Re: Abu Ghraib

Just a brief follow-up on the previous post. I think there are three distinct and interesting threads to follow on this incident: a) How many troops/contractors had direct involvement in or knowledge of these events, and what will the consequences be for them, b) what sort of policy mistakes were made by higher ranking officers and officials that allowed this sort of conduct to take place and to go unnoticed long enough for it to get so out of hand, who will be held accountable, to what degree, and what procedural changes will be implemented, c) have there been any efforts at a cover-up, if so, who was involved and how far up the chain of command did it go. It may be some time before all of this becomes clear...

Dan Rather and CBS Sat On Abu Ghraib Story for Two Weeks...

... at the request of General Myers. So says the WP. That would not be too problematic in itself, except that General Myers claimed on ABCNews This Week (sorry, I couldn't find the transcript) that he hadn't yet read the Taguba memo (it apparently was working its way up the chain of command). And today, President Bush said during an interview on Al Hurra (an Arab television station):

Q When did you learn about the -- did you see the pictures on TV? When was the first time you heard about --

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, the first time I saw or heard about pictures was on TV. However, as you might remember, in early January, General Kimmitt talked about a investigation that would be taking place about accused -- alleged improprieties in the prison. So our government has been in the process of investigating.

So let me get this straight--General Myers knew that CBS was going to break a story about prison abuses, but did not bother to get his hands on--and read--the Taguba report the two weeks during which he managed to stall the CBS story? Moreover, why didn't General Myers talk to the President about the CBS story that was bound to hit soon? Or are we supposed to understand President Bush's response as an equivocation--that he did not see or hear about pictures until the 60 Minutes II story? Give me a break. The Bush administration was keeping wraps on the Taguba report and other instances of abuse that they knew of (those murdered in Afghanistan, for instance), hoping that the stories would never see the light of day. And President Bush has the audacity to say, in that interview with the Arab TV station:

And secondly, there is investigations to determine how widespread abuse may be occurring. And we want to know the truth. I talked to the Secretary of Defense this morning, by the way. I said, find the truth, and then tell the Iraqi people and the world the truth. We have nothing to hide. We believe in transparency, because we're a free society. That's what free societies do. They -- if there's a problem, they address those problems in a forthright, up-front manner. And that's what's taking place.

Cut and Run

John MacArthur in this commentary [Common Dreams] makes the best case I have read so for encouraging the U.S. to abandon Iraq now. I don't agree (yet)--but he gets an "A" for effort. My favorite part:

We welcomed President Thieu and Marshal Ky; we should even find a place for Ahmad Chalabi and the pornographic wardens of Abu Ghraib prison.

The Taguba Report

Complements of MSNBC, here is the full U.S. Army report discussing the widespread abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (or so I've heard--I haven't gotten around to reading this monster yet). Thank you Josh Marshall for pointing to the link (Talking Points Memo has really made itself into a halfway decent blog. It would be all the way decent if they had a slogan like ours).

Yes, America Can

Yes, folks, this is an official Bush-Cheney campaign slogan: Yes, America Can. And with that I think we can safely state that the presidential race has devolved into the Special Olympics.

Just A Question

I was just reading CSM's wrap-up of Abu-Ghraib news, and I had this question: After Fallujah, after Bush's statements on Sharon's plan, after Abu Ghraib, what Muslim arab would dare to align themselves with the US? Of course, according to CSM "this latest incident may not have made all that much difference to many in the Arab world because their opinion of the US had already sunk as low as it could". Whew! Thank goodness for that. I thought this torture thing was really going to hurt us.

Abu Ghraib Prison--Where Democracy Goes to Die

Seymour Hersch once again presents enlightening coverage of the situation and its history in this month's New Yorker Magazine. Horrible atrocities were being reported as early as fall and should have been known to American leaders on all levels no later than February, but some officials maintain they did not learn of any problems with prisoners in our custody until the story was broadcast on 60 Minutes II. How the story will affect the teflon president and American sentiment on the war remains to be seen. But we can be sure that America has just lost its last few friends in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

Re: Thank God We Rescued the Iraqis...

President Bush has this to say today from his rose garden (see here [ABC News]):

A year ago, I did give a speech from the carrier saying that we have achieved an important objective, that we had accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq. As a result a friend of terror has been removed and now sits in a jail. I also said on that carrier that day that there was still difficult work ahead....

Of course, he must have meant no more torture chambers or rape rooms run by Saddam.

Thank God We Rescued the Iraqis...

...from Saddam's torture chambers. I mean, that way we can hook the electrodes to their testicles ourselves. Adnan Al-Pachachi comes to the US's defense, noting that while Saddam tortured and killed his prisoners, the US only tortures the prisoners, but doesn't kill them. Of course, judging by Tuesday's Afghanistan article, it's only a matter of time before we start killing them too.

Alright, so clearly it's disingenuous to suggest that this is in any way US policy. However, I think it's entirely appropriate to suggest that the US government has completely failed in their task of preparing soldiers for the work required of them. Since the close of the Cold War the US army has been mostly used for interventions and peace-keeping operations. And the likelihood that we'll engage in a large-scale conventional war anytime in the next decade or so is exceedingly slim. Yet the military has stubbornly refused to accept that peacekeeping is an important duty that is required of them. Instead of preparing for it, they whine and moan each time that their soldiers are not prepared for this and don't know what to do, and, boy, what difficult and compromising position we're putting them in. Oh, poor me. The Bush administration came in with the same mind-set, and in 2002 they shut down the Army War College's Peacekeeping Institute (which, of course, only had a budget of $200k and a staff of 10 people anyway). So every time that the military screws up in Iraq and we hear the familiar refrain they were trying to perform a job they were never trained for, let's keep in mind that this is only the case because both civilian and military leadership refuse to admit the by-now obvious reality that peacekeeping is a vital part of the military's mission.

And these people are running our country...

You know, I may have gotten this Wolfowitz guy all wrong--he really does know his stuff. Not.

Better Them Than Us

I don't generally find George Will to be a terribly insightful writer, but he's got a column in the Washington Post today wherein he suggests that a Sunni-Shiite civil war wouldn't be a bad thing since it would get them shooting at each other instead of at us. Now that right there is a prize-winner of a statement. If you're trying to find it in the column, this is after he brands the UN as useless, but before he suggests that we provide the Shiites with an incentive to crush the Sunnis. Who gave this clown a column in the Post anyway?

Figuring Out the New Rules

Joseph Nye has YASPC (yet another soft power column) on CSM. He acknowledges that the US holds complete military dominance over the rest of the world, but questions how useful this is in the face of evolving threats. The 2002 National Security Strategy correctly analyzed the problem, but came up wanting on solutions. This is not a problem that hard power alone can solve. Like the democracy article, this is nothing new, but it is a point that desperately needs a wider audience.

Democracy Is Hard

CSM is running a story about a shift in public opinion regarding democracy in Latin America. Disappointed by decades of poor performance from their major parties many Latin American voters are electing populist outsiders, who unfortunately are also struggling to bring improvement. Democracy is a difficult form of government. We've discussed this here before, but it bears repeating. It becomes particularly difficult if you lack stable civic institutions, a substantial economic middle class, and sound economic policies. Latin American nations suffer on all accounts. Their experience has not been so different from those of other fledgling democracies in Africa and South-east Asia. Even the former Soviet states, which are relatively better off in those regards, have struggled with democracy. This is the backdrop in which the US invasion of Iraq needs to be considered. The idea that we could simply remove Saddam Hussein and then Iraq would transform into a shining beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East was absurd from day 1. I think people in the US are slowly beginning to realize this.

A People's History of the War on Iraq--One Radical's View

See what Howard Zinn has to say about our current predicament in the June Progressive Magazine. Zinn will be speaking in Madison on May 8, for anyone who might be interested...

Bringing American Standards of Human Rights to Afghanistan

Last week the government of Afghanistan executed Abdulah Shah by firing squad, the first execution since the Taleban lost control of the country. I guess we bring these occupied countries up to speed on some things more quickly than others...

Who's Helping Who?

Howard Kurtz caught a bit of news in his column today that is an interesting cultural sign of the times. He considered how much effort NBC went through to cross -promote the Trump reality show. Kurtz gives the following examples:

Katie Couric chatted up Donald Trump on "Today," which also hosted 14 fired contestants and aired audition tapes. "Dateline NBC" devoted chunks of two programs to the reality show's finale, including behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the winner. Not to mention an MSNBC poll on who should win, CNBC's preemption of Monday night newscasts for "Apprentice" reruns, and segments on NBC cable shows "Deborah Norville Tonight," "Capital Report" and "Scarborough Country."

But in talking with some of the key people a different picture emerges:

"I appreciate the fear that we might be shilling for shows," the NBC News president [Neil Shapiro] says. But, he says, the Trump show doesn't need any ratings help, while NBC news shows got a big boost.

Shapiro went on to discuss the fact that NBC tried to get Survivor contestants on their shows as well, but was cut off by CBS, meanwhile NBC themselves restrict access to Apprentice people. It turns out that they're not using their news programs to pump the reality shows, but rather using the reality show segments to pump viewership of news programs. It's a sad world...

Democratic Reform in the Middle East Tarnished By US Support

This isn't a real shocker, but since it is relevant to a discussion Barry and I had over the weekend, I thought I'd post it. CSM is reporting that democratic reform in the Middle East may be set back by the Bush administration's strong support. According to the article "[h]ostility to the US in the region is so intense that the administration is finding that anything marked "made in USA," such as the reform plan, is not well received." They cite events in Fallujah, Najaf, and Bush's recent statements on Israel as key issues. CSM also quotes European diplomats worrying that American actions are hindering their ability to promote democracy through negative association.

Condi's Secret Fantasies

From this New York Metro story:
A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”

The Washington Post is also covering the Freudian slip here.

Bush's Efforts to Redefine Sovereignty

Black's Law Dictionary defines sovereignty as follows:
(1) Supreme dominion, authority, or rule.
(2) The supreme political authority of an independent state.
(3) The state itself.

I am deeply troubled that on at least two instances, the Bush administration is misusing that term for political purposes. First, it maintains that although the United States has "complete jurisdiction and control" over Guantanamo Bay and retains the property for as long as it likes, Cuba retains "ultimate sovereignty" because a 1903 lease and a corresponding treaty between Cuba and the United States says so. But "sovereignty" used in that way simply has no meaning. Cuba has no legal authority over individuals at the base and cannot terminate the lease without the consent of the United States. And the lease restricts the use of the land for "coaling and naval stations only, and for no other purpose," but quite clearly we have been using the land for other purposes for some time (including as storage for Haitian refugees before using it as a prison camp) but Cuba cannot terminate the lease despite the United States' failure to comply with its provisions. Apparently, the only right that Cuba retains is to get the land back if the United States ever abandons it.

Second, the United States claims that it is transferring sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, but really it is not transferring "absolute political authority" or anything remotely close to it. According to this WP article, Marc Grossman, the Under-Secretary of State for political affairs, recently stated that the caretaker government to whom "sovereignty" will be transferred will have no law-making authority, and the United States military wil continue to exercise final authority over all troops stationed there, as well as the Iraqi army, police, and security forces. What, then, does sovereignty mean in that context? Mr. Grossman explains taht "in many, many, many other parts of Iraqi life, there will be a very important Iraqi face on an Iraqi government." (NYT and LAT also provide similar reports). An "Iraqi face" does not equal sovereignty, plain and simple.

The problem is more than a semantic one. It reflects a fundamental precept of American foreign policy. Specifically, the United States refuses to cede one inch of its own power to an international governing body because doing so would jeopardize American sovereignty, but when it comes to exerting authority over others, the U.S. strips all functional meaning from that term. That duality surely does not go unnoticed by the rest of the world, and compromises our standing and integrity. And in the context of Guantanamo Bay, it tears at the very fabric of our government. When our own government plays fast and loose with the concept of sovereignty, "we, the people" are at grave risk of losing the power that the Constitution grants to us.

E-ink product is launched in Japan

The New York Times has this coverage. I never wanted to be Japanese before now (even this didn't do it for me). But the chance to get my hands on one of those e-ink e-books, it would almost be worth giving up all the "God Bless America" goodness and liberties.