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.