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Are there times when we have to accept torture?
Every regime that commits this crime does so in the name of salvation

Ariel Dorfman, UK Guardian

Is torture ever justified? That is the dirty question left out of the universal protestations of disgust, revulsion and shame that has greeted the release of photos showing British and American soldiers tormenting prisoners in Iraq.

It is a question that was most unforgettably put forward over 130 years ago by Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. In that novel, the saintly Alyosha Karamazov is tempted by his brother Ivan, confronted with an unbearable choice. Let us suppose, Ivan says, that in order to bring men eternal happiness, it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature, only one small child. Would you consent?

Ivan has preceded his question with stories about suffering children - a seven-year-old girl beaten senseless by her parents and enclosed in a freezing wooden outhouse and made to eat her own excrement; an eight-year-old serf boy torn to pieces by hounds in front of his mother for the edification of a landowner. True cases plucked from newspapers by Dostoevsky that merely hint at the almost unimaginable cruelty that awaited humanity in the years to come.

How would Ivan react to the ways in which the 20th century ended up refining pain, industrialising pain, producing pain on a massive, rational, technological scale; a century that would produce manuals on pain and how to inflict it, training courses on how to increase it, and catalogues that explained where to acquire the instruments that ensured that pain would be unlimited; a century that handed out medals for those who had written the manuals and commended those who designed the courses and rewarded and enriched those who had produced the instruments in those catalogues of death? Ivan Karamazov's question - would you consent? - is just as dreadfully relevant now, in a world where 132 countries routinely practice that sort of humiliation and damage on detainees, because it takes us into the impossible heart of the matter regarding torture; it demands that we confront the real and inexorable dilemma that the existence and persistence of torture poses, particularly after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. Ivan's words remind us that torture is justified by those who apply and perform it: this is the price, it is implied, that needs to be paid by the suffering few in order to guarantee happiness for the rest of society, the enormous majority given security and wellbeing by those horrors inflicted in some dark cellar, some faraway pit, some abominable police station.

Make no mistake: every regime that tortures does so in the name of salvation, some superior goal, some promise of paradise. Call it communism, call it the free market, call it the free world, call it the national interest, call it fascism, call it the leader, call it civilisation, call it the service of God, call it the need for information; call it what you will, the cost of paradise, the promise of some sort of paradise, Ivan Karamazov continues to whisper to us, will always be hell for at least one person somewhere, sometime.

An uncomfortable truth: the American and British soldiers in Iraq, like torturers everywhere, do not think of themselves as evil, but rather as guardians of the common good, dedicated patriots who get their hands soiled and endure perhaps some sleepless nights in order to deliver the blind ignorant majority from violence and anxiety. Nor are the motives of the demonised enemy significant, not even the fact that they are naked and under the boot because they dared to resist a foreign power occupying their land.

And if it turns out - a statistical certainty - that at least one of the victims is innocent of what he is accused, as blameless as the children mentioned by Ivan Karamazov, that does not matter either. He must suffer the fate of the supposedly guilty: everything justified in the name of a higher mission, state stability in the time of Saddam, and now, in the post-Saddam era, making the same country and the whole region stable for democracy. So those who support the present operations in Iraq are no different from citizens in all those other lands where torture is a tedious fact of life, all of them needing to face Ivan's question, whether they would consciously be able to accept that their dreams of heaven depend on an eternal inferno of distress for one innocent human being; or whether, like Alyosha, they would softly reply: "No, I do not consent."

What Alyosha is telling Ivan, in the name of humanity, is that he will not accept responsibility for someone else torturing in his name. He is telling us that torture is not a crime committed only against a body, but also a crime committed against the imagination. It presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine someone else's suffering, to dehumanise him or her so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness, those who know and close their eyes, those who do not want to know and close their eyes, those who close their eyes and ears and hearts.

Alyosha knows, as we should, that torture does not, therefore, only corrupt those directly involved in the terrible contact between two bodies, one that has all the power and the other that has all the pain, one that can do what it wants and the other that cannot do anything except wait and pray and resist. Torture also corrupts the whole social fabric because it prescribes a silencing of what has been happening between those two bodies; it forces people to make believe that nothing, in fact, has been happening; it necessitates that we lie to ourselves about what is being done not that far, after all, from where we talk, while we munch chocolate, smile at a lover, read a book, listen to a concerto, exercise in the morning. Torture obliges us to be deaf and blind and mute - and that is what Alyosha cannot consent to.

There is, however, a further question, even more troubling, that Ivan does not ask his brother or us: what if the person being endlessly tortured for our wellbeing is guilty?

What if we could erect a future of love and harmony on the everlasting pain of someone who had himself committed mass murder, who had tortured those children; what if we were invited to enjoy Eden all over again while one despicable human being was incessantly receiving the horrors he imposed upon others? And more urgently: what if the person whose genitals are being crushed and skin is being burnt knows the whereabouts of a bomb that is about to explode and kill millions?

Would we answer: yes, I do consent? That under certain very limited circumstances, torture is acceptable?

That is the real question to humanity thrown up by the photos of those suffering bodies in the stark rooms of Iraq, an agony - let us not forget - about to be perpetrated again today and tomorrow in so many prisons everywhere else on our sad, anonymous planet as one man with the power of life and death in his godlike hands approaches another who is totally defenceless. Are we that scared? Are we so scared that we are willing to knowingly let others perpetrate, in the dark and in our name, acts of terror that will eternally corrode and corrupt us?

© Ariel Dorfman

· The Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman is the author of Desert Memories and, with his son Joaquin, the novel The Burning City

Europeans Like Bush Even Less Than Before

By SARAH LYALL, New York Times

LONDON - Earlier this year, George Osborne, a Conservative member of Parliament, took a straw poll of some legislators from his party. The subject was President Bush. The results were not pretty.

"George Bush scares the hell out of me," one Tory said, according to an article by Mr. Osborne in The Spectator. Another told him: "Bush is a man who might wail at the moon. I don't feel comfortable with him." A third said that while he would vote for Bush in November if he could, "I think Anglo-American relations would be better if Kerry won."

That was long before pictures showing the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners were published all over the world, horrifying even Mr. Bush's allies. And the people Mr. Osborne polled were all Conservatives, by tradition and temperament the Republican Party's natural friends across the Atlantic.

But perhaps the only surprising thing about the vehemence of anti-Bush feeling, based on a reading of newspapers, opinion polls and interviews around Europe, is how unsurprising it truly is. In fact, one reason the recent disclosures have proved so damaging to the American cause here is that Mr. Bush had so little good will upon which to draw.

Across Europe, anti-Bush feeling has contributed to a consensus that the coming American election is of singular importance: for the United States, certainly, but also for the rest of the world. Anxieties about the direction America is going are accompanied more often than not by a passionate desire, cutting across national borders and party lines, to see President Bush voted out of office in November.

Europeans are in general more liberal than Americans, and among Europe's mainstream liberals, rejecting Mr. Bush is a matter of course. But a strange thing seems to have happened to many conservatives, who would ordinarily be the American president's cheerleaders. Even those who favor him seem loath to admit to wholehearted support, tempering their praise with caveats and qualifications.

It is as if admiring Mr. Bush is seen as slightly shameful among thinking Europeans, like confessing a preference for screw-top wine bottles.

"I must say, he's not very popular," said Sergio Romano, an Italian teacher and commentator who has served as ambassador to NATO and to the former Soviet Union. "It's quite understandable that he wouldn't be popular with the bulk of the center-left European intelligentsia, but he's not very popular with the conservatives or moderates either."

In Britain, Lawrence Freedman, a professor of war studies and the vice principal for research at King's College London, paused for an awkward moment when asked about an article he had written for The Financial Times arguing that Mr. Bush seemed "the safer bet," based on past experiences with second-term United States presidents.

"I wouldn't want to come across as a supporter of President Bush," Mr. Freedman said. "It was more of not being pro-Bush, but of explaining why Europeans, despite appearances, might end up not being unhappy if Bush was elected."

In poll after poll, Europeans have shown themselves to be fervently anti-Bush. In Britain, America's staunchest ally in the war in Iraq, a poll of 1,007 people taken last month for The Times of London by the British polling company Populus found support for Senator John Kerry over President Bush by a margin of 56 to 22 percent.

From America, a poll of people in nine nations conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in March found that opinion of the president and, by extension, the United States, had plummeted across Europe since Mr. Bush took office.

In France, the poll found, the president had an 85 percent negative rating; in Britain, 57 percent; in Germany 85 percent; and in Russia, 60 percent.

"People say, 'I'm very frustrated that I can't vote in the U.S. elections, because these are the ones that affect my way of life more than anything else,' " Ken Dubin, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid, said in an interview.

Referring to the prewar meeting last year of President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and José María Aznar, who was then the prime minister of Spain and whose recent election loss was attributed to antiwar feelings by Spanish voters, Mr. Dubin said, "I've heard the comment, 'One down, two to go.' "

In an editorial in March, the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian put it more starkly. "Senator Kerry carries the hopes not just of millions of Americans but of millions of British well-wishers, not to mention those of nations throughout Europe and the world," the newspaper wrote. "Nothing in world politics would make more difference to the rest of us than a change in the White House."

Of course there are Bush supporters here. Mr. Osborne is one: "I think he's been a good president for the U.S. and for Britain, and I'd like to see him re-elected," Mr. Osborne said in an interview.

So are leaders like Mr. Blair and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. Many European thinkers, while acknowledging the depth of anti-Bush feeling, say it is simplistic and unfair.

"I was impressed by Bush's reaction to Sept. 11, and how he helped put the country back on its feet," said Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, an international lawyer and political writer in France, and the author of "An Alliance At Risk: The United States and Europe Since Sept. 11."

"Europeans tend to attribute the rift between the U.S. and Europe essentially to one man and one administration, and to believe that the mere election of a different president would mend the relationship quickly," he added. "Unfortunately, the reasons for the current Atlantic divide are deeper and more complex."

Some countries, like Poland, which has committed troops to the war in Iraq, have their own reasons for wanting Mr. Bush to succeed.

"Given that the Polish fate in Iraq is linked with President Bush and his policies, there are more sympathies on the Bush side," said Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a former European affairs minister who is running for the European Parliament. "We think he's been a decisive and courageous president."

But on the whole it is hard to find unreserved enthusiasm for Mr. Bush in Europe. Not that Senator Kerry is seen as particularly dynamic or gifted, or even as especially likely to solve all of America's foreign-policy problems. But he has one irresistible attraction: his non-Bushness.

Europeans' objections to Mr. Bush are multifaceted. Some are still obsessing about stolen elections and hanging chads. Others cannot get past the president's plain-spoken manner, his proudly aggressive anti-intellectualism, his ties to the religious right and his tendency in public to trip over words and concepts.

The criticism can be expressed in ways that are exceptionally disparaging of an American president.

The Express, a British tabloid, for instance, ridiculed Mr. Bush's news conference last month in an article titled, "The President's Brain Is Missing," saying his performance had revealed him as a "bumbling embarrassment."

The paper printed a series of unflattering photographs showing Mr. Bush's various facial expressions after a reporter asked whether he had made mistakes since the Sept. 11 attacks. "In what was meant to be a rallying defense of the war," the caption read, "George Bush appears alternately flummoxed, panicked, forgetful and distant as he struggles to remember what he's been doing in Iraq for the past year."

But beyond distaste for Mr. Bush's personal style are serious questions about what Europeans see as his American-centric, us-or-them worldview.

These began soon after Mr. Bush took office, when he diverged from the European position on a host of international treaties. Then came Sept. 11, the conflict with Iraq, the subsequent backpedaling about the rationale for entering the war and, now, the prisoner abuse scandal.

"The thing that Europeans cannot understand is how you can vote for a liar," said Peter Schneider, a German essayist and novelist. "Here is somebody who lies about something that leads to a war where tens of thousands of people's lives are involved."

Nor are Europeans thrilled about the American values they feel Mr. Bush has encouraged, in which anti-Europeanism is applauded as a virtue, people boycott French wine in protest at the French position on Iraq and Senator Kerry is ridiculed by the Republicans for being able to speak French.

"The idea that you have a leader of the U.S. who's not interested in listening to his allies is important in the way people perceive Bush," Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States at the French Institute of Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "He has a very simplistic view of the world, which we find difficult to accept. In fact, that we find dangerous."

In Moscow, the political commentator Aleksandr Yanov said Mr. Kerry was a superior candidate for many reasons, high among them that he appears to have a far more nuanced view of the world.

Writing in Nyezavisimaya Gazeta, Mr. Yanov said, "In contrast to Bush, he will never put the Bolshevik principle - 'Those who are not with us are against us' - at the center of his policy."

Nick Clegg, a British Liberal Democrat who is a member of the European Parliament, said it was "difficult to exaggerate" the European hope that President Bush would lose the election - particularly in Brussels, whose multilateral ethos is mightily offended by Mr. Bush's unilateralism.

"At the moment, a consideration or analysis of Kerry's positions is pretty underdeveloped," Mr. Clegg said in an interview. "Partly, it's because it's still early days and he hasn't revealed his hand fully. But what really drives people is alarm about George Bush's policies, more than some overwhelming attraction to Kerry.

"What is missing in the modern American cult of "sorry" is any sense of responsibility.... Everyone is sorry "it" happened." Bingo, baby...

A Sorry State
The Artlessness Of the Apology

By Tony Judt, Washington Post

We live in the age of the public apology. When a crisis occurs or a scandal is exposed, the first instinct of many public figures today is to erupt in a torrent of remorse. From Bill Clinton's 1992 apology to his wife for his sexual infidelities to the notorious 1998 Oprah Winfrey show where guests apologized to people they had "hurt," saying sorry has become all the rage. On the Oprah show experts even offered tips on how to apologize. "Don't be afraid to apologize," the incomparable Ms. Winfrey advised on her Web site. "Apologizing to your child doesn't mean you lose."

President Bush could have used a few such tips this month. Faced with the evidence of serial abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, Bush condemned, decried and regretted; but he didn't apologize for a week. In a world where victims -- real or presumptive -- demand not merely justice but penitence, the president's reluctance became a political issue in its own right.

For the second time this spring the Bush administration was caught up in the media's passion for public contrition. In late March the public commission investigating security lapses before 9/11 was transformed into a daytime soap opera. Would Condoleezza Rice follow Richard Clarke's cue and offer a telegenic "sorry" for letting it all happen? How would she "look" if she did offer an all-points apology? And -- of even greater media interest -- how would she look if she didn't?

Rice is a mediocre national security adviser but a good tactician. By refusing to express remorse ("I don't think that there is anyone who is not sorry for the terrible loss that these families endured," she told Ed Bradley on "60 Minutes," but she added, "the best thing that we can do for the future of this country is to focus on those who did this to us."), she paid a small price in the congeniality stakes while keeping journalists' attention firmly diverted from anything that mattered. It was Rice's present sentiments, rather than her past actions, that held center stage. We used to pay attention to what public figures did and what they thought. Now all we really want to know is how they feel. And everyone, even the president, enthusiastically obliges.

Public apologies used to be a very serious matter -- that's why they were so uncommon. In the past, when faced with bad news, politicians would do anything rather than confess. Typically, they dissimulated. Rather than tell you how they felt about something unpleasant for which they might be held accountable, they just issued denials: "It never happened." Later, when denial was no longer possible, they downplayed the matter: "All right, it happened, but it wasn't as bad as you say." And then, later still, when the scale of the crime or scandal was clear to all, they would concede that, "Well, yes, it happened and it was every bit as bad as you say. But it's all so long ago -- why dredge up the past?"

That is still the response in cultures where the public confession of failure or misbehavior carries heavy social penalties. In Japan, the wartime mistreatment of Chinese and Koreans is still mired in semi-denial and official mis-memory. Turkish authorities -- and many Turks -- shift uncomfortably between exculpatory re-description and outright denial when confronted with the massacre of the Armenians. Australia's leaders no longer deny the near-genocide of the Aborigines, but it is such old news that they refuse to dwell on it.

Even where international pressure has made official "regrets" and restitution unavoidable, as in the case of the Holocaust, heartfelt official remorse is rare -- the recent apology by President Alexander Kwasniewski for his countrymen's part in the destruction of their Jewish neighbors was all the more effective for being unprecedented in Poland.

The public apology, in short, is not a universal political response to bad news. But in the United States, where virtually everyone (except the 43rd president) apologizes at the first opportunity, it has a very different resonance. This does seem to be a distinctively American development. True, Tony Blair also indulges in it, but then in his well-advertised religiosity and his propensity to wax moralistic, Blair is the most "American" prime minister in modern British history. He is also of an age with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George W. Bush and other baby boomers molded by the pedagogical revolution of the '60s and the narcissistic preoccupations of the era.

For this generation of political leaders -- and followers -- it has always been important to have the right sort of feelings and to display them copiously. Thus (according to his spokesman) President Bush -- hitherto seemingly immune to the sensibilities of his generation -- feels sorry for the "pain caused" by the publication of pictures and reports of American soldiers torturing Iraqis. In Bush's own words he feels "bad" about what happened, "sorry for the humiliation" of Iraqi prisoners. He might not say that he exactly "feels their pain" -- that is a more distinctively Clintonian sentiment -- but it is the same general idea: Saying "sorry" makes it better. The victim feels better and so does the perpetrator -- indeed, you score a triple: You are good, you do good and you feel good.

The preferred use of sorry, however, is in the formulation "I'm sorry that such and such happened," distancing the speaker from any connection to the events, thereby relieving the speaker of any need for self-examination.

But in any case, in its transition from private relations to public affairs, the apology encounters some intriguing paradoxes. In the first place, it is self-undermining. As anyone knows who has ever dealt with young children, saying "sorry" has a dual purpose: It concedes guilt and exculpates the perpetrator. "I said I'm sorry -- why are you still upset?" Thus President Bush undoubtedly hopes that by saying how sorry he feels that his army has disgraced itself he can speedily put the affair behind him. But in this he is surely mistaken.

In our age of instant remorse the currency of penitence has been hyperinflated and has lost almost all its value. Most of those who heard the president expressing his regrets, above all the Arab and Muslim audience to which they were primarily directed, will have echoed the celebrated response of Mandy Rice-Davies at the height of the Christine Keeler affair in Swinging London, when Lord Astor denied under oath that he had been involved with her: "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

Moreover, while the president's regrets are doubtless heartfelt, his skeptical international audience is likely to reflect that he is no less "sorry" that the news leaked out. He may also come to rue the carefully qualified apologies offered by his subordinates: Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, first offered his apologies and then spent some time explaining that what he was referring to were the "illegal or unauthorized acts" of "a small number of soldiers." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. army spokesman in Iraq, similarly qualified his expression of regrets -- "a small number of soldiers doing the wrong thing." Such grudging, formulaic repentance (alleged sodomy "with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick" is now "the wrong thing"?) merely calls attention to its own inadequacy -- and invites charges of bad faith.

So what is a democratic leader to do? If you apologize too soon it rings false -- particularly to foreign audiences unfamiliar with the American cult of contrition. But if you stay silent it suggests callous indifference or a coverup. The crimes in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are not comparable to My Lai in Vietnam or other atrocities committed in the heat of battle by terrified GIs and inadequate officers. They were born of that arrant indifference to laws, regulations, rights and rules that has characterized this administration from the outset, and that was bound, sooner or later, to percolate down to the sergeants and mercenaries who do the dirty work. Thus Bush had no option but to acknowledge immediately that terrible things had been done in Iraq -- and he would be wise to make sure that he has been told and is telling the whole story. But a public expression of his pain and sorrow will no longer suffice.

What is missing in the modern American cult of "sorry" is any sense of responsibility. Whether it concerns the incompetence of the security apparatus before 9/11, a misguided and failed imperial adventure, the mismanagement and degradation of the army, or the criminal behavior of Americans in Iraq, everyone feels "bad" and everyone expresses "regret." But until Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testified on Friday, no one even hinted at feeling "responsible." According to Bush (interviewed on the U.S.-funded Al Hurra Arabic language television network), "We believe in transparency, because we're a free society. That's what free societies do. If there's a problem, they address those problems in a forthright, upfront manner." Except, of course, we don't.

For in the very next sentence, Bush assures his interlocutor that "I've got confidence in the secretary of defense, and I've got confidence in the commanders on the ground . . . because they and our troops are doing great work on behalf of the Iraqi people." So the commanders are off the hook.

Meanwhile the New York Times (on May 6) carries a touching little story about the confused and helpless GIs who actually did the torturing, claiming that they were following orders/ had no orders/ misunderstood those orders/ were themselves misunderstood/ suffered great stress at the time/ are suffering even greater stress now -- and so forth.

Everyone is sorry "it" happened. But unless its leaders can get beyond that sanctimonious and self-serving response, the United States is in deep trouble. If Rumsfeld (who on Friday offered his "deepest apology"), Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz or Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard B. Myers were honorable men they would resign in shame. But they are not.

If Bush were of presidential caliber he would have sacked them by now -- and taken full personal responsibility for their incompetence. But wherever the buck stops these days, it surely is not on the president's desk. Yet nothing short of such an old-fashioned assumption of duty can now retrieve America's standing in the community of nations.

To the rest of the world Bush's apologies are mere exercises in damage control. The same president who spoke of leading God's crusade against Evil and who basked in the self-congratulatory aura of his invincible warriors will have difficulty convincing the rest of humanity that he really cares about a few brutalized Arabs.

Given the president's simultaneous and reiterated insistence that neither he nor his staff have done anything wrong and that there is nothing to change in his policies or goals, who will take seriously such an apology, extracted in extremis? Like confessions obtained under torture, it is worthless. As recent events have shown, America under Bush can still debase and humiliate its enemies. But it has lost the respect of its friends -- and it is fast losing respect for itself. Now that is something to feel sorry about.

---

Early Iraq Abuse Accounts Met With Silence

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

Detailed allegations of psychological abuse, deprivation, beatings and deaths at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq were met by public silence from the U.S. Army last October — six months before shocking photographs stirred world outrage and demands for action.

At the time, one ex-prisoner sensed that words might count for little. Instead, Rahad Naif told a reporter, "I wish somebody could go take a picture of Camp Bucca."

These early accounts by freed prisoners, reported by The Associated Press last fall, told of detainees punished by hours lying bound in the sun; being attacked by dogs; being deprived of sufficient water; spending days with hoods over their heads.

One told AP of seeing an elderly Iraqi woman tied up and lying in the dust; others told of ill men dying in crowded tents.

They spoke repeatedly of being humiliated by American guards. None mentioned the sexual humiliation seen in recently released photos, but Arab culture might keep an Iraqi from describing such mistreatment.

In contrast to suggestions that the photos indicate isolated abuse by a few, these Iraqis told of widespread practices in several camps that would violate the Geneva Conventions and other human rights standards. On Friday, in an unusual public statement, the international Red Cross agreed, disclosing that its inspectors last year found a "broad pattern" of abuse.

On Oct. 18, AP posed specific questions about the reported abuses to the U.S. military command in Baghdad and the 800th Military Police Brigade, which was in charge of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities.

The MP unit drafted responses, AP later learned, but the Baghdad command did not release them. No explanation was given. The AP report, published Nov. 1, cited a statement to Arab television by the MP commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, that prisoners were treated humanely.

Meantime, "between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees," according to the report of a later Army investigation.

That Army report said the photos from Abu Ghraib dated from this period — both before and after the AP article appeared.

The Army's report, which found that soldiers also committed "egregious acts and grave breaches" at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, did not come to light until they were disclosed in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker magazine. It had been classified "secret."

That investigation was prompted by a soldier's complaint to superiors in January about fellow guards' actions.

The half-dozen ex-prisoners interviewed by AP in October were freed without charges after spending months in Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and the Baghdad airport's Camp Cropper.

Some Americans were humane, they said, but many were not.

"They don't have morals. They don't respect old or young. They humiliate everybody," said Naif, 31, a Baghdad resident like the others and one of three brothers confined.

Women guards especially were verbally abusive, with obscene invective, "insulting our sisters and parents. It was very hard to accept," he said.

"Some are like children, showing off their muscle," his brother Hassan, 32, said of the MPs.

Last summer, when temperatures topped 120, guards struck one man at Camp Cropper with an "electric stick" because he was slow carrying water, and then "tied his hands and put him in the sun for three hours," said Ziad Tarik, 24.

This punishment in "The Garden" also was recounted by others: being made to lie bound in the sun for hours on a patch of sand enclosed by razor-wire, even for such lesser infractions as shouting to the next tent or stealing food.

They also told of beatings by guards — for example, of an Abu Ghraib prisoner who refused to eat.

"He was stubborn, so they hit him, and he spent three days in the hospital," Tarik said.

"They used to hit people and turn dogs loose on them," said Saad, 36, the third Naif brother, who spent 2 1/2 months in Abu Ghraib.

"They used to humble people by putting nylon bags over their heads, for three days, with their hands tied up. I know one who died because he couldn't breathe."

The U.S. military and CIA now say at least 14 detainee deaths have been or are being investigated.

The camps held not only men captured in the anti-U.S. insurgency, but many others picked up by U.S. troops in broad neighborhood sweeps, on slight suspicions or unverified tips, or as curfew-breakers, checkpoint-dodgers or common criminals. Up to 8,000 are believed still held.

The Naif brothers said they and neighbor Tarik were seized by American soldiers after a nasty quarrel with another neighbor, who had links with the U.S. occupation and apparently denounced them as resistance supporters. The brothers were thrown into three separate camps.

Prisoners regularly rose up in protest or riots to demand they be charged or freed, and sometimes to seek better treatment for ill comrades, the men said.

"They'd turn dogs on us to put down the demonstrations," said Ra'id Mohammed Hassan, 42.

He said he was taken to Camp Bucca after Americans searching his car found a weapon, a common item for Iraqis.

The ex-detainees complained they were never given enough water for drinking and washing and at times were denied food as punishment.

"Once we were saying prayers for the death of a prisoner, and we were chanting, so they kept food from us for a day and a half," Saad Naif said.

In hours of AP interviews, the Iraqis said the Americans' treatment of women detainees and the sick most appalled them.

Hassan Ali Muslim, 28, detained for alleged carjacking but never charged, remembered one man being brought into their stifling, overcrowded tent at Camp Cropper in a sickbed. He said another died beside him.

"He was an old man. We had to line up for food, and it was very hot and it took a very long time, and wasn't good for sick people," Muslim said. "After the meal he began breathing heavily, and he just died."

The men told of detainees in wheelchairs and poorly treated diabetics, of epileptic seizures and nervous breakdowns.

"I saw four die in our camp," Tarik said of Abu Ghraib. Even when fellow prisoners warned of one man's worsening condition, he said, "they said they wouldn't take him (to a hospital) until it's serious and he's about to die."

Saad Naif said the "worst thing" was the treatment of women.

"Innocent women were kept for months in the same clothes. I saw a woman about 80 years old — her hands were tied up and she was lying in the dust," he said.

Hassan Naif recalled a day at Camp Cropper when a man saw his sister being punished by being stretched out bound in the sun. He angrily tried to cross the razor wire ringing his tent, "and they shot him in the shoulder," he said.

Saad Naif said he saw another prisoner shot dead when he approached the wire at Abu Ghraib.

Muslim, whose father was jailed under the ousted Baathists, said the U.S. system hardly compared with the old regime's bloody political prisons, and he said living conditions improved at times under the Americans.

Camp Cropper, whose overcrowded conditions had grown notorious, was closed Oct. 1. The secret Army investigation, nevertheless, found that the worst abuses continued at least into December at Abu Ghraib.

Much of what the ex-detainees told AP meshed with what delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outsiders allowed into the camps, were said to have found on visits last year.

Those findings were confidential, but the human rights group Amnesty International said last summer it learned that the ICRC inspectors were finding serious abuses, and it charged that "torture and gross abuse of human rights" were occurring.

On Friday, the Red Cross disclosed it had repeatedly demanded last year that U.S. authorities correct problems in the detention centers. The Americans took action on some issues but not others, it said.

"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," Pierre Kraehenbuel, the Red Cross operations director, said in Geneva.

Inside the camps, too, appeals were made.

Saad Naif said one prominent detainee, a former Iraqi provincial governor, urged U.S. military officers to halt the abuses.

More Bad News May Be on the Way for Bush

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON - In one of the darkest weeks of his administration, President Bush saw America's reputation sullied, the U.S. effort in Iraq damaged and his own campaign for re-election clouded. And more bad news may be on the way.

While the world already has been horrified by pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the Pentagon warns there are many more photos and videos that have not been disclosed.

They show "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman," embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress.

From the White House to Capitol Hill, policy-makers are worried that the United States faces lasting damage abroad — particularly in the Middle East — from the pictures of naked Arab men being tortured and humiliated by American soldiers, the same forces sent to Iraq to liberate the country from Saddam Hussein 's torture and repression.

Analysts describe the pictures as great recruiting tools for al-Qaida and other extremist groups and said they undermine America's claims to a moral high ground. Rumsfeld said the impact was "radioactive."

Bush, in his weekly radio address Saturday, said, "They are a stain on our country's honor and reputation." He said the abuses were the work of a few and do not reflect the overall character of the 200,000 members of the U.S. military who have served in Iraq in the past year.

Six months from the November elections, Iraq weighs heavily on the president.

April was the deadliest month yet for American soldiers in Iraq and May is off to a bloody start.

On the diplomatic front, the administration does not know who will take power in Iraq from the United States in a June 30 handover.

Costs are soaring. The administration has sent Congress an unexpected $25 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan .

Day after day, the extraordinary apologies from the president and his top deputies dominated the news.

Pollsters and presidential experts are scratching their heads over how the prisoner scandal will affect Bush's re-election hopes.

"There's such a big question mark there, it's unlike anything we've seen before," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

"The public is very critical of (Bush's) management of Iraq. They don't think he has a clear plan for bringing it to a successful conclusion, but a thin majority of the public has been hanging in with that it was the right decision to go to war," Kohut said. "This could be the event which makes people say 'Oh, we did make a mistake.'"

Political scientist James Thurber of American University likened the Iraq images to the infamous Vietnam pictures of a naked young girl fleeing a napalm attack and a Viet Cong prisoner being executed on a Saigon street.

Referring to the new pictures, Thurber said, "That's what we're going to remember about Iraq. It's just not going to go away. That may have a lasting and negative effect on his campaign. It certainly does right now and I think you'll see it in the polls immediately."

Support for Bush's handling of foreign policy and terrorism, usually his strongest issue, was at 50 percent in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday. That compares with 55 percent a month ago.

Kurt Campbell, a former Pentagon official during the Clinton administration, said it was too early to tell whether Rumsfeld would be able to keep his job.

"The real issue is there's more stuff that's going to come out that is troubling, beyond humiliation and torture. Deaths I think," said Campbell, director of international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"And there's going to be quite a long record of warnings that were either ignore or dismissed. And that I think is going to be problematic," Campbell said.

Lawmakers worried the pictures would harm U.S. credibility for years, perhaps decades. While the United States champions freedom and democracy in Iraq, the pictures show vivid scenes of cruelty and insensitivity.

Splashed across front pages across the Middle East and around the world, the pictures may undermine "the substantial gains toward the goal of peace and freedom in various operation areas of the world, most particularly Iraq," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee .

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the committee's top Democrat, said the abuses "dishonored our military and our nation and they made the prospects for success in Iraq even more difficult than they already are."

Added Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.: "This was a political and public relations Pearl Harbor."

Bush pledged in his radio address that the United States would not be thrown into retreat.

"This has been a difficult few weeks," Bush said. "Yet our forces will stay on the offensive, finding and confronting the killers and terrorists who are trying to undermine the progress of democracy in Iraq."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE: Terence Hunt has covered every president since Ronald Reagan .

Looks like BushCo might jettison Rummy after all (not surprising, since they started positioning him to take the fall last winter). I love this quote from the news piece: "He said bluntly, "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them."". Well no duh, Donald - so does this mean you are taking the rap for 9/11 as well? Stay tuned to find out if Rummy will take one for the team and fall on his sword.

Rumsfeld Warns Prison Scandal May Deepen

By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned members of Congress that the Iraq prison abuse scandal could worsen with the release of videos and more photographs depicting brutality.

With his future in the Cabinet in jeopardy, Rumsfeld apologized and told House and Senate committees Friday that he took full responsibility for the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison. Rumsfeld offered "my deepest apology" to Iraqis abused by American soldiers and said he would seek compensation for them. He also said those responsible would be punished.

But it's not clear whether the hearings, broadcast live nationwide, would ease pressure on Rumsfeld to resign. Lawmakers said they were pleased by his apology, but some said his testimony left questions unanswered about who was giving orders and why Congress wasn't told earlier about the extent of the abuse.

Rumsfeld said he wouldn't resign "simply because people try to make a political issue out of it," but he didn't rule out the possibility of stepping down. He said if he could not be effective, "I certainly wouldn't want to serve. And I have to wrestle with that."

Asked by Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., if he would step down if that would help undo the some of the damage caused by the scandal, Rumsfeld said "that's possible."

President Bush (news - web sites) reiterated his support for Rumsfeld, telling reporters on his campaign bus after traveling through western Wisconsin on Friday the secretary is a "great" Cabinet member.

"He'll remain in my Cabinet, period," the president said.

The photographs of stripped, hooded Iraqi prison inmates being sexually humiliated by their American captors has caused outrage throughout the world, aggravating anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East and severely undermining American credibility in Iraq.

Rumsfeld said there are many more photographs and videos that have not been made public yet.

"It's going to get still more terrible, I'm afraid," he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he wants to "prepare the public: Apparently the worst is yet to come potentially in terms of disturbing events."

He later told reporters, "The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience."

He did not elaborate, but a Senate aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said senators have been told videotapes are believed to exist showing rape and the corpses of what are possibly murder victims. The tapes were described in an additional part of an investigative report. The Pentagon has not yet submitted that additional part of the report to senators, the aide said.

In his appearances, Rumsfeld offered Congress a rare display of public contrition, while continuing to defend the military's actions and questioning of his critics' political motivations.

His apology came one day after Bush offered his own regrets. Rumsfeld said the treatment of prisoners was "inconsistent with the values of our nation. It was inconsistent with the teachings of the military ... and it was certainly fundamentally un-American."

During a total of six hours of testimony, Rumsfeld sought to repair the damage done to American prestige aboard, to ease the anger of lawmakers caught off guard by the uproar and to shore up support for his own job.

He said bluntly, "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them."

His testimony won praise from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va.

Others lawmakers were more guarded. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said "I think the secretary did an effective job. I believe that there is a lot more that needs to be discussed and a lot more answers that need to be given." Another Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, also said "I still think there are many unanswered questions."

During the Senate hearing, the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., noted with "deep dismay" that Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had briefed lawmakers about Iraq in a classified session last week but did not mention the major story they knew was about to break on CBS.

But after the hearing, Levin wasn't ready to call for Rumsfeld's resignation.

"If I thought his resignation would change the policies of this administration relative to Iraq, I'd be all for it," he said.

Rumsfeld repeatedly told members of Congress he and Bush were "blindsided" by the photos when they were broadcast. He said the pictures had been leaked, and had not yet reached the Pentagon when they appeared on television.

He also said that Army officials had publicly disclosed the abuse when it was first reported and announced investigations into it. He said Pentagon officials did not press for details because they did not want to interfere with the investigation.

Rumsfeld said a panel of retired officials would report within 45 days on "the pace, the breadth, the thoroughness of the existing investigations" and determine whether more inquiries were needed.

One of the oldest chuckles in journalism is about what is news (dog-bites-man is not news. Man-bites-dog is news.)

Man Bites Dog

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A man fleeing police in the South African city of Durban bit the dog and police officer ordered to apprehend him, police said on Friday.

"The guy actually bit the dog... He was stupid because those dogs are trained not to let go," Superintendent Danelia Veldhuizen of Durban police told Reuters.

The man ran from a house where he is accused of raping a young mother at knife-point on Thursday. The police dog unit was alerted to give chase. The man is expected to be charged with rape and robbery.

Veldhuizen said the man bit the policeman's finger right through to the bone, but the dog was fine.

Prostitute says government ruining trade

By Sarah Goodwin, UK Retuers News

BERLIN (Reuters) - A leading German prostitute says the government is putting the squeeze on the legalised prostitution industry with a drive to collect taxes and plans to fine businesses that don't hire trainees.

Molly Luft, operator of a famous Berlin brothel with 10 freelance staff, said the government's moves would harm a profession that employs 400,000 in Germany and has annual sales of four billion pounds.

"People just don't have the money to pay for sex anymore," said Luft, 60, referring to the country's stagnant economy and the new tax pressures.

"Who can pay more than they can afford? These law changes will be disastrous for brothel operators," she said in an interview with Reuters Television on Friday.

German lawmakers have started looking for ways to more effectively collect taxes from prostitutes after the Federal Audit Office scolded the government for squandering some two billion euros a year in lost tax revenues.

A parliamentary committee is expected to soon propose new measures to improve the tax take from red light districts because the government's budget deficit is worsening.

At the same time, the lower house of parliament on Friday passed a separate law that will fine companies that fail to hire at least one apprentice for each 15 staff workers -- and brothels would not be exempt from financial penalties.

"My God, I can't imagine the consequences because of the special circumstances of the trade," she said, when asked about the government's plans and the double blow her business faces.

"It would be terrible. Prostitution attracts women who can't usually cope with a regular job and have never really learned general skills on punctuality, reliability.

"These women come and go as they please," said Luft, who has appeared on television talk shows and is one of the country's most outspoken prostitutes. "They don't think about record keeping and taxes."

Law changes in recent years to force prostitutes out of the underground economy and into legitimate tax-paying businesses have failed to make any headway, she said.

Prostitutes can get health insurance and retirement benefits and trade unions have tried to bring prostitution out of the shadows by drawing up standard contracts after the government passed a law in 2001 allowing them to sue their clients for mistreatment or failing to pay fees.

But very few sex workers have taken advantage of that.

Falling in Love -- a Gender-Bending Experience

LONDON (Reuters) - Falling in love -- that crazy, blissful feeling -- causes gender-bender changes in men and women's testosterone levels.

A study by an Italian researcher shows that when couples fall in love their testosterone levels alter. It falls in men and rises in women so they become more like each other.

"Men who were in love had lower levels of the male sex hormone testosterone -- linked to aggression and sex drive -- than other men," New Scientist magazine said Wednesday.

"Love-struck women, in contrast, had higher levels of testosterone than their counterparts."

Donatella Marazziti, a scientist at the University of Pisa in Italy, made the discovery after studying 24 people in love.

"It's as if nature wants to eliminate what can be different in men and women, because it's important to survive at this stage," she said.

Not all scientists agree with Marazziti's interpretation of the results and some say changing testosterone levels could be a result of increased sexual activity.

But whatever the reason it doesn't last long.

Church leaders object to casting God on U.S. side

Abuse photos undermine Bush's religious rhetoric

Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers points to the danger of President Bush describing the occupation of Iraq and the war on terror as battles between forces of good and the "evildoers" of the world, religious leaders say.

Even before compromising photos of nude and hooded prisoners surfaced in the news media, some mainline Protestant and American Muslim leaders had criticized the president for a series of speeches that appeared to say that God was on the side of America.

"We question that kind of theology -- putting 'good' on us and 'evil' on the other,'' said Antonios Kireopoulous, the associate general secretary for international affairs at the National Council of Churches, the major ecumenical agency in the United States.

"Seeing these photos of prisoner abuse puts the lie to that,'' he said in an interview Thursday. "It shows the crack in that kind of thinking.''

In his remarks Thursday marking the annual National Day of Prayer, President Bush showed new caution in his use of religious language. "God is not on the side of any nation," he said during the White House gathering.

"He finds his children within every culture and every tribe,'' the president added.

Former President Ronald Reagan established the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer. While the day is described as an interfaith event, it is primarily promoted by conservative evangelicals. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush often spoke of his Christian faith in personal, self- help terms, revealing how a conversation with evangelist Billy Graham and a "born-again" conversion helped him overcome a drinking problem and lack of direction in his life.

But in the aftermath of the terror attacks, Bush's religious rhetoric began to reflect what one noted theologian calls "American messianic nationalism.''

Rosemary Ruether, a professor of theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, said the president and many of his supporters on the Christian right speak of his administration as "messianic agents chosen by God to combat evil and to establish good.''

But that is not the impression given by the photos coming out of Iraq in the past week.

"They fly in the face of that kind of language,'' Ruether said. "There is something horrendous and contradictory in having all this torture come out of the very same prison used by Saddam Hussein's torturers.''

At a White House news conference Thursday, Bush continued his defense of U.S. troops in Iraq, calling them "honorable, decent, loving people.''

Later in the day, the president seemed to go out of his way to answer theological critiques of his religious rhetoric during his National Day of Prayer remarks.

"Americans do not presume to equate God's purposes with any purpose of our own,'' the president said. "God's will is greater than any man, or any nation built by men. "

Those comments come one week after "Frontline" aired a PBS documentary on Bush titled "The Jesus Factor.''

In the program, a top leader in the Southern Baptist Convention says Bush told him that "God wants me to be president.''

Before that, journalist Bob Woodward quoted Bush as saying that he didn't ask his father, the former president, whether he should invade Iraq, but that he turned instead to "a higher Father" for advice.

Earlier this week, the president's God-talk was criticized at a national convention of Bush's own United Methodist Church.

And at a news conference Tuesday in Pittsburgh, Bishop McKinley Young of the African Methodist Episcopal Church said Bush "is not the only one who hears from God.''

"We did not elect him as priest of the nation,'' Young said. "We elected him as president.''

The most controversial comments about God's role in the Iraq war have come from Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the president's deputy undersecretary for intelligence.

Referring to an encounter he had with a Muslim general in Somalia, Boykin said, "I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.''

As for the war on terror, the general told a church group, "We are an army of God raised up for such a time as this."

The comments offended many Muslims, including Helal Omeira, the Northern California director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Omeira also has been shocked by the abusive photos coming out of Iraq in the past week, but has urged his fellow Muslims not to overreact.

Neighbors' noses led to menagerie of wild critters

By The Associated Press

GERMANTOWN, Wis. — Neighbors' complaints about the stench of decay prompted authorities to search the suburban Milwaukee apartment.

They found a home crawling with life: About 200 creatures — including alligators, scorpions, carnivorous beetles, snakes and turtles — formed a bizarre menagerie kept alive by a woman who fed them roadkill.

"The smell was just unbelievable," said William Mitchell, a state conservation warden who found about 70 ducks in a basement pen with droppings covering the floor. "It was really stinking. ... It made my eyes water."

Animal carcasses were in a freezer, and decaying carcasses were in an adjacent garage. Among the dead animals were raccoons, rabbits, opossums and squirrels.

Jamie Verburgt, resident of the apartment, was given two state citations for possessing game animals out of season, Mitchell said. "She said they were car kills," Mitchell said. "I warned her that it is illegal to take dead animals off the side of a road. ... The dead animals were used to feed the live animals, and some were given to flesh-eating beetles."

The live animals were seized by the Washington County Humane Society, pending investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

---------

Animals retrieved from the apartment:

* 76 ducks

* 2 game birds

* 2 alligators

* 6 snakes

* 10 turtles

* 1 African frog and other frogs

* A few geckos

* 1 iguana

* 3 tarantulas

* 3 scorpions

* More than 150 mice and rats.

Tape of 9/11 air traffic controllers destroyed

May 7, 2004

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- Air traffic controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11 recorded their experiences shortly after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center but a supervisor destroyed the tape, a government report said Thursday.

The destruction occurred despite an FAA order three days after the hijackings: ''Retain and secure until further notice ALL Administrative/Operational data and records.''

The supervisor said he destroyed the tape because it violated FAA policy calling for written statements from controllers who have handled a plane involved in an accident or other serious incident. He also said he felt the controllers were not in the right frame of mind to have consented to the taping, the report said.

The report did not characterize the tape's destruction as an attempted cover-up.

-------

What are they feeding these hillbilly retards? Suddenly, teaching kids that bullying is not okay has become some sinister plot to undermine heterosexuality? Jeeze louise!

People don't just 'turn gay' because others are doing it - either you prefer your own gender, or you prefer the opposite gender, it's like preferring chocolate over vanilla. If you like girls, no amount of boys liking boys (or girls liking boys) is going to make you suddenly like boys. Do straights "choose" to be straight? Fuck no, ask any of them they'll tell you they just are, always will be, no choice involved.

Everyone has been the target of the schoolyard asshole at one point or another, what the fuck is the problem with making that behavior unacceptable? Sounds like these bozos want people to feel its okay to beat up queer kids, or kids that other kids just think *might* be queer, or kids that are in any way different, just call 'em queers.

Seems pretty clear that the bullies just want to keep the system the way it is...

Anti-Bullying Program or ‘Gay Agenda?’

W. Va. School Tolerance Plan Targeted for Allegedly Promoting Homosexuality

By Bryan Robinson, ABC News

For years, a program sponsored by the West Virginia Attorney General's office has attempted to squash school bullies, but opponents say it is really promoting a "gay agenda."

The Civil Rights Team Project, a school anti-bullying program organized by the state attorney general's office, has been under fire since August, when the West Virginian Family Foundation accused it of being a veiled promotional tool for homosexuality.

The foundation, a conservative Christian organization that supports the "traditional" family and family values, filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the attorney general's office and 20 schools to find out which students have participated in the program.

It argues that the Civil Rights Team Project is not really designed to counter bullying but to advance the "gay agenda" — promoting homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle and perhaps add momentum to a movement to give gays and lesbians special status as a protected class under state hate-crime laws.

School anti-bullying programs and films featuring non-traditional families have been accused of promoting a "gay agenda," but supporters say they are merely reflecting changes in society. (Women's Educational Media)

"The gay agenda is the promotion and open acceptance of this chosen lifestyle as normal and on par with heterosexuality in every facet of society," said Kevin McCoy, president of the West Virginia Family Foundation. "The Civil Rights Team Project training materials certainly promotes this agenda without question."

The project, critics argue, is not needed because the state Legislature has passed anti-bullying measures and West Virginia School State Board has adopted codes of conduct that protect all students from bullying and harassment.

"The fact is the 'project' is really nothing more than hate crimes training for children under the guise of an anti-bullying program," said McCoy. "West Virginia hate crime statute does not include sexual orientation as a protected class, nor is there a federal hate crime statute with this definition. Where does the attorney general obtain his authority to unilaterally implement a political program behind the backs of the citizens of this state?"

No Hidden Agenda

Project organizers argue that they do not have a hidden agenda. The Civil Rights Project, run by West Virginia Attorney General's Civil Rights Division, is modeled after an anti-bullying program that was started in Maine in 1996 and has been offered to high schools and middle schools since 1999.

The project consists of teams of three students per grade at participating schools who, with the help of faculty advisers, help educate their classmates on issues bias, prejudice and tolerance.

The purpose of the program, organizers say, is to have students encourage their fellow students to accept other classmates' differences, discourage bullying and report instances of bullying and name-calling.

"With bullying behavior, we've found that they [students] do it often for peer support and to get bragging rights of their peers," said Paul Sheridan, project coordinator of the Civil Rights Project.

"It is has been our experience that students are more familiar with the social climate of their school than parents and sometimes teachers. One of the things the program does is enlist students in shifting the climate of the school. A group of students spend the year working together to address the problem of intolerance within their schools and they are monitored by a faculty adviser."

Sheridan said the project has been popular among parents and schools. Participation in it is voluntary and individual schools handle parental notification and roles in the program differently. These kind of programs, he said, are encouraged to help prevent the circumstances that lead to school shootings and give students an opportunity to participate in an activity that benefits their community; develop their character; and perhaps enables them to get college scholarship opportunities.

Alleged Gay Training Manual

Still, critics of the Civil Rights Team Project say it goes beyond combating bullies — and parents have been complaining. McCoy said uproar began when parents at a state school board meeting expressed concern about the program and demanded that it come to an end.

Despite Sheridan's claims, McCoy says, there is clear evidence his program is promoting a gay agenda. He cites the project's training manual, which recommends that teachers:

Wear a "LesBiGay positive" button or a T-shirt with a "Straight, But Not Narrow" slogan or a pink triangle

Tell students not to assume all their classmates are heterosexual, but acknowledge that some students are homosexual and bisexual.

Avoid using traditional terms such as boyfriend, girlfriend, wife or husband and broaden their language to include "partner, lover, significant other." Teachers are also advised to use "permanent relationship" instead of "marriage."

Identify the contributions of homosexuals in history, literature, art, science and religion and expand libraries to include books related to sexual diversity.

Notion of a Bullying Hierarchy

Project organizers say they deal with intolerance of all kinds — racial, ethnic, sexual, religious and homophobic. However, schools participating in the program may choose to deal with issues that are most affecting their students. One school, Sheridan said, may use the program to focus on primarily racial intolerance and not gay intolerance.

"The notion that we're promoting some kind of gay agenda … it's just absurd," Sheridan said. "Intolerance and bullying in whatever form it takes varies from school to school. … In middle school, if a student is perceived as being homosexual, there's a chance he is going to get the same kind of slur that many adults hear. The fact is harassment of that kind occurs in school. For some people to insinuate that a certain kind of bullying is morally acceptable is just nuts."

"It's just sad that people can't agree on this," Sheridan continued. "Bullying is wrong. There shouldn't be any controversy about that. People can differ on strategies [on how to address the problem]. There can be different strategies."

Sissonville’s Tale

One teacher whose school participates in the Civil Rights Team Project said the allegations against the program were erroneous and misleading. Travis Baldwin, who supervises the Civil Rights Team Project at Sissonville High School in Charleston, W. Va., said the guidelines he received only gave guidance on how to set up a program and could not be interpreted as promoting a gay agenda. The charges against the project, Baldwin said, left him "flabbergasted."

"The only mention of gay and lesbian and bisexual issues deals with the fact that all students should be treated equally in any setting, regardless of sex, religion, culture," Baldwin said. "It was a way of teaching tolerance and acceptance of the differences of the minority within the majority as well as those of majority within the minority."

"The charges I heard against the project were so erroneous, it was laughable," Baldwin said. "Some of these ultra-conservative groups don't even want the word 'homosexual' mentioned in the public schools at all."

The Civil Rights Team Project started at Sissonville High School last fall. Baldwin said he encourages students in his school's program to participate in all community activities that deal with civil rights. When the controversy erupted in August, he said he sent a letter to parents encouraging them to contact him if they had any concerns and questions. So far, he said he has not received any negative feedback.

"Our membership has probably doubled in size this year," Baldwin said.

The Politicization of Bullying

Some critics do not mind having school anti-bullying programs but prefer to not have them focus on special groups of any kind.

"You can have a blanket anti-abuse policy where you tell students don't bother anyone of any kind, without reference to special criteria," said Peter LaBarbera, senior policy analyst for The Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America. "We've been dealing with these kinds of programs for years. The reason why we're opposed to these programs is because they say they're concerned about children's safety, but then they become politicized to promote homosexuality."

LaBarbera stressed that he does not endorse the bullying and harassment of gays and lesbians. He said an anti-bullying program could be established without indoctrinating others to the lifestyle and beliefs of a particular group.

"We're all for protecting students," LaBarbera said. "Anyone who picks on a gay person, especially if they're weaker, is despicable. … People get bullied and teased for all kinds of reasons. But when you look at the manual of the program in West Virginia, its recommendations come right out of [the mouths of] gay activists."

Promoting Christian-Phobia

LaBarbera and The West Virginia Family Foundation argue that the Project will train students to spy on others who do not share their values. The Project and other similar anti-bullying programs, they said, encouraged lack of tolerance for Christianity. Under these measures, Christian students and teachers could be accused of harassment for merely talking about their beliefs.

"It is their way of saying religion contributes to homophobia," said LaBarbera. "We don't get the same respect from gays for traditional religion that we are expected to give for their lifestyle. They tend to believe that people who don't agree with their lifestyle is intolerant. But people have a right in this country to believe that homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle."

LaBarbera said the Family and Culture Institute has received a growing number of harassment complaints from Christians who say they are being bullied because of their traditional beliefs and values. More people, he said, are being harassed for "not being politically correct."

"Why can't we have something in the manual that says don't pick on Christians?" LaBarbera asked.

Homophobia Debate: Best Left Out of Classrooms?

The debate in West Virginia is likely to continue for some time. McCoy hopes to ultimately eliminate the Civil Rights Team Project while Sheridan hopes many parents and schools won't be scared away from the program.

McCoy and his supporters believe issues of tolerance regarding gays and lesbians should be left out of the schools and with the Legislature and state school board.

"Any decisions made on this controversial subject should be made by the West Virginia Legislature and the West Virginia state school and not from politically correct programs originating anywhere else," McCoy said.

Sheridan cannot help but see irony in the debate over his anti-bullying program. The anti-bullying measures passed in West Virginia in the past year, he said, call for programs like The Civil Rights Team Project.

"Part of the irony is that if you read the policies, they require that schools implement state programs such as this collaborative one," Sheridan said. "It's already there. It's already in place."

Tolerance Film Overcomes Surprise Intolerance

Challenges to anti-bullying measures and programs in states such as Maine, Florida and Washington have mirrored those facing the Civil Rights Team Project in West Virginia. Recently, a film also criticized for allegedly promoting a gay agenda won a battle in Novato, Calif., when the local school board voted in August to show it to all fifth-graders on a pilot run for one year.

The makers of That's a Family, one of a series of tolerance films produced by Women's Educational Media in San Francisco, insisted the film was designed to show children — and help them accept — the different kind of families their classmates may belong to, including same-sex parents, single parents and families where grandparents act as parents. However, for 18 months, critics of the film in Novato argued that it was really a veiled promotion of homosexuality and that it violated parents' right to instill their own values into their children.

The opposition in Novato surprised the film's makers because it had played in 78 school districts in 41 states and was endorsed by the PTA. They said their critics mischaracterized the movie, equating its recognition of the changed times and the changing face of today's family with the promotion of a gay agenda.

"It reflects family diversity. It acknowledges the diversity in families as opposed to promoting certain lifestyles," said Debra Chasnoff, director and producer of That's a Family. "It's important to make that distinction. Somehow that manages to get twisted and turned around and people think we are promoting a gay agenda. Our philosophy is that we are letting young children speak for themselves and tell other children about their lives and their families and tell them what their lives are like."

Chasnoff said there is no sexual intimacy in the movie, and she encourages school officials to involve parents in studies and discussions following film viewings. Following its pilot run, she hopes school administrators will feel comfortable showing That's a Family to all grade levels.

Most of all the film's supporters hope the movie gives its young audience a better understanding of each other and makes them think twice about teasing and calling each other names.

"My hope is that when a child sees this, he will feel affirmed, that he and his family were acknowledged in this film, that they will feel better about his school, his community, more welcome and more safe," said Annan Paterson, co-chair of United for Safe Schools and a school psychologist in Novato. "When you have an empathy, an understanding of others, you are less likely to tease, to bully, to make fun of."

Chasnoff is completing work on another yet-to-be-titled film in her series that focuses primarily on bullying and name-calling. It will feature interviews with school bullies and bullying victims. Chasnoff is preparing herself for another possible backlash, especially since the film will tackle gay-bashing in schools.

There is no way a buncha backwoods hicks like the MP unit accused of mistreating Iraqi prisoners came up with their 'softening techniques' on their own. Their calculated actions stink to high heaven of 'military intelligence' and CIA mindfuck standard operating procedures.

TORTURE BY THE BOOK
The pattern of abuse of Iraqi prisoners follows established CIA interrogation techniques

by Vikram Dodd, Guardian UK

In Britain the debate about photographs depicting abuse of Iraqi prisoners has centred on their authenticity. In the US there are no doubts about the pictures showing what American soldiers did in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. But the photos raise a larger question. Did a gang of reservists from Virginia hit on ways of mistreating Muslim prisoners to maximise their humiliation all by themselves? President Bush says the photos disgust him. However, there is growing evidence that the abuses in Abu Ghraib were no aberrant act, but a warped product of US policy and the practices of its intelligence community.

In emails released by his family, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, a guard at Abu Ghraib, says military intelligence used dogs to intimidate prisoners, leading to "positive results and information". In one email he wrote: "We have had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours." Sgt Frederick said that he queried some of the abuses: "I questioned this and the answer I got was: this is how military intelligence wants it done." Another guard supports his claim that intelligence people controlled Abu Ghraib, as does the former head of US military prisons in Iraq, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski.

The recently leaked army report into the abuses, by Major General Antonio Taguba, said military intelligence, CIA personnel and private contractors "actively requested that guards set physical and mental conditions for favourable interrogation of witnesses". They were meant to soften up detainees before the interrogators got to work.

It's not just in Iraq that the US is accused of abusing its prisoners. The five Britons released from Guantánamo Bay told of beatings and other ill-treatment. Weeks before last year's alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib, Gen Karpinski said a team ofintelligence officers from Guantánamo Bay visited Abu Ghraib to "give them new techniques".

While in Iraq in late August and early September 2003, the Guantánamo team - overseen by Major General Geoffrey Miller - recommended that military police guards act as "enablers" for interrogations, Gen Taguba reported. The US is now bringing in Gen Miller, who ran the camp at Guantánamo Bay, to run prisons in Iraq. He could at least ensure that guards no longer carry cameras.

A Briton released from Guantánamo alleged that, as in Abu Ghraib, sexual humiliation was identified by US officials as a way of breaking Muslim detainees. In Iraq it was the simulation of oral sex, forced masturbation and human pyramids, withpeople kept naked for long spells. In Guantánamo, according to one British detainee, naked prostitutes paraded before inmates to taunt them.

Abuse allegations against the US have now surfaced in Iraq, Guantánamo, Bagram, in Afghanistan, and even in Gambia, where a British businessman told the Guardian he was threatened with rape and beatings while being questioned by US agents.

Part of the interrogating team at Abu Ghraib was from the CIA. There are clues from that organisation's history that it has found ill-treating detainees to be useful in the past. Two CIA interrogation manuals surfaced in 1997 after the Baltimore Sun obtained them under freedom of information laws. Reading them in the context of the pictures from Iraq and accounts from Guantánamo suggests that the advice they contain is still being applied.

One, dating from 1983, was written for use in Honduras. Entitled "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual", it states: "The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy."

Sgt Frederick says detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept in isolation for up to three days in windowless rooms. According to the CIA manual, "a person's sense of identity depends upon the continuity in his surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others ... Detention should be planned to enhance ... feelings of being cut off from anything known and reassuring."

The US denies it uses torture. While the pulling of fingernails may be out, coercion and psychological stress are permitted, according to the CIA manual. How to put such advice into practice is up to intelligence officers.

Of the Iraqi images, the most chilling was the hooded man standing on a box, with wires attached to him. He was reportedly told he would be electrocuted if he moved. According to the CIA manual, threatening him with electrocution may have been better than the real thing: "The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. For example, the threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." However, "if a subject refuses to comply after a threat has been made, it must be carried out. Otherwise, subsequent threats will also prove ineffective."

But the CIA manual can enlighten us further about the scandal at Abu Ghraib. The man on the box would have battled exhaustion from having to stand motionless, driven by fear of an electric shock. And, the manual says, "pain that he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance. If he is required to maintain a rigid position such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods, the immediate source of discomfort is not the questioner but the subject. After a while, the subject is likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength. Intense pain is likely to produce false confessions, fabricated to avoid additional punishment."

The 1983 CIA manual draws heavily from the 1963 "Kubark manual", named after the codeword the CIA gave itself. It explains what the US military may have hoped to gain by sexually humiliating prisoners. "The effectiveness of most of the non-coercive techniques depends upon their unsettling effect. The interrogation situation is in itself disturbing to most people encountering it for the first time. The aim is to enhance this effect, to disrupt radically familiar emotional and psychological associations ... When this aim is achieved, resistance is seriously impaired. There is an interval ... of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. It is caused by a traumatic or sub-traumatic experience which explodes, as it were, the world that is familiar to the subject as well as his image of himself within that world. At this moment the source is farlikelier to comply."

This appears to be what US intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib have been putting into effect. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused guards, testified that it was her job to keep prisoners awake, including the hooded man placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes and genitals.

According to the New Yorker, she stated: "MI [military intelligence] wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner [a guard] and Frederick's job to do things for MI ... to get these people to talk." The Kubark manual states that "resistance is sapped principally by psychological rather than physical pressures". It also warns that approval from headquarters is needed for "bodily harm" or "medical, chemical or electrical methods". The two deaths now being treated as murder probably emanate from sadism, rather than policy.

It remains to be seen what kind of disciplinary or legal action the Abu Ghraib interrogators and their superiors will face. As Sgt Frederick wrote in an email: "They always said that shit rolls downhill, and guess who is at the bottom?" And if George Bush is unsure what US intelligence is capable of, he can always ask his dad. The first President Bush used to be head of the CIA.

Think Again: What Bush Surge?

by Eric Alterman, Center for American Progress

It's a cliché to point out the reporters are addicted to polls the way some conservative moralists are to painkillers and gaming tables. What rarely gets noticed is how irresponsibly and often incredibly they frequently spin them.

Last week, a pair of poll results helped create a mini-boom for President Bush, as reporters and pundits marveled over the fact that despite a bloody month in Iraq and sustained questions about the White House's handling of pre-9/11 intelligence, the president managed to pick up some points and widen his modest lead over presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry.

Fox News' Brit Hume looked at the polling data and announced Bush was "on the rebound." He wasn't alone. "Bad News Just Rolls Off Bush," read a headline for a Kansas City Star column that announced Bush has "become a president with a sheen of Ronald Reagan Teflon." A similar Detroit News column declared, "Pundits bang away at George W. Bush, but he's weathering storm," and added, "The more barbs the president suffers, the more confidence he gains with potential voters. Bush's standing with likely voters improved, and his overall standing with Americans has solidly rebounded."

Those pundits might want to look a bit closer at all the available poll results, because they simply don't paint a portrait of a president whose "overall standing with Americans has solidly rebounded." The episode highlights what goes wrong when the press becomes overly impressed with passing polling data.

There's no doubt that last week's poll results were surprising and caused (or should have) some concern for the Kerry campaign. Polling voters between April 16-18, the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey showed Bush indeed expanding his lead slightly over Kerry, 51-47 percent. At nearly the same time an ABC News/Washington Post poll was released, reporting Bush moving ahead of Kerry, 48-44 percent. And yes, given the political circumstances of early April, a turbulent time for the White House, the results were newsworthy. But the notion of Bush has morphed into a Teflon president who's able to operate high above the concerns of star-struck voters is just not supported by the data.

Worse, the press in the last week failed to tip news consumers off to some important polling details. Completely ignored by the pundits was the fact that already this year CNN/USA Today poll results have swung wildly several different times, making Bush's latest gains less impressive. For instance, earlier this year between Jan. 11 and Feb. 2, the survey recorded a 19-point swing in favor of Kerry in a match-up with Bush. Part of the problem is the survey polls less than 800 likely voters nationwide, giving it a robust four percent margin of error. (By comparison, the ABC News/Washington Post poll surveyed 1,200 registered voters.) In other words, the CNN/USA Today poll needs to be taken with a large tablet of salt, regardless of who's up or down.

Worse, the press corps didn't even stay within the bounds of the oldest working media cliché; three items makes a trend. Instead, the press swung into action, boosting up Bush, after reading just two poll results, while simply ignoring surveys that didn't fit their preferred storyline. For instance, the Zogby International poll, released the same time as the ABC/Washington Post and CNN/USA Today polls, found Kerry actually leading Bush nationally, 47-44 percent, (In the same Zogby poll, just 43 percent think Bush deserves to be re-elected.)

Also ignored, believe it or not, was the latest Fox News poll, which asked voters if the election were held today, for which candidate would they pull the lever. The results were a statistical tie; 42 percent for Bush, 40 percent for Kerry, numbers that have remained unchanged for two months.

Meanwhile, a new Marist poll released Monday showed it was Kerry who was leading Bush, 47-44 percent, in the key 17 battleground states where the election will be decided. Interestingly, in the Washington Post's own poll, in the more significant race, where the election will actually be decided, Kerry leads Bush 46-44 percent in 17 battleground states. So where's the proof of Bush's "surge"?

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported in a page-one article that through skillful "oratory" and use of images, "President Bush and his aides have kept the American public from turning against the war in Iraq despite the swelling number of U.S. casualties there." But the polls paint a different picture; one suggesting the American public has clearly turned against the war, and Bush's handling of it, over the last 12 months.

Just look at the data from the Post's own survey; 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the president is handling the situation in Iraq, the highest response rate that running question has garnered in 12 months. Fifty-three percent don't think Bush has a clear plan about what to do in Iraq, 59 percent agree the United States has "gotten bogged down" in Iraq, and 35 percent think it's left the nation weaker. (Just 29 percent think it's made the United States stronger.) Also, 65 percent think there has been an "unacceptable" level of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

Meanwhile, according to a University of Pennsylvania National Annenberg Election Survey conducted between April 1-14, 51 percent of Americans don't think the war in Iraq was worth it, and 56 percent don't think Bush has a clear plan. Just 29 percent think the war has decreased the threat of terrorism for the United States. And overall, 51 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation in Iraq. The new Harris poll finds 55 percent of Americans think the war in Iraq is not going well, and the latest from the Pew Center finds 48 percent disapprove of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, compared to just 44 percent who approve.

In other words, a majority of Americans tell pollsters they disapprove of the way Bush has handled the war, fear it's making the United States weaker and less safe, that we're getting bogged down, that the rate of casualties is unacceptable, that the war wasn't worth it, and it's not going well, but Bush gets credit for maintaining public support?

As for the jackpot, big-picture question, "Do you think the United States did the right thing in going to war with Iraq, or do you think it was a mistake?", 52 percent say it was the right thing, according to ABC/Washington Post, while 46 percent say it was a mistake. But those numbers are moving south, fast. Since the question was asked 12 months ago, there's been a 31 point drop in "right thing" and a 30 point jump in "mistake," making for a 61 point swing that shows no sign of abating.

Despite the misgivings about Iraq, Americans still like Bush, the plain-talking politician, right? Writing for the Wall Street Journal's online opinion site last week, Peggy Noonan insisted the recent poll results indicate Americans instinctively love Bush: "They can tell that George W. Bush is looking out for America." She stressed his "popularity continues high."

Oh really? According to the latest Gallup/CNN/Time poll, 56 percent have a favorable opinion of Bush, compared to 42 percent who had an unfavorable one. But just three months ago, 65 percent had a favorable opinion of Bush, while just 35 percent were unfavorable, which means there's been a 16-point shift away from Bush already in this young year. Other pollsters have detected a mirror movement away from Bush. Fox News recorded a 21-point swing in the favorable/unfavorable category since January. And in its latest poll, Zogby International recorded the president's lowest personal favorable rating of his presidency, 53 percent.

If such trends continue, with just a few more months of such "popularity" for Noonan's hero and Bush will find himself with a one-way ticket back to Crawford. Remember, the "numbers" may not lie but it's not numbers talking; it's reporters and pundits.

Powell 'surprised' by intensity of Iraqi resistance

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said he was "surprised" with the intensity of the Iraqi resistance to the American occupation.

"I'm surprised. But it is more resistance than we expected to see at this time," the chief US diplomat said in an interview with CNN.

He said the US military had responded accordingly by sending more troops into Iraq (news - web sites).

"We will have to be there for a considerable period of time in the future in order to provide the security that they're not able yet to provide for themselves," Powell explained.

"And I think if we were on top of this security problem, if we didn't have these terrorists and thugs of the previous regime challenging us, people would be throwing roses at us for all we're doing to help with the country and to reconstruct the country," he said.

Asked if the Iraq war that ousted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was a war of choice or necessity, Powell replied:"It was a war both of choice and necessity."

"We could have chosen not to go to war, but the president took a hard look at this situation from the beginning of the administration," Powell said.

Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush

By JIM RUTENBERG, New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 4 — The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Disney, which bought Miramax more than a decade ago, has a contractual agreement with the Miramax principals, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, allowing it to prevent the company from distributing films under certain circumstances, like an excessive budget or an NC-17 rating.

Executives at Miramax, who became principal investors in Mr. Moore's project last spring, do not believe that this is one of those cases, people involved in the production of the film said. If a compromise is not reached, these people said, the matter could go to mediation, though neither side is said to want to travel that route.

In a statement, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Miramax, said: "We're discussing the issue with Disney. We're looking at all of our options and look forward to resolving this amicably."

But Disney executives indicated that they would not budge from their position forbidding Miramax to be the distributor of the film in North America. Overseas rights have been sold to a number of companies, executives said.

"We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax," said Zenia Mucha, a company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore's agent. "That decision stands."

Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's company, backed out.

Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.

"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

Disney executives deny that accusation, though they said their displeasure over the deal was made clear to Miramax and Mr. Emanuel.

A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. The executive said Mr. Moore's film is deemed to be against Disney's interests not because of the company's business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film, which does not have a release date, could alienate many.

"It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," this executive said.

Miramax is free to seek another distributor in North America, but such a deal would force it to share profits and be a blow to Harvey Weinstein, a big donor to Democrats.

Mr. Moore, who will present the film at the Cannes film festival this month, criticized Disney's decision in an interview on Tuesday, saying, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?' "

Mr. Moore's films, like "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," are often a political lightning rod, as Mr. Moore sets out to skewer what he says are the misguided priorities of conservatives and big business. They have also often performed well at the box office. His most recent movie, "Bowling for Columbine," took in about $22 million in North America for United Artists. His books, like "Stupid White Men," a jeremiad against the Bush administration that has sold more than a million copies, have also been lucrative.

Mr. Moore does not disagree that "Fahrenheit 911" is highly charged, but he took issue with the description of it as partisan. "If this is partisan in any way it is partisan on the side of the poor and working people in this country who provide fodder for this war machine," he said.

Mr. Moore said the film describes financial connections between the Bush family and its associates and prominent Saudi Arabian families that go back three decades. He said it closely explores the government's role in the evacuation of relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States immediately after the 2001 attacks. The film includes comments from American soldiers on the ground in Iraq expressing disillusionment with the war, he said.

Mr. Moore once planned to produce the film with Mr. Gibson's company, but "the project wasn't right for Icon," said Alan Nierob, an Icon spokesman, adding that the decision had nothing to do with politics.

Miramax stepped in immediately. The company had distributed Mr. Moore's 1997 film, "The Big One." In return for providing most of the new film's $6 million budget, Miramax was positioned to distribute it.