A letter to Lewis Lapham, editor at Harper's

Dear Lewis Lapham, Harper's editor,

Though a big fan of yours, I am writing to lodge a complaint about your August, 2005, "Notebook" piece, "Moving On." An otherwise stellar contribution is marred by the omission of Nixon's crime regarding the deaths of millions of southeast Asians--a crime, as you know, committed after his election in 1968 by continuing and expanding the criminal and stupid hostilities in Indochina. Given your usual sensitivity when dealing with such topics, mentioning his crime of killing "58,000 American soldiers in Indochina" without mentioning the even larger crime of killing millions of Indochinese seems out of character to this loyal reader.

Just after the point in your piece where this omission of the major aspect of Nixon's war crime should be, you claim that "thirty-one years later, the Bush Administration commits crimes of a much larger magnitude." This seems to be a rather difficult argument to maintain even with respect to the somewhat misleading statistic you give. Nixon, of course, had a good deal of responsibility for a large portion of the 58,000 American deaths, but Johnson and Kennedy should be given proportionate blame too. More to the point, it seems clear to me that Nixon's tens of thousands of American deaths are of "a much greater magnitude" than Bush's 1802 American deaths as of April 3rd, 2005.

With respect to the millions of non-American deaths you failed to mention--even considering Nixon's proportionate blame in this respect too--your argument that Bush's crimes are of a much larger magnitude seems to be way off, even "weightless," to use a word you use later in the piece to decry the usual nature of the messages of our media. The very lack of a historical context--that lack that scares you and me so much in our Forrest Gump country, in what you call "America's child mind"--is what this particular omission and the subsequent argument seem to suggest.

Obviously the recent ascendancy of the now-dominant Forrest Gump ideology we and the rest of the world suffer under has a lot to do with the ascendancy of our Forrest Gump president. Actually, he is more a Nixonian crook than a stupid-is-as-stupid-does bumpkin--and, as you so insightfully wrote not long ago, a very American and very dangerous form of huckster. Bush's war crimes, however, have yet to reach the near holocaust-scale of the U.S.-Vietnam war. What worries me most is the absence in our culture of any widespread consciousness of this particular BIG CRIME in our collective past--much like what I would hope many Germans grapple with. It is this very cultural disavowal your omission ironically reproduces, while your essay so cogently analyzes some of the cultural forces at work that produce the kind of media conditions that allow an ahistorical ideology of simplistic fantasies and disavowal to become dominant, as Goebbels and Rove certainly know.

Also, Bush's war crimes--certainly less lethal than those of Nixon, Johnson, or Kennedy--seem more the crime of a group than the crimes of Nixon, who seemed more the mob boss than just an unlikely figurehead. So Bush's crimes would be more the crimes of something more widespread than just his deeds, or the deeds of the current version of Republican White House mafia. I would argue that Americans have more shared responsibility for Iraq than Cambodia, but the latter is still larger in scale. I see a more direct criminal responsibility now as more widespread: a more vocal hard-right minority (still a minority as Miller's Ohio piece shows) making more public decisions, and more access to information. But this access competes with what might be a more naturalized and more resilient right-wing ideology founded on the coupled fantasies of American intrinsic goodness and American superiority.

While we--those who work to be part of "the reality-based community"--do the important work of subverting Bush and the destructive and dangerous cultural fantasies and disavowal on which his power feeds (all in the hope of working toward some kind of reality-based liberal democracy), I believe it is crucial that liberals and leftists not get blinded by our justified rage at the current administration, and maintain a reality-based historical context. I think we can do this work of subversion without reductive and simplistic claims like Bush is the worst president we have ever had. I would still reserve that title for Nixon because, again, I see his continuation of the war in Indochina as being a major part of America's most recent BIG CRIME, one that seems overwhelmingly larger than either Watergate or Iraq, and one to which I feel inescapably connected as an American, even though I was born a month before the mostly bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident. Pro-slavery and pro-expansion presidents of the past might also compete for this title since they would be complicitous in two other BIG CRIMES of our nation's brutal infancy. Certainly times are tough now, but we have surely seen worse. For example, American's aren't killing each other as much as before: no civil war, no labor massacres, uprisings seem less frequent, and a repeat of something like Kent State seems unlikely.

What our current Robber Barron president represents in a broader sense, I believe, should be our focus now, and it is something that should be put into historical context--that is, it should be subverted without losing sight of the hard-core corruption and brutality that is so much a part of American history. As you know, Bush, his mafia-like administration, and the cultural ideology of right-wing fantasies-disavowal they represent are more of a continuation of our history than an anomaly.

Email to a friend

Hi,

I think this photo of Bush holding the phone upside down is a lot better than the dancing Hillary cartoon, which seemed a bit too Republican for my taste (it showed Bush as normal in comparison to Hillary). With respect to said photo, however, we have to be on the watch for doctored photos and phony Bushisms: the internet is full of 'em.

As for the Hillary cartoon, forgive me when it is hard for me to laugh about certain things: it seems all too scary to me that Bush has been in office for so long, and will be for years to come. Hillary would seem like a godsend at this point. A la Woody in Annie Hall, my hatred for Bush has reached such heights I have to come up with a new word to describe it. Beyond "disdain"; beyond "loathing." Check out my blog to get a better sense of the far reaches of my enmity.

I've been writing some anti-Bush songs, and coming up with some bumper stickers that I hope will help me to feel less ... vulnerable, disgusted, surrounded, etc. (see below). I have the two top bumper stickers for you when you are ready to add them to your vehicle's bumper (and risk damage to said vehicle in "the OC", GOP and SUV packed as it is). I've got my "support wise & ethical policy" on my Volvo. It is just one in my neighborhood ... compared to countless "support our troops." So this veteran feels a bit ... unsupported ... and at risk of vehicular damage.

I wrote an anti-Bush song called "so wrong" on November 5, 2004. It will be on the next CD, out in January, 2006. I'm thinking of including the "so wrong" bumper sticker in the CD ... to make sure my sales are limited to liberals in the future. Actually, I'll probably do it since it wouldn't really matter anyway given my sales. Maybe I should try to sell bumper stickers instead of CDs (and give away the CDs with the bumper stickers!).

The one on the bottom is a new idea I just thought of. Do you think I should get it printed? I was thinking of giving it to ... That would go over well, I'm sure. It would be great to vandalize a few OC SUVs with it. Ooohh, just kidding. You know I wouldn't do that....

The Monomaniacal Karl Rove's Revolution

A recent statement by Karl Rove:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

His motives seem rather transparent, and typical. When being attacked, he goes on the defensive, usually lying while he does it. Rove is monomaniacal: all he seems to care about is how to win more power for himself and others, particularly W. This comment attempts to put liberals on the defensive in a political climate where Rumsfeld was (finally!) roundly criticized in a Senate hearing by Edward Kennedy, who listed several "gross errors and mistakes" (see "The Quagmire of Iraq" in May, 2005) by the administration, Rumsfeld in particular: "In baseball, it's three strikes, you're out ... What is it for the secretary of defense? Isn't it time for you to resign?" He should have said a lot more, and it was very late in coming--but still felt good to hear.

Ample evidence of Rove's monomaniacal nature can be found in the film "Bush's Brain." One of the most disgusting examples (there are many) is from the 2000 primary season when Rove got Bush to share the stage with some other raving right-wing lunatic in South Carolina ready to malign a 5-year veteran of the Hanoi-Hilton, John McCain. The subject of this lunatic's rant was McCain's supposed lack of support of veterans as a Senator, despite the fact that McCain has been a stalwart supporter of vets since his return from Vietnam. McCain would say to Bush on Larry King that he should be ashamed of himself. Very true (a truism even), but it probably wasn't Bush's idea. It was classic Rove, as "Bush's Brain" makes clear. Bush, by the way, would cut the VA budget after entering office. McCain would strangely support Bush in 2004. McCain should be ashamed of himself for that.

Anyone who has seen "Bush's Brain" knows that Rove is monomaniacal and lacks anything most people would call moral decency. In fact, it is only the cultish, zombie-eyed true believers who think he really cares about those who died in 9/11, or securing the homeland, when he made his recent comments about conservatives and liberals (see "Terror War(ning) as Political Hay" in June, 2004, posts below). Did he care about John McCain's sacrifices as a Naval officer when he maligned his record? What does Rove value beyond power? Should anything this modern-day Machiavelli says be taken out of the context of his monomaniacal desire for power?

Returning to his comments, the first part of the statement carries the biggest lie: Rove and Bush are not conservatives (see "A Letter to Conservative Voters" in September, 2004, below). They are part of what might be called the "reactionary revolutionary right" (RRR). And let's give some thought to how Bush, Rove and Wolfowitz saw the 9/11 attacks. They saw the savagery, certainly, and they did prepare for war, without a doubt. But the war that Bush and Wolfowitz most wanted, and the war that has cost so many lives and created so much more hatred of the U.S. abroad, had nothing to do with the attacks.

More importantly, this war has made our homeland obviously less secure. The war in Iraq, as predicted by many, has proven much more difficult than the twisted intellect of Wolfowitz and crew ever imagined, and, predictably, than they continue to tell the nation. In fact, they look naive and stupid in retrospect (see "Quagmire" below), and they continue to tell lies about US success there: "mission accomplished" is among the most disgusting, but Cheney's recent "insurgency in its last throes" gives it some competition on the disgust meter. Like Enron, the executives in the White House are telling the share holders outrageous lies in a coordinated attempt to keep their stock inflated.

As Tim Dickerson's "Railroading Security" gives evidence for (see blog entry by the same name below), homeland security has been neglected by Bush and crew. Homeland security initiatives, for the most part, had to be pushed on them. They were much more concerned about winning the next election, and with the revolution at home and abroad. The revolution abroad is mostly about securing U.S. hegemony. A crucial part of this goal is securing control of the flow of oil to the U.S. (while lining the pockets of Bush's cronies). Does anyone really take seriously the "let's spread democracy" crap? For the most part, the Bushies are not interested in conserving the status quo. One example of the few things they are interested in conserving, related to the conservation of their power, is Bandar Bush's family--as long as the house of Saud is instrumental to getting what Bush and Co. want.

The revolution at home, unlike their efforts abroad, is going well for these zealots. The RRR is becoming more and more the standard bearers of the right, and the criminal-capitalist offspring of the old Rockefeller right are loving the corporate-welfare-and-deregulation ride the RRR and its cultish followers are providing. In turn, Bush's "real base"--as he says in Moore's film to a room full of the very wealthy, all in white tie or ball gowns--is providing all sorts of corporate support, particularly media support, for such revolutionary changes as the grotesque undermining of executive office institutions like the EPA, FCC, FERC, and SEC. Wolves guarding the hen houses of the U.S. linfrastructure is conventional these days. More significantly, important things like having an energy policy independent of the "special interests" of energy corporations is still just a pipe dream of pragmatists. The relative non-issue of Social Security is Bush's agenda (his lame attempt to push the economic pedal to the medal while lining the pockets of the financial wing of his base).

Modern-day Goldwater-Republicans have moved the fanaticisms of that presidential candidate into the mainstream, making Nixon seem to the cultish (ridiculously) a candidate for the tag "liberal" ("he did go to China"). One of the most remarkable achievements of the RRR, in fact, has been to help the maligning of a word all of the forefathers would have been proud to hear used to describe themselves: "liberal." The change in the use of this term alone is ample proof of how un-conservative this movement can be, and how the RRR is in fact winning the culture wars. Sad times.

So the RRR saw the savagery of 9/11 ... and Rove smiled because he knew that this meant a chance to make his incompetent cohort seem presidential--which, just prior to 9/11, had been a serious challenge since Bush's "election." After 9/11, all Bush had to do was to say the word "evil" a lot, and amp up his phoney cowboy imitation. Wolfowitz smiled because he saw 9/11 as an opportunity to satisify his obsession to go to war with Iraq, and an opportunity to establish his "preemption" policy as the standard. More generally, it is hard not to understand Wolfowitz as perceiving 9/11 as an opportunity to aggressively pursue his grand schemes of preserving US hegemony.

The administration went into Afghanistan with a force that equalled their enthusiasm for this war-- a war which so far has been the only aspect of their response to even resemble a "war on terrorism." It was a very small force. They knew enough about Soviet/CIA history to know that Afghanistan could be a hornet's nest, and it didn't really have anything they wanted (pipeline potential, maybe, but no oil). For political reasons, they would have liked to pick up Osama along the way ("dead or alive," said this unconvincing would-be John Wayne). Bin Laden, however, had been paid by the CIA to fight the Soviets back in the 80s (which meant the US helped him transport his fanatical enthusiasm to kill infidels from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan). Unlike any US force, CIA or otherwise, OBL really knew the area, and had the support of the local Afghans and Pakistanis. And Pakistan's dictator was and still is forced to deal with sympathetic zealots all around him. Like Saddam was, Musharaf is worried about his hold on power, and the Islamists all around him would prefer something akin to what Iran has. A hornet's nest, indeed, but also a huge threat to U.S. security (lots of potential al Qaeda members in that region).

Because the small U.S. force sent to fight the Taliban were really good at what they do (this veteran is quite confident about that, excluding the AF disaster with the Canadian troops), they were able--with the help of shifty warlords we probably should have excluded from the fighting with more of our own troops--to topple the fanatical, terrorist-supporting Taliban, but unable to do much damage at all to al Qaeda and the like, the first-order enemy. To actually make a dent on the type of terrorism behind 9/11, it seems Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would have to be two top targets of US aggression. We all know that wouldn't happen. And we all know a "war on terrorism" is about as viable as a "war on drugs" when "war" is understood in conventional terms of troops, planes, ships and weapons. Fighting terrorism has to go way beyond war, Mr. Rove.

In 2004, Rove smiled again as he was once again able to get his man into office by (sort of) winning the election. Again, he would do it by maligning a Vietnam vet who bravely served his country, and keeping out of the public eye how Bush avoided any brave service, and even defrauded the government by not fully serving his commitment after a very expensive stint in pilot training (see the blog entry on the Dan Rather debacle below). With "the savagery of 9/11" somehow transformed into "I'm a war president" (in a war against a dictator anyone who cared knew hated and felt threatened by al Qaeda)--with this transformation, spin graduated to revolution.

The RRR are now a major world force. I still say Nixon was the most distructive president this nation has experienced, especially since so many southeast Asians and Americans died under his watch. But Bush may be even worse since he represents this seachange victory of the right. Bush is more the face of, an epiphenomenon of, something much more significant than the man himself: a cultural revolution, put on steroids by 9/11, and promoted and sustained by corporate media and an electorate more easily-swayed, ignorant, and naive than cynical.

Right-leaning democrats (which is most democrats from where I sit) mostly were in support of the RRR and its spin-based revolution, few challenging Bush and crew on their bold-faced lies--few even mentioning that the war in Iraq was not at all connected to 9/11, few making clear that Saddam had no connection to al Qaeda, and few arguing that, after it was made crystal clear, Bush and crew should be held accountable for their WMD lies. There were no Iraqis on those planes. Almost all were Saudis (see two entries on Saudi Arabia in April, 2004, below). Iraq is not the issue with 9/11. Never was.

Liberal democrats "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," but were naive enough to grant Bush the power to choose which war--that is, to choose a war that had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush and crew chose to USE this tragedy as a way of getting what they could not justify otherwise: a war with Iraq that they hoped would lead to greater control over vast amounts of oil. War profiteers on a grand scale. The fact that they used 9/11 in this way, I argue, is one of the many BIG CRIMES of this administration (see torture blog entries in April and May, 2004, and the "war criminals" entry in June, 2004, below).

The crime of the democrats with respect to 9/11 was letting Bush and Rove get away with the crime of shamelessly using 9/11 to push their unrelated agenda in Iraq. Those democrats who are guilty with respect to this crime should be voted out of office. There are more shameless crimes to come with the RRR, unfortunately. Democrats can honor the victims of 9/11 best by "going to war" against those who would use their tragedy to further their own twisted and unrelated agenda. They can atone for their crimes of omission by taking the political risk of standing up against the RRR. Unfortunately, such a stand is a political risk in a culture where the tag of liberal might be grounds for libel. A sad cultural state, indeed.

The Quagmire of Iraq

Recommended reading: "The Quagmire" (of Iraq) by Robert Dreyfuss.

"Bush says freedom is flowering, but as the Iraq war drags on, it's beginning to look a lot like Vietnam."

"The war in Iraq has killed more than 100,000 and cost nearly $200 billion--and now the country is on the verge of exploding into full-scale war."

"The three major forces--Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds--are threatening to blow the country apart."

Some important points:

- Bush is lying (surprise, surprise).

- The Shiites, the most powerful force due to large numbers, have many factions, and (surprise) some are rather reactionary fundamentalists a lot like their supportive Shiite neighbors in power in Iran: hardly the type of people the US would want in power in Iraq, you'd think, especially after Bush Sr. abandoned the Iraqi Shiites to the brutality of the Sunni Republican Gaurd after the first Gulf War.

- Many Kurds want an independent Kurdistan in the north, and see multi-ethnic Kirkuk as their "Jerusalem."

- Signs of Kurdish brutality towards minorities, particularly towards Sunni's, ("ethnic cleansing" mentioned in the article) are being reported in the north. Saddam, a Sunni, killed tens of thousands of them, many with a weapon of mass destruction: poison gas.

- If an independent Kurdistan is established, Turkey would feel pushed to invade. Syria and Iran wouldn't be too thrilled either. Violence toward Kurdish Turks has a long history.

- If neighboring Sunni countries see a Shiite takeover, or a growing and violent movement for an independent Kurdistan, they will probably increase or start direct or indirect military support to Sunni fighters.

Bush 4/05: "The establishment of a free Iraq is a watershed event in the global democratic movement."

Bush 2/05: "Freedom is on the march in Iraq. These are exciting times. We're making progress there."

LBJ, 11/67: "We are inflicting greater losses than we are taking. We are making progress."

Railroading Security

From "The Breifing by Tim Dickinson," Rolling Stone Magazine, May 19, 2005, pg. 42:

"According to the Deaprtment of Homeland Security, the nation's top priority should be protecting America's railways from terrorist attacks. But when the District of Columbia recently ordered trains loaded with chlorine gas and other 'ultra-hazardous' materials to steer at least two miles clear of the nation's capital, the department sided with the rail company CSX Transport, which went to federal court in April to block the D.C. measure. In its court filing, Homeland Security argues that the city's action poses a threat to 'national security, public safety, public health and a strong economy.' The former head of CSX, John Snow, now serves as treasury secretary in Bush's cabinet."

The 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal killed 3800 people when an ultra-hazardous gas leaked from one of its plants. People were found dead up to five miles from the site of the leak, according to tropmed.org.

This seems to say a lot the priorities of Bush and Co.: ultra-hazardous, but plain to see for those who will look.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

For Roger Ebert, this film is "not a political documentary. It is a crime story. No matter what your politics, 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' will make you mad...."

My short take on the film: a smart movie about really screwed up people in a dangerous and criminal business culture. The bottom line: the film shows how the criminality of this culture goes way beyond Enron. Not just Enron, but all the institutions involved were culpable to varying extents: really big banks, accounting firms, legal firms, investment analysts, the white house, FERC, SEC, etc., etc.

The film is a penetrating look at a microcosm of criminal capitalism American style. One that, unfortunately--despite the ever-vigilant policing of our looking-out-for-the-little-people executive branch--is surely still macrocosmic, still pervasive, though some in the cult of free markets refuse to admit this, and stand steadfastly to their fundamentalist distortions of Econ 101 combined with Darwin-lite. The lesson is simple: much more, much stronger, and much smarter regulation required.

Policing: the job of the executive branch. What a laugh! Adam Smith would be appalled by the criminal, welfare-based types of "free" markets the Enrons of the world represent. Since we still have wolves guarding the hen house (e.g., the FERC case with California; Bush as the top law enforcer of the country), it can only get worse than it was when Enron was dancing its Wall Street dance and going way beyond having Arthur Andersen cook their books. We need more Elliot Spitzers. A lot more. Just like we needed more Eliot Nesses back when Capone and Co. were making their millions (chicken feed compared to, say, Lou Pai's hundreds of millions (formerly Enron's EES CEO), or to what Cheney stands to make in his lifetime as he consults the likes of Halliburton on how to get away with even more than it ever could before).

Here's a joke Jeff Skilling told during the California energy crisis, with a big grin: "What's the difference between the Titanic and California: the Titanic went down with the lights on." What a card! He's so funny I almost forget about the ridiculous energy rates millions had to pay then, including me—that is, how Enron simply stole A LOT of money from me and millions of other Californians. I didn't cry when he was in handcuffs. I smiled when I saw Ken Lay in handcuffs.

The California energy debacle, as presented in this film, is a great example of why the cult leaders, the radical fundamentalists of free markets, want pervasive deregulation. Guess what: it allows criminal corporations to make more money. And guess what: this is really BAD for the economy in general. Just like having lots of debt, and huge deficits, etc., etc. Bush and Co. is REALLY BAD for the economy Republicans! Admit it! The idea of the fiscally conservative Republicans is obviously an amazing example of Orwellian myth creation.

Just think of all the effort put into, for example, dealing with debt, whether it is the government paying it off or corporations hiding it in fake entities. Nothing is produced when so much effort is put into getting away with as much as possible, and too much money is spent on gaming the system rather than producing something valuable. Unregulated capitalism doesn't work. It can, however, work on the microcosmic level and, for example, make the Lou Pais and the Rockefellers of the world astronomically rich. And this is why it is supported by that class of people. Yes, I used the word "class." Bush has been part of that class since the beginning; Cheney has clawed his way into it. Every other class pays the bills when little of value is produced and so much money is made by very few people.

Bush and "Kenny Boy" have more in common than just being buddies: for me, this story of Enron provides a few important parallels of the type of mindset--and the type of tactics--we also see in the cultish White House: ponzi schemes (e.g., privatizing social security), accounting blatantly intended to mislead, HUGE deficits, lots of reliance on over-the-top PR, lots of hard-core bullying tactics, the upper echelons populated by high priests of the cult of free markets with lots of pseudo-Darwinian theories, etc. One significant difference: the white house has more of a righteous sense of doing God's work, or at least uses that PR spin to the utmost (I refuse to see Bush's faith as anything but opportunistic). The Enron crew really were mostly about making a lot of money. And they liked strippers. And company jets. And macho motorcycle trips. Lou Pai sold his five million shares of Enron stock for $353 million--obviously well before the fall, and just after divorcing his wife and marrying one of his stripper girlfriends. According to the film, he is the second biggest landowner in Colorado. Except for the stripper part (what about intimacy Lou?!), Pai, it seems, was clearly the smartest guy in the room.

Jeff Skilling, a truly twisted organism, as the film makes abundantly clear, saw himself as no less than a genius, and, I'm sure, a genetic wonder. His favorite book was some lame business cult book with "DNA" and "survival" in the title. He applied its teachings to set up a ruthless peer-analysis system that required 15% of the human resources of Enron be terminated each year. I bet that got results! Look at their efficiency! I'm sure it fostered a lot more ... criminality since the pressure demanded results. Get that Californian power plant to shut down; just pay them off. Get that Andersen accounant to sign off, and the lawyers too. Let's get the banks in on this. How about some Nigerian barges?

This company makes great reality TV in this film--but a lot weirder. Skilling, however, proved not too fit, and I loved seeing the genetic ubermensch handcuffed. A natural glitch perhaps? Actually, Skilling didn't seem so bright when, not long before the fall, he let his anxiety get the best of him and called an analyst who asked for some basic cash flow numbers an "asshole"--on a conference call. Duh. Some red flags went up, and the stock price … plummeted. Actually, it didn't really plummet until he left the company out of the blue. Another real smart move. "No really: my family needs me." In the film he gets compared to a Jim Jones who refuses to drink the Kool Aid after he has just handed it out to everyone else. I love that one.

There's a lot of outrageous stuff here. Prepare yourself to be disgusted by the grandiosity of the Enron schemes when you see it. Think of the massive power plants in India: a grand monument to the inefficiency of this brand of criminal capitalism. Try not to think about how this mess has hurt the US economy in general. It's too painful. Try not to think about what this says about America in general. Our leader, formerly just an altar boy, is now the Pope of this cult. Also keep in mind that, really, there was nothing Bush could do during California's energy crisis. Let the markets take care of themselves (and Kenny Boy). Survival of the fittest. Only the weak argue otherwise.

Comparing CBS's Dan Rather and NYT's Judy Miller

A letter I wrote today to writer-scholar-activist George Monbiot, whose blog is highly recommended:

Hello George,

In your "Media Fairyland" piece, I wish you had said something about the parallel between the CBS Rather/Bush story and the NYT Judy Miller/WMD story.

It seems to me that Miller was reporting a lot of lies about WMD fed to her by Ahmad Chalabai. Unlike the CBS story which was basically true, the NYT WMD story, as we all know, was basically false: Iraq had no WMD. The CBS story basically claimed the obvious: Bush used his connections to avoid the war, and then didn't serve out his commitment. I am a 9-year veteran of the Air Force. I can't imagine the AF records not being able to show definitively and positively that I was where I was supposed to be during my commitment. Moreover, my father and brother, both veteran pilots, have told me that they would never dream of missiong a flight physical. Missing a flight physical like that would seriously damage any regular officer's career--that is, any flyer not in some "champagne" squadron.

One of the big problems with what went down in the media with the CBS story is that crappy reporting on the right seems to go on without people losing their jobs, without consequences. Why would Miller (or the administration) trust Chalabai, a criminal on the lamb from Jordanian officials, and an obvious opportunist playing several sides at once? Blatantly bad reporting on Miller's part. The Miller stories helped propell the US into a grossly unethical, illegal, unnecessary, and stupid war. Why is she still on the NYT payroll? Not to mention the Valerie Plame outing, and the forged yellowcake documents. Why weren't the journalists reporting the Niger-yellowcake stories fired from their jobs, if not accepting forgeries as fact is what is required to keep your job? Why doesn't the NYT lose credibility over the Miller-Chalabai articles when CBS does over the Rather-Bush story? Again, and as you know, the basic idea of the CBS story was ... correct! Bush received favored treatment to get into the Texas ANG, and then didn't complete his commitment--a commtiment that is supposed to be payback to US taxpayers for the very expensive costs of pilot training. What is so obvious is that Bush did not feel compelled by any duty to fulfill this commitment. We do live in a "fairyland" where someone who lacks this kind of sense of duty is President, and where the media and its audience seem so blind to the right-wing bias so clearly exposed when we compare the fate's of Miller and, for example, CBS producer Mary Mapes.

Thanks again for another great article.

Best wishes,

Eric Anders


George Monbiot's reply the next day:

"Yup. Spot on. G."

An update from 8/05: see Ariana Huffington for more on Judy Miller. Great stuff.

Oxfam's Tsunami Relief

Oxfam is a great place to donate for tsunami relief.

From MoveOn.org: "Oxfam is already scrambling on the front lines to fight off starvation and disease -- and beginning to rebuild. Because Oxfam has worked for years with grassroots groups in the hardest hit areas, they were able to mobilize local leadership to help survivors immediately after the tsunami hit. And Oxfam will be there for the long-term, helping communities recover and regain their ability to meet basic needs. Oxfam needs to raise $5 million immediately to provide safe water, sanitation, food, shelter, and clothing to 36,000 families in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India. Your contribution can make this possible."

Maturity Should Be an Election Issue

A video containing Bush's real message to the American middle and "working" classes.

Reactionary Attrition?

After publishing a horrible obituary marking the death of the philosopher I admire most, Jacques Derrida, the NYT has published a very readable, straightforward, and beautiful eulogy written by the world-renowned scholar Mark C. Taylor, professor of humanities at Williams College.

The NYT would be wise to take seriously Taylor's version of the Derridean axiom, "There can be no ethical action without critical reflection" before it again publishes such a debased and inaccurate obituary of someone so revered by so many. This, however, is probably too much to ask from an institution too often reactionary in character.


What Derrida Really Meant

October 14, 2004

By MARK C. TAYLOR

What makes Jacques Derrida's work so significant is the
way he brought insights of major philosophers, writers,
artists and theologians to bear on contemporary problems.

Excerpt from the article:

"... There can be no ethical action without critical reflection.

During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings.

And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger.

As the process of globalization draws us ever closer in networks of communication and exchange, there is an understandable longing for simplicity, clarity and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism - in this country and around the world. True believers of every stripe - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world.

Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open."

LA Times "Truth Shading" III

To the editor:

Though your article "Rivals Choose Their Numbers Wisely" distorts the balance of spin used by each side in favor of the incumbent, and the fact that Bush repeatedly lied about John Kerry's record, I did appreciate that you did have a separate article on the same page, "Bush 'Not Concerned' About Bin Laden in '02," describing the blatant lie Bush told about how he had never said he was "not concerned" with Bin Laden. What I regret about this separate article, however, is that you failed to state plainly that this is a blatant lie.

One of the reasons Bush tells such blatant lies is that he knows that most of the electorate won't read the paper to do any fact checking after the fact, and that the papers will generally avoid using the words "blatant lie" even when that is the truth of the matter. What Bush also counts on is this strange deferential treatment he has gotten throughout his term in office, where the media avoids holding him accountable for what is for many his recurring and obvious deceitfulness.

I found one specific of your article "Rivals Choose Their Numbers Wisely" particularly frustrating. In two previous letters to the editor, I have argued that the job loss figure Kerry has given throughout the debates (1.6 million jobs lost) is correct, contrary to several claims made by your paper that this is somehow dishonest. Yes: this figure represents private sector job loss only -- because that is all that matters! The issue at hand is the health of the private sector. Government job gains are irrelevant. Government job increases do not reflect the health of the economy, especially when they are paid for by increasing record deficits. There was considerable job creation in the government during the depression!

Eric Anders
Los Angeles

LA Times "Truth Shading" II

To the editor:

As with the VP debate in your article "Rivals' Bold Assertions Are Debatable" from three days ago, today's post-debate fact-checking article—"Kerry, Bush Beat Around the Truth in Debate" (10/9/04)--is egregiously skewed in favor of the current administration. Once again, you present the "beating around the truth" in last night's debate as being balanced between the two candidates--but then, contrary to your headlines and the general claims in the opening of the article, what you show clearly describes a huge imbalance in dishonesty between the two candidates.

For Kerry, the only concrete example you give of actual dishonesty is better explained as sloppy: his suggestion that "sneak and peak" started with the Patriot Act. Does anyone really question that the Patriot Act goes too far in the name of security?

The job loss figure Kerry gave, contrary to the claims made by your paper, is the correct figure for the private sector, which was the issue at hand. Government jobs were not at issue, especially when these jobs are paid for by increasing the deficit and do not reflect the health of the economy at all. In other words, the issue was the state of the economy; there was considerable job creation in the government during the depression!

You also suggest that Kerry was dishonest when he claimed he had shown how he would pay for his campaign promises, and how he would do this while not raising middle-class taxes and cutting the Bush deficit in half in four years. LAT also suggests that cutting back on tax breaks to the rich and closing loop holes to corporations is not enough to do justify such claims. This is debatable, making Kerry's claims debatable, not false or misleading.

Kerry has given several accounts of how his numbers add up, and they add up much better than the numbers the Bush administration have given. Bush administration numbers in the past have, on several occasions and as we all know, added up to big lies, and his campaign-promise numbers add up the same way. Even the conservative Economist, who openly supported W four years ago, argues that Bush's numbers don't add up as well as Kerry's. The Economist did a poll of 100 of the world's top economists asking which candidate's platform is more economically sound. Kerry came out way on top. Kerry is much more honest when it comes to numbers, and much more fiscally conservative, and yet Kerry is the only one mentioned as dishonest on this score in your piece.

More to the point here: Is this all you could come up with for Kerry during the whole debate? All I have is "sneak and peak." If so, we have on our hands one of the most honest candidates in US history. I'm sorry, but this does not rate for me as "beating around the truth." Not even close.

With John Edwards in your piece on the VP debates, all I could come up with was a slight exaggeration, if that: 88.5% of coalition casualties are US, not the 90% stated by Edwards (and by Kerry last night too). "Sneak and peak" and 1.5% exaggeration. Cheney and Bush, on the other hand, lied about extremely important issues of national security.

Just as with the VP debates, LAT bends over backwards to present the "truth shading" as balanced when it is clearly not. With the democrats I see no evidence of outright dishonesty presented in your articles; with the Republicans I see clear evidence of bold-faced lies. With the democrats their slight exaggeration and sloppy or vague claims are actually very close to the truth and not really misleading: the Patriotic Act does impinge citizen's freedoms, and very close to 90% of the so-called coalition's casualties are US casualties.

The Republican's bold-faced lies, on the other hand, are extremely misleading--dangerous even. Their lies support the dangerous myths that they have done a good job at securing the US against terrorist when they clearly have not. As I wrote in my previous letter, this administration was deaf to terror warnings before 9/11, resisted the 9/11 commission and the establishment of a department of homeland security after the attacks, never dealt with Saudi Arabia (or Iran) as a serious geographic base of Islamic terror, have yet to do even the most obvious safeguard of compiling and putting into action a terrorist watch list, redirected massive resources needed for attacking al Qaeda away from operations in South Asia to the Persian Gulf, and in so doing enraged a huge chunk of the Islamic world and alienated our traditional allies, etc., etc.

Their lies give the impression that the Iraq war has been a good thing for our country, that the US economy is doing well, that this administration has been a good thing for the middle class—-all gravely untrue.

One of the bold-faced lies you reported was Bush's claim that 75% of al Qaeda's total membership had been captured or killed. You write that, at best, this has happened for only 67% of al Qaeda's known leaders. There is a huge difference between "known leaders" and "membership" in al Qaeda, a difference that could be in the millions--while sympathy with it's goals is clearly in the hundred millions and growing fast as billions around the world see US forces using serious force in Iraq every day. Bush's claim might lead us to think that 75% of the "war on terror" is done, which is a grave distortion of the truth: the threat to the US from Jihadist terrorists has grown substantially since 9/11, not decreased--growth in sympathy with Al Qaeda and, even more so, in reaction to the insane invasion of Iraq.

In his article "Al Qaeda--Not Iraq--Is the Real Threat," Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies at the conservative CATO Institute, writes:

The "truth is that the al Qaeda terrorist threat does not emanate from Iraq. Al Qaeda has grown from a relatively small group of radical Islamic extremists to a larger ideological movement in the Muslim world. The threat now goes beyond al Qaeda to include a growing number of radical Muslim groups that share at least some of al Qaeda's ideology, but many of which are not directly connected to or formally affiliated with al Qaeda…. ending the U.S. military occupation of Iraq would go a long way towards stemming the tide of growing radical Islamic extremism."

Bush's 75% claim is not "shading the truth" or "beating around" it; this is one of several bold-faced lies told by Bush and Cheney during the debates. These lies endanger a largely confused electorate about what threatens the US, and therefore puts us all at risk. By not reporting these bold-faced lies as such is irresponsible, making the LAT complicitous in those dangers being increased due to its complicity in the deepening of these confusions. As I said in my previous letter, the stakes are too high for the fourth estate to "beat around the truth" in general--and in particular when it comes to the balance between the dishonesty of each candidate.

Eric Anders
Los Angeles

Bush Apologists Are Not "Balanced"

To the producers of "Left, Right, and Center" (LRC):

I've listened to LRC for a long time now, and I was really disappointed by today's show (10/8/04). Please try harder to find someone on the right who is not deranged. Axis-of-evil Frumm was bad, but this guy May....

More to the point, the show will only work if you have someone centrist as moderator, evidenced by today's show. May clearly botched the job. If you lose Bob Sheer because of what happened on the show, you will lose this listener for sure. I wouldn't blame Bob Sheer for leaving the show given May's foolish and offensive antics. Appalling.

Why do the LRC producers seem to think that the right must be represented by a Bush apologist? Does Bush represent all of the right? Certainly not those "Rockefeller" Republicans who hold high the value of fiscal responsibility.

History will probably look back and see this period, our time, as rather troubled, and the Bush administration as an abomination of our so-called democracy. If the truth is that Bush himself is deranged, and that the US is going through a particularly dark period, would responsible journalism require such apologists for journalistic balance? Would an imaginary LRC show in Hitler's Germany require an apologist for Hitler? Though Bush-Hitler comparisons are usually irresponsible for obvious reasons, both for me cleary fall into the deranged category and therefore they and their policies are not worthy of journalistic representation.

It seems to me that NPR could take the journalistic risk of having someone from the right who is not an idiot, who does not compulsively apologize for the lies and misdeeds of Bush and crew--someone who would see Bush as an embarrassment to the right, while supporting rightist values and policies. These people do exist, and you will find links to related articles and sites at my "Letter to Conservatives" post below.

I never thought I'd want to hear Bill Buckley or someone like him on a show so much. John Dean?

Eric Anders
Los Angeles

LA Times "Truth Shading" I

To the editor of the LA Times:

Your article from 10/6, the day after the VP debates, "Rivals' Bold Assertions Are Debatable," was flagrantly unbalanced since your article presents the "truth-shading" by the two debaters as being balanced between the two. The subtitle claims "both are guilty" but the evidence used in your article actually shows is that the truth shading by Edwards was minor at worst--while Cheney's flat out lies were, as ever, egregious.

The article claims "Cheney never flatly asserted that Iraq was complicit in the Sept. 11 plot" but then goes on to give one clear example of how he flatly asserts the connection, a connection he has obviously made countless times. What does he have to say exactly for it to meet your mark of "flat assertion"? "Hussein planned 9/11"? Who doesn't know that the Iraq war is more accepted by Americans if they mistakenly see it as part of a war on terror? Machiavellian Cheney knows this well and has obviously used the lie of a Iraq-9/11 connection very many times, and without any moral reservations, even as tens of thousands die in this illegal war, and the war does nothing to fight those who threaten us, and even makes the US more and more vulnerable to Islamic extremism.

Cheney, as you reported, also lied about capturing or killing "thousands of Al Qaeda" members—another egregious lie with national security at stake, as if the Bush administration has really cared as much about securing our country from terrorists as securing its hold on power. Two American myths: the Bush administration is good on security and Iraq is connected to 9/11. They were deaf to terror warnings before 9/11, resisted the 9/11 commission and the establishment of a department of homeland security after the attacks, never dealt with Saudi Arabia as a serious "geographic base" of Islamic terror, have yet to do even the most obvious safeguard of compiling and putting into action a terrorist watch list, redirected massive resources needed for attacking Al Qaeda away from operations in South Asia and Osama bin Laden to the Persian Gulf, and in so doing enraged a huge chunk of the Islamic world and alienated our traditional allies, etc., etc.

Now, what did Edwards lie about? He said that the US has suffered 90% of the coalition casualties, and the actual figure is 88.5%. Yup: he's a liar all right. And why do you even entertain Cheney's blatant lie that the figure ought to be closer to 50%? The issue was "coalition" deaths, not deaths in general. Even if deaths in general were the issue, that figure would be a lie since it is obvious that--not even counting Iraqi combatant deaths--many more Iraqi civilians have died than American combatants in this war, by a factor of twelve or more as of today (www.iraqbodycount.org).
Why does your paper, and so many other news organizations, seem to bend over backward for this administration? Given the radical nature of this administration and its cult-like following, I think it is way past the time that news media in general need to radically reconsider their conception of journalistic balance. The world is relying on our fourth estate to do just this. The stakes are too high not to do so.

Eric Anders
Los Angeles, CA

A letter to conservative voters

Hello conservative voters,

I am a liberal. My guess is that most conservatives would not be too moved if they heard me go on and on about how Bush is, quoting one of the conservative authors below, "a dangerous, profligate, moralizing radical."

So I am sending these articles with the hope that the conservatives who do read them might be more open to the anti-Bush views of other conservatives, and other Republicans ... more open to their pleas not to vote for Bush this November. 

Both liberals and conservatives agree that this time around the stakes are extremely high. Let's try and get these articles out there so at least there can be some more thought and exchange on whether George W. Bush or John F. Kerry is the better person for the job.

Obviously, I believe Kerry is by far the better choice, but for this letter I will defer to the conservatives below to make arguments in that direction.

Thanks for your time, Eric Anders

**************

Why conservatives must not vote for Bush, by Doug Bandow

"A Reaganite argues that Bush is a dangerous, profligate, moralizing radical -- and that his reelection would be catastrophic both for the right and for America."

**************

Anti-War Republicans: A Telling Shift in Allegiance, by Eileen McNamara

**************

Rock-ribbed Republican -- and anti-Bush, by Michelle Goldberg

The newest, most outspoken critics of the war on terrorism and Iraq are conservatives.

**************

The Conservative Case Against George Bush, by William Bryk

**************

Some Web Sites to explore ......

Republicans Against Bush

Another "Republicans Against Bush" web site

And even more Republicans Against Bush

Find a Republicans Against Bush group near you

Republicans For Kerry

Conservatives for Kerry

Conservatives Against Bush

Mothers Against Bush (and mothers are always right)

Arab-American Republicans Against Bush

Homosexual Republicans Against Bush

NH Republicans who want other NH Republicans to "skip Bush"

More Conservatives Against Bush

... And More Conservatives Against Bush

... And More Conservatives Against Bush

Terror War(ning) as Political Hay

On May 26th, Daniel Schorr's NPR commentary "Terror War as Political Hay" suggested many things about the Bush administration's use of the "war on terror" and terror warnings as "political hay," but as usual stopped short of saying that Bush and Co. has been lying all along about the U.S. war in Iraq being the "central front in the war on terror." Bush recently repeated this lie at my alma mater, the US Air Force Academy.

Schorr reminds us that most Americans think that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks, even though anyone who is the least bit knowledgeable about these matters knows there is no connection whatsoever. Schorr does not make it clear that the Iraq-9/11 connection is one of the BIG LIES of Bush and Co. Instead of calling Bush's repeated assertions that the war in Iraq is the "central front in the war on terror" (or his treatment of a connection between 9/11 and Iraq as a given) simply what they are--bold-faced lies--Schorr calls these assertions an "ideological fixation," suggesting that Bush and Co. actually believe their own lies. Wrong. These are simply lies made by people who know they are lying.

With regard to terror warnings, Schorr points out that Bush's claim about Iraq being the "central front in the war on terror" contradicts Ashcroft's and Mueller's recent dire warning that Al Qaeda plans a major attack on the U.S. this summer. Schorr's point is a good one: if the war in Iraq is so central, does that make the fight against Al Qaeda a marginal concern?

But this is not Schorr's central concern when it comes to the recent terror warning. Rather, Schorr points out that Bush's popularity has been steadily dropping as the situation in Iraq gets worse for U.S. forces in Iraq, and for the administration. Bush's approval rating on Iraq is at 40%, an all-time low, while the U.S. public's disapproval of his handling of the Abu Ghraib scandal is at a "dramatic 57%" (I think Schorr means dramatically high, but 57% seems dramatically low to me).

Schorr ends his commentary by simply pointing out that, when it comes to "dealing with terrorists," Bush leads Kerry 52 to 39% in the polls. Thus, "intended or not," Bush is helped politically when dire terror warnings are issued at press conferences by members of the Bush administration.

Schorr refrains from saying out right that the warning was not based on increased intelligence "chatter," that the warning, in other words, was issued to raise Bush's approval ratings as the election draws nigh.

But Schorr must have written his commentary before we learned that Tom Ridge, the director of Homeland Security, was informed about the supposedly raised terror threat at the same time as the rest of us were. Let's make this clear: Ashcroft and Mueller issued the warning at a press conference and Ridge did not know about it. Prior to announcement, Ridge was actually playing down the threat level. But now, after some damage control among the members of the board of Bush and Co., Ridge and Ashcroft have come out saying that the Justice Department and Homeland Security are now on the same page.

Again, Ridge is the director of Homeland Security. Wouldn't Ridge have been in the loop if the threat were real?

We might also ask why Ashcroft, our attorney general, would be giving such news conferences, and not Ridge? The FBI is part of Justice, and they supposedly found the new intelligence ... which, by the way, has since been seriously called into question, if not completely discredited. We might also ask why the terror alert level was not raised when Ashcroft and Mueller discovered all this evidence of dire threats? Ridge, it would seem, should have some say in terror alert levels. That's his department.

The answer, it seems to me, is pretty clear: Bush and Co. are, as Schorr suggests, using terror warnings to make political hay. It is difficult to fathom how irresponsible this is--how unethical this is, how hateful. If the U.S. is attacked, I hope those who are attacked have not been in any way dulled by Bush and Co.'s cries of wolf.

Another impeachable offense, it would seem.

I wish the 52% who think Bush is better on terror than Kerry would think about a few basic ideas. The war in Iraq is not part of the war on terror. The U.S. war in Iraq has been fanning the flames of Arab and Muslim hatred of the U.S., and increases U.S. insecurity with respect to Jihadist terror.

Using terror warnings to make political hay is so reprehensible ... it is hard to see straight as I write. Obviously, false warnings gravely increase our homeland insecurity. When it comes to getting their way, Bush and Co. seriously don't seem to care how many lives they put in harms way, Iraqi or American.

War Criminals

It is hard to believe that Bush, Rumsfeld, and Powell did not know about the torturing at Abu Ghraib prior to the publication of the photos. According to Seymour Hersh, Rummy not only knew, but encouraged zealous measures of attaining intelligence through his direct orders. In case you missed it, here is Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that, if this is so, they are all guilty of war crimes. Powell has a history of trying to cover up war crimes.

Powell's history with My Lai, and some more funky stuff related to Abu Ghraib below.

In "Bush: Dumb Like A Bullet ... Is Dubya both a bumbling simpleton *and* a shrewd manipulator who smirked at tortures in Iraq?", Mark Morford gives us a great read that ties together some articles that cover otherwise grossly under-reported topics.

In that bastion of liberal values, The NY Post, we can read that the sex-capades of the MPs in Abu Ghraib weren't merely a routine part of the sadistic war crimes committed against Iraqi inmates. Rather, it seems that the sanctioned sadism of the prisons environment actually turned the MPs on ... and they made some Abu Ghraib pornos ... that, along with more evidence of extreme prisoner abuse, are now being kept from public view.

In a previous post ("On American Abuse of Prisoners 1"), I tried to link some of the sadism of Abu Ghraib to my experience with the "training" at the US Air Force Academy. It is interesting to note that this Academy is also under investigation for many unreported rapes. I dated one of my female classmates after we graduated, and she confirmed my suspicion that sexual abuse and rape were much more common there than than the official story led us to believe. It seems that where you have sanctioned sadism, supposedly in the service of some higher good ("training" future officers, saving American lives in Iraq), aggressive (and what might normally be transgressive) sexuality seems to be let loose.

But back to the war criminals in higher office. If Rumsfeld gave the order, he is most likely guilty of a war crime. If he knew, he is at least guilty of purgery. Jail, not just impeachment, should be in his future ... but won't be, as we all know.

And Bush probably knew too. Or, he was told and didn't do anything about it. He may have forgotten, or not understood completely, but this won't hold up in court.

Yes, Powell knew too, and he makes it clear that Bush knew. Before we start respecting Powell because he doesn't get along with Rummy, and is kept out of the loop with the leaders of Bush and Co., we might consider that he is implicated in yet another cover up of a war crime, as he was with My Lai.

Disgusting stuff.

On American Abuse of Prisoners II

The people who committed these crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- the junior officers and enlisted personnel, the contractors -- should be tried and then punished if they are found guilty of war crimes. But the chain of command should be punished as well--and all the way to the top, which is Bush, not Rumsfeld. Why doesn't the buck stop with the military's commander-in-chief? A year ago Bush was playing it up big on the deck of that battleship. As expected, he only takes credit for what he sees as the good things the military does, while hiding coffins at Andrews AFB from the media. The buck should stop with Bush, the leader of the military, not his secretary. Of course, it is clear that Bush and Co. won't accept this buck at all. And I will be surprised if Rumsfeld resigns, since he is one of the two primary players in this oligarchical madhouse.

They are all guilty of war crimes, just as the generals in charge of the Nazi concentrations camps were. Had Hitler lived, he would have been tried at Nuremburg and held responsible for the holocaust, even if he had claimed not to have had a hands-on style of leadership, and claimed not to have known about the crimes--as Bush asserts. Just yesterday, Rumsfeld claimed that he didn't know about the prisoner abuse until only a week ago. Blatant lie: Powell, the Red Cross, and many generals all knew. Given his very hands-on style of running things, there is no way that Rumsfeld didn't know of something like this for over a year. That's how long ago the first reports started coming in.

Shades of Iran-contra: Republicans saying they didn't know about it, that this wasn't how they led, and an imbecile in charge claiming he didn't know. We should recall that Bush and Co. started their term by, among other things, undermining the International Criminal Court, the very court that would try them for these war crimes. The war itself is illegal -- a war crime. It is hard to get troops to take the Geneva Convention seriously if the war they are involved in doesn't respect international law, and the leaders themselves have repeatedly avoided backing international legal institutions--the Geneva Conventions in particular.

Bush and Co. have a history of disrespecting the Geneva Conventions. A USA Today article claims that Rumsfeld hasn't even admitted that what happened at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and in Afghanistan violate the Geneva Conventions. But here he betrays his knowledge of the conventions when it comes to US POWs. The double standard supports the dehumanization of Iraqi POWs.

Leadership was the problem with the prisoner abuse, along with a criminally absurd ideological backdrop: thinking of these Iraqi people as "terrorists" (though most of them are innocent according to the LA Times today, 5/11, front page), as guilty before proven innocent, even though this war, despite the Orwellian twists of Bush and Co., obviously has nothing to do with fighting terrorism and again is itself a crime of which Bush and Co. are guilty. Anyone fighting the US occupation of Iraq is labeled a "terrorist." In Afghanistan, when the US employed Bin Laden to help fight off the Soviet occupation, he and his band of Jihadists were called "freedom fighters," and Bin Laden was praised by the US and given LOTS of money.

I imagine that these junior officers and enlisted people felt their actions were justified (at least partially) because they believed they were in a war connected to 9/11. But the connection between the war in Iraq and the "war on terror" is one BIG LIE, among many others, that sets up an ideological backdrop which encourages these types of abuses. As "terrorists," the Iraqis can easily be rationalized as sub-human.

The Bush administration is directly culpable for this lie, and for this ideological backdrop, as is the media for not being more critical of all the obvious lies (the words "Bush lies about ..." are nowhere to be found in the popular media since 2000, even though his lies are well documented elsewhere). There is so much confusion out there that the media could do a lot more to clear up, rather than pandering to Bush and Co. For example, few Americans realize that Al Qaeda and Saddam were mortal enemies, and that Saddam, a Sunni, imprisoned many Sunni Jihadists. Saddam would usually just kill the Shiite Jihadists, since, as with the Wahhabis and Al Qaeda, he seemed to hate Shiites more than he hated Americans (see "The Saudi Paradox" by Princton Professor Michael Doran).

To say Saddam and Bin Laden somehow worked together is a blatant lie. They despised almost everything the other stood for. Maybe they had common anti-Shiite, anti-American, and anti-Isreal interests at certain times (though not at other times: see photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the late 80s), but they hated and feared each other as much as they hated and feared the US. Again this lie, the lie that we are fighting "terror" in Iraq, is directly related to the abuse at the prison, as these soldiers mistakenly believed that what they were doing was a part of "protecting America against terrorism." Total BS: the US-Iraq war clearly makes the world much more dangerous for Americans with respect to Jihadist or Islamic terrorism. The focus Bush and Co. put on secular Saddam blurs what should be a focus on Jihadists.

Al Qaeda has wanted regime change in Iraq (and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.) for decades. So the US has at least twice had common interests with Bin Laden: Afghanistan and Iraq. If we follow Bush's logic of guilt-by-association, doesn't this make us guilty of terrorism? Here's a dangerous thought: if we wanted to bring the "war on terror" to the middle east, then Saudi Arabia--home of 15 of the hijackers, and home of the state-sponsored form of Jihadist Islam, Wahhabism, which all of the hijackers and Bin Laden followed--would seem a more likely target. Not that I would support such a war either. Bush and Co., however, are too entangled with Saudi oil not to protect Saudi Arabia from such a simple (and simplistic) conclusion (see House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger). Why the media doesn't investigate the Saudi-Bush connection, the Saudi Jihadists of the Wahhabi faith and their state-sponsored dissemination of their Jihadism (see Doran), and the connection of all this to 9/11, I cannot for the life of me figure out.

Generally speaking, a "war on terror" is a stupid and untenable idea, one that fits in with W's simplistic world view (Good/Evil, Freedom/"Terra"), a world view he is unfortunately succeeding at selling with the help of greedy media conglomerates with editors who certainly know better, or should. His ulterior motive of toppling Iraq (revenge for Father's loss to Clinton, oil grab, and I don't know what else compels him to sacrifice so many lives -- but certainly not democracy in the ME) is also being sold as connected to this war on terror. How this bunch of single-minded "neo-cons" gets away with all of this is amazing to me. More terrifying and tragic than amazing, really.

Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of the "neo-con" oligarchy ... but don't hold your breath. Forty-five percent of the US population seem intent on following this or some similar type of "evil" weirdness. We seem to be living during a time when denial and extreme ideology is still as much a part of the American scene as when we killed millions of southeast Asians to protect them from communism. If I were religious, I'd ask God to help us, and protect the rest of the world from our weirdnesses. But I'm not, so I just write really long posts to vent.

On American Abuse of Prisoners I

I was just listening to the reports from Iraq and was reminded of my own training to be both a guard and a prisoner of war at the Air Force Academy during the summer program called S.E.R.E. ("seary": survival, evasion, resistance, escape).

The "resistance" and "escape" part of the training, lasting about a week or so, took place in a very elaborate mock POW camp in the mountains above the Academy. When I went through the program as a new sophomore (just after recovering from a broken jaw with six weeks of wires and very little food), the POW part of the training came after the survival and evasion parts, which amounted to two weeks of even less sustenance than I received while my jaw was wired shut. So I was already delirious, but I remember a variety of sadistic abuses, often in the form of mind games and humiliation. It was a horrible experience, but I imagine it might have prepared me to be in the position some of the Iraqi prisoners have unfortunately found themselves in.

A year after I went through the training as a prisoner, I was chosen to be a guard in the POW camp to facilitate the training of the class one year behind me. Whatever training we guards-to-be may have gotten on how to play the mind games, to humiliate, to be the sadists they wanted us to be, this training paled in comparison to what happened the year we spent venting our pent up hostilities on the members of the class behind us, since we spent the whole year "training" them to be cadets. Our pent up hostilities exploded during our year of inflicting abuse, which ended with a "hell week" that put hundreds in the hospital and provoked congress to terminate the very old tradition of hell week. This year-long "training" is really an extended course on the type of sadism that permeates the Academies, and has done so since well before my grandfather was hazed in 1924 during his "plebe" year at the Naval Academy.

I have no recollection of learning the Geneva Conventions and their rules on the treatment of prisoners during my training. We probably got it though. I just don't remember. I do remember learning about the "Stanford syndrome," where a mock POW camp was created at Stanford and the people involved in this unethical experiment ended up delusional about the reality of the environment and their role in it--i.e., they started believing they were in fact guards in a prison, and the people they were treating so sadistically deserved what they were getting. The prisoners fell into similar delusions, though of the masochistic kind. I remember being surprised and ashamed when I discovered that I was not as immune to this syndrome as I thought I would be.

I find it ironic and tragic that people might believe Rumsfeld's line that the abuse Americans are dishing out to Iraqi prisoners is somehow un-American. The kind of sadism that we are hearing about is actually a rather standard and traditional part of military training. I imagine that most Americans are vulnerable to the fantasies that torturers are only to be found among Nazis, or (in the racist version of these fantasies) in Latin American, Japanese or Vietnamese prison camps. I was disturbed by how familiar the photo of the strutting, smiling female guard with naked Iraqi men behind her was for me. It reminded me of my very American "training."

I was reminded of how I had to learn to "resist" the torture inflicted on my by my captors. In order to learn how to teach this lesson, to teach "resistance," someone, the teacher, has to become an expert in torture. The US has many such experts. Many of them, as many of you know, work at what is known as the Army's "School of the Americas," recently given the Orwellian name of the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation." As Mary Turck puts it in her article:

"What do Col. Byron Lima Estrada of Guatemala, Lt. Josê Espinoza Guerra and General Juan Orlando Zepeda, both of El Salvador, and General Juan López Ortiz of Mexico have in common?

They are all murderers. They were all trained at the School of the Americas. Because of them, and because of thousands of others like them, many people call the U.S. Army's School of the Americas the "School of Assassins."

And what do Panama's Manuel Noriega, Argentina's Leopoldo Galtiere, Peru's Juan Velasco Alvarado, Ecuador's Guillermo Rodriguez, and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer have in common? They have all been dictators in their countries, and they were all trained at the School of the Americas. Because of them, and others, many people call the U.S. Army's School of the Americas the "School of Coups."

The School of the Americas (SOA) is a military training school for Latin American soldiers. SOA is an official program of the U.S. government, funded by the government and run by the U.S. Armed Forces since 1946. SOA graduates have long been implicated in terrorism, human rights violations, coercion, and atrocities committed against civilian populations across Latin America."

You can see the rest of the article at the web site below. My basic reason for sending this article is to give everyone a sense of how very American it is to torture, humiliate, terrorize, and not follow the Geneva Convention--which means how American it is to commit war crimes. There is a well-documented history of this for those who aren't blinded by their patriotism and their delusional John Wayne Americas.

What seems so scary now is that Jihadists around the world now have an even stronger case that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, led by a former oil man, is a racist, power grab, "naked aggression" (as Bush senior said of Iraq years ago), an illegal occupation with the goal of gaining more control over Arab resources, the second largest known oil reserves in the world. I am embarrassed that a year ago I was fooled into believing the WMD threat was real, and that I wasn't more against the invasion then. Perhaps my "training" clouded my judgement. Excuses, excuses.

Saudi Arabia - some grossly under-reported topics

Dear (various liberal-leaning members of the press),

I am writing because I am hoping someone will take the lead on a story that I feel is grossly under-reported:

Saudi Arabia, Bush's connection to it, and its connection to terrorism via Wahhabism.

The basic questions:

Has President Bush been avoiding putting pressure on Saudi Arabia due to his and his family's long-term connection to Saudi Arabia?

The complexity of this topic, of course, is great, but the basic question of why so little media attention has been put on Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism is unbelievable ... and dangerous. Al Qaeda is Wahhabi. All of the hijackers were Wahhabis--a brand of Islam that is unfortunately infused with Jihadism and hatred for the West, US, Jews, and Shiites.

Could someone please write an article or do a show on how the Wahhabis get money from the House of Saud, and use this money to spread a particularly virulent form of anti-Western hatred to other Muslim countries?

Again, this stuff is so complicated. According to Michael Scott Doran("The Saudi Paradox"), Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Wahhabis hate the Shiites as much, if not more, than they hate Americans and Jews. Bin Laden didn't really care all that much about Palestine and hated Sadaam, Mubarek, etc.

Doran also points out that the interior minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Nayef, is beholden to radical Wahhabi clerics, and he is the one the Bush administration ultimately relies on to ferret out terrorists in Saudi Arabia. This is a criminal irony, and it seems that Bush's motivation is to avoid putting any kind of pressure on the Sauds and Saudis to do something serious about Saudi terrorists, and about Wahhabism or internal terrorist cells.

Any so-called "war on terrorism" that does not engage seriously with Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism is a joke. Serious engagement does not have to include invasion, as suggested by John Baer in his book, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude. Baer seems to forget that "Our Soul" would not buy much crude, and his hawkish, CIA-style "solutions" are reactionary at best.

Please report on the Saudi's, Wahhabism, and House of Bush's connection to the House of Saud (see Craig Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud : The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties). Bin Laden and fifteen highjackers are Saudis and Wahhabis! US money funds the house of Saud, which has been beholden to Wahhabism since the 18th C. Indirectly the US funds Al Qaeda and their Wahhabi cronies. Bush claims the primary front of the war on terror is in Iraq. What an obvious and grotesque lie, though never mentioned as such by the press. Saudi Arabia will prove to be the most dangerous hot-bed of terrorism--as if 15 of the 19 hijackers didn't already show this.

I've listed some references and possible guest speakers for the show below.

Sincerely,

Eric Anders