<h>The undying myth of the forefathers</h> <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18611" source="AlterNet" author="Arriana Huffington">Do You Recognize Bush's America?</a> contains a lot of good, hard information about the Bush administration, covering the massive contradictions in policy versus pablum that should be evident to any 10-year-old, but evidently escapes most Americans (though, to be fair, they miss it because of the paucity of real information provided by criminally negligent media). Then she ends the article with: <bq>The guiding principle behind George Bush's rebooted Democracy is a deep mistrust of the American people and an undying faith in the ability of "the elites" to decide what is best for America --- and the world. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the old 1776 version, where We the People get to make up our own minds.</bq> For someone who's so synced with current events and claims that today's America is <iq> a lot different than the America that I grew up studying --- and revering</iq>, it's a shame to see that even Huffington has no clue on which basis our country was actually founded. I only just recently dove into 18th and 19th century American history to fill in some holes, but this country <i>was</i> founded on <iq>undying faith in the ability of "the elites" to decide what is best for America</iq>. It's in the Constitution --- only white men with a lot of property were allowed to vote. This myth of the principles underlying our country is but one of the many fabrications that make up the accepted perception of the United States. These perceptions are carefully constructed by a propaganda machine larger than any other, channelling public forums of thought into accepted channels --- all the while giving the appearance of independent thought and accomodation of conflicting points-of-view. Though the accepted points-of-view conflict, they are always defined within a very narrow spectrum of acceptable ideas, with certain axioms always holding to be true. We get to see a few of those myths being built, as with everything today, in "Internet-time" --- right before our very eyes, inconvenient facts are elided form the public record and convenient truths are reenforced from all sides. <h>9/11 commission shenanigans</h> The latest media frenzies have involved a lot of testimonies by administration officials, often appearing in trial-like commissions that give the appearance that we're "getting to the bottom of things" and that "justice will be done" and the "bad apples weeded out". Huffington talks about one circus, the 9/11 commission, whereas the current one is the furor over US military behavior in Iraq, particularly Abu Ghraib. The President, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the USA, was not required to testify on his own before the 9/11 investigative commission. He was allowed to bring along a buddy --- Dick Cheney. Their <iq>three-hour appearance</iq> was not <iq>tap[ed] or even transcrib[ed and] ... the White House helpfully confiscated the notebooks of the 9/11 Commissioners as they were leaving the Oval Office.</iq> All we know about the meeting is what the members of the commission were allowed to tell, which was that <iq>[t]he president got off a couple of good shots</iq> and was a <iq>bit of a tease</iq>. I'm sure they're getting right to the bottom of what went wrong. <h>These photos are not America!</h> The commission investigating this "incident" or "fiasco" is just as much of a love-fest, despite what you may hear about what a <iq>tough time</iq> Rumsfeld is having right now. The coverage on CNN (International anyway) showed quite a bit of the questioning. Almost every question starts off with a faux-justifications, like one guy who had to point out that a Coast Guardsman had been <iq>killed by a fanatic ... from a culture that values life over death</iq>. Another guy really raked Rummy over the coals with <iq>Mr. Rumsfeld, you've carried us through two wars ... efficiently</iq> and gave the people who did the torture a get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of <iq>I don't know if anyone explained what is acceptable and... what is not</iq>. Most simply ignored the right-and-wrong of torture and focused entirely on image-control, wondering aloud whether <iq>making heads roll will repair our image and help the war effort ... do you think we should do that?</iq>. A true stumper for Rumsfeld. He had to consider a bit, then admitted he didn't feel comfortable scapegoating, on account of what a stand-up guy he is: <iq>[s]hould I look for someone to blame ... to throw over the side ... that's not how we do things here ... in America</iq> Oh no? Ask all of the downsized, jobless folks who know exactly what happens when you screw up at your job, or even if you don't --- you don't really have to look far, Rummy. Throughout the meeting, there's a ridiculous amount of grandstanding (long rambling speeches) and chuckling going on considering the gravity of the situation being investigated. We're talking torture ... and these highly moral representatives of ours are only discussing punishment in the narrow context of what sort of an effect it will have on our image and whether it will help the war effort. They seem almost uncomfortable that they have to talk about this at all. Will the Arab world need us to give them a token offering before they fall all over themselves thanking us for liberating Iraq? This is a world-view that is arrogant, but at the same time laughably simplistic; if we go through the motions, the world will love us. It's as easy as pie. An attitude which comes easily to those that don't have to earn anything, whose every need is satisfied without effort. It is these people that are stupidly endangering our country with their simplemindedness, concerned only with short-term gain --- and with barely a glimmer of an idea of how even that is to be won. These leaders we have will get us all killed --- we are the ones who will pay for their arrogance when the rest of the world starts to <i>really</i> get pissed off. <h>Massaging the image</h> It is taken as a given that these abuses are not endemic --- they are isolated aberrations of an otherwise wholesome fighting force. The problem is not with the system, just a few bad apples, including some in the press here. Rumsfeld spent a few minutes ranting about how mad he was that the pictures were made public without the Pentagon's approval! He wasn't ranting about the pictures or that Americans look quite gleeful in most of them, but that the Pentagon was not given the chance to squash the whole thing! Sage nodding from several members of the committee who realize what a breach of protocol that was. Another question was baldly put in context of image control, prefaced with <iq>outrage that the ... credibility of this nation has been damaged ... that the campaign in Iraq is endangered ... even though failure is not an option</iq>. That was the start of a supposedly critical question --- I kind of lost track there. So take reports of what a "rough day" Rumsfeld had with a grain of salt; he's just in trouble for having failed to massage this information properly --- or having let it escape, causing damage to "this country" (and the important people therein). That's the crime he'll hang for in America, if at all. Rumsfeld is visibly bored during the whole thing ... even as members of Congress or other generals or calls from people in the US are telling him what a fucking God of War he is. CNN makes sure to stream constantly the fact that Rumsfeld has had a hard day today and the <iq>tough questioning</iq> he's undergoing, so you're in the proper frame of mind and can interpret the blatant lovefest as hardline, politically-biased (also mentioned a gazillion times) questioning determined to ferret out the truth. Overall, CNN considered the hearing a win for Rumsfeld because they noted that he did not concede that the US had broken the Geneva conventions. He didn't have to legally concede a blatant fact --- that's not just a win for Rumsfeld, that's a win for freedom! Just because you don't admit you broke a rule doesn't mean you didn't break it. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2040-2004May4.html" title="A Wretched New Picture Of America: Photos From Iraq Prison Show We Are Our Own Worst Enemy" source="Washington Post">A Wretched New Picture Of America</a> is a remarkably honest editorial deriding the government's (and complicit media's) overwhelming emphasis on US image, rather than the war crimes themselves: <bq>Reputation, image, perception. The problem, it seems, isn't so much the abuse of the prisoners, because we will get to the bottom of that and, of course, we're not really like that. The problem is our reputation. Our soldiers' reputations. Our national self-image. These photos, we insist, are not us.</bq> And then there are the apologists who claim that the whole war is <iq>lost now</iq> since we can never hope to <iq>gain the hearts and minds ... of the Arab people</iq>. That's a Vietnam-era expression that didn't make any sense then and it doesn't make any sense now. You know when you lost Iraqi "hearts and minds"? When you invaded, dumbass. You know when you lost Arab "hearts and minds"? Every year when you sign that Israeli military-aid package check. Meanwhile the Red Cross talks about <iq>systemic abuse</iq> across the board. But I'd much rather believe the Pentagon. Those lying sacks of shit in the Red Cross have had it in for the US since day one. Meanwhile the tens of thousands of people who get killed (many civilians) aren't discussed --- only the people that affect the <iq>United States' credibility</iq>. <iq>America's not what's wrong with the world</iq> says Rummy --- again, this show's for internal consumption only --- for the properly uninformed. For people that bother to do an reading at all, the US hasn't <i>ever</i> had any <iq>human rights credibility</iq>. All the sad-faced, grim denials that this is not America are purely show put on for US citizens. The rest of the world is too cynical and too aware of US foreign policy to believe it. However, there are enough Americans willing to happily address this issue within the narrow confines prescribed by their televisions and come to the 'right', 'moral' conclusion without noticing that their choice was pretty much already made for them. <h>America responds: yes it is!</h> Interviews with people from the home town of Lyndie Englands in <a href="http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1258&storyid=1302907" source="Daily Telegraph">Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty</a> show that, at least for one West Virginian town, this kind of ultraviolent racism is not only tolerated and encouraged, but also calmly explained for the uninitiated: <bq>To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised. ...[t]ormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey.</bq> <a href="http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/05/09/news/world/world02.asp" title="Dog of war: The girl from a redneck trailer park who embarrassed the world's superpower" source="Sunday Times">Dog of War</a> gives more background on Lynndie England. It's not just her backwoods townsfolk that support torture, now that it's out in the open, Rush Limbaugh is also strongly in favor of it, saying that <iq>the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country</iq>. <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo05082004.html" title="Torture Party: Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib" source="CounterPunch" author="Kurt Nimmo">Torture Party</a> quotes a lot more from Limbaugh than the bits being reported elsewhere, because he doesn't just idly compare Abu Ghraib to fraternity pranks. He is <i>not</i> quoted out of context. He's a sick bastard who thinks this is a reasonable way to treat Arabs and that the poor men and women of our military are going to take the fall for the squeamishness of the liberal fairies in the American public and press. He hammers home quite clearly that Arabs are sub-humans that don't suffer from what we've seen in these pictures --- the photographs show only legitimate techniques that are the right of the US military to use: <bq>These are Arab males --- what better way to humiliate them than to have a woman have authority over them? ... The objective is to soften them up ... there was no horror, there was no terror there was no death, there was no injuries, nothing.</bq> ...and what's the big deal anyway, asks Rush? It's just boys being boys and girls being girls, like when you stick an M-80 in a frog and light it. Nobody got hurt, so what? <bq>I'm talking about people having a good time, these people [CIA agents and MPs at Abu Ghraib], you ever heard of emotional release? You heard of need to blow some steam off? ... we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, ... because they had a good time.</bq> When given an opportunity to clearly provide a statement distancing the White House from this sick, sick madman, Mouth of Bush, Scott McClellan, said <iq>The President's views have been very --- have been made very clear.</iq> In effect, no comment. No distancing. No other way to interpret it but as silent White House approval of Rush's rantings, despite Bush's obviously heartfelt "deep disgust". Then again, you've got to be careful: Bush can't afford to alienate the xenophobic psycho vote in an election year. But Rush is blatant. Doubtless a lot of people listening to him were pretty shocked to hear him support torture of pretty much any Arab so whole-heartedly. How are other media responding? More subtly. Again, the channels of thought are pre-carved and the entire presentation smoothly slots you into a pre-approved line of thought. It's simple things like the title of an article: <a href="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4881156/" title="Rough Justice in Iraq: As alarming details surface in a growing prisoner-abuse scandal, the U.S. general who was in charge talks about what went wrong" source="Newsweek">Rough Justice in Iraq</a>. This is an article breaking the story about Abu Ghraib --- how the hell did they manage to fit the word "justice" into the title? Well, it gives you the federally-sanctioned viewpoint in a nutshell: we're spreading freedom over there ... things just got a little "rough". <h>Torture in America</h> First off, let's set straight what we're dealing with here. Is it torture? <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.php?reposid=/multimedia/tds/headlines/8139.html" source="The Daily Show">GIANT Mess O' Potamia</a> starts off with Rummy carefully explaining that what we saw in those pictures is <iq>technically abuse ... not torture</iq>. Next we'll hear that Iraq doesn't technically forbid torture since it didn't have a Constitution at that point: it was under pure military rule. So sorry, but we can't prosecute under laws that don't exist ... shucks, as much as we'd like to take some responsibility, looks like it'll have to be some other time. Let's also define the term "prison". Since <a href="http://www.detnews.com/2004/nation/0405/05/nation-142131.htm" source="Detroit News">Army report paints picture of a prison out of control</a> quotes an Army report saying <iq>that 60 percent of Abu Ghraib inmates were 'not a threat to society'</iq>, we have to think of that place as more of a detention center. So that guy on the leash? ... He might just have been a taxi driver who looked like a guy on one of those playing cards they were handing out at the start of the war. They all look the same, don't they? Remember that when leafing through the Iraqi adventure photo album. It's also not the only prison we're running, by the way. There have been plenty of reports of abuse from Afghanistan prisons we run, including several murders (remember the guys who were "rioting", but were found shot dead with their hands zip-stripped behind their backs way back in Winter 2001?). As another respondant said in <a href="http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=04/05/06/18264032;cid=101" source="Plastic">Christ, amateurs.</a>, we've also got another famous prison in <bq>... that place in Cuba they hold detainees specifically so they can remain outside the jurisdiction of US law? The fact that the US Government is basically breaking it's own laws by bureaucratic slight of hand tells us they are not operating with entirely decent intentions. I cynically predict that this mindset towards POWs in Iraq carries over into the treatment of 'unlawful combatants' in scenic Guantanamo Bay.</bq> According to <a href="http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10334/view/print" source="TomPaine.com">Terminating Torture</a>, it's a matter of policy to <iq>hold ... detainees in offshore and foreign prisons where allegations of mistreatment cannot be monitored</iq>. This is not by accident --- in fact, <iq>the rendition of captured Al Qaeda suspects from U.S. custody to other countries --- such as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco --- where they were tortured or mistreated</iq> is another charge to which the Bush administration has only answered "no comment" --- in effect, tacitly (though not legally) confirming that these acts, do, unfortunately, in the execution of the war on terror for all that is good and great and American, occur. Guantanamo is the proving ground for such practices, and the <iq>[t]he U.S. government has argued that U.S. courts would not have jurisdiction over these detainees, even if they were being tortured or summarily executed.</iq> <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05082004.html" author="Alexander Coburn & Jeffrey St. Clair" source="CounterPunch">Torture as Normalcy: As American as Apple Pie</a> recounts a quick history of torture enacted by the US throughout the world in the last 50 years or so. More interesting is that torture of Americans by Americans trumps all of that. Torture is pretty much accepted for the almost 1% of the population unfortunate enough to run afoul of US law. The US has been: <bq>...charged by the UN and also by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International with tolerating torture in US prisons ... [where] prisoners are kept in solitary in tiny concrete cells for years on end, many of them going mad in the process. ... with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been pressured or forced to have sexual contact ... [e]xtrapolating these findings to the national level gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.</bq> <a href="http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=04/05/06/18264032;cid=14" source="Plastic">Prison Rape equals Comic Gold</a> points out, quite rightly, that rape and torture in prisons is so mainstream and accepted that <iq>we decided long ago that sexual assault against men in prison is funny</iq> and to attempt to <iq>disown a felony that has brought us all such mirth [is] un-american</iq>. Black humor aside, as the country with both the highest rate of incarceration <i>and</i> the highest incarceration in the world, along with prison conditions that helped get us kicked off of the UN Human Rights Commission (last year, in case you missed it in the front page news), the denial that torture in now way reflects America's values rings hollow. <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/zaitchik05072004.html" title="From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell">Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell</a> mentions that Bush's home state contains <iq>super-max prisons [described] as 'the worst in the country'</iq>, but gives Bush a pass because <bq>the abuse at Abu Ghraib does not represent any America that George Bush could possibly have known about. The America he knows never sets foot inside prisons. It just owns them and fills them and builds them. Anything that happens after that, well, it might as well be another country.</bq> <h>Some optimistic defenses</h> But let's let Paul Wolfowitz look on the bright side of the occupation for us. He happliy let us know that <iq>in one year ... no new mass graves have been found</iq>. Well, it's easy to not find things (*cough* WMD *cough*). You can not find things just by not looking for them. Or, when civilians are killed, you just don't bury them. No new mass graves. <a href="http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=04/05/06/18264032;cid=88" source="Plastic">Eyes on the prize, people</a> looks at the committee and its quick instantiation as a positive sign that the US is on the up-and-up --- precisely because they are investigating it. <bq>Want proof that military tribunals can be fair? This is it. No internal cover-up, no excuses, just fact-finding and honest reporting. ... The government is admitting the problem. The military is correcting the problem.</bq> Is it? Is it really? The offenses were made known months ago, and charges are still only "pending" against those involved. You need only look at similar situations in history to see that most of the people involved will be absolved once the fickle public eye roves onward. The quote above was labelled as incoherent in the discussion forum. I think that's an unfair evaluation --- disengenuous would have been better. It's very coherent ... and exactly the kind of talk that's so convincing because it sounds so rational. Read the whole comment; notice how he never mentions what the prize actually is; notice how he doesn't mention why the fact that there's <iq>still fighting in Najaf and Fallujah</iq> somehow justifies the whole invasion. This is someone who is aware of only this current foreign adventure in Iraq and has no inkling of actual US history. When he <iq>call[s] bullshit</iq> on the statement that <iq>the West can't do anything right --- it fails through action and it fails through inaction, always, everytime.</iq>, he gives no reason why --- it's simply bullshit. That statement is not bullshit --- if anything, it's not strong enough. He's right, the West doesn't fail through action or inaction, it doesn't fail at establishing democracies because that's not what it's trying to do, nor was it ever --- and that's a reasonable evaluation consistent with the entire history of US foreign involvement. <h>Fire Rumsfeld?</h> The Boston Globe thinks Rumsfeld should be fired because he <iq>turned what should have been a liberation into a very dicey occupation</iq> whereas the Wall Street Journal thinks Rumsfeld shouldn't be fired because that action may harm Bush's re-election chances. Both of them move the terms of discussion so far away from what happened. The Globe attacks Rumsfeld for screwing up what overall should have been a cakewalk for democracy, feeding us some more of this bullshit about a liberation. The Journal stays on-topic, focussing on what's really important --- getting Bush re-elected (what was that about torture again? ... never mind). Bush's statement managed to cram the word "Freedom<span style="vertical-align: super; font-size: 80%">TM</span>" in as much as possible (as usual) and talks about the other, <iq>decent, giving, law-abiding</iq> soldiers --- that this is not representative of America. Again, statements for the US public ... the rest of the world doesn't believe a word --- too much first-hand evidence to the contrary for most of them. Bush rewrote a bit of history when asked about the anniversary of the whole "Mission Accomplished" landing, saying he announced that a <iq>achieved a great mission ... the removal of Saddam Hussein</iq>. Just how spectacularly stupid does he think we are? <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.php?reposid=/multimedia/tds/headlines/8136.html" source="Daily Show">365 Days Later</a> showed him, quite clearly, announcing the <iq>end of major combat operations in Iraq ... and the United States and our allies have prevailed</iq>. Kerry is pretty much just standing by his stance that Bush has <iq>fumbled the ball</iq> and that he (Kerry) could conquer Iraq way better than Bush. Yay for voter choice! He's also calling for Rumsfeld to be fired. Ooooh, strong move, Kerry. What would that actually accomplish? Well, we wouldn't have to put up with Rummy's press conferences and arrogant attitude anymore. Considering that the President already said he wasn't going to fire him and that most of Washington is lining up to kneel before him, it's not likely to happen, though. MoveOn.Org is also fully behind firing Rumseld, though they also don't mention what it will accomplish. We'll still be in Iraq and Afghanistan, we'll still have a military pumped full of hate, viewing all non-Americans, and certainly brownish, babble-speaking non-Americans as ants to crush, we'll still have them deployed and advising in <iq>about ... 140 countries</iq> (Wolfowitz talking about all the places he felt the love in the last few years, where the <i>true</i> America is known and understood) and bases in over 100 countries. But, once Rumsfeld is fired, Americans can sit back, mission accomplished, feel all good and morally righteous and happily brainwashed, IV-fed their <i>unique</i>, fantasy world of history-as-it-happens by their myriad media services and the US government will continue with business-as-usual, as they have always done. MoveOn was even so bold as to quote Thomas Friedman calling for Rumsfeld's resignation. Thomas Friedman! The right-wing, super-nut who spent oh-so-many columns in the NY Times explaining the genetic inferiorities of minorities and Arabs and anyone not rich and white (that's why they don't succeed, don't you see?). How can you possibly take this organization seriously, as a serious populist movement, when they're siding with John "I would have conquered Iraq way better than Bush" Kerry and Thomas "A-rabs are even worse than blacks" Friedman? I like the <a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.php?reposid=/multimedia/tds/celeb/celeb_8132.html" source="The Daily Show">Bob Kerrey Interview</a> much better. He summed up his experiences so far on the 9/11 commission with <iq>oh jeez, ...well ... life is just bullshit</iq>.