Money isn’t everything: Political Update

From an historical point of view, the good news for John Kerry is that he is virtually tied with the incumbent President in the spring before the election, and in some polls has a lead beyond the statistical margin of error. The good news for President Bush is that after all the terrible and shocking news of the past month, he is still virtually tied with his challenger.

So the situation is still fluid. When the photos from Iraqi prisons stop coming or at least stop being so newly shocking, and when general Iraq exhaustion sets in, while Bush makes his weekly speeches on Iraq, and the trappings of a transition begin to appear, his downward job approval plunge could stop. He has bottomed out so far at around 42%. If he goes below 40%, he's toast. If he stays and slowly improves, Bush is still in the running. The next month may tell the tale.

The electoral numbers right now are beginning to be quite grim for Bush, as Kerry pulls ahead in many of the "battleground" states, and some states the polverts (political experts) thought were safe for Bush are coming into play. Independents are swinging away from Bush but not yet in a committed way towards Kerry. Bush is experiencing some erosion of Republican support, but likely only a bit of it will go to Kerry. However, a strongly conservative third (or would it be fourth?) party candidate could still emerge and siphon off some of that discontent.

So far Kerry has been working "on the ground" in key states, getting local coverage and sounding mostly domestic policy themes. The only national news he's made recently is the proposal to postpone accepting the Democratic nomination until the Republican convention, so that spending and money-raising limits won't kick in six weeks before the Bushies face those limits. We expect this idea to go away in a few days, but it does indicate that the Dems are being surprisingly successful in raising money. Spending six weeks more cash on campaign ads may not be either necessary or all that useful. According to a recent study, voters overwhelmingly declared they were ignoring ads (which should be taken with a grain of salt, since the idea of ads is to connect negative or positive emotions, the more unconscious the better) but also that they thought Kerry's ads (which are almost solely biographical) are more negative than Bush's (which are almost completely negative.) They are probably thinking (if they are thinking) of the anti-Bush ads run by move on.org and other unaffiliated groups. They have no spending limits.

Eventually Kerry is going to have to take the national stage, and make a compelling case for himself. His problem may be that his support is so soft that any "success" that is not obvious and abject failure in Iraq will motivate a rally round the president feeling. He has to make people feel good, feel positive, about their choice of him, without making them feel guilty for abandoning a president in "wartime." The convention is the natural and traditional stage for this. It will be the first look many voters take. He has to sound a resonant theme, which doesn’t rely on advertising.

Fortunately we know someone who has figured out exactly how to do this, and perhaps one day soon we will divulge this information. If you’re a Kerry campaign honcho, email for details to bilko@tidepool.com.

The Spy Who Loved Us


Thirty-three million dollars later, America's best Iraqi friend and Our erstwhile Chosen Iraqi Leader is being accused of spying for Iran. In a remarkable chorus of newspaper and magazine reports cited by Tim Russert in his Meet the Press interview of Ahmad Chalabi, the guy who reputedly convinced the Bushies to sound the alarm that Saddam was ready to launch nuclear missiles filled with anthrax into every sandbox and corporate headquarters in America, was a conduit for disinformation promulgated by Iran. Its aim was to goad America into attacking Iraq and toppling Saddam. Good thing cooler heads prevailed. Didn't they?

With narrowed eyes and furtive brow, Russert played the indignant American to Chalabi's cool denials. You lied and innocent Americans bought it. It's all your fault! What a show!

If indeed these charges are correct, what sweet revenge for both Iran and Iraq. For it was the U.S. government, reputedly in tandem with Israel, that tried its best to make the Iraq-Iran war last longer, with more destruction. The idea was to ruin both countries, much as the war in Afghanistan had destroyed that country and depleted the Soviet Union, leading to its self-destruction---all helped mightily by U.S. covert aid, arms and other meddling.

It was in order to help Afghanistan fight the Soviets that the U.S. trained and armed an obscure Saudi rich boy named Osama bin Laden, and supported him in using Islam as a rallying rationale for organized armed violence. His first foray into his new business was financed by the CIA.

When the Iran-Iraq war broke out, Israel converted supported Iran while the U.S. pretty openly support Iraq (while selling, or at least trying to sell arms to Iran secretly. Remember Iran-Contra?) It was the U.S. that provided Saddam with WMDs, including chemical weapons and anthrax. The U.S. trained Iraqis to use these weapons, and helped target attacks on Iran and the Kurds. This was the Reagan administration, with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, who is described by Mahmood Mamdani in his new book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, as "a central figure in Reagan's effort to court Saddam."

Then came former CIA director George Bush I, who as President invaded and defeated Iraq, but did not attempt to overthrow Saddam or occupy the country. Occupation, he thought, was a quagmire that couldn't succeed. His son George II apparently believed with some passion that this was a major failure of the old man, maybe even a cowardly one. He was going to set things right, and as Carl Bernstein discovered in interviews for his book, Little George didn't so much as ask the kind of advice of Big George that former presidents would ask of predecessors of the opposite party. This likely was also the view of Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, making them easy marks for any guy with the right foreign accent who would tell them what they wanted to hear. And they didn't even have to stick his face in the toilet or set the dogs on him.

Chalabi denied the stories and made some sense in his interview. Such is the fraught atmosphere in Washington, and this administration and its supporters' proven willingness to say or do anything to grab or maintain power, plus the proven ability of the establishment press to be gulled and stampeded into huge choruses of panicked bullshit, and/or to see and pitch things according to their own interests, that it's impossible to know at this moment whether or not Chalabi is being set up.

Of course Chalabi and whether he ever really loved us like he said he did, is entirely irrelevant. The incompetent and immoral fanatics running the U.S. government are responsible for these actions. It may take awhile for the media and much of the public to forget their own complicity long enough to hold them responsible.

From shock to the awful truth

It's all happening so fast, each news cycle more dreadful than the last, and only shock and denial protects us. The media prattles, and the public---or that portion of it that can still afford the gas---hides in the malls.

But if we ever really do focus clearly, the next stage is anger. America has been disgraced, and every American disgraced with it. What has been going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably elsewhere is nothing short of sanctioned savagery.

We should be motivated by a cold determined anger to do something about it. These leaders have disgraced us. It's already abundantly clear, complete with paper trail, that all this started with Bush. He and his administration must go. If an election weren't scheduled for November, the only honorable course would be impeachment.

The frivolous self-righteousness of the rabid right against Clinton notwithstanding, impeachment of a president is a serious matter, especially in wartime, with troops fighting for their lives. So an election is better, and this one can't come soon enough. It is the only possibility to begin restoring any shred of honor, and any hint of decency.

The situation is so bad that however reluctant he may be to do anything that might endanger American soldiers, John Kerry must express this sense of our disgrace, and his awareness of the need to address it. This administration must be held accountable, and that means they must go.

It's worth noting that the prisoner abuse disgraces the U.S. military first of all, and honorable people within it are very aware of this. Apparently it was military officers in JAG units who tried for months to stir media and professional (lawyers) interest in this prison and torture issue, without success. So perhaps in addition to shock, one reason the media is unclear on this is that it also disgraces them.

There's been a lot of talk about the psychology of it all, but much of it has been misplaced. The psychology that gets to the root of it is the psychology of George W. Bush and his true believers.

Bush's rabid religious right supporters have unleashed their shadows into the public arena, not to deal with them, but to motivate policy and make decisions and judgments. Bush may be the most unreflective and fanatical of all, though in a slightly different way. He has convinced himself that his self-worth depends on being the war president. Politically it's a deadly delusion, for it is clear that if Bush needs to start wars in order to be the heroic war president, he will. It completely defines him. It defines his approach to every issue. Without war he would be lost.

War is his righteous instrument, his calling from his oddly Old Testament Christianity. His certainty---his staying the course---is fanaticism. It doesn't just mean keeping troops in Iraq until some reasonably stable government is forthcoming. It means destroying those he perceives as enemies. He sees the world in stark figures of his own delusions. Of course there are enemies. The Twin Towers didn't destroy themselves, at least not literally. But he can't see the actual threat of actual enemies clearly or deal with them effectively, when he is lost in a mirror of shadows.

The Bushies and their true believers see those foreigners as uncivilized, and so they commit the most scandalously uncivilized acts, and justify them with counter-civilized rationales. This behavior and these justifications unravel a hundred years of international law, and return us to the Middle Ages and the Crusades. Only it's not just European white men---this insidiously rational-sounding insanity apparently infects women, perhaps including the nation's highest ranking African American woman, and Asian-American and Latino-American administration officials and true believers. Americans all.

And why aren't we hearing more from Christian believers about this fanaticism? What kind of Christianity is this, operating in those prisons? American Christians are being disgraced.

But the news that has barely begun this week is writing on the wall another reason Bush must pray for re-election. It will postpone the possibility of his being charged in American courts with war crimes. Some of his underlings might not be so protected.

The Adminstration That Couldn't Shoot Straight

"He was one of those incredibly stupid, energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, no invention, just a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith in his stupid idiot luck to pull him through."
H.G. Wells "A Dream of Armageddon"

This is the day the U.S. raided the office of the Iraqi exile they paid $27 million to, who told them they would easily find the weapons of mass destruction, that Iraqis would welcome American occupation with flowers and the oil wells would more than pay for reconstruction.

This is the day they had to release their Portland, OR suspect (AKA material witness) in the Spanish terrorist bombing, when the fingerprints they used to finger him turned out to be of the fingers of somebody else in, uhn, Algeria.

This is the day that their faux news commercials for the prescription drug cards that seniors hate because they are impossible to use, was declared illegal.

This is the day after the charge that the terrorists they said they bombed in Baghdad were actually a wedding party, and that they killed 40 people including children. This may turn out to be not true, but isn't it interesting that no one can say it's even unlikely, that the charge sounds credible?

The worry we've had is that the Bushies are screwing up so badly that any small suggestion of success will look like a breakthrough. Just by the law of averages something would seem to have to go right for them. So this continuing, not-very-slow motion collapse into chaos is becoming downright scary.


Two notes you saw here first that have since made the national press: Teresa Heinz Kerry is being touted as the secret weapon that could guarantee Pennsylvania for Kerry, and that there are now questions about prisoner treatment at Guantanamo.

One additional note to the prisoner abuse scandal, which also gets worse everyday. Some other psychologists have chimed in to suggest that the current screenfuls of so-called "reality TV", featuring large doses of people being humiliated in various disgusting ways, has encouraged folks to think abusing Arabs is a fun thing to do. We find this a hard one to dismiss. It rings true.

Amplifications

by Phineas Dash

Morgan's commentary below on the still evolving prisoner abuse scandal are apropos but need to be balanced with the other side of what he said, and of what others are saying. As I'm sure he would agree. Though circumstances aren't deterministic, they can be powerful, and individuals can get swept up in them. The shadow, the dark side within us all, can be called forth when we least expect it.

As for the individual soldiers involved,one has signed a confession which details actions contrary to what some others are claiming, including the woman who said she was following orders. Or at least, complicate the picture with the ferocious enthusiasm of the abuse. Evil was loose.

But in general I must agree with what these columns have been insisting, that the tone and the expectation was set at the highest levels, apart from the shameful laxity and the clear violation of international law in the established procedures. That the Iraqis the Americans were supposedly saving turned into the enemy as soon as they passed through the prison gate (and up to 90% of them there by mistake and random sweeps, or just because they were young males), is a predictable outgrowth of the Bush and the Bushie attitude towards preemption, how we deal with our enemies, and how we are right and they are evil, less than human. That's the self-righteous tragedy we've been sucked into.

The bravado that comes from fear can be dangerous, as it turns so quickly to wanton cruelty which is cowardice. This is the rationale and expression at the most basic and brutal level for a policy that is more abstract and holy-sounding, but at its base is the same. America the offended innocent becomes America the bully. We can defend ourselves better than this.

Psychology
by Morgan Dash

Yes, this is how it works. We torture and humiliate prisoners, perhaps kill some. The Others are angry, they call us bestial. They decapitate one of Ours. Our leaders go on television and call Them "barbarians" and "animals." An angry Senator is angry because so much fuss is made over a few incidents of bad behavior against killers, rapists and insurgents who have probably killed some of Us.

We can treat them as less than human because They are less than human to Us---they are predatory animals we must kill before they kill us. And vice versa. There is truth to the killing part, of course. Some of Them are killing some of Us. Some of Us are killing some of Them. But thinking of each other as Other, as less than human, is the key to how these "excesses," these alternatives to good, clean, fair slaughter from distant silos, happen.

PBS Newshour had a group of psychologists to explain how good American boys and girls could engage in torture. Maybe this is why psychologist rarely appear on TV---neither they nor the anchors know how to do this right. The psychologists gave a number of plausible, somewhat plausible, and not very plausible explanations. The basic thing wrong with them was the assumption that those American boys and girls were acting on their own (which was today's mantra, helped by the carefully parsed testimony of the investigating General who said that according to the interviews he did no one ordered them to specifically do those specific acts. If you look at that closely, it's the rationalization of somebody whose internal report was made public, and he wants to keep his job.)

Whereas the attorneys for one of those charged, the young woman, said that she maintains she was specifically ordered to pose for those pictures. She was handed the leash, she was placed in those pictures, so that the photos could be used on entering prisoners, to make them talk or be subjected to the same horrifying humiliations.

But though the moderator repeated a few times that they weren't trying to prejudge the accused, that's exactly what they were doing. They were explaining why and how these soldiers invented these acts, performed them, and took pleasure in performing them. They even explained that taking "trophy photos" and not thinking they could be used against them later, was consistent with their analysis. So now we know WHY they are guilty, although of course we don't know IF they are guilty.

The psychological explanations were about context: put people in certain situations and they will behave in certain ways. Put people in charge of a prison and they will torture the inmates, as a Stanford experiment proved. I've heard this kind of explanation before, and I just don't buy it. Sure, put people in particular situations, and they are perhaps more likely to act in ways radically different from how they would act otherwise. And yes, people will generally react in predictable ways according to the roles they are assigned. But sometimes is not most of the time, and most of the time or generally, is not always. And it most definitely does not mean: has to happen. Can't do nothing about it.

The Stanford experiment said more about the willingness of rich college kids to torture other college kids than about human behavior, let alone the behavior of trained people selected for their jobs because of aptitude, attitude and proven skills, commitment and judgment. Certainly, poorly trained kids with no leadership, experience or understanding of what they're doing, left alone with only each other and the military structure to protect them in a place very far from home filled with people who might kill them, are likely to do what they believe they have to do to survive.

One of the accused soldiers was trained---as a mechanic. The woman involved claims she wasn't trained at all. As her lawyers say, no one has proved she did anything, except pose in the photos.

And in general terms, these experiments get their patina of determinism---the situation made me do it-from the fact that "everybody" in the experiment acts in a particular way. That everybody is a fraud. In one of the most celebrated experiments, I know this for a fact.

It was the famous electroshock experiment in New Haven in 1970, when test subjects were told to give shocks to people in another room when they gave wrong answers, and even when they heard them cry out in pain and beg them to stop, they did it anyway because they were told to. Every single one of them did this.

But every single one of who? Of the people who participated in the experiment. Why did they? Maybe for money. I was in New Haven in 1970, down on my luck, and I saw the ad in the paper soliciting people to participate in an experiment on learning or perception or something vague. It paid $25. It turned out to be this very experiment, although I didn't know it at the time.

I called the number. I asked about what the experiment would entail. The answer I got was very vague and maybe deceptive. It didn't pass my smell test. At the time I was suspicious about experimenters giving weird drugs. I guess I'd read about experiments like that recently. It never occurred to me I would be told to hurt someone else. So I've kicked myself since for not showing up for the experiment, because I know I would have refused.

I recently communicated my misgivings about this experiment to a social scientist who knows the study well. He claims that the test subjects were a good mix, not just students and indigents who really needed the $25. And he didn't much credit my objection that perhaps the kind of people who wouldn't have cooperated were the kind of people who wouldn't have participated at all. He also said that I couldn't know what I would do in those circumstances, even if I thought I did. Lots of people think they are "good people" but when told to do something questionable by authority figures in white coats, they could rationalize it and do it.

But that wasn't my point. It wasn't because I thought I was a good person. I had explained to him what I was like in 1970. I was battered because I had been fighting authority figures for several years-first in college, later in the job world, and between them the big one: the draft, the people who were trying not only to kill me but to force me to kill other people I did not want to kill. I went to considerable lengths to prevent them from putting me in that position, and I would have gone even further. There was absolutely no way it was going to happen.

So the idea that I would give painful electric shocks to strangers because I was told to by assholes in white coats dangling $25 in front of me, after what I'd been through and the attitude I had, was laughable, and remains preposterous. Not only would I have refused, it would have absolutely made my day to tell them to fuck off, and to walk out of there. Who knows, I might have busted up their idiot lab on the way out.

My point in telling him this was to suggest that in 1970 I wasn't an isolated case. It was just about a highwater mark for anti authority behavior. Do they really believe that Abbie Hoffman would have followed their orders? And the many people who were suspicious of authority were likely not to agree to participate in their stupid experiment anyway.

My point in repeating this story now is that circumstances can have a great influence on behavior, and they may very well force you to make choices, but they don't determine behavior. Perhaps there is a situation which can be replicated in an experimental situation that would prove me wrong, but I haven't seen it yet.

More to the point, according to relatives of one of the young Americans involved in the Iraqi prison nightmare, he did object. He took it to his superiors, he asked for clear instructions, he asked for the rules of the Geneva Conventions. Somehow this story is more credible to me than the one being told by the Bushies and their minions, and supported unwittingly by those psychologists.

But at least they didn't blame it all on testosterone. With women in the pictures and in command positions involved, that hoary notion is gone.

Bush, Iraq and Hell

"Tramp, tramp, tramp, they go, boys who will never be men, rejoicing patriotically in the nation that has thus sent them forth, badly armed, badly clothed, badly led, to be killed in some avoidable quarrel by men unseen." H.G. Wells
Anticipations 1902


Among the many consequences of the prisoner abuse scandal is that it tarnishes the reputation and pride of the American military. This probably was a factor in several high-ranking military officers going public with their dissent on how the war in Iraq is being handled. The Washington Post story can be found here. Now it's U.S. Army generals likening Iraq to Vietnam: tactical victories, strategic defeat and quagmire.

The responsibility for this war belongs to the Bush administration, not only in their willful ignorance and megalomania but in suppressing advice that was contrary to their fantasy. Nobody is immune to their viciousness: not a U.S. general who told them their occupation plans were unrealistic, any more than a CIA agent undercover who herself said nothing at all, or their record of questioning the patriotism of veterans who lost limbs (Max Cleland) or who were POWs (John McCain.)

As for the prisoner abuse itself, the Red Cross reports and internal Pentagon reports done many months ago show that the abuses were widespread and authorized. No one yet knows how far up the chain of command the authorizations for specific abuse policies go, but it's clear how far up the attitude goes that made them all but inevitable: to the very top, to George W. Bush.

Just today's example: in his address to military personnel he commends soldiers in Iraq who are kind and fair to "innocent Iraqis", referring to those met outside the prisons. For one-dimensional Bushies, capture and incarceration equals guilt, equals terrorist. Yet military officials themselves say that 70% to 90% of detainees in Iraq were incarcerated by mistake. Here's the story from the Financial Times of London.

The relationship of Iraq and terrorism to American Cold War policy in Iraq is summarized with stunning clarity in a new book by Mahmood Mamdani, "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim," which is described in a San Francisco Chronicle review we highly recommend.

As for Bush the great leader, yes, he is decisive. He is decisively leading America into the pits of hell.

Rumbles, Rituals and Rumsfeld

The spectre of possible scapegoating always makes us uncomfortable. Not that Donald Rumsfeld is innocent, just that he is singled out with such ferocious focus that if he goes, it might appear all is now right with the world. John Kerry got it right: we don't need a new Secretary of Defense. We need a new President. This administration must be taken off the stage.

For at the same time that Rumsfeld and Bush are trying to distance themselves from the prisioner photos, their Rabid Right lackeys on the talk media are justifying rough treatment as the way this war on terror has to be conducted. That is more credibly a reflection of this administration's beliefs and policies. It provides the clear answer to why the warnings from the Red Cross and others went unheeded from the very outset of the occupation. It is why Rumsfeld is more upset that he didn't realize the damage the photos would do than he is that he didn't care about the actual practices and their effects on the victims as well as the Iraqi public.

News reports are not emphasizing enough the indiscriminate as well as widespread use of these practices. The only conclusion that anyone can draw is that if these are meant to break the will of the enemy, then everyone in Iraq was the enemy.

The Senate hearing was political theatre, but theatre is where these matters receive their fullest focus. Donald Rumsfeld facing former prisoner of war Senator John McCain and his incisive questions in a quiet, calm voice, was the heart of it today. But the ritual here should be exposure, a common realization and shame, not blood sacrifice.

Stats for the day:

number of members of U.S. Congress, House and Senate.....550

number of pharmaceutical company lobbyists for
members of congress...........750

reason medical drug prices are so high, acc. to
pharmaceutical companies.........cost of research

percentage of money spent on marketing vs
money spent on research.........40%

people who pay for marketing and lobbying.....sick people

#1 most profitable company in San Francisco Bay area......Atlantic Richfield

contributing reason.... soaring gas prices


On the Kerry v-p front, seems a decision announcement is near, although maybe not till next month. No credible new names have emerged recently, except Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. Our two cents?

Good choices: Richard Gephardt, Bob Graham

Acceptable choices: John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Gov. Ed Rendell of PA

Bad choices: Evan Bayh (too conservative), with Wesley Clark on the cusp because of his loose lips

don't know enough about: Bill Nelson (FLA), Tom Vilsack

We wouldn't mind being surprised by an inspired choice nobody is mentioning, which would be even more interesting in that it would show how disciplined the Kerry people can be in following Kerry's wishes to keep the process quiet, so as not to embarrass worthy possibilities who are passed over.

The problem is finding somebody who can be president, who can bring some electoral votes, who Kerry trusts, whose politics are acceptable, and who isn't drop dead dull. And what do you emphasize in this volatile time---foreign policy (Graham, Clark) or domestic agenda (Gephardt, Edwards)? And if you can't get everything in one person, what do you sacrifice? Do you look at other Senators from eastern states or CA with foreign policy credentials and media presence?

Maybe the most interesting thing to watch is whether the Kerry people have more creative imagination than the media, who haven't come up with a credible new possibility in months.

How about Ralph Nader?

By the way...Bush continues to lead slightly in national polls. Look for that to change quite soon.

The Beginning of the End

The evolving story of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is like so much else to do with this war, tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting and predictable. Let loose the dogs of war---just what did you think it meant?

A few facts and observations emerging...The prison housed "detainees"---people picked up in sweeps, randomly in some cases, never even suspected of a crime---as well as a range of other kinds of prisoners. One of the official investigations by the military itself said that the prison had no real means of sorting and distinguishing its prisoners. This is one item to keep in mind as the excuse of "tough questioning" of terrorist suspects surfaces, though probably only on Fox news.

The main defense by the military and the Bushies is: a few rotten apples. Haven't we seen enough of blaming the bottom of the chain of command, the most expendable, to know that tactic for what it is? That same investigation saw the problem was structural, i.e. the responsibility of those in charge. The soldier who forced the investigation by turning in these photos said that he was ordered to obey military intelligence and continue these abuses, even after he told superiors about them (contra what the general in charge is now saying.) Seymour Hersh's story in the New Yorker maintains that this torture and these humiliations of prisoners began almost immediately and continued throughout the occupation.

The layers of responsibility---military, military intelligence, and civilian contractors---is just beginning to be scrutinized. But it's worth noting that civilian contractors in Iraq are beyond any law: they are beyond U.S. jurisdiction, yet aren't covered by military law and apparently not by international law.

A panel assembled on Charlie Rose was unanimous in believing that the acts were deliberate tactics, they were intentionally humiliating to Arab sensibilities, that Arabs know this, and that the last hope for an American led transition is gone. It's the My Lai of Iraq. Charlie Rose looked more shaken than we've ever seen him, at not only the enormity of what has happened, but the prospect of what will happen. This, said one panelist, is the tip of the iceberg.

The scrutiny will spread, perhaps even to Guantanamo, perhaps even to the same kind of thinking in the Patriot Act, which always was: you can trust us to know who the bad guys are, so no innocent person need fear these measures.

As for the men and women "grunts" who posed for the pictures: what happened to them, what they became and did, that's also part of the dogs of war. It was surreal seeing all this break just as James Hillman's book, "A Terrible Love of War" was published. It says all too well what this is about.

And it should tangentially put the lie to the idea that war is simply a result of male testosterone. There were women in those photos, smiling and thumbs up. The general in charge of the prison is a woman. (She says she was not permitted to visit the wing of the prison run by military "intel.")

The investigations showed that in addition to the abuse in the photos--male prisoners stripped, piled on each other, attached with electrodes--they were subjected to various forms of sexual intimidation, including forced masturbation. And that guards performed sex with women prisoners (we're not sure that the report actually said rape, but what else could it be.)

As these words hit cyberspace, the first reports are coming in of large explosions in Baghdad in the vicinity of the prison where the photos were taken, the prison where Saddam kept his torture chambers. This story of American torture there breaks as the Marines turned over Faluja to some of Saddam's generals.

It competes with the "feel good" story of the Halliburton employee who escaped his kidnappers, rescued by passing American troops. This young working class man was reportedly in Iraq because he needed the money to pay for medical care for his wife, because his health insurance didn't cover it. That's not the feel good part we don't suppose.

It's worth mentioning as well that the military investigation is months old, that Iraquis have been telling reporters for months of abuses in the prisons but only Arab media has paid any attention.

We are shocked but not surprised by any of this. We are saddened, and we are angry. We are all going to pay for this. There will be young Americans who never thought this was going to happen to them when they joined the national guard, who will die because of this. We will see terror here again, because of this. It's no longer just a matter of a horrendous failure in a faraway country. This is the beginning of the end of Americans in Iraq. What else it becomes remains for us to see.

Taking Fire

We'd like to think the Kerry campaign checks in here regularly, but not even the magic of seeing words looking like they've really been published in cyberspace has completely sucked us into grandiose delusion, at least not all of the time.

But we offer not advice this time but assessment. We sense that Kerry supporters are getting nervous. The Bushies have had nothing but bad news for weeks, and Bush isn't falling, and may even have slightly risen in the popular vote polls. Kerry at times seems no longer visible, and we can't hear him, so it seems like he isn't saying anything. And on cable or in those battleground states, the waffle ads appear, and we're not talking about for the international pancake house.

So without commenting on the Kerry campaign's strategy per se, here are some thoughts... When soldiers in battle are on the screen, there are people who feel it unpatriotic to criticize the president, although in the supposed solitude of the voting booth, it might be a different story. Also, it's April going on May, and the election is in November; people polled may offer their opinions but how considered they are, who knows. There usually is a shift in the last month, and the pattern in recent elections has been that alot of voters don't really make up their minds until the last minute.

Politics is not really part of the mainstream culture in America. It's something everybody has an opinion on, but they know more about the candidates on TV talent shows. One outcome of Bush being in so much trouble the past month is that his face has been on the TV screen a lot more than Kerry's, and let's face it, a lot of people see TV with the sound off, or tuned out one way or another.

Kerry was on Hardball the other day and a few things he said suggested that consciously or not he's approaching this as a firefight. Right now he's outgunned---the Bushies are throwing $70 million going on $100 million in ad buys, they're attacking him from every official government podium they control as well as the ones they get because they are the government, and he's not even the official nominee yet. He's taking fire, firing back when he can, and basically showing that he's holding his position, they haven't touched him.

The convention gives him a stage, and an opportunity to define himself when more people will be watching. Then he's in the fight. When what passes for campaign rules kick in, and the parties have limits within which they can spend, he can go on the offensive effectively.

In the meantime he's doing what he can do: he's raising money for the campaign, he's targeting particular voting groups---college students for a week or so, manufacturing and other workers in key states for a week or so. He's speaking to 300 people at a time. Getting a feel for what people are concerned about, and what hits home with them.

Will it be enough? The Bushies are supposedly taking a page from the Clinton playbook and attempting to define Kerry in the spring, as Clinton ads did Bob Dole. This year has broken so many rules it's going to be difficult to talk realistically about precedents. Will these incredibly crude tactics work? Only if they make people stop listening. But events may well keep them listening. And after the conventions come debates.

What about the Nader factor? There was some polling that showed Nader might actually have correctly assessed that he's taking GOP votes as well as Dem. But other polls remain worrisome. The stakes get higher as Nader becomes the anti-war candidate. That's going to be a hard one. Somehow Kerry has to reassure people who don't really want to vote for Nader this time---who do believe that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush---but the war is getting to be too much. He's got to convince them that he can defuse it, bring the violence down to police level, without just walking away.

So for those looking for solace, hope, comfort: Kerry's most recent media appearances have been very good, which may not shift votes now but bodes well for the future. The media still falls for every Bushie stunt, but they've been looking for blood in the water, and they are not sensing weakness in Kerry. And as things get desperate in Iraq they might even move helplessly towards the guy who is making sense, who sounds like he knows what he's doing and isn't nuts.
The polls in the battleground states look better than the more general polls would suggest. And a poll of professional gamblers betting real money on the outcome has Kerry ahead by more than 30 points.

Other People's Children
by Theron Dash

The Bushies don't want you to see the flag-draped coffins. Somebody took a picture of some and sent them to the newspaper. That somebody worked for somebody who worked for the Bushies. That somebody got fired, and for good measure, so did that somebody's spouse. That's how we handle things down here at the ranch.

Now there are too many flag-draped coffins, and too many more soldiers needed here there and everywhere, so politicians are calling for the reinstatement of the draft. Black politicians are saying it, white ones too. Equal burden is the idea.

I've got a better idea: stop sending other people's children to die for your vanity, your political greed and religious delusions. Stop sending other people's children---because you sure as hell aren't sending your own---for any reason other than the absolutely necessary defense of their homeland.

The draft is involuntary servitude. The draft is slavery with a better chance of quick death or amputation. The draft the last time around did nothing to equal the burden. There was a draft when George II wasn't putting his smirk on the line, and when Dick Cheney had other priorities. The rich will always find a way, and so will the sort of rich and kind of powerful. The country will pay for yet another massive and punitive bureaucracy, and the FBI will be chasing sons and daughters of conscience instead of not catching terrorists. The draft plus the Patriot Act sounds like a real winning combination. Half a generation disappeared, no film at eleven.

Drafting more soldiers isn't the answer. Sending fewer soldiers on insane missions is the answer. When the country is truly threatened, you won't need a draft. If you do, the country is lost anyway. The draft is just another way of saying you just can't get good help anymore, can you, especially when you don't pay them enough to support their children, and they tend to get killed or wounded in a costly way (if you don't get away with warehousing them instead of providing medical care) before their term of service pays off your training investment. Turnover, that's the problem. All that dirt turning over, and all those flag-draped coffins we aren't ever supposed to see.

Earth Day: Do You Know Where Your Planet Is?

For a terrific Earth Day essay that the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times REFUSED TO PRINT, go HERE. (Find it: April 22, 2004)

the not so secret meaning of "freedom"
by Theron Dash

Although he mentions democracy once in awhile, GW Bush stresses the word "freedom" as what he wants to bring to Iraq. Maybe that's because democracy would mean that the Iraqi people would decide for themselves what kind of a government they want. That's not exactly what the Bushies have in mind.

They didn't invade the country and cause so much grief, even to themselves, just to exchange an old dictator with an anti-American Muslim state, however democratically elected. They certainly won't stand for a government that decides to throw them out, lock, stock and military bases. Or one that denies American companies the lucrative oil and oil contracts. No, that's where freedom comes in.

Because freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose. It's one of those big, nonspecific words that can mean what you want it to. Like, the American Dream. And in fact, these days they mean almost the same thing, at least to the Bushie people. Freedom in Iraq means the freedom of the Iraqi people to sell oil to America, and to spend the money on American goods and services. It means the freedom to host a big U.S. military base, and a huge American embassy, and lots of American corporations. And of course, lots of Walmarts and McDonalds. Maybe, eventually, if they're real good, a Disneyland!

Freedom means globalized American corporate capitalism. The freedom to choose from the fast food menu, the freedom to choose which of the 154 channels of insulting and desultory sameness you want to watch for the next fifteen seconds. Freedom to watch blonds squirm in tubs of snakes, or a fat-faced jerk say, "You're fired." The freedom to vote for the made candidate of your choice. All the freedoms we enjoy, and that the terrorists hate.

Of course you also get your bonus freedom of the press (except when it's spewing anti-American propaganda), your freedom of speech (unless you say something that suggests you might be a terrorist sympathizer) and whatever other freedoms are still permitted under the International Patriot Act. Because there's the same fine print you find in your credit card contracts---we reserve the right to change the rules at any time. Hey, you don't like it? In a free Iraq, love it or leave it. But you'll never be bored with freedom. No, one way or another, we'll keep you occupied.

the Real Blair Bush Story?

The headlines, the newscasts all stressed the same thing: Bush and Blair were of one mind on Iraq, still. Even the PBS Newshour reporter said something like it was a sunny spring day in Washington but there was no daylight between Blair and Bush.

But later in that same broadcast, interviews with three journalists---one from Italy, one from Poland, one from the UK---had a slightly different story to tell. Responding to questions, the Italian and the Polish journalist agreed that though the Iraq war was highly unpopular in their countries (as it still is in the UK), and even though their countries had both taken casualties (Italy has lost the most soldiers, after the U.S., and one kidnapped citizen murdered; both had sustained their first casualities and killed their first civilians in collateral damage since World War II), their governments were keeping their troops in Iraq.

But then, again in response to questions, they allowed that this was a commitment that expires on June 30, unless the UN takes charge. The Italian pointed out that in fact his government's position was precisely that of Spain. And the UK journalist confirmed that UN control was a condition of other European partners, which Tony Blair had been tasked to communicate to Bush.

So Bush's sudden interest in UN participation was not exactly his own bright idea. He apparently was told by his good buddy Blair that he'd truly be going it alone in Iraq starting in July if he doesn't cede control to the UN. Though Bush made all those noises, it remains to be seen how much control he is willing to give up, and what else as well---like contracts and oil revenues---to participating countries.

Unleash the CIA? Were You Born Yesterday?

by Theron Dash

The GOPers drumbeat concerning What Went Wrong that allowed 9-11 to happen is that Intelligence let the president down. No, not his intelligence, though that's a likely suspect, but the "Intelligence Community," the CIA and the FBI. Clearly they weren't "sharing information" effectively. And clearly, the Bushies need to deflect any criticism from themselves. But the intent is to build up the covert agencies, and arm them with Patriot Act Police powers, so they can read the riot act to anybody they please, without fear or favor of civil liberties, at home or abroad. And it's a real bad idea.

There's been a lot of talk about how diminished the CIA budgets had become, but little information on why that was so. It was because the CIA was running riot through the world for generations, especially since Nixon, out of control trying to rule the world.

It's all nicely outlined in a forthcoming book by Mahood Mamdani, an African political scholar who divides his time between Columbia University in New York and his hometown of Kampala, Uganda. He lays out what has reached the public in dribs and drabs over the years, but is strangely never discussed these days: how the post-Vietnam, Cold War CIA conducted a series of proxy wars, from southern Africa to Central America, attempting to bleed the Soviet Union dry in Afghanistan, and to weaken both Iran and Iraq by supporting both sides of their war. In the process, they created the terrorists they are now supposed to fight, and not just metaphorically created them: they recruited, trained and supplied them, including Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. They developed and unleashed all the horrors that now haunt us, including terrorist warfare, assassination and kidnapping; including financing warfare from drug money, and privatizing war with the help of the U.S. religious right.

The CIA materially aided Saddam Hussein, and the U.S. supplied him with WMDs including chemical and biological weapons, and training in their use. They supplied him with satellite images to help him target "his own people" for chemical attacks, and then tried to get the UN to look the other way. Among those involved in all of this, on a policy or operational level, were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other Nixon-to-Reagan-to- Bushies, I and II. (Which is not to say that Carter and Clinton were blameless. Their policies and approvals of CIA operations contributed to the reign of disorder and death.)

One official reason that CIA and FBI were limited in the information they could share was that the FBI had to follow rules in the U.S. that protect citizens in court cases, whereas the CIA didn't have the same constraints on how they gathered their information elsewhere. Another possible reason---and a situation that came up more than once---was that suspects the FBI wanted to prosecute were working for the CIA---"assets" in spyspeak.

Now let us praise the Patriot Act for allowing federal government police to deny rights by uttering the magic words, "terrorist," before any bothersome proof has to be produced. Actually, all it takes is "suspicion of" to do it, as thousands being held without charges would attest, if they could be heard. But of course we don't have to worry about our government abusing their powers in their heroic efforts to protect us. And you can stop those unpatriotic thoughts right now, if you know what's good for you.

And this selfsame Patriot Act will break down the walls between the FBI and CIA so they can share information, and that's going to make us safer. Unfortunately, the 9-11 commission is showing that the FBI couldn't effectively share information without walls, within the agency, and neither could the CIA.

Maybe they need better computers, and a better culture, and maybe more money to pay for them. But we can't afford a CIA powerful enough to create our next generation of deadly enemies. Or a powerful FBI at war with dissent.

The Prince...

"A prince should...have no other aim or target, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war and its organization and discipline."
----Niccolo Machiavelli

Kevin Phillips says the patron saint of the Bush family is Machiavelli, though it's likely G.W. would wonder if that isn't the guy who played shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers for part of a season in the 1940s. John Dean says that the real president in matters of policy is Dick Cheney, and that his greatest skill is convincing G.W. that he's the president. Dean says G.W. is a terrific Head of State, which is a bit more than a figurehead of state but not a lot. Or, maybe he's just the Prince.

This Prince had a few goals for his so-called press conference Tuesday: be resolute, hit the Churchill buttons, don't smirk, don't back down on anything, but have a humble manner. Talk war---make a few offhand-seeming comments that are mildly surprising, almost generous; but be sure to subtly impugn the patriotism of anyone who opposes you. Niccolo would have been proud.

This Prince is a war president. He has to be---it's the only kind of president he is capable of being. If he wasn't blowing up things, killing and maiming people at long distance, throwing around the present power of the U.S. (while running through the country's resources like a multiple drug addict in a casino), he wouldn't be a Leader, he wouldn't be president at all---he'd be his own vice-president, trotted out to get pictures taken with foreign leaders, and sent to present merit badges to visiting Boy Scouts. He'd most certainly not be the Prince.

Did it ever occur to you that what might make the Prince of Darkness so dangerous would be that he believes---or consciously adheres to the belief--that he is the Prince of Peace?

Way back when, Bush's speechwriter came up with the line, "axis of hatred," already a sublime oversimplification, a bit of inflammatory rhetoric that is basically unforgiveable. But the Bushies weren't satisfied, they wanted something more "Biblical." Thus was "Axis of Evil" slouched into the language, by the worst who are full of passionate intensity.

Us good. They evil. Us love freedom. Them hate freedom. It's just that simple. Which is why it was important that Bush not admit any mistakes. Which is why any recognition of complexity, attempt to deal with the real needs of others in the dynamics of the moment, is in the Bushie lexicon, flip-flopping. (It's also hypocrisy, but what else is new?)

Do you get it yet? It might sound like: in this particular situation, what America is trying to achieve is good for the people of Iraq, good for the Middle East and the world, and good for American interests. So what's not to like? Except the body bags, which causes your prince to have a royal stomach churn, aren't you impressed that he can admit feelings just like the commoners have?

But it's heard like: America, we're good people, so we do good things. If we aren't completely good, then we must be evil. But we can't live with ourselves if we think we're evil. So we want to believe the Leader who tells us what we do is good. All of it. We're Soldiers of God, fighting those fanatics who believe they are soldiers of God fighting the infidels who believe they are....etc.

So we'll get back to politics, including Realpolitik, soon enough. But for the moment, isn't it strange? We apparently have a United States that is firmly divided in half, which is so archetypal it's scary. Those driven by the shadow profess themselves the guardians and champions of the light? Is this Biblical enough for you? It's practically a description of the anti-Christ from the Apocalypse of John, which should be more familiar to Bush's supporters than his opponents---they're the ones waiting for, hoping for and perhaps working for the Apocalypse. In that prophesy, the anti-Christ claims to be the Messiah. Maybe it's more psychology than prophesy. The Prince of Darkness may be Unconsciousness unchained. Maybe that's how it works, throughout history, and to end history.

what must be said


There is much to be said about the current warfare in Iraq, especially in terms of political history. But for the moment, what must be said is that although everything that is happening now was foreseen in character, as part of the warnings against invading Iraq more than a year ago, it is in any case a cause for intense and bitter sorrow.

The names of Americans scroll by on the CNN and PBS honor rolls of the dead, the only time these names are mentioned, or probably ever will be: these young men and women from towns we know in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and places we've never been, in New Mexico and Florida. Perhaps we saw their faces once, heard their voices as they talked to the cameras about their tasks---standing strong, talking with intelligence and hope.

Their deaths are tragedies for all of us. They died for a mistake, a willfully arrogant mistake. Their faith and their hope were betrayed.

And they at least flash before the media imagination for a moment. Not so the hundreds of Iraqis, and not even the soldiers from the UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, Japan, the Ukraine, all of whom came under fire this week. We never hear of their deaths, not even the numbers of their dead and wounded, let alone names. So much for the pretense of a coalition. A coalition of cannon fodder.

Those young men and women who are still there, some of whom just arrived, jumping head-first into hell, and some who have been there for a weary year, days or weeks from going home, who now must remain, in more peril for their lives than ever. What kind of confidence can they possibly have in the people who are sending them to kill or be killed?

By and large they have not earned the enmity they face. That dishonor goes to others, most of whom have lived long lives in luxury, some of whom are in the morally repugnant class of those who supported the war in Vietnam yet avoided the dangers they advocated for others. They sit in the comfort of their U.S. homes and their deadly certainties, while innocents die for their lies. These are the sacrifices of this Good Friday. And there's nothing redemptive about any of it.

No Silver Bullet? Condi Got It All Wrong, Lone Ranger Complains

by Morgan Dash

In an exclusive American Samizat interview, the Lone Ranger (otherwise known as the Masked Rider of the Plains) broke his decades-long silence to complain about the misuse of his most famous symbol by National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice in her testimony before the 9-11 commission.

"'There was no silver bullet' that could have prevented 9-11-she said it several times," Lone said, his deep baritone voice rising in distress. "It makes a great soundbite, but what does it mean? She made it sound like my silver bullets were especially accurate or foolproof kinds of bullets, but that's nonsense. I never shot a silver bullet in my life. That wasn't the point."

In fact, the Ranger explained, it was quite the opposite. "I made my silver bullets to remind me that a life, like silver, is too precious to waste. Sometimes I would leave one behind with people I'd helped, so after I rode away, they would be reminded of the same thing. Those silver bullets got to be identified with me, so people knew what I stood for."

What he stood for was tolerance, fairness and a sympathetic respect for the rights of others. "I never killed anyone," he says, "not with a silver bullet or any other kind of bullet. That was true for all the stories in the Lone Ranger television series---and it was a very popular series for a long time." So popular, he points out, that it played on all three of the existing national networks in the 1950s and 1960s-including two of them at the same time. "A lot of children watched it, and I felt a special responsibility because of that," he recalls, "but about half the audience was made up of adults."

The Lone Ranger is still diffident about being called a hero, but he insists that his principles be fairly represented---and his silver bullet symbol is particularly important to him. "That malt liquor was bad enough," he said. " I guess you have to live with that kind of thing. But this was a real violation. It twists what I meant with the silver bullet. It was my statement in very violent times. Of course, the Old West doesn't hold a candle to today, but maybe that's why my message is needed."

After checking the interview tape, we turned back to ask a final question---but the Lone Ranger was gone.

Condi

She brought her scowl and teeth briefly flashing in a contorted smile to the 9-11 hearing, and the media build-up for it virtually guaranteed that if she didn't flat out fall on her face (and probably even if she did), then the Bushies would hail it as a great success and lots of people would agree.

The overall media reaction was as schizophrenic as anything else in national politics these days, but the 9-11 families---especially the three widows known as the Jersey Girls---seemed pretty near unanimous in being underwhelmed. Condi Rice, as the vast world now knows her thanks to the instant intimatizing media, tried to be gracious, acted as if her participation in the Bushies attempted character assassination of Richard Clarke had never happened, and she had never refused to testify in the first place...but basically she was on the defensive. And her defense sounded pretty narrow: none of my underlings (which must include cabinet officers, CIA etc.) gave me a paper entitled Threat Assessment indicating that al Quaeda operatives were going to highjack airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Such a defense, accompanied by evidence that there was a lot of information buzzing around to raise suspicions, and a lot of warnings (even if they weren't in reports from her deputies entitled Warnings!) of what did happen, but no actual evidence that anything in particular was done in response, tends to point to Condi Rice as the person who screwed up, at least in the sense that she had way too narrow a view of what her responsibilities were, if not her job description in the Bush bureaucracy, as National Security Advisor to the President.

This certainly was the view of the Jersey Girls on the talk shows, but care must be taken not to make Condi Rice the scapegoat here. The widows must resist what could be a psychological displacement, a kind of survivors' guilt, projecting onto the only woman in sight. Besides which, it leaves others off the hook---especially Dick Cheney and the other Nixon/Kissinger/Reagan Cold War/Hot Oil warriors---but also Sleepy George himself. Rice may be an exceptionally bright but exceptionally passive National Security Advisor, but she was working in a particular culture, best described by New Yorker writer Ric Hertzberger as "real men care about missile defense and Iraq," not skinny terrorists in shacks, miles away from a B-1 bomber or a decent restaurant.