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From the article:
While it's no longer news that Bush Administration officials meet regularly with Christian fundamentalists, it was surprising to hear about this particular meeting because it was clearly meant to be kept out of the headlines. It came to light only after Village Voice reporter Rick Perlstein received "details" about it from "a confidential memo signed by Presbyterian minister Robert G. Upton."
U.S. Cpl. Patrick Tillman, a ex-pro-football player who became a darling of the media and politicians after he was KIA in Afghanistan, was accidentally slain by his fellow U.S. soldiers, the military has determined. Supposedly, it took an investigation to determine this. I'm sure soldiers on the scene knew the truth of that fateful night; despite the well-documented reality of the "fog of war," soldiers often have 6th-sense-like observations in combat.
But the military and Club Shrub saw an opportunity for propaganda, so no troops on the scene were interviewed. Instead, the media was immediately fed a partial story of a patriot giving up a lucrative career as a football player to fight, as if that was the whole story, and the media--sluggish, habitually uninterested in pursuing falsity behind press releases from conservative, military, or administration press releases--regurgitated it. (And politicians and VIPs who would never show up at a "regular" GI's funeral, spoke at Tillman's, because cameras were there.)
When will the media catch on to this pattern of deception evident at this point in countless stories big and small?
It was falsely reported, including by The New York Times, based on selective sources, that there were WMDs in Iraq. Now it's reported widely that there never were any, as had been said all along by countless mostly-ignored sources. It was reported aluminum tubes used for nuclear reactors were in Iraq; now it's known they were Italian tubes irrelevant to WMDs or nuclear anything.
It was falsely reported, including by The New York Times, that there were two trailers in Iraq used for manufacturing biological weapons, and now we know they were British-manufactured trailers that served no special purpose at all.
It was falsely reported, including by The New York Times, that there were Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that could be operational in 45 minutes.
It was falsely reported, including by The New York Times, that Pvt. Jessica Lynch was a hero because she fired all her ammo before being captured; that she was tortured and mistreated; that her location was discovered by U.S. intelligence agents; and that U.S. troops shot their way into the hospital to rescue her. But now we know none of that was true. Now we know she was taken to a hospital where she was well-treated; that an Iraqi on hospital staff proactively gave her location to U.S. troops, but only on his second attempt, because when he first approached U.S. troops they shot at him; that the Iraqi hospital staff welcomed the U.S. troops into the hospital and led them to Lynch's bedside.
Clearly, the American mass media's continued disregard for journalistic investigation and sensible skepticism is so shockingly consistent as to be deemed willful.
...the truth. Terry Jones, the Oxbridge-educated writer, actor, and producer, formerly of Monty Python's Flying Circus, has written an incisive essay in The Guardian. From Jones' commentary:
It's difficult to think of anyone who has inflicted more harm on Americans than their current president. Since he assumed the title of most powerful man in the world, 4 million Americans have lost their health insurance and 2 million jobs have disappeared. According to a CNN report, 'half of all Americans are living from paycheque to paycheque--effectively one paycheque away from poverty'. And Mr Bush's latest budget proposes to withdraw support of all kinds for working families earning less than $35,000 a year. At the same time the national debt has rocketed to more than $26,000 for every family.
.....
During a run-up to an election, all administrations will try to claim credit for spreading largesse even where they don't deserve it, but Bush's administration has gone one further by trying to claim credit for largesse it has actually been doing its damnedest to stop.The justice department, for example, is boasting about spending $47m on a local law enforcement programme, when Bush had actually proposed cutting its budget by 87%. And the $11.7m that the secretary of health boasts they are setting aside to help those without healthcare is for a programme that Bush has tried to shut down every year he's been in office.
.....
Thousands of men, mostly Arabs or south Asians, have now been secretly imprisoned in America without charge, and the government has refused to publish their names or whereabouts. They have been
'disappeared'. Don't cry for me, Argentina. In fact, the more I think about it, America hardly seems like America any more....
Roman Catholic bishops are calling for the denial of the sacrament of Communion (the "Eucharist") to anyone who is pro-choice, who is in favor of extending civil rights to gays, or who is in favor of stem cell research or the right to die, "euthanasia."
Let us consider previous interference by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in modern politics:
*In 1864, Pope Pius IX issued his encyclical Quanta Cura, which condemned the notion that
liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.
*Pope Leo XIII, in 1886, issued a "Non expedit" which forbade any Roman Catholic from voting.
*In 1924, Pope Pius XI forbade the Catholic Popular Party to work with the Socialist Party against Mussolini. He later dissolved the party.
*Pius XI on December 20, 1926, declared to all nations that "Mussolini is the man sent by Providence." And when Mussolini asked the Italian women to give up their gold and silver rings to help fund the conquest of Ethiopia, priests preached that they should give as much as they could.
*The Roman Catholic church agreed to remove Hitler's last obstacle to power for him when Pius XI dismantled the Roman Catholic Centre Party--a workers party and literally the only remaining political party in Hitler's path--in 1933. The future Pius XII arranged the deal. (See John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope, 1999.)
I stand with our nation's Founding Fathers against any tyranny of superstition or ecclesiastical power over the conscience of the individual.
From a reader, Scott Bramlett:
The first thing I heard this morning on the radio was a report that a man had been decapitated in Iraq. The execution was video taped. The images made it to the Internet. And all of these things were seen as good by those who murdered this man. It has caused me grief and rage all day. Why has this one thing...as opposed to the whole terrible war from which this act has sprung? I am not sure, but conjecture follows.
The newscast was the first thing I heard on the radio this morning, right after waking up. This means consciousness was a little soft, not so protected. The idea of this horror made it to the core of cognition, and then thought kept turning it over and over. And the way my thought worked this morning was that I found myself first in the place of this man, Nick Berg, and then that of his family. From Nick Berg, I extrapolated the simple truth of the delicacy and tenderness of all human flesh, how quickly we feel pain. From this, I considered the delicacy of the human mind and how quickly it darkens under brutality and suffering, the terror of unfathomable darkness, the merciless and final separation from everything dear.
War forgets all of this. It sets an abstract ideal over the quotidian domain of human experience, pain and bliss, both. The reality of war puts these things second. It demands this demotion of human reality to meet its ends. But the world only becomes real for humanity in general in individual human hearts. This is why each brutal movement, each act of violence and terror darkens the whole of humanity's experience, because each of us is humanity in the particular. All these particular concrete existences go to form that large abstract concept. This is why killing in all but the rarest of instances (perhaps that of mercy killing) is a crime against humanity, and why each murder that is ever perpetrated is a crime against humanity, whether in war, or on our streets in so-called peacetime.
We are now not only at war, but are at war under false pretences. This is a terrible, terrible conflict, and will, I am sure, be universally considered a high crime years (and hopefully not many) from now. It is difficult to go about my normal business, having entertained these considerations. Still conscience demands movement, the taking of some action.
I've been discussing Mr. Berg's murder with colleagues today. For many, it is clear that the blame for the current wave of horrors is in the hands of this nation's executive. It is difficult to fathom that George W. Bush remains in office after it has become all too clear that he led this country to battle in Iraq, having obfuscated the awful events of September 11, 2001 as the basis for such an action. Not yet has any connection been shown between the terrorist attacks on that day and the nation of Iraq. In light if this, how is it, my colleagues and I wonder, that President Bush is still happily perched in his seat in the Oval Office, but President Clinton was impeached by Congress for acts far less deadly and dishonest? Having asked the question, the one thing that looms large as an answer to my heartache and that of many of this country's citizens is the expulsion of George W. Bush and his henchmen from their offices as administrators of the American government. It is this, or despair, a world gone dark not only for Nick Berg, but for us all.
With Attorney General John Ashcroft's appearance before the 9/11 Commission coming soon, it's a good time to resurrect Albert Hunt's highly relevant Wall Street Journal column, "The Unaccountable Attorney General," from June 6, 2002.
One reason, the FBI explains, that it didn't respond last summer to an agent's warnings about suspicious activities at flight schools by Middle Eastern men was a lack of resources. But there were enough FBI agents to eavesdrop on New Orleans hookers and their clients.
.....
[A ]s the nation's chief law enforcement officer, John Ashcroft's pre-Sept. 11 agenda was fighting gun control, abortion, state laws permitting assisted suicide or medical marijuana, and going after hookers and their clients, not terrorism.
.....
The endless drudgery of monitoring flight schools was not the path to advancement in the Ashcroft criminal justice system.
What makes this more galling was the willingness of the Bush camp to blame the Clinton administration for the failure of American counter-terrorism: documents show that Ms. Reno, whatever her failings, was far more committed to fighting terrorism than Mr. Ashcroft. The attorney general's efforts to rewrite history, painting himself as an anti-terrorist warrior from the get-go is simply duplicitous.
.....
The only two top officials retained by George W. Bush a year and a half ago were CIA Director Tent and Richard Clarke, the terrorism expert at the National Security Council.
The Justice Department sought huge budget increases and Attorney General Reno stressed the fight against terrorism. There were excesses, such as the establishment of an alien terrorist removal court, to secretly evict suspected terrorists, but it appears not to have been used.
In a May 1998 strategic directive, Ms. Reno listed her only "tier one" priority as combating "terrorist and criminal activities that directly threaten national or economic security." In her memorandum to budget heads for the 2002 budget, her final one, counter terrorism and cyber crime were accorded the top priority.
By contrast, Mr. Ashcroft cut back on the counter-terrorism emphasis. In his directive to budget heads for the 2003 budget, he too laid out priorities, over a dozen; none pertained to anti-terrorism.
Although last summer the FBI complained that it lacked sufficient resources in the war against terrorism, the attorney general rejected the bureau's request for $57.8 million for more counter-terrorism agents, intelligence researchers and language translators. In a letter to Budget Chief Daniels Sept. 10, the attorney general outlined his initial requests for more funds. There are no add-ons for counter-terrorism, but there is a reduction in grants to state and local governments for anti-terrorism.
Every military operation seen from any temporal perspective, be it minute-to-minute or first aggression to last shot, can be described as a series of waves: troops advance; troops rest; defenses are built; defenses are overrun; tactics are planned; tactics are executed, etc.
I suspect that every relative pause in insurgent momentum in Iraq will be spun by Oil Club Shrub as the final insurgent defeat. But I suspect that each pause will be followed by new insurgent action. Granted...one action must ultimately be the last one. Granted...each may be weaker than the one before until the insurgency fails. But there is a 50/50 chance at best that the "last act" will be not the final insurgent shot fired, but rather the final American soldier withdrawn in Vietnam-style "'peace' with honor."
And getting to that event could take years, especially if Club Shrub continues to rule America, ever more isolating us from the UN and our allies.
The Iraqis have firearms; tens of thousands of them. The Iraqis have anti-armor weapons, mostly RPGs, as we see repeatedly on television. Today they shot down an Apache helicopter with a SAM. They have TNT. Therefore, the population despite our efforts was never even close to sufficiently unarmed. Disarming them now is impossible. IMPORTANTLY: The borders of Iraq are more open now that during Saddam's reign, greatly increasing the chances of yet more arms trickling if not pouring in. The Shiite-Sunni alliance against American occupying troops also of course involves Saddam's former military, including probably special forces veterans from Desert Storm and the war against Iran.
(God, why are we there? Why but for the arrogance of power and the stupidity of the American people and the complicity of the media did we invade in the first place, in direct violation of international law? We have unnecessarily set human history on a new unstable course. It should be al-Qaeda who is seen as the great destabilizer, because of 9/11. But who would have thought that we would invade IRAQ instead of going after al-Qaeda, and as a result eclipse terrorism itself as a force of destabilization? Terrorism against the West and America's aggression in Iraq are a horrific combination of realities, each with very violent consequences; each will result in a million gallons of human blood shed worldwide.)
American combat deaths during this uprising have been very few relative to the ferocity of the engagements. This could suggest insurgent ineffectiveness. Will they get better bearings overtime, as the mujahedeen eventually did against Soviet invaders in Afghanistan? But Iraqi casualties are in the 100's and 100's. That will have consequences later. Revenge will be sought by a 1,000 families. Revenge will be taken by many of them, against our young men and women in uniform.
Again to Jessica Stern (see my 4/7 post), this time the words of Dr. Hani al-Sibai, the director of the London-based Al-Maqrizi Center for Historical Studies. He is a radical, anti-US, and thus very biased; but his words shouldn't be ignored:
"When the United States occupied Iraq, the border was actually uncontrolled." Iraq, he says, "is currently a battlefield and a fertile soil for every Islamic movement that views jihad as a priority." He emphasizes that Iraq is a "better place" than Afghanistan for waging jihad "in terms of the language, features of the people, and popular sympathy -- whether in Iraq's Sunni regions or its neighboring countries." He notes that "the continuation of the anti-occupation resistance will produce several groups that might later merge into one large group." Very few of the participants in the Iraqi "jihad" are members of al-Qaida, he says. "Nevertheless, the role of al-Qaida and its sympathizers in Iraq is more like the salt of the earth and it's reminiscent of the role of Arabs in Afghanistan who lifted the spirit of the Afghan people, who fought and sacrificed thousands of martyrs." He describes a new network of Salafi and other jihadist Sunni groups that formed five months after the occupation began. The network consists of mujahedeen, ulema, and political and military experts, he says, together with a number of jihadist factions from the north and south that previously operated separately. He concludes, "Even if the U.S. forces capture all leaders of al-Qaida or kill them all, the idea of expelling the occupiers and nonbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula and all the countries of Islam will not die."
A friend, Darrin Bodner, has moved to Washington D.C. to help David Brock with a new media watchdog org, Media Matters for America. Visit them regularly at mediamatters.org.
The debut of Media Matters is truly exciting. *With passive reporting--the regurgitation of press releases, disproportionately from the disciplined and rich GOP-Bush-Rove spin machine--now an American crisis,
*with market share hogs like Fox News and Clear Channel literally propagandizing for the right-wing and calling it "news," and
*with lazy TV news programs and channels following a model of "reporting" focused on anchor-celebrities and sensationalizing, organizations like Media Matters are desperately needed to call the press to accountability (and to simply fact check!)
There cannot be too much funding or energy dedicated to efforts like those of Media Matters.
This from Mercer Human Resource Consulting: The median white collar worker made $46,100 in 2003, an increase of 3.3% from the previous year. By contrast, the median CEO at 350 of the nation’s largest corporations, made $3.6 million, an increase of 19% from the previous year.
