don't like this report merely because it takes some middle-moderate position: I like it because it doesn't categorize any broad category of people as evil.

Based on what I've read, I suspect Sadr _is_ a thug, who is fighting a puppet government sponsored by a self-interested U.S. Administration bent on controlling other people's oil. Both sides are using violence and patriotic rhetoric to support their positions. Both sides are doing wrong: the U.S. doesn't belong there, and Sadr shouldn't monopolize a public shrine that doesn't belong to him (though I understand the purposes of the tactic). So no one comes out smelling great in this scenario.

I tend to be more critical of the U.S., because the U.S. shouldn't be there - if the U.S. wasn't there, this entire scenario wouldn't be occurring. There's no reason to be an anti-occupation insurgent if there's no occupation. If Sadr's group didn't believe in the puppet government, and the puppet government didn't have the option to force its will on its people with U.S. firepower, it's more likely a compromise could be reached, since the relative power available to the groups would be more symmetrical. Or the government could take the time to establish itself and then deal with its opposition as an actual representative government, which would give it legitimacy it currently lacks.

It appears, from the events at the government meeting intended to establish the next step in government, that many are concerned about Najaf and want Sadr's (or his supporter's) participation in government, even though many object to his methods. THAT is a democratic, inclusive sentiment. Unfortunately, it appears that the issue will be resolved through overwhelming U.S. force, rather than debate and ballots.

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The main reason that the U.S. claims to be there, as a stabilizing force, doesn't seem to be working out convincingly. Instead, it is buttressing those that sympathize with its particular method of establishing 'order,' and violently clashing with those that don't. It aids collaborators, and shuns others. This is a traditional and logical tactic used by occupying powers, but it creates divisions and erodes the long-term credibility of occupied allies.

I don't think the U.S. intention is to taint its allies, but it's happening.

The U.S. needs to get out.

Glimmer of hope in Najaf: Delegation Arrives in Najaf to Meet With Sadr (washingtonpost.com, 08/17/04). Iraqis sympathetic to the situation the people of Najaf find themselves in, and hoping to prevent a bloodbath, refocused the national conference on the siege of Najaf. They've drafted a document proposing amnesty for Sadr's militia, turning Sadr's group into a legitimate political party, and ending the standoff at the Imam Ali Mosque, returning it to common Iraqi use rather than the exclusive use of Sadr's group.

Contrast this with the interim figurehead Allawi's 'whatever the U.S. wants is fine' position.

I don't think I previously posted a link to this: IRAQI WAR CASUALTIES, 3/21 - 7/31/03. Raed Jarrar, Director of this survey, is the same Raed that Salam Pax, 'the Baghdad Blogger,' was writing to when he titled his blog "dearraed.blogspot.com." (Pax is on a "hiatus" to edit a film.)

The Baghdad Burning blog pointed me back to that link. River doesn't make the current situation sound any better than today's other reading has...

More news which suggests the U.S. isn't making much progress on winning over people by attacking Najaf: Aljazeera.Net - Iraqi 'human shields' flock to Najaf (english.aljazeera.net, 08/16/04): "Around 2000 Iraqi civilian 'volunteers' have formed a human shield around Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf as US-led forces beseige the city."

Aljazeera.Net - Najaf officials quit in protest (english.aljazeera.net, 08/13/04):

Sixteen of Najaf's 30-member provincial council resigned in protest at the US-led assault on [] Najaf.... The council's resignations came several hours after the deputy governor of Najaf resigned in protest against the US offensive on the city.... On Thursday evening, the director of tribal affairs at the Iraqi Interior ministry announced his resignation through Aljazeera and said he could no longer work with the interim government in good faith given the "carnage and barbaric aggression of the US-led forces in Najaf."

This doesn't bode well.

Understatement of the day, from Informed Comment : 08/01/2004 - 08/31/2004:

I think the Americans are gradually incurring feuds with all the major clans of Iraq, and this is undesirable.

Voices in the Wilderness is alarmed that the U.S. "has told civilians to leave Najaf, in what appears to be the creation of a free fire zone, where anyone who moves becomes a target." This is near the the Imam Ali Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam (both Shia and Sunni).

It sounds like something very bad is about to happen.

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This audio file discusses the Imam Ali Mosque in more detail: NPR : Najaf's Holy Shiite Mosque and the 'Valley of Peace' (www.npr.org, 08/12/04). It is an interview with Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan.

Professor Cole maintains an excellent blog called Informed Comment at juancole.com. Excerpt from his 08/16/04 entries:

Likewise, CNN appears to have been the victim of a second-hand psy-ops campaign, insofar as it is referring to the guerrillas as "anti-Iraqi forces." The idea of characterizing them not as anti-American or anti-regime but "anti-Iraq" was, according to journalist Nir Rosen, come up with by a PR company contracting in Iraq. Nir says that they were told that no Iraqis would fall for it. So apparently it has now been retailed to major American news programs, on the theory that the American public is congenitally stupid.

I liked that comment for obvious reasons, but this one is even better:

The Allawi government forced all independent journalists to leave Najaf on Sunday, so that the only reporting we will have on operations there will come from journalists embedded with the US forces.

This week I watched the documentary film Control Room, which was filmed during the Iraq war. It provides an inside view of Al Jazeera, the most popular satellite channel in the Arab world, as it broadcast from U.S. Central Command.

The Bush Administration LOATHES Al Jazeera. The documentary provides clip after clip of Donald Rumsfeld, ranting, including a rant about how Al Jazeera must be planting women and children in front of homes bombed by U.S. air strikes to actually imply that women and children live in such homes in Iraq. Really. He said that. There's video. It's just amazing.

So it's worthwhile to see how the war looked from the people who worked at and ran the station that Rumsfeld (not the most credible person in the Bush Administration) loves to hate.

News flash: Arab people work there! And they have opinions! This includes those people who consider themselves to be or to have been Iraqis! THAT, in and of itself, is almost completely lacking from American reporting: what Iraqis thought about the war. (Aside from Ahmed Chalabi. (wikipedia.org) And he doesn't really count.) One reporter, who has a 'western' wife and previously worked for the BBC, tries to spread comprehension, using his experience in 'western' and Islamic cultures to explain to a young, go-team military official what the actual perception of U.S. actions is in the Arab world.

A senior manager of Al Jazeera is interviewed extensively. He comes across as somewhat arrogant, but provides some very interesting commentary. He remarked, for example, that once the war is 'won,' the details of exactly how it was 'won' will be shunted aside. History will be reduced solely to the fact of victory, and everyone will rush on to the next topic.

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My partner reminded me of my favorite John Madden quote, "Winning is the best deodorant." Madden meant it in a sport context, but it certainly applies here. Prior to the U.S. war in Vietnam (which the Vietnamese call 'the American War'), there was a generic assumption that all wars were won cleanly and fairly by the victor -- that famous truism about victors writing the history books notwithstanding. I've been waiting for the modern mass media, and especially the use of video, to change that.

I don't think I fully comprehended the nationalism of the available media outlets, however.

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'Control Room' provides a valuable point of view, and is worth seeing.

While the previous TMW link provides a link to the Washington Post article that inspired it's excellent diatribe, I should provide a link as well:The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story by Howard Kurtz (washingtonpost.com, 08/12/04), along with my personal favorite quote:

'We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power,' DeYoung said. 'If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said.' And if contrary arguments are put 'in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far.'

Must read: This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow: August 08, 2004 - August 14, 2004 Archives entry entitled "No shit, Sherlock" on another media company's belated revelation that they shouldn't have been such zealous cheerleaders in the run up to the war based on untrue information.

There is strong language for well-deserved emphasis.

Favorite comment: " ...[the parrot-like media is] desperately afraid of being labeled 'unpatriotic' by a handful of fringe lunatics who not only don't deserve the attention they get, but in a sane world, would not deserve to be pissed upon if they were on fire."

It's intended as a sinister image, but I find it aesthetically pleasing: BBC's illustration for "US moves to crush Shia uprising". (bbc.com, 08/12/04).

The rocket propelled grenade gracefully echos the shape of the dome and minaret.

This Modern World (08/08/04): "Using the threat of terrorism to scare voters: all of September will be 'National Preparedness Month'":

It's three years after 9/11, and less than three months before an election, and now we get a National Preparedness Month.

And yes, let's ask Bush and Tom Ridge the simple question: what the hell do these people think the previous 35 months were?

Here's an excellent item that I failed to publish when it appeared back in mid-May: The Moral Case Against the Iraq War by Paul Savoy (thenation.com, 05/13/04), on the topic of belated rationalizations for the invasion of Iraq:

Talking about the world, or at least Iraq, being 'better off' avoids confronting the civilian carnage caused by the war. As the late Robert Nozick cautioned in his classic work on the moral basis of freedom, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, we should be wary of talking about the overall good of society or of a particular country. There is no social entity called Iraq that benefited from some self-sacrifice it suffered for its own greater good, like a patient who voluntarily endures some pain to be better off than before. There were only individual human beings living in Iraq before the war, with their individual lives. Sacrificing the lives of some of them for the benefit of others killed them and benefited the others. Nothing more. Each of those Iraqis killed in the war was a separate person, and the unfinished life each of them lost was the only life he or she had, or would ever have. They clearly are not better off now that Saddam is gone from power.

(If you have an account with the Onion for "premium" services, see also "Dead Iraqi Would Have Loved Democracy", theonion.com, 03/26/03.)

When does a foreign government have the right to decided that YOUR death is an acceptable price for what it believes is the best interests of your fellow citizens in a sovereign nation? Never, obviously.

The article picks apart several of the pseudo-humanitarian war justifications belatedly asserted. It's worth a read.

Another excerpt from War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning on that last comment about history:

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as lie. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the lie that led to it.

It's just a darned good book.

As if history was made to be forgotten, not learned from

Several years ago, I read a great book by historian Gerda Lerner called Why History Matters. One of the intriguing chapters dealt with the historical revisionism that the Nazis engaged in after their rise to power. The story they were trying to sell the German people, of their hidden greatness and their culture's sabotage by outside forces, didn't mesh with available historical information. So the Nazis had to revise all the school textbooks to take out all the foreigners and German Jewish citizens who had contributed to the greatness of their culture. Through such purges, they were able to sell people on their story more completely.

The story gave me flashbacks to architecture history, in which Egyptian kings of the later eras had the names of their predecessors carved out of the monuments documenting their accomplishments, and replaced them with their own. Or of the Spaniards reaching the new world and burning the written Codices of the locals, and then insisting that the locals had no culture or civilizations because they had no books, a "problem" which the Spaniards could fix... by supplying books about how great the Spaniards are, while depriving the locals of means to recall their independence with historical detail.

History gives you legitimacy. We are here! We have been here! Textbooks in the U.S. are a political battleground for legitimacy: the groups that are overrepresented don't want to give up the space they monopolize, because it might give too much legitimacy to other groups who share this country. I bet you can tell me lots of details about the individual wealthy early leaders of the country, but have no idea how many native persons were already on this land at about that time.

Shaping history for self-serving ends works. We're told what's important in all media. We believe it. Less well documented truths are fuzzy, not widely enough shared to be jointly discussed and recalled, and don't take hold in debates.

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This seems like a long tangent, and it is. But it's also about the denial of history required to believe in war.

This morning I read Howard Zinn's essay, Artists in Times of War, about how people who often think independently and creatively often manage to resist the groupthink of wartime hysteria. This wartime hysteria requires a denial of history: toss out the bad and ambiguous parts and insist that one's home nation is the good victim of an evil villain, regardless of circumstances. As a good victim, our nation can engage in retributory actions which would only be evil if others so acted.

I've marveled several times at quotes from my fellow Americans which verged on completely senseless: comments about how other nations couldn't understand what we went through on September 11th, because no one else had ever suffered a serious terrorist attack. !?!?

Each time I've heard such opinions through the mainstream media, such comments are accepted completely, adding to the lack of connection to history. Plenty of other nations have suffered terrorism. Plenty of other nations have suffered, even at the hands of the U.S.! But the mass media plays into the new game, failing to provide context. They don't mention other attacks. They don't mention other nations, except as potential attackers. There is no history.

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Patriotism, often a thinly veiled form of collective self-worship, celebrates our goodness, our ideals, our mercy, and bemoans the perfidiousness of those who hate us. Never mind the murder and repression done in our name by bloody surrogates from the Shah of Iran to the Congolese dictator Joseph Désiré Mobotu... We define ourselves. All other definitions do not count.

-- Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

Hedges, a war correspondent, reflects on how individuals and nations twist history to make themselves look better and justify evil acts. He does a depressing, persuasive job in arguing that the nationalism just beneath the surface of most citizens could bring us to commit atrocities against innocents at the drop of a hat. In a fit of emotion, we could believe anything good about ourselves and anything bad about others, high on a shallow unity of panic which will leave us feeling alone and desperate to forget how dirty our hands are the moment the conflict of the day ends. His comments on the textbooks of recently warring nations, and the twisted, self-serving versions of events that makes them conflict with each other, shouldn't be surprising, but it is.

It's a good, yet discouraging read.

Context

The U.S. is still facing credibility problems abroad that it doesn't suffer at home, in its statements about wishing to liberate the Iraqi people to bring them freedom and democracy. A lot of this credibility gap isn't based on wacky information that the rest of the world is getting: rather, the gap would be narrower on the domestic side if Americans had any idea of the United States' support of non-democratic, non-liberating regimes throughout recent history.

The BBC's brilliant feature "Iraq: Conflict in Context" provides fabulous links and articles on the region's history and U.S. involvement there. This history is not well known to most Americans.

BBC - History - Crusades and Jihads in Postcolonial Times, by Dr. S. Sayyid tells us this:

The United States has tried to exert control by using regional powers such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as its proxies. By relying on these proxies the US has often become involved in the internal politics of these countries. US support has often increased the coercive resources available to the ruling elites of these countries while at the same time it has also tended to undermine the legitimacy of these regimes.

Thus, these regimes have to place a greater reliance on coercion - which further undermines the legitimacy of the ruling elites... It is this cycle of declining legitimacy and increasing repression that plagues the political order in the Middle East. Within this context political groups seek to close the gap between rulers and ruled by making rulers more accountable, and find themselves facing a repressive machinery that is often supported by western powers.

Those who have survived the U.S.' support for undemocratic regimes are unlikely to believe mere language invoking liberation. There just hasn't been enough evidence of it, and so the words are reduced to vague rhetoric. If freedom, liberty, and democracy are TRULY American values, our history in the region would have demonstrated this.

American actions have NOT demonstrated this.

The history of western powers demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to have democracy at home and exercise tyranny aboard. Both France and Britain maintained relatively free 'democratic' societies while exercising authoritarian control over their imperial possessions.

Americans, who experience significant freedom, assume inappropriately that their experience of American power is shared by others abroad. A conceptual gap exists in their experience.

Part of the reason the U.S. says one thing about freedom and democracy and does another, according to Dr. Sayyid, is that Americans cannot overcome our historical mythology that insists that we are the bearers of civilization, and that anyone else is barbaric. Many cultures suffer from this sort of egoism. But the United States is enforcing this belief with its military and intelligence services, deciding that the freedom of [barbaric] others is unimportant relative to U.S. interests. Our papers read this way daily, influencing the thoughts of ordinary citizens who might not come to such conclusions on their own.

This is a great article: I encourage you to read it in its entirety.

Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism....

Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few.

----Lt. General William Odom (Ret.), U.S. Army

This sensible quote is from Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, and Opinion Control Since 9-11 by Nancy Snow. Snow's latest book, part of the Seven Stories Press Open Media Series of compact, concise books on vitally important topics, is a treasure. She cites voluminous source material to examine how propaganda has historically been used, and is currently being used by the corporate media in support of its owners' interests. The use of language to hide dissent and distort reality to create a docile populace during war is amazingly important right now, and we all need to be media-literate enough to know when we are being manipuated. Her dissection of commentary is graceful and sharp.

Her website is also an excellent and highly recommended resource for information on information manipulation.

You ARE reading the Thismodernworld.com blog every few days, aren't you? If you aren't, you must. It is ALWAYS full of intriguing news.

For example, this entry quotes from a Financial Times article which reports that Pakistani officials see no justification for the Orange Alert in the U.S. based on persons they have in custody, though the Pakistanis are being used as justification for the alerts.

Another recent entry cites The Secret File of Abu Ghraib: New classified documents implicate U.S. forces in rape and sodomy of Iraqi prisoners, by Osha Gray Davidson in Rolling Stone. While the title discusses more of the graphic abuses, day-to-day conditions were inhumane:

The prison was filled far beyond capacity. Some 7,000 prisoners were jammed into Abu Ghraib, a complex erected to hold no more than 4,000 detainees. Prisoners were held in canvas tents that became ovens in the summer heat and filled with rain in the cold winter. One report found that the compound "is covered with mud and many prisoner tents are close to being under water." ....

In a series of increasingly desperate e-mails sent to his higher-ups, Maj. David DiNenna of the 320th MP Battalion reported that food delivered by private contractors was often inedible. "At least three to four times a week, the food cannot be served because it has bugs," DiNenna reported. "Today an entire compound of 500 prisoners could not be fed due to bugs and dirt in the food." Four days later, DiNenna sent another e-mail marked "URGENT URGENT URGENT!!!!!!!!" He reported that "for the past two days prisoners have been vomiting after they eat."

The fact that this officer kept requesting assistance and had it ignored suggests that correcting the deplorable conditions were not a priority for anyone above him. Or, that these deplorable conditions were desirable and/or intentional. Which is worse.

And it's not just that the citations to other materials are great: TMW has great commentary of its own. See Bush manipulates the war for his own gain. Again.

Read it often! I had a link prior to my page formatting change: I'll (eventually) get this omission from the new format corrected.

[Week+ vacation interruption in posting. Posting will resume shortly.]

A Ted Rall comic points out that there are lots of people to feel sorry for.

Independent Media Center | www.indymedia.org | ((( i ))) "The Fightback Begins" has some reporting on the state of freedom here in the U.S. during the political conventions, which is a good indicator of the freedom and liberty our government always purports to be fighting for:

The summer is heating up as the Democratic National Convention(DNC) and the Republican National Convention(RNC) approach. Activists are being harassed in New York, Boston and the Midwest, but they continue to organize.

The police are doing their best to create a climate of fear in Boston, blanketing the city with surveillance cameras, preparing to arrest 2500 people, conducting random searches of passengers on public transportation and trying to make protesters gather in a "free-speech zone." The FBI is even claiming that a "domestic extremist group" is planning to attack news trucks. But local activists refuse to be cowed.

Anti-DNC action kicks off July 23 with the Boston Social Forum and continues with a "unwelcoming party", direct action and the "Really Really Democratic Bazaar."

Meanwhile, in New York, the NY Daily News ran an unsubstantiated front-pagestory claiming that "internet-using anarchists" are planning to cause chaos by fool bomb-sniffing dogs at Penn Station and major organizer United for Peace and Justice has been forced to hold their August 29 rally on the West Side Highway, instead of Central Park. But Still We Rise and the Poor People?s Economic Human Rights Campaign are still holding large demonstrations on August 30, the day of direct action is still (tenatively) planned for August 31 and various speaks-outs and conferences are still going ahead.

Live links and commentary (including lots of 'hey, you people, DO something!' and 'nothing can be done!' writing, which is always entertaining) at the link above.

Something that tickled me, which I forgot to post earlier: A Tiny Revolution: More Terrifying Funniness on the topic of the forged Niger uranium documents, which the CIA had to send to the State Department for Translation:

The documents are in French. So... does this mean the CIA doesn't have any translators who SPEAK FRENCH? I mean, I realize French is an incredibly exotic, traitorous language that's only taught in 90% of the high schools in America. And like everyone, I'm offended when foreigners insist on making those guttural, non-English sounds they call their 'language.' Nonetheless, it seems to me the CIA might take some of those tens of billions of dollars they spend every year and hire people who speak the languages used by the others who inhabit this planet. Just because it's like, you know, the very most basic part of their job.

I should link you to tinyrevolution.com more often - good stuff. A little humor makes our dire world situation a little easier to contemplate.

A Tiny Revolution: The Autonomous Republic of Charlie Brownistan has some good points to make about the U.S.'s treatment of the Kurds, the Bush Administration's favorite victims of Saddam Hussein when it's convenient, and an ignored group when they inconveniently want rights. "By my count, we're now working on our sixth betrayal of the Kurds since World War I...." Check out both this page, its cartoon, and the comments.

The always worthwhile column by Gomez at sfgate.com has some interesting quotes from the foreign press on the background of the interim leader of Iraq. WORLD VIEWS: Aussie journo alleges that new Iraqi prime minister shot prisoners down (sfgate.com, 07/22/04) deals with a report from Australia that the leader executed detained insurgents. Quotes about this man's past from sources selected by Gomez are intriguing. Samples:

"The immediate question is how did Allawi, who helped install Saddam Hussein, become the White House choice to lead this benighted country into freedom and democracy." [Greens leader Bob Brown of Australia]

"Allawi, a former hit man for the Saddam regime, has shown signs of flexing his power under the interim constitution to its limits and [of] breaking out of U.S. control.'"

Interesting, yes? There's more at wikipedia's biography page for Mr. Allawi, in which we learn that he was a member of the CIA-supported group that provided arguments that Iraq had WMDs, and of how he passed his time in exile:

Some have reported this as an exile, but some of Allawi's old counterparts have claimed that he continued to serve the Baath Party, and the Iraqi secret police, searching out enemies of the regime. During this time he was president of the Iraqi Student Union in Europe. Seymour Hersh quotes former CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro: "[...] Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London [...] he was a paid Mukhabarat agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff." A Middle Eastern diplomat confirmed that Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat "hit team" that killed Baath Party dissenters in Europe. However, he resigned from the Baath party for undisclosed reasons in 1975.

Oh my. Read the entire entry, especially for the entertaining characterization of the "45 minute" WMD claim, which Allawi was involved in passing along.

Election Observers are only for despotic regimes! Oh, wait...

I know I made much of the article about postponing U.S. elections at the discretion of the Homeland Security team. There's other stuff I made much of to my friends, but failed to post here.

Introduction: Congresswoman Corrine Brown in Jacksonville after Censure (firstcoastnews.com)

The argument started during a debate over HR-4818. The bill would provide international monitoring of the November presidential election. Congress has been considering an outside monitor due to all the confusion over the last election, and the "hanging chads" in Florida.

Representative Brown said, "I come from Florida, where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'etat. We need to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Over and over again after the election when you stole the election, you came back here and said get over it. No we're not going to get over it and we want verification from the world."

Those comments drew an immediate objection from Republican members of the House. Leaders moved to strike her comments from the record. The House also censured Brown which kept her from talking on the House floor for the rest of the day.

Related Story: This Modern World's "Unpopular juntas never like UN observers" from July 16, 2004, proves additional comments on events surrounding Representative Brown's censure. Her district had 27,000 ballots discounted in the 2000 election, and she doesn't want her constituents disenfranchised again.

The backstory: about a dozen members of Congress, including several leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, recently called for UN observers to verify American elections, given the hanky-panky we all know is coming.

The ruling junta, displaying their usual integrity, promptly produced a bill forbidding any such thing, shouted the Congresswoman down when she wouldn't just Go F*ck Herself™, censured her, and then had her comments stricken from the Congressional Record.

Nice "democracy" we got here.

And the bill: From the Library of Congress (if this link doesn't work, search thomas.loc.gov for HR-4818):

H.R.4818

Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2005 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)

---

PROHIBITION ON USE OF FUNDS TO REQUEST THE UNITED NATIONS TO ASSESS THE VALIDITY OF ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

SEC. 579. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by any official of the United States Government to request the United Nations to assess the validity of elections in the United States.

In a country where we're supposed to allow the government to read our medical and library records because "we have nothing to hide," the government took time out from its business to pass a law saying that observers can't watch our allegedly fair and free elections?!? That bodes ill...

Name Calling Oh no, it's happening again. The New York Times article, 25 Rebels Are Killed in Daylong Firefight in Iraq, U.S. Says (nytimes.com, 7/22/04), uses the phrase "the hardline Sunni Muslim city of Ramadi."

Roll that over your tongue a few times. "the hardline Sunni Muslim city of Ramadi." The CITY is hardline? Everyone in the City? The municipal water system is hardline? The schools?

Have you ever heard any city in the U.S. described as "hardline" or "fundamentalist" or "radical?" After the tragic Oklahoma City federal building bombing, no one said that McVeigh was from "the hardline, separatist, militant state of Montana."

No one said that, because here in the U.S., we're all considered to be individuals. No matter how fringe some American like, say, Pat Robertson is, you'll never hear the mainstream press refer to him as "extreme Christian fundamentalist Robertson." (At least, you won't hear that kind of language about white guys, the dominant minority.) And you won't hear his town described by the same terms.

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We dimly understand here that our cities, towns, states, and regions are populated by individuals. Even if we characterize them broadly ("red" states vs. "blue" states), the labels are general and imprecise.

[Note to non-US readers: in the last presidential election, states were labeled either "red" and "blue" depending on which party won the state's electoral votes in our indirect election system. Many of the states were won by single-digit electoral victories, but the whole state was still presented as having been just one color. We've just let oversimplified graphics dictate our reality in terms of thinking of the people in those states, which have never been purely 'red' or 'blue.']

But foreigners are treated as caricatures. They're all the same. They're good or evil -- there are no shades of gray. They all deserve the same fate. It's RIDICULOUS to think this way. But how else can you characterize the population of a major city in one swoop as "hardline?"

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Not by our hearts
will we allow whole peoples
or countries to be deemed evil.
--Not in Our Name Pledge of Resistance

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Compare your search engine results for "extremist Christian" (972 right now) to "radical Shiite cleric" (12,600 hits).

["Radical Christian" is a brand name and a positive term, so it's not comparable for searching purposes.]

Now matter how extreme we are, we're okay, and subject to nearly polite treatment in the press, unless our last name is Clinton or we're black and have been convicted of something. But everyone else is open to some very rude characterizations.

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You're thinking, Yes, but these are special circumstances! The people being rudely characterized are SHOOTING Americans! I remember that rash of school massacres here in the U.S. They all turned out to be perpetrated by suburban white boys, but even in that circumstance the killers were bestowed with individualism. Which is why you didn't read headlines like "Radical Violent Caucasian Males Terrorize Suburban Schools Nationwide." They were still all treated as individuals - and they were killing Americans, mostly KIDS, many of them GIRLS.

Yeah, but that's us killing our own. That's different, you might say.

Not really. All of these things are political. Teenage gun toting killers really shouldn't be treated with so much more respect than foreign rebels who believe they're defending their homes and families. We shouldn't give outrageous labels to foreigners, while coddling our own domestic killers. It gives us a distorted perception of the world.

It's bad enough that I was almost ready to believe that certain rebel leaders in Iraq actually had the official title "radical Shiite cleric." I never heard their names without that phrase. Which is ridiculous.

There are a couple of odd parts in a discussion of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was given command of Iraq last June, and whose career was ruined by the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. The Military: The General Departs, With a Scandal to Ponder (nytimes.com, 07/22/04). This is the first odd part:

'One of my former commanders, a good friend, a mentor, instilled in me very early on that there's probably a minority of your soldiers - he used the number 10 percent- that can be criminals, that the only reason they manage to stay in line is because of the training and the discipline and the leadership that is provided by our institution,' he said.

'And if you don't provide them that, they'll walk away, and they'll revert back to that instinct of being criminals.'

I suppose he's saying that the 'few bad apples theory as applied to prison scandals' has some basis, but it also is a strange admission that the folks representing the U.S. in the occupation aren't all apple-pie serving ambassadors, as has been suggested zealously post-scandal.

The other odd comment:

But the general rejected any suggestion that he deserved sympathy. "I've never seen this as something that those kids did to me,'' he said, referring to the soldiers implicated in the abuse. "I have looked at those events as something that happened to my country, and to my Army, and it is going to be our country and our Army that has to recover.''

I'm pretty sure the Iraqis believe that the prison abuse is something that happened to THEIR country.

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But, in respects which haven't been frequently discussed, Sanchez is right. This war is something that has "happened" to the U.S. (as a result of U.S. actions), and has had a huge negative domestic impact that is rarely mentioned.

The war was marketed to the American people as prevention of an imminent attack; then as an effort to remove weapons of mass destruction from a supporter of terrorism that we like less than other supporters of terrorism; then as an effort to rid the world of an evil dictator and to liberate the Iraqi people; and now as a nation-building effort, complete with massive funding and posh rebuilding contracts for Bush's political donors.

The focus shifted from 'what this war will do for us' to 'what we're claiming this altruistic war will do for others, which we might just happen to make some money on.' Which is a big change. And despite the shifts in rhetoric, the impact on the U.S. has been huge. Not as huge as the impact on Iraq, obviously.

Here at home, reservists and National Guardsmen have all been taken from their families and jobs; soldiers have had their tours of duties extended repeatedly; veterans and military families have had their benefits cut; our tax money is being diverted to defense contractors away from the services we pay for; the Bush Administration is protested in every city and country he visits, and requires security measures that shut the public out of entire neighborhoods; our traditional international allies loathe our policies; the abuse scandal has tarnished the country's reputation abroad; the war has divided communities; and to cope with the criticism, war supporters have radicalized even further into a state of isolation and denial.

I don't recall any of those items being in the ads leading up to this war. But it's a high domestic cost. And it's a cost that isn't being fully acknowledged.

UN 'to detail lack of Iraqi WMDs' (bbc.com, 07/20/04): Now that U.S.-friendly interim-government is in place in Iraq, it's okay to admit that there are no WMDs in the country, for financial reasons.

Mr ElBaradei [head of the International Atomic Energy Agency] told reporters in Cairo: 'The return of inspectors to Iraq is an absolute necessity, not to search for weapons of mass destruction, but to draft the final report on the absence of WMDs in Iraq so that the international community can lift the sanctions.'

I haven't seen much play in the commercial US media about this, but perhaps the absence of WMDs is now old hat.

US army reveals more jail abuse (bbc.com, 07/22/04) The U.S. military has documented 94 cass of abuse (confirmed or alleged) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report said the cases included theft, physical assault, sexual assault and death.

But it described them as unauthorised actions taken by individuals, in some cases combined with the failure of a few leaders to provide supervision and leadership.

This article notes that the Red Cross considers the abuse to be systemic.

Image: "PantsOnFire-Mobile" (sfgate.com).

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)

TNR Online's "PAKISTAN FOR BUSH. July Surprise?" (tnr.com, 07/07/04) provides this update on the 'war on terror:'

According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt....

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs [High Value Targets] before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

I'd think that LAST YEAR or the YEAR BEFORE would have been better. But it appears that the early capture of bin Laden would not be "better" for everyone's purposes.

Comment from my source for this, Bob Harris of thismodernworld.com:

The article goes on to detail the carrot-and-stick measures used to crank up the pressure on Islamabad to deliver up Bin Laden in a timely fashion.

Which means they could have done this earlier....

We should rejoice at Osama's capture, whenever it happens. But if Bin Laden suddenly shows up as scheduled, this should be understood, in advance, as prima facie evidence George W. Bush has spent years -- years! -- not doing all in his power to bring the greatest mass murderer in our history to justice.

I'm back, and I haven't actually been avoiding all news about the mess in Iraq: I read Salam Pax's book about his experience during the war.

I really can't imagine seeing my hometown bombed by an unwelcome power, knowing that it would occupy my country and set up power to serve its own ends.

Pax (not his real name) describes himself as "pragmatic" - now that the war damage is done, he wants to focus on what happens NEXT - he isn't very patient with people wanting to rehash why they were so gung ho to bomb him. He provides an interesting and very educational read. I recommend both his book, and his very popular blog.

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It's difficult to come back to all the bad news. More than 11,000 civilian casualties (iraqbodycount.net). U.S. military casualties topped 800 while I was away: five additional soldiers died yesterday. ("US troops die in Samarra attack," bbc.com, 07/08/04). The handover of "sovereignty" came early (Handover advanced but problems remain, bbc.com, 06/28/04), but had to be performed in secret because security is so poor and the country is so unstable. (The "handover" in Iraq: like the large fly crawling on the CNN reporter's cheek, thismodernworld.com, 06/28/04).

I'll go back to commenting on clippings now. But I think I can safely observe that the route taken hasn't led Iraq to where the U.S. wanted it to go.

You must comply with the secret list you're not permitted to see, journalists: this from Reporters Without Borders: United States - Annual Report 2004:

Swedish journalist Emil Nikkah was prevented in August from doing a report for the Swedish TV station Kanal 5 because of US delay in issuing him with a press visa. He was born in Iran, which is designated by the US as a country supporting terrorism. The US embassy in Paris said visa requests involving such countries had to be dealt with in Washington and could take up to eight weeks to process. The list of suspect countries is secret.

The report also lists all of the foreign journalists who were harassed, had their accreditation threatened, were forced to sign agreements not to document anything they saw at Guantanamo, etc. Even foreign journalists attending video game trade shows were harassed! This indicates the zeal and xenophobia of certain law enforcement officials in keeping us "free."

Free... of journalism about video game conventions? I'm reasonably sure that isn't what the Homeland Security effort is actually about.

So Much for Democracy - Iraqis Plan for Introduction of Martial Law (commondreams.org & Johannesburg Star, 07/08/04) by Robert Fisk introduces us to a new way to approach democracy: having an unelected government declare martial law.

Iraq has introduced legislation allowing the Iraqi authorities to impose martial law; curfews; a ban on demonstrations; the restriction of movement; phone-tapping; the opening of mail; and the freezing of bank accounts.

If that isn't a sign of the lack of progress in appealing to the Iraqi public, I'm not sure what is.

Oh, and the legislation reintroduces the death penalty.

A bad sign: Yahoo! News - Pentagon Reportedly Aimed to Hold Detainees in Secret, (news.yahoo.com/LAtimes.com, 07/09/04). Because the Pentagon doesn't look bad enough yet:

Pentagon officials tentatively agreed during a high-level meeting last month to deny that process to some detainees and to keep their existence secret "for intelligence reasons," senior defense officials said Thursday.

[I've been traveling, on a sabbatical from the constant stream of bad news. A few more days of Geology and Anthropology study, and I'll return.]

The best article all week is Dan Froomkin's 'A Disconnect on the Al Qaeda Link'. (washingtonpost.com, 06/17/04) This article comments on and links to the Bush Administration's quotes linking Iraq and Al Queda in the past, and new statements denying that such statements were ever made.

Link after link after link of now denied Administration statements. It's just amazing.

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After reading the reports summarized in that article, you might begin to get a tiny feeling that perhaps, just maybe, the corporate media in the U.S. can (periodically) exhibit a spine.

Maybe.

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Diplomats & Military Commanders For Change.com have issued a statement insisting that the Bush Administration doesn't grasp the world's complex foreign policy realities, and so must be replaced. Comments from individuals are available at the BBC website, along with a list of the signatories and who appointed them. (bbc.com, 6/16/04) There are a few Republican appointees on the list.

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Annan slams war crime exemption (bbc.com, 6/17/04):

The UN secretary general has urged the Security Council not to renew an exemption from prosecution for US troops on UN peacekeeping duties.

Kofi Annan said the exemption, passed for two years running and due to expire on 30 June, would discredit the UN's claim to represent the rule of law.

Some of the countries which have not ratified the International Criminal Court Treaty: Russia, Iran, Israel... and the U.S.

We've all seen how the U.S. has a poor reputation for how it treats its enemies, but have you seen how it treats its friends? Welcome to America (guardian.co.uk) is the story of British writer Elena Lappin (who is married to an American), who flew into LAX on a freelance assignment. Upon arrival she failed to notice the fine print on her visa waiver reflecting an unannounced Homeland Security policy change, which prohibited her from signing the visa waiver provided on the plan if she happened to "represent the foreign information media." For failing to notice this fine print and honestly declaring the purpose of her visit, she was handcuffed, interrogated, locked up for 26 hours in a jail with no privacy and no bed, searched bodily by female guards with rubber gloves...

Read it: your hair will stand on end at the thought of airport security completely losing their minds over WRITERS. (Realize that the described detention centers are popping up near an airport near you. The last line of the article, revealing a guard's mentality, tells you how bad things have become.)

This treatment, concluding with being marched through the airport handcuffed (again) for deportation, has happened to foreign journalists visiting the US recently 12 other times.

Reporters Without Borders, an international group working to promote the freedom of the press, sent a letter of protest and published an article with additional information, including a link to details of the other US expulsions.

For those of you who are interested, Mrs. Lappin points out that the countries of the world that require special 'journalist visas' include such glorious governments as those of "Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe"... and the United States.

Scary stuff: there's been quite a bit of discussion about the Bush Administration's internal memoranda discussing the options to avoid prosecution for war crimes. Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush (nytimes.com, 06/07/04) has a summary line that can make your hair stand on end:

"A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security."

This is a separate memorandum from the one declaring that international law did not apply to anyone the US labeled as 'enemy combatants.'

As someone who works with lawyers, I sort of wish they'd come up with a title that reflected that this is a political and ideological position, rather than one maintained by lawyers generally. Lawyers are ALSO battling for detainees' rights, after all.

Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture (washingtonpost.com, 06/08/04) provides additional rationalizations for torture, including the wacky idea of simply redefining torture.

In the Justice Department's view -- contained in a 50-page document signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and obtained by The Washington Post -- inflicting moderate or fleeting pain does not necessarily constitute torture. Torture, the memo says, "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Yes, our government has come up with a new way for us to win hearts and minds!

The consistent thread that runs through the memoranda and other spooky revelations is that this Administration considers itself to be above the law, with any barrier to absolute power quickly being disregarded, ESPECIALLY international laws and laws that apply to foreigners. Our democratic ideals and insistence that we're a good people should apparently stand, even in the presence of voluminous evidence that our leaders are sliding the other way.

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In March, the Nation followed up a 2003 article called "In Torture We Trust" with extremely creepy info. The update also called 'In Torture We Trust' also has highly disturbing content:

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz famously proposed allowing US judges to issue "torture warrants" to prevent potentially catastrophic terrorist attacks. Writing in The New Republic last fall, Richard Posner, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, expressed reservations about Dershowitz's proposal but argued that "if the stakes are high enough, torture is permissible. No one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."

If you've been sleeping too peacefully lately, you should read the entire article (4 web pages long), which includes discussions of how torture has been used by other governments.

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I wonder how many of the unintelligible warnings we receive about potential terrorist attacks against the US ('the u.s. will be attacked hard,'!?!?) are acquired through torture.

I don't know how many of you ever read excerpts of Inquisition trials, but it does appear you can force just about anyone to confess to just about anything when they're in enough pain. One alleged 'witch' was tortured into saying that she dated the devil and that he'd given her the ability to fly by providing her with a box of fat with a stick in it. The testimony didn't save her life, but it certainly caused a lot of head scratching among her torturers. I suspect she just wasn't asked sufficiently leading questions. ("Say the U.S. will be attacked with __________, or we'll _______ your _____" is about how I imagine it.)

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In other recent news, former chief US weapons inspector David Kay says it's "delusional" to believe that WMDs exist in Iraq (BBC, 06/05/04).

"We simply got it wrong," he said. "Iraq was a dangerous country, Saddam was an evil man and we are better off without him and all of that. But we were wrong in our estimation."

(I like the 'and all of that.')

And, if you missed it, the New York Times' public editor has performed a review of the Times' coverage of the WMD issue, and has found it lacking. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction? by Daniel O'Krent (nytimes.com, 05/30/04) and the Times' critique of articles whose assertions have never been proven provide hindsight about the paper's rush to judgment.

The articles have inspired a lot of commentary, some of which is so ideologically based that it would inspire laughter if we didn't have to live in the same country with the authors. None of the authors were this concise, but some retorts basically said 'by retracting unproveable self-interested exile myths and discredited news stories, you are surrendering to terrorists.'

For a very profane criticism of the Times, see Get Your War On, page 36. (When I say profane, I really mean profane. Yet rather accurate, and really funny. Suggested message from the NYT to its readers: "Why the hell are you still reading us? Does Judith Miller have to kill you herself?")

Katha Pollit notes in a Nation article called "Show & Tell at Abu Ghraib,", "...apparently even wartime atrocities are being outsourced now."

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You may think that the prison abuse scandal in Iraq was the work of a few bad apples who didn't have adequate supervision. Human rights groups have noted a systemic pattern, however, and now some evidence suggests the White House planned for abuses to occur, and seeked to have a plan in place to avoid being responsible for them.

THE REACH OF WAR: GENEVA CONVENTIONS; Justice Memos Explained How to Skip Prisoner Rights by Neil Lewis (nytimes.com, 05/21/04, $) points out that the Justice Department have been laying plans to ignore international human rights law and American anti-torture laws since late 2001 and early 2002. These documents show the Administration was laying out specific legal loopholes, announced by fiat, for use in avoiding war crimes liability in American courts. Rather than suggesting that the U.S. not commit war crimes, the memoranda make recommendations for claiming that the crimes weren't committed on U.S. soil.

Apparently, Colin Powell provided a spirited argument for complying with the Geneva Conventions in order to have its protections apply to U.S. troops. It does not appear that he was listened to.

"Bad people have celebrations, too" - another chapter of winning hearts and minds

I'm not one who generally likes to watch others squirm, but watching the US revise it's denials about having bombed a wedding party now that a video of the wedding is circulating is just too much. Any tiny shred of credibility that the military may have thought it had is... merely the side effect of some medication their spokespeople are on.

How's this for an ineffectual effort? 'Wedding video' clouds US denials (bbc.com, 05/24/04)

"We still don't believe that there was a wedding or a wedding party going on when we hit in the early hours of the morning," the unidentified official was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

"Could there have been some sort of celebration going on earlier? Certainly."

(Emphasis mine.) This mistakenly implies that the world will be much more pleased knowing that a wedding party died in its sleep, rather than during an ongoing wedding celebration. Even this lame effort to pretend that this is what the military's earlier denials meant contradicts official statements, such as the one summarized here (In pictures: Iraq wedding video (bbc.com), stills from wedding video):

US forces maintain they attacked a safehouse for foreign fighters and, until the emergence of the video, insisted there was no evidence of a wedding at the location.

On Friday, US statements made it sound as if the scene was a battleground, and not a celebration with kids present:

[Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt] said earlier: "We sent a ground force in to that location. They were shot at. We returned fire." (Iraqis bury victims of US strike, (bbc.com, 05/20/04))

A little context explaining why the planes came back and bombed the site in the middle of the night might not fit in with the image being portrayed here.

Reporters who actually bothered to go to the scene (U.S. Says Iraq Attack Site Wasn't Wedding, news.yahoo.com 05/24/04) found evidence refuting just about everything stated by the US military:

"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

But video that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent.

An AP reporter and photographer, who interviewed more than a dozen survivors a day after the bombing, were able to identify many of them on the wedding party video, which runs for several hours.

APTN also traveled to Mogr el-Deeb, 250 miles west of Ramadi, the day after the attack to film what the survivors said was the wedding site. A devastated building and remnants of the tent, pots and pans could be seen, along with bits of what appeared to be the remnants of ordnance, one of which bore the marking "ATU-35," similar to those on U.S. bombs.

A water tanker truck can be seen in both the video shot by APTN and the wedding tape obtained from a cousin of the groom.

On Monday, a senior coalition military officer said "we still don't believe there was a wedding going on" and that intelligence showed that only legitimate targets were attacked.

[Emphasis again mine.] Since reporters were able to immediately access the site and make photographic and video comparisons, clearly the military could have performed a similiar investigation of the allegations had it wanted to. Instead, it appears to be releasing conclusions of imaginary investigations performed entirely on a desk in a far-flung office, and then being called on it.

This is not a time when the US military needs to be lying and looking more wicked to the rest of the world.

Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing "Bush Speech: Was It Enough?" (washingtonpost.com, 05/25/04) provides an extensive compilation of links and quotes from major media commentary about Bush's Iraq war policy speech last night, many of which are fascinating. (And yes, it includes an interpretation of Bush's pronunciation of the prison central to the abuse scandal.) The link that's making the rounds most in my peer group: a graph indicating Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low (washingtonpost.com).

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There are several very interesting quotes in another post article, primarily the perspectives of American troops in Iraq, including this one:

"I just think it's a lost cause," said Spec. Will Bromley, a gunner who sits inside the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and mans a 25mm cannon whose rounds can blast walls to pieces. "This has become harder than we thought. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein, that's one thing. Getting Iraqis to do what we want is another. It's like we want to give them McDonald's and they might not want McDonald's. They have to want it or we can't give it to them." -- from Soldiers' Doubts Build as Duties Shift, By Daniel Williams (washingtonpost.com, 05/24/04)

The article also details a raid performed by this particular unit, and the mishaps that occur along the way. Such details explain why the troops are demoralized, and why Iraqis who once were relieved at the US presence have grown eager for the US to depart.

The long, slippery slope

Many people who opposed pre-emptively attacking Iraq to prevent its use of Weapons of Mass Destruction against the U.S. insisted that such an attack would be an ugly, drawn out process which could not possibly worth the inevitably high cost in human life.

After Bush declared the end of major combat and cut all the soldiers' combat pay accordingly, much of the press announced that the peaceniks were wrong, that the war was a cakewalk, that the war's (ever-changing) goals would all be shortly accomplished, and that the lovefest between the Iraqi people and democracy would begin immediately.

Apparently, some of the people doing the announcing had enjoyed their 5-martini lunches a little too early. Every day the news of more death, more anger, and less hope for order and peace gets worse. Bombing the way to peace as a strategy is exposed daily as a delusion. Those who prematurely predicted the cakewalk, not being the type prone to retrospective strategic analyses, have decided that the same approach that got us into our current situation is the best one to using moving forward: more force, 'staying the course," and odd rhetoric about how we can't stop what we're doing now.

Nothing has been learned.

And we can't announce that the peaceniks were right, can we?

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Punishment and Amusement: Documents Indicate 3 Photos Were Not Staged for Interrogation, by Scott Higham and Joe Stephens (washingtonpost.com, 05/22/04) reveal additional details of the darkest side of occupation. Most hair-raising quote from a soldier at the prison:

"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "

This Post article observes that documents about the prison abuses reveal that horrors were committed against Iraqis for interrogation purposes, and others were committed solely for the entertainment of the jailers. It also provides additional details about how soldier Joseph Darby acquired the photos and acted to try to stop the abuse.

This brings us to When Joseph Comes Marching Home, by Hanna Rosin (washingtonpost.com, 05/17/04), what may be the creepiest article about how one man's effort to stop the war crimes has cost a soldier's family their peace (and possibly their safety). The unguarded commentary from Darby's small home town reveals some of the biases which have complicated the American people's reaction to the revelations of torture and murder at Abu Ghraib. The most interesting suggestion to me is the idea that REPORTING a year of abuse is causing Iraqis to hate us, not the abuse itself . That's a disconnect I can't fathom -- the Iraqis who have been released have been telling their peers for a long time.

It is also deeply disturbing that one resident believes that reporting the atrocities was 'turning against your fellow man' -- yet somehow, committing atrocities isn't. I had to reread it to absorb that the speaker doesn't believe that Iraqis are 'fellow men.'

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Those of our 'fellow men' who happen to have been caught committing atrocities are being tried for their crimes -- and are getting off with very light punishments. Within the military world, which has a unique perspective, losing your military career for killing someone is a big deal. Outside the military world, it looks more like a cover up. In Military Justice Is Put On Trial In Iraq Abuse Scandal by Vanessa Blum (law.com, 05/18/04, subscription required), the Pentagon's effort to make a show of their orderly justice system suggests that they'll have a hard time understanding what outside expectations would lead to.

Just before reading this, I had pointed out that Americans who had murdered civilians for sport in Vietnam and had been caught on film managed to avoid punishment despite national outcry, so it is difficult to point to a model of military justice which isn't an oxymoron. This article points to the sorry statistics associated with the perpetrators of the My Lai massacre, which does not provide hope for actual justice in the current situation.

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It's amazing to me that the press has only recently taken to observing that American soldiers aren't infallible. Reuters' reporters are among those captured and abused at US-run prisons (bbc.com, 05/18/04). The deaths of several reporters at the hands of the US military have resulted in formal complaints by the media to the military, but no acknowledgement that the 'code of conduct' - the rules under which U.S. soldiers can shoot just about anyone for any reason - can result in murder.

Even as the bodies of more than 40 members of a wedding party killed by the US are being laid to rest, the US insists that it has 'intelligence' that proves it bombed the right house. (bbc.com, 05/20/04) No number of bodies or witnesses can bring the military to look at the evidence before it, to acknowledge that such evidence exists, OR (perhaps most importantly) to revise its approach of bombing large areas to kill suspects whose whereabouts are not known. Not even when there is video of the aftermath, and witnesses who happen to be Iraqi officials:

Video gathered in the western town of Ramadi by Associated Press Television News showed bloody bodies piled into a truck. The bodies included children, one of whom was decapitated, AP reported. Iraqi witnesses interviewed in the video said revelers at a wedding had been celebrating by shooting guns in the air before they came under fire.

The military presented a sharply different account of events, with a news release from U.S. Central Command and a Defense Department official in Washington saying "coalition forces" had attacked a suspected location of foreign fighters.[italics mine]

...Lt. Col. Ziyad Jbouri, a deputy police chief in Ramadi, told the AP that Wednesday's assault killed between 42 and 45 people, including 15 children and 10 women. Salah Ani, a doctor who works at a hospital in Ramadi, told the news service that the death toll was 45. --- from 40 Reported Killed in U.S. Attack in Western Iraq: American Officials Dispute Iraqi Claims That Aircraft Hit Wedding Party, by Thomas E. Ricks and Mark Stencel (washingtonpost.com, 05/19/04)

The Red Cross has plainly stated that "The excessive use of force violates international human rights." Yet, the US is using its unmatched brute force to argue for the rule of law, while violating the rule of law.

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"50-100 Iraqis died in U.S. custody last year" (Torturing Hearts and Minds, by Marjorie Cohn, truthout.org, 05/04/04).

By the way: when was the last time you heard about the state of the Guantanamo Bay detainees?

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New images of soldiers posing happily with the bodies of dead Iraqis (cnn.com) aren't generating the level of outrage one might expect in US papers who condemned the showing of live US POWs on TV. (fair.org). Meanwhile, in an unfortunate error of timing:

[General Ricardo Sanchez] warned senators that "this awful episode at Abu Ghraib must not allow us to get distracted" from the war against insurgents in Iraq.

"The honor and value systems of our armed forces are solid and the bedrock of what makes us the best in the world," Sanchez said. "There has been no catastrophic failure, and America's armed forces will never compromise their honor." -- General: No pattern of abuse at prisons [but] New Abu Ghraib images involve body, CNN, 05/20/04

(More at CIA investigates death of three detainees, CNN, 05/20/04.)

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Last thought for the day, from a title of an article that says it all: US demands war crimes immunity: The US believes 'malicious cases' could be brought against its soldiers. (bbc.com, 05/21/04).

Timing is everything.

Try to wrap your brain around this one: according to a discussion I heard on the radio, the torture, abuse, and killing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians, most of whom were mistakenly arrested by the U.S., should now be dismissed because of the brutal killing of one American done in revenge for the aforementioned abuse, which shows that all those mistakenly arrested Iraqis have peers who are terrible people.

Again: if your people do something terrible to other people, and then some of the other people take revenge on your people for that terrible thing, that makes THEM bad.

But YOU are not bad for starting the cycle of violence by doing something terrible to them.

This was delivered by a man on the radio in all seriousness, couched in fancier words.

I feel a headache coming on...

Last item for this entry: "80% in Iraq Distrust Occupation Authority: Results of Poll, Taken Before Prison Scandal Came to Light, Worry U.S. Officials, from today's Washington Post. The long list of negative opinions of the US aren't surprising. The Pentagon's complete denial of reality is, however. See their fairyland quotes late in the article.