Wrong direction. Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule (latimes.com, 6/05/06):

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans 'humiliating and degrading treatment,' according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

Go read the whole article - there are some great quotes.

Steps like this permanently prevent the U.S. from claiming the moral high ground in any conflict. This could not be what is intended.

Human rights exceptionalism. The war in Iraq has hurt Americans in many ways: increased our taxes, decreased our civil liberties, killed our relatives and peers, reduced our public services, resulted in racial hysteria, damaged our economy, thrown our government into insurmountable debt, and made us less secure at home and abroad.

European governments are also catching some harm for their role in assisting the U.S.' less savory activities associated with the so-called war against global badness. Europe under 'rendition' cloud (news.bbc.co.uk, 6/7/06) notes that not only have Poland and Romania tarnished their international reputations by hosting U.S. 'black' facilities, where untold human rights violations have occurred, but Sweden, Bosnia, the UK, Italy, Macedonia, Germany and Turkey have all aided and abetted the U.S. in a variety of ways. This puts the EU in an awkward position of wanting to enforce human rights everywhere, but having its own members shun that responsibility at key points in its dealings with the U.S. government.

The goal of the investigation is to prevent these sorts of human rights violations from occurring again. But with the violator countries unwilling to admit their guilt, it's hard to get to a point where such events can be prevented with any certainty.

Who wants to be a citizen of a country whose government 'disappears' its citizens, or who permits other governments to 'disappear' citizens to undisclosed locations in its country?

Blinded by denial. One of the more interesting things about the tragedy at Haditha is the way the military has changed its story over time. Probe Into Iraq Deaths Finds False Reports (truthout.org, originally from washingtonpost.com, 6/1/06, which now has a shorter article up) describes not just the revisionism the military's spokesmen used, but their overt hostility toward the press involved in factual inquiry.

Bargewell's report also is expected to address why the Marine Corps let stand statements issued by official spokesmen that were known to be false at least two months ago. On Nov. 20, the day after the shootings, Marine Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool told reporters that the Iraqis died in a crossfire, stating that, 'Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents.' Time magazine, which first began making inquiries about the incident in January, reported that when one of its staff members asked Pool about the allegations, he accused the journalist of being duped by terrorists. 'I cannot believe you're buying any of this,' the magazine said the officer wrote in an e-mail. 'This falls into the same category of any aqi [al-Qaeda in Iraq] propaganda.' Another military representative, Lt. Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, told the magazine that insurgents caused the civilian deaths by placing the Iraqis in the line of Marine fire.

In March the magazine broke the news that Marines had killed Iraqi civilians at Haditha.

(Bold emphasis added.)

Just because something looks like propaganda, doesn't mean it isn't true, as we learned from Abu Ghraib. (Well, we should have learned that from Abu Ghraib.)

Unfortunate parallels. BBC NEWS | Middle East | Haditha: Massacre and cover-up? (5/31/06).

Media commentators have spoken of it as 'Iraq's My Lai' - a reference to the 1968 massacre of 500 villagers in Vietnam.

I read a book on My Lai, actually, years ago. It was a very interesting story. A soldier witnessed the massacre of civilians by fellow soldiers, but had a heck of a time getting anyone to investigated. When the story finally went public and an investigation occurred, the soldiers responsible for the massacre were all eventually excused for their crimes (serving very limited sentences and then being forgiven), and went back to their normal, civilian lives after ruining the reputation of nearly all soldiers. The officials and politicians responsible for the war didn't couldn't separate atrocities from the overall war effort, and not wanting to tarnish the war effort, swept the crimes aside. The damage they did to the entire concept of 'military justice' is still with us.

Perhaps it's a bit late to start. 'Ethics training' for US troops (news.bbc.co.uk, 6/1/06)

The US military is to put all troops in Iraq through ethical training, in the wake of the alleged murder of civilians in Haditha, US press reports say.

General George W Casey is expected to order that 'core values' training begin immediately, the reports say.

This article goes on to remark that the Haditha massacre may have an adverse impact on U.S. public opinion. But I think PR is a different course entirely.

In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre (washingtonpost.com, 5/27/06):

The 24 Iraqi civilians killed on Nov. 19 included children and the women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post special correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington. The girls killed inside Khafif's house were ages 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, according to death certificates.

Not what 'liberation' usually means. BBC NEWS | Middle East | No quick fixes for new Iraq government (BBC, 5/21/06) provides a sad update on what Iraq is like now.

The Baghdad morgue has said that violence-related deaths have been running at an average of 1,100 a month since February. . . Sunni leaders have blamed some of the killings on Shia militias operating under cover of the Shia-run interior ministry. Public trust in the security forces has been deeply shaken, especially among Sunnis.

A recent report by the inspector-general of the Iraqi oil ministry said that billions of dollars a year were being lost to outright theft and smuggling, with official collusion, throughout the oil industry. . . .

Services and utilities, especially electricity, and the employment situation have also deteriorated, adding to public disillusion with life and the authorities.

I assume this is why coverage of Iraq has been reduced to smaller and smaller news items in U.S. papers: there's so little to feel good about, that they'd prefer to fill the pages with, well, anything else.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq Body Count: War dead figures (news.bbc.co.uk, 6/15/06): Iraq Body Count currently puts the total number of civilian dead at 34,830 - 38,990.

The issue of counting the number of Iraqis killed since the US-led invasion is highly controversial and the figure is disputed. The US and UK military authorities do not record the number of civilians killed by their forces.

Atrocities. In the eyes of the American media, American troops could do no wrong in the early months of the war in Iraq. It just wasn't possible. Everyone who died under American fire had to be bad, be they a wedding party or a family. The press didn't ask many questions. The military, which was permitted to make up its own rules of engagement, wrote rules that forgave them for shooting just about anyone: when tragedy struck, they'd note that the outcome was sad, but the military was playing by it's own rules, so everything was fine.

That era is over. Official: Iraq Civilian Deaths Unjustified. (washingtonpost.com, 5/26/06) describes an ongoing investigation into an incident where, for once, the military's story didn't stick. Two dozen dead Iraqi civilians, supposedly killed in a roadside skirmish with insurgents, are now considered to be the victims of an actual war crime.

Video released by the foreign media are contributing to the sense that this incident must be investigated.

In the Haditha case, videotape aired by an Arab television station showed images purportedly taken in the aftermath of the encounter: a bloody bedroom floor, walls with bullet holes and bodies of women and children. An Iraqi human rights group called for an investigation of what it described as a deadly mistake that had harmed civilians.

On May 17, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a former Marine, said Corps officials told him the toll in the Haditha attack was far worse than originally reported and that U.S. troops killed innocent women and children "in cold blood." He said that nearly twice as many people were killed as first reported and maintained that U.S. forces were "overstretched and overstressed" by the war in Iraq.

Once one atrocity is presented by the U.S. media, others are likely to follow.

And the war goes on. The war in Iraq continues on, contrary to the way the media has represented it since Bush's "Mission Accomplished" media blitz so long ago. A civil war of sorts has been raging on continually, but the daily death toll is no longer on the front page every day.

I'd always wondered, while reading about long-running wars elsewhere in the world, how people deal with the constant bad news, since war inevitably produces bad news. Now I know: the war's space allotment on the front pages of newspapers becomes smaller, and smaller, and smaller...

The definition of "news" in the U.S. is based heavily on the idea of novelty: ongoing tragedies, like poverty, war, famine, abuse, or neglect are not "new" day to day, and so fall from attention. And that's happening here.

Could it be worse? Well, yes. BBC NEWS | Americas | Planning the US 'Long War' on terror (news.bbc.co.uk, 4/10/06):

It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake.

The 'Long War' is the name Washington is using to rebrand the new world conflict, this time against terrorism.

Now the US military is revealing details of how it is planning to fight this very different type of war.

It is also preparing the public for a global conflict which it believes will dominate the next 20 years.

I guess this means we all have time to reread 1984 a few more times.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq three years on: A bleak tale (news.bbc.co.uk, 3/17/06). This article quotes Prof. Cole, of the blog Informed Comment, with a particularly sad status report:

"Some 80 bodies have been found in Baghdad and environs since Monday. On Tuesday alone, police discovered 46 bodies around the capital. They appear mostly to have been Sunni Arabs targeted by enraged Shias attacked by the guerrillas during the past three weeks.

"Some were in the back of a minibus. Some were in a mass grave in Shia east Baghdad. The latter were discovered when passers-by saw blood oozing out of the earth. Blood oozing out of the earth is a good metaphor for Iraq nowadays."

There are also quotes from people who think things are going fine. Those people are also not Iraqis, and the sunny things they say are not compatible with news about mass graves.

How embarrassing for U.S. representatives to have a double standard about mass graves. As if they are only important if the maker of them is our political enemy. As if the people in them are less dead.

*

Having double standards about mass graves leads to some awkward questions about the attitude toward war in general. It may be a stretch, but I think it would be nice if we can all be appalled equally. I recall being vexed by reporting of mass graves in the past, when it turned out that graves discovered in Iraq contained evidence that they were actually from the Iran-Iraq war. I remember feeling a bit outraged over being... how can I say it. Used? Manipulated. Manipulated into thinking that the mass grave somehow justified the use of more violence by the U.S. there, when it was something else entirely. But STILL VERY SAD. I would have been sad even if the mass grave was filled with people from Iran from that war. Or people from Iran who were killed with illegal chemical weapons by Iraq, an action that the U.S. condoned. (gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/).

Because those people would still be dead. Dead for really unfortunate, unnecessary reasons.

One of the things that creeps me out about the current political situation, is that there are so many people who seem to believe that atrocities that result in mass graves are only horrid if they were committed by people we don't like. The way atrocities are reported, the descriptions are eerie reminders of horrors we read about in history, things that were NEVER supposed to happen again, and yet the justifications have begun anew.

'Same as it ever was.

A belief that humanity can really improve and become ethical should not be a casualty of this war. Yet...

Remembrance and protest in images. Rallies Mark Iraq Anniversary (washingtonpost.com, 3/19/06). That 12th image is especially lovely.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Press scathing at Iraq anniversary (news.bbc.co.uk, 3/20/06). Sample:

There is outrage at the conditions on the ground, with one paper asking "is the daily discovery of bodies the freedom President Bush says Iraqis are living in?"

What it costs us. One of the most powerful periodicals I read last year about the damage that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had done to the United States is The Nation | Issue | December 26, 2005 : The Torture Complex (thenation.com). It's a themed issue about what the U.S. is now known for around the world in the post-Abu-Ghraib era: immoral, illegal, physical and mental abuse. The damage isn't limited to our image, of course: it's also a sort of rot from within, and ordinarily upstanding people suddenly stand on their heads and twist their tongues trying to justify something which they have always claimed to abhor. It's ugly to see someone arguing that something was TERRIBLE when the Nazis or Saddam Hussein or [tyrant of the week] did it, but... well, it's peachy keen when the U.S. kills people the same way, "because we're, like, good."

Extra-notable: a reminder that the School of the Americas has been exporting torture for years, and that there has always been denial of the immorality of that on the part of the majority of Americans - and vehement protest by a vocal, moral, minority.

How bad is it, continued. From the ordinarily lighthearted Achenblog (washingtonpost.com, 2/23/06) comes a sobering summary of the status of US intervention:

But each news bulletin is more disturbing than the last. More than 100 bodies have been found in the past day, executed. The BBC reported that a busload of 47 factory workers was stopped at a checkpoint, and all the workers were summarily murdered on the spot. The perpetrators of this massacre and other atrocities remain mysterious. War between Sunnis and Shiites could be averted if the citizens find someone else to blame for the violence, and, according to the Post story, some folks are ready to point the finger at the Americans and 'Zionists.'

The not-quite-correct Colin Powell line, explaining "the Pottery Barn Rule" (which Pottern Barn insists isn't their policy) of 'you break it, you buy it' in which the US' removal of one government makes it responsible for the country they're occupying is just as evident as Powell's warning suggested.

How bad is it? Daytime Curfew in Four Iraqi Provinces Halts Violence (washingtonpost.com, 2/24/06) is actually titled on the front page as "Relative Calm in Iraq Today." Which doesn't mean much.

She has a point: From AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Candlelight vigils stop illegal wiretapping! by Rachel Neumann:

writing letters to an administration that already knows what I think since they've been monitoring my emails and phone calls seems ridiculous.

One of the early casualties of the attack on Iraq and the related ideological war was the current US administration's decision that they are absolutely above the law, and can spy on citizens at will.

It seemed at first that there was public sentiment in favor of legal surveillance of anyone who had independent thoughts of any kind in the early days of the war, especially surveillance of the peace movement, which had predicted that the war might be a very bad thing - an unpopular, widespread sentiment. But when the Bush Administration went beyond that, civil libertarians actually woke up and got mad, including some of those in Bush's own party. How novel.

Sad landmark for the British part of the Coalition: BBC NEWS | Scotland | Funeral for 100th conflict death (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/20/06).

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Guantanamo Bay inmates 'tortured' (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/13/06):

[From UN special raporteur on torture, Manfred Novak.]

'We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government. There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture,' Mr Nowak told the LA Times.