Iraq is Lost: Bush and Blair are Deluding Themselves
Sunday, January 09, 2005
How bad is the Times today? Wilgoren and sports make the front page.
How bad is the Times today? Wilgoren and sports make the front page
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Congressional Election Protest
It Almost Looked Real
By Chuck Zlatkin
http://www.rightiswrong.com/zlatkinletter.php
The protest against the alleged results of the 2004 Presidential Election can't qualify as a Santayana moment because of a technicality. This time one senator did come forth, but other than that, we were seeing history repeat itself. George W. Bush will sit in the White House because the people who represent us in Congress have certified that George W. Bush was elected legally for the second time!
I didn't vote for Bush or Kerry but I still ache when presented with this reality. I watched the show yesterday. The Black Congressional Caucus was going to challenge the election of George W. Bush on the floor of Congress on live television! (CSPAN does qualify as live television, right?) The only way we got to see them attempt this challenge in 2001 was when we watched Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 in 2004! Liberals will call that progress. At this rate an illegal presidential election will be overturned in about 200 more years. And people wonder why I'm no longer a Democrat.
I tip my hat to Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones for being the person to object and for giving a wonderful speech. She detailed how registered voteres were denied their rights as citizens to vote in the presidential election in Ohio. She reported on the irregularities that prevailed that day. She didn't use the word conspiracy once.
I also have to congratulate Barbara Boxer for being the Senator to sign on to Ms. Tubbs Jones protest which sent both houses of Congress into the legally mandated two hour session to debate the issue. It was nice to see this issue debated in Congress and shown on CSPAN, while being broadcast on Pacifica. It almost looked real.
The speeches were great theater. Sometimes I was even moved. John Lewis' impassioned speech reminded all of us that people died to get the right to vote. He showed us that we can't ignore that fact, and that it should never be taken lightly. Lewis dramatically presented the horror of what occurred in Ohio. But none of the supporters of this protest called the results of the national election invalid. They were using this forum to report the irregularities that took place and to call for study and new legislation to prevent this from happening in the future.
(Everyone who lives in a state where you are confident that the election took place legally and that the vote count was tabulated accurately, please raise your hands. That's what I thought.)
My favorite Republican speaker was Ric Keller from Florida. He was one of the people to speak of the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. That's another reason I'm no longer a Democrat. The left wing of the party is now referred to as the Michael Moore wing. Moore was the most fervent supporter of General Wesley Clark to be the Democratic nominee. Clark, a big fan of using anti-personnel weapons and depleted uranium was the proud overseer of the School of the Americas. Wesley Clark wouldn't get my vote for dogcatcher. Voting for war criminals is unhealthy, obviously not the only weakness of the Michael Moore wing.
Now to the vote itself: A number of people were not there to vote. A few were off somewhere supposedly studying the theft of an election in the Ukraine. Maybe they were there to find out what went wrong since the stolen election was overturned. John Kerry wasn't there, because he never wanted to be president in the first place. Anyway, the Senate vote came first because they had so little to debate. The vote was 74-1 to reject the protest.
I should make one thing clear. Only Barbara Boxer voted in favor of the protest. That means that Robert Byrd, who sometimes has been the voice of conscience in the Senate on issues effecting our freedom, didn't vote in favor of the protest. That means that Hillary Clinton, with all her knowledge of what went wrong in Ohio, voted against the protest. That means that the new Black Hope, Barack Obama, in his first major vote, ignored the Black Caucus and voted for George W. Bush to be president.
In the House, the majority of Democrats voted with the Republican Majority and approved the election of George W. Bush. Are we saying that there is only one Democratic Senator capable of voting her conscience? Are they're only less than 40 members of the house who can take a principled position? Where was Ron Paul?
I'm sure Barbara Boxer knew that she was going to lose. I'm quite convinced that Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening knew that they were going to lose when they were the only two senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964. The two men voted their conscience even though the House voted unanimously in favor. Maybe that's why I remembered their names forty years late; I didn't even have to google.
Maybe the legacy of being an activist for forty years is that you learn that the number of elected officials that you could call leaders in the struggle can be counted on one finger. And you know which one.
If you've spent anytime lobbying elected officials, you know that their primary concerns are raising money for their own re-election. It is a real victory when you see that they even understand what you are talking about, let alone take a leadership position. In the case of both Gore and Kerry they didn't even show leadership qualities in their own elections!
The outcome of this election, both real and imagined, is more of a symptom than a cause of our problems. The election is the theater where we look at each other as the source of problems rather than looking up at those in power.
Conscience and courage are not too much to demand from the elected officials we put in office to represent us. We should accept nothing less.
ChuckZlatkin@yahoo.com
www.rightiswrong.com
By Chuck Zlatkin
http://www.rightiswrong.com/zlatkinletter.php
The protest against the alleged results of the 2004 Presidential Election can't qualify as a Santayana moment because of a technicality. This time one senator did come forth, but other than that, we were seeing history repeat itself. George W. Bush will sit in the White House because the people who represent us in Congress have certified that George W. Bush was elected legally for the second time!
I didn't vote for Bush or Kerry but I still ache when presented with this reality. I watched the show yesterday. The Black Congressional Caucus was going to challenge the election of George W. Bush on the floor of Congress on live television! (CSPAN does qualify as live television, right?) The only way we got to see them attempt this challenge in 2001 was when we watched Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 in 2004! Liberals will call that progress. At this rate an illegal presidential election will be overturned in about 200 more years. And people wonder why I'm no longer a Democrat.
I tip my hat to Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones for being the person to object and for giving a wonderful speech. She detailed how registered voteres were denied their rights as citizens to vote in the presidential election in Ohio. She reported on the irregularities that prevailed that day. She didn't use the word conspiracy once.
I also have to congratulate Barbara Boxer for being the Senator to sign on to Ms. Tubbs Jones protest which sent both houses of Congress into the legally mandated two hour session to debate the issue. It was nice to see this issue debated in Congress and shown on CSPAN, while being broadcast on Pacifica. It almost looked real.
The speeches were great theater. Sometimes I was even moved. John Lewis' impassioned speech reminded all of us that people died to get the right to vote. He showed us that we can't ignore that fact, and that it should never be taken lightly. Lewis dramatically presented the horror of what occurred in Ohio. But none of the supporters of this protest called the results of the national election invalid. They were using this forum to report the irregularities that took place and to call for study and new legislation to prevent this from happening in the future.
(Everyone who lives in a state where you are confident that the election took place legally and that the vote count was tabulated accurately, please raise your hands. That's what I thought.)
My favorite Republican speaker was Ric Keller from Florida. He was one of the people to speak of the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party. That's another reason I'm no longer a Democrat. The left wing of the party is now referred to as the Michael Moore wing. Moore was the most fervent supporter of General Wesley Clark to be the Democratic nominee. Clark, a big fan of using anti-personnel weapons and depleted uranium was the proud overseer of the School of the Americas. Wesley Clark wouldn't get my vote for dogcatcher. Voting for war criminals is unhealthy, obviously not the only weakness of the Michael Moore wing.
Now to the vote itself: A number of people were not there to vote. A few were off somewhere supposedly studying the theft of an election in the Ukraine. Maybe they were there to find out what went wrong since the stolen election was overturned. John Kerry wasn't there, because he never wanted to be president in the first place. Anyway, the Senate vote came first because they had so little to debate. The vote was 74-1 to reject the protest.
I should make one thing clear. Only Barbara Boxer voted in favor of the protest. That means that Robert Byrd, who sometimes has been the voice of conscience in the Senate on issues effecting our freedom, didn't vote in favor of the protest. That means that Hillary Clinton, with all her knowledge of what went wrong in Ohio, voted against the protest. That means that the new Black Hope, Barack Obama, in his first major vote, ignored the Black Caucus and voted for George W. Bush to be president.
In the House, the majority of Democrats voted with the Republican Majority and approved the election of George W. Bush. Are we saying that there is only one Democratic Senator capable of voting her conscience? Are they're only less than 40 members of the house who can take a principled position? Where was Ron Paul?
I'm sure Barbara Boxer knew that she was going to lose. I'm quite convinced that Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening knew that they were going to lose when they were the only two senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964. The two men voted their conscience even though the House voted unanimously in favor. Maybe that's why I remembered their names forty years late; I didn't even have to google.
Maybe the legacy of being an activist for forty years is that you learn that the number of elected officials that you could call leaders in the struggle can be counted on one finger. And you know which one.
If you've spent anytime lobbying elected officials, you know that their primary concerns are raising money for their own re-election. It is a real victory when you see that they even understand what you are talking about, let alone take a leadership position. In the case of both Gore and Kerry they didn't even show leadership qualities in their own elections!
The outcome of this election, both real and imagined, is more of a symptom than a cause of our problems. The election is the theater where we look at each other as the source of problems rather than looking up at those in power.
Conscience and courage are not too much to demand from the elected officials we put in office to represent us. We should accept nothing less.
ChuckZlatkin@yahoo.com
www.rightiswrong.com
Friday, January 07, 2005
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: We Are All Torturers Now
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: We Are All Torturers Now
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 6, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
We Are All Torturers Now
By MARK DANNER
T least since Watergate, Americans have come to take for granted a certain story line of scandal, in which revelation is followed by investigation, adjudication and expiation. Together, Congress and the courts investigate high-level wrongdoing and place it in a carefully constructed narrative, in which crimes are charted, malfeasance is explicated and punishment is apportioned as the final step in the journey back to order, justice and propriety.
When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Americans began torturing prisoners, and they have never really stopped. However much these words have about them the ring of accusation, they must by now be accepted as fact. From Red Cross reports, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba's inquiry, James R. Schlesinger's Pentagon-sanctioned commission and other government and independent investigations, we have in our possession hundreds of accounts of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment - to use a phrase of the Red Cross - "tantamount to torture."
So far as we know, American intelligence officers, determined after Sept. 11 to "take the gloves off," began by torturing Qaeda prisoners. They used a number of techniques: "water-boarding," in which a prisoner is stripped, shackled and submerged in water until he begins to lose consciousness, and other forms of near suffocation; sleep and sensory deprivation; heat and light and dietary manipulation; and "stress positions."
Eventually, these practices "migrated," in the words of the Schlesinger report, to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where for a time last spring the marvel of digital technology allowed Americans to see what their soldiers were doing to prisoners in their name.
Though the revelations of Abu Ghraib transfixed Americans for a time, in the matter of torture not much changed. After those in Congress had offered condemnations and a few hearings distinguished by their lack of seriousness; after the administration had commenced the requisite half-dozen investigations, none of them empowered to touch those who devised the policies; and after the low-level soldiers were placed firmly on the road to punishment - after all this, the issue of torture slipped back beneath the surface. Every few weeks now, a word or two reaches us from that dark, subterranean place. Take, for example, this account, offered by an unnamed F.B.I. counterterrorism official reporting in August, more than three months after the Abu Ghraib images appeared, on what he saw during a visit to Guantánamo:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more...When I asked the M.P.'s what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occasion...the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
This is a fairly mild example when judged against the accounts of the "abuses" that have entered the public record. I put quotation marks around the word "abuses" because most of these acts - as the F.B.I. agent acknowledged ("the interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment") - were in fact procedures, which would not have been possible without policies that had been approved by administration officials.
In the next few days we are likely to hear how Mr. Gonzales recommended strongly, against the arguments of the secretary of state and military lawyers, that prisoners in Afghanistan be denied the protection of the Geneva Conventions. We are also likely to hear how, under Mr. Gonzales's urging, lawyers in the Department of Justice contrived - when confronted with the obstacle that the United States had undertaken, by treaty and statute, to make torture illegal - simply to redefine the word to mean procedures that would produce pain "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure." By this act of verbal legerdemain, interrogation techniques like water-boarding that plainly constituted torture suddenly became something less than that.
But what we are unlikely to hear, given the balance of votes in the Senate, are many voices making the obvious argument that with this record, Mr. Gonzales is unfit to serve as attorney general. So let me make it: Mr. Gonzales is unfit because the slow river of litigation is certain to bring before the next attorney general a raft of torture cases that challenge the very policies that he personally helped devise and put into practice. He is unfit because, while the attorney general is charged with upholding the law, the documents show that as White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales, in the matter of torture, helped his client to concoct strategies to circumvent it. And he is unfit, finally, because he has rightly become the symbol of the United States' fateful departure from a body of settled international law and human rights practice for which the country claims to stand.
On the other hand, perhaps it is fitting that Mr. Gonzales be confirmed. The system of torture has, after all, survived its disclosure. We have entered a new era; the traditional story line in which scandal leads to investigation and investigation leads to punishment has been supplanted by something else. Wrongdoing is still exposed; we gaze at the photographs and read the documents, and then we listen to the president's spokesman "reiterate," as he did last week, "the president's determination that the United States never engage in torture." And there the story ends.
At present, our government, controlled largely by one party only intermittently harried by a timorous opposition, is unable to mete out punishment or change policy, let alone adequately investigate its own war crimes. And, as administration officials clearly expect, and senators of both parties well understand, most Americans - the Americans who will not read the reports, who will soon forget the photographs and who will be loath to dwell on a repellent subject - are generally content to take the president at his word.
But reality has a way of asserting itself. In the end, as Gen. Joseph P. Hoar pointed out this week, the administration's decision on the Geneva Conventions "puts all American servicemen and women at risk that are serving in combat regions." For General Hoar - a retired commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of a dozen prominent retired generals and admirals to oppose Mr. Gonzales - torture has a way of undermining the forces using it, as it did with the French Army in Algeria.
The general's concerns are understandable. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion. By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage - the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights - that the president has so persistently claimed is America's most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism. One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture.
By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantánamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. After Mr. Gonzales is confirmed, the road back - to justice, order and propriety - will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.
Mark Danner is the author of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 6, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
We Are All Torturers Now
By MARK DANNER
T least since Watergate, Americans have come to take for granted a certain story line of scandal, in which revelation is followed by investigation, adjudication and expiation. Together, Congress and the courts investigate high-level wrongdoing and place it in a carefully constructed narrative, in which crimes are charted, malfeasance is explicated and punishment is apportioned as the final step in the journey back to order, justice and propriety.
When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Americans began torturing prisoners, and they have never really stopped. However much these words have about them the ring of accusation, they must by now be accepted as fact. From Red Cross reports, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba's inquiry, James R. Schlesinger's Pentagon-sanctioned commission and other government and independent investigations, we have in our possession hundreds of accounts of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment - to use a phrase of the Red Cross - "tantamount to torture."
So far as we know, American intelligence officers, determined after Sept. 11 to "take the gloves off," began by torturing Qaeda prisoners. They used a number of techniques: "water-boarding," in which a prisoner is stripped, shackled and submerged in water until he begins to lose consciousness, and other forms of near suffocation; sleep and sensory deprivation; heat and light and dietary manipulation; and "stress positions."
Eventually, these practices "migrated," in the words of the Schlesinger report, to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where for a time last spring the marvel of digital technology allowed Americans to see what their soldiers were doing to prisoners in their name.
Though the revelations of Abu Ghraib transfixed Americans for a time, in the matter of torture not much changed. After those in Congress had offered condemnations and a few hearings distinguished by their lack of seriousness; after the administration had commenced the requisite half-dozen investigations, none of them empowered to touch those who devised the policies; and after the low-level soldiers were placed firmly on the road to punishment - after all this, the issue of torture slipped back beneath the surface. Every few weeks now, a word or two reaches us from that dark, subterranean place. Take, for example, this account, offered by an unnamed F.B.I. counterterrorism official reporting in August, more than three months after the Abu Ghraib images appeared, on what he saw during a visit to Guantánamo:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more...When I asked the M.P.'s what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occasion...the detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
This is a fairly mild example when judged against the accounts of the "abuses" that have entered the public record. I put quotation marks around the word "abuses" because most of these acts - as the F.B.I. agent acknowledged ("the interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment") - were in fact procedures, which would not have been possible without policies that had been approved by administration officials.
In the next few days we are likely to hear how Mr. Gonzales recommended strongly, against the arguments of the secretary of state and military lawyers, that prisoners in Afghanistan be denied the protection of the Geneva Conventions. We are also likely to hear how, under Mr. Gonzales's urging, lawyers in the Department of Justice contrived - when confronted with the obstacle that the United States had undertaken, by treaty and statute, to make torture illegal - simply to redefine the word to mean procedures that would produce pain "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure." By this act of verbal legerdemain, interrogation techniques like water-boarding that plainly constituted torture suddenly became something less than that.
But what we are unlikely to hear, given the balance of votes in the Senate, are many voices making the obvious argument that with this record, Mr. Gonzales is unfit to serve as attorney general. So let me make it: Mr. Gonzales is unfit because the slow river of litigation is certain to bring before the next attorney general a raft of torture cases that challenge the very policies that he personally helped devise and put into practice. He is unfit because, while the attorney general is charged with upholding the law, the documents show that as White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales, in the matter of torture, helped his client to concoct strategies to circumvent it. And he is unfit, finally, because he has rightly become the symbol of the United States' fateful departure from a body of settled international law and human rights practice for which the country claims to stand.
On the other hand, perhaps it is fitting that Mr. Gonzales be confirmed. The system of torture has, after all, survived its disclosure. We have entered a new era; the traditional story line in which scandal leads to investigation and investigation leads to punishment has been supplanted by something else. Wrongdoing is still exposed; we gaze at the photographs and read the documents, and then we listen to the president's spokesman "reiterate," as he did last week, "the president's determination that the United States never engage in torture." And there the story ends.
At present, our government, controlled largely by one party only intermittently harried by a timorous opposition, is unable to mete out punishment or change policy, let alone adequately investigate its own war crimes. And, as administration officials clearly expect, and senators of both parties well understand, most Americans - the Americans who will not read the reports, who will soon forget the photographs and who will be loath to dwell on a repellent subject - are generally content to take the president at his word.
But reality has a way of asserting itself. In the end, as Gen. Joseph P. Hoar pointed out this week, the administration's decision on the Geneva Conventions "puts all American servicemen and women at risk that are serving in combat regions." For General Hoar - a retired commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of a dozen prominent retired generals and admirals to oppose Mr. Gonzales - torture has a way of undermining the forces using it, as it did with the French Army in Algeria.
The general's concerns are understandable. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion. By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage - the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights - that the president has so persistently claimed is America's most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism. One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture.
By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantánamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. After Mr. Gonzales is confirmed, the road back - to justice, order and propriety - will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.
Mark Danner is the author of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Yahoo! News - White House Won't Release Gonzales Papers
Yahoo! News - White House Won't Release Gonzales Papers
No Way, Jose.... I mean Alberto...
No Way, Jose.... I mean Alberto...
SI.com - Ute fans angry at police for electrical shocking - Wednesday January 5, 2005 5:11PM
SI.com - Ute fans angry at police for electrical shocking - Wednesday January 5, 2005 5:11PM
You can taser old ladies, kids, bystanders, no problem. But if you taser all-american sports fans, mister, you are lookin for a fight!
You can taser old ladies, kids, bystanders, no problem. But if you taser all-american sports fans, mister, you are lookin for a fight!
]ABC News: Gonzales Promises Non-Torture Policy
ABC News: Gonzales Promises Non-Torture Policy
This account seems to have left out the "wink and nod" after Gonzales' statement.
This account seems to have left out the "wink and nod" after Gonzales' statement.
"TORTUROUS....Shorter Glenn Reynolds: I'm usually against torture, but if Democrats are against it too then maybe it's not so bad after all."
The Washington Monthly: "TORTUROUS....Shorter Glenn Reynolds: I'm usually against torture, but if Democrats are against it too then maybe it's not so bad after all."
Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib? (washingtonpost.com)
Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib? (washingtonpost.com)
The Wash Post Article referred to in the previous blog post....
washingtonpost.com
Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib?
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, January 5, 2005; Page A17
During the past eight months there have been many news cycles, many front-page stories, many events. There have been elections. There have been hurricanes and tidal waves. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, eight months is not a very long time. In most of the world, something that happened eight months ago is considered "recent." In Washington, however, it seems that eight months ago is considered "ancient." How else to explain the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of attorney general of the United States?
Or, more to the point: How else to explain the widespread assumption that Gonzales -- who commissioned the "torture memo" of August 2002, following a meeting in his office -- will be decisively confirmed? After all, eight months ago, much of the country -- and much of the Republican Party -- was gripped by horror and embarrassment after the publication of photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those photographs haven't gone away: As I write this, I need only click on my computer's Internet Explorer icon and there is Lynndie England, grinning and giving a thumbs-up behind a pile of naked men.
If the pictures haven't gone away, the value system that led to Abu Ghraib hasn't gone away either. Last month -- really recently -- lawsuits filed by American human rights groups forced the government to release thousands of pages of documents showing that the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base long preceded the Abu Ghraib photographs, and that abuse has continued since then too. U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have, according to the administration's own records and my colleagues' reporting, used beatings, suffocation, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and dogs during interrogations. They probably still do.
Although many people bear some responsibility for these abuses, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is among those who bear the most responsibility. It was Gonzales who led the administration's internal discussion of what qualified as torture. It was Gonzales who advised the president that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people captured in Afghanistan. It was Gonzales who helped craft some of the administration's worst domestic decisions, including the indefinite detention, without access to lawyers, of U.S. citizens Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.
By nominating Gonzales to his Cabinet, the president has demonstrated not only that he is undisturbed by these aberrations, but that he still doesn't understand the nature of the international conflict which he says he is fighting. Like communism, radical Islam is an ideology that people will die for. To fight it, the United States needs not just to show off its fancy weapons systems but also to prove to the Islamic world that democratic values, in some moderate Islamic form, will give them better lives. The Cold War ended because Eastern Europeans were clamoring to join the West; the war on terrorism will be over when moderate Muslims abandon the radicals and join us. They will not do so if our system promotes people who support legal arguments for human rights abuse.
The president's opponents -- Democrats, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- are lining up to oppose Gonzales. But there are Republicans who ought to understand the deeper issues at stake as well. I am thinking of Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who was the moving force behind the recent passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act. I am also thinking of Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who has been an eloquent spokesman on behalf of the victims of religious persecution around the world. Other influential critics of international human rights abuses include Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, whose presence in Kiev last month had an enormous, uplifting impact on Ukrainian human rights demonstrators; Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who has given his time to promote human rights even in obscure, unfashionable places such as Kazakhstan and Belarus; Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has called for linking of trade agreements to human rights; and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a member of the Judiciary Committee (which will pose questions to Gonzales) and a politician who can speak knowledgeably about human rights issues in Russia, China and the Middle East.
And those are only a few senators. In fact, anyone who has ever wanted the United States to play a role in promoting and supporting democracy and human rights around the world -- and this includes a wide swath of the conservative movement -- ought to oppose the appointment of Alberto Gonzales, if only on the grounds that he is associated with bad legal advice that has damaged our ability to do so. Just because the president can't remember how embarrassed we all were eight months ago doesn't mean the rest of Washington, and especially the rest of the president's party, need be gripped by amnesia as well.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
The Wash Post Article referred to in the previous blog post....
washingtonpost.com
Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib?
By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, January 5, 2005; Page A17
During the past eight months there have been many news cycles, many front-page stories, many events. There have been elections. There have been hurricanes and tidal waves. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, eight months is not a very long time. In most of the world, something that happened eight months ago is considered "recent." In Washington, however, it seems that eight months ago is considered "ancient." How else to explain the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of attorney general of the United States?
Or, more to the point: How else to explain the widespread assumption that Gonzales -- who commissioned the "torture memo" of August 2002, following a meeting in his office -- will be decisively confirmed? After all, eight months ago, much of the country -- and much of the Republican Party -- was gripped by horror and embarrassment after the publication of photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those photographs haven't gone away: As I write this, I need only click on my computer's Internet Explorer icon and there is Lynndie England, grinning and giving a thumbs-up behind a pile of naked men.
If the pictures haven't gone away, the value system that led to Abu Ghraib hasn't gone away either. Last month -- really recently -- lawsuits filed by American human rights groups forced the government to release thousands of pages of documents showing that the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base long preceded the Abu Ghraib photographs, and that abuse has continued since then too. U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have, according to the administration's own records and my colleagues' reporting, used beatings, suffocation, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and dogs during interrogations. They probably still do.
Although many people bear some responsibility for these abuses, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is among those who bear the most responsibility. It was Gonzales who led the administration's internal discussion of what qualified as torture. It was Gonzales who advised the president that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people captured in Afghanistan. It was Gonzales who helped craft some of the administration's worst domestic decisions, including the indefinite detention, without access to lawyers, of U.S. citizens Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.
By nominating Gonzales to his Cabinet, the president has demonstrated not only that he is undisturbed by these aberrations, but that he still doesn't understand the nature of the international conflict which he says he is fighting. Like communism, radical Islam is an ideology that people will die for. To fight it, the United States needs not just to show off its fancy weapons systems but also to prove to the Islamic world that democratic values, in some moderate Islamic form, will give them better lives. The Cold War ended because Eastern Europeans were clamoring to join the West; the war on terrorism will be over when moderate Muslims abandon the radicals and join us. They will not do so if our system promotes people who support legal arguments for human rights abuse.
The president's opponents -- Democrats, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- are lining up to oppose Gonzales. But there are Republicans who ought to understand the deeper issues at stake as well. I am thinking of Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who was the moving force behind the recent passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act. I am also thinking of Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who has been an eloquent spokesman on behalf of the victims of religious persecution around the world. Other influential critics of international human rights abuses include Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, whose presence in Kiev last month had an enormous, uplifting impact on Ukrainian human rights demonstrators; Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who has given his time to promote human rights even in obscure, unfashionable places such as Kazakhstan and Belarus; Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has called for linking of trade agreements to human rights; and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a member of the Judiciary Committee (which will pose questions to Gonzales) and a politician who can speak knowledgeably about human rights issues in Russia, China and the Middle East.
And those are only a few senators. In fact, anyone who has ever wanted the United States to play a role in promoting and supporting democracy and human rights around the world -- and this includes a wide swath of the conservative movement -- ought to oppose the appointment of Alberto Gonzales, if only on the grounds that he is associated with bad legal advice that has damaged our ability to do so. Just because the president can't remember how embarrassed we all were eight months ago doesn't mean the rest of Washington, and especially the rest of the president's party, need be gripped by amnesia as well.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Dynamist Blog: Torture Hearings
Dynamist Blog: Torture Hearings
As the reader might discern I'm not fan of this post except in the way that is seems to show how Republican Supporters are seemingly uniformlycursed in their ability to want the truth and outrage to be voiced when there's the slightest possibility dems will make repubs look bad.
As the reader might discern I'm not fan of this post except in the way that is seems to show how Republican Supporters are seemingly uniformlycursed in their ability to want the truth and outrage to be voiced when there's the slightest possibility dems will make repubs look bad.
:::Mo(nu)ments:::: Divorcing in Israel
:::Mo(nu)ments:::: Divorcing in Israel
No real point with this post, just thought it was an interesting topic covering customs in a terrorist nation.
No real point with this post, just thought it was an interesting topic covering customs in a terrorist nation.
From the Oceans, Indiscriminate Devastation
ABC News: Tsunami Survivors Worry Psychiatrists
ABC News: Tsunami Survivors Worry Psychiatrists
I need to read this article, I suppose. I know it is meant to be a serious article about a serious calamity. However, my first relation based on the headline is: "Oh gadzooks!, if Psychiatrists are worried, we must all be in deep kimchee."
I need to read this article, I suppose. I know it is meant to be a serious article about a serious calamity. However, my first relation based on the headline is: "Oh gadzooks!, if Psychiatrists are worried, we must all be in deep kimchee."
God's Wrath!
AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth
Today has been busy with taking care of personal and business matters. I'm just taking a moment to checking the blogosphere, and here this is. I think it's my manic mood that makes me, after reading this, want to laugh hysterically or cry.
Today has been busy with taking care of personal and business matters. I'm just taking a moment to checking the blogosphere, and here this is. I think it's my manic mood that makes me, after reading this, want to laugh hysterically or cry.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Asylum Seeker's Death Sparks Outrage
Asylum Seeker's Death Sparks Outrage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-na-haitian2jan02,1,40535.story?coll=la-health-medicine
THE NATION
Asylum Seeker's Death Sparks Outrage
Haitian community says the case of a pastor who died in immigration officials' custody, his medicines confiscated, is emblematic.
By John-Thor Dahlburg
Times Staff Writer
January 2, 2005
MIAMI — When the Rev. Joseph Dantica flew here from Haiti, his family said, he was seeking a momentary respite from the strife and violence convulsing his native land. Instead, the 81-year-old Baptist clergyman died in federal custody, separated from his family and medicine that he was carrying to treat his ailments.
The death of the pastor, who was detained at Miami International Airport after requesting temporary asylum, has provoked lasting anger and outrage that have rippled far beyond the Haitian American community. Dantica was a longtime spiritual leader and frequent visitor to the United States who had a valid entry visa and family members in this country.
"To let this man who came with such hopes die is really, really, really aggravating to the community. It has been the subject of questions, expressions of anger, disappointment and helplessness," said Marleine Bastien, founder and executive director of Haitian Women of Miami Inc., an advocacy group.
Dantica died in a Miami hospital Nov. 3 while in Department of Homeland Security custody. The pathos of a frail and aged man dying apart from his family, plus the fact that his niece, Edwidge Danticat, is a prominent Haitian American author, have kept this case in the spotlight.
"The way my uncle was treated was so emblematic of the way Haitian asylum seekers are treated here. Their stories are not believed, they are immediately detained, sometimes for years, and the majority are deported," Danticat said. (Her family name is spelled differently, she explained, because of an error made on her father's birth certificate.)
Danticat, 35, is the author of the novel "Breath, Eyes, Memory" that was a selection in Oprah Winfrey's book club. She is calling for an investigation by U.S. authorities into the death of the man who reared her in Haiti for eight years until she could join her parents in Brooklyn, where her immigrant father worked as a taxi driver. The writer has the support of Walter Mosley, author of the "Easy Rawlins" novels based in postwar Los Angeles, and film producer and director Jonathan Demme.
Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, a Miami Democrat, has also asked the Bush administration to look into the circumstances surrounding the pastor's death and bring criminal charges if warranted. If Dantica had kept quiet and not told immigration officials that he might overstay his visa, Meek noted, he could have entered this country freely, then registered an asylum claim by telephone at his leisure.
Instead, "he wanted to be truthful with us, and his truthfulness became his demise," the congressman said. In general, Meek said, "Haitians are treated unlike any other nationality that comes through Miami International Airport, in my opinion. They are at the bottom of the pole."
To date, the response from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division has been a four-paragraph statement reporting that an autopsy showed Dantica's death was caused by pancreatitis, a "preexisting and fatal condition."
There is "no connection" between the rapid deterioration in Dantica's health and his detention after he arrived Oct. 29 in Miami, the statement said. Spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez in Customs Enforcement's Miami office declined to elaborate on Dantica's case, but said it was wrong to maintain that Haitians seeking to enter the United States were treated more harshly than people from other countries.
"Our enforcement operations do not target one particular race, nationality or ethnicity over any other," Gonzalez said. "The laws are applied evenly across the board."
Dantica was pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in the lawless Bel-Air district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Dantica fled to the United States with his 55-year-old son, Maxo, after the church was pillaged and their lives threatened by an armed gang.
On Oct. 24, the church had been used by U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police who engaged in a running gun battle with gang members in the streets outside. Survivors reportedly told Dantica that 15 gang members had been killed, and threatened to behead him if he didn't hand over money to bury them. The minister and his son went into hiding, then departed for Miami.
Dantica, who spoke through a voice box after surgical removal of his larynx, suffered from high blood pressure and an inflamed prostate. When detained along with his son by U.S. officials, the minister was carrying prescription and herbal remedies. The drugs were confiscated, said Danticat, who spoke by phone with her uncle after he was taken to the Krome Detention Center west of Miami.
While awaiting an immigration hearing there, her uncle began vomiting and passed out, she said. He was taken to a hospital where family members were not permitted to see him and died the next day.
"I think there is a strong connection with the way he was treated and the fact he died," his niece said. "They took his medicine and when he was in crisis, they didn't attend to him."
Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said that because of Dantica's age and valid visa, U.S. officials had the option of quickly releasing him into the custody of family members. Instead, she said in an op ed piece published last month by the Miami Herald, they accused the minister of faking his illness, and he died alone, chained to a hospital bed.
"At every turn, Haitians are discriminated against," Little said in an interview. In a report soon to be made public, her Miami-based group will allege that in some parts of South Florida, Haitians seem to have been "disproportionately targeted" in sweeps for illegal immigrants conducted as part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "Operation End Game."
Haitians illegally in the country, who may number 100,000, also have not been granted "temporary protected status," despite the widespread disorder in their homeland after the February departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and despite the destruction caused in the autumn by Hurricane Jeanne, which killed 3,000 people.
In April 2003, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said U.S. diplomats had noticed an increase in Pakistanis, Palestinians and other third-country nationals using Haiti as a staging area to enter this country. Little said that claim was groundless and had been used to justify a crackdown on Haitians who want to immigrate.
Danticat, a naturalized citizen who lives in Miami, said her uncle had been bewildered and ashamed to find himself behind bars. She said she hoped that an investigation into his death would lead to more humane treatment for asylum applicants.
"They could have let us see him; they could have let Maxo see him," she said. "But they let him die alone. It's shameful."
The day after his father's death, Maxo Dantica was released by U.S. officials and told that he could remain in this country for at least a year.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
Article licensing and reprint options
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-na-haitian2jan02,1,40535.story?coll=la-health-medicine
THE NATION
Asylum Seeker's Death Sparks Outrage
Haitian community says the case of a pastor who died in immigration officials' custody, his medicines confiscated, is emblematic.
By John-Thor Dahlburg
Times Staff Writer
January 2, 2005
MIAMI — When the Rev. Joseph Dantica flew here from Haiti, his family said, he was seeking a momentary respite from the strife and violence convulsing his native land. Instead, the 81-year-old Baptist clergyman died in federal custody, separated from his family and medicine that he was carrying to treat his ailments.
The death of the pastor, who was detained at Miami International Airport after requesting temporary asylum, has provoked lasting anger and outrage that have rippled far beyond the Haitian American community. Dantica was a longtime spiritual leader and frequent visitor to the United States who had a valid entry visa and family members in this country.
"To let this man who came with such hopes die is really, really, really aggravating to the community. It has been the subject of questions, expressions of anger, disappointment and helplessness," said Marleine Bastien, founder and executive director of Haitian Women of Miami Inc., an advocacy group.
Dantica died in a Miami hospital Nov. 3 while in Department of Homeland Security custody. The pathos of a frail and aged man dying apart from his family, plus the fact that his niece, Edwidge Danticat, is a prominent Haitian American author, have kept this case in the spotlight.
"The way my uncle was treated was so emblematic of the way Haitian asylum seekers are treated here. Their stories are not believed, they are immediately detained, sometimes for years, and the majority are deported," Danticat said. (Her family name is spelled differently, she explained, because of an error made on her father's birth certificate.)
Danticat, 35, is the author of the novel "Breath, Eyes, Memory" that was a selection in Oprah Winfrey's book club. She is calling for an investigation by U.S. authorities into the death of the man who reared her in Haiti for eight years until she could join her parents in Brooklyn, where her immigrant father worked as a taxi driver. The writer has the support of Walter Mosley, author of the "Easy Rawlins" novels based in postwar Los Angeles, and film producer and director Jonathan Demme.
Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, a Miami Democrat, has also asked the Bush administration to look into the circumstances surrounding the pastor's death and bring criminal charges if warranted. If Dantica had kept quiet and not told immigration officials that he might overstay his visa, Meek noted, he could have entered this country freely, then registered an asylum claim by telephone at his leisure.
Instead, "he wanted to be truthful with us, and his truthfulness became his demise," the congressman said. In general, Meek said, "Haitians are treated unlike any other nationality that comes through Miami International Airport, in my opinion. They are at the bottom of the pole."
To date, the response from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division has been a four-paragraph statement reporting that an autopsy showed Dantica's death was caused by pancreatitis, a "preexisting and fatal condition."
There is "no connection" between the rapid deterioration in Dantica's health and his detention after he arrived Oct. 29 in Miami, the statement said. Spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez in Customs Enforcement's Miami office declined to elaborate on Dantica's case, but said it was wrong to maintain that Haitians seeking to enter the United States were treated more harshly than people from other countries.
"Our enforcement operations do not target one particular race, nationality or ethnicity over any other," Gonzalez said. "The laws are applied evenly across the board."
Dantica was pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in the lawless Bel-Air district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Dantica fled to the United States with his 55-year-old son, Maxo, after the church was pillaged and their lives threatened by an armed gang.
On Oct. 24, the church had been used by U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police who engaged in a running gun battle with gang members in the streets outside. Survivors reportedly told Dantica that 15 gang members had been killed, and threatened to behead him if he didn't hand over money to bury them. The minister and his son went into hiding, then departed for Miami.
Dantica, who spoke through a voice box after surgical removal of his larynx, suffered from high blood pressure and an inflamed prostate. When detained along with his son by U.S. officials, the minister was carrying prescription and herbal remedies. The drugs were confiscated, said Danticat, who spoke by phone with her uncle after he was taken to the Krome Detention Center west of Miami.
While awaiting an immigration hearing there, her uncle began vomiting and passed out, she said. He was taken to a hospital where family members were not permitted to see him and died the next day.
"I think there is a strong connection with the way he was treated and the fact he died," his niece said. "They took his medicine and when he was in crisis, they didn't attend to him."
Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said that because of Dantica's age and valid visa, U.S. officials had the option of quickly releasing him into the custody of family members. Instead, she said in an op ed piece published last month by the Miami Herald, they accused the minister of faking his illness, and he died alone, chained to a hospital bed.
"At every turn, Haitians are discriminated against," Little said in an interview. In a report soon to be made public, her Miami-based group will allege that in some parts of South Florida, Haitians seem to have been "disproportionately targeted" in sweeps for illegal immigrants conducted as part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "Operation End Game."
Haitians illegally in the country, who may number 100,000, also have not been granted "temporary protected status," despite the widespread disorder in their homeland after the February departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and despite the destruction caused in the autumn by Hurricane Jeanne, which killed 3,000 people.
In April 2003, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said U.S. diplomats had noticed an increase in Pakistanis, Palestinians and other third-country nationals using Haiti as a staging area to enter this country. Little said that claim was groundless and had been used to justify a crackdown on Haitians who want to immigrate.
Danticat, a naturalized citizen who lives in Miami, said her uncle had been bewildered and ashamed to find himself behind bars. She said she hoped that an investigation into his death would lead to more humane treatment for asylum applicants.
"They could have let us see him; they could have let Maxo see him," she said. "But they let him die alone. It's shameful."
The day after his father's death, Maxo Dantica was released by U.S. officials and told that he could remain in this country for at least a year.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
Article licensing and reprint options
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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