Reality Wedge #3: having and eating cake

Professor Andrew J. Bacevich

Some texts on "torturegate":

Torture, as a word, except in documents or in the mouths of other people -- those "critics" -- has evidently lost its descriptive powers in our news world where almost any other formulation is preferred. Often these days the word of choice is "harsh," or even "brutal," both substitutes for the anodyne "enhanced" in the Bush administration's own description of the package of torture "techniques" it institutionalized and justified after the fact in those legal memos. The phrase was, of course, meant to be law-evading, since torture is a crime, not just in international law, but in this country. The fact is that, if you can't call something what it is, you're going to have a tough time facing what you've done, no less prosecuting crimes committed not quite in its name. Tom Engelhardt

International law and American treaty obligations were defied, as were established American law on the conduct of war and the treatment of prisoners, constitutional protections, and the surveillance of citizens. All of this occurred without meeting serious, or at least successful, Congressional or judicial challenge, with little or no objection from the national press, and all but unanimous support from the national audiovisual media. One needn’t go through all that again.(...)President Obama’s unwillingness to see his first term dominated by the crimes of the Bush administration is comprehensible. Yet there is a limit. The latest case of the human moral vacuum created and encouraged during the Bush years is so outrageous, perverse, sadistic and nihilistic that it demands attention, for all that it tells us about the rest that has happened. I speak of the ordered, authorized, and conscientiously supervised water-boarding of two prisoners 266 times. The men who authorized, ordered, and performed such acts should be hanged. It is as simple as that. William Pfaff

Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards." Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs? Michael Scheuer

Hard though it is to believe, Barack Obama may be facing an issue with bigger consequences for the US than any already on his desk: whether officials from the previous administration – perhaps up to and including George W. Bush – should be prosecuted for violating domestic and international laws on torture.(...) Many Americans would see prosecutions as partisan; their loudest advocates do seem driven more by loathing of the Bush administration than zeal for justice. Rather than building a consensus against torture, which is the real prize, prosecutions might militate against it. Mr Obama may now be unable to halt the process. Before choosing not to try, he should think hard about where it might lead. Editorial - Financial Times

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Beginning with Professor Bacevich's masterful, almost Swiftian, evisceration of the jingoistic ignorance and hypocrisy which after more than a century finally was symbolized by what we call "George W. Bush", the above texts lay out with clarity the full gravity and the deadly vortex facing the United States of America in the torture controversy

In my view, at the heart of all of the controversy of whether to prosecute or even investigate torture is the following consideration:

The United States of America is not a not a "normal" country.

The USA is not a "nation" in a traditional sense as England, France, Japan or Spain are: with hundreds of years of common history, religion, language, culture, victories and defeats to fill and color their daily lives with unspoken meaning and identity no matter what constitution or regime happens to be in power at the moment. That is not America's case.

Without it's laws and republican traditions the United States of America would simply be a multicolored spectacle of fat people out shopping. That is what it is in danger of being, may already have become. The United States without habeas corpus becomes merely the sinister, hypocritical, mastodon that Andrew Bacevich paints.

Admitting the use of torture and not prosecuting those who have bent or broken the Constitution and international law is the slipperiest of slippery slopes. Not only America's identity is at stake, even the ideas of the enlightenment: liberty, equality and the rights of man themselves, which America likes to think it incarnates, are at risk.

As an example: Since Eisenhower embraced Franco, "black Spain" has treated America and its president much as their ancestors treated the Pope, as the final guarantor of their legitimacy to rule. I have seen with my own eyes how much of Spain's unreconstructed, Francoist right wing, symbolized by José María Aznar, cloaked themselves with the democratic seal of approval and modernidad that Bush conferred on their own ancestral toxic mixture of religion, selfishness, greed and centuries of the systematic violation of and contempt for human rights. At this moment they are nonplussed by many of Obama's opening initiatives. That is much to Obama's credit.

Finally the decision that faces America is the same one that faced ancient Rome, whether to be an empire or to be a Republic. Of course that decision was taken long ago... America is an empire and America tortures and has taught others how to torture for decades. This what Chalmers Johnson calls "The Sorrows of Empire".

The real question today is whether the cat can ever be walked back.

To prosecute the torturers right up to the top with the same vigor that the United States employed against the villains of Nuremberg or Slobodan Milošević would be a fundamental first step in reclaiming the Republic.

This is a fork in the road. One path surely leads to hell on earth and the other, perhaps, possibly, maybe, could be, might be, the path where happiness, so long pursued, could finally be caught. DS

Israel, America's tragic looking glass: some notes

John Ging is an ex-Army officer who worked in Rwanda during the genocide and was in the Balkans when ethnic cleansing took place. As one of the UN’s main men on the ground in Gaza, he says the current Palestinian situation is the worst he has ever encountered... Irish Times (hat to P. Weiss)

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As the waters of this unspeakably criminal tsunami momentarily recede and we can briefly assess the damage, push aside some smoking rubble, count the victims and simmer in our impotent rage, I'd like to share with you some of the material I have collected during these few days during which we have had our noses rubbed in so much, and such indigestible, horror.

When I began to work with the Internet in the mid 90s, I soon discovered the beauties of the collage of illustrative quotes from authoritative voices, complete with links.

Standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were, I even made a modest little business out of sending these collages to corporate clients with my comments attached and the buzz the comments produced led to my writing a weekly column in a major Spanish newspaper. I guess I'm another one of those little Internet stories.

So instead of pontificating about the horror of Middle East, today I'll take a step back, revert to default mode and do a collage with minimalist comments of mine own attached.

Except for China Matters and the clipping from the Irish Times, which I found on Philip Weiss's invaluable blog, all the commentators quoted are Jewish. For one of the most heartening developments in all this retched horror is the reaction of so many Jewish people in Israel, America and around the world, whose principals are principals no matter whose tribe is involved.

It was always clear that Israel was going to take advantage of the post-Bush/pre-anybody interregnum to attack one of its enemies. Remember when the possibility of an attack on Iran or Lebanon 2.0 were being chewed over? It turned out badly for the people of Gaza, but Iran & Syria are probably noting that all Israel could do in the end was beat up the little guy on its doorstep. China Matters

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Avi Shlaim - Guardian

It is important that Jewish people are at the cutting edge of world outrage because Israel's still being admitted into civilized company after what has been perpetrated in Gaza is enough to fuel a hundred and one conspiracy theories no matter how far fetched and outre they might be.

Apartheid South Africa was never cut so much slack... Serbia was bombed into submission and Milosevic brought to trial, but it is hard to imagine that any Israeli will ever have to stand trial in The Hague, for what the entire world has witnessed.

But as Abba Eban was fond of saying about the Palestinians, the Israelis never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. As Immanuel Wallerstein points out:

Had Israel been serious about a two-state solution based on the so-called Green Line - the line of division at the end of the 1948-1949 war - it probably would have achieved a settlement.

Israel however was always one step behind. When it could have negotiated with Nasser, it wouldn't. When it could have negotiated with Arafat, it wouldn't. When Arafat died and was succeeded by the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas, the more militant Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. Israel refused to talk to Hamas.

Time has finally run out on the "two state solution" and what might have been, will never now be. Israel has painted itself and the USA into a corner, from which it seems almost impossible for America to escape.

In my opinion only the reaction of America's Jewish community can save us from this nauseating Albatross without a tragic fracturing of our political culture.

Sadly, you see, Israelis see their Jewish state as a bone in the throat of Palestinians, not just historically, but still. They feel themselves, increasingly, in a desperate “existential” fight where no holds are barred now, because no holds will be barred later. Show weakness about what is yours, and you are a baby-step away from Bosnia. Which is, of course, what Serbians thought, and how "Bosnia" began. Bernard Avishai (hat to P. Weiss)

Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime, they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.

This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.

This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand. Uri Avnery

If Israel's goose isn't yet cooked, it is certainly ready to be tested with a fork. Here is how Professor Immanuel Wallerstein analyzes the resulting juices in an article entitled, "Chronicle of a Suicide Foretold: The Case of Israel".

Now, Israel has invaded Gaza, seeking to destroy Hamas. If it succeeds, what organization will come next? If, as is more probable, it fails to destroy Hamas, is a two-state solution now possible? Both Palestinian and world public opinion is moving towards the one-state solution. And this is of course the end of the Zionist project.

The three-element strategy of Israel is decomposing. The iron fist no longer succeeds, much as it didn't for George Bush in Iraq. Will the United States link remain firm? I doubt it. And will world public opinion continue to look sympathetically on Israel? It seems not. Can Israel now switch to an alternative strategy, of negotiating with the militant representatives of the Arab Palestinians, as an integral constituent of the Middle East, and not as an outpost of Europe? It seems quite late for that, quite possibly too late. Hence, the chronicle of a suicide foretold. Immanuel Wallerstein

The United States is well caught between a horrid rock and a tragic hard place. If America's most valued allies in the Middle East, the tushy licking Arab "moderate" regimes collapse and are replaced by Islamic republics, which is where Israel's hysterical barbarity is inevitably taking them, this will have a massively detrimental effect on America's standing in the world and might even collapse the dollar; however, if any US government attempts to pressure Israel meaningfully, then AIPAC and all it represents will surely pull out all the stops and use any tool that comes to their hands to destabilize that government... in the middle of the greatest economic crisis since the great depression.

That is the dilemma that President Obama will be facing by tomorrow evening. DS

Democracy without consequences is exhibitionism

"Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue"
La Rochefoucauld

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Democracy without consequences is mere exhibitionism. If some serious jail time doesn't follow these revelations of torture and destruction of evidence then the United State is just "flashing" the world.

If America is not going to eradicate these practices it should at least have the decency to cover them up. That would show some consciousness that they were wrong or minimally incongruent with the supposed ideals of the republic.

Bush has to be extradited to the Hague for trial for war crimes if the USA ever wants to be taken seriously again as anything more than a large collection of fat people out shopping. DS

CIA boss faces tape interrogation - BBC News
The head of the CIA is due to testify to two key congressional intelligence committees, after it emerged tapes of two interrogations had been destroyed.

Gen Michael Hayden will face questioning amid ongoing concern over why the tapes were wiped in 2005. Some suggest a possible torture cover-up.

The CIA and the US justice department are investigating the tape destruction.

Meanwhile, an ex-CIA agent has defended the use of "water-boarding", which critics say amounts to torture.

Speaking to ABC News, John Kiriakou said the technique, which simulates drowning, helped "break" a key al-Qaeda suspect.

The suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was said to be one of the men questioned in the deleted footage.

A Palestinian, he was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mr Kiriakou said the day after water-boarding was used on Abu Zubaydah, the detainee told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to co-operate.

"From that day on, he answered every question," the retired agent said.
But the director has come under pressure to explain the agency's decision to destroy the tapes.

Correspondents say there are suspicions that the decision was made to conceal evidence that terror suspects were being tortured in order to extract vital intelligence.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that lawyers in a clandestine branch of the CIA gave written approval in advance for the destruction of the tapes, and said this could widen the scope of the investigation.

Gen Hayden has defended the decision, saying it was "done in line with the law".

The CIA says it destroyed the tapes to protect the identity of its agents.

But Democrats have accused the agency of a cover-up to hide evidence of possible detainee torture.

Speaking on Monday, Mr Kiriakou told ABC News he had wrestled with the moral implications of using so-called "enhanced techniques" on prisoners.

"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself - weighing the idea that water-boarding may be torture, versus the quality of information that we often get after using the water-boarding technique," he said.

"And I struggle with it."

But on Tuesday he shifted responsibility from the CIA to the White House, saying the decision to use certain interrogation techniques did not rest with people like him.

"This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and justice department," he told NBC TV.

Human rights groups say that water-boarding - and other techniques allegedly used by the CIA - can be defined as torture under various international treaties to which the US is a signatory.

The administration of US President George W Bush has always maintained it does not allow the use of torture. LINK

Iraq: crime and punishment

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This article from the New York Review of Books by Peter W. Galbraith is about as clear and complete an analysis of America's disaster in Iraq and Iraq's disastrous encounter with America that you are likely to find anywhere. If you can still stand reading about it, a must read.

However having said that, I have to insist that this otherwise fine article is obviating what for me is a key point: the criminal nature of America's intervention in Iraq and the necessity of a catharsis that determines the criminal responsibilities of those who led the country to war and punishes them with a severity corresponding to their crimes.

It should be pointed out to those who are unmoved by the sufferings of the people of Iraq, that America's young men and women who have been maimed or killed in Iraq, have not just "died in vain", which is an absurd idea. (Is an automobile accident or colon cancer "dying in vain"?) What has happened to them is far, far worse: they have been mutilated or killed while carrying out a criminal enterprise, as if they had been shot while robbing a gas station or a convenience store. That should not be allowed to stand. DS

Iraq: The Way to Go - New York Review of Books
Abstract: The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning—a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes— but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America." Tellingly, the Iraq war's intellectual boosters, while insisting the surge is working, are moving to assign blame for defeat. And they have already picked their target: the American people. In The Weekly Standard, Tom Donnelly, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote, "Those who believe the war is already lost—call it the Clinton-Lugar axis—are mounting a surge of their own. Ground won in Iraq becomes ground lost at home." Lugar provoked Donnelly's anger by noting that the American people had lost confidence in Bush's Iraq strategy as demonstrated by the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress. (This "blame the American people" approach has, through repetition, almost become the accepted explanation for the outcome in Vietnam, attributing defeat to a loss of public support and not to fifteen years of military failure.) Indeed, Vietnam is the image many Americans have of defeat in Iraq. Al-Qaeda would overrun the Green Zone and the last Americans would evacuate from the rooftop of the still unfinished largest embassy in the world. President Bush feeds on this imagery.(...) But there will be no Saigon moment in Iraq. Iraq's Shiite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaeda, or a more inclusive Sunni front. Iraq's Shiites are three times as numerous as Iraq's Sunni Arabs; they dominate Iraq's military and police and have a powerful ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that might support the Sunnis are small, far away (vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi population centers), and can only provide money, something the insurgency has in great amounts already. Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today—a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic, and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.(...) In laying out his dark vision of an American failure, President Bush never discusses Iran's domination of Iraq even though this is a far more likely consequence of American defeat than an al-Qaeda victory. Bush's reticence is understandable since it was his miscalculations and incompetent management of the postwar occupation that gave Iran its opportunity. While opposing talks with Iran, the neoconservatives also prefer not to discuss its current powerful influence over Iraq's central government and southern region, persisting in the fantasy—notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary—that Iran is deeply unpopular among Iraq's Shiites and clerics. (At the same time, US officials accuse Iran of supplying Iraqi Shiite militias with particularly lethal roadside bombs.)(...) In the parts where we can accomplish nothing, we should withdraw. But there are still three missions that may be achievable—disrupting al-Qaeda, preserving Kurdistan's democracy, and limiting Iran's increasing domination. These can all be served by a modest US presence in Kurdistan. We need an Iraq policy with sufficient nuance to protect American interests.Unfortunately, we probably won't get it. READ IT ALL

Walt Disney's "Adolph Eichmann"

The toothpaste smile of the all-American, "girl next door"

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This article by William Pfaff is a "must read". This subject has gotten me rereading Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem", whose subtitle, "A Report on the Banality of Evil", perfectly describes the system that has been created and which, for want of a better name, we call "Bush". DS

The American Enthusiasm for Torture - William Pfaff
Abstract: Probably the most disturbing – to an American – of the developments in the United States since 2001 has been the manner-of-fact way in which torture has been adopted by the United States as a normal aspect of its military and intelligence operations. At the beginning there was very little protest, and indeed very little discussion, in Congress and the mainstream media at the adoption by the United States of what a few years before had been Nazi wartime SS and Gestapo methods.(...) The first serious public protest followed the Abu Ghraib prison revelations, and the main objection articulated was that they made the United States look bad. They were passed over in military reports as merely the clumsy brutalities of untrained “hillbilly” National Guardsmen, and an NCO was sent to prison. In fact he and the others had been ordered to “soften up” the victims before the real torturers arrived. The same absence of protest was largely true throughout the American military services, supposedly committed to an ethic of “honor” (remember the West Point oath, to “duty, honor, country”?), and legally bound by international treaty, national law, and military regulations to eschew torture. Still more significant was the apparent indifference (or political intimidation) of the public and politicians, again reflected in the press. At the end of May of this year, the Bush administration was reportedly reviewing its methods of torture, in order to ban or limit some methods that, when revealed, had eventually stirred public expressions of disapproval, such as simulated drowning or “waterboarding,” while at the same time enlarging or intensifying the permitted use of other methods as yet secret. This review continues to be reported in the same manner-of-fact way as discussion of farm subsidies, trade talks, or tax legislation.(...) We are also encouraged to feel concern for America’s patriotic torturers and give them our support. An article in The Washington Post early in June wrote of the “tortured lives” of the torturers themselves.(...) Only amateurs think that ever-increasing pain produces accurate and useful information, although this seems from the beginning to have been the conviction of the President and his legal advisor, now America’s attorney general. Allied interrogators during world war II, who knew the language and culture of the peoples they were dealing with, used widely-known non-coercive techniques, including those employed with consistent success by intelligence and criminal police interrogators the world over (including the FBI men who visited Iraq and sent scandalized reports back to Washington, to be ignored). The president’s terminology concerning the still-secret “enhanced interrogation techniques” that he insists are “crucial” to American success, according to the conservative writer Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic magazine was originally Nazi. It was used to describe SS and Gestapo practices that in 1948 were determined to have been war crimes subject to the death penalty. Current discussion, such as it is, still mainly concerns the legality of these practices. Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 commission and a former advisor to Condoleezza Rice, stated the vital point when he recently said that a concern to established the legal frontier “obscures the core of the issue....My own view is that the cool, carefully considered, methodical, prolonged, and repeated subjection of captives to physical torment, and the accompanying psychological terror, is immoral. I offer no opinion as to whether such conduct is a federal crime, merely that it is immoral.” READ IT ALL

The Blair farewell message to Britain: you been 'ad

Those yellow lights on Bayswater Road made you look Chinese to me./ Little Ming Foo, the pearl of the east, turned out to be you, you great hairy beast." "Those Yellow Lights on Bayswater Road" Marty Feldman and Barry Took

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Yes, in fact for the last ten years the British people have been befooled, betrayed, cheated, confounded, confused, deceived, defrauded, deluded, diddled, duped, entangled, entraped, escamotered, fooled, gazumped, gulled, hoaxed, hoodwinked, illaqueated, insnared, lead astray, nobbled, played false, fleeced, sniggled, snowed, swindled, taken for a ride, tricked and generally have been given quite a fucking. DS
Courtesy of the English Synonym Dictionary

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Bye-Bye, Blair - Slate
Abstract: All through Blair's career, there has been a fascinating contrast, or dissonance, between appearance and reality, words and deeds, rhetoric and achievement. (...) We didn't laugh, or not immediately, when he said early on, "I would never do anything to harm the country or anything improper. I never have. I think people who've dealt with me think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy." Those memorable words were spoken in the wake of an episode—the rules against tobacco sponsorship of sport were waived after a large donation had been made to Blair's party—for which most of us didn't think straight was quite the word. Since then, there has been a long line of scandals with exotic names like Mittal and Hinduja, culminating in the baroque cash-for-peerages affair, and in the truly extraordinary moment last December when, for the first time in our history, a prime minister was questioned by the police at the official residence at 10 Downing Street. Straight sort of guy? He has been compared to Winston Churchill or to Margaret Thatcher, but the former prime minister he may best resemble is David Lloyd George, of whom historian Kenneth O. Morgan has written that, while Lloyd George's government had plenty of successes to its credit, what people disliked so much was "its tone as much as its policies, its atmosphere of intrigue and corruption." That fits the Blair years all too well. There is a connection between Blair's religion, with his antinomian sense that "to the pure all things are pure," reinforcing a conviction that anything he does must therefore be virtuous, and his conduct in office, the spinning and smearing, the dirty tricks and the cynical maneuvers. Above all, his departure is burdened by Iraq and the burning sense of anger and betrayal so many feel at the way we were taken to war by Blair pitching a false prospectus and selling us a bill of goods, all in his most exalted manner and for what he believed were good reasons. READ IT ALL

Iraq: a crime unpunished, a death star born

"There is no alternative to getting out. Simply getting out as rapidly and efficiently as possible" - William Pfaff

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I'm having trouble working up any enthusiasm for the "electable" Democrats running for president... Not one of them talks frankly about the criminal responsibility of destroying Iraq and setting the Middle East ablaze. Is everything supposed to go on as if nothing had happened? Is this to be treated as simply well intentioned incompetence and the page turned?

In fact, self-examination and accountability are essential if the United States is not to become a political black hole or death star. Germany had the great good fortune to be denazified by foreigners, but the USA is going to have to do it all by itself. DS

William Pfaff: Ending One War, Launching Another
Abstract: President George W. Bush’s reinforcement of American forces, announced at the start of the year in the guise of a final “surge” to “victory,” has merely displaced the sectarian attacks from one place to another, while doing nothing to solve the crisis that is destroying the Iraqi nation: inspiring sectarian murder on a huge scale, and sending its elites -- and others – into exile, or more likely, eventually, to refugee camps. If this goes on, when we Americans leave, there will be no Iraq, in any meaningful sense. We will have murdered the Iraqi nation, as nation (-- “to save it”). There is no alternative to getting out. Simply getting out as rapidly and efficiently as possible, with as much political help (or otherwise) as can be found from other governments in the region, who have an interest in containing the crisis. But getting out. No bases or troops left in Iraq. No new bases nearby. Hands off Iraq’s oil. Is that possible? Personally, I doubt it. It goes entirely against the interventionist mind-set and globalist strategy convictions that have dominated Washington for the last four decades. But without this, the region is left ablaze. Even the congressional opposition, which wants to get out of this war, proposes a beginning in October, a finish a year or so on, debating departure as if a perpetuated American presence of some kind is necessary to whatever solution may actually exist. If we leave now, or leave completely, there will be chaos! There is chaos now. The crucial factor in precipitating this terrible situation was the American invasion, and the principal factor in its continuation is the continued American presence in that country. When we leave, what follows will be the Iraqis’ responsibility. For any solution to be possible the United States must leave. For any solution to be possible the United States must leave. This certainly may be followed by intensified violence in the immediate term, but no long-term resolution of the civil struggle is imaginable with American forces still there. They haplessly stand by, witnesses to the conflagration George Bush and his colleagues have loosed. Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress cling to the belief that the American intervention was well-intentioned, and therefore American good intentions could still be a positive force in the country. READ IT ALL

Wolfowitz: Up against the wall Paul

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Paul Wolfowitz, whose every failure has been handsomely rewarded, is certainly the most visible, successful and symbolic of the neocons.

Over a half a million Iraqis have died, millions have been displaced. These are people who had never done any harm to the USA.

Their pain, their fear and their blood cry out for justice.

Thousands of Americans have been killed, maimed or crippled by this war, mistakenly believing in good faith that their sacrifice was in defense of their country and its flag when, in fact, they have been led to besmirch and desecrate them.

Their pain, their fear and their blood cry out for justice.

People are sent to prison everyday for stealing a car or a purse...

Until Wolfowitz and the others he represents are brought to trial for war crimes it will be impossible to begin to address the damage that has been done to America's central belief in the goodness of its own nature. DS

Andrew Cockburn: The puppet who cleared the way for Iraq's destruction - Guardian
Abstract: Among those relishing the exposure of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz's manoeuvres on behalf of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, in recent weeks was almost certainly the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was driven from public life thanks to the catastrophe of Iraq, and for the moment at least lurks in obscurity. Wolfowitz, his deputy until 2005, contributed in almost equal measure to the debacle, yet managed to slide from the Pentagon into the presidency of a leading international institution with every chance to redeem himself. Blame for torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, bungling over troop levels, chaos in Iraq's reconstruction, and the general meltdown in Pentagon management has all too often been laid at Rumsfeld's door alone. However, Wolfowitz was an energetic enabler of these outrages and many other notorious initiatives.(...) Before we conclude that Wolfowitz was the original author of the policies that destroyed Iraq, we should note that his entire career, at least up through his Pentagon service, has been in the service and at the direction of others. His early work in Washington promoting the dubious merits of an anti-ballistic missile programme, for example, was sponsored by Paul Nitze, a powerful insider who devoted a lifetime of intrigue to boosting east-west tensions and US defence spending. Nitze served as godfather to the neoconservative movement in the 70s, correctly calculating that a fusion of the pro-Israel lobby with the military-industrial lobby would create an alliance of unstoppable power. Among the early and most potent recruits was an old friend of Wolfowitz's, Richard Perle, known and feared in Washington as "the Prince of Darkness" for his ruthless bureaucratic skills and commanding position in the neoconservative forces. The relationship flourished into Wolfowitz's sojourn in the Pentagon. Officials who worked closely with him remarked to me on the amount of time Perle, then a close associate of Conrad Black, spent closeted with the deputy secretary. They remained in constant touch, as Wolfowitz's phone logs attest. Other regular recipients of Wolfowitz calls included Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff to Vice-President Cheney and now a convicted felon, and Robin Cleveland. Cleveland was in charge of national security programmes at the White House office of management and budget. From that powerful position, according to a former close colleague of Wolfowitz's, she "was one of the most important people in the group that gave us the Iraq war". Late last year Perle and other leading neoconservatives lashed out publicly at Rumsfeld, deriding his mismanagement of the Iraqi enterprise they had worked so hard to set in train. "Interesting they are not going after the puppet," the former colleague emailed me in reference to Wolfowitz's absence from his old friends' denunciations. Given recent sordid revelations, his role in shredding the reputation of the World Bank and the morale of its employees may be harder to obscure. READ IT ALL

Cheap shot

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I know it's a cheap shot, but the question is still the same:

Why is it so absurdly easy in the United States of America for people with histories of severe mental disturbance to get their hands on deadly weapons? DS

Wolfie blew it............ in a honey pot

"What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privitize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!" - Kurt Vonnegut

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This is really too delicious! Here is Wolfowitz who goes around the world wagging his finger at third world leaders and urging them to "fight corruption," caught in the tackiest, cheesiest most obvious of compromising situations... How dumb can you get? Is he dumb or is he just crazy?

Good question! This is a sample of the same brain power that organized the invasion and occupation of Iraq... Looked at that way it is kind of reassuring. A Spanish philosopher once said that if he had to choose between bad people and stupid people he would choose the bad people, because they sometimes took a rest. DS

Wolfowitz must be told to resign now - Editorial - Financial Times
The president of the World Bank has one asset: his credibility. The Bank’s capacity to make a difference lies not in its money and ideas but in its ability to be the world’s voice for development. This includes, as Paul Wolfowitz, the current president, has insisted, being the voice for good governance. Recent revelations have, however, demonstrated such serious failures that the Bank’s moral authority is endangered. If the president stays, it risks becoming an object not of respect, but of scorn, and its campaign in favour of good governance not a believable struggle, but blatant hypocrisy.

It is important to understand what is not at issue here. It is not Mr Wolfowitz’s unpopularity, even though his role as an architect of the Iraq war made him disliked from the start. It is not failures of management, even though his reliance on a group of outside appointees made him mistrusted by many inside and outside the Bank. It is not disagreements over development doctrine, where some convergence of views has occurred. It is not a romantic relationship with a subordinate, itself hardly a rarity in today’s world.

The issue is whether the failures of corporate governance are serious enough to damage the Bank’s moral authority. In a world where curtailing corruption and improving governance have become central to the practice of development, the world’s premier development institution must, like Caesar’s wife, stand above suspicion.

What then is the story? When Mr Wolfowitz became president of the World Bank he also became the boss of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. To resolve this situation – inconsistent, rightly, with Bank rules – Ms Riza was seconded to the US State Department.

So far, then, so unproblematic. Yet, it is alleged, the terms of the appointment, which appear astonishingly generous, violate a number of Bank protocols. Worse, it now appears Mr Wolf­owitz personally directed the Bank’s head of human resources to offer his girlfriend these exceptional terms. Worse still, this has come out after misleading claims by a senior official that the ethics committee of the board, in consultation with the general counsel, approved the agreement.

What then do we see here? The answer is: an apparent violation of Bank rules; favouritism that borders on nepotism; and a possible cover-up. It is true Mr Wolfowitz and Ms Riza were put in a difficult position. Even so, what has come out would be bad in any institution. In an institution that spear-heads the cause of good governance in the developing world, it is lethal.

The World Bank has moved from being a self-proclaimed exemplar of best practice in corporate governance to an example of shoddiness. As long as Mr Wolfowitz stays, this can be neither repaired nor forgotten, be it outside the Bank or inside it. In the interests of the Bank itself, he should resign. If he does not, the board must ask him to go.

Let's make a deal! - In homage to Kurt Vonnegut

In Iraq, rules for evaluating claims have changed. Before President Bush declared major combat operations over, in May 2003, commanders considered most checkpoint shootings to be combat-related. Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the former commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, stiffened rules at checkpoints. In late 2003, as more Iraqis were accidentally injured or killed, the Army began offering condolence payments. It has not always worked as planned, said Sarah Holewinski, the executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, a nonprofit group in Washington. “Sometimes families would get paid and sometimes their neighbors wouldn’t,” she said. “It caused a lot of resentments among the Iraqis, which is ironic because it was a program specifically meant to foster good will.” NYT - READ IT ALL

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Here is a photo from the New York Times of an Iraqi lady getting paid $2000 for her dead husband. Cheap, huh? DS

Python: the killer rabbit on Iran

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Terry Jones of Monty Python shows that there is life in the "killer rabbit" yet.

Britain and the United States have lost any "moral authority" that they might have had on the subject of human rights, which in a sense is as if the French had lost all their authority on food or the Germans on engineering. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." DS

Terry Jones: Call that humiliation? - Guardian
Abstract: I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are. It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.(...) And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed". What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on. READ IT ALL

The essential Iraq

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The important things to keep in mind while following the political battle over Iraq in Washington is:

• The way the United States entered Iraq stinks

• The way the United States has acted in Iraq stinks

• The way the United States leaves Iraq, for sure, will... stink too. We've been through this before... The US always deserts its allies and leaves them holding the bag and then worries about its "syndrome". And Hollywood makes a lot of films about how we actually won... And people ask, "what would Jesus do?" as if Jesus would have ever gotten himself into such a mess.
  

The United States has destroyed its "brand" in Iraq. Nobody can take Americans seriously anymore except as shoppers.

What does that mean?

Imagine if Coca Cola had mysteriously poisoned several thousand people. "Great", you say, they go out of business.

Not so fast. What about all the jobs and the families that depend on them... Mortgages, health plans, pensions, children's education, etc, etc. As we saw with the Soviet Union, (and Enron) when a great structure collapses it is no joke. What would Coca Cola have to do to regain its lost prestige?

First, it would have to discover how the hypothetical poisoning happened, who and what was responsible. If there was criminal negligence or malice aforethought... people would have to go to jail, right up to the chairman and if the chairman's policies were responsible, especially the chairman. And then they would have to pay heavy reparations to all the victims and their families. Maybe then, only just maybe, people all over the world could hear again about how "things go better" or "the real thing" or about 'pauses that refresh' with out vomiting or running for the exits.

That is more or less where things are now. The world system ("really-existing-capitalism") depends to a great extent on America's credibility... even if we aren't in agreement with the system; like it or not we are all stakeholders and if it collapses we will suffer...

That credibility will not be restored by further martyrizing of the people of Iraq... There is no credibility to be gained in Iraq now if there ever was any to begin with. Credibility can only be restored by the USA, in the USA itself. How?

By holding public hearings, Nuremberg-type "show trials" if you will, publicly investigating how this war happened, punishing the offenders, especially Bush and Cheney... (Impeachment isn't good enough). And finally formal apologies to the people of Iraq and payments to the victims (not contracts for Halliburton to "reconstruct"). Cash they can spend any way they want, visas, scholarships, green cards, you name it. People everywhere would respect that and if they didn't respect it they could kiss our ass, because it would be the right thing to do. At least we could respect ourselves and that's a good place to start.

Is this possible? Well, America is a place where impossible things happen all the time and have been happening for hundreds of years... So, why not? The capacity to pleasantly surprise itself and others may be the only national characteristic that can save the USA now. DS

Senate vote... a merry melody?

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The other day I had to take our lovely Persian cat of fourteen years to the vet to be put down. Literally to put her "out of her misery" from kidney failure. It was something dreadful, but it had to be done.

I only bring this personal note up because that is what the Senate is doing with its vote on the war in Iraq.

Now, I am not not for a minute comparing the obscenely criminal war of Iraq with the beautiful creature I helped to die, but rather America's image of itself as a great and generous country filled with noble ideals... because that is what the Senate is putting out of its misery. The misery of Iraq will probably continue for many years to come. DS

Senate Supports a Pullout Date in Iraq War Bill - New York Times
Abstract: The Senate went on record for the first time on Tuesday in favor of a withdrawal date from Iraq, with Democrats marshaling the votes they needed to deliver a forceful rebuke to President Bush’s war policy.(...) “When it comes to the war in Iraq, the American people have spoken, the House and Senate have spoken,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “Now, we hope the president is listening.”(...) The outcome of the Senate vote took both parties by surprise. Republicans were stung by the defection of Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has not supported a timetable for withdrawal before although he is his party’s most outspoken critic of the war in Congress. “There will not be a military solution to Iraq,” Mr. Hagel declared. “Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. It doesn’t belong to the United States. Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost.” The Democrats also gained the vote of Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, who voted against a withdrawal date just two weeks ago. “People want our troops home,” Mr. Nelson said.(...) “This bill should be named the Date Certain for Surrender Act,” said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. “A second-year cadet at West Point could tell you that if you announce when the end will be, it’s a recipe for defeat.”(...) Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a war critic since the conflict began four years ago, said the combination of the House and Senate votes was momentous. He said it showed how far the Democratic Congress had come toward removing troops since the beginning of the year, adding that political and policy momentum was on their side. “Rather than continuing to defy the will of the American people and Congress by threatening to veto this legislation,” Mr. Kennedy said, “President Bush should put the Iraqis on notice.”(...) Three more Republicans who have expressed serious reservations about the course of the war — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John W. Warner of Virginia — sided with their colleagues in trying to strip the timetable from the spending legislation. All three senators are facing tough re-election fights next year. Ms. Collins said she was more troubled by the requirement that the administration begin removing troops within 120 days of the legislation rather than the March 2008 deadline for having most of the military out. “I don’t think it is wise to have an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq,” said Ms. Collins, who said she was willing to wait until August to see if the continuing troop increase improves conditions there. “This doesn’t mean I support an unending commitment of our troops in Iraq. I don’t.”(...) Mr. Warner, who has criticized the administration’s conduct of the war, said he remained committed to changing policy in Iraq, but not by imposing Congressional timetables on American troops. “It would be the bugle of retreat,” Mr. Warner said. “It would be echoed and repeated from every minaret through Iraq: the coalition forces have decided to take the first step backward. We cannot send that message. Not at this time.” READ IT ALL

Howard Zinn: just like ringing a bell

We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress. Howard Zinn

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There is nothing I can add to this wonderful article by the author of, "A People's History of the United States," except to praise its clarity... especially its moral clarity. We are living in a potentially great moment in history... if we choose to make it great. DS


Howard Zinn: Are We Politicians or Citizens? - The Progressive

By Howard Zinn

May 2007 Issue

As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration’s “surge” of troops, and the Republicans’ refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them.

That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, “like many of us, don’t think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war.”

Ironically, and shockingly, the same bill appropriates $124 billion in more funds to carry the war. It’s as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.

We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

Timetables for withdrawal are not only morally reprehensible in the case of a brutal occupation (would you give a thug who invaded your house, smashed everything in sight, and terrorized your children a timetable for withdrawal?) but logically nonsensical. If our troops are preventing civil war, helping people, controlling violence, then why withdraw at all? If they are in fact doing the opposite—provoking civil war, hurting people, perpetuating violence—they should withdraw as quickly as ships and planes can carry them home.

It is four years since the United States invaded Iraq with a ferocious bombardment, with “shock and awe.” That is enough time to decide if the presence of our troops is making the lives of the Iraqis better or worse. The evidence is overwhelming. Since the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, about two million Iraqis have left the country, and an almost equal number are internal refugees, forced out of their homes, seeking shelter elsewhere in the country.

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. But his capture and death have not made the lives of Iraqis better, as the U.S. occupation has created chaos: no clean water, rising rates of hunger, 50 percent unemployment, shortages of food, electricity, and fuel, a rise in child malnutrition and infant deaths. Has the U.S. presence diminished violence? On the contrary, by January 2007 the number of insurgent attacks has increased dramatically to 180 a day.

The response of the Bush Administration to four years of failure is to send more troops. To add more troops matches the definition of fanaticism: If you find you’re going in the wrong direction, redouble your speed. It reminds me of the physician in Europe in the early nineteenth century who decided that bloodletting would cure pneumonia. When that didn’t work, he concluded that not enough blood had been let.

The Congressional Democrats’ proposal is to give more funds to the war, and to set a timetable that will let the bloodletting go on for another year or more. It is necessary, they say, to compromise, and some anti-war people have been willing to go along. However, it is one thing to compromise when you are immediately given part of what you are demanding, if that can then be a springboard for getting more in the future. That is the situation described in the recent movie The Wind That Shakes The Barley, in which the Irish rebels against British rule are given a compromise solution—to have part of Ireland free, as the Irish Free State. In the movie, Irish brother fights against brother over whether to accept this compromise. But at least the acceptance of that compromise, however short of justice, created the Irish Free State. The withdrawal timetable proposed by the Democrats gets nothing tangible, only a promise, and leaves the fulfillment of that promise in the hands of the Bush Administration.

There have been similar dilemmas for the labor movement. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that unions, fighting for a new contract, must decide if they will accept an offer that gives them only part of what they have demanded. It’s always a difficult decision, but in almost all cases, whether the compromise can be considered a victory or a defeat, the workers have been given some thing palpable, improving their condition to some degree. If they were offered only a promise of something in the future, while continuing an unbearable situation in the present, it would not be considered a compromise, but a sellout. A union leader who said, “Take this, it’s the best we can get” (which is what the MoveOn people are saying about the Democrats’ resolution) would be hooted off the platform.

I am reminded of the situation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, when the black delegation from Mississippi asked to be seated, to represent the 40 percent black population of that state. They were offered a “compromise”—two nonvoting seats. “This is the best we can get,” some black leaders said. The Mississippians, led by Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses, turned it down, and thus held on to their fighting spirit, which later brought them what they had asked for. That mantra—“the best we can get”—is a recipe for corruption.

It is not easy, in the corrupting atmosphere of Washington, D.C., to hold on firmly to the truth, to resist the temptation of capitulation that presents itself as compromise. A few manage to do so. I think of Barbara Lee, the one person in the House of Representatives who, in the hysterical atmosphere of the days following 9/11, voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to invade Afghanistan. Today, she is one of the few who refuse to fund the Iraq War, insist on a prompt end to the war, reject the dishonesty of a false compromise.

Except for the rare few, like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, and John Lewis, our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be “realistic.”

We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.

Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”

Khalilzad: the right to impatience

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Some of this stuff is really getting hard to stomach.

"The American people are getting impatient with the Iraqis."

The American people are getting impatient with the Iraqis? At last count some 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the unprovoked invasion of their country led by the United States of America... as a result of this 3236 Americans have also died.

The foundational statement of the USA, its Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal". Now I am not very good at math, but with the help of my little Chinese adding machine, I get these figures: 650,000 divided by 3,236 equals 200.87. So if all men are created equal the Iraqis have about 200 times more right to be impatient than the Americans do. Now if that seems absurd, then so does the Declaration of Independence and if that is absurd then the Americans are just a bunch of fat people out shopping. DS

From The Guardian: The outgoing US ambassador to Iraq yesterday delivered a blunt farewell message to Iraq's leadership, saying the Bush administration's patience was wearing thin and urging them to stem the bloodshed. (...) At a final news conference in Baghdad, the Afghan-born diplomat warned of the growing pressure in the US to commit to a timetable for a withdrawal of troops. "I know that we are an impatient people, and I constantly signal to the Iraqi leaders that our patience, or the patience of the American people, is running out," said Mr Khalilzad, who has been nominated by Presdient Bush to succeed John Bolton as America's envoy to the UN.

Global Warming... changing the subject?

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Clarification: I am not a global warming skeptic. I think it obvious that our model of development and our idea of what constitutes "prosperity" and the "good life" are unsustainable even in the medium term. If every Chinese and Indian family get a car... I believe that global warming is by far the greatest threat to our planet etc, etc.. so I am not a revisionist or anything like it.

However, having said that, I am getting a little suspicious of the political use that global warming is being put to right now. Anything Tony Blair is pushing makes me suspicious to begin with, but what makes me really suspicious is Hollywood's enormous enthusiasm for the subject. "Hollywood" is the name for the most manipulative, phony, snake oil salesmen in the history of our planet. It occurs to me that they are pumping up global warming and climate change paranoia to change the subject from America's criminal responsibility in Iraq and make American "progressives", feel good about something so they don't get so depressed they stop buying tickets.

American "progressives" have absolutely nothing to feel good about. They are with out any doubt the greatest collection of useless wankers on earth... They should feel terrible. What has been done to Iraq and to the people of Iraq is, with the possible exception of the Cambodian genocide, the most criminal episode in international affairs since WWII. American progressives have shown themselves totally ineffectual in preventing it or stopping it and now Hollywood is going to give them a "cause" that will make them feel good! They should wake up with Iraq every morning, think about Iraq all day long, every day and dream about it at night, all night, every night (if they can sleep).

If I am a fan of Al Gore's it has nothing to do with global warming. I'm a fan because he should have been president and if he had been, he wouldn't have invaded Iraq and all these people wouldn't have been killed and tortured and maimed and robbed and the archaeological treasures of Mesopotamia would not have been looted and the priceless manuscripts burned. In short until those responsible for this massive catalog of war crimes are brought to justice we are simply a criminal nation and have absolutely nothing to feel good about... ever again. DS

Don't it always go to show You'll never know what you got till it's gone?

"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." - Matthew 15 - 11

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" - Matthew 16 - 26

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The biblical verses quoted above are of those which define our entire tradition and tell us who we are in history and what our culture has come to mean.

They tell us that in the end, what we do can do us more harm than anything that can be done to us. That finally we decide who we are... our dignity is in that decision, only we ourselves can destroy who we are.

Will Bush and those who pull his strings never tire of defiling us? Will we never tire of being defiled? DS

Slavoj Zizek: Knight of the Living Dead - New York Times
Abstract: (...)In a way, those who refuse to advocate torture outright but still accept it as a legitimate topic of debate are more dangerous than those who explicitly endorse it. Morality is never just a matter of individual conscience. It thrives only if it is sustained by what Hegel called “objective spirit,” the set of unwritten rules that form the background of every individual’s activity, telling us what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. For example, a clear sign of progress in Western society is that one does not need to argue against rape: it is “dogmatically” clear to everyone that rape is wrong. If someone were to advocate the legitimacy of rape, he would appear so ridiculous as to disqualify himself from any further consideration. And the same should hold for torture. Are we aware what lies at the end of the road opened up by the normalization of torture? A significant detail of Mr. Mohammed’s confession gives a hint. It was reported that the interrogators submitted to waterboarding and were able to endure it for less than 15 seconds on average before being ready to confess anything and everything. Mr. Mohammed, however, gained their grudging admiration by enduring it for two and a half minutes. Are we aware that the last time such things were part of public discourse was back in the late Middle Ages, when torture was still a public spectacle, an honorable way to test a captured enemy who might gain the admiration of the crowd if he bore the pain with dignity? Do we really want to return to this kind of primitive warrior ethics? This is why, in the end, the greatest victims of torture-as-usual are the rest of us, the informed public. A precious part of our collective identity has been irretrievably lost. We are in the middle of a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone, to dampen and undo what is arguably our civilization’s greatest achievement, the growth of our spontaneous moral sensitivity. READ IT ALL

Patience for Iraq war waning, say congressional leaders

The patient ones

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It is hard to read this article from "The Examiner" without wanting to scream obscenities and punch walls. These are the men and women who voted for the war talking. They have opened the gates of hell, pushed the people of Iraq through them and now they are "impatient" and would like to shut the gates and walk away. What is most sickening and unforgivable is the sanctimonious tone used... They probably say this stuff after one of those Washington "prayer breakfasts".

Of course the Americans should get out of Iraq, they should never have been there in the first place... but the United States should be paying war reparations to the people of Iraq for the next 50 years, at least, and the people who organized this war should be put on trial and imprisoned. DS

Patience for Iraq war waning, say leaders - The Examiner

Abstract: Four years into the Iraq war, all sides in the bitter debate agree that President Bush’s “troop surge” plan represents the final drop of American patience for the war. If Iraqis fail to control the violence, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “The American taxpayer has a reasonable expectation that we will bring our people home.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has steadfastly supported the mission, said Republicans’ patience is nearly exhausted, too. “This is the last chance for the Iraqis,” the Kentucky Republican said in an interview with The Examiner. “The last chance for them to step up and demonstrate that they can do their part to save their country.”(...) Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott said(...) “At some point, you got to say to them, ‘Congratulations, Saddam is dead,’ ” Lott said. “We brought Baghdad under control. You folks got to decide whether you just want to kill each other forever or have a real government and peace and freedom and democracy.”(...) Anyway, Democrats say, Republicans send the same message to insurgents and Iraqis as timetables do when they say that their patience will run dry in months rather than years. “That may be,” Lott replied. “But at some point, they have to take control themselves.” READ IT ALL(barf bags not provided)

US in Iraq: Karma watch

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The most important thing to remember about America's invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq is that it is an unprovoked, criminal, act.

The people who perpetrated it, and especially those who ordered this slow torture and decimation of the people of Iraq are simply criminals and the citizens and institutions who supported them are no less than accessories to horrible crimes.

And unlike Hitler's Germany, no American can ever say that they didn't know all this was or is happening.... America, after all, is a "free country".

All this is not just wet, liberal, "hand wringing", it is simply an understanding of the fundamental sources of America's wealth and power and even what keeps the whole complex beast "airborne".

For unlike Hitler's Germany, one of the pillars of America's power is its commitment to habeas corpus, human rights and the rule of law. America is not an ethnic group, it is an agreement taken freely by people who have come from all over the world to live together in peace and prosperity and to materialize the ideas and hopes of the Enlightenment. Without those ideas, the United States of America is little more than a parking lot... Wal-Mart would be a more appropriate symbol of America than Abraham Lincoln.

Even Joseph Nye's insightful idea of America's "Soft Power," pales into trivial "truthiness" when speaking of presuming to be the embodiment of some of the greatest ideas of Western civilization: freedom, justice, democracy... and then gratuitously violating all those self-proclaimed standards in a "war of choice": attacking a country which had never harmed America, destroying its state, killing, torturing and humiliating the men, raping the women, terrorizing the children and scattering the priceless treasures of timeless antiquity to the winds

The only way for America to recover its prestige -- it would be pretentious to say recover its "soul" -- would be to hand over all those responsible, beginning with Bush and Cheney, to the International War Crimes Tribunals, where they could be judged in Nuremberg fashion. Sadly, unlike Hitler's Germany, America has not been defeated by a foreign power and its alien ideology... America has defeated itself. DS

Anthony Arnove - Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster - TomDispatch Abstract: Here is a short rundown of some of what George Bush's war and occupation has wrought: Nowhere on Earth is there a worse refugee crisis than in Iraq today. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some two million Iraqis have fled their country and are now scattered from Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Iran to London and Paris. (Almost none have made it to the United States, which has done nothing to address the refugee crisis it created.) Another 1.9 million are estimated to be internally displaced persons, driven from their homes and neighborhoods by the U.S. occupation and the vicious civil war it has sparked. Add those figures up – and they're getting worse by the day – and you have close to 16% of the Iraqi population uprooted. Add the dead to the displaced, and that figure rises to nearly one in five Iraqis. Let that sink in for a moment. Basic foods and necessities, which even Saddam Hussein's brutal regime managed to provide, are now increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis, thanks to soaring inflation unleashed by the occupation's destruction of the already shaky Iraqi economy, cuts to state subsidies encouraged by the International Monetary Fund and the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the disruption of the oil industry. Prices of vegetables, eggs, tea, cooking and heating oil, gasoline, and electricity have skyrocketed. Unemployment is regularly estimated at somewhere between 50-70%. One measure of the impact of all this has been a significant rise in child malnutrition, registered by the United Nations and other organizations.(...) In those same years, according to the best estimate available, the British medical journal The Lancet's door-to-door study of Iraqi deaths, approximately 655,000 Iraqis had died in war, occupation, and civil strife between March 2003 and June 2006. (The study offers a low-end possible figure on deaths of 392,000 and a high-end figure of 943,000.) But you could travel coast to coast without seeing the equivalents of the billboards, subway placards, full-page newspaper ads, or the like for the Iraqi dead. And you certainly won't see, as in the case of Darfur, celebrities on Good Morning America talking about their commitment to stopping "genocide" in Iraq. Why is it that we are counting and thinking about the Sudanese dead as part of a high-profile, celebrity-driven campaign to "Save Darfur," yet Iraqi deaths still go effectively uncounted, and rarely seem to provoke moral outrage, let alone public campaigns to end the killing?(....) There is a general agreement across much of the political spectrum that we can blame Iraqis for the problems they face. In a much-lauded speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Sen. Barack Obama couched his criticism of Bush administration policy in a call for "no more coddling" of the Iraqi government: The United States, he insisted, "is not going to hold together this country indefinitely." Richard Perle, one of the neoconservative architects of the invasion of Iraq, now says he "underestimated the depravity" of the Iraqis. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Democratic frontrunner in the 2008 presidential election, recently asked, "How much are we willing to sacrifice [for the Iraqis]?" As if the Iraqis asked us to invade their country and make their world a living hell and are now letting us down. This is what happens when the imperial burden gets too heavy. The natives come in for a lashing. READ IT ALL