"Proud to be an American?"

This lengthy NYT article about US military prisoner abuse in Afghanistan leaves no doubt: Our military is no different from other nations'. It is a cruel tool of a war-mongering empire that is due to fail as have all others before it because of the inherently bestial nature of war. We were taught, as citizens of previous empires were taught, that we have a special place in history, that we are a benign force. Wrong. We're not only not special, we're more dangerous than any previous force because of our global dominance.

I pray for all of us--for America, sure; but more urgently for the rest of the world.

Baghdad seething

Riverbend's latest post, describing Condi Rice as The Vampire and relating the horror of car bombs in Baghdad, concludes with this compelling observation:

Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted and generally being treated like animals trapped in a small cage. At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That's not to say that all troops disrespect Islam- some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.

By doing such things, this war is taken to another level- it is no longer a war against terror or terrorists- it is, quite simply, a war against Islam and even secular Muslims are being forced to take sides.

We have guided missles, why can't they?

It's a bit chilling, but it seems the insurgency in Iraq has found a way to make sure their car bombs get to the target. Duct tape.

"The officer said that in two of the recent Baghdad bombings, investigators
had found indications that the men driving the cars had been bound with duct
tape before the attacks. He said the foot of one of the attackers, in a
marketplace bombing last week that killed 22 people in south Baghdad, had been
found taped to his vehicle's accelerator. In another case, the officer said, the
attacker's hands were taped to the vehicle's
wheel.
"The implication was that those planning the
attacks wanted to be sure that the vehicles would continue to their targets even
if the drivers were killed by American or Iraqi gunfire as they
approached."

Modern medicine, modern war

There have been various reports of this before, but here's a chilling one: The prevalence of brain trauma among US soldiers who're wounded in Iraq. Our modern medicine saves their lives, keeping them from being counted as war dead, but at what cost?

What does it take

for the "smoking gun" story to get legs. For weeks (two-plus, now) bloggers have been beating the drum about the "fix the facts" memo that surfaced in Britain and so far, besides some random mentions, nothing, nada, nichts, in any MSM publication, including cable TV. Maybe the publication of the entire memo in the NYT Review of Books will change that, but I wouldn't hold my breath, especially in light of Newsweek's recent cave-in on the Koran-flushing story.

If Nixon had managed equally to cow the press, he'd have served out his term and been hailed as a much-maligned leader of the free world.

My hope: The Bushies weather all of these early storms, only to have all the revelations pile up at the end of his term so that he leaves in disgrace and his Republican successor loses to anybody in a landslide.

Surprise, surprise

Rummie, and now Condie, have made surprise visits to Iraq of late. Here's another example of how the media is cowed by the administration's verbiage. These visits aren't surprises to anyone but the media and the Iraqi insurgents. Obviously both our military and the administration knows of the visits in advance. The only people who're surprised are the media and the Iraqis, who, if they were told, would make the visits impossible due to the overwhelmingly negative response, and possible danger, the visits would engender.

Now isn't that special...

Iraq, according to the International Drug Control Board, has now become a key artery for smuggling drugs that are grown in Afghanistan. The route through porous borders and a fractured security system takes heroin, speed and marijuana, from their source to the Mediterranean and then into the European marketplace.

So--with all the money and lives we've expended, we've managed to turn Iraq from a harsh dictatorship into a violent hotbed of terrorism and a major drug-trafficking center. I suppose if we drop some more cash and bodies into the fray, we can add civil war to the list.

Update about the AWOL MSM story

It's been a couple of days now, and still no MSM story about the British memo about how the Bushies predetermined the attack on Iraq and "fixed the facts" to justify it, all as reported in my previous post, "I'm soliciting suggestions." Several bloggers have commented on the MSM silence, and 88 Congresspersons have jointly authored a letter to the President to inquire about the story (while noting the MSM silence on the subject), but still so far nothing from NYT or WaPo or any of the TV channels, not even cable, so far as I can see.

I just don't get it

With CEOs' salaries skyrocketing (even after all the scandals involving over-compensated corporate managers), it turns out that the workers' pensions will fall to the axe because of United Airlines' bankruptcy reorganization. Result: its defined-benefit plan will pay $800 per month as a pension to an employee who'd been promised $1700.

Isn't it time Americans woke up to what's afoot in America? Apparently not, so long as the same companies that are sucking up our money own the media that doesn't report it.

I'm not making this up

Halliburton's KBR unit, the one that's been all over the news in the last two years for overcharges and missing documents in its Iraq rip-off, was just awarded bonuses of millions of dollars by the Defense Department for its "very good" work.

This essay from a Louisville, Kentucky, paper, says it all

Louisville, Kentucky? How can a city in a red state have such a blue paper? No, not blue. True blue.

I'm soliciting suggestions

for a word to be applied to that temporal gap between when a story is reported in the foreign press, or on a blog, and when it is finally (if indeed it ever is) picked up by MSM here in the US. This powerful piece of information about Bush's predetermination to attack Iraq and "fix the facts" to justify the invasion lay outside of US news for at least a week until just now, when the Chicago Tribune finally gave it a small half-column. Now, let's see if it gets any further legs or whether it'll be washed away by stories about runaway brides and weird pop singers.

Two questions arise from this news story

in today's NYT.

First, where on Earth does the reporter get the phrase, "fully and freely elected democratic government" in describing Iraq's present set of office-holders? The nation was under occupation and a large segment of the populace boycotted the election because of the Sunnis' outrage at the US presence in the country. That phrase certainly isn't necessary for the story that follows (about the selection of a cabinet) and is clearly the product of the same herd instinct and bias that characterized the reporting of events in Iraq since Bush set his eyes on it. It's an indication, and an obvious one, of how colored the US reporting is on this war, notwithstanding the mea culpa the NYT has previously expressed over just that bias.

Second, if Iraq can have a Human Rights ministry in their government, why can't we?

Ooops, here it comes

This mass grave isn't Saddam Hussein's doing. It's apparently the product of some pissed off Shiites getting even with Sunnis, from deeds back in the day. Or not. Either way, it's a dangerous turn of events.

Whazzup?

I just finished a book by George Johnson, who writes, among other things, science pieces for the NYT. Fire in the Mind. A super read, an in-depth analysis of various scientific theories--math, physics, geology, biology--juxtaposed against native American tales and myths, all with a view to explaining why we seem to have a "fire in the mind" to learn about ourselves and our meaning. He concludes thus (I'm leaving out some really good stuff):

"Sometimes the intelligence of our species seems like a tiny flame
flickering on the periphery of a vast blackness, trying to illuminate the
void. Who gave us this burden? Will anyone or anything beyond our
celestial campsite ever care? If this web is just something we are
spinning for our own amusement, it will die along with its
creators.

"...[I]t is hard not to believe that we are all
participating in something universal, something holy, that the pageant must
unfold beyond our planet. Perhaps we are merely one among a myriad of
players--gathering bits, abstracting concepts, building great edifices of
theory, these mathematical Towers of Babel, that reach higher and higher above
the plains. High enough, perhaps, to make out, just barely, the
rhythm of other dancers, the flickering of other fires."

Was that conclusion just Johnson's late-night musing, or perhaps--more cynically--his way of satisfying his editor with a final phrase signaling a role for faith, or at least an instinct for mysticism? I'm not sure, but to me it doesn't matter. While I disagree with some people's interpretation of the quote attributed to Einstein ("God does not play dice with the universe"), namely, that Einstein was expressing a belief that something mystical was at work in the universe, I am coming to believe that we humans aren't anywhere near capable of knowing everything--even of seeing everything. I believe Einstein was saying something like, "We don't know what game is afoot, because we can't see God or the dice, or even ourselves."

That I truly believe, for me anyway. I'll always be playing dice in the dark. The question then becomes, Why play at all?

Cofer the Beheader

This quote of our counterterrorism chief, seeking bin Laden's head in a box, reveals all one needs to know about the propensitites of Bush appointees.

A reason to watch Entertainment Tonight

Here's a take on why "serious bloggers" should keep connected to the topics of lesser significance. Does this mean we must watch all the trash on TV? No, but we score no style points for ignorance, either.

Now just a goddam minute

Now they're going after PBS. We'll lose not only Nova, Amercian Experience and Now, but the Antiques Road Show too, the latter not on political grounds, but because it's competitive with, and hence to be absorbed by, commercial television, just like Siskel and Ebert were.

Thank God for the NYT

Not just that it (and a few other MSM outlets, such as the LA Times) more than occasionally provides an outlet for news that's not reported by the other sources, such as this one on the recent ouster of the UN investigator of prison practices in Afghanistan, but that it's a big enough source that its stories can't be ignored. Right? Let's see if the story is picked up anywhere else. I'll report back on this.

Soft Patch or Hard Times

With increasing inflation and declining GDP, there has been mention by the economic pundits of the possibility of stagflation. This phenomenon last occurred in the seventies, when inflation soared and the economy remained flat, so that there was no apparent fiscal or monetary remedy that wouldn't either trigger higher inflation or drive the economy downward. We're probably not headed there yet, but there are ominous signals--and little indication that anything in being done to stem the tide, while both the U.S. trade imbalance and federal deficit continue to grow unchecked. If I were a dollar-holder, or a treasury bond trader, I'd be looking to get out pronto.