Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Bush’s Base

Via reader jh Woodyat I’m informed of some fascinating analysis of the prisoner abuse scandal over in freeperville: Did the Arab “Street” Get a Message We Didn’t Mean to Send?

The POW photos are having an unintended effect on the Arab “Street” and the “resistance.”

Amidst all the apologies, I want to suggest we all (Hillary Clinton here) take a deep breath and consider something that no one in the administration or Congress has (publicly) considered:

By now, everyone pretty well knows that Arab societies base everything on power and perceptions of power. In part, that is why so many Freepers and conservatives got their panties in a bunch because it appeared in public like “apologizing” was a sign of weakness.

Ah, my friends. You aren’t thinking like an Arab. The “street” and, indeed, the leadership doesn’t trust much of what we say—they only look at what we do. It would have made no difference if Bush formally apologized and sent each detainee a bouquet of flowers—the “street” would see that as a sham, a pretense, a distraction from the “real” policy.

No, I suggest something else. That the Arab “street” and especially the “resistance” has taken from those photos a message we didn’t intend to send, but one that strikes fear into the very heart of them—a message of pure power and dominance. The submissive positions of these “tough” Iraqi men under the heels and attached to the leashes of WOMEN (and relatively small women, at that) sends a very powerful message to the “street.”

Don’t screw with the Americans. Oh, they’ll “apologize,” be we know that when the hearings are over, and the attention is off, they can do what they want.

I want to reiterate: this is foreign to our way of thinking. Unless you’re a hard-core Democrat, you don’t pathologically lie to achieve your objectives. But we must start thinking like the enemy.

Has anyone noticed that we virtually walked into Najaf this week, unopposed? Al-Sadr did nothing. Has anyone noticed that Fallujah is quiet? Very few roadside bombs/suicide bombs in the last couple of days. This could all change, but it is eerie that when a message of power is sent out all over the Middle East—unintentionally on our part—it resonates. Big time.

Yes, yes. Americans have the most humongous, elephantine dicks on the planet. Everybody knows that. Especially freepers. They also have the smallest brains.

In one sense, this person is right. The “Arab street” doesn’t believe these half-hearted apologies for one minute. Rummy’s still running things, Bush can’t spit out the word “sorry” without choking and the plan continues unabated. Whether they are all shaking and weeping like little girls under the shadow of our mighty manhood is another story. I guess this “analyst” forgot that these guys lived under Saddam, who up until about five minutes ago was universally condemned for doing exactly what this fellow now praises the US for doing.

After having to endure the hate-filled rhetoric of Democrats, David “National Greatness” Brooks must be so proud to be politically aligned with fine examples of civil discourse like Rush Limbaugh and these real Americans:

It’s like judo. You turn your weaknesses into strength. The scandal is a weakness, and we turn it into a strength. Right now, every would-be terrorist is going to have horrible nightmares of sexual torture before they light off their next bomb.

Sadly, American troops are now having the same nightmares. Which is why they aren’t too happy right now. Their jobs just got exponentially more dangerous.

Excellent point. Also note this: the prisoners chose to submit to this humiliation. They could have defied us and chosen their 72 virgins. How strong is their faith? I believe that the Japanese were much more devoted to their faith than the Islamics. God willing, I do not expect to see as many suicide bombers as there were kamakazis back during WWII. Right or wrong, some of the guards called their bluff, and we can learn from that.

It was the prisoners choice to live or die and they chose to live. So it’s their fault they were sexually tortured and humiliated. Buncha babies.

You know? You may be on to something. We know we’re dealing with cowards. Perhaps alSadr crapped his kaftan when he saw those photos and pictured himself naked… barking like a dog with a chain on his neck… at the end of a leash held by a 90 pound woman sucking on a Pall Mall.

[…]

Can you imagine us apologizing and offering cash reparations to jailed lower-level Nazi crimminals during WW2 for “humiliating” them? The American people would’ve been horrified by such a suggestion. …..but back then we were made of much sterner stuff.

That’s so true. As our National Security Advisor said, “we liberated the German people from Hitler” just as we are liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam. It’s just a matter of sorting out who’s naughty and nice. Luckily, American troops can automatically tell the good Iraqis we are liberating from the bad Iraqis we are fighting. The prisoners who were being beaten raped and tortured must be guilty of something or they wouldn’t be there, right?

The only [thing] that would have made those pictures even worse,to the “Arab Street”,would have been if these pictures also showed women rubbing bacon all over those “brave” soldiers for Allah.

Good idea. But, really, why are we playing these silly games. Concentration camps are one proven method to deal with these sub-humans.

On the other hand:

I don’t know if this sexual harassment will do the job. Personally I would like us to locate this piss-ant called Al-Sadr and the mosque he is located in. Once located we drop a MOAB (Muslims & Other Arab Bastards) bomb. I figure a few of these, probably less than 10-20 would shut the Arab-Muslim’s up.

They don’t say Americans are the pargmatists of the world for nothing.

Yeah, you nailed it. This stuff is so lame compared to other wars. I actually thought the pictures were a bit comical. As the poster states, the pictures may have made a very large point to a culture which treats it’s women like crap. And guess what? NO ONE GOT HURT! Seeing a human being jump from a burning sky scraper; now that’s NOT funny. And guess what? That person died and not one Arab or Muslim leader was asked to apologize, nor did any apologize. In fact, those societies cheered at what happened on 911. I say screw ’em, and I say screw the libs who are demanding this non-stop apology.

Until we get an apology from all the Arabs who had nothing to do with 9/11, we can do whatever we want (and to all those woman hating liberals who support them, too.)

Here’s another feminist for Bush:

If I were a Muslim woman and saw that tiny woman pretending she had an AK-14 pointed at their hubby’s cajoles, I be saying let me get you a real handheld rocket propeller with an extra round and send him to his 72 Virgins. I’ll help pull the trigger!

Muslim women (if they have seen any of these pics) must be grateful that finally the “men” are being abused and not the females in Iraqi.

I don’t condone what was done and evidently there is more to come (no pun intended). Geez, these guys were in “prison” and another thought is that maybe a lot of Iraqi’s recognized some of their former torturers and were pleased that Allah had sent such “tormentors” to revenge these evil doers.

One last thing! A pair of Hane’s women’s panties???? Get real, most of the guys in SanFran would have gone for the Victoria Secret thong with matching lace bra.

I hope we get this crap behind us and win the war on terror and have a turnover on June 30th that makes every sacrifice our Country and our Military worthwhile.

The DEMS are fiddling while Rome is burning. Clinton’s “I didn’t have sex with the woman is more abusive to me as an American than any of the pics I’ve seen so far!

Well, there you have it.

I think the way to fight off evil is to do some acts of goodness. See, the great strength of the country is the hearts and souls of our fellow Americans. And the best way to declare our position, the best way to make our position known to the world, is through what I like to call the gathering momentum of millions of acts of kindness and compassion and decency; acts of compassion and decency which take place on a daily basis, in all kinds of ways. George W. Bush

Or we could pour buckets of pig blood all over the naked prisoners.

It’s all good.

New Insurgency

Iraqi scholars plan US opposition

The “tough” thing is, their opposition sounds suspiciously like it might end up as some form of pluralistic democracy:

What is becoming increasingly accepted as the inherent inability of the US-led coalition to come to grips with the situation – further exacerbated by the range of opposition forces ranged against it – has left a political vacuum, a vacuum that this initiative hopes to help fill.

The senior Shia cleric behind the initiative, Sheikh Jawad al-Khalisi, brought together some 500 prominent Iraqis – Shia, Sunni, Arab nationalist and Kurdish.

They hope to carve out a path, free from American and other foreign influences, along which the majority of Iraqis could be persuaded to move.

The conference set up a 16-member panel, pledged to boycott any US-sponsored political group, including the Iraqi Governing Council, to re-establish the national army and to restore sovereignty under the auspices of the United Nations.

Sheikh Khalisi’s opposition to the US programme seems bound to cause hostility in some quarters.

But the idea of a broad and wholly Iraqi initiative may also win hearts and minds among the local population.

Heavens to Betsy, Donald. Do you think they’ll agree to let the US keep its four planned permanent military bases and run their economy like a Cato Institute wet dream? I sure hope so because if not they might find themselves on the receiving end of a little R21.

Link via Common Prejudice

Time To Move On

Larry Eagleberger is now appearing on national television programs drunk, apparently. He says that this hand-wringing has got to stop. We have 50 years of history showing that we are the good guys and if others in the world don’t understand that then there is something wrong with them.

The Daily Brew:

We Are All Wearing The Blue Dress Now

Whether Republicans like it or not, if George Bush is elected in the fall, the entire world will view the election as American approval of the torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. It might not be fair, it might not be reasonable, but it is nevertheless reality. Apologies, prosecutions, firings and courts martial will not be enough to expunge the stain this scandal has placed on the honor of the United States. The pictures are simply too graphic. The abuses are simply too horrible. If George Bush is elected President, the entire world will view the election, at a minimum, as tacit approval of these events.

Read the rest.

Brew is correct. If we do not turn Bush out of office, the American people will no longer have the benefit of the doubt. Up until now, most of the world has realized that Junior got in on a hummer. But, if we legitimately elect this idiot, we will be seen to have validated all the actions of this administration.

The Method To Their Madness

Keep in mind that General Taguba estimated that more than 60% of those detained at Abu Ghraib are innocent of any crimes:

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.

The techniques devised in the system, called R2I – resistance to interrogation -match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: “It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn’t know what they were doing.”

He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.

“There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends”.

Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan “prolong the shock of capture”, he said.

Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes.

“Most people just laugh that off during mock training exercises, but the whole experience is horrible. Two of my colleagues couldn’t cope with the training at the time. One walked out saying ‘I’ve had enough’, and the other had a breakdown. It’s exceedingly disturbing,” said the former Special Boat Squadron officer, who asked that his identity be withheld for security reasons.

Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons.

A number of commercial firms which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals.

“The crucial difference from Iraq is that frontline soldiers who are made to experience R2I techniques themselves develop empathy. They realise the suffering they are causing. But people who haven’t undergone this don’t realise what they are doing to people. It’s a shambles in Iraq”.

The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops.

“The feeling among US soldiers I’ve spoken to in the last week is also that ‘the gloves are off’. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11”.

When the interrogation techniques are used on British soldiers for training purposes, they are subject to a strict 48-hour time limit, and a supervisor and a psychologist are always present. It is recognised that in inexperienced hands, prisoners can be plunged into psychosis.

The spectrum of R2I techniques also includes keeping prisoners naked most of the time. This is what the Abu Ghraib photographs show, along with inmates being forced to crawl on a leash; forced to masturbate in front of a female soldier; mimic oral sex with other male prisoners; and form piles of naked, hooded men.

The full battery of methods includes hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food.

Unless there is a ticking goddamned nuclear bomb in the basement of the White House, there is not even a tiny shred of an excuse for this shit.

The happiest man on the planet today is Osama bin Laden. He kisses a picture of Teresa Lapore every night before he goes to sleep, thanking Allah for sending her to put the dumbest assholes in the world into the White House.

The Smirking Jezebels From The Appalachians

Tory wierdo Boris Johnson coined the above phrase in his now infamous apologia for supporting the war. It’s facile and silly, but it made me realize that the two most vivid symbols of the war are two 21 year-old female soldiers from West Virginia — Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England — one blond, one brunette, one the embodiment of American goodness, the other the hated representive of America’s dark side.

It appears that the line between good and evil can run right down the center of one little state — a little state that was created during the civil war when those appalachians refused to join the confederacy. Perhaps it is, and always been, the beating heart of America, warts and all.

Thorough Investigations:

Three U.S. military policemen who served at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison said on Thursday they had witnessed unreported cases of prisoner abuse and that the practice against Iraqis was commonplace.

“It is a common thing to abuse prisoners,” said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, of the Army National Guard’s 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area. “I saw beatings all the time.

“A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression,” he said. Sindar and the other military policemen, who have returned to California from Iraq, spoke in interviews with Reuters.

[…]

Although public attention has focused on the dehumanizing photos, some members of the 870th MP unit say the faces in those images were not the only ones engaged in cruel behavior.

“It was not just these six people,” said Sindar, the group’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons specialist. “Yes, the beatings happen, yes, all the time.”

[…]

Until earlier this year prisoners would arrive at Abu Ghraib with broken bones, suggesting they had been roughed up, he said. But the practice ended in January or February, as practices at the prison were coming under increased internal scrutiny.

Photos obtained by Reuters show U.S. soldiers looking into body bags of three Iraqi prisoners killed by 870th MP guards during a prison riot in the fall of 2003. One photograph shows a bearded man with much of his bloodied forehead removed by the force of a bullet.

“We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support … also being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved ones suffering from depression,” said another of the military policemen, Spc. Dave Bischel. “It all contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get stressed.”

The Californians’ remarks were unusual, as U.S. soldiers have been reluctant to speak out in public on the issue.

Some say investigators went out of their way to keep the allegations under wraps. When military investigators were looking into abuses several months ago, they gave U.S. guards a week’s notice before inspecting their possessions, several soldiers said.

“That shows you how lax they are about discipline. ‘We are going to look for contraband in here, so hint, hint, get rid of the stuff,’ that’s the way things work in the Guard,” Leal said.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Jacob Weisberg has a fascinating piece up at Slate called, The Misunderestimated Man – How Bush chose stupidity:

Bush’s assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush’s case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.

Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, “Smart comes in all kinds of different ways.” The president’s way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.

What’s more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn’t laugh at FDR because he couldn’t walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can’t talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush’s bond to the masses.

But if “numskull” is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

The most obvious expression of Bush’s choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad’s spear-chucker in Washington, he didn’t understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn’t get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn’t absorb anything from them. Bush’s ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.

There’s more good stuff about his little Oedipal issue and the fact that he really is the laziest bastard to ever become president.

I maintain that the biggest insult the Republicans have ever pulled — and I’m including that bodice ripping romance novel they called The Starr Report — was to put this unqualified manchild in charge of the world.

They Should Be Grateful

From the previously mentioned Inhofe appearance on Chris Matthews yesterday:

JAMES INHOFE: … Let‘s look at this prison.

No. 1, this is one prison out of 26. No. 2, this is the same prison where Saddam Hussein was torturing people in an indescribable way, far worse than any abuses that took place in these pictures.

We‘re talking about drilling holes in their hands. We‘re talking about electrocuting people. We‘re talking about just dropping their bodies, half their bodies into acid. You know, things that are really serious.

Now if were an Iraqi and I went through what they said they went through, I would say to myself, That‘s not nearly as bad as if we had been here when Saddam was in charge.

They were letting off steam, Chris! Just a little ‘o that Deliverance style “sooooooey” action. They were damned lucky they didn’t get their hands drilled, for cying out loud.

Gotta run Chris. I’m late for the National Day of Prayer invitational Broomstick Slam. Thanks for having me.

Vote the liberals out of office. You will be doing the Lord’s work, and he will richly bless you. James Inhofe

Good Riddance

I think that the single most egregious mistake that Bush has made in his presidency (among many egregious mistakes) is continuously asserting that we are “better” as a people than “the enemy,” whom they have never adequately defined. His vaunted “moral clarity” continues to be nothing more that a puerile appeal to emotion that has done much more harm than good. Historically, nations have always done this, but in this age of global media, it is a very bad idea. It’s much too easy for pictures and words to make their way around the world in seconds to contradict such assertions and destroy our credibility. As Bush himself says repeatedly, “it’s a different kinda war” and indeed it is. It is much more a war of ideas than a war of military conquest. If there was ever a time when we needed someone with highly developed communication skills, it was now. Unfortunately, we were saddled with someone who speaks in the most simplistic terms possible and it is blowing back on us now.

Immediately after 9/11, Bush’s braintrust framed this War On Terrorism as between “good ‘n evil,” “us ‘n them” — exactly as bin Laden did. Instead of using reason, strength and good will to continue the solidarity the world felt toward America after 9/11, we reacted like a hurt child, lashing out with inchoate rage at virtually everyone, all the while screaming about our superior characters. (We even went after the Europeans for Christ’s sake.)

Had we emphasized our institutions and traditions rather than our alleged goodness, we might be able to get past this awful moment of Abu Ghreib by showcasing a system that resists brute power and religious judgments of character in favor of blind justice. Their scramble now to investigate and fact-find again completely rings hollow because we rested our entire argument on the character of Americans in contrast to everyone else. Our credibility is in shreds.

There were essentially three stated reasons for invading Iraq. The first was because Saddam had WMD. The second was because Saddam had ties to terrorists. The third was because Saddam tortured and terrorized his own people.

There are no WMD. There never were any terrorist ties. And by consciously undermanning the “liberation” we created the circumstances that have led to sweeps of innocent Iraqi people who are then dragged into a prison system with no due process and are systematically tortured — by us, not Saddam. No decent person can believe that it is moral to “pre-emptively” invade a country and do such things in the name of liberation and our superior “goodness” as a people.

Now, I’m not saying that Americans are a bad people. We’re just people, comprising the full range of human character from saint to psychopath. So are the Iraqis and so is every other tribe. That is why we have government in the first place. It’s hard to tell who’s bad or good and it’s not enough to simply assert that one group is and one isn’t. We need systems and institutions to sort these things out in the most perfect way we can find and those systems and institutions are imperfect indeed. If we ever had a strength in America, a source of pride and superiority, it was that we put our trust in the rule of law not men.

And that is precisely the opposite of what our president has been saying. He’s said “trust us” because we are good. We don’t need to provide any explanations or adhere to any laws, treaties or agreements because the character of our people doesn’t require it. And that is why these pictures are being greeted around the world with both horror and glee. The president of the United States has been holding out the moral superiority of the American people as justification for flouting all laws and conventions and we’ve just been slapped in the face with the truth. Americans are capable of being just as depraved as anyone else. (I would have thought that anyone over the age of 10 would already know this, but apparently not.)

Once Bush is removed from office maybe we can drop this simpleminded drivel and start speaking to the world like adults again. Fewer self-righteous sermons about being “called to bring freedom to the world” and more talk about the rule of law would be a breath of fresh air. I have a feeling we might find that people around the world are more willing to cooperate if our president doesn’t constantly lecture them about our superior moral character and instead leads on the basis of reason, law and justice. In the war of ideas, the latter is where the real firepower exists.