Friday, May 21, 2004
THE HYPOCRICY OF THE REICHWING
If a Democrat Were Doing This
by Guy Reel, Common Dreams
The release of disgusting photos showing abuse of Iraqi prisoners was followed by the horrifying beheading of a prisoner in retaliation for the prisoner abuses. Over and over again we heard from the right, "How are those parallel? A beheading versus some humiliation - which is worse?" They argued, again and again, that the beheading shows we were right to fight this horror which is terrorism, and that it showed we must stay the course in Iraq.
They don't even have it halfway right. We should be fighting terrorism, but we have lost our way. The beheading, perhaps above all images we've seen, shows the mistake of the war. Many have missed the obvious - the beheading was done by a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda. It was not the Iraqi people who did this. Rather, the Iraqis have been remarkably restrained in their reaction to the prisoner abuse scandal, when you consider what has happened to them. They lost a dictator but gained a military presence that is responsible for holding innocent people, then humiliating them.
But the beheading - that is another matter.
It illustrates why, in response to an attack by Al-Qaeda terrorists, we should have gone after the Al-Qaeda terrorists.
This might seem elementary, but it is a point lost on about half of Americans. This half of the populace is strangely oblivious to facts - it's as if they live in a world divorced from the one the rest of us are in. They will support their leader no matter the depths of the disaster we are facing.
This is a sad state of affairs because one can easily imagine that if a Democrat were in charge of the White House now, and we were in exactly the same position we are now in - disastrous deficits, an untenable war, ecological carelessness, soaring gas prices, payoffs to cronies, arrogant foreign policies, trillions in unfunded obligations that threaten Social Security, education and Medicare while we go deeper and deeper into debt every day - he would be lucky to have 20 percent support now. A Democrat in exactly the same position that President Bush is in now would be looking at losing the fall election in a record landslide. Why? Because Democrats are willing to abandon their leaders and vote for the other guy if the policies their leaders are pursuing aren't working. Many Republicans, however, have apparently decided they will stick with a disaster all the way to the bitter end.
Any time you are faced with a Republican making arguments about politics today, ask him or her to imagine that a Democrat was in charge right at this moment - that this Democrat has pursued exactly the policies that have put us where we are now. Then ask the Republican if he would support that Democratic president. The honest answer for most is no. And neither would the vast majority of Democrats. Yet while some support for Bush has dropped, he is still hanging on to much of it. Given where this nation is, his support is, in fact, incredible.
One reason for this disparity in electoral reasoning, a disparity that has grown worse over the last 10 or 15 years, is that there is a vast apparatus fixed to spread right-wing falsehoods. If Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the hundreds of local rightist radio zealots began telling the truth, Bush wouldn't be polling 20 percent. That is because of their relentless mischaracterizations of Bush policies and Democratic responses - their willingness to lie to achieve their aims, to portray Democrats as un-American, or to claim they are unwholesome, or lustful for your tax money. These are ridiculous but appealing arguments, and to refute them gives them currency.
After the beheading, those on the right kept asking, "Where is the outrage?" Here it is - we should hunt down and kill those who beheaded Nick Berg. By the way, these criminals are the same people who used airplanes to kill innocent people on our soil. We should be fighting them tooth and claw, with every method - economic, military, diplomatic - at our disposal. So why aren't we?
Because of this president, we're letting the bad guys get away. We're fighting the wrong war while screaming about the terrorist threat. This president has hamstrung the United States. We're locked in a bloody, Israeli-like aggression against a people who had no cause against us. That's where the true outrage should be directed - at the president who has led us into one of the worst messes in our history. It's costing not only thousands of lives but billions of dollars that threaten the economic security of the United States - and this president not only refuses to pay for it, he is actually is giving MORE money to his millionaire friends who, in turn, contribute millions of that former tax money to his re-election campaign.
Just think if a Democrat were doing this. He'd be finished.Thursday, May 20, 2004
BE KIND TO YOUR FINE FEATHERED FRIENDS
British Company Makes DVD for Parrots
LONDON - Associated Press
No more bored birds. No more annoyed avians.
A British company on Friday introduced "Pollyvision," an 80-minute DVD of wild parrots preening, feeding and flying through the rainforest that it hopes will entertain caged parrots and budgies while their owners are out at work.
The World Parrot Trust, based in Hayle, southwest England, said it believes the work is the first to be aimed at an avian audience.
It has been launched as part of celebrations for World Parrot Day on May 31.
Film producer Jamie Gilardi, a Californian parrot biologist, believes the DVD could improve the lives of Britain's 5 million pet parrots and budgies.
"Parrots are highly intelligent, sensitive and social creatures, so they need a great deal of enrichment and stimulation or they get bored and depressed," he said.
The film has been edited to appeal to parrots' interests and attention span.
Alison Hales, one of the directors of the Paradise Park Wildlife Sanctuary in Hayle, said the DVD also gave an insight into the "secret life of parrots."
But she added, "We have yet to see whether all parrots will respond to it, or whether some will be frightened."
On the Net:
World Parrot Trust, http://www.worldparrottrust.orgWednesday, May 19, 2004
CORPORATIONS ARE PSYCHOPATHIC
The lunatic you work for
If the corporation were a person, would that person be a psychopath?
To the anti-globalisers, the corporation is a devilish instrument of environmental destruction, class oppression and imperial conquest. But is it also pathologically insane? That is the provocative conclusion of an award-winning documentary film, called “The Corporation”, coming soon to a cinema near you. People on both sides of the globalisation debate should pay attention. Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, “The Corporation” is a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution.
It begins with a potted history of the company's legal form in America, noting the key 19th-century legal innovation that led to treating companies as persons under law. By bestowing on them the rights and protections that people enjoy, this legal innovation gave the company the freedom to flourish. So if the corporation is a person, ask the film's three Canadian co-creators, Mark Achbar, Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott, what sort of person is it?
The answer, elicited over two-and-a-half hours of interviews with left-wing intellectuals, right-wing captains of industry, economists, psychologists and philosophers, is that the corporation is a psychopath. Like all psychopaths, the firm is singularly self-interested: its purpose is to create wealth for its shareholders. And, like all psychopaths, the firm is irresponsible, because it puts others at risk to satisfy its profit-maximising goal, harming employees and customers, and damaging the environment. The corporation manipulates everything. It is grandiose, always insisting that it is the best, or number one. It has no empathy, refuses to accept responsibility for its actions and feels no remorse. It relates to others only superficially, via make-believe versions of itself manufactured by public-relations consultants and marketing men. In short, if the metaphor of the firm as person is a valid one, then the corporation is clinically insane.
There is a tendency among anti-globalisers to demonise captains of industry. But according to “The Corporation”, the problem with companies does not lie with the people who run them. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a former boss of Shell, comes across in the film as a sympathetic and human character. At one point, he and his wife greet protesters camped on the front lawn of their English cottage with offers of a cup of tea and apologies for the lack of soya milk for the vegans among them. The film gives Sam Gibara, boss of Goodyear, time to air his opinions, which are given a reasonably neutral edit. Ray Anderson, boss of Interface (which claims, with psychopathic grandiosity, to be the world's largest commercial carpetmaker) is given the hero treatment. Having experienced an “epiphany” about the destructive and unsustainable nature of modern capitalism, Mr Anderson has donned the preacher's cloth to spread the religion of environmental sustainability among his peers.
The main message of the film is that, through their psychopathic pursuit of profit, firms make good people do bad things. Lucy Hughes of Initiative Media, an advertising consultancy, is shown musing about the ethics of designing marketing strategies that exploit the tendency of children to nag parents to buy things, before comforting herself with the thought that she is merely performing her proper role in society. Mark Barry, a “competitive intelligence professional”, disguises himself as a headhunter to extract information for his corporate clients from rivals, while telling the camera that he would never behave so deceitfully in his private life. Human values and morality survive the onslaught of corporate pathology only via a carefully cultivated schizophrenia: the tobacco boss goes home, hugs his kids and feels a little less bad about spreading cancer. Company executives and foot soldiers alike will identify instantly with this analysis, because it is accurate. But it is also incomplete.
The greater insanity
Although the moviemakers claim ownership of the company-as-psychopath idea, it predates them by a century, and rightfully belongs, in its full form, to Max Weber, the German sociologist. For Weber, the key form of social organisation defining the modern age was bureaucracy. Bureaucracies have flourished because their efficient and rational division and application of labour is powerful. But a cost attends this power. As cogs in a larger, purposeful machine, people become alienated from the traditional morals that guide human relationships as they pursue the goal of the collective organisation. There is, in Weber's famous phrase, a “parcelling-out of the soul”.
For Weber, the greater potential tyranny lay not with the economic bureaucracies of capitalism, but the state bureaucracies of socialism. The psychopathic national socialism of Nazi Germany, communism of Stalinist Soviet rule and fascism of imperial Japan (whose oppressive bureaucratic machinery has survived well into the modern era) surely bear Weber out. Infinitely more powerful than firms and far less accountable for its actions, the modern state has the capacity to behave even in evolved western democracies as a more dangerous psychopath than any corporation can ever hope to become: witness the environmental destruction wreaked by Japan's construction ministry.
The makers of “The Corporation” counter that the state was not the subject of their film. Fair point. But they have done more than produce a thought-provoking account of the firm. Their film also invites its audience to weigh up the benefits of privatisation versus public ownership. It dwells on the familiar problem of the corporate corruption of politics and regulatory agencies that weakens public oversight of privately owned firms charged with delivering public goods. But that is only half the story. The film has nothing to say about the immense damage that can also flow from state ownership. Instead, there is a misty-eyed alignment of the state with the public interest. Run that one past the people of, say, North Korea.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
DEEP SOUTH TITTIEBAR OWNER TO BUSH: NO LAP DANCE FOR YOU, ASSHOLE!
Strip club owner invokes a sign from above to criticize president
By ERNEST HOOPER, St. Petersburg Times
It was just before lunch Friday when the banner, roughly 18 feet wide and 7 feet high, went up on the side of Joe Redner's abandoned warehouse near the Tampa Convention Center.
A woman spotted it and screeched her car to a halt, nearly triggering a rear-end collision with another car, Redner says. The woman shared harsh words with the workers erecting the sign. What message could generate so much anger?
"IS BUSH THE ANTI-CHRIST?"
And you thought only the dancers from Redner's Mons Venus night club could stop traffic.
Redner has a long history of fighting to protect his adult entertainment establishments and First Amendment rights. He is no stranger to controversy, but this latest move may draw more ire than any of his nude dance crusades.
Asked if he realized the sign would strike a nerve with people, Redner said, "You just gave me more incentive. That's exactly what I want to do."
The banner is intended to be a stinging indictment of the president. Redner faults Bush for everything from his environmental policy to the Patriot Act to his humanitarian record. Redner clearly is no fan of the Iraqi conflict, and you know, I think he really believes Bush is the Antichrist.
But Redner also wants to motivate the religious right. He put up a second sign in Ybor City that says, "BUSH: GOD TOLD ME TO INVADE IRAQ."
"I want to push some good Christians to their limit," Redner said. "They are antagonists and I compare Iraq to a modern-day crusade.
"I think they should go read Revelations and see if he meets the criteria. If they believe that type of stuff, they can't immediately dismiss that he is not. The Antichrist, by definition, is a master deceiver."
When people learn the sign belongs to Redner, the backlash is likely to be swift. WFLA radio host Todd Schnitt, who doubles as morning host MJ Kelli of WFLZ-FM 93.3, put a picture of the banner on his Web site and called Redner a nasty name.
Schnitt, who supports Redner's right to operate strip clubs, had a heated exchange with Redner on the Tuesday afternoon show.
"So are you saying if we run our fingers through the president's hair we'll find the number 666 on his scalp?" Schnitt jested.
But Redner said it's the dominance of conservative radio and hosts such as Schnitt and Rush Limbaugh that prompted him to post such an eye-catching message.
"You can't get on radio and say anything bad about Bush, or they'll eat you up," Redner said. "Bush has his propaganda ministry out there and this is just my way of communicating."
Interestingly, Redner said he was inspired by a 2002 article written by conservative Pensacola Baptist minister and radio talk show host Chuck Baldwin.
What's that they say about politics and bedfellows?
Baldwin, the vice presidential nominee for the Constitution Party, could not be reached Monday. In his article, he concluded that Bush, while not the Antichrist, possessed more deceptive qualities than former President Bill Clinton.
It all sounds a little crazy, but amid the rhetoric I spot some issues more important than Antichrist claims and references to The Omen.
At its core, Redner's banner is about dissent, and dissent always has been a cornerstone of American policy. We can't let the horrors of terrorism change that, and really, we need to be more vigilant in fighting the overriding emotion of fear.
The problem with Redner's banner is few people will take it seriously. The sensational sign may stop traffic, but it won't press malleable moderates into truly examining Bush's leadership. And the religious right will get so angry that reason will become even more dominated by blind faith.
I'm glad Redner got our attention, but these days we need clear thinking and calculated questions, not eye-popping banners.
The president's policy decisions should not be beyond serious scrutiny, and that scrutiny should come from both sides of the political spectrum.
That's all I'm saying.Wednesday, May 19, 2004
SUCK IT UP, RUSH
Torture caves Limbaugh in his own rush week
By Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post Columnist
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Somebody needs to help Rush Limbaugh.
He seems to be one satiric column away from a spot on the couch next to Dr. Phil.
I had no idea Limbaugh would be such a wet noodle, a tough-talker with a rhetorical glass jaw. But after last week, a week of relentless "sympathy shopping" on his part, it just may be that Limbaugh isn't butch enough to sip coffee with the gals on The View.
"Who am I?" he intoned to his listeners in one of his many Hallmark moments. "I am a kid from Missouri who wanted to be on the radio, now -- that's all I've ever wanted to do. I've wanted to be the best at what I am and the best at what I do, true -- but on the radio. Now, all of a sudden I have to be discredited in order for the left to win."
Oh, grow up already.
You're a 53-year-old professional pontificator who made light of torture and abuse because you're addicted to all things Bush.
Hey, I feel sorry for you. I can't imagine what it must be like to suffer from your political addiction. But, for crying out loud, take a little personal responsibility, instead of play-acting through your The Passion of the Rush routine.
You're a seasoned slasher who is bleating foul because you've been hoisted by your own petard.
Hey, it happens. Part of the job. Sometimes you just make a fool of yourself.
You ought to be used to it by now. Donovan McNabb. Name ring a bell?
So quit acting like one of those teenagers in an MTV reality show.
That "out-of-context" stuff is so dog-ate-my-homework.
By the way, thanks for the full-page ad in The Palm Beach Post last week, allegedly to refute my column from last Sunday and to instruct county residents on the editorial opinions of The Washington Times -- always a useful perspective in local events. And thanks for discussing my offending column on the air.
I understand why you preferred to mischaracterize my column. Don't worry about me. I can take the rough treatment. And I got a laugh out of your attempt to tell your sycophants that they didn't need to actually read my column to be outraged by it.
"Unless you want to go try to find the Sarabino column," you told your listeners, "I wouldn't waste my time. I've summarized it for you: Because my Skull and Bones comments were so outrageous, I need to be taught a lesson so the state attorney ought to really ramp up the investigation just to teach me a lesson."
Oh, c'mon. Let's be honest here.
The column was about your being a world-class hypocrite.
That you can make light of physical abuse of prisoners in Iraq while pretending that the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office, which is investigating you for possible "doctor shopping" for prescription drugs, is using investigatory methods that we shouldn't stand for as decent Americans.
Methods, by the way, that one court already has upheld.
So, I'm just pointing out your appalling gall and political servitude. That's what I trade in, Rush: hypocrisy, gall, pomposity, hubris and inflated self-importance. In other words, the back of your bubble-gum card.
Political affiliation is irrelevant.
Be a big boy about it. Show a little snap.
Quit sympathy shopping. You're supposed to be a big leaguer. Act like one.
On the other hand, any time you'd like to take another full page ad, please mention my name.Wednesday, May 19, 2004
SETTLING OUT OF COURT: 'SORRY ABOUT THE BUTTFUCK, BUDDY'
US military now trying to buy abused prisoners
AFP, Baquba
At the Camp War Horse detention centre in Baguba, north of Baghdad, it is a surreal scene: US soldiers handing out cash to freed prisoners along with a note saying "You have not been mistreated."
Desperate to limit the damage from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the US military has launched something of a charm offensive surrounding their detention centres.
They face an uphill struggle.
The photographs showing Iraqi prisoners being humiliated at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib have badly damaged the reputation of the world's largest army here amid growing opposition to the occupation.
A recent poll showed 80 percent of Iraqis mistrust the US-led coalition.
Camp War Horse, a 1,500 square metre (more than 16,000 square foot) complex on a windswept strip of desert, is the first port of call for "anti-Iraqi forces" arrested by the Americans in Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
Detainees are interrogated for between three and seven days.
Then they are either sent home, or, if something turns up the US military does not like, handed over to Iraqi police or transferred to the US 1st Infantry Division, based in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
Clutches of former prisoners interviewed by AFP have spoken of being mistreated at similar bases across the country before being transferred to coalition prisons.
But the US military intelligence commander at Camp War Horse, Major Kreg Schnell, was adamant that his troops had not laid a finger on detainees.
Journalists taken on a guided tour of the facility saw no signs of physical abuse on Iraqi prisoners, kept in two large and sparse, but clean, pens.
They told the governor of Diyala, Abdullah al-Jaburri, who had demanded access to the centre, that they were not being humiliated.
The visit began with refreshments. The mood was cordial, but a member of the US-installed interim Governing Council complained.
"We must accelerate their (trials). We must have lists of names, know why the prisoners have been arrested and where they have been transferred," said Hafed Abdelaziz.
Request granted. Colonel Dana Pittard, commander of the 1st ID, based in the western area of the province, hands over the requested list.
"Have you been mistreated?" the governor asks the detainees, dressed in orange boilersuits.
"No. We have never been tortured," chorused those behind bars as some 50 soldiers stood nearby.
The infirmary, toilets, showers, interrogation room: everything is clean.
Schnell says his officers, and the military police, are fully versed in the Geneva Conventions and are properly trained.
"Here isn't Abu Ghraib", he said.
One interrogator explained his methods for getting prisoners to talk.
"I try to build a relationship and get their view point, and make them comfortable. Scaring them makes them shut down because they are afraid and they won't talk. I try to be friendly and open-minded," he said.Wednesday, May 19, 2004
VONNEGUT WEIGHS IN ON THE MADNESS
Cold Turkey
By Kurt Vonnegut
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
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When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.
Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.
I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.
I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.
But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:
Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:
As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?
How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
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There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does “A.D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.
Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?
No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.
Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
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And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”
The same can be said about this morning’s edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
So there’s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.
Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:
I often think it’s comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It’s practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren’t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.
If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll make it easy for you.
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal.
If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative.
What could be simpler?
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My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans.”
How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.
So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.
Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.Tuesday, May 18, 2004
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
Monday, May 17, 2004
THE FACE OF A TRUE PATRIOT
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan. Kiesling tendered his resignation in 2003.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.
It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.
The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.
The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?
We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.
We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has “oderint dum metuant” really become our motto?
I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?
Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.
I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share. \
(signed)
John Brady Kiesling
Monday, May 17, 2004
WHY WON'T YOU JUST ADMIT THAT WE MUST HAVE THAT IRAQI OIL?
OPEN LETTER TO GEORGE W. BUSH:
Cease Fire Now, Mr. "War President"
by Ward Reilly, Baltimore Chronicle
BATON ROUGE, May 12, 2004 It doesn`t get much worse than this folks, especially if you are a soldier in our "war president's" army. What is the plan, George? We ALL want to know ASAP!
Yesterday I listened in pure amazement to your Press Secretary McClellan as he described the horrifying murder of an American civilian. He said " It shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom. They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women, and children."
Who is the "enemy of freedom," Mr. President? The buck stops where, Mr. Commander-in-Chief? Who is it that has repeatedly shown no regard for the people in Iraq? There are 25,000,000 Iraqis that are not Saddam Hussein living there. What is the "true nature" of this disaster?
No oil, then no "Mission Accomplished" after all, right Mr. President "Bring `Em On"? Twelve thousand innocent Iraqi citizens, who did nothing to any US citizen, are DEAD, and over 750+ innocent US troops (and counting) are dead. And more than 20,000 troops have been medivaced out of Iraq for one reason or another.
What is the plan, Mr."Mission Accomplished"? What has Jesus, your "Almighty," told you to do next? We`d like to know.
Why won`t you just admit that we must have that Iraqi oil? Why don`t you just admit that not only do we have to control the oil facilities, but we also have to control every inch of land that the oil pipelines go through, in order to steal it properly?
As an infantry veteran, I am disgusted by what you are putting our troops through. As a common citizen, I am sick at what your entire cabinet have brought upon our nation. In a week that has shown the sub-human level that war brings upon all it touches, let`s not forget that none of this had to happen. Not one American had to die. Nor one Iraqi. The world was willing to help us flood Iraq with Inspectors indefinitely, if necessary. Imminent threat? What imminent threat?
"Infinite Justice," "Mission Accomplished," WMDs, Saddam Hussein, sStaged rescue missions, mutilated US civilian workers, mutilated and tortured POW`s, pre-emptive war, forced curfews on entire (ancient and proud) cities, 12,000 innocent civilians killed, USA PATRIOT Act, Osama bin Laden, imperialistic, colonial, occupation. Screw the French, screw the Germans ("you`re with us or you're against us").
Mr. President, you said in the first week of the war, and I quote; "First, we will demonstrate to the people of Iraq and the world that the United States and the coalition aspire to liberate, not to occupy Iraq." Ambassador Negroponte said at the same time; "The coalition aspires to liberate, not occupy, Iraq." Our nation might have forgotten your words of a year ago, but the people of the Middle East have not.
Well Mr. Bush, I`m not sure what language you speak, but in my poor, street-English, "no occupation" means we don`t keep our military there. If we can allow 20,000 to 30,000 civilian mercenaries to work in Iraq, just go ahead and up that number to 150,000 civilian mercenaries, and bring our military home now.The oil business is supposed to be private business. Pipeline business is private business. Our military is not to be used for the oil business, ever.
When you sold us your war, Mr. President, the country thought it was because of WMDs and Saddam Hussein.That`s what your followers believed, because that is what you told them. There are 237 lies, spread evenly amongst the top five members of your administration. That`s what the "Waxman Iraq Report" documents.
That`s 237 times that you, Ms. Rice, Mr. Cheney, Gen. Powell, and Mr. Rumsfeld told us lies or misleading statements to sell this war. And that is a government report, produced by government workers, who are your--and the taxpayers'--employees.
THAT is why you were allowed to take our nation to war. You sold it to us. Hussein is finished. There are no WMD`s, and if there were any before, they are gone now, like our troops need to be.
If there had been no "Infinite Justice"--oops, I mean "Iraqi Freedom"--then there would have been no prison atrocities, and no murder of any US citizens. YOU put our innocent military personel and civilians there, President Bush--nobody else but you. Your actions have forced the people of Iraq to take drastic measures to fight for what is theirs. If you want to be a big man and claim you are a "war president," then you have to suffer the consequence of the results of your war when it goes bad.
This is a war that had a worldwide anti-war movement before it even started. ONLY YOU could have stopped it all from happening. The entire world begged for PEACE on February 15th, 2003. Over 15,000,000 people said PLEASE DON`T DO IT! You didn`t listen to us.
CEASE FIRE, NOW, MR. PRESIDENT! Pull back to Baghdad and withdraw NOW! The Iraqis will not stop killing our soldiers and citizens until we are gone.That much is obvious. The instant you say "CEASE FIRE" and begin to pull our ENTIRE military out, the violence against our citizens will stop. GUARANTEED!
The Iraqis have no desire to kill Americans who are leaving. ALL the different factions involved there just want us gone. Saddam is captured. Just don`t turn out the lights on the way out. It`s THEIR oil. They can have it. And let them contract the repair of their nation to whomever they want. They`ve shown you how they plan to deal with contractors loyal to you.
You have managed to do the one thing Hussien could never have done, and that is to unify ALL of Iraq. Unfortunately, it is unified against us. Closing down a newspaper because it doesn`t agree with what YOU are doing in Iraq? Inventing yet another enemy (al-Sadr) to keep our focus off of what is really going on? (How is that $56,000,000 US embassy building in Bahfdad coming along, by the way? Do you honestly believe that we will ever get to use it?
I don`t remember you saying that someone named al-Sadr was the reason for the war in Iraq before a few weeks ago. You told Donald Rumsfeld to "find the truth, and then tell the Iraqi people and the world the truth." Well, that tells me a lot about you, President Bush. It tells me that you don`t know the truth, and that you have to send out people to "find" it. "Invent it" would be a better way to say it.
The chain of command leads to YOU, Mr."War President." The policy in the field is your policy. Don`t make the soldiers who are doing YOUR dirty deeds, administering YOUR policies, look like criminals or rogues. All of our troops are innocent, Mr.Bush. It is you and your cabinet that are guilty.
It`s a win-win situation if you leave now. We have Saddam, and the WMDs are gone. Dubya Bush wins, IF your objectives are what you said they were. And the Iraqis have their victory, with Saddam gone and us gone.
Our troops are doing to the Iraqi prisoners what the Commander In Chief wants them to do. They wouldn`t be there if you didn`t put them there. CEASE FIRE, and let those soldiers come home and go back to their jobs and schools and families.They don`t want to be there, and the Iraqis don`t want them there."MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", and good riddance to the whole giant disaster. You told Al-Arabiya, "We don't tolerate these types of abuses." "These types," you say? We just tolerate the type of abuses that aren`t captured on film, right Mr. Bush? The bombs dropping from 30,000 feet landing on innocent people, not a problem. Razor wire wrapped around entire cities of innocent Iraqis. Blowing holes in Mosques with helicopters. Do you really call that liberation? Freedom? Democracy?
CEASE FIRE Mr. Bush. Otherwise our nation is ruined. Plain and simple. Bring the troops home NOW!
P.S.:--Please apologize, and fire your cabinet, just before you resign. The rest of us will try and save our nation.
Monday, May 17, 2004
NEXT WEEK: CONFIRMED - POPE IS CATHOLIC, BEARS SHIT IN WOODS
The Washington Post, in an amazing show of courage, calls republicans liars:
From GOP, Zero Tolerance For Democratic War Critics
Republicans have adopted a scorched-earth strategy toward Democrats who challenge the wisdom of the way the war in Iraq is being conducted. Such critics, GOP officials say, are not merely misguided but are craven cut-and-runners who help the enemy and put politics ahead of U.S. troops' safety.
(snip)
On Wednesday, Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot said Kerry had suggested all U.S. troops in Iraq are "somehow universally responsible" for the Abu Ghraib prisoner mistreatment. (HERE)Kerry had said essentially the opposite. The reported abuse, Kerry had said, "is not the behavior of 99.9 percent of our troops."
House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), noting that DeLay sharply criticized the Clinton administration's military intervention in Kosovo, said Friday: "The hypocritical attacks on legitimate calls for an inquiry [into the prison abuses] and thoughtful critiques of the administration's Iraq policy . . . represent a purely political calculation designed to silence debate and undercut Democrats." Pelosi, picking up the theme, said Republicans "will not silence us with these personal attacks."
(snip)
Quotables:
"We all know that the Democrats are against the war [in Iraq]. They are trying to do everything they can to undermine the war."
-- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), May 13 news conference
"We ought to be working . . . in the most bipartisan way we can here in the Congress. And what we're seeing is . . . increased partisanship, partisan attacks" by Democrats.
-- Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), same news conference
Monday, May 17, 2004
NO ONE HATES WAR MORE THAN THOSE FORCED TO PARTICIPATE
Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'
By Paul Rockwell -- Sacramento Bee
"We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it."
- Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.
Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq?
A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.
Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?
A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.
Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?
A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.
Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?
A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.
Q: He spoke English?
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?
A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons.
Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?
A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.
Q: Over what period did all this take place?
A: During the invasion of Baghdad.
'We lit him up pretty good'
Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?
A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.
Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?
A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.
Q: A demonstration? Where?
A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."
Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?
A: Both.
Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?
A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.
Q: What kind of firepower was employed?
A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.
Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?
A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.
Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?
A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.
Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.
A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time.
Q: And the incident?
A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this.
Depleted uranium and cluster bombs
Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?
A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.
Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium?
A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.
Q: Did you breath any dust?
A: Yeah.
Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians.
A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.
Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?
A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s---!"
Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?
A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.
Q: What's an ICBM?
A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.
Q: What happened?
A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.
Q: What kind of training?
A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.
Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?
A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.
Q: Dropped from the air?
A: From the air as well as artillery.
Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?
A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.
Q: Including inside the towns and cities?
A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs.
Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over.
A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.
Embedded reporters
Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?
A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home.
Q: Why?
A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties.
Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?
A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"
Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?
A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.
Q: What changed you?
A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.
Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?
A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.
Showdown with superiors
Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?
A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."
He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.
Q: What happened then?
A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.
I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong."
It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.Monday, May 17, 2004
WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF THE AUNTIES?
Gay couples enter golden years with more risk
By Sandra Block, USA TODAY
They don't usually march in gay pride parades, participate in protests or hang rainbow flags from their front porches. Many of them lead quiet, closeted lives. But gay senior citizens are at the center of the fractious debate over same-sex marriage in the USA.
Older gay couples face a much greater risk of spending the end of their lives in poverty because they're ineligible for a host of federal protections, ranging from Social Security survivor benefits to estate tax exemptions, gay rights advocates say. Couples who have lived together for decades may be barred from sharing a room in a nursing home or an assisted living facility. Many gay seniors fear they'll lose their homes if their partner needs government-subsidized long-term care.
Phyllis Lyon, left, and Del Martin have been in a long-term relationship for more than 50 years and were the first couple to be married after San Francisco allowed same-sex marriages in the city.
The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, estimates that more than 23% of same-sex couples include a partner 55 or older, and 12% include one who is 65 or older. Their ranks are expected to balloon as 77 million baby boomers — including millions who are in long-term gay relationships — reach retirement age.
Some of those couples plan to be at the front of the line today when Massachusetts is expected to become the first state to hand out marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Among them: Gloria Bailey, 63, and Linda Davies, 58, of Orleans, Mass. Both were plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to order the state to issue same-sex marriage licenses. They've been together for 33 years.
Davies recently had a double-hip replacement, and the couple spent many hours looking for a health care facility that would allow Bailey to stay with her during her hospitalization.
"If we hadn't done that legwork, we could have been excluded from each other because we don't have any next-of-kin privileges," Bailey says. "Linda was more worried about whether I was able to be with her than she was about the surgery."
Opponents of gay marriage say couples can protect their interests through joint-ownership agreements, health care proxies and other legal contracts. But more broadly, they argue that marriage shouldn't be defined in terms of the financial benefits it provides.
"We feel that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples," says Ray McNulty, spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage. "However, they do not have a right to overturn and redefine marriage as it has been known for generations in this country."
Same-sex marriage supporters counter that it's impossible to replicate with contracts all the protections marriage provides, which become increasingly important as couples get older. Even civil unions, which have been available in Vermont for four years, "don't trigger any of the over 1,000 federal benefits and protections a marriage license triggers," says Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign. The federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages.
Benefits important to older gay couples:
•Social Security survivor benefits. If one member of a married couple dies, the surviving spouse can choose to retain his or her own benefits or accept the spouse's, whichever is higher. The benefits provide financial security for survivors who stayed home or earned a lower income than their spouse.
Same-sex couples are ineligible for survivor benefits. The HRC says the lack of survivor benefits for senior gay couples results in an average loss of $5,528 a year.
Karin Blake, 61, a Massachusetts estate-planning attorney, has paid into Social Security for 35 years. But if she dies before Connie Tassinari, 68, her partner of 31 years, Tassinari won't be eligible for any of Blake's benefits.
Blake has tried to make up for the loss of benefits by purchasing life insurance, but premiums for older policyholders are expensive. For gay couples, that can result in some difficult trade-offs, she says. "What you spend on life insurance, depending on your situation, could mean you're not going to travel as much, or you're not going to eat as much."
•Taxes. Married people can inherit unlimited assets from their spouses without triggering federal estate taxes. That's not the case for gay couples. If one partner dies, the other could pay estate taxes, even on a home that was jointly owned, the HRC says. In 2004, estates worth less than $1.5 million are exempt from federal estate tax. Estates that exceed that amount are subject to a tax rate of up to 48%.
The tax hit could be significant for older gay couples whose property has gained in value over the years. Bailey and Davies have invested in real estate since the mid-1970s and have owned their home in Orleans since 1985. Property values on Cape Cod have skyrocketed since then.
When one of them dies, the surviving spouse will owe "tremendous estate taxes," Bailey says, and probably will have to sell the home to pay them.
That's not the only tax bomb gay couples face. When a married 401(k) owner dies, the spouse can roll the money into his or her own retirement plan, deferring tax until the money is withdrawn. Gay beneficiaries are usually required to take the money as a lump sum and pay income tax on the entire amount, which can push them into a higher tax bracket, the HRC says.
•Health care. Nursing-home care takes a financial and emotional toll on many older couples, but the consequences for gay couples are particularly severe, says Amy Hunt, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Aging Project of Massachusetts.
When a member of a married couple goes into a nursing home, the government requires the couple to "spend down" most of their assets before the individual is eligible for Medicaid, a federal program administered by the states. But the formula allows the healthy spouse to keep enough money for living expenses. In addition, the home isn't counted as an asset, allowing the healthy spouse to remain in the home.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Older gay couples need to take extra steps to protect their financial interests. Where to get info:
Gay Financial Network, www.gfn.com, features articles on estate planning, retirement saving, insurance and other issues facing same-sex couples.
Nolo Press, www.nolo.com, features articles on drawing up a living-together contract, property rights of unmarried couples and domestic partner benefits.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, www.hrc.org/ familynet, offers a panel of experts who answer questions on a variety of financial issues, ranging from property ownership to tax law.
That protection doesn't extend to gay couples, Hunt says. Some couples have been forced to give up their homes so one partner can qualify for Medicaid coverage, gay advocates say.
"I know many seniors who have stayed up at night worrying about this," Hunt says.
Gay couples do have one advantage over married couples in the Medicaid equation. In some cases, a married couple's combined income and assets are included when calculating how much an individual can contribute to nursing-home care. A gay senior who enters a nursing home doesn't have to include a partner's income and assets, Hunt says.
But even with that edge, many gay seniors are disadvantaged, particularly if they have a lower income than the partner who requires nursing-home care, Hunt says.
She knows of an older lesbian who owns the home she shares with her partner and is beginning to experience poor health. If she goes into a nursing home before her partner, "There's nothing she can do to protect her partner — nothing she can do to stop her home from being seized," Hunt says.
The woman, who is a Massachusetts resident, plans to apply for a marriage license today, Hunt says. But because Medicaid is a joint federal and state program, it's unclear how gay couples with a Massachusetts marriage license will be treated, she says.
•Estate planning. When a gay partner dies without a will, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Most state inheritance laws don't recognize same-sex partners, which means the deceased partner's assets will likely go to siblings or other family members, even if they've been estranged.
Frederick Hertz, an attorney in Oakland and co-author of A Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples, says he's representing a gay senior who could lose his longtime home because his partner died without a will. Initially, the deceased partner's family told the man he could remain in the home, but when the value of the property doubled, they decided they wanted to sell, Hertz says.
Couples can avoid such disasters through estate planning, but most Americans, including many gay couples, don't have a will. Jack Evans, 74, and his partner, George Harris, 69, of Dallas have had a will for years, and they update it every year or two. Evans and Harris, who have been in the real estate business for more than 30 years, have taken numerous other steps to protect their financial interests. But many of their friends haven't followed their example, Evans says.
"I know a lot of people out there, a lot of my friends, that don't have their wills in order," he says. "That's absolutely crazy."
A new day
While gay-rights groups applauded the Massachusetts court decision, the broader impact is cloudy. In April, the Massachusetts Legislature approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, although the measure won't go before the voters until 2006. Several states also have enacted laws targeted at gay unions. Last month, Virginia lawmakers passed legislation that prohibits civil unions and other same-sex partnerships in that state.
Polls show the nation is deeply divided on this issue. Many Americans who abhor discrimination against gays and lesbians are still uncomfortable with the idea of redefining traditional marriage.
For that reason, many older gay couples say they don't expect to live to see gay marriage become commonplace. But for some, getting a marriage license from one state still represents a huge milestone.
"I didn't think in my lifetime I would ever see a wedding day for me," says Karin Blake, who kept her relationship secret until three years ago. She plans to apply for a marriage license as soon as possible. "I'm quite astonished to be able to have the opportunity.
"I can't see anyone being hurt by providing the ability for us to take care of each other financially," she adds. "I think it's beneficial for society for people to be able to take care of each other."Sunday, May 16, 2004
DON'T BE A SAP
Defense Dpt. Denies Rumsfeld OK'd Interrogation Plan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of unconventional interrogation methods in Iraq (news - web sites) to gain intelligence about the growing insurgency, ultimately leading to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the New Yorker magazine reported on Saturday.
Rumsfeld gave the green light to methods previously used in Afghanistan (news - web sites) for gathering intelligence on members of al Qaeda, which the United States blames for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the magazine reported on its Web site.
The Pentagon (news - web sites), however, called the assertions, "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with anonymous conjecture," and strongly denied that Rumsfeld, who has been under fire for the prisoner abuse scandal, or any Pentagon official had sanctioned the interrogation program.
Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the abuses of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison depicted in photos and videos had "no basis in any sanctioned program, training manual, instruction, or order of the Department of Defense (news - web sites),"
U.S. interrogation techniques have come under scrutiny amid revelations that prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were kept naked, stacked on top of one another, forced to engage in sex acts and photographed in humiliating poses.
Rumsfeld, who has rejected calls by some Democrats and a number of major newspapers to resign, returned on Friday from a surprise trip to Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison, calling the scandal a "body blow." Seven soldiers have been charged.
The abuse prompted worldwide outrage and has shaken U.S. global prestige as President Bush (news - web sites) seeks re-election in November. Bush has backed Rumsfeld and said the abuse was abhorrent but represented the wrongful actions of only a few soldiers.
The U.S. military has now prohibited several interrogation methods from being used in Iraq, including sleep and sensory deprivation and body "stress positions," defense officials said on Friday.
SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM
The New Yorker said the interrogation plan was a highly classified "special access program," or SAP, that gave advance approval to kill, capture or interrogate so-called high-value targets in the battle against terror.
Such secret methods were used extensively in Afghanistan but more sparingly in Iraq -- only in the search for former President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and weapons of mass destruction. As the Iraqi insurgency grew and more U.S. soldiers died, Rumsfeld and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone expanded the scope to bring the interrogation tactics to Abu Ghraib, the article said.
The magazine, which based its article on interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, reported the plan was approved and carried out last year after deadly bombings in August at the U.N. headquarters and Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.
A former intelligence official quoted in the article said Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved the program but may not have known about the abuse.
'DO WHAT YOU WANT'
The rules governing the secret operation were "grab whom you must. Do what you want," the unidentified former intelligence official told the New Yorker.
Rumsfeld left the details of the interrogations to Cambone, the article quoted a Pentagon consultant as saying.
"This is Cambone's deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program," said the Pentagon consultant in the article.
Pentagon spokesman Di Rita said Cambone had no responsibility for detainees or interrogation programs anywhere, including in Afghanistan or Iraq.
U.S. officials have admitted the abuse may have violated the Geneva Conventions, which governs treatment of prisoners of war.
The New Yorker said the CIA (news - web sites), which approved using high-pressure interrogation tactics against senior al Qaeda leaders after the 2001 attacks, balked at extending them to Iraq and refused to participate
After initiating the secret techniques, the U.S. military began learning useful intelligence about the insurgency, the former intelligence official was quoted as saying