Month: May 2004

Sunburned Partisans

A new group called Scumbags for Truth is going to issue a letter at a press conference tomorrow:

Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is “unfit to be commander-in-chief.” They will do so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday.

“What is going to happen on Tuesday is an event that is really historical in dimension,” John O’Neill, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy as a PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) boat commander, told CNSNews.com . The event, which is expected to draw about 25 of the letter-signers, is being organized by a newly formed group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

“We have 19 of 23 officers who served with [Kerry]. We have every commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam. They all signed a letter that says he is unfit to be commander-in-chief,” O’Neill said.

John O’Neill, of course, is the Nixon stooge who’s been paid to come out of character assassination retirement to destroy Kerry’s military record. Here’s a picture of him with his mentor the convicted felon Chuck Colson and his hero the disgraced and pardoned Dick Nixon:

Haldeman: — crew cut, real sharp looking guy who is more articulate than Kerry. He’s not as eloquent; he isn’t the ham that Kerry is. But he’s more believable. [edit]

Haldeman: This guy now, is gonna, he’s gonna move on Kerry.

The White House encouraged O’Neill to challenge Kerry to a debate. Kerry agreed and before the event, President Nixon called O’Neill into the Oval Office for a pep talk. “It’s a great service to the country,?”declared the president.

Nixon: Give it to him, give it to him. And you can do it, because you have a pleasant manner, too, because you’ve got and I think it’s a great service to the country. [edit]

Nixon: You fellows have been out there. You’ve got to know, seeing the barbarians that we’re up against, you’ve got to know what we?re doing in that horrible swamp that North Vietnam is. You’ve got to know from all our faults of what we have in this country that, that what we’re doing is right. You’ve got to know too, people are critics. Critics of the war, critics of [unint], run America down. [edit] You’ve gotta know that you’re on the winning sthat, that you’re on the right side.

Two weeks later, the veterans squared off on the popular Dick Cavett show:

O’Neill: Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on the war weariness and fears of the American people. This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, crimes committed on a day to day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

Kerry: We believe as veterans who took part in this war we have nothing to gain by coming back here and talking about those things that have happened except to try and point the way to America, to try and say, here is where we went wrong, and we’ve got to change.

(Amazing isn’t it? Same bullshit, different war. After the events of the last week, it looks as if we have merely refined our methods. The sadistic sexual humiliation techniques are truly a step forward.)

As for the Scumbags For Truth, (aka SoFT) John O’Neill proudly consorted with felons and liars to smear John Kerry then and is doing the bidding of their heirs still today. One would hope that his picture and the Nixon tapes would feature heavily in any rebuttal. They haven’t quite managed to finish the full Uncle Joe Stalin historical airbrush on Tricky Dick just yet. Their hands are full for the moment with keeping Bozo from going off the reservation and turning Dizzy Ron into a saint.

I hear a lot of complaining that Kerry talks too much about Vietnam and that it’s all in the past and we should move on and deal with more pertinent issues. I can understand that sentiment, particularly among those who are too young to have a stake in the argument. (It’s the way I used to feel about “who lost China” arguments.) But, as you can tell from the strangely familiar arguments above, Vietnam is just a proxy for a particular worldview that continues to be debated even 30 years later.

Progress is slow when viewed from the perspective of one life. Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back. A lot of things have changed since O’Neill and Kerry first squared off 33 years ago, but the argument about blind patriotism, government transparency and what constitutes a just and unjust war rages on.

I would suggest, however, that with 20/20 hindsight we know that John Kerry was not the one who was the liar in those conversations recorded so long ago. And we know who ended up as convicted felons and who did not. And we also know that unlike Kerry, in the 33 years since that confrontation on Dick Cavett that Nixon’s house boy John O’Neill has done nothing of note. Indeed, his only claim to fame in his entire life is as a GOP Swift Boat Stooge against Kerry.

It seems pretty obvious who holds the high ground on this one. I am betting this thing is going to backfire.

Catch ‘O The Millenium

Whiskey Bar: An Iraq Prison Diary

The diary is a fascinating read – not least because it documents the fact that as of last Sunday, one of the private contractors identified in the Army’s own internal investigation of the torture scandal was still at Abu Ghraib, and may still have been supervising or conducting interrogations.

The contactor’s name is Steven Stephanowicz, and he works for CACI International – one of two firms that have been publically linked to the abuses in Abu Ghraib’s high-security cell block.

The few, the proud, the mercenary sadists.

Guantanamo Warden to Oversee U.S. Iraq Prison Rules

Boy, that’s a relief. Well, except for this :

“One of the five Britons recently returned to the UK from Guantanamo Bay has claimed that he was subjected to cruel and sadistic treatment by US authorities.

Jamal al Harith, from Manchester, told the Daily Mirror today that detainees of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta had to face frequent beatings, prolonged periods of isolation and traumatic psychological torture.

The 37-year-old was held at Guantanamo Bay for just over two years after coalition forces brought about the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. The divorced father-of-three said that the behaviour of prison guards was a deliberate affront to Islam and exacted to offend and terrorise the detainees.

Jamal told the Daily Mirror: ‘The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture – bruises heal after a week – but the other stuff stays with you.’

Mr al Harith said that religious practises were often disrupted or even banned in order to punish and antagonise prisoners.

The most extreme of these claims centres around how guards would bring prostitutes into the camp to pose naked in front of prisoners, who were used to veiled women, and counter to Islamic practice.

He said: ‘It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend – and we would shout it out around the whole block”

Hey, at least they didn’t force the prisoners themselves to pose naked and simulate fellatio for the camera. That we know of, anyway.

When I read this account last March, I thought it was bullshit. It seemed so nuts, especially the psycho-sexual sadism. But, since pictures prove that it happened at Abu Graib prison under the Americans and we now have pictures of it happening in southern Iraq under the British, I’m inclined to think this sick behavior might just be happening in Gitmo, too. There is either a common illness or a common method to their madness.

On the other hand, Colin “My Lai Cover-Up” Powell assured us that it was impossible:

“We have watched Guantanamo Bay very carefully knowing of the interest of a number of nations, including the United Kingdom, and knowing that we have responsibilities under the Geneva Convention and because we are Americans, we don’t abuse people who are in our care.”

Mr Powell said it was “not in the American tradition to treat people in that manner”.

There you have it.

Coalition Of The Chilling

Britian probes torture claims in Iraq:

“I am aware of the allegations which have been made today of the abuse of prisoners by British soldiers in Iraq,’ Britain’s most senior army officer, General Sir Michael Jackson said, referring to pictures published in the Daily Mirror.

‘All allegations are already under investigation.’

US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have today condemned disturbing pictures showing the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at a prison west of Baghdad.

In a fresh blow to the image of the US-led coalition, new pictures to be published in Saturday’s Daily Mirror show British soldiers apparently beating a detainee, a suspected thief, with rifle butts, and urinating on him.

According to the newspaper, the prisoner was allegedly threatened with execution during an eight-hour ordeal, which left him bleeding and vomiting, with a broken jaw and smashed teeth.

The Daily Mirror said it was given the pictures by serving soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, who were horrified at the act depicted and concerned that ‘rogue elements’ in the army were undermining attempts to win the hearts and minds of local people in British-administered southern Iraq.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the soldiers told the paper that the unnamed captive, against whom no charges were brought, was driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle after his ordeal.

It was not known whether he survived, the newspaper said.”

URINATED ON: A British soldier urinates on an Iraqi prisoner in a vile display of abuse. The captive was beaten and hurled from a moving truck. Army chiefs are investigating.

The brutality of the repression – the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty are well documented.

Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others.

I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam.

“But you don’t”, she replied. “You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear.”

And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to live. Tony Blair 3/18/03