Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Misunderstanding

… how do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America? I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am — like most Americans, I just can’t believe it. Because I know how good we are, and we’ve go to do a better job of making our case. —- GWB 10/11/01

A photo from TV shows an Iraqi prisoner with a hood over his head, standing on a box and with wires connected to his hands. Photo: Sky News

United States soldiers at a prison outside Baghdad have been accused of forcing Iraqi prisoners into acts of sexual humiliation and other abuses.

The charges, first announced by the military in March, were documented by photographs taken by guards in the prison.

Some of the photographs, and descriptions of others, were broadcast in the US on Wednesday by a CBS television news program and were verified by military officials.

Of the six people reported in March to be facing preliminary charges, three have been recommended for courts martial.

The program reported that poorly trained US reservists were forcing Iraqis to conduct simulated sexual acts in order to break down their will before they were turned over to others for interrogation.

In one photograph naked Iraq prisoners stand in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.

In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The news show said that, according to the army, he had been told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.

“The pictures show Americans, men and women, in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners,” a transcript said.

“And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up.”

The program’s producers said the army also had photographs showing a detainee with wires attached to his genitals and another that showed a dog attacking a prisoner.

The photographs were taken inside Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, where US forces have been holding hundreds of Iraqis.

—

The Abu Ghurayb (pronounced ah-boo GRAYB), [Abu Ghraib] prison is located approximately 20 miles west of Baghdad is where Saddam Kamal (who was head of the Special Security Organization) oversaw the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners. The prison was under the control of the Directorate of General Security (DGS) also known as the Amn al-Amm.

As many as 4000 prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib Prison in 1984. At least 122 male prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/ March 2000. A further 23 political prisoners were executed there in October 2001.

Finally, the attitude of the Iraqis toward the American people — it’s an interesting question. They’re really pleased we got rid of Saddam Hussein. And you can understand why. This is a guy who was a torturer, a killer, a maimer; there’s mass graves. I mean, he was a horrible individual that really shocked the country in many ways, shocked it into a kind of — a fear of making decisions toward liberty. That’s what we’ve seen recently. Some citizens are fearful of stepping up — GWB 4/13/04

Full story from 60 Minutes II, here.

Update:

Rule of law or men?

Hundreds of Fayli (Shi’a) Kurds and other citizens of Iranian origin, who had disappeared in the early 1980’s during the Iran-Iraq war, reportedly were being held incommunicado at the Abu Ghurayb prison. Such persons have been detained without charge for close to 2 decades in extremely harsh conditions.

Yesterday, George W. Bush argued that he has the same power right here in America. The opposing counsel had this to say about that:

…when you take his argument at core, it is: “Trust us.” And who’s saying, “trust us”? The executive branch. And why do we have the great writ?

We have the great writ because we didn’t trust the executive branch when we founded this government. That’s why the government saying “trust us” is no excuse for taking away and driving a truck through the right of habeas corpus and the Fifth Amendment that “no man shall be deprived of liberty except upon due process of law.” We have a small problem here. One citizen — we’re not talking about thousands — one citizen caught up in a problem in Afghanistan. Is it better to give him rights, or is it better to start a new dawn of saying there are circumstances where you can’t file a writ of habeas corpus, and there are circumstances where you can’t get due process? I think not.

I would urge the court not to go down that road. I would urge the court to find that citizens can only be detained by law. And here there is no law. If there is any law at all, it is the executive’s own secret definition of whatever “enemy combatant” is. And don’t fool yourselves into thinking that that means somebody coming off a battlefield, because they’ve used it in Chicago, they’ve used it in New York, and they’ve used it in Indiana.

But, we’re good and they’re evil. We have nothing to worry about.

Los Angeles Times Orwellian Web Headline Of The Day

“U.S. Committed to Fallouja Talks”

By Tony Perry, Patrick J. McDonnell, Daryl Strickland 9:53 a.m.

Hours after spectacular firefight, several blasts ring out in the city as U.S. planes attack”

There Are “Terrorists” And Then There Are Terrorists

Via Orcinus I find that a real live, rock ’em sock ’em terrorist/assassin was arrested by pure luck last week:

Police came upon Breit after an anonymous caller reported a gunshot going off in his apartment Sunday night.

When officers arrived, Breit told them, “I screwed up.”

He explained he accidentally shot off his AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle in his home, blowing a hole through his door frame.

Breit agreed to a search of his house and car, according to the complaint.

The search turned up several hundred rounds of ammunition, components for pipe bombs, shotguns, more than 700 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, a cannon fuse and a recipe for dynamite.

The search also turned up a list of federal officials, political and public figures with the word “marked,” next to the names. Breit told agents it meant “marked to die,” because the people were liberal, opposed to gun rights or opposed to the current government.

Police also found a note that reads: “I will die for my cause, for it is just. I won’t put my hands up and surrender — I will not rest till I purge these United States from the treasonist (sic) parasites.”

What the Sun-Times story neglects to tell readers is that it appears that nearly the entirety of his targets were Democrats and liberals. That information comes from a news release from the Brady Campaign:

Federal agents say they recovered seven guns, more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition, pipe bomb making components and other explosives, a list of government officials and political and public figures with the word “marked” written next to them, and a written plan for 15 heavily armed men to kill 1,500 people at a Democratic presidential meeting.

Breit’s library included The Turner Diaries, the anti-government cult novel that inspired Timothy McVeigh, and Guns, Freedom and Terrorism, the book authored by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, investigators said.

[…]

Information about this case is nowhere to be found at the Web sites of either the FBI or the Justice Department — though of course, both carry voluminous reports discussing threats from international terrorists. And of course, the FBI has a full phalanx of reportage on various aspects of “eco-terrorism,” which is currently the agency’s prime domestic-terrorism focus

Hey, this guy is nothing like an eco-terrorist. He was just planning to do what many would consider a good deed, fighting the good fight, respecting the culture of life and all that. It’s not like he’s out of the mainstream or anything:

You know, there are two wars going on in the world right now. There’s the United States war against international terrorism and there is the Democrat Party war against George W. Bush.

The good news is that the government is ruthlessly running down the terrorists who are a real danger. Like this evil web-master:

Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam.

Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad.

As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.

Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide “expert guidance or assistance” to groups deemed terrorist.

I feel safer just knowing this computer geek is behind bars. He may not actually believe in everything that appears on that web-site, but he ought to be a little bit more careful about the company he keeps.

Yet, I worry that a fine upstanding gun-owner like Mr Breit could be persecuted just for “screwing up” and firing off his AK-47 inside his home, bringing the jack-booted thugs of the Federal Gestapo to his door. It’s not like he actually offed a bunch of Democrats or anything. You can’t blame a guy for dreaming.

I’m just glad that a patriot like John Ashcroft is in charge of these things. He knows how to set the right priorities.

Let Freedom Ring

Our quest — our quest for freedom — our quest for freedom is around the world. Good foreign policy is a foreign policy that insists upon freedom in our own neighborhood. Good foreign policy is a policy that insists upon freedom in parts of the world where there’s hatred and the lack of hope. That’s why I will continue to work, so long as I’m President, for a vision of peace based upon the cornerstone of free societies. And we will succeed. George W. Bush

Headlines on FoxNews at 12 noon, Tuesady, April 27, 2004:

Police Clash With Terror Suspects in Damascus

Fallujah Shaken by Intense Blasts, Gunfire

Marines engaged in door-to-door fighting in Fallujah; U.S. troops kill 64 gunmen during heavy battle in Najaf

Related Stories

Iraqi to U.N.: We Want ‘Complete Sovereignty’

Kidnappers Threaten to Kill Italians in

Blair: Britain Has Sufficient Troops in Iraq

Fight Goes Door-to-Door

What Does Perle Want From Chalabi?

Via Kevin, I find this question from Juan Cole about our good friend Ahmad:

It would be really interesting to know the list of secret promises Chalabi has given Perle (and presumably the Israelis through Perle) that would explain this Neocon fervor for the man.

The question rang a bell for me and I recalled that I had written about this very thing a little over a year ago in this post in which I discussed at great lengths the delusions already being perpetrated in the name of “demahcracy.” I excerped a very interesting Washington Post article that contained this little gem:

In public comments last month, Perle suggested that installing Chalabi in power in Baghdad would alleviate any Muslim fears of U.S. imperialist aims. It would also improve the chances for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Perle said, because “Chalabi and his people have confirmed that they want a real peace process, and that they would recognize the state of Israel.“

It all comes back to “Clean Break.”

Myth Takes

On TAPPED today, Matt talks about Victor Davis Hansen’s lame assertion that left wing arguments about the war are “myths.” In his usual convincing fashion, Matt demolishes Hansen’s tired wingnut defense that while the WMD issue was put forth perhaps “erroneously” it doesn’t matter because there were other good reasons for invading. And anyway, when everything comes up roses it won’t matter why we did it. Matt gets to the meat of the matter and brings up the related fact that the repeated assertions of “grave and gathering” danger made majorities of the public believe until this day in what has been proven to be a complete falsehood about Saddam’s WMD and ties to terrorists. He says:

I’ve written previously, these false beliefs correlate highly with support for the war. Now there’s a case to be made that the president’s done the right thing here. I can imagine an argument that the American people are just too unsophisticated to grasp the needs of American grand strategy and that, therefore, they need to be tricked into doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But if that’s the case you want to make, you need to produce an argument. Just deriding liberal arguments as myths when they are, in fact, perfectly accurate doesn’t cut it.

I can imagine that argument, too, particularly coming from a bunch of phony Straussians. But it would be more than a little bit contrary to Crusader Codpiece’s happy talk about liberating the Iraqi people and in total contradiction to the self-righteous Republican oratory about their commitment to freedom and democracy. Let’s be clear about the real “myths” at play here.

If you look closely at the last few years you have no choice but to believe that Republicans think democracy itself is a myth. For instance, there was that little matter of impeachment over a private sexual matter — a manipulation of the constitution to overturn the public will, to which the public, thankfully, registered its displeasure in midterm elections and polls. Not two years later there was the bizarre sight of Republicans in Florida professing that arbitrary deadlines and the mere possibility of human error were more important than the principle of making sure that all votes were duly counted — even by judges who are charged with matters of life and death every day. Now we see Republicans slyly admitting that the public needs to be tricked into doing the right thing rather than being told the truth and being allowed to make their wishes known. It’s been clear for quite a while to anyone paying attention that the GOP “reverence” for the principles of freedom and democracy is strictly a marketing device.

And this may present a little problem for Junior’s Freedom Crusade because even though some Americans may be, shall we say, “biased” enough to believe that all Arab bad guys must be in cahoots and trying to kill us, I doubt that either Americans or Iraqis are gullible enough to believe that “freedom and democracy” can possibly mean this:

The Bush administration’s plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday.

[…]

The arrangement would be, I think as we are doing today, that we would do our very best to consult with that interim government and take their views into account,” said Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs. But he added that American commanders will “have the right, and the power, and the obligation” to decide.

Sure, you can call a foreign military occupation “freedom” and you can say that “democracy” is a caretaker government or a handpicked governing council, but that doesn’t make it so. What it does do is make a mockery of the very values we are supposedly trying to impart. A good number of Americans see it, most of the rest of the world sees it and the Iraqi people definitely see it. At this point it might be better part to have Junior just shut the hell up. His mindless blathering just draws attention to our government’s rank hypocrisy.

The Enemy Within

History is going to show that a nutcase by the name of Laurie Mylroie and a group of equally nutty followers, including the Vice President and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, led the United States into a war on the basis of a daffy conspiracy theory.

The proposal, pressed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, called for President George W. Bush to declare Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as an enemy combatant in the war on terror. This would have allowed Yousef to be transferred from his cell at the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colo., to a U.S. military installation.

Wolfowitz contended that U.S. military interrogators—unencumbered by the presence of Yousef’s defense lawyer—might be able to get the inmate to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War.

The previously unreported Wolfowitz proposal—and the high-level consideration it got within the Justice Department—sheds new light on the Bush administration’s willingness to expand its use of enemy-combatant declarations inside the United States beyond the three alleged terrorists, two of them American citizens, who have already been designated by the White House.

Actually believing this nonsensical conspiracy theory about Ramsi Youssef, and attempting to change 200 years of legal precedent in order to prove it, would be the equivalent of Bill Clinton using Oliver Stone’s JFK as the basis for prosecuting the remaining members of the Johnson administration for the assassination of Kennedy.

There is no greater reason to get rid of Bush than to put this little Mylroie/Wolfowitz freakshow back in its little Lyndon Larouche conspiracy corner.

RIP

The Memory Hole Photos of Military Coffins (Casualties From Iraq) at Dover Air Force Base

While the Republicans are trying to distract everyone with spooky tales of the boogey man, we all must remember that Americans are already dying every single day in a useless, goddamned war. Again.

They’re Comin’ Ta Git Yah!

House OKs Speedy Elections if Attacked

Get out your gas masks. And I don’t mean because of an impending bio weapon attack. I’m talking about the impending Republican gasbag attack.

The Mighty Wurlitzer is pumping up the volume and I’m sure the media are panting and groaning with anticipation of another RNC generated spin cycle.

Critics of the 45-day election plan said it was both too short a time for some states to prepare for elections and too long to leave Congress in a paralyzed state. Several warned of a martial law condition, with the executive branch taking over legislative authorities such as declaring war during the 45 days that Congress is unable to function.

“A catastrophe that could prevent whole states from being represented for 45 days is at the heart of the concern,” said Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., another backer of amending the Constitution.

Run for your lives!

Hearings were also scheduled on the issue of incapacitation, or how to define when a member who is still alive is unable to carry out his congressional duties, possibly because of a biological or chemical attack.

As our Dear Leader once sagely inquired, “what’s the difference?”

Truth “Available Soon”

Susan reports the shocking news that the Bush administration lies about absolutely everything.

Six months have passed since the Phoenix reported that the US Census Bureau’s latest income and poverty reports contained significant errors (see “The Politics of Poverty,” News and Features, October 10, 2003). The reworked numbers, which will show that median after-tax household income declined far more in 2002 than the bureau reported, have been ready since January, according to sources in the agency. All that remained was to work out a “release strategy,” according to one manager in the Housing and Household Economics Statistics Division. A follow-up call in March to find out when the new numbers would be made public yielded this information from Dan Weinberg, chief of the division: the bureau still needs to establish a “release strategy.” It’s starting to look an awful lot like the “release strategy” is to not release the new numbers at all.

As first reported by the Phoenix last fall, the bureau used erroneous marginal tax rates in calculating 2001 data. As a result, the reports released last September falsely claimed that median after-tax household income remained stable in 2002, when in fact it dropped significantly — probably about 1.5 percent. The Census Bureau conceded the error and promised to redo the figures.

Since then, the words “Available Soon!” have adorned the Web page where the after-tax figures should be (ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032003/rdcall/toc.htm). Meanwhile, the original report, containing incorrect data, is still available from the bureau’s main page — as are the September press release and briefing documents that tout the false numbers as evidence that things are not so bad. The bureau has known that this is not true for six months, and has had the corrected data in hand for at least three.

This would hardly be the first time that, given a choice between an upbeat falsehood and a dour truth, the Bush administration embraced the comfortable lie.

In other news, George W. Bush won the Nobel Peace Prize for smiting evil doers everywhere and bringing freedom to the world. You can look it up.