Ever since the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal broke earlier this year, the standard line coming out of the White House is that it was all the soldiers' fault, that it was all because of a few "bad apples." In keeping with the Bush Administration's stay-on-message-no-matter-what motif, they kept on saying the exact same thing even when it was revealed that military higher-ups not only knew about the abuses, at the very least they tacitly approved because they didn't order them to stop. While the story has mostly died down thanks to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and others in the conservative media who insisted it was much ado about nothing, a few more intrepid souls have kept on following the trail.
Now that trail may very well have led right onto George W. Bush's desk.
Thanks to persistent Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU managed to pry out of the Administration a treasure trove of angry memos from FBI agents stationed in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
The memos complain how Department of Defense ("DOD") interrogators, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval, passed themselves off as FBI agents while using what the writer called "torture techniques" against prisoners. "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way," one memo says, "DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [by] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [be] left holding the bag before the public."
Other memos relay agents' disgust at the use of "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations" in Iraq and Guantanamo, and that Pentagon officials "were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses." In revulsion, FBI supervisors ordered their agents not to take part in such questionings: "We have instructed our personnel not to participate in interrogations by military personnel which might include techniques [allowed] by the Executive Order but beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice."
Yes, it now seems there was an explicit order from President Bush allowing the abuse of captured prisoners, an order the FBI refused to follow. (Astoundingly, the American media has largely glossed over this revelation, preferring instead to dwell on the titillating details of just which tortures were committed.)
One of the released memos, dated May 22, 2004, says that "an Executive Order signed by President Bush authorized the following interrogation techniques, among others: sleep 'management,' use of MWDs (military working dogs), 'stress positions' such as half squats, 'environmental manipulation' such as the use of loud music, sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The letter goes on to say that the week before, after the Abu Ghraib scandal had broken, the order was slightly revised so that "all interrogation techniques previously authorized by the Executive Order are still on the table but that certain techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted."
All of this violates the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. Some months after 9/11, then-White House counsel (and now Attorney General-designate) Alberto Gonzales wrote a much-publicized memo claiming that mistreatment counted as torture only if the prisoner was killed or permanently injured. He also wrote that the Conventions did not apply to al Qaeda prisoners and that the Government could do pretty much whatever it wanted. The memo sparked a furor when it was leaked, and the White House appeared to back down.
But the FBI memos reveal that abuse and torture continued not just long after the policy was supposedly changed, but it went on even months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. For all we know, it continues even now. And by the way -- given the memo's reference to the order revision allowing such "techniques" only on "very high-level authority," who signed off on the continued abuses?
It appears nobody in the White House realized that the Conventions are there for a reason: to prevent torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war. This is a very slippery slope, if the United States claims it can unilaterally ignore international law and do whatever it likes with captured fighters, what will prevent our enemies from doing the same thing with our soldiers?
Big kudos to the FBI, which is capable of recognizing an illegal order even if the Pentagon is not.
If the FBI E-mails are correct and Bush did indeed issue an Executive Order approving the use of human-rights abuses against prisoners, then ultimate responsibility for Abu Ghraib and numerous other examples of abuse, torture and even summary executions extends all the way into the Oval Office. It doesn't matter how much the Administration tries to make the little guys, who actually carried out their orders, take the fall. They were ordered to do so by their superiors, who must also be held accountable.
The very notion that the President of the United States secretly signed off on the use of torture, no matter how it was defined, is appalling. It's even more appalling to realize they really thought they could get away with it. The moral high ground in the War on Terror is getting further and further away.
12/22/2004
12/21/2004
Adoption for Your Amusement, Again
Back in April, ABC raised hackles with a stunningly ill-conceived promo for a 20/20 episode about open adoption. “Barbara [Walters] will bring you what might be called the ultimate reality show,” co-anchor John Stossel proclaimed as he plugged the upcoming show. “As you watch, a pregnant teenager will decide which of five couples gets her baby." Disgusted by the prospect of adoption's very personal and emotional nature being perverted into some loathsome sort of grand prize, viewers showered the network with complaints and ABC quickly backed down.
Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, the usual suspect has picked up where ABC left off. And then some. For on January 3, 2005, Fox, the network behind such highlights of cultural programming as The Swan and The Littlest Groom, pollutes the airwaves with the first episode of a new reality series about adoption.
The premise is, to put it mildly, repulsive. A young woman who was adopted at birth faces eight men, one of whom is her actual biological father while each of the other seven tries to deceive her into thinking he's the real deal. She has to decide which one is genuine. If she picks correctly she gets $100,000; if not, the misidentified fake gets the cash.
This exercise in degradation is called, of course, Who's Your Daddy?
Even for a network unafraid to get down into the slime of shameless human exploitation, this is a new and very offensive low. The decision by an adoptee to find one's biological parents is fraught with questions about identity and who one really is. Taking that most personal of quests and turning it into a game show laced with deception and greed is truly repugnant. The fact that Fox actually found people stupid and desperate enough to prostitute themselves in this manner says volumes about the sorry state of American television and the lengths to which people will go to get their fifteen minutes of fame.
"I can understand the reservations," executive producer Kevin Healey said in an interview, "but the people came to it with great excitement and a willingness to play the game. It's a fun and healthy way to get to know this person that they've never met."
Fun and healthy? Where's the fun in seeing someone's hope to learn who she is and where she came from dashed to the merry laughter of millions? Perhaps someone out there will see the show, think back on their own adoption, and see it not as an expression of love and family but rather as a way to make a quick buck. Doesn't sound healthy to me.
"The daughters feel bad when they pick wrong," co-executive producer Scott Hallock added, "because they're like, 'I let my dad down.'"
Yeah, we're all crying with you. If you're dumb enough to think the path to self-discovery involves humiliation on a national (international, really, once you count global syndication) scale and comes with a cash prize, you deserve what you get. This hearkens back to the sort of entertainment seen in the Roman Coliseum, where condemned criminals and slaves were forced to hack each other to death for the amusement of the emperor. What fun!
Fox has once again hit bottom with this despicable excuse for entertainment. Until the next time, that is.
An editable form letter with contact list is online at http://simpleasthat.com/actionletter/index.php.
Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, the usual suspect has picked up where ABC left off. And then some. For on January 3, 2005, Fox, the network behind such highlights of cultural programming as The Swan and The Littlest Groom, pollutes the airwaves with the first episode of a new reality series about adoption.
The premise is, to put it mildly, repulsive. A young woman who was adopted at birth faces eight men, one of whom is her actual biological father while each of the other seven tries to deceive her into thinking he's the real deal. She has to decide which one is genuine. If she picks correctly she gets $100,000; if not, the misidentified fake gets the cash.
This exercise in degradation is called, of course, Who's Your Daddy?
Even for a network unafraid to get down into the slime of shameless human exploitation, this is a new and very offensive low. The decision by an adoptee to find one's biological parents is fraught with questions about identity and who one really is. Taking that most personal of quests and turning it into a game show laced with deception and greed is truly repugnant. The fact that Fox actually found people stupid and desperate enough to prostitute themselves in this manner says volumes about the sorry state of American television and the lengths to which people will go to get their fifteen minutes of fame.
"I can understand the reservations," executive producer Kevin Healey said in an interview, "but the people came to it with great excitement and a willingness to play the game. It's a fun and healthy way to get to know this person that they've never met."
Fun and healthy? Where's the fun in seeing someone's hope to learn who she is and where she came from dashed to the merry laughter of millions? Perhaps someone out there will see the show, think back on their own adoption, and see it not as an expression of love and family but rather as a way to make a quick buck. Doesn't sound healthy to me.
"The daughters feel bad when they pick wrong," co-executive producer Scott Hallock added, "because they're like, 'I let my dad down.'"
Yeah, we're all crying with you. If you're dumb enough to think the path to self-discovery involves humiliation on a national (international, really, once you count global syndication) scale and comes with a cash prize, you deserve what you get. This hearkens back to the sort of entertainment seen in the Roman Coliseum, where condemned criminals and slaves were forced to hack each other to death for the amusement of the emperor. What fun!
Fox has once again hit bottom with this despicable excuse for entertainment. Until the next time, that is.
An editable form letter with contact list is online at http://simpleasthat.com/actionletter/index.php.
12/20/2004
Social Insecurity
Remember the fear campaign with which President Bush and his neoconservative cadre scared us into supporting his invasion of Iraq? All those tales of horrible (nonexistent) weapons which could turn Main Street, USA into a smoking hole in the ground? Well, he's at it again, and this time his target is much closer to home. Mistaking his close election win for an actual mandate, Bush has set his "shock and awe" sights on Social Security.
Yes, that Social Security; the program which has provided America's senior citizens, disabled workers and the children of workers who die young with a financial safety cushion for well over half a century. According to Bush, the system is in active crisis because while Social Security currently takes in $1.25 for each dollar paid out and is thus very much in the black, it will be paying out more than it takes in by 2018. The Social Security Administration, the group that actually runs the program, begs to differ, saying that given current economic trends this won't happen until 2042; the Congressional Budget Office says 2052. (The same CBO report says that that extending Social Security's solvency by another century while maintaining benefits would require additional revenues equal to less than three percent of federal spending. This happens to be less than that we're currently spending in Iraq.) Even given the fickleness of the economy, this is hardly an active crisis.
Bush claims it is, however, and his solution is...partial privatization! Yes, his answer to a fiscal problem which may occur a few decades down the road is to allow individuals to some of their payroll taxes into the stock market right now, the theory being that people will make more than enough money from their investments to offset smaller Social Security benefits. It's really just a variation on the old the-market-knows-everything mantra that gave us the Great Depression, the S&L scandal, Enron, etc. This solution has three tiny little problems.
First, every penny taken out of the system has to be made up in order for current benefits to be paid and the trust fund maintained. And Bush is determined to get the money by borrowing it, with total ten-year estimates as high as $2 trillion added to our already $7.5 trillion national debt. This may well make foreign and domestic investors wary about continuing to finance our exploding debt when the Bush Administration itself clearly doesn't care. This makes the dollar and stock market fall, interest rates and unemployment rise, and so on.
Second, privatizing Social Security would be putting the program in the hands of the ilk who gave us such financial triumphs as the seemingly endless stock-market and mutual-fund scandals, not to mention the up-and-down vagaries of the market as is. Who will have to explain the magic of the markets to angry seniors whose entire retirement benefits were stolen by the likes of Ken Lay or went down the drain with a company's bankruptcy?
And third, administrative overhead costs, which currently take up less than one percent of the annual Social Security budget, would multiply more than ten-fold under a privatized system. That's as much as $75 billion a year gone from retirement benefits to line the pockets of Wall Street. Not surprisingly, Wall Street is the one sector of the American economy actively pushing for such "reform." And also not surprisingly, the financial industry gave big bucks to Bush, more than $30 million in the 2004 campaign alone.
That works out to a 250,000% return on their investment. Not too shabby. Better than the S&P 500 and loads better than Hillary Clinton did with her much-maligned cattle futures.
The eventual fiscal problem with Social Security can be almost or entirely solved with one single change. As it stands now, only the first $87,900 of a person's income is subject to Social Security payroll taxes. Meaning that someone earning a bit under ninety grand pays exactly the same amount into Social Security as someone like Bill Gates. Or Tom Cruise. Or, for that matter, George W. Bush. Raising or removing the cap would do away with this inequity and maintain the system's integrity for decades to come.
Of course, the whole notion of Social Security's guaranteed benefits is heresy to Bush's well-heeled friends, who have never hid their desire to blow up the "socialist" system and replace it with a super-capitalist free-for-all in which individuals sink or swim. If you invest in the right stocks, you get to live in a nice comfy house and have all your needs met. If you don't, or if your stock turns out to be run by crooks -- well, those are the breaks, kid. Hope that refrigerator box is warm in winter.
Dismantling Social Security and endangering the livelihood of senior citizens just to satisfy the ideological fantasies of government-hating Republicans and to further enrich the financial industry is a terrible idea. Congress should block it at the first opportunity.
Yes, that Social Security; the program which has provided America's senior citizens, disabled workers and the children of workers who die young with a financial safety cushion for well over half a century. According to Bush, the system is in active crisis because while Social Security currently takes in $1.25 for each dollar paid out and is thus very much in the black, it will be paying out more than it takes in by 2018. The Social Security Administration, the group that actually runs the program, begs to differ, saying that given current economic trends this won't happen until 2042; the Congressional Budget Office says 2052. (The same CBO report says that that extending Social Security's solvency by another century while maintaining benefits would require additional revenues equal to less than three percent of federal spending. This happens to be less than that we're currently spending in Iraq.) Even given the fickleness of the economy, this is hardly an active crisis.
Bush claims it is, however, and his solution is...partial privatization! Yes, his answer to a fiscal problem which may occur a few decades down the road is to allow individuals to some of their payroll taxes into the stock market right now, the theory being that people will make more than enough money from their investments to offset smaller Social Security benefits. It's really just a variation on the old the-market-knows-everything mantra that gave us the Great Depression, the S&L scandal, Enron, etc. This solution has three tiny little problems.
First, every penny taken out of the system has to be made up in order for current benefits to be paid and the trust fund maintained. And Bush is determined to get the money by borrowing it, with total ten-year estimates as high as $2 trillion added to our already $7.5 trillion national debt. This may well make foreign and domestic investors wary about continuing to finance our exploding debt when the Bush Administration itself clearly doesn't care. This makes the dollar and stock market fall, interest rates and unemployment rise, and so on.
Second, privatizing Social Security would be putting the program in the hands of the ilk who gave us such financial triumphs as the seemingly endless stock-market and mutual-fund scandals, not to mention the up-and-down vagaries of the market as is. Who will have to explain the magic of the markets to angry seniors whose entire retirement benefits were stolen by the likes of Ken Lay or went down the drain with a company's bankruptcy?
And third, administrative overhead costs, which currently take up less than one percent of the annual Social Security budget, would multiply more than ten-fold under a privatized system. That's as much as $75 billion a year gone from retirement benefits to line the pockets of Wall Street. Not surprisingly, Wall Street is the one sector of the American economy actively pushing for such "reform." And also not surprisingly, the financial industry gave big bucks to Bush, more than $30 million in the 2004 campaign alone.
That works out to a 250,000% return on their investment. Not too shabby. Better than the S&P 500 and loads better than Hillary Clinton did with her much-maligned cattle futures.
The eventual fiscal problem with Social Security can be almost or entirely solved with one single change. As it stands now, only the first $87,900 of a person's income is subject to Social Security payroll taxes. Meaning that someone earning a bit under ninety grand pays exactly the same amount into Social Security as someone like Bill Gates. Or Tom Cruise. Or, for that matter, George W. Bush. Raising or removing the cap would do away with this inequity and maintain the system's integrity for decades to come.
Of course, the whole notion of Social Security's guaranteed benefits is heresy to Bush's well-heeled friends, who have never hid their desire to blow up the "socialist" system and replace it with a super-capitalist free-for-all in which individuals sink or swim. If you invest in the right stocks, you get to live in a nice comfy house and have all your needs met. If you don't, or if your stock turns out to be run by crooks -- well, those are the breaks, kid. Hope that refrigerator box is warm in winter.
Dismantling Social Security and endangering the livelihood of senior citizens just to satisfy the ideological fantasies of government-hating Republicans and to further enrich the financial industry is a terrible idea. Congress should block it at the first opportunity.
12/15/2004
To Tell the Truth
Remember the old TV game show To Tell the Truth? A group of panelists all claimed to be a single specific person, and the contestant who figured out which one was being honest and not lying through his or her teeth would win prizes.
It's back, sort of.
Three years ago, the Pentagon's proposed Office of Strategic Influence went down in flames after its true purpose became known -- the dissemination of false articles in foreign media publications with the intent of fooling the enemy. What the OSI never figured out was that in this age of global communication, anything published anywhere quickly becomes known everywhere else, so fake news planted abroad could quite easily blow back into the American press.
A more direct example occurred only last month, when the Pentagon admitted planting a CNN story that the attack on Fallujah was underway even though it wouldn't start for another three weeks, with the supposed aim of "smoking out" insurgents in the city. The revelation was greeted by yawns from most of the media, instead of outrage at being turned into an unwitting propaganda tool.
Here we go again. According to The New York Times, the Pentagon is considering "planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles."
Like they don't hate us enough already. American credibility across much of the world, but particularly in the Arab world, is already in the toilet. Recent polls show that solid majorities in most Arab countries now see America as the greatest threat to world peace, and this latest revelation is not about to help matters.
Besides, now that the Pentagon -- and, let's face it, the Bush Administration in general -- has shown they are willing to lie to further American interests, the American people now face a dilemma: every time we hear an official pronouncement, we have to wonder if it's true. Lots of people already disbelieve anything they hear from Washington, and that number can only increase if lying becomes official policy, no matter what the justification.
On the other hand, disseminating propaganda lies instead of real facts to the media does have its upside: no one will ever have to know about such unpleasantries as insufficiently armored vehicles or botched planning. Everything will be perfect. Well, except on the actual ground in Iraq, but as most people wouldn't go there in a million years, who's going to know the difference?
Here's a bright idea: why not try telling the truth for a change? Rather than mount a crude propaganda effort to fake out the purveyors of hatred, we should broadcast and publicize messages of tolerance and inclusivity, so the people who now hear only the voices of jihad get another source of information. The best disinfectant for hatred is always sunlight, and lots of it.
Besides, if we have to lie to people to get them to like us, what does that say about us to begin with?
This was a bad idea three years ago, and it's still a bad idea. The Pentagon should jettison this half-baked plan, and fast.
12/09/2004
Shut Up and Die
Comparing the Bush Administration's everything-is-just-peachy comments on Iraq to the daily mayhem we see from that war-torn country, one can come to the conclusion that there are apparently two Iraqs.
One exists in a world where American soldiers hand out candy to smiling and photogenic children, where the Iraqi people eagerly embrace a perpetual American occupation backing up a puppet government, where people look forward to standing in line as sitting ducks while waiting to vote for a candidate approved by Washington, where people are happy to forget all about their bombed-out homes and their relatives being scooped off the street and the risk of getting killed while going to the store.
The other exists in the real world, where American soldiers trying to secure an entire country cannot even secure a ten-mile stretch of roadway between the Green Zone and the Baghdad airport, where a homegrown insurgency grows more every day, where two fighters are recruited for every one killed, and where an estimated one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed since the American invasion began almost two years ago.
The myopia of President Bush and his inner circle gets more and more pronounced every day. Their method of dealing with bad news from Iraq may be a simple one -- just wish it all away -- but it does not exactly help the situation. Instead, they hide behind meaningless slogans ("Freedom is on the march!" "We're making progress!" and so on) whose only apparent purpose is to trick people who don't bother reading beyond the headlines into thinking everything is fine. One wonders if Bush et al believe their own nonsense.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the few first-term Cabinet secretaries not shown the door after the election, showed off his management style while visiting American soldiers in Kuwait yesterday. (Rumsfeld evidently does not believe his own propaganda, as he didn't go anywhere near the Iraqi border, leaving that for the suckers -- oops, soldiers -- who are fighting his war for him.) He asked for questions from the troops, getting the usual collection of softballs and sound bites.
But just once, he got an actual question, from a soldier who put him on the spot by asking, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us?" As the mass of soldiers erupted in applause, Rumsfeld shot back, "You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
In other words, shut up, go back to the front lines, and get blown up for the greater glory of -- well, we're still figuring that part out. Anyway, we decided to fight this war on the cheap and we'll do it to the last drop of your blood.
If he said it during a war that was thrust upon us, where we were required to rush into the field or else, it would be one thing. But considering that this was very much a war of choice, and that Rumsfeld et al sneeringly rejected cautions from military professionals about the troops and resources needed, it was absolutely outrageous. And does anyone remember Bush's now forgotten campaign promise that the troops would have all the armor they needed?
It's like the old Groucho Marx line when he was caught with another woman and tried to deny the incredibly obvious: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
Bush, Rumsfeld and their band of merry men are determined to take us through the looking-glass, where black is white, where up is down, and where an endless desert quagmire is a fabulous success. They're entitled to their delusions, but they can't make the rest of us go along with it.
One exists in a world where American soldiers hand out candy to smiling and photogenic children, where the Iraqi people eagerly embrace a perpetual American occupation backing up a puppet government, where people look forward to standing in line as sitting ducks while waiting to vote for a candidate approved by Washington, where people are happy to forget all about their bombed-out homes and their relatives being scooped off the street and the risk of getting killed while going to the store.
The other exists in the real world, where American soldiers trying to secure an entire country cannot even secure a ten-mile stretch of roadway between the Green Zone and the Baghdad airport, where a homegrown insurgency grows more every day, where two fighters are recruited for every one killed, and where an estimated one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed since the American invasion began almost two years ago.
The myopia of President Bush and his inner circle gets more and more pronounced every day. Their method of dealing with bad news from Iraq may be a simple one -- just wish it all away -- but it does not exactly help the situation. Instead, they hide behind meaningless slogans ("Freedom is on the march!" "We're making progress!" and so on) whose only apparent purpose is to trick people who don't bother reading beyond the headlines into thinking everything is fine. One wonders if Bush et al believe their own nonsense.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the few first-term Cabinet secretaries not shown the door after the election, showed off his management style while visiting American soldiers in Kuwait yesterday. (Rumsfeld evidently does not believe his own propaganda, as he didn't go anywhere near the Iraqi border, leaving that for the suckers -- oops, soldiers -- who are fighting his war for him.) He asked for questions from the troops, getting the usual collection of softballs and sound bites.
But just once, he got an actual question, from a soldier who put him on the spot by asking, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us?" As the mass of soldiers erupted in applause, Rumsfeld shot back, "You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
In other words, shut up, go back to the front lines, and get blown up for the greater glory of -- well, we're still figuring that part out. Anyway, we decided to fight this war on the cheap and we'll do it to the last drop of your blood.
If he said it during a war that was thrust upon us, where we were required to rush into the field or else, it would be one thing. But considering that this was very much a war of choice, and that Rumsfeld et al sneeringly rejected cautions from military professionals about the troops and resources needed, it was absolutely outrageous. And does anyone remember Bush's now forgotten campaign promise that the troops would have all the armor they needed?
It's like the old Groucho Marx line when he was caught with another woman and tried to deny the incredibly obvious: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
Bush, Rumsfeld and their band of merry men are determined to take us through the looking-glass, where black is white, where up is down, and where an endless desert quagmire is a fabulous success. They're entitled to their delusions, but they can't make the rest of us go along with it.
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