Of Broken Pottery and Broken Kneecaps

Turns out it's a fallacy: Pottery Barn never had a "You broke it, you bought it" policy. Wiser business minds than that ran the Pottery Barn.

If only wiser minds were serving as apologists for our country's foreign policy, particularly our continued military occupation of Iraq. With the other justifications for that occupation having gone the way of all lies, the apologists are clinging desperately to the last and the lamest: "We broke Iraq, now we are obliged to stay and fix it."

Sounds all grown up and responsible, don't it? But how about the first Gulf War? We broke the hell out of Iraq then, didn't we? Did we fix it? No, we did not. In fact we imposed through the U.N. very severe economic sanctions to make sure that Iraq stayed broken. We wanted it broken, badly broken, so that the Iraqi people would be so miserable that they would be compelled, in desperation, to overthrow Saddam and his thugs.

And emiserate we did. Infant mortality rates soared. Tens of thousands of innocent children died of malnutrition or inadequate health care. The poor of Iraq were devastated. Only Saddam and his boyos continued to live high off the hog -- this from kickbacks for selling oil through loopholes in the sanctions, loopholes we deliberately left open for the sake of some of our oil-poor friends. We knew, through regular reports to the Security Council, that Saddam was getting these kickbacks, yet we did nothing about it. All of our attention was focussed on his WMD programs -- which programs, it turns out, did not exist.

The lamest of the lame. A better analogy for our occupation of Iraq would be a protection racket. You know, when the mob offers a small businessman "protection" from criminals, competitors, and corrupt cops -- all of this for a nominal fee? And if the businessman says "Thanks, but no thanks; I can protect myself," what happens to him? He gets his kneecaps shattered by his would-be protectors. The offer, it turns out, is one he can not refuse.

The American forces are presently supplying Iraqis with protection they can't refuse. And what is the price? That the Iraqis put in place an America-friendly government, one that can guarantee a steady flow of inexpensive oil our way for the next half-century.

And if they balk at our magnanimous offer -- as the worshippers at the Najaf mosque did yesterday, hurling their shoes at the head of one of our favorite puppets, the ex-Baathist thug / ex-CIA asset Iyad Allawi? Well, those ingrates had better watch their holy kneecaps.

Which kneecaps, if we break, we will most definitely NOT feel obliged to fix.

John Prine on the torture question

Some lyrics from John Prine's song "Some Humans Ain't Human," from his recently released Fair & Square.

Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind
You open up their hearts
And here's what you'll find
A few frozen pizzas
Some ice cubes with hair
A broken Popsicle
You don't want to go there . . .

Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind
They lie through their teeth
With their head up their behind
You open up their hearts
And here's what you'll find
Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind

Although not directly a commentary on the Bush administration torture policy, this song might serve as such. When we condone torture, we essentially have given up our humanity -- this because we've given up on humanity. We've given up on the idea that human beings can be redeemed, that people can be good. And once we've done that, what's the point in going on?

To state it differently: what keeps Dick Cheney from slicing his throat? If you have that much contempt for humankind, why not just cash in your chips?

I know Dick, I know: I can't handle the truth . . .

paid propagandists

A New York Times headline:

"U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers," . . . A covert campaign is under way to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay Iraqi journalists monthly stipends.

Why should we expect that Iraqi journalists should be treated any differently than our own? Armstrong Williams got a paycheck from the Bush administration for being in favor of No Child Left Behind, right? Why shouldn't Iraqis be paid to write articles favoring the U.S. backed government?

The difference is, of course, that Williams was not signing his own death warrant by supporting No Child Left Behind. Iraqi journalists might well be doing this if they allow their name to appear as author of what will be perceived as a pro-U.S. article in their papers. So give them some combat pay as well.

Who Loves Ya?

What's it like? It's like a man whose wife has divorced him, moved across the country, remarried, had children by her new husband, and obtained a number of restraining orders against her ex. Still, the man keeps contacting her saying "Come on, baby, I know we can make this marriage work!"

That's what Bush's attitude toward Iraq is like. He's just incapable of recognizing that it is over, kaput. The Iraqis don't love us, won't ever be persuaded to love us, in fact hate our guts and just want us to bugger off forever. But Bush won't see it.

"Come on, baby! Just give me another chance! That Abu Ghraib thing was just an aberration! And Fallujah? I was drunk, I swear. Come on, love me!"

By the company one keeps . . .

What is the test of an honest man?

An honest man, if he should happen to wake and find himself in a house of ill repute -- having accidently wandered in the night before (for even honest men take a drop now and then) -- an honest man will leave that house immediately, lest his family or co-workers spy him there.

Can there be any doubt now that the Republican Party is no place for an honest man? How much more evidence of its corrupt nature does one need to conclude that the GOP is a rotten den of iniquity? Do not fool yourself, friend, into thinking that you can somehow redeem that house by your very presence. No, flee it immediately. Get out, and for God's sake stay out.

Flee whither? To the arms of the Democrats? Not necessarily. An honest man may not be altogether comfortable in the company of Bill Clinton and John Kerry, I will admit; yet he certainly cannot stay in the company of George Bush, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, "Scooter" Libby, "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Taft, Ken Blackwell -- yea, an endless gallery of rogues! -- and remain honest.

It's like the song the bartender sings at closing time: "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Ya better watch out! Ya better not cry!

From The Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 24 -- A suicide attacker steered a car packed with explosives toward U.S. soldiers giving away toys to children outside a hospital in central Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 31 people. Almost all of the victims were women and children, police said.

He knows when you are sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows when you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness' sake!

The grotesque nature of this war would cause the most proficient craftsman of black comedy to throw his hands into the air and concede that he's no match for Bush and his gang. This indeed is the present Uncle Sam has brought the children of Iraq.

The parents of those children would be wise, I think, to advise their kids to give American soldiers bearing gifts a very wide berth, lest they be turned to bloody mush. In addition the Iraqi government should require that all Americans in country wear a tinkling little bell -- as a housecat might be forced to wear -- this to give the kids fair warning of their approach.

Vide the true history of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Also see Derek Mainhart's excellent The Iraqi Tinies, his short graphic novel on the fate of the children of Iraq.

Precious Truths

The New York Times reports that the Bush administration has decided to charge Jose Padilla with lesser crimes than those of which he has been publicly accused (that is, planning to set off a "dirty bomb," to blow up apartment buildings with gas lines) because it was "unwilling to allow testimony from two senior members of Al Qaeda who had been subjected to harsh questioning."

For "harsh questioning" we should read, of course,"torture." And there is good reason why the courts do not accept as evidence testimony elicited by torture: it is notoriously unreliable. When one is being tortured, one will say almost anything to make the torture stop -- often whatever one thinks one's interrogators want to hear.

One of the "senior members of Al Qaeda" is reportedly Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, "believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." Mohammed is being held at a "black site" somewhere -- another kind of undisclosed location. Why undisclosed? "The better to give you the third degree, my dear!"

The Times report continues: "One review, completed in spring 2004 by the C.I.A. inspector general, found that Mr. Mohammed had been subjected to excessive use of a technique involving near drowning in the first months after his capture . . . . Another review, completed in April 2003 by American intelligence agencies shortly after Mr. Mohammed's capture, assessed the quality of his information from initial questioning as 'Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.'"

What a poetic way of putting it! Yes indeed, torture does bring out the Shakespeare in some people. The all-too-prosaic question the courts must ask, however, is the following: How does one know for sure, of the utterances gasped out during the waterboarding session, which are truths and which falsehoods? How to tell the VIP from his bodyguards?

Yet Mr. Cheney persists in defending torture as a necessary tactic in the War on Terror. We must not "tie the hands" of our Commander in Chief by prohibiting him from tying the hands of others -- this preparatory, of course, to kicking the living bejeezus out of them. If you oppose torture (as, for example, torture victim John McCain does), Mr. Cheney has a question for you: "Why do you hate Freedom?"

Let's call this what it is. It is not intelligence gathering. It is terrorism, pure and simple. We counter terror with terror. Why? Because such hardboiled tactics are what Bush's handlers think will play best in the heartland, will please a majority of voters. No better example of politics trumping moral principle than this.

The unflappable one

Dick Cheney's old friend Alan Simpson recently commented on how the scandals that have brought low the VP's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, will likely leave the boss untouched. The reason, Simpson suggests, is the marvelous strength of Cheney's character: "He's a survivor of all time. . . . I never saw him bow his head or go into a cocoon or suck his thumb or anything like that. He's an unflappable man."

In reading Simpson's characterization of Mr. Cheney, I was reminded of another unflappable character, this one from the realm of poetry. Allow me to quote a few stirring lines from this fine fellow: "What though the field be lost? / All is not lost -- the unconquerable will, / And study of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield." The poet is John Milton, the poem is Paradise Lost, and the speaker is, of course, the Prince of Darkness -- flat on his back on the floor of hell (having recently been delivered there by that most Special of Prosecutors), trying nonetheless to buck up his own crestfallen chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Beelzebub.

Also an unflappable man, Milton's Satan, so much so that generations of romantic readers have mistaken him for the hero of the piece -- an egregious misreading that surely would have left Milton disgusted. The poet was, after all, in God's camp.

As for Simpson's reading of Cheney, it is also a misreading. For "unflappable" we should substitute "unscrupulous," "shameless," or better yet just plain "evil." It was Cheney, after all, who at the start of the so-called War on Terror asserted that our country might be compelled to employ "the dark arts" to win that war -- his reference being to torture. And that prediction has been borne out. No longer content simply to train other governments in the dark arts (vide WHINSEC, formerly the School of the Americas), the United States has itself become a torture regime, hanging out its shingle at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan -- at God knows how many "black sites" flung across this ever-suffering globe.

And it is Cheney who, in response to torture victim John McCain's recent attempt to excise this cancer from the body politic by demanding that all future interrogations done in our name be conducted in accordance with the Army Field Manual and the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- it is, as I say, the Unflappable One who has pressured Senator McCain and others to exempt CIA interrogators from the torture prohibition. Cheney wants those operatives to continue to be permitted to defend freedom ("Honor bound!") by inserting needles under fingernails, holding heads under water, administering electric shocks to genitals, and so on. He wants this in spite of the fact that every expert observer has concluded that very little in the way of actionable intelligence has been uncovered via such techniques.

Torture, it turns out, just doesn't work. And there is this troubling tendency for what begins as "coercive interrogation" to degenerate quickly into mere sadism. Thus those winning snapshots of our own Lynndie England demonstrating state-of-the-art canine training techniques. Just a bad apple, you say? Make no mistake, gentle reader: it was the Unflappable One who made her do it. And once she did it, we could kiss the possibility of success in Iraq -- what slim chance there was for that to begin with -- a fond farewell.

So "hearts and minds" be damned! In the manly vision of Richard Cheney, Lady Liberty lifts her lamp beside, not the Golden Door -- that fabled gateway to a Shining City upon a Hill -- but rather beside a rather grim chamber door, above which are inscribed the words "Abandon all hope ye who enter here," and upon which hangs a little cardboard sign that reads "Torture in Progress: Do Not Disturb."

counting bodies -- theirs

Then:

"We don't do body counts on other people," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in November 2003, when asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether the number of enemy dead exceeded the U.S. toll.

Now:

"For a discrete operation, it's a metric that can help convey magnitude and context," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman.

Today in The Washington Post a report (with the punning title "Enemy Body Counts Revived" -- tee-hee!) that our military has changed its mind about the enemy dead in Iraq, has decided to start counting them after all -- at least when we slaughter them in big bunches. This to impress the American public that ours is a Can-Do kind of military (in the killing department at any rate) and to signal "progress" in the war in Iraq. As if there is a finite number of enemy over there and every one we kill brings us a step closer to total victory.

Is there anyone still naive enough to buy this? Anyone who doubts that such mass slaughter will fuel anti-American sentiment, serve as a recruiting tool for the resistance, increase the number of enemy exponentially? Is there anyone whose attention will be distracted by this body count from our own troop death toll --closing in on 2,000 combat deaths?

This counting up of enemy dead, discredited after the debacle that was the Vietnam War, a sure symptom that our current war effort is -- to coin a phrase -- in its last throes. Time to get the Humvee out of Dodge.

*************

Also in the Washington Post report:

In May, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, mentioned the killing of 250 of insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi's "closest lieutenants" as evidence of progress in Iraq.

Myers went on: "These were the 250 lieutenants who grew up on the same block as Zarqawi, attended the same grade school, played on the same soccer team, dated the same girl, and served as best men at his wedding. You know, his mates."

Michael Brown can moo, can you?

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!"

--George Bush to Michael Brown, post-Katrina

It's never fun being the fall guy, and I'm not certain I'm being made to be the fall guy. But if being the fall guy gets done everything I want to get done, fine.

--Michael Brown, a few days later


Panegyrick to a Crony

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Oh the wonderful things Michael Brown can do!
Michael Brown can go like a cow. He can go MOO MOO.
Michael Brown can do it. How about you?

He can go like the rain DIBBLE DIBBLE DIBBLE DOPP.
He can go to a hurricane HURRY UP AND STOP!
He can fake up a resume LICKETY SPLIT.
He can take the fall like a proper little s--t.

He can even be FEMA director.
He can do that, too.
Michael Brown can do it.
How about you?

-------

My two-year-old son is quite impressed by Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown, thinks him a remarkably accomplished gentleman -- after all, he can make a wide variety of zoo noises. So George Bush seemed equally impressed by Mr. Michael Brown. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" A good name for the gentleman in question, given that it was precisely due to his being a brownie (in the playground sense of the term) that he became head of FEMA.

Think about it. In the wake of 9/11, Bush promises to do everything in his power to protect this country from such disasters in future -- to preserve the country in the aftermath of such disasters should they occur. Yet he places at the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Joe Allbaugh, a political hack (manager of the 2000 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign) who has zero experience in emergency management. And then, when Allbaugh leaves the post for greener (consulting) pastures, he replaces himself with his college bunkie Mike Brown, a man with even less experience in emergency management than he (if it is possible to have less experience than zero . . .).

If you look up "crony" in the dictionary, you'll find Brown's picture in the margin.

So how seriously are we to take Bush's sworn commitment to protecting this country from terrorist-spawned catastrophe? In this administration, cronyism always trumps policy, always trumps moral principle. Everything is grist for the (Karl)Rovian political mill, including the lives of our citizens.

Oh the wonderful things Mr. Bush can do.

Let the Eagle Soar

Let the eagle soar,
Like she’s never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar!

--John Ashcroft, "Let the Eagle Soar"


Near the beginning of the war a colleague posted on his office door a cartoon of a bald eagle sitting on a stool sharpening his talons with a file. The implication was clear: after 9.11, it was lex talionis time. As our late, great Attorney General John "Jaysus!" Ashcroft put it, "Let the mighty eagle soar!"

The other day I was driving through the countryside, glimpsed in the distance a red-tailed hawk being tormented in flight by a group of blackbirds. The majestic hawk was soaring and swooping, doing its best to evade the smaller birds, who were darting in, pecking the hawk viciously, then darting out again -- instinctive guerilla tactics. The hawk was helpless. All it could do is keep flying and hope the blackbirds would eventually grow tired of the game and desist.

Which is the better analogy for our military and its predicament in Iraq, Ashcroft's triumphant eagle or my beleaguered hawk?

This Thing of Darkness

When can their glory fade?
. . .
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

--Tennyson


To my last post the blogger "Mausergirl" responds:

"You're making a basic mistake in your logic here - and that is to assume that every soldier is a grunt on the front lines. More than 80% of soldiers are not infantry or other combat MOSs, and individual experiences vary.

And let me tell you, soldiers gripe, moan, and whine about politics just as much as anyone else does. They question why we're where we're at, and what we're doing there."

Of course she's right that not all soldiers are combat troops. Of course she's right that lots of soldiers -- the vast majority, I suspect -- indeed do "reason why": reflect upon and analyze the war, its causes and consequences, and wonder if they are being abused by their leaders.

What I was getting at is that the soldier that the militarists exhort us to respect and revere is a mythological figure: He who does not question why and who has an absolute and unwavering devotion to Duty. This, the ideal soldier of their fevered dreams, is the soldier they hold up to the rest of us to honor and--this is most important--to emulate. "Pat Tillman did not question his leaders in time of war so neither should you." This mythic warrior is used by war propagandists as a rhetorical club to discourage critics of the war, to shame them into silence. "If only Cindy Sheehan could love Freedom as much as Pat Tillman loved Freedom! If only she understood Duty as that hero did! If only she could SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Reading the other day on The Washington Post website a chat session with a pro-Bush mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Whenever a reader would ask her a question about the causes of the war, whether they were legitimate or not, her response was "That's not my call to make." When further pressed she commented that she trusted the leaders she had voted into office to do the right thing. A sad case. A mother of a dead soldier unable to face the fact that she may be partially responsible for her son's death, given that her vote help put in office the man who sent him to his death. A very bitter pill to swallow.

The fact is that we live in a democracy, we vote our leaders into office, so ultimately it IS our call to make. We bear part of the responsibility, part of the blame, when they make mistakes or act badly. This is certainly how much of the rest of the world sees it. Why they hate US for this war, not just Bush. What was Prospero's line about Caliban? "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine." Only if we all acknowledge responsibility for this war, this thing of darkness, can we act to end it.

ask a soldier if

The pro-war party depends heavily on the cult of the soldier to quiet the opposition. Sabre-rattlers are fond of quoting our servicemen and women on their belief in their mission, in the Glorious Cause. "Just ask a soldier," these propagandists advise. Tell you what:

I'll ask a soldier if I want to know how to break down an M-16.

I'll ask a soldier if I want to know how to sight in a mortar.

I'll ask a soldier if I want to know if MREs generally cause constipation or its opposite.

I'll ask a soldier if I want to know what it feels like to be spattered by the brains of the now-dead soldier beside you.

I'll ask a soldier if I want to know what PTSD-induced insomnia feels like.

I will NOT ask a soldier about the true causes and the ultimate consequences of the war he or she fights. About these topics the typical soldier is as clueless as the civilian.

Perhaps more clueless -- not because of a lack of intelligence but on principle. It is part of the warrior ethic not to question the causes of the war he fights but just to fight it. "Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die." A soldier, were he to engage in public speculation about these larger questions, would likely be mercilessly mocked by his comrades-in-arms. The good soldier is a trained fighter, takes professional pride in fighting, so fights. Like a good fighting cock or pit bull. The fight is all.

An area to be examined: the conflict between the warrior mythos and the reality of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Does recognition of the existence of the latter require a radical solicitation of the former? Or are we to resign ourselves to the necessity of the soldier as sacrificial victim?

What's It All About, Cheney?

What is the reason for this war, again?

From today's New York Times:

Army Contract Official Critical of Halliburton Pact Is Demoted

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

Ms. Greenhouse's lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action an "obvious reprisal" for the strong objections she raised in 2003 to a series of corps decisions involving the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which has garnered more than $10 billion for work in Iraq.

Dick Cheney led Halliburton, which is based in Texas, before he became vice president.

"She is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs," Mr. Kohn said Sunday in an interview. He also said the Army had violated a commitment to delay Ms. Greenhouse's dismissal until the completion of an inquiry by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings, Mr. Kohn said. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.

Ms. Greenhouse fought the demotion through official channels, and publicly described her clashes with Corps of Engineers leaders over a five-year, $7 billion oil-repair contract awarded to Kellogg Brown & Root. She had argued that if urgency required a no-bid contract, its duration should be brief.

Ms. Greenhouse had also fought the granting of a waiver to Kellogg Brown & Root in December 2003, approving the high prices it had paid for fuel imports for Iraq, and had objected to extending its five-year contract for logistical support in the Balkans for 11 months and $165 million without competitive bidding. In late June, ignoring warnings from her superiors, Ms. Greenhouse appeared before a Congressional panel, calling the Kellogg Brown & Root oil contract "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." She also said the defense secretary's office had improperly interfered in the awarding of the contract.

************

Behind the cannon fire, always the Ka-ching of the cash register. A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

Rather than the militarist's mantra "Freedom ain't free," more apropos for this war would be "Free markets ain't free." How does protecting Halliburton's profit margin by undermining competitive bidding protect my freedom, I wonder?

This war is bullshit, Billybob. Sorry you been suckered.

By God's grace?

Luke Stricklin, I have no doubt, would like to punch me in the head.

Mr. Stricklin was featured on CNN a few days ago -- a young soldier home from Iraq who has penned a patriotic little country ditty entitled "American by God's Amazing Grace." The main point of the song is that, if you had served with Mr. Stricklin in Iraq, you'd be very grateful that God allowed you to be born an AMERICAN:

Well when you've seen the things that I've seen
things don't seem so bad
quit worrying 'bout what you ain't got, thank God for what you have
Cause you could be raising your family in this place
but you were born in America, By God's Amazing Grace!!!!

I've little argument with this sentiment (although I might observe there are places in America damn neart as God-forsaken as the hell holes of Iraq). The lyrics to which I object -- which objection, I am certain, would incite Mr. Stricklin to assault and batter me -- are the following:

You want to talk about it, you better keep it short
cause I got a lot of lost time I gotta make up for.
Really don't care why Bush went into Iraq
I know for sure what I done there and I'm damn sure proud of that.
You got something bad to say about the USA
you better save it for different ears 'less you want to crawl away.

Here we have the warrior in full battle cry. "Really don't care why Bush went into Iraq." To Mr. Stricklin the WHY of the war is irrelevant ("Theirs not to reason why," etc.); all that matters is that he did his duty: "I know for sure what I done there and I'm damn sure proud of that." And if you dare suggest that Uncle Sam is on the wrong side of this war? Well, pal, them's fightin words. Prepare to meet your maker.

The timing here is interesting. It's been a while since we've been favored with a pro-war song -- patriotic gore such as Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten?" or Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)" got a lot of radio play near the beginning of the War on Terror, when the country's blood was up. For the most part these songs have faded with the public's enthusiasm for the war. They've been displaced by anti-war songs such as Billy Bragg's "The Price of Oil," Steve Earle's "Rich Man's War," Eliza Gilkyson's "Highway 9," or the Rolling Stones' forthcoming "Sweet Neo Con."

I say "displaced," but that's not quite right. The pro-war songs received a good deal of play on mainstream radio, especially country stations. Toby Keith's bellicose growl went echoing through every laundromat across the land. The anti-war songs have never reached the ears of Clear Channel listeners, can only be found on alternative radio and the internet (and I doubt that the Stones' new cut will be an exception). No surprise, then, that when a belated pro-war song is penned, the writer should get prime facetime on CNN. Meanwhile Earle and Gilkyson must settle for the relatively modest stages of Democracy Now and Air America.

Poor Luke Stricklin. Listening to his song you can sense his violent ambivalence toward the war, his struggle to reconcile contradictory feelings. He tells us that he doesn't care about why "Bush went into Iraq." Note here the Commander-in-Chief is referred to as "Bush," not "President Bush" or even "Mr. Bush." Stricklin is clearly distancing himself from the prime maker of the war. This suggests that he's aware of the possibility that Bush's motives might not have been the best. Yet he does not want to hear criticism of the president, hasn't got the time, "got a lot of lost time I gotta make up for." Lost time? Does that not indicate time wasted? Is the war a just cause or a waste of time? If it is a waste of time, what of Mr. Stricklin's pride in his service? Is he protesting too much there?

Might not Mr. Stricklin's refusal to listen to criticism of the war be construed as a species of flight: he resists listening for fear that he'll discover he has been duped -- horribly duped -- by Dubya and the boys? Perhaps Mr. Stricklin, deep down, already knows this, knows that he's been suckered. Perhaps he is struggling to repress his desire to punch in the head, not yours truly or Cindy Sheehan or any other war protestor, but instead George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld -- perhaps even himself?

Can you say Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? "American by God's Amazing Grace" positively reeks of it. It's all there: the trauma ("I ain't never been to hell / but it couldn't be any worse than this place"), the uncertainty ("Tell my wife don't worry 'cause I know what to do / it makes you feel better sometimes, but don't know if it's true"), the anger ("And I laugh in your face when you say you got it bad"). Rather than stoking his rage by listening to the blood-spattered war anthems of his mentor Toby Keith, Mr. Stricklin probably would be better off listening to songs wherein PTSD is explicitly thematized, songs such as John Prine's "Sam Stone," Steve Earle's "Home to Houston," and Tom Waits' "Day After Tomorrow."

Little chance of that, however, given Mr. Stricklin's strong identification with the military. As an article in the latest Newsweek notes, "PTSD is one acronym the military does not like. It prefers 'temporary adjustment disorder,' with an emphasis on the temporary."

Yes, soldiers like Luke Stricklin are just a TAD crazy. May God's amazing grace deliver them from this evil.

vile weed

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims

--Rabindranath Tagore

I recall a comment made near the beginning of the Iraq war by Fred Thompson, former Senator from Tennessee, now an actor on the TV series Law & Order. Thompson opined that it was ridiculous for war protestors to claim that they "support the troops": how can you support the troops without supporting what the troops are doing, that is, making war?

In a sense Thompson is right. I, an opponent of the war, support our troops only insofar as I feel sympathy for them: they are being misused, abused, and ought to be brought home immediately. I don't support them in their mission. Not in the least.

For saying this of course I will be accused of ingratitude, "the vilest weed that grows." Yet why should I be grateful to the troops that are prosecuting an unjust war, a war that hurts my country more than helps it?

Let me offer an analogy. Suppose you decide to remodel your kitchen, hire a contractor to carry out this work while you are away on summer vacation. You give the foreman detailed instructions on what you want done, then leave. A few months later you arrive home to find the laborers in the last stage of the project. To your astonishment the kitchen looks nothing like the kitchen you requested, in fact is a disaster. You question the laborers about this, and they convince you that the work they've done follows exactly the plans given them by their foreman -- which plans differ entirely from the directions you had given him.

Now, it would be illogical and unfair for you to resent the laborers for the disaster -- it was the man giving them orders who is to blame, not they. And yet neither should you feel obliged to be grateful to the laborers for the work they have done. What they have done is create a disaster -- even if they did so in good faith, following the orders of their boss.

So, why should I feel gratitude toward the soldiers who are creating the disaster that is the war in Iraq? I don't blame them for the war -- they are merely following orders, as good soldiers must do. Yet I refuse to be bullied into the position that I should not be critical of the war because I might hurt the feelings of the men and women fighting it. If my opposition to the war appears ingratitude to some of the soldiers and their families, then so be it.

Still, some might say we should be grateful to those serving in Iraq, not for what they are doing, but for what they are: good and dutiful soldiers. We should be grateful to them for the same reason Tennyson was grateful to the men of the Light Brigade, for their absolute devotion to duty: "Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die."

Yet according to this logic we should also be grateful to the soldiers of the Third Reich, of Imperial Japan, for what they were during World War Two. They, too ( many of them, anyway), were paragons of duty -- men who followed the orders they were given without question, even unto death. On what reasoned principle can we deny them our gratitude, if what they were doing is irrelevant? Although we may feel a good deal of sympathy for them, I doubt that many of us would feel grateful to those German and Japanese soldiers, given that we consider the cause for which they fought unjust -- indeed, positively evil. Why, then, can we not take into account our view of the war in Iraq, whether it is a just or unjust war, when considering a proper attitude toward our troops? There appears to be a double standard at work here, one that cannot be logically or ethically defended.

By the way, the Charge of the Light Brigade was, tactically speaking, a disaster. It essentially destroyed the Brigade, made it unusable for the remainder of the Crimean War. ("C'est magnifique," noted a French commander of the brigade's suicidal charge, "mais ce n'est pas la guerre.") Only in Tennyson's heated romantic imagination could the charge become glorious. For a latter-day Tennyson, we have (alas!) the con man Ahmad Chalabi, who, in the period after the invasion, when it became clear that no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (the original casus belli) were going to be found, remarked defiantly, "We are heroes in error."

Should Ahmad Chalabi also be an object of our undying gratitude? Only, perhaps, in the superheated imagination of a Richard Perle.

On the dotted line

In reponse to my blog posting "Mr. Wronghead," a friend writes:

However, the other side of the coin is that, by joining the Army, you are agreeing to participate in the defense of your country. Casey must have believed he was doing the right and honorable thing by enlisting in the Army at the time of this Iraq war.

True enough. The question, of course, is whether the war in Iraq is necessary for the defense of this country. As Michael Moore observed in Fahrenheit 9/11, the men and women of our armed forced sign a contract that says they agree to defend us against all enemies, foreign and domestic -- this on the implicit condition, however, that they not be put in harm's way needlessly. The war in Iraq was not necessary and it has made America a more likely, not less likely, target for terrorism. The truly patriotic thing for a soldier to do today is to conscientiously object to serving in this war that endangers our country.

Besides, why do people join the armed forces? Is it always patriotism or are there other motives? How many of the young men and women now being exposed to mortal violence in Iraq would be in the military if they had been offered, say, a $50,000 a year job as an alternative to enlisting? My point is that many of the young people in the military are essentially economic refugees. If one's choice is between donning a military uniform or donning a Walmart-blue vest (a McDonalds-orange vest, etc.), then the military uniform may look like the better, more dignified choice.

I quite frankly am tired of hearing the argument that the families of our men and women led to the slaughterhouse which is Iraq have no right to complain since their loved ones signed on the dotted line, knew -- or should have known -- what they were getting into. Reminds me of the argument made by coal mine operators whose workers died in many cases because the operators were too tight to pay for necessary safety measures: that the workers knew going in it was a dangerous job so their families are due no compensation. Oftentimes these workers had no choice but to go into the mines: it was that or starve. The argument is callous to the point of cruelty.

Mr. Wronghead

A letter to the editor published in yesterday's Lima News, an "open letter to Cindy Sheehan," is typical in its wrongheadedness about the war in Iraq.

The letter writer asks Cindy to pack it up and go home. "Your actions on the side of the road in Texas give aid and comfort to those who not only killed your Casey, but made it necessary for him to be there."

One presumes the writer's reference here is to the Iraqi insurgents. The ones who killed Casey, however, work in the White House and Pentagon; they made it necessary for him to be there.

"The casualties we are sustaining in this war on terrorism are a sad necessity to our victory in this new face of war."

Hasn't the letter writer heard? It is no longer a war on terrorism. It's the "global struggle against extremist violence," or something like that. Whatever you call it, it's abundantly clear that IT is actually generating terrorism, not squelching it. How could it do otherwise?

(Dick Cheney yesterday spoke to a group of combat veterans, swearing that we will destroy terrorism utterly, even if it means hunting down and killing every last terrorist. Even if it means doing what is obviously impossible?)

"So, I ask you to go home Cindy and take some comfort in the fact that Casey did not die a trivial death in a car accident here at home, from drugs or in a senseless drive-by shooting. He died an honorable death defending the United States, a death many of us were willing to risk."

Yes, Cindy, be glad your son had a good and meaningful death, rather than a trivial or shameful death. Dulce et decorum est, Cindy. Sweet and fitting it is to die for your country -- your country, right or wrong. Be glad he's dead, you ingrate bitch.

"Please do not allow your grief to be used by our enemies here and abroad to subvert our efforts to bring an honest peace to our world."

Yes, Cindy, go home and swallow your grief, swallow your righteous indignation. Go home and swallow it, even if it burns a hole in your gut. Choke it down and keep it down, else be labeled a traitor by your betters, such as myself, the super-patriotic inditer of this disciplinary letter.

God bless America, Cindy, and God damn you.

Sacred Profanity

Cindy Sheehan, in testimony before the Conyers hearings on the Downing Street memos:

"There are a few people around the US and a couple of my fellow witnesses who were a little justifiably worried that in my anger and anguish over Casey's premeditated death, I would use some swear words, as I have been known to do on occasion when speaking about the subject. Mr. Conyers, out of my deep respect for you, the other representatives here, my fellow witnesses, and viewers of these historic proceedings, I was able to make it through an entire testimony without using any profanity. However, if anyone deserves to be angry and use profanity, it is I. What happened to Casey and humanity because of the apparent dearth of honesty in our country's leadership is so profane that it defies even my vocabulary skills. We as Americans should be offended more by the profanity of the actions of this administration than by swear words. We have all heard the old adage that actions speak louder than words and for the sake of Casey and our other precious children, please hold someone accountable for their actions and their words of deception."

Recall the story of the meeting between Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe -- author of Uncle Tom's Cabin -- where Lincoln is reported to have remarked, "So, this is the little lady who started this great war?" Well, if George Bush ever works up the nerve to meet again with Cindy Sheehan (what are the chances?), he might well remark, "So, you're the little lady who wants to end my great big war?" To which Cindy might well reply, "Eff you, you stupid SOB."

Clear Channeling the War

So the little man gathered all his chicken hawks in
And the neo-cons and his daddy's kin
They had their own clear channel and a hell of a spin
And a white man hidden in a black man's skin

--Eliza Gilkyson, "Highway 9"


Listening to WLW Cincinnati ("a Clear Channel station") a few days ago, to one of their on-air personalities saying that he's heard from the troops in Iraq that they want the "liberal" media to stop counting bodies -- the bodies, that is, of dead American soldiers -- and start accentuating the positive, talking about the good things that are happening over there. That's what the troops want, so that's what we need to do.

Imagine if there were fifty violent events a day in Cincinnati and the press decided that, instead of covering the shootings and kidnappings and bombings and general chaos, it was going to focus exclusively on the positive things that were happening in the city -- say, the renovation of a school or the construction of a new water treatment plant. Wouldn't the press be accused of participating in a conspiracy of silence, of abandoning and betraying its mission to keep the public informed?

It's pathetic how these flag-waving Bushites just want the ugly reality of Iraq to go away -- for us all to pretend that it is other than a disaster -- rather than admit that their support for this disgraceful war was and is wrong.

Every time an American soldier bleeds in Iraq or Afghanistan it should lead, be front page news. We need to be reminded of the real cost of war as long as the war drags on.

And too bad if it ruins Dubya's vacation to have the mother of a dead soldier camping outside his ranch, demanding that he look her in the eye and tell her that her sacrifice was worth it. He doesn't have the balls, obviously, and neither would any of his right-wing radio propagandists, these professional smart-alecks turned warmongers.

****

I sent a version of the above to the on-air personality in question, who replied with an angry email saying that I had misrepresented what he had said on the air (I hadn't in the least) and letting me know that, because I was nothing more than another minor academic squirreled away in the ivory tower (an ivory tower in Lima, Ohio, no less), that my opinion about the war in Iraq was worthless.

This from a glorified disc jockey who took a week-long Potemkin village tour of Iraq and, on the basis of that experience, claims for his opinion about the war tremendous authority. What a joke! What of those soldiers who have been a hundred times longer in Iraq and think of the war as a complete disaster? Is their opinion a hundred times more valuable than his? If so, shouldn't he just shut up about the war?

I grow weary of Bushites trying to silence the critics of the war by claiming their criticism is an insult to the troops, is base ingratitude. For the thousandth time: one can be critical of the war without demeaning the men and women tricked into fighting it.

Besides, what does your average twenty-something soldier know of the true causes and long-term consequences of the war in which he fights? The answer to that, of course, is next to nothing. As Ambrose Bierce -- himself a soldier decorated for valor -- said of the rank and file's knowledge of the war, "they can know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry." That was true at the time of the Civil War and still true today. Soldiers are trained to fight, take professional pride in fighting, and so fight without question. "Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die."

And dying they are, a few more each day. Let's all agree to look the other way. To do otherwise, apparently, is an unforgivable lapse in taste -- like gawking at the scene of a traffic accident.

Pullout? Bush and the Rhythm Method

In Today's Washington Post:

In Iraq, No Clear Finish Line

The Bush administration has sent seemingly conflicting signals in recent days over the duration of the U.S. deployment to Iraq, openly discussing contingency plans to withdraw as many as 30,000 of 138,000 troops by spring, then cautioning against expectations of any early pullout. Finally yesterday, President Bush dismissed talk of a drawdown as just "speculation and rumors" and warned against "withdrawing before the mission is complete."

The shifting scenarios reflect the uncertain nature of the mission and the ambiguity of what would constitute its successful completion. For all the clarity of Bush's vow to stay not one day longer than needed, the muddled reality is that no one can say exactly when that will be.

Pullout Schmullout. This administration has no intention of ending our military occupation of Iraq. That we have constructed there huge (and hugely expensive) military bases is evidence enough of our true intentions. We will have a military presence in country -- enough of a presence to intimidate the locals into seeing things our way -- forever if the neocons have their way. And as long as Bush is in office they will have their way.

The question Bush's handlers are asking themselves is how to create the impression of a pullout. In other words, how many troops do we need to remove to convince the American public that we are leaving -- that Iraq is over -- and thereby shift its attention elsewhere in time for the midterm elections? In other words this is all politics driven. It's about public relations in this country -- "winning the minds" of the American people by changing the lead. It's all Karl Rove stuff. Turd Blossom tactics.

Later in the above-cited article retired General Barry McCaffrey is quoted as saying that, although the war in Iraq is winnable, "It's a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now." Nonethless, McCaffery's considered opinion is that Bush strategy in Iraq still has an "80% chance of success." Ironic, I thought, that the ex-Drug Czar, erstwhile Supreme Commander in another obviously unwinnable war, is asked to comment on our chances of winning this one. Ought to change his name to Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes.

New Logo?

"Global War on Terror" is out. How about . . .

Grand Imperial Parade?

Eye for an Eye Expedition?

Great Global Goatfuck?

Worldwide Weapons Expo?

Dubya's Excellent Adventure?

Why They Hate Us World Tour?

Wholehog Hegemonic Hootenanny?

YES, DAMMIT, IN THE HEAD!

WASHINGTON (UP:Up) - The Bush administration today defended the controversial shoot-Valerie-Plame-in-the-head policy devised by beleaguered political strategist Karl Rove.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan conceded the possibility that innocent CIA agents could be killed as White House operatives are forced to make split-second decisions on whether a suspicious person who does not heed warnings is indeed Valerie Plame and should be shot in the head. Nonetheless, Mr. McClellan observed, desperate times call for desperate measures, "and we are in desperate times."

Portraying the threat posed by Valerie Plame to Republican control of Congress as "terrifying," McClellan said that "there is no point shooting Plame in the chest, because she might survive to write an Op-Ed piece for The Washington Post."

Robert Novak revealed in an opinion piece in Sunday's Fascist Daily that Rove had sent security teams for training to Israel and other countries hit by terrorism. There, Novak said, our people learned that "there is only one sure way to stop an undercover CIA agent determined to serve his or her country: destroy the brain instantly, utterly. One, two, three shots--blam, blam, blam, right between the freakin eyes!"

In response to a reporter who questioned whether Rove might be "kinda outta control," McClellan grew visibly indignant: "There is nothing gratuitous here in what is going on," he said. "There is nothing cavalier. There is no conspiracy to shoot people. I mean, except for Valerie Plame . . . and possibly her husband."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also weighed in on the policy: "We are living in unique times of unique evil, at war with an enemy of unspeakable brutality, and I have no doubt that now, more than ever, the principle is right," Scalia remarked while taking a break from his favorite pastime: pulling the wings off of flies.

a roving, a roving . .

A roving, a roving, since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a roving with thee fair maid.

So Dubya may soon be singing to his precious Turd Blossom -- if, that is, it turns out that Rove's were the lips that loosed the name of Valerie Plame.

Couldn't happen to a nicer fella.

afghan redux

"Oh I'm sick of hearing about Iraq!" replied the peevish infant Dubya to his many critics. "What about Afghanistan, huh? Huh? What about THAT! Now THAT was a victory, ya gotta admit!"

From today's NY Times: "The steady stream of violence has dealt a new blow to this still traumatized nation of 25 million. In dozens of interviews conducted in recent weeks around the country, Afghans voiced concern that things were not improving, and that the Taliban and other dangerous players were gaining strength."

Dubya: "OH SHADDUP!"

****

Twenty-seven years ago, when Jimmy Carter reinstituted draft registration in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I made the decision not to register, fully expecting that my eighteen-year-old ass would wind up in jail as a result. Now there's rumor of reinstitution of the draft, this to supply the necessary cannon fod . . . er, manpower for our present and prospective imperial invasions / occupations, including our occupation of Afghanistan. There is an irony at work here, one almost too sickening to nail down.

What of the "defeated" Taliban? "'We were wrong,' a senior Afghan government official acknowledged, saying of the Taliban, 'It seems they were spending the time preparing.'" (NY Times)

Shades here of that pesky mujahadeen of old. Those freedom fighters we supported and so admired . . . for a time.

Undisclosed Location Disclosed!

The Vice President on Guantanamo detainees:

``They're very well treated down there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want,'' Cheney said in a CNN interview. ``There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people.''

It was revealed today that the undisclosed location to which Vice President Dick Cheney retreated post 9/11 was in fact the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. This reporter has received from an anonymous source photographs of the VP lounging barechested by the Gitmo pool, sipping daiquiris at the seaside bar, and playing shuffleboard with suspected Taliban fighters. Rumor now has it that the Bush administration, rather than yielding to political pressure to shut down the controversial facility, plans instead to push it as the next hot Caribbean tourist destination. Provisional promo line: "Gitmo Bay. Come for the waterboarding. Stay for the sailboarding."

Wanted: Skilled Cartoonist

From today's NYTimes:

WASHINGTON, June 24 - President Bush promised the Iraqi prime minister on Friday that he was "not giving up on the mission" in Iraq despite rising pressure from Congress and the public to describe a strategy for gradual American withdrawal. And he shrugged off suggestions that the military and members of his administration fundamentally disagree on the strength of the insurgency.

Directions to cartoonist: draw a picture of Dubya as Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound. In the background a scoreboard that reads "Insurgents 50, Home 0." All around it is raining body parts. Dubya crying out: "Hey, where's everybody going? It's just a summer shower. It'll clear up in no time! Freedom is on the march, I tell ya! Come back, guys!"

Good grief.

Of Quagmires and (Mental) Pismires

This war has been consistently and grossly mismanaged," Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Rumsfeld. "And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire."

"Well, that is quite a statement," Rumsfeld, flanked by top US commanders, responded. "First let me say that there isn't a person at this table who agrees with you that we're in a quagmire."

Rumsfeld continued, "No, not a quagmire. Not even close. More like a slough, I'd say. Worse than a bog, certainly, but nowhere near a quagmire. One can make a long, hard slog through a bog, through a slough, but never through a quag."

"And while we are making distinctions," Rumsfeld added, "about all this talk of President Bush's being an idiot. That's ridiculous. An imbecile perhaps. And certainly a moron. No one at this table would deny he's a moron. But an idiot? Goodness gracious no! Remember, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence--and that applies to brains as well as WMD. An idiot? No, never an idiot, Senator. I deny it, deny it to my last breath."

At this the Defense Secretary rose and excused himself from the hearing, remarking that he had an important appointment with the King of Borrioboola-Gha to discuss a status of forces agreement.

Meanwhile in their first meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari delivered to President Bush "a letter from the Iraqi people." It is reported that the envelop contained not only a letter but a quantity of fine white powder. This was wrested away from the President by Secret Service agents before he could set it up in lines.

Funny Stuff!

WASHINGTON (AP). At a White House press conference yesterday President Bush was asked by a reporter whether, given the horrific violence still common in Iraq, he regrets having announced "mission accomplished" on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln two years ago. Mr. Bush rolled his eyes and responded, "But we did accomplish our mission. It's like Turd Blossom said. What we wanted to do with this war was distract John Q. Public's attention while we looted the treasury for ourselves and our rich friends. It was all a matter of disassembling, don't ya see?" The President then glanced in the direction of a group of his advisors, all of whom were grimacing and violently drawing their index fingers back and forth across their throats. After hesitating a moment, Mr. Bush concluded, "But in any event we are convinced that the world is safer with Osama behind bars, that Freedom is on the march, and that Liberty is one very satisfied young lady. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with a sand trap." At this valedictory witticism the assembled press corps chortled appreciatively, thankful for being blessed with a President capable of self-deprecatory humor.

Meanwhile in Iraq four children died when the car in which they were riding was mistakenly fired upon by American soldiers at a checkpoint. No American soldiers were injured in the incident.

battle fatigue

AP WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney, reacting to a growing chorus of calls to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held, says there are no present plans to do so. "The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people," he said.

To which people is our Vice President, Mr. Hal I. Burton, referring? To the detainees or to the soldiers detaining them? Perhaps he has in mind that young stalwart caught pissing through an air vent on a prisoner? Next thing you know that guy will be getting a ticker-tape parade and a Congressional Medal of Freedom. "For pissing above and beyond the call of duty."

Battle fatigue. People sick of the war. Too sick of it to protest it, to demand that it be stopped. A collective sigh of boredom at every mention of Iraq. Almost worse than jingoistic, blood-thirsty support for the war, since it's possible that that passion could be converted into its opposite. But indifference? For that no remedy.

Drug Warriors Victorious!

From today's Washington Post, from an article on the Supreme Court's decision that the feds can over-rule states that legalize marijuana for medical purposes:

"Echoing an argument advanced by the Bush administration, [Justice] Stevens expressed concern that 'unscrupulous physicians' might exploit the broadly worded California law to divert marijuana into the market for recreational drugs."

How horrible. That the same croakers who now divert highly-addictive yet legal prescription painkillers like Oxycontin (RUSH!) into the market for party drugs would do the same with marijuana, a drug about as addictive, about as harmful, as a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint.

Saints -- and John Walters -- preserve us! The Spirit of Harry Anslinger, be with us!

cuchulain resartus

Cuchulain stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide.

--W.B. Yeats

From a Washington Post article of Thurs, June 2, 2005:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a war we are winning," Cheney told the 906 graduating cadets, their families and underclassmen gathered in Falcon Stadium. But much hard work remains, he added. "After 9/11, this nation made a decision. We will not sit back and wait for future attacks. We will prevent those attacks by taking the fight to the enemy."

Meanwhile Cuchulain, legendary Irish warrior, spoke to the Red Branch graduating class at their camp on the Irish sea. "For too long," remarked the brawny hero, "we have waited idly by while the waves gathered force to crash upon the shore. From this point on, we will take the battle to the enemy -- hit him before he hits us. King Conchubar calls it 'pre-emption,' and it's a damn fine strategy. So up, me boyos, up and at 'em!" And with this the Hound of Ulster leapt from the podium, ran straight into the surf, and, drawing his broadsword, began slashing madly at the waves -- this while his audience looked on with an air of puzzlement.

Memorial Day 2005

A pleasant day, contrary to forecasts.

I find myself wandering a cemetery in Dunkirk, Ohio --this
graveyard terminus of a tiny parade wherein my eldest son,
a 4-H'er, is marching with his dog.

My two-year-old boy is beside me. He wants poppa to lift him up
onto the monuments to play, is frustrated by my hesitation.

No anxiety in him about desecration, about disrespecting the dead.
In this he is as unselfconscious as George W. Bush placing a wreath.

This my forty-fifth Memorial Day. Impossible heap. My last grandparent
died just a few weeks ago. Fine summer days -- how many remain to me?

We drift past a weathered old stone on the periphery of the yard.
Slight shock of recognition. "Valentine Amspaugh," a Civil War vet,
his final resting place. A tiny flag flutters over the stone, a last
pathetic gasp of gratitude.

How many dead today in Iraq, I wonder?

And my sons -- will their names appear on some future casualty list?

Here comes the band.

Newsweek--author of all our woe!

Inquiry by U.S. Finds 5 Cases of Koran Mistreatment

By THOM SHANKER
Published: May 27, 2005, in New York Times

An American military inquiry has uncovered five instances in which guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba mishandled the Koran, but found "no credible evidence" to substantiate claims that it was ever flushed down a toilet, the chief of the investigation said on Thursday.

[we continue the story . . .]

"Sure," said Brig. General Jay W. Hood, "we creased the Koran, we tore the Koran, we tossed the Koran, we kicked the Koran, we stomped the Koran, we shot the Koran, we burned the Koran, we licked the Koran, we pissed on the Koran, we wiped menses on the Koran, but we never were so disrespectful as to flush the Koran down a toilet. Give us a little credit for cultural sensitivity, will ya?"

Meanwhile the White House through spokesman Scott McClellan has assigned blame to Newsweek for the death of Pat Tillman, recent hurricanes in Florida, and the miserable performance of the Cincinnati Reds' bullpen this season. The magazine has issued an abject apology for these lapses in journalistic intergity. "Jesus what ratpuke we are," remarked Associate Editor Mia Kulpa.

homo homini lupus

Listening on the way to work to a report on a soldier dead in Iraq, a male in his early twenties. Killed by an IED. They profiled him, his family in grief. The older brother recalling fondly his sibling's first deer kill: how he crouched, quiet and still, in the blind, how finally a buck came close enough, how he shot, how the deer flopped, how the boy of sixteen ran whooping across the field to tag his prize.

Picturing the insurgent in ambush. Waiting, waiting for the patrol, adrenaline surging, breath in gasps. Then, as the trucks rumble by, setting off the bomb, the thud and roar of the explosion, the smoke, the fire, the wreck, the screams of the wounded. The exhilaration of the insurgent, his pleasure in mere slaughter.

I snap off the radio in disgust. What abject creatures we are.

good boys!

From the New York Times, 25 April 05

"Rice and Cheney Are Said to Push Iraqi Politicians on Stalemate"

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 24 - Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.

Photograph caption: Vice President Cheney pictured in the foreground waterboarding longtime Kurdish leader and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani. In the background Secretary Rice, leading a naked Ibrahim Jafari about on all fours by a leash, is apparently attempting to teach Iraq's democratically-elected prime minister to heel.

a few bad apples

From The New York Times, April 23, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 22 - A high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility for the abuse of detainees there, Congressional and administration officials said Friday.

In other news, a high-level Klan investigation has cleared Klu Klux Klan leadership of any responsibility for lynchings and other hate crimes. "It was the fault of just a few bad apples," remarked Bob Bigtree, Klan spokesman. "The Klan has always encouraged understanding of and tolerance toward people of color and other minorities. We are deeply saddened by these unfortunate historical events."

Ave atque vale

This week Dennis Shreefer was fired from his job as afternoon radio personality on WIMA-Lima, "a Clear Channel station." A parade of geniuses has been calling in to gloat and sneer, to tell his replacement how happy they are that Dennis has been canned. Most are insisting that it was his own fault, that Dennis did himself in by being so rude, vindictive, and judgmental.

This is nonsense, of course. Dennis was no more rude, vindictive, and judgmental than the two syndicated shock jocks that precede him: Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. What got Dennis fired was being highly critical of George W. Bush and his gang of thieves. If he had spent the last year bashing John Kerry and the liberal establishment, Dennis could have been TWICE as hateful and still have his job.

It's no secret that right-wingers have difficulty accepting criticism, listening to any view that differs from their own even slightly. Those listeners who were perfectly content when Dennis was bashing Clinton suddenly reached for the dial when he started bashing Bush.

And Dennis's replacement? A local jock-sniffer, which gentleman has made it perfectly clear that he will be happy to be whatever his listeners want him to be in order to keep them tuned to WIMA. Expect a mini-Limbaugh, then, with a dash of Paul Harvey.

Good day!

Rendered Speechless by Rendition

After the 2001 attacks, Bush broadened the CIA's authority and, as a result, the agency has rendered more than 100 people from one country to another without legal proceedings and without providing access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a right afforded all prisoners held by the U.S. military. --The New York Times 17 March 05

My dictionary lists a dozen meanings for the word "render." Definition number five is "To surrender or relinquish; yield." I suppose this is the intended meaning behind "extraordinary rendition": to surrender, relinquish, or yield a prisoner to another country.

Yet, given the reality of our government's policy --the real world consequences of that policy -- another meaning of "render" strikes me as apropos here, definition number eleven: "To reduce, convert, or melt down (fat) by heating."

I grew up in a small Midwestern town, just south of which stood a rendering plant. This plant's big orange trucks would travel far and wide to collect dead animals which were brought back to the plant to be rendered. We kids always called it the "stink factory," since the stench its processes produced was powerful indeed: the range of offense could be measured, quite literally, in miles. When we rode by it, we would all ritually hold our noses, regardless if we were up or downwind. In our minds, the factory became an objective correlative for disgust.

Yet the odor from this plant was nothing compared to the stench given off by the Bush administration's practice of spiriting off terror suspects to foreign countries, knowing full well that they will be rendered by those into whose hands we deliver them. That's "render" number eleven: To reduce, convert, or melt down by heating.

"Extraordinary rendition" is, of course, a euphemism. In that respect it is like "collateral damage." Some among us have learned to read through the latter euphemism to see the horrific reality behind it: dead women and children, dead at the hands of our forces. So "extraordinary rendition"? Let us call it what it is: the outsourcing of torture. Having other countries do our dirtywork for us. And it stinks to high heaven.

To further illuminate the real effects of extraordinary rendition, we might reflect a moment on the meanings of a word that comes just before "render" in the dictionary, that is "rend": 1. To tear or split apart into pieces violently. 2. To tear (one's garments or hair) in anguish or rage. 3. To tear forcibly; wrest. 4. To pull, split, or divide as if by tearing. 5. To pierce or disturb with sound: a scream rent the silence.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have become what we claim to loathe.

mock borowitz: wolfowitz

-WASHINGTON, March 16. President Bush has given Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz the nod for the job as head of the World Bank. "Paul is committed to development," said Bush at a press conference, adding, "He's a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job."

At the same press conference, Wolfowitz was asked by reporters about initial policy directives. "First thing, I'm going to do away with those draconian overdraft charges. Jesus, you overdraw your checking account one time, JUST ONE TIME IN TEN YEARS, and the motherfuckers are all over you like ugly on an ape -- like you're the fucking enemy or something." After pausing for a moment to slick back his hair with a great gollop of saliva, Wolfowitz concluded, "We'll see what sending in a few dozen tomahawks will do to soften their resolve, the bitches."

Another turn of the thumbscrews

The Easter Bunny has been very kind to the credit card companies. After years of intense lobbying they finally got Congress to pass an anti-bankruptcy law last week. By this law many individuals who previously would have been able to wipe out their debt under Chapter 7 will now be required to file under the much more stringent Chapter 13. President Bush and other Republicans have praised this law as an effective means of cracking down on deadbeats trying to game the credit system.

True, the number of bankruptcy filings have increased sharply in the last decade. Yet analysts have established that many of these filings are by individuals crushed under huge medical debt. Rather than looking upon this increase in bankruptcies as a symptom of very sick health care system, the Bush administration has chosen, characteristically, to place the blame squarely on the victims. It’s not that health insurance is beyond the means of many honest working class Americans. No. It’s that our society is full of lazy jerks trying to weasel their way out of paying their debts.

(As for those poor, put-upon credit card companies: in the last eight years their profits have increased a mere 163%. Can you blame them for wants to squeeze a bit more out of us?)

So, to those of you who voted Republican in the last election: when you are working that double shift at Valuemart in a futile attempt to pay off those huge hospital bills, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you continue to possess the right to bear arms to protect yourself against gays with the itch to marry.

Appointment Shocker

WASHINGTON, March 7 - President Bush on Monday chose John R. Bolton, a blunt-spoken conservative known for his sharp skepticism of the United Nations and international diplomacy, as the new American ambassador to the world organization. --from NY Times

"Bolton once opined that "There's no such thing as the United Nations," and that if the U.N. building in New York "lost 10 stories it wouldn't make a bit of difference." In 2000, Bolton said, "If I were doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member [the United States] because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world." --from website of American Progress Action Fund

WASHINGTON, March 8 --President Bush on Tuesday shocked many Washington insiders with his appointment of Reynard the Fox as Keeper of the Henhouse.

"Reynard is a highly-experienced, hard-nosed keeper," remarked Bush at a morning press conference. "He has our complete confidence, and we can be sure that he will make those fucking chickens toe the line."

Reynard's comes as the latest in a long line of controversial presidential appointments, including Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General, John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence, the Marquis de Sade as Chief Investigator of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and William Burroughs as Drug Czar. The last two appointments are particularly controversial given that both appointees are dead. "Dead or alive, they're still good men and I expect them to do a bang-up job!" remarked Bush, who farted audibly to emphasize the point.

Elsewhere forensic experts discovered traces of President Bush's seminal fluid in Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's mesial groove. When asked about this by reporters, a clearly-exasperated Bush snapped, "Well whaddaya think I meant when I called her my 'work wife'?'"

mock borowitz: Iraqi Shocker!

"ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, March 2 - The American military's major detention centers in Iraq have swelled to capacity and are holding more people than ever, senior military officials say. The growing detainee population reflects recent changes in how the military has been waging the war and in its policies toward detainees, the officials say."

The above from today's (4 March 05) New York Times. We continue the story:

"The plan now," said Colonel Schiesskopft, chief executive officer in charge of Iraqi detention and waterboarding, "is to continue to detain more and more Iraqis until we've got the entire native population under lock and key. We're betting this will significantly decrease the incidence of terrorist attacks."

When asked by reporters about this change of policy, White House spokesman Scott McClellan referred to it as a "bold move," and "one that will be good for Iraq, good for America, and, moreover, good for business." No-bid contracts to construct the approximately 50,000 needed detentions centers have been awarded to Halliburton -- which contracts should net the company an estimated five hundred billion dollars over the next ten years. Shortly after the announcement of the contracts, Vice President and Ex-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney was overheard clicking his heels thrice while humming merrily the tune "We're in the Money!"

McClellan also announced that the White House has named recently-sprung jailbird Martha Stewart to a post as special advisor for interior design in the new prison system. "Looks like this year shackles will be a good thing," remarked Ms. Stewart.

Elsewhere, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez tapped ex-White House correspondent Jeff Gannon as a special consultant on internet obscenity. "We thought Jeff was a good fit for the job," remarked Gonzalez, "a very tight fit."

Go ahead Jeff!

Bushian Theidiocies

My undergrad students have been writing about the Iraq war. Many are reflex conservatives, dyed-in-the-wool Bushites. I show them how all the justifications the Bush administration has offered for the war --i.e., defense against WMD, subversion of a terrorist threat, humanitarian concern for the peoples of Iraq, etc. -- are as leaky as sieves. Some, at a loss for any other way to defend Bush, suggest that he is probably in possession of some secret knowledge that, were it to be divulged, would make everything he does make perfect sense. But of course it can't be divulged, since to do so would be to compromise national security... or something. So we simply have to give our president the benefit of the doubt. Father knows best.

Whence this ingenious defense of their hero? From religion. It's called "theodicy." How to account for the fact that an omnipotent and loving Deity allows evil to exist? The answer: our perception of evil is a misperception -- a distortion of vision resulting from our lack of knowledge. Were we to take a God's-eye view of the universe, could we take in the divine plan in all its complexity, then we would see that the plan is good, perfectly good, and in the end evil is an illusion. Mere mortals, however, can never attain God's knowledge, gain the perspective He possesses, so we must simply have faith in God, in His infinite goodness and in the infinite goodness of His Creation.

What's hilarious, of course, is the equation of George W. Bush with God; the idea that this beady-eyed, rat-brained schemer is on level with the Almighty (epistemologically speaking) and that we should consequently pay him comparable respect, manifest for him a comparable reverence, hold him in comparable awe.

And those sorry-arsed reprobates who refuse the equation? Let them be humbled like Job.

An Army of Fun!

"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot . . . .It's fun to shoot some people. . . .I like brawling."

The words of Lt. General James Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In response to questions about these remarks, General Michael Hagee defended Mattis, calling him "one of this country's bravest and most experienced military leaders."

"While I understand that some people may take issue with the comments made by him, I also know he intended to reflect the unfortunate and harsh realities of war," he said in a written statement. "Lt. Gen. Mattis often speaks with a great deal of candor."

I wonder, what if some of those being put on trial for torture at Abu Ghraib manifested a similar candor? As thus: "Actually it's quite fun to torture them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to torture some people. I like humiliating and causing them pain. Tee-hee!"

Would we praise such candor? And why not? After all, those soldiers were doing the job they were ordered to do: softening up prisoners preparatory to interrogation so that those interrogation sessions might be more productive, yield valuable intelligence that might help us win the War on Terror. Wouldn't their candid admission that they enjoyed their work equally reflect "the unfortunate and harsh realities of war"?

Not all the brass leapt to Mattis' defense. "I was a little surprised," said retired Vice Adm. Edward H. Martin. "I don't think any of us who have ever fought in wars liked to kill anybody."

If we can be disturbed by Mattis'"candor," we can be disgusted by Martin's lack thereof. Of course there will be those fighting in war who like to kill people. Isn't combat training, in large part, an attempt to desensitize people to killing, make soldiers more efficient killing machines? And isn't this why so many combatants, when they return to civil society, have such great difficulty adjusting? How does one reverse the conditioning that created tactical sociopathology? How to turn off the "kill switch," so to speak, once you've turned it on?

Rather than prosecuting the "bad apples" who are torturing prisoners or executing wounded enemy soldiers, perhaps we should be going after the "bad apples" who made this war in the first place, who put good and civilized people into a situation that must necessarily brutalize them -- indeed, turn some of them into monsters. As one mother of a disgraced soldier remarked, "I gave them a good boy, they sent me back a murderer."

Deja Vu Again

Hope is a knave that befools us evermore
Which until I lost no happiness was mine
I strike from hell to grave on heaven's door:
"Abandon all hope ye who enter here."

--Nicholas Chamfort

"At polling centers hit by explosions, survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh."

--New York Times article of 2/2/05


Ah, the post-election euphoria! Something about it seems . . . familiar. Perhaps it's like the euphoria most Americans felt at the sight of Saddam's statue being torn down by our soldiers in Baghdad. Or like the euphoria many felt at Bush's victory speech aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Or the euphoria some (fewer) felt in the wake of Paul Bremer handing over "sovereignty" to the Iraqi interim government.

Can one develop a tolerance for euphoria, the way one can for cocaine?

So many pundits growing teary-eyed while describing the voter turnout in Iraq! "People actually showed up to vote! Lots and lots of people! Hurrah!"

Well, maybe not the Sunnis, not so much. Hardly at all, in fact.

"But the Kurds turned out in huge numbers, right?"

True enough. And Peter Galbraith reported in the New York Times that these same Kurds, upon exiting the polls, were polled again and voted ten to one that, if they had their druthers, they'd druther form a country of their own, independent of Iraq. Can you say "civil war"?

"Well, how about the Shiites? Huge numbers there, right? Masses of happy people voting [as conservative editorialist David Brooks would have it] against Saddam, against the old tyranny."

And maybe voting against Uncle Sam as well, a little bit? Against his continuing, and heavily-armed, presence in their midst? Voting for him to get the hell out of Dodge?

"But there was so little violence -- I mean, compared to what was predicted."

Fifty Iraqis lost their lives on election day. Fifty people slaughtered. Imagine if that had happened in the United States: fifty people whacked for daring to vote. The election would be considered a disaster, a nightmare.

But of course we are not talking about the United States, we are talking about Iraq, where one has to adjust one's expectations a bit. Lower the bar, as it were, civilization-wise.

Where's my anti-euphoria medication?

Repetition macht frei!

In Bush's second inaugural address, which lasted all of seventeen minutes, he used the word "freedom" twenty-five times. His reference, of course, is to our mission in Iraq (although, curiously, the word "Iraq" never passed his lips). Talk about protesting too much!

Ohhhhhh! FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM

Viola! Iraq is free!

The word "liberty" appeared fifteen times in the speech. Apparently Bush is hoping that if he repeats that word often enough the American people will, when they think of the war in Iraq, picture in their minds' eyes Lady Liberty, lifting her lamp beside the golden door. Unfortunately a more likely candidate for war icon -- and a truer reflection of the reality--is the image of a hooded man perched on a box with electrodes attached to his hands. Not exactly lamps and golden doors here. Rather another sort of monumentalism, one reflected in the words "All hope abandoned ye who enter in."

Perhaps Dante's caveat should be inscribed by the provisional authority over the arrival gates at Baghdad International Airport.

Accountability Moment

“Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election. And the American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I'm grateful.”

Am I alone in finding the above comment made by George Bush in a recent interview not only stupid but downright chilling? I mean like the remark, “Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?” THAT kind of chilling?

What is he saying? “Since 51% of the American people who voted voted for me, that means I am not to be held accountable for anything I did, any decision I made, in my first term.” Is it something like that? That his re-election makes him immune from any blame?

Sounds like a guilty man, acquitted by an incompetent jury, breathing a huge sigh of relief as he cites his constitutional protection from double jeopardy. Think of O.J. Simpson post murder trial.

Because Bush has been re-elected, he is no longer accountable, for example, for war crimes committed by our side in Afghanistan and Iraq? (Recall that after WWII it was primarily the Nazi leadership, rather than the soldiers who committed atrocities, that were tried and condemned).

Bush is not accountable for the long-term effects of the “Bush Doctrine” of pre-emptive war? If he is not, then who is? Is it God? Should it instead be called the "God Doctrine"? Perhaps, because, after all, it was God who put Bush in office. So Bush assures us.

Perhaps it is God alone who will ultimately hold Bush responsible for his actions, since -- God knows!-- the American people clearly lack the wisdom, and Congress the backbone, to do so.

The Hackery of Machan

In a recent editorial entitled "The Incompetence of Rather," Tibor R. Machan, who bears the impressive title of "R.C. Hoiles Chair in business ethics and free enterprise at Chapman University in Orange, California," takes to task the long-time CBS anchorman for the part he played in the scandal over forged documents related to Bush's Texas Air National Guard service.

Machan notes that Rather testified he "still believes that the content of the documents is true because 'the facts are right on the money,' and that no one had provided persuasive evidence that the documents were not authentic." These assertions by Rather are "preposterous," says Machan. "Facts are established by proofs, by evidence, not by the absence of disproof or the lack of counter-evidence." Machan complains that Bush is presumed guilty by Rather, is forced to prove his innocence, to "prove a negative." This is very bad form indeed for any respectable journalist.

It appears to me, though, the Machan is deliberately conflating two claims by Rather. I agree that it is preposterous for Rather to continue to insist that the documents are not forgeries. They clearly are. That this is the case, however, does not mean that their "content"--what they suggest about Bush's National Guard service--is not true. If "content" refers to the claim that Bush blew off the final year of his Guard service, that claim may very well be, probably is, true, though the documents CBS produced to "prove" this claim may be fraudulent.

An analogy: I can believe that Mark Fuhrman was a real sleazeball, a bad cop who planted evidence to try to get O.J. Simpson convicted of murdering his wife. I can believe this and still believe, as most reasonable people do, that O.J. Simpson murdered his wife.

It appears to me the Bushites are very much interested in encouraging the sort of logical confusion that Machan deliberately fosters here. They are hoping the John Q. Public will assume that, since the documents meant to prove that Bush behaved irresponsibly were fraudulent, then there must be no truth to the claim the Bush was a naughty boy. But clearly he was. If Bush did not blow off the final year of his Guard service, why does he not produce evidence of this? How difficult could it be to find one person who remembers serving with him at that time? To continue to claim that it is possible that Bush did his Guard duty in full is just as "preposterous" a position as any Machan blasts Rather for taking.

Another thing. "Facts are established by proofs, by evidence, not by the absence of disproof or the lack of evidence." I think it impossible that Mr. Machan could write those words and not hear in them the echo of Donald Rumsfeld's infamous gloss on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." What Machan accuses Rather of doing to Bush--of presuming him guilty and making him prove his innocence--is precisely what Bush and his men did to Saddam Hussein. They accused him of having weapons and demanded that he prove that he did not--to prove a negative. Of course we know now that Saddam was being put in an impossible position since the weapons did not exist. Machan writes, "such a defendant would have no way to go about showing that none of these things happened since in order to do so, one would need to know what evidence exists for the claim. But none had been provided." What solid evidence did the Bush administration provide that Saddam possessed WMD? None. The best it could do was the dog-and-pony show poor Colin Powell was forced to put on at the United Nations -- not exactly one our our country's finest moments.

"Dan Rather," writes Machan, "appears to believe that whenever someone says something damning about people he doesn't much like, that must be 'right on the money,' simply because no one has proven it wrong." Once again, how can Machan not observe that this precisely describes Bush's attitude toward Saddam, a person Bush "doesn't like much," to put it mildly ("This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"). Bush didn't much like Saddam, therefore the claim that he possessed WMD must be "right on the money." Bush didn't much like Saddam, so the claim that he was in bed with Osama bin Laden must be valid. And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Machan concludes that "Dan Rather should be fired" for his misbehavior. Allowing him to retire early, apparently, was not enough; a much greater mess should be made of him. So how about Bush? As for Rather's ethical lapse, what damage did it do, except to his own and his news organization's credibility? Compare that to the damage caused by Bush's lapse: thousands of lives lost, billions of dollars down the drain, and our country's reputation in the world a smoking ruin.

Freedom on the March!

What George W. Bush said:

"As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva."

What happened as a consequence:

"According to ICRC [the Red Cross], one prisoner 'alleged that he had been hooded and cuffed with flexicuffs, threatened to be tortured and killed, urinated on, kicked in the head, lower back and groin, force-fed a baseball which was tied in his mouth using a scarf and deprived of sleep for four consecutive days. . . . When he said he would complain to the ICRC he was allegedly beaten more. An ICRC medical examination revealed hematoma in the lower back, blood in urine, sensory loss in the right hand due to tight handcuffing with flexicuffs, and a broken rib.'"

In a detainee's own words: "They threw pepper on my face and the beating started. This went on for half and hour. And then he started beating me with a chair until the chair was broken. After that they started choking me. At that time I thought I was going to die, but it's a miracle I lived. And then they started beating me again. They concentrated on beating me in the heart until they got tired from beating me. They took a little break and then they started kicking me very hard with their feet until I passed out."

Another. "They stripped me naked, they asked me 'Do you pray to Allah?' I said 'Yes.' They said 'Fuck you ' and 'Fuck him.'. . . Someone else asked me, 'Do you believe in anything?' I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"

As Andrew Sullivan notes, "These are not allegations made by antiwar journalists. They are incidents reported within the confines of the United States government" (NYTimes, 13 Jan 04).

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shores . . . and I will torture the hell out of them.

CBS Purge

Today CBS, in a broad mea culpa gesture, fired four people involved in the Sixty Minutes segment on Bush's National Guard service. Here the network attempts to salvage its news department's reputation by holding people accountable for bad journalism.

Gee whiz! Imagine if the Bush administration demonstrated a comparable level of accountability! For example, what if it held people accountable for the WMD fiasco, or the Abu Ghraib torture scandal? A deafening silence would descend upon the West Wing, upon certain corridors of the Pentagon -- given the sudden absence of the many individuals responsible.

I guess the difference is that the Fourth Estate is willing to admit that it is capable of making mistakes, whereas the Bush administration, as we all learned during the presidental debates, is mistake-proof.

The real news, of course, is that the administration secretly paid the right-wing editorialist Armstrong Williams a quarter of a million dollars (this tax dollars, by the way) to promote its No Child Left Behind program. So much for independent journalism. Psyops targeting, not the Iraqi people, but the American.

A Tsunami of Stupidity

We give them money; are they grateful?
No they're spiteful and they're hateful.

--Randy Newman, "Political Science"


In the wake of the tsunami--death toll now estimated 150,000--Dubya emerged on the third day from his Crawford retreat to deliver tidings of comfort and joy. He pledged $35 million for disaster relief. Just think: almost as much in aid for the one of the greatest natural disasters of the last hundred years as he is likely to spend celebrating his re-election on inauguration day! It was only after a few days of being called a cheapskate by the world that Bush uped the figure to $350 million.

In the light of the this reluctant good samaritanism, consider again the current justification for our war in Iraq: that we are there spending billions of dollars (and hundreds of lives) because of our deep and abiding love for the Iraqi people. If our occupation is motivated by compassion -- and not by greed -- why not a comparable expenditure for the tsunami victims? Are they less worthy of our love?

I've been listening off and on for the last few days to what Bill Moyers, in a recent valedictory speech, characterized as "the nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio": Beck, Limbaugh, et al (I know, I know, but they're all I can get on the radio around here...). All of these instant geniuses are suggesting that ANY disaster relief we offer is more than those brown bastards deserve. "After all, we give more in humanitarian and developmental aid than the rest of the world combined and nobody appreciates it!" So saith the radio preachers.

Never mind the reality: "According to a 2001 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes based at the University of Maryland . . . the average American believes that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on assistance to developing nations, more than 20 times the actual figure." Whereas the money so far pledged by Sweden for tsunami relief amounts to $8.40 for each of its citizens, the money Bush initially pledged (the 35 million) amounts to "twelve cents per capita" (Charles Sennott, "Global Analysts Dispute Perceived US Generosity," the Boston Globe, 12/31/04).

Tsunami an irresistible metaphor now. For example: the tsunami of stupidity we experienced on November 2nd. Particularly in our part of Ohio. This a working-class area, suffering from severe economic depression, yet the people vote overwhelmingly to return to office a guy whose main goal as president is to loot the Treasury for the sake of his bloated plutocrat friends? A guy who is doing absolutely nothing to help working class people--is in fact positively harming them?

No, one need not have been listening all that closely on November 2nd to hear throughout Ohio's fourth district an immense collective "DUH!" The crashing of the moronic wave.