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Tuesday, March 28, 2006 |
William Fisher | Biscuits, Anyone?. Biscuit are comprised of teams consisting of military psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, and other health care professionals. Their role, it has been charged by former Guantanamo interrogators, is to advise the military on ways of increasing psychological duress on detainees to make them more cooperative and willing to provide information. Aren't forensic psychiatrists physicians? Aren't they, as well as behavioral science specialists and prison psychologists, governed by the ethical rules of their professions? There is nothing ethical about advising interrogators about how to "break" detainees, writes William Fisher. [t r u t h o u t]
12:50:32 PM 
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Retired Generals Want Scalia Off Gitmo Case
Staff and agencies
27 March, 2006
25 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked Monday to stay out of a case involving a foreign detainee because of remarks Scalia made about the rights of enemy combatants.
Justices were hearing arguments Tuesday in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden . His lawyers argue that President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered Hamdan and other alleged enemy combatants to face special military trials.
The retired generals said Scalia[OE]s speech in Switzerland "give rise to the unfortunate appearance that ... the justice had made up his mind about the merits" of Hamdan[OE]s arguments.
The retired generals said that the justice may have "personal animus" to the Hamdan case because he has a son who served in the military in Iraq .
Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees could use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. Scalia disagreed with that ruling, and in the recent speech repeated his beliefs that enemy combatants have no legal rights.
The letter came from five retired generals and admirals: Navy Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter; Navy Rear Adm. John D. Hutson; Vice Adm. Lee F. Gunn; Marine Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms; and Army Brig. Gen. James P. Cullen.
12:42:05 PM
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Published on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 by TruthDig
The White House that Cried Wolf
by Molly Ivins
The Pentagon has once again investigated itself! And[~]have a seat, get the smelling salts, hold all hats[~]the Pentagon has once again concluded the Pentagon did absolutely nothing wrong and will continue to do so.
In this particularly fascinating case, the Pentagon investigated its own habit of paying people to make up lies about how well the war in Iraq is going, and then paying other people to put those lies in the Iraqi media, thus fooling the Iraqis into thinking everything in their country is tickety-boo. Well, if we can[base ']t fool them, whom can we fool?
The case revolves around a contract worth several million dollars given by the U.S. military command in Baghdad to the Lincoln Group, a public relations outfit started by two young entrepreneurs, one British, one American, in 2003 in Iraq. Articles were written by American military personnel from the American point of view about the war, to wit, it[base ']s going well. Lincoln Group in turn paid Iraqi journalists, some [base "]on retainer,[per thou] to print the articles without revealing the source.
Amusingly enough, through other programs, the U.S. government is also spending money trying to teach Iraqis about the importance of a free press in a democracy. According to the Pentagon[base ']s investigation of itself, none of the Lincoln Group[base ']s actions violate military policies because the Pentagon is just trying to counter the vast amount of anti-American propaganda carried in Middle Eastern papers.
While I think this is the best Pentagon-investigating-itself case of the week, I have to admit it[base ']s like the Oscars[~]these investigations are so hard to compare to comedy and tragedy, documentary and animated shorts. Also featured this week is the case of the Abu Ghraib dog handler, a 24-year-old sergeant who was convicted for tormenting detainees. The dog was not convicted, on the theory that it was just acting on orders.
Despite the huge international outcry over torture, so far the heavy-hitters in the plot receiving real red, white and blue justice are Lynndie England, a 5-foot-tall, 23-year-old woman with learning disabilities and other non-commissioned officers. They were clearly the mastermind behind the entire international stink fest, from Gitmo to Afghanistan. England was put in prison for three years. Her baby boy will be walking and talking by the time Ms. England finishes doing her time, but no one in the upper ranks is responsible for anything that[base ']s happened.
In the unfortunate case of the Black Room reported in The New York Times, we taxpayers seem to have been charged with the cost of refurbishing one of Saddam Hussein[base ']s military bases into [base "]a top secret detention center.[per thou] One former torture chamber is now an [base "]interrogation cell[per thou] used by Special Operations forces. [base "]In the windowless, jet-black garage-sized room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball.[per thou] I say, this time, let[base ']s indict the dogs.
Of course, there is always the same depressing coda to new accounts of torture and mistreatment of prisoners by American troops[~]no useful information was acquired.
With all these horrifying details surfacing ("No Blood, No Foul[per thou] was the slogan at the Special Operations forces[base '] Camp Nama), you may wonder why I return to the case of the chipper newspaper articles. I find them deeply symbolic, certainly paradigmatic and possibly even plangent, a word that[base ']s hard to work into a newspaper column. Quite some time after we had invaded Iraq, our government informed us we had done so in order to bring democracy to their nation. Originally, we were told we had to invade their country because there were tons of weapons of mass destruction therein, but they turned out not to be there. So, through a process of masterly media manipulation, we went from Saddam[base ']s nuclear program to democracy. It seems to me this is how George W. Bush and Co. govern, period. It[base ']s a Karl Rove thing. When reality is unsatisfactory, just manipulate the media.
You can[base ']t deny that the process has excellent results. It wins elections, for one thing. It confuses our critics and turns debate away from what we might loosely call [base "]the truth[per thou] and into pointless fistfights about whether Iraq has descended, is descending or might descend into civil war.
"HOW DARE YOU CALL IT A CIVIL WAR[~]YOU[base ']RE JUST LENDING COMFORT TO OUR ENEMIES.[per thou]
[base "]LOOKS LIKE A CIVIL WAR TO ME.[per thou]
[base "]DOES NOT[~]WHERE[base ']S LEE, WHERE[base ']S GRANT?[per thou]
[base "]DOES SO!"
This is not helpful dialogue[~]remember the fight over whether there was an [base "]insurgency[per thou] in Iraq or the Mission was still Accomplished, it was just [base "]remnant Baathists and foreign terrorists[per thou]? That was a mirror of the arguments we had at home over whether President Bush could be described as a [base "]friend[per thou] of Ken Lay[base ']s or whether he is [base "]close[per thou] to Tom DeLay or [base "]knows[per thou] Jack Abramoff. Likewise, entire policy discussions would get subsumed by furious debate over whether Bush[base ']s proposals meant [base "]privatization[per thou] of Social Security or were merely [base "]personal accounts.[per thou]
Grabbing reality by the throat and forcing it into a form you find more pleasing than reality itself is not only a great election strategy, it works for a lot of people on a lot of levels in life[~]denial is a good game while it lasts.
But as we can all attest, if you ignore reality, sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. I suspect the [base "]tough-minded[per thou] (they pride themselves on being tough-minded) members of the Bush administration think they are not ignoring reality, but just persuading other people to ignore it long enough to allow them to change it. This is not an original thought. Many of the great thumb-suckers of D.C. have come to the same conclusion and pondered deeply on the [base "]fatal hubris[per thou] of this administration. Fatal jackasses are what we have.
Faced with the unappetizing reality of Iraq, Bush and Rove are relying on that grand old reliable strategy[~]attack the media. It doesn[base ']t play as well as it used to. Everyone who wants an alternative reality is already watching Fox News. The rest of the country is worried.
Let me hasten to admit that I have no solution[~]I have tried to be constructive over the course of this war, but I[base ']m flat out of ideas. I haven[base ']t an earthly clue whether it would be better if we up and left or if we sat and stayed. What I am sure of is that none of us will figure that out until we stop pretending, until we take a long, cold hard look at the reality on the ground. Then someone needs to level with us about what it will cost to stay, in lives and dollars and, God help us, goodwill.
In a Washington Monthly book review, I found a suggestion that we copy Cold War tactics on terrorism and practice [base "]containment[per thou] rather than this War of Good vs. Evil, Battlestar Galactica bull. But that requires someone who will level with the people. And the more this administration plays games with definitions of democracy and weasel wording about torture, the less they can be believed about anything. Like the boy who cried wolf, someday they[base ']re going to tell the truth, and no one will believe them.
Meantime, let us all enjoy the game of Pentagon-investigates-itself.
Just remember, sooner or later, we[base ']ll have to indict the dogs.
11:14:25 AM
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Craig Crawford: Nice Try, Mr. President. Five reasons why Andrew Card's departure doesn't help President Bush: - He wasn't the problem. Hardly the most powerful chief of staff in presidential history, Card was a glorified scheduler who took a back seat to Vice President Dick Cheney and his own supposed deputy, Karl Rove.
- This is no shakeup. Even some Republicans on Capitol Hill were calling for a "gray beard" -- a former member of Congress or someone high profile from outside the White House -- to replace Card with a portfolio to fire others.
- Josh Bolten is no "gray beard." The OMB director might not sit in the West Wing, but he is inside the bubble of this White House, and lacks the background and friendships on Capitol Hill that GOP leaders were hoping for in a new chief of staff.
- Finger in the levee syndrome. Just as firing Michael Brown as FEMA chief failed to stem criticism of the administration's Katrina handling, trying to create the impression of change with the Card-to-Bolten maneuver could only serve to provoke more calls for more change.
- Ousted staffers tend to take revenge. While Card is loyal to the Bush family, he has strong ties on background to many in the news media. Any frustrations he might feel are likely to come out over time.
-- crawfordslist
 [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
10:16:23 AM
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Patt Morrison: ''Terrorism Cleanup in the Produce Aisle''.
Thank you, Alberto Gonzales, and John Ashcroft before you. I count my tax dollars well spent if they've gone to battle this scourge, this specter:
Vegeterrorism.
I was in Austin yesterday and I opened the paper to see a story -- by a Los Angeles Times colleague of mine, as it turns out -- about something that happened right here at the University of Texas.
``The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show,'' my colleague's story went.
Earlier this month, the story said, an FBI counterterrorism official had been showing slides to a law school class mere miles from where I was sitting Monday, wearing my jammies and eating whole wheat toast. The slides listed militia, Islamist and neo-Nazi groups, and one slide labeled ''Anarchism'' showed some federal analyst's list of groups that people bent on terrorism might cozy up to.
Among them was Food Not Bombs, which among other tasks serves vegetarian food to the homeless.
Thank goodness the FBI has a lock on the hated Al Kohlrabi group, and its demented leader, Granola bin Laden.
Is this the real reason that Bush I hated broccoli?
Here we go again, conflating dissent with disloyalty. In the Cold War, Indiana insisted on loyalty tests from pro wrestlers. I guess it wasn't un-American to do fake headlocks, just to think pinko while doing it.
What does this mean for vegans like Kinky Friedman, the musician-author-independent candidate for Texas governor, who's corresponded with Dubya and spent a night in the Bush White House? I visited his Austin headquarters later that same day, but he wasn't around for me to ask him, WWKD - What Would Kinky Do?
As a vegetarian who is probably already on some right-wing enemies list for what I write, shall I now find myself on another list for what I eat - or won't eat?
Are people like me un-American, and therefore anti-American, for not wanting to kill blameless animals just to keep this human animal sated? For not being as one with Hypertensive-Americans making daily pilgrimage to Burgerland Inc.? Are all the reasons to be a vegetarian - the animals' health, my health, the extravagantly wasteful means of acquiring protein that meat represents - politically suspect or downright unpatriotic?
A lot of really wonderful Americans say they don't worry about the government watching them, because they're not doing anything wrong. Who gets to define ''wrong''? In the Cold War, you could be kept out of a government job for giving the ``wrong'' answers to questions like, ''What do you think of female chastity?'' A scientist was kept off a government panel because he was arrested at a protest to integrate a swimming pool. Does that ring a very recent and very loud bell?
It sounds funny, on the face of it, feds monitoring the dispensers of vegetarian meals. But don't be fooled -- we're not talking aren't small potatoes.
 [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
10:14:25 AM
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Kevin Phillips: Time to Recall Bush?. Two years ago in American Dynasty, I suggested that George W. Bush, if re-elected, might well face impeachment in his second term as the debacle in Iraq deepened. This has come to pass, and not surprisingly because American presidents since World War Two -- Truman over Korea and Johnson and Nixon over Vietnam -- faced similar rumblings when wars went poorly or were clearly mismanaged.
Still, the talk did not become action, and even Nixon's 1974 impeachment did not extend to the Vietnam war. The odds, then, are that the talk of impeaching George W. Bush over mismanagement in Iraq or national security excesses at home won't go anywhere either. The Democrats in Congress are right to suspect that such a move could open a political version of Pandora's box.
Back in 1998, the GOP-led crusade to impeach Bill Clinton certainly did. The clumsiness of the GOP effort also wound up focusing attention on the moral hypocrisy of certain Republican leaders in the House of Representatives whose peccadilloes were on a par with Clinton's. It is all too easy to imagine a clumsy Democratic-led impeachment efflort creating a backlash in which that party's own war and national security-related skills become a GOP target and wind up distracting the public from George W. Bush's own incompetence.
This raises another critical point. For all that opinion polls show that incompetence is the word voters most often associate with Bush, incompetence is not a high crime or misdemeanor of the sort generally considered grounds for impeachment. Should Bush become incompetent for causes not existing at the time of his election -- a series of strokes damaging his memory, for example -- that would probably be covered under the disability provisions of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But that is not the kind of incompetence perceived in the current polls.
The 25th Amendment might also apply if a president became religiously delusional -- for example, insisting on going to church two or three times a day to make certain God kept providing him with timely advice and instructions. Indeed, George W. Bush may have some simiular delusions -- in 1999 he told groups of preachers that God wanted him to run for president, and similar comments, mostly hearsay, have been reported from time to time since then. In 2004, the Lancaster New Era reported that Bush spoke as follows to a private gathering of Pennsylvania Amish: " I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job."
That comment certainly raises major questions. But even if they were overt and deemed potential subject matter for the 25th Amendment, under present law the issue would have to be raised by a majority of Bush's Cabinet members. That would be unlikely, and with the alleged behavior not entirely established, even the press has not gotten very interested.
Which bring me to the remedy sought a few years back when Californians got tired of their governor, Gray Davis. Under state law, they were able to mount a recall effort that took away his job. To set up a simular federal mechanism, a constitutional amendment would seem necessary, and that could not happen overnight. Still, with impeachment losing credibility as a constitutiional remedy, the possibilility of having an "incompetent" president with a 35% job approval rating in office for almost three more years represents enough of a threat to an unhappy and beleaguered United States that a wide-ranging debate is in order.
-- Kevin Phillips
 [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
10:11:17 AM
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Nigeria Says Warlord Has Disappeared. FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, March 28 [~] Confusion reigned today over the status of Charles G. Taylor, the onetime warlord who became president of Liberia and who is wanted for war crimes by an international court for atrocities affecting Sierra Leone during neighboring Liberia's civil war. By LYDIA POLGREEN. [NYT > Home Page]
7:52:26 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.
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