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.