By William Fisher
If enthusiastic White House and Congressional support could solve America’s public diplomacy problems, Dina Habib Powell would be well on her way to becoming a national heroine.
The Egypt-born Ms. Powell, currently the top personnel official at the White House, is about to be confirmed as President Bush’s choice to be Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). She will supervise all international student and other cultural exchange programs and serve as senior deputy to Karen Hughes, the long-time Bush confidante who has been nominated to direct all U.S. public diplomacy efforts.
Powell, whose parents emigrated from Egypt when she was a child, speaks fluent Arabic. She has risen quickly through Republican Party ranks, serving in the personnel office of the Bush-Cheney transition team and as Director of Congressional Affairs for the Republican National Committee.
At her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (May 26), New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu, himself an Arab-American, observed, “Ms. Powell was born in the Middle East but raised in the United States. Who better to understand many of the challenges that lie before us, particularly in engaging with the Muslim world?”
And Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin – a consistent critic of the Bush Administration and the only senator to vote against the USA Patriot Act --applauded Powell’s dedication to dialogue and assured her, “you will have strong allies on both sides of the aisle.”
Addressing the committee, Ms. Powell acknowledged the challenges facing American public diplomacy efforts. She said, “Our nation must engage with the rest of the world. But to be successful, we must listen. Our interaction with the world must be a conversation, not a monologue.”
She said she is committed to widening the “two-way highway of people-to-people exchange,” adding that she would work to “ensure international students know they are welcome at U.S. colleges, encourage more women and girls to participate in exchange programs, and enlist the private sector more fully in our public diplomacy efforts.”
ECA-sponsored exchange programs have served more than 800,000 people from 185 countries, including more than 200 former or current heads of state and 1,500 cabinet ministers.
However, post-9/11, the difficulties of obtaining student visas and Muslim fear of ‘Islamophobia’ in the U.S. have caused a precipitous decline in foreign enrollments in American colleges.
Powell has also expressed her views on public diplomacy during trips abroad. In Egypt, she addressed the perception that the U.S. is attempting to impose its ideas of democracy on others. She said, “We do not wish to impose reform. It is not our place. We want to listen to the voices of the region and where it is appropriate, lend a helping hand.”
She said that the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 triggered a “psyche change for the American people”. Despite that, she added, one day later, “the president visited a mosque, took off his shoes and paid his respects, and said 'this should not [make people] even begin to think about discrimination against people of Arab descent’. Shortly thereafter, racial profiling was made a federal crime.”
However, human rights organizations charge that racial profiling and harassment of Muslim- and Arab-Americans are still being practiced by government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), the body within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for screening airline passengers and maintaining Federal ‘no-fly’ lists.
Despite the high profile nominations of Karen Hughes and Dina Powell, America’s public diplomacy efforts remain problematic, particularly in the Middle East. Opinions of the U.S. remain at an historic low. And the country’s expensive broadcasting operations, including the Arabic-language satellite TV channel, Al Hurra, have to date failed to attract significant audiences.
Commenting on Powell’s nomination, Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, said, “People are not going to legitimize the policy because someone is speaking Arabic to them.”
Criticisms of America’s current public diplomacy efforts have come both from home and abroad.
A number of U.S. and overseas commissions and think-tank reports have faulted the Bush Administration for not fully explaining U.S. policies and practices, including the invasion of Iraq, the Arab-Israeli dispute, rendition of detainees to countries where they would likely face torture, and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Typical was a report issued late last year by a bipartisan commission appointed by President Bush. It concluded that the American campaign to communicate its ideas and ideals, particularly to Muslim audiences, was “uncoordinated and underfunded, and risks sending contradictory messages about U.S. intentions.”
The United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy said that one of the few successful initiatives -- exchange programs between US and foreign students -- has been burdened by ''redundant" security measures and ''excessive" visa fees.
Another report, by the Middle East Institute in Washington and the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, that said, Americans “have to learn that ignoring the feeling of peoples in the Arab world and their desire for justice and dignity can only lead to expanding the pool of terrorists, rather than drying it up.”
The Brookings Institution, a highly respected Washington-based think-tank, also found U.S. communications efforts “not only under-resourced, but also lacking an effective strategic direction, particularly towards the Islamic world.”
And Dr. John Brown, who resigned from the State Department in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and who is now a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., told IPS, “The objective of public diplomacy should be to win long-term friends for the U.S. One way to do that is to respect others, which the administration seems incapable of. The Bush White House doesn't really believe in diplomacy -- if it did, would it select John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the UN -- so how can it possibly believe in public diplomacy"?
Saturday, June 04, 2005
EMMETT TILL AND OTHERS
By William Fisher
Fifty-five years ago this summer, two white men abducted, tortured and killed a 14-year-old black youth, Emmett Till, allegedly for whistling at a white store clerk while on a visit to Mississippi.
An all-white jury acquitted the clerk’s husband and half-brother in a state court trial most regard as a farce.
Till's murder proved to be one of the catalyzing events of the civil rights movement. Black leaders, religious and labor organizations and numerous public officials called on the Justice Department (DOJ) to act. But Federal authorities claimed, erroneously, that only state officials could prosecute racially motivated crimes.
Rosa Parks – often hailed as “the mother of the civil rights movement” -- has said that it was the Till murder that motivated her to refuse to move to the back of an Alabama bus from the ‘white’ seating section in 1955. Her action would lead, almost a decade later, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending racial segregation in public accommodations and services in the U.S.
Last year, after relentless pressure from civil rights, labor and religious leaders, the FBI finally reopened its investigation into Till's murder, and two weeks ago exhumed his body to perform DNA and other analyses to determine that the body is indeed that of Emmett Till. After identity has been determined, investigators will seek clues about how Till died. No autopsy was ever performed on the young body found in a river wrapped in barbed wire.
It was similar evidence that led to the 1994 conviction white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in the 1963 shooting death of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, whose body was exhumed in 1991.
And since 1989, federal authorities have re-examined 22 deaths from the civil rights era and made 25 arrests, leading to 16 convictions, two acquittals and one mistrial.
Perhaps the most famous of these trials was for the murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney, who were targeted for their Freedom Summer work challenging segregation. The trio was intercepted by three carloads of Ku Klux Klansmen near Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964. They were shot, and their bodies buried beneath a 15-foot earthen dam. Federal officials conducted a massive hunt for the three, but it was ultimately a Klan informant who led them to the bodies.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said more than 20 men took part in the killing plot by the Klan, and 18 were indicted and tried. The jury convicted seven defendants. Eight others were acquitted. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in three other cases.
The judge in the case, an ardent segregationist, sentenced two of the men to ten years, two others to six years, and the other three to four years. The judge said of his sentences, "They killed one nigger, one Jew, and a white man -- I gave them all what I thought they deserved."
The convictions in the case represented the first ever in Mississippi for the killing of a civil rights worker. The investigation and trial later became the basis for the film “Mississippi Burning”.
But more than a dozen Mississippi civil-rights-era murder cases remain
un-reopened and un-investigated. These include:
Rev. George Lee, a minister who preached about voting rights in black Baptist churches more than a decade before the height of the civil rights movement, was driving home in 1955 when he was hit with gunfire from a passing car. The County sheriff quickly claimed his death was a traffic accident. Asked about the lead pellets taken from Lee's face and head, the sheriff replied they were probably dental fillings. The coroner ruled the death resulted from "unknown causes."
Lamar Smith, a World War II veteran, organized voter registration drives. In 1955, he and some white men got into an argument. A number of witnesses saw one of the white men pull out a pistol and shoot Smith at close range. Three men were arrested but went free when none of the witnesses would testify to what they had seen. Those three men have since died.
Four years later, Mack Charles Parker was accused of raping a white woman. When he was arrested, a Mississippi state trooper offered the woman's husband a pistol to shoot Parker. Three days before Parker was to stand trial, he was dragged from his jail cell, beaten and shot. His body was found in a river 10 days later. The FBI investigated and obtained confessions from some of the eight white suspects. However, the county prosecutor refused to present evidence to a state grand jury and a federal grand jury refused to indict.
When civil rights activist Bob Moses arrived in 1961 in Mississippi, Herbert Lee served as one of his guides. Lee drove Moses around in the black community to talk about voting rights. Lee was killed by a then-state legislator after an argument. He told authorities he shot Lee in self-defense, and a black witness testified to a coroner's jury that Lee was armed and arguing. No charges were filed. The witness later recanted his story, only to be killed himself.
Louis Allen was a witness to the killing of Herbert Lee. He initially testified to a coroner's jury that Lee was armed with a tire iron and killed in an argument, but later told civil rights workers he had been ordered to lie by a white man and followed the instructions to protect his family. He kept silent for more than two years. He was about to move away from Mississippi when he was found dead in his driveway, riddled with buckshot.
Fifty-five years on, Mississippians say the mentality of the 1950s and 60s has disappeared – indeed, African-Americans have been elected to the state legislature and to many mayoral offices. But the many unsolved murders ensure that the civil rights movement will continue to cast a long shadow. Each passing year sees the deaths of prospective suspects and victims, making the work of investigators extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible.
Fifty-five years ago this summer, two white men abducted, tortured and killed a 14-year-old black youth, Emmett Till, allegedly for whistling at a white store clerk while on a visit to Mississippi.
An all-white jury acquitted the clerk’s husband and half-brother in a state court trial most regard as a farce.
Till's murder proved to be one of the catalyzing events of the civil rights movement. Black leaders, religious and labor organizations and numerous public officials called on the Justice Department (DOJ) to act. But Federal authorities claimed, erroneously, that only state officials could prosecute racially motivated crimes.
Rosa Parks – often hailed as “the mother of the civil rights movement” -- has said that it was the Till murder that motivated her to refuse to move to the back of an Alabama bus from the ‘white’ seating section in 1955. Her action would lead, almost a decade later, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending racial segregation in public accommodations and services in the U.S.
Last year, after relentless pressure from civil rights, labor and religious leaders, the FBI finally reopened its investigation into Till's murder, and two weeks ago exhumed his body to perform DNA and other analyses to determine that the body is indeed that of Emmett Till. After identity has been determined, investigators will seek clues about how Till died. No autopsy was ever performed on the young body found in a river wrapped in barbed wire.
It was similar evidence that led to the 1994 conviction white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in the 1963 shooting death of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, whose body was exhumed in 1991.
And since 1989, federal authorities have re-examined 22 deaths from the civil rights era and made 25 arrests, leading to 16 convictions, two acquittals and one mistrial.
Perhaps the most famous of these trials was for the murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney, who were targeted for their Freedom Summer work challenging segregation. The trio was intercepted by three carloads of Ku Klux Klansmen near Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964. They were shot, and their bodies buried beneath a 15-foot earthen dam. Federal officials conducted a massive hunt for the three, but it was ultimately a Klan informant who led them to the bodies.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said more than 20 men took part in the killing plot by the Klan, and 18 were indicted and tried. The jury convicted seven defendants. Eight others were acquitted. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in three other cases.
The judge in the case, an ardent segregationist, sentenced two of the men to ten years, two others to six years, and the other three to four years. The judge said of his sentences, "They killed one nigger, one Jew, and a white man -- I gave them all what I thought they deserved."
The convictions in the case represented the first ever in Mississippi for the killing of a civil rights worker. The investigation and trial later became the basis for the film “Mississippi Burning”.
But more than a dozen Mississippi civil-rights-era murder cases remain
un-reopened and un-investigated. These include:
Rev. George Lee, a minister who preached about voting rights in black Baptist churches more than a decade before the height of the civil rights movement, was driving home in 1955 when he was hit with gunfire from a passing car. The County sheriff quickly claimed his death was a traffic accident. Asked about the lead pellets taken from Lee's face and head, the sheriff replied they were probably dental fillings. The coroner ruled the death resulted from "unknown causes."
Lamar Smith, a World War II veteran, organized voter registration drives. In 1955, he and some white men got into an argument. A number of witnesses saw one of the white men pull out a pistol and shoot Smith at close range. Three men were arrested but went free when none of the witnesses would testify to what they had seen. Those three men have since died.
Four years later, Mack Charles Parker was accused of raping a white woman. When he was arrested, a Mississippi state trooper offered the woman's husband a pistol to shoot Parker. Three days before Parker was to stand trial, he was dragged from his jail cell, beaten and shot. His body was found in a river 10 days later. The FBI investigated and obtained confessions from some of the eight white suspects. However, the county prosecutor refused to present evidence to a state grand jury and a federal grand jury refused to indict.
When civil rights activist Bob Moses arrived in 1961 in Mississippi, Herbert Lee served as one of his guides. Lee drove Moses around in the black community to talk about voting rights. Lee was killed by a then-state legislator after an argument. He told authorities he shot Lee in self-defense, and a black witness testified to a coroner's jury that Lee was armed and arguing. No charges were filed. The witness later recanted his story, only to be killed himself.
Louis Allen was a witness to the killing of Herbert Lee. He initially testified to a coroner's jury that Lee was armed with a tire iron and killed in an argument, but later told civil rights workers he had been ordered to lie by a white man and followed the instructions to protect his family. He kept silent for more than two years. He was about to move away from Mississippi when he was found dead in his driveway, riddled with buckshot.
Fifty-five years on, Mississippians say the mentality of the 1950s and 60s has disappeared – indeed, African-Americans have been elected to the state legislature and to many mayoral offices. But the many unsolved murders ensure that the civil rights movement will continue to cast a long shadow. Each passing year sees the deaths of prospective suspects and victims, making the work of investigators extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible.
Be Mournful, America
The article below is by Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., who worked in the defense sector of the aerospace industry for 22 years, and now teaches in the California Community College system.
By Gerald S. Rellick
Be mournful, America. We have lost yet another courageous, noble countryman to a senseless, corrupt cause. John McCain eulogized Pat Tillman at his funeral, but now that the world knows the Army lied about the details of Tillman’s death, he remains silent. Where is our Vietnam War hero when we need a champion to challenge the venality and deceit of the Bush administration?
In the summer of 2002, I wrote a long letter to John McCain, a politician and leader that I admired and respected. I asked him to seriously consider opposing George Bush for the Republican presidential nomination. I felt that McCain was the best chance to put an end to what was clearly developing into the worst presidency in American history. I stressed to him that if Bush was allowed to continue for four more years, it would not only devastate the country, but also ravage the Republican Party for many years to come. Only John McCain had the stature to challenge an incumbent—either as a Republican, or as independent, like McCain’s hero, Teddy Roosevelt. I cited a passage to him from an essay by Alan Wolfe from the July 8, 2002, issue of The New Republic. Eight months before the invasion of Iraq and long before Bush’s lies had become common in the American media. Wolfe’s words were prescient:
“As Lord Bryce noted in 1888, the American way of choosing presidents rarely produces politicians of quality. Subsequent events vindicated his point: in the half-century since his book appeared, Americans elected…as mediocre a political leadership as we have had in our history…Will [the Bush] administration take its place among the worst presidencies of modern times? [I believe] George W. Bush will be lucky if his presidency ever rises to the level of Taft’s or Harding’s.
“During the 2000 election, Bush’s advisers discovered something that no one before had ever quite known: there are simply no limits to how much you can lie in American politics and get away with it. And it is the transposition of that approach to politics into policy that constitutes the disgrace of the Bush method.
“[This situation]…opens the political territory for a challenge from a Roosevelt-style Republican such as John McCain…There is every reason to believe that there exists a hunger for leadership in America.”
Hunger for real leadership, indeed! Then came the summer of 2004 and rumors of a possible Kerry-McCain ticket. Polls showed the public loved the idea—two real men versus two weenies: Batman and Robin against Barney Fife and the Penguin. It was a winner -- a movie ending with America saved from the brink of disaster.
But it was not to be. For reasons known only to McCain, he made the decision to support George Bush for reelection. Admittedly, he wasn’t the most enthusiastic campaigner, but he made enough appearances that it probably made a difference in what turned out to be an extremely close election. And now the country is stuck—stuck for four more years of what is now most certainly the worst presidency in American history.
So John McCain joins Colin Powell in the ranks of those Americans who served their country bravely and honorably, in Vietnam and elsewhere. Despite their valor on the battlefield, these Americans have failed the test of moral courage in the political arena. McCain is another fallen hero, having traded his integrity for political gain.
These festering sores were exacerbated for me recently when I read of the circumstances surrounding the tragic death a year ago of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Tillman, as we all know, was the star NFL player who, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, turned down a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals in order to be an Army Ranger. The Army initially reported that Tillman died in a heroic defense of his position. They awarded him the Silver Star for bravery posthumously. However, we have since learned that Tillman was accidentally killed by his own troops. Moreover, it is now evident that the Army hid the truth from the public, and even from Tillman’s family.
As the Washington Post reported, "A new Army report on the death shows that top Army officials, including the theater commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, were told that Tillman's death was fratricide days before the [funeral] service." But it wasn’t until weeks later that Tillman’s family was informed. “And even then,” writes Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times, “They provided no details and answered no questions, saying only that friendly fire ‘probably’ killed Tillman.”
Continuing a consistent practice in the Bush administration, the Army lied about Tillman’s death to prevent the loss of their “patriotic poster boy”. How would potential recruits react if they discovered that a true American hero had died at the hands of his own men? The Neo-cons needed a steady supply of soldiers to carry out their imperialistic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Tillman, they had a propagandist’s dream. They were not about to let a nagging detail like truth destroy their false image of Tillman dying a hero’s death.
Tillman’s father, Patrick, had this to say:
"After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this…They purposely interfered with the investigation …. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a hand basket if the truth about his death got out."
Tillman's mother, Mary, told the Post, "The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."
So where does John McCain fit into this? McCain was clearly moved by Pat Tillman’s patriotism, self-sacrifice and courage—as we all were. McCain delivered a eulogy at Tillman’s funeral and spoke publicly about his admiration for this fine young man. The newly revealed circumstances of Tillman’s death don’t change any of that. However as one who spoke so eloquently of Tillman and his sacrifice, as one of the most prominent members of the Senate, and as a man who was going to “talk tough” to Don Rumsfeld after the election, why is John McCain now silent? Why isn’t he asking for accountability in this matter? Patrick Tillman may have answered this question when he said, "Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore."
Make no mistake, John McCain wants to be president – and he wants it badly. But for those of us who would have supported him enthusiastically in 2004, it’s too late. Ironically, George Bush has paved the way for him by demonstrating that honor and integrity are worth nothing in the Republican Party of today.
I would suggest that there was a time not long ago that the Army would have lived up to a higher standard and told the truth about Pat Tillman. But as Norman Mailer remarked in a recent essay, “The motives that lead to a nation's major historical acts can probably rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of its leadership.”
Or put another way, sewage flows down hill.
By Gerald S. Rellick
Be mournful, America. We have lost yet another courageous, noble countryman to a senseless, corrupt cause. John McCain eulogized Pat Tillman at his funeral, but now that the world knows the Army lied about the details of Tillman’s death, he remains silent. Where is our Vietnam War hero when we need a champion to challenge the venality and deceit of the Bush administration?
In the summer of 2002, I wrote a long letter to John McCain, a politician and leader that I admired and respected. I asked him to seriously consider opposing George Bush for the Republican presidential nomination. I felt that McCain was the best chance to put an end to what was clearly developing into the worst presidency in American history. I stressed to him that if Bush was allowed to continue for four more years, it would not only devastate the country, but also ravage the Republican Party for many years to come. Only John McCain had the stature to challenge an incumbent—either as a Republican, or as independent, like McCain’s hero, Teddy Roosevelt. I cited a passage to him from an essay by Alan Wolfe from the July 8, 2002, issue of The New Republic. Eight months before the invasion of Iraq and long before Bush’s lies had become common in the American media. Wolfe’s words were prescient:
“As Lord Bryce noted in 1888, the American way of choosing presidents rarely produces politicians of quality. Subsequent events vindicated his point: in the half-century since his book appeared, Americans elected…as mediocre a political leadership as we have had in our history…Will [the Bush] administration take its place among the worst presidencies of modern times? [I believe] George W. Bush will be lucky if his presidency ever rises to the level of Taft’s or Harding’s.
“During the 2000 election, Bush’s advisers discovered something that no one before had ever quite known: there are simply no limits to how much you can lie in American politics and get away with it. And it is the transposition of that approach to politics into policy that constitutes the disgrace of the Bush method.
“[This situation]…opens the political territory for a challenge from a Roosevelt-style Republican such as John McCain…There is every reason to believe that there exists a hunger for leadership in America.”
Hunger for real leadership, indeed! Then came the summer of 2004 and rumors of a possible Kerry-McCain ticket. Polls showed the public loved the idea—two real men versus two weenies: Batman and Robin against Barney Fife and the Penguin. It was a winner -- a movie ending with America saved from the brink of disaster.
But it was not to be. For reasons known only to McCain, he made the decision to support George Bush for reelection. Admittedly, he wasn’t the most enthusiastic campaigner, but he made enough appearances that it probably made a difference in what turned out to be an extremely close election. And now the country is stuck—stuck for four more years of what is now most certainly the worst presidency in American history.
So John McCain joins Colin Powell in the ranks of those Americans who served their country bravely and honorably, in Vietnam and elsewhere. Despite their valor on the battlefield, these Americans have failed the test of moral courage in the political arena. McCain is another fallen hero, having traded his integrity for political gain.
These festering sores were exacerbated for me recently when I read of the circumstances surrounding the tragic death a year ago of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Tillman, as we all know, was the star NFL player who, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, turned down a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals in order to be an Army Ranger. The Army initially reported that Tillman died in a heroic defense of his position. They awarded him the Silver Star for bravery posthumously. However, we have since learned that Tillman was accidentally killed by his own troops. Moreover, it is now evident that the Army hid the truth from the public, and even from Tillman’s family.
As the Washington Post reported, "A new Army report on the death shows that top Army officials, including the theater commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, were told that Tillman's death was fratricide days before the [funeral] service." But it wasn’t until weeks later that Tillman’s family was informed. “And even then,” writes Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times, “They provided no details and answered no questions, saying only that friendly fire ‘probably’ killed Tillman.”
Continuing a consistent practice in the Bush administration, the Army lied about Tillman’s death to prevent the loss of their “patriotic poster boy”. How would potential recruits react if they discovered that a true American hero had died at the hands of his own men? The Neo-cons needed a steady supply of soldiers to carry out their imperialistic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Tillman, they had a propagandist’s dream. They were not about to let a nagging detail like truth destroy their false image of Tillman dying a hero’s death.
Tillman’s father, Patrick, had this to say:
"After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this…They purposely interfered with the investigation …. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a hand basket if the truth about his death got out."
Tillman's mother, Mary, told the Post, "The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."
So where does John McCain fit into this? McCain was clearly moved by Pat Tillman’s patriotism, self-sacrifice and courage—as we all were. McCain delivered a eulogy at Tillman’s funeral and spoke publicly about his admiration for this fine young man. The newly revealed circumstances of Tillman’s death don’t change any of that. However as one who spoke so eloquently of Tillman and his sacrifice, as one of the most prominent members of the Senate, and as a man who was going to “talk tough” to Don Rumsfeld after the election, why is John McCain now silent? Why isn’t he asking for accountability in this matter? Patrick Tillman may have answered this question when he said, "Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore."
Make no mistake, John McCain wants to be president – and he wants it badly. But for those of us who would have supported him enthusiastically in 2004, it’s too late. Ironically, George Bush has paved the way for him by demonstrating that honor and integrity are worth nothing in the Republican Party of today.
I would suggest that there was a time not long ago that the Army would have lived up to a higher standard and told the truth about Pat Tillman. But as Norman Mailer remarked in a recent essay, “The motives that lead to a nation's major historical acts can probably rise no higher than the spiritual understanding of its leadership.”
Or put another way, sewage flows down hill.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
We Don't Need no Stinkin' Compassion
By Jason Miller
Why did I open that box?
Oh to be blissfully unaware! Alas, in my studies for my activist writing and advocating for social justice, I have opened Pandora’s Box. In some ways I wish I could have closed it before frightening truths permeated my mind, but it is too late. As I delve more deeply into the sea of knowledge about current events, history, ideology, and politics, I am experiencing seriously altered perceptions, thoughts and feelings with respect to many facets of the world. Having passed the point of “know return”, I remain in America in a physical sense, but in an intellectual sense, “I am not in Kansas anymore!” My faith in America and our government has been severely shaken. While disturbing, my awakening has been quite liberating. In some ways I miss the warm fuzzy feelings that came with belief in the pleasant fiction of the America that our leaders portray. However, in spite of the discomfort, I relish the freedom of seeing my world with clarity. In an ongoing effort, I will strive to seek the information necessary to continue piercing the veil of propaganda disseminated by our leaders.
With eyes wide open , I yearn to share the truth with others. An editor once complained that many of my pieces were "litanies of the wrongs" in America. I write my litanies precisely because there are many "wrongs", and the mainstream media is not going to expose them. My goals are to present information that the mainstream media omits, and to persuade readers to act for social change. I often harp on the "wrongs in America" so that readers will want to take non-violent action to make them "rights". As my writing has evolved, I have also incorporated solutions to the problems on which I harp, and have been doing my part to carry out the solutions which I offer.
Tristful day for justice
Priscilla Owens is now a federal judge, setting her up for an eventual nomination to the US Supreme Court. I shake my head in disgust that such a person has reached a position of power in the federal judiciary. Disgust and repulsion fill me as I ponder this turn of events.
From a 5/25 NY Times article:
"She represents a part of the Texas culture that is basically a frontier mentality," said Linda S. Eads, a law professor at Southern Methodist University and a former deputy attorney general of Texas who supports Ms. Owen's nomination.
"You don't cry about your hardships, you just keep moving forward," Professor Eads said. "In some ways, it's a very empowering philosophy, and in some ways it can be seen as cold. I guess it depends on which side of the outcome you are."
During the Senate nomination process, Owens enumerated her "most significant opinions" from her days on the Supreme Court in Texas. Her choices belie her harsh, severe nature, and are a harbinger of bleak prospects for the victimized, poor, or disenfranchised who will seek justice in her court.
From the NY Times again:
“"she chose opinions overturning rulings in favor of a child born with birth defects, a worker injured on an oil rig, a nurse fired for blowing the whistle on a drug-dealing co-worker, a family with an interest in an oil field that had been drained by a nearby company, asbestos and breast-implant plaintiffs and a student whose school made him cut his hair."
Owens simply mirrors the Oligarchy which rules our nation. Her pride in opinions that favored corporations and victimized those who were truly deserving of justice reflects her cold, callous, and hypocritical nature. The Oligarchs’ newly anointed arbiter of justice will implement their inhumane, fascist agenda with zeal and joy.
Oligarchy in America? Can it be true?
Monolithic corporations like Wal-Mart, obscenely wealthy clans with names like Bush, DuPont, and Kennedy, leaders of the Religious Right like James Dobson, powerful religious organizations like Opus Dei, and the intricate web of entities comprising our military industrial complex have psychologically and economically enslaved the American people. We have relinquished our power to this collection of avaricious demagogues which I call the Oligarchy. Sadly, many Americans are unaware that they are unwitting servants of an imperialistic machine built to establish world domination (http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm). Many of the "elected representatives" in our government are naturally part of the Oligarchy by virtue of their wealth. With powerful lobbying groups, the Oligarchs are able to use pressure or bribes to ensnare many of the true representatives of the people who sneak into our government. If Mr. Smith went to Washington today, the Oligarchs would make him one of their own very quickly.
George Bush, the figurehead of the Oligarchy, projects a reassuring image of a "strong and resolute" leader with the Texas machismo to make brash (yet incalculably obtuse) statements to the terrorists. Remember, "Bring it on"? When the Oligarchs either allowed 9/11 to happen, or actually caused it to happen (http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/47), they had the psychological lever they needed to essentially crush the remnants of America's republic. Fear drove the American people to surrender many of their freedoms to a tyranny. Bush's tough talk, declaration of a “war on terror”, rush to war with a "terrorist" nation, close alignment with the Religious Right, and his alleged adherence to "absolute, family values" in a world of uncertainty, provided an illusory shelter from the storm. Already psychologically shackled by years of mind-numbing propaganda, many Americans surrendered themselves to the powerful embrace of Big Brother. If they could only see his true face, they would recoil and run away in horror.
Mirror, mirror on the wall....who is the ugliest soul of all?
Greed, hubris, narcissism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, and deceit are but a few of the "attributes" which many of the Oligarchs possess. These qualities are necessary ingredients to achieve the success defined and portrayed by the Oligarch-sponsored media machine. Thinness, self-reliance, strength, financial prosperity, influence, youth, and beauty are essential to being a successful American. Getting ahead and feeling good about oneself, regardless of the cost to others, lie at the black heart of the American dream. The quintessential American strives to meet these goals with abandon and disregard for the impact on others, and generally receives the welcoming embrace of the Oligarchs when they do reach these hallowed objectives. Narcissism be thy name.
Tyranny wears many masks
Our land has been beset by a twisted version of Christianity that spreads itself like a virus through the use of psychological terrorism. Various groups and sects comprise the Religious Right and the Dominionists, the carriers of this contagion. While the individual groups and leaders vary to some extent in beliefs and tactics, their goals are closely aligned. These modern day crusaders have relentlessly pursued the persecution of gays, and hence provided the Oligarchs with the scapegoat that a tyranny needs in order to thrive. Fortified by the hubristic belief that theirs is the one true religion, and that Jesus guarantees them a place in heaven, members of the Religious Right feel confident that they possess the "manifest destiny" to impose their agenda on the rest of America. They have grossly abused their tax exempt status with their forays into the political arena. The Religious Right is also threatening to corrupt our secular public institutions with their "truth", which they derive from selective interpretation of the Bible. Someone needs to remind them that truth is not easily plumbed from a book which the Church revised many times throughout history for the purpose of manipulating the masses.
Spiritually deficient
Priscilla Owens and her fellow Oligarchs lack compassion, a crucial spiritual value. Were one to confront them, they would probably claim they were "compassionate conservatives", or they might downplay the value of compassion. Compassion was the hallmark virtue of Christ. Jesus was the one of the most empathic and liberal activist in history, and were he alive today, Bush and his ilk would be leading the march to Golgotha. Jesus was mostly about compassion, the virtual antithesis of the core motivations of the Oligarchs.
Matthew 9:35: "Jesus was going about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the reign of God and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the crowds, Jesus felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd."
As Carolyn Baker pointed out in a series of articles in Dissident Voice about the Religious Right (http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Baker0517.htm), their claim to be a “pro-life” is little more than Orwellian Newspeak. The fact is that they are actually "pro-birth" and are hostile to women's rights. Striving to advance their patriarchal agenda, they relentlessly push to deny a woman's right to reproductive choice, even going so far as to enlist pharmacists to deny birth control, and in extreme cases, killing abortion doctors. Recently, Tom Delay has even made veiled threats against members of the judiciary who dare to rule in ways inconsistent with the goals of the Religious Right.
Denying the reality that many teen or unwanted pregnancies often result in horrendous lives for the resulting children, the Religious Right continues to press for the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Were that to happen, their efforts to “save the unborn” would actually result in more death and suffering as women continued to seek abortions. It is a foregone conclusion that the unborn would continue to die in similar numbers, while many women seeking illegal abortions from back-alley butchers would be maimed or killed. Like the Pharisees, the Religious Right and the scoundrels at the helm of our nation are far more concerned with their artificial, abstract "family values" than they are with the welfare of real human beings. Their strident objection to abortion ultimately boils down to a psychological power-play of men over women. What does the Bible say about the equality of women?
"There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus."(Gal. 3:28)
Need evidence that the Oligarchs and their Religious Right brethren are also "pro-death"?. Look to the war in Iraq. Over 1600 Americans have died, thousands more have been injured, and countless Iraqis have been killed or injured in this imperialistic foray into the Middle East. With strong support from the leadership of the Religious Right, Bush and his fellow Oligarchs gleefully launched "Shock and Awe" on Iraq, after lying to the American people to legitimize the invasion. Offering a textbook example of psychological projection, in 2/02 Pat Robertson characterized Islam as a religion that wants to "dominate and then, if need be, destroy." Portraying this crusade as a struggle of "good versus evil" enables the Oligarchs to lend moral justification to plundering the US treasury and channeling the money to their mega-corporations, like Haliburton. Characterizing Islam as our enemy enables them to use the Middle East as their springboard for the world domination they so desperately crave. What might Jesus have said to Bush as he prepared to invade Iraq?
"Do not resist one who is evil. but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other."
As they continue to pillage our treasury and further bankrupt America, the Oligarchs are now on a relentless campaign to slither their way into Social Security to plunder its revenues. Bush touts privatization as a means to strengthen our "ownership society". The reality is that the Americans who would benefit most from privatization would be the current "owners", the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who have more capital than the combined wealth of 90% of the rest of the population. Average Americans would be playing the lottery with their Social Security money while wealthy investment bankers would fatten their already burgeoning wallets with the astronomical up tick in transaction fee money. Under the Oligarchs, the wealth gap continues to widen, the middle class is rapidly shrinking, and the rich continue to increase their holdings through enormous tax cuts. Where might Jesus say to the 1% who is vying to add to their wealth?
After the young man left, Jesus talked to his disciples about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. "It is easier", he said, "for a camel to go through the eye of a needle."
While the Oligarchs continue to prosper with increased corporate welfare, decreased taxes, and increased funding for the military industrial complex, the less fortunate suffer the budget cuts which are badly needed to keep the $7.5 trillion dollar debt from spinning further out of control. The elderly, the disabled, the poor, single mothers, and family farmers tighten their belts for the "good of their country" while the elite let theirs out a few notches. Why are we giving the biggest tax cuts to those who already possess great wealth? Why are we cutting taxes at all? Thanks to the unrestrained spending and tax cuts of the Oligarchs, our legacy to our children is a $7.5 trillion debt that continues to mount. What did Jesus say about paying taxes?
Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
It has become personal
I grew up under the reign of a tyrannical father who, despite his denial, shares many of the Oligarchs' values. Having prospered financially, he met one of the most important goals of success in the perverse system of "American" values. However, the tab was three heart attacks and the loss of his family. My mother divorced him and got remarried. My brother has disappeared somewhere in Alaska. I elected to walk away from him. Had I licked his boots long enough, I probably would have inherited a small fortune. However, I would not abide his tyranny, and I will not abide the tyranny of the ruling elite in America today.
Both my wife and I suffered deep emotional wounds inflicted by Christian churches which embodied the values of the Religious Right. She and I have both forged our own personal spiritualities. Neither of us has chosen to reconcile the Christian religion into our spiritual beliefs after the damage that the churches rendered upon us. My wife and I are both people of honesty and integrity. We respect the rights and dignity of others, and embrace many of the teachings of Christ. However, neither of us calls ourselves Christian.
I went through extremely difficult times in the past. During those times, I utilized several components of the social welfare system to get myself back on my feet. Had those life-lines not been there, I would not be where I am today. I now have a college degree and earn a middle class wage as an account representative at a finance company. My wife and I are raising our son, and I have joint legal custody of two boys from a previous marriage. I am an active parent in their live, and pay my child support to their mother. I am also a successful activist writer in a climate where dissident voices are all too scarce of a commodity.
Should I stay or should I go?
I choose to stay in America so that I can make a positive difference. Like Judge Owens, I am exceedingly persistent and tenacious, and I have empowered myself by overcoming significant adversities. However, unlike Owens and the rest of Bush's Neocon subordinates, I do not see the "frontier mentality" as a virtue. My wife and children have taught me not to expect others to be as tenacious as I am in facing challenges. People need compassion, and some need more help than others. As much willpower as I have, I needed serious help during my trials, and still need help and support. I have reconciled my strengths and limitations, and feel more connected with others because of my limitations. Compassion and mercy are values that I embrace, in spite of my strength.
I have chosen to align myself with the disenfranchised of society and to pursue social and economic equality. My friends are mostly women, minorities, gays, intellectuals, or people who are economically disadvantaged. I have chosen to advocate for social justice, civil liberties, and intellectual freedom through my activist writing and through my ACLU affiliation. I am teaching my children to think critically to free their minds and to seek social justice. I dissent against the Oligarchs through my writing. I have chosen to learn Spanish as a second language so that I can communicate with my numerous Hispanic immigrant customers rather than demeaning them by forcing them to speak a language that they have not had time to learn. My wife and I work hard to live within our means. Unlike our government, we are virtually debt-free because of our thrift. We boycott multinational corporations like Wal-Mart and spend our money at small, local vendors when possible. My wife and I both strive enthusiastically to be part of the solution in a nation beset with problems..
My one regret in staying in America is that I pay taxes to the federal government. However, despite the fattening of the Oligarchs and the furthering of the imperialistic agenda, I feel gratified knowing that some of my tax money goes to social welfare, educational, and other programs to benefit humanity. Since I am not prepared to stop paying taxes and engage in a futile battle with the IRS, I live with this ambivalence.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be (Voltaire)
As the tyranny grows more overt, and the light of democracy grows dimmer, the Oligarchs grow bolder in implementing their foreign and domestic policy agendas. With rising frequency, their policies clash significantly with the welfare of the poor and working class. Still, I believe that once enough of the uneducated and undecided American people awaken and become motivated to act, the Oligarchs will be forced to render a measure of social and economic justice. Studying the Populists, the Wobblies, the New Dealers, and the Civil Rights protestors, I see how they forced significant social change in favor of the people. I rest my faith and hope on their successes. I am prepared to go a step beyond what I am doing now and engage in civil disobedience when it becomes necessary, and will encourage others to do the same.
I envision a grassroots movement rising to power over the next few years. It has already started gathering momentum through the subversion of the mainstream media via the Internet. Non-profit news sites, blogs, email, and over 2 billion websites give people an unprecedented means to communicate and exchange information. The human spirit thirsts for freedom, and when enough people begin to realize that they have been enslaved, the dissidence and non-violent revolution will become so powerful that the Oligarchs will capitulate and yield a share of the wealth and power back to the people. We of the poor, working and middle class have the advantage in numbers, and in the fact that tyrants are destined to fail because of the intolerance of the human spirit for enslavement. The Oligarchs need us to buy their products and do their dirty work, and people will not wear the yoke of oppression indefinitely. Despite their possession of most of the wealth, the true economic power lies in our hands. It is only a matter of time before increased awareness and activist efforts shift the balance of power, but more people need to wish to be free, and take the steps necessary to attain freedom. Remember, you have more power than you think, and compassion is an empowering virtue!
Why did I open that box?
Oh to be blissfully unaware! Alas, in my studies for my activist writing and advocating for social justice, I have opened Pandora’s Box. In some ways I wish I could have closed it before frightening truths permeated my mind, but it is too late. As I delve more deeply into the sea of knowledge about current events, history, ideology, and politics, I am experiencing seriously altered perceptions, thoughts and feelings with respect to many facets of the world. Having passed the point of “know return”, I remain in America in a physical sense, but in an intellectual sense, “I am not in Kansas anymore!” My faith in America and our government has been severely shaken. While disturbing, my awakening has been quite liberating. In some ways I miss the warm fuzzy feelings that came with belief in the pleasant fiction of the America that our leaders portray. However, in spite of the discomfort, I relish the freedom of seeing my world with clarity. In an ongoing effort, I will strive to seek the information necessary to continue piercing the veil of propaganda disseminated by our leaders.
With eyes wide open , I yearn to share the truth with others. An editor once complained that many of my pieces were "litanies of the wrongs" in America. I write my litanies precisely because there are many "wrongs", and the mainstream media is not going to expose them. My goals are to present information that the mainstream media omits, and to persuade readers to act for social change. I often harp on the "wrongs in America" so that readers will want to take non-violent action to make them "rights". As my writing has evolved, I have also incorporated solutions to the problems on which I harp, and have been doing my part to carry out the solutions which I offer.
Tristful day for justice
Priscilla Owens is now a federal judge, setting her up for an eventual nomination to the US Supreme Court. I shake my head in disgust that such a person has reached a position of power in the federal judiciary. Disgust and repulsion fill me as I ponder this turn of events.
From a 5/25 NY Times article:
"She represents a part of the Texas culture that is basically a frontier mentality," said Linda S. Eads, a law professor at Southern Methodist University and a former deputy attorney general of Texas who supports Ms. Owen's nomination.
"You don't cry about your hardships, you just keep moving forward," Professor Eads said. "In some ways, it's a very empowering philosophy, and in some ways it can be seen as cold. I guess it depends on which side of the outcome you are."
During the Senate nomination process, Owens enumerated her "most significant opinions" from her days on the Supreme Court in Texas. Her choices belie her harsh, severe nature, and are a harbinger of bleak prospects for the victimized, poor, or disenfranchised who will seek justice in her court.
From the NY Times again:
“"she chose opinions overturning rulings in favor of a child born with birth defects, a worker injured on an oil rig, a nurse fired for blowing the whistle on a drug-dealing co-worker, a family with an interest in an oil field that had been drained by a nearby company, asbestos and breast-implant plaintiffs and a student whose school made him cut his hair."
Owens simply mirrors the Oligarchy which rules our nation. Her pride in opinions that favored corporations and victimized those who were truly deserving of justice reflects her cold, callous, and hypocritical nature. The Oligarchs’ newly anointed arbiter of justice will implement their inhumane, fascist agenda with zeal and joy.
Oligarchy in America? Can it be true?
Monolithic corporations like Wal-Mart, obscenely wealthy clans with names like Bush, DuPont, and Kennedy, leaders of the Religious Right like James Dobson, powerful religious organizations like Opus Dei, and the intricate web of entities comprising our military industrial complex have psychologically and economically enslaved the American people. We have relinquished our power to this collection of avaricious demagogues which I call the Oligarchy. Sadly, many Americans are unaware that they are unwitting servants of an imperialistic machine built to establish world domination (http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm). Many of the "elected representatives" in our government are naturally part of the Oligarchy by virtue of their wealth. With powerful lobbying groups, the Oligarchs are able to use pressure or bribes to ensnare many of the true representatives of the people who sneak into our government. If Mr. Smith went to Washington today, the Oligarchs would make him one of their own very quickly.
George Bush, the figurehead of the Oligarchy, projects a reassuring image of a "strong and resolute" leader with the Texas machismo to make brash (yet incalculably obtuse) statements to the terrorists. Remember, "Bring it on"? When the Oligarchs either allowed 9/11 to happen, or actually caused it to happen (http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/47), they had the psychological lever they needed to essentially crush the remnants of America's republic. Fear drove the American people to surrender many of their freedoms to a tyranny. Bush's tough talk, declaration of a “war on terror”, rush to war with a "terrorist" nation, close alignment with the Religious Right, and his alleged adherence to "absolute, family values" in a world of uncertainty, provided an illusory shelter from the storm. Already psychologically shackled by years of mind-numbing propaganda, many Americans surrendered themselves to the powerful embrace of Big Brother. If they could only see his true face, they would recoil and run away in horror.
Mirror, mirror on the wall....who is the ugliest soul of all?
Greed, hubris, narcissism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, and deceit are but a few of the "attributes" which many of the Oligarchs possess. These qualities are necessary ingredients to achieve the success defined and portrayed by the Oligarch-sponsored media machine. Thinness, self-reliance, strength, financial prosperity, influence, youth, and beauty are essential to being a successful American. Getting ahead and feeling good about oneself, regardless of the cost to others, lie at the black heart of the American dream. The quintessential American strives to meet these goals with abandon and disregard for the impact on others, and generally receives the welcoming embrace of the Oligarchs when they do reach these hallowed objectives. Narcissism be thy name.
Tyranny wears many masks
Our land has been beset by a twisted version of Christianity that spreads itself like a virus through the use of psychological terrorism. Various groups and sects comprise the Religious Right and the Dominionists, the carriers of this contagion. While the individual groups and leaders vary to some extent in beliefs and tactics, their goals are closely aligned. These modern day crusaders have relentlessly pursued the persecution of gays, and hence provided the Oligarchs with the scapegoat that a tyranny needs in order to thrive. Fortified by the hubristic belief that theirs is the one true religion, and that Jesus guarantees them a place in heaven, members of the Religious Right feel confident that they possess the "manifest destiny" to impose their agenda on the rest of America. They have grossly abused their tax exempt status with their forays into the political arena. The Religious Right is also threatening to corrupt our secular public institutions with their "truth", which they derive from selective interpretation of the Bible. Someone needs to remind them that truth is not easily plumbed from a book which the Church revised many times throughout history for the purpose of manipulating the masses.
Spiritually deficient
Priscilla Owens and her fellow Oligarchs lack compassion, a crucial spiritual value. Were one to confront them, they would probably claim they were "compassionate conservatives", or they might downplay the value of compassion. Compassion was the hallmark virtue of Christ. Jesus was the one of the most empathic and liberal activist in history, and were he alive today, Bush and his ilk would be leading the march to Golgotha. Jesus was mostly about compassion, the virtual antithesis of the core motivations of the Oligarchs.
Matthew 9:35: "Jesus was going about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the reign of God and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the crowds, Jesus felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd."
As Carolyn Baker pointed out in a series of articles in Dissident Voice about the Religious Right (http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Baker0517.htm), their claim to be a “pro-life” is little more than Orwellian Newspeak. The fact is that they are actually "pro-birth" and are hostile to women's rights. Striving to advance their patriarchal agenda, they relentlessly push to deny a woman's right to reproductive choice, even going so far as to enlist pharmacists to deny birth control, and in extreme cases, killing abortion doctors. Recently, Tom Delay has even made veiled threats against members of the judiciary who dare to rule in ways inconsistent with the goals of the Religious Right.
Denying the reality that many teen or unwanted pregnancies often result in horrendous lives for the resulting children, the Religious Right continues to press for the reversal of Roe vs. Wade. Were that to happen, their efforts to “save the unborn” would actually result in more death and suffering as women continued to seek abortions. It is a foregone conclusion that the unborn would continue to die in similar numbers, while many women seeking illegal abortions from back-alley butchers would be maimed or killed. Like the Pharisees, the Religious Right and the scoundrels at the helm of our nation are far more concerned with their artificial, abstract "family values" than they are with the welfare of real human beings. Their strident objection to abortion ultimately boils down to a psychological power-play of men over women. What does the Bible say about the equality of women?
"There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus."(Gal. 3:28)
Need evidence that the Oligarchs and their Religious Right brethren are also "pro-death"?. Look to the war in Iraq. Over 1600 Americans have died, thousands more have been injured, and countless Iraqis have been killed or injured in this imperialistic foray into the Middle East. With strong support from the leadership of the Religious Right, Bush and his fellow Oligarchs gleefully launched "Shock and Awe" on Iraq, after lying to the American people to legitimize the invasion. Offering a textbook example of psychological projection, in 2/02 Pat Robertson characterized Islam as a religion that wants to "dominate and then, if need be, destroy." Portraying this crusade as a struggle of "good versus evil" enables the Oligarchs to lend moral justification to plundering the US treasury and channeling the money to their mega-corporations, like Haliburton. Characterizing Islam as our enemy enables them to use the Middle East as their springboard for the world domination they so desperately crave. What might Jesus have said to Bush as he prepared to invade Iraq?
"Do not resist one who is evil. but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other."
As they continue to pillage our treasury and further bankrupt America, the Oligarchs are now on a relentless campaign to slither their way into Social Security to plunder its revenues. Bush touts privatization as a means to strengthen our "ownership society". The reality is that the Americans who would benefit most from privatization would be the current "owners", the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who have more capital than the combined wealth of 90% of the rest of the population. Average Americans would be playing the lottery with their Social Security money while wealthy investment bankers would fatten their already burgeoning wallets with the astronomical up tick in transaction fee money. Under the Oligarchs, the wealth gap continues to widen, the middle class is rapidly shrinking, and the rich continue to increase their holdings through enormous tax cuts. Where might Jesus say to the 1% who is vying to add to their wealth?
After the young man left, Jesus talked to his disciples about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. "It is easier", he said, "for a camel to go through the eye of a needle."
While the Oligarchs continue to prosper with increased corporate welfare, decreased taxes, and increased funding for the military industrial complex, the less fortunate suffer the budget cuts which are badly needed to keep the $7.5 trillion dollar debt from spinning further out of control. The elderly, the disabled, the poor, single mothers, and family farmers tighten their belts for the "good of their country" while the elite let theirs out a few notches. Why are we giving the biggest tax cuts to those who already possess great wealth? Why are we cutting taxes at all? Thanks to the unrestrained spending and tax cuts of the Oligarchs, our legacy to our children is a $7.5 trillion debt that continues to mount. What did Jesus say about paying taxes?
Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
It has become personal
I grew up under the reign of a tyrannical father who, despite his denial, shares many of the Oligarchs' values. Having prospered financially, he met one of the most important goals of success in the perverse system of "American" values. However, the tab was three heart attacks and the loss of his family. My mother divorced him and got remarried. My brother has disappeared somewhere in Alaska. I elected to walk away from him. Had I licked his boots long enough, I probably would have inherited a small fortune. However, I would not abide his tyranny, and I will not abide the tyranny of the ruling elite in America today.
Both my wife and I suffered deep emotional wounds inflicted by Christian churches which embodied the values of the Religious Right. She and I have both forged our own personal spiritualities. Neither of us has chosen to reconcile the Christian religion into our spiritual beliefs after the damage that the churches rendered upon us. My wife and I are both people of honesty and integrity. We respect the rights and dignity of others, and embrace many of the teachings of Christ. However, neither of us calls ourselves Christian.
I went through extremely difficult times in the past. During those times, I utilized several components of the social welfare system to get myself back on my feet. Had those life-lines not been there, I would not be where I am today. I now have a college degree and earn a middle class wage as an account representative at a finance company. My wife and I are raising our son, and I have joint legal custody of two boys from a previous marriage. I am an active parent in their live, and pay my child support to their mother. I am also a successful activist writer in a climate where dissident voices are all too scarce of a commodity.
Should I stay or should I go?
I choose to stay in America so that I can make a positive difference. Like Judge Owens, I am exceedingly persistent and tenacious, and I have empowered myself by overcoming significant adversities. However, unlike Owens and the rest of Bush's Neocon subordinates, I do not see the "frontier mentality" as a virtue. My wife and children have taught me not to expect others to be as tenacious as I am in facing challenges. People need compassion, and some need more help than others. As much willpower as I have, I needed serious help during my trials, and still need help and support. I have reconciled my strengths and limitations, and feel more connected with others because of my limitations. Compassion and mercy are values that I embrace, in spite of my strength.
I have chosen to align myself with the disenfranchised of society and to pursue social and economic equality. My friends are mostly women, minorities, gays, intellectuals, or people who are economically disadvantaged. I have chosen to advocate for social justice, civil liberties, and intellectual freedom through my activist writing and through my ACLU affiliation. I am teaching my children to think critically to free their minds and to seek social justice. I dissent against the Oligarchs through my writing. I have chosen to learn Spanish as a second language so that I can communicate with my numerous Hispanic immigrant customers rather than demeaning them by forcing them to speak a language that they have not had time to learn. My wife and I work hard to live within our means. Unlike our government, we are virtually debt-free because of our thrift. We boycott multinational corporations like Wal-Mart and spend our money at small, local vendors when possible. My wife and I both strive enthusiastically to be part of the solution in a nation beset with problems..
My one regret in staying in America is that I pay taxes to the federal government. However, despite the fattening of the Oligarchs and the furthering of the imperialistic agenda, I feel gratified knowing that some of my tax money goes to social welfare, educational, and other programs to benefit humanity. Since I am not prepared to stop paying taxes and engage in a futile battle with the IRS, I live with this ambivalence.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be (Voltaire)
As the tyranny grows more overt, and the light of democracy grows dimmer, the Oligarchs grow bolder in implementing their foreign and domestic policy agendas. With rising frequency, their policies clash significantly with the welfare of the poor and working class. Still, I believe that once enough of the uneducated and undecided American people awaken and become motivated to act, the Oligarchs will be forced to render a measure of social and economic justice. Studying the Populists, the Wobblies, the New Dealers, and the Civil Rights protestors, I see how they forced significant social change in favor of the people. I rest my faith and hope on their successes. I am prepared to go a step beyond what I am doing now and engage in civil disobedience when it becomes necessary, and will encourage others to do the same.
I envision a grassroots movement rising to power over the next few years. It has already started gathering momentum through the subversion of the mainstream media via the Internet. Non-profit news sites, blogs, email, and over 2 billion websites give people an unprecedented means to communicate and exchange information. The human spirit thirsts for freedom, and when enough people begin to realize that they have been enslaved, the dissidence and non-violent revolution will become so powerful that the Oligarchs will capitulate and yield a share of the wealth and power back to the people. We of the poor, working and middle class have the advantage in numbers, and in the fact that tyrants are destined to fail because of the intolerance of the human spirit for enslavement. The Oligarchs need us to buy their products and do their dirty work, and people will not wear the yoke of oppression indefinitely. Despite their possession of most of the wealth, the true economic power lies in our hands. It is only a matter of time before increased awareness and activist efforts shift the balance of power, but more people need to wish to be free, and take the steps necessary to attain freedom. Remember, you have more power than you think, and compassion is an empowering virtue!
Saturday, May 28, 2005
How The Mighty Are Falling
By Jason Miller
Mom, apple pie and malevolent leaders
Somebody tell Karl Rove to drop the applause sign. The minions he manipulates are cheering for an America that does not exist. That abstract concept of America, and its embodiment of liberties and human rights, is a fiction. Norman Rockwell's portrayal of America was an idealistic perversion of a landscape, which for many, has been littered with oppression, bigotry, greed, torture and even murder. Goya's brutal painting "Duel with Cudgels" comes closer to capturing the essence of the underlying mean-spiritedness of that is very much a component of this nation. Bush, his Neocons, and the obscenely wealthy Oligarchs, who finance Republicans and Democrats alike, embody the face of America which is seldom portrayed by our flag-waving mainstream media. Yes, there is a dark, brutish aspect to this self-proclaimed beacon of freedom and liberty, and I am going to delve into it. Read on if you dare to take an introspective look at the darker aspects of our national identity.
Evil heritage
As early as 1661, American colonists began engaging in the slave trade. With the advent of the birth of our nation in the late 18th Century, even our hallowed Constitution legally endorsed the evil institution of slavery. Abolitionists who rose to oppose slavery, like John Brown, were executed as terrorists. Even an incredibly bloody Civil War and three Amendments to the Constitution were not enough to end American oppression of the black race. The specter of Jim Crow arose in the south in the 1890's. Its power did not dwindle until courageous leaders like Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr. arose in the mid Twentieth Century. Their tireless efforts forced the federal government to enforce human rights for the black race. Fear of the growing power of a minority led to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., a peaceful proponent of civil rights. One can make a strong case that the US government facilitated the assassination to stem the spread of King's "radical ideas". In today's America, racism hides behind a veil of "political correctness", and those who practice bigotry do so covertly, in a cowardly attempt to avoid legal consequences.
The Native Americans have not fared so well in America either, at least not since the Western Europeans invaded their continent. In 1830, the US Congress passed the "Indian Removal Act". This measure eventually enabled the federal government to resolve the problem of a growing population in the state of Georgia by moving the Cherokee Nation to the state of Oklahoma. In 1838, on the forced 1,000 mile march, 4,000 Cherokee men, women and children died in what is now known as "The Trail of Tears".
Tecumseh, a Shawnee leader who organized opposition to forced Native American colonization, showed his insight into the ugly aspect of America when he spoke to the Osage tribe in 1812. In his speech, he said, "Brothers, the white people are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and harmless; but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death."
Thanks to Howard Zinn in Voices of a People's History of the United States for uncovering a telling quote from the Saturday Pioneer, a newspaper in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Ironically, L. Frank Baum, who also wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (an "American literary classic"), was the paper's editor in 1890, when the quote appeared. Shortly after the massacre at Wounded Knee, and the subsequent murder of Sitting Bull, Baum's paper wrote, "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent....and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians." The Saturday Pioneer had just defined the concept of "Manifest Destiny", the belief that America had the divine right and destiny to expand its borders across the North American continent and beyond.
We take what we want
Driven by a psychotic hubris, our leaders were convinced that America had the right and the duty to "civilize" the rest of our continent with our "superior" Democratic and Protestant ideals. Sound familiar? America began unleashing its imperialistic impulses on sovereign nations in 1846. President James Polk annexed Texas, and sent American troops to help this future state gain its independence from Mexico. Two years and 38,000 dead combatants later, America brought Mexico to its knees, and proudly included Texas, New Mexico, and California in its borders. Robbing the Native Americans of their land was not enough to satiate the appetites of our imperialist leaders for "White" conquest.
William McKinley came to office in 1896 to preside over a country that still had a ravenous appetite for expansion. Under McKinley, the US waged war against Spain in Cuba. America drove the Spaniards out, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by greedy US corporations. 500,000 Filipinos were killed as America wrested the Philippine Islands away from Spain. Our government justified their deaths by proclaiming that the American victory would enable the US to civilize the savages in the Philippines. McKinley also arranged for the annexation of Hawaii and Puerto Rico during his unprecedented advance of the cause of Manifest Destiny.
The price of avarice
In the early Twentieth Century, Upton Sinclair and his fellow muckrakers cast bright lights into the shadowy corners of corporate America. There they exposed ruthless, avarice-driven exploitation and victimization of American workers and consumers. Sinclair's expose' of the corrupt and dangerous practices of the meat-packing industry, The Jungle, led to the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Prior to the efforts of Populists and Socialists like Sinclair, America's system of unbridled capitalism, enabled by laisez-faire economic policy by the federal government, allowed ruthless corporations to treat their workers like cattle. Greedy profiteers were also able to market their products to consumers with virtual disregard for quality and safety. Millions of Americans sustained injuries, worked in perilous, inhuman conditions, received grossly inadequate wages, or died as a result of corporate lust for profits. During the so-called Gilded Age, corporations reigned with an appalling disregard for humanity. However, pressure from muckrakers, Socialists, unions, and Populists eventually curtailed the power of the Oligarchs.
All is fair in love and war.....
Woodrow Wilson continued to justify American imperialism under his foreign policy of Wilsonian Democracy. Refining the notion of Manifest Destiny, Wilson asserted the necessity of America to employ any means necessary, including force, to install democracies in nations around the world. In large part, his doctrine rested on Kant's notion that democracies are less likely to be war-like than dictatorships or monarchies. Wilsonian Democracy propelled the US into World War I. How ironic that America, the self-proclaimed model for democracy, engaged in yet another war. Is this an indication that Kant's notion was inaccurate, or can one conclude that the US is not truly as democratic as the state-sponsored propaganda would have the masses believe? During the war, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and other war protestors who violated the Sedition Act sacrificed their freedom for exercising their First Amendment rights. As they sat in prison for standing up to our imperialist leaders, over 100,000 Americans died in the "war to end all wars". Our government employed flag-waving propaganda and mandatory conscription to thrust millions of young men into the horror of war, yet those who protested in the "land of the free" were imprisoned.
Ask the Japanese citizens during World War II for their perspective on the "American Dream". After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the federal government employed curfews as a means to marshal control of the "enemy within". Bowing to pressure from business interests who wanted to eliminate Japanese-American competitors, the US government eventually made the decision to move 110,000 people of Japanese descent into ten relocation centers throughout the United States. Stripped of their homes, businesses, and possessions, they were interned behind barbed wire for over two years. Their alleged crime was disloyalty to America. Over 2/3 of them were American citizens born on American soil. Disgracefully, our government imprisoned them without a trial and without charging them with a crime. Guantanamo Bay is not without precedent. It is frightening that in a "free nation" like the United States that such a history could repeat itself without widespread public outcry.
Appetite for destruction
American leadership is still drunk with power, arrogance, and an insatiable appetite for the accumulation of wealth. Based on a statement of principles drafted in 1997, and a think-tank created to formulate ways to implement the principles, The Project for the New American Century paved the way for George Bush and his pack of Neocons to launch the unprovoked and unsubstantiated invasion of Iraq. Several of the war hungry Neocons, like Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, signed the statement of principles. The events of 9/11 gave them the rationale they needed to initiate their aggression. Their imperial intentions are clearly outlined at http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm. Their concluding paragraph states:
"Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next."
What is perhaps equally disturbing is that a vast majority of the Democrats have made little tangible effort to challenge the illegal actions of Bush and the Neocons, making them complicit partners. Short of a few exceptions, like Bill Moyers, the mainstream media has forsaken their duty as the Fourth Estate. Rather than informing the American people of the truth about our corrupt and malevolent government, they bow to the pressure of their corporate masters and feed us versions of the truth that withhold details and present criminal act by our government in a benign manner. A British Member of Parliament recently showed the guts to openly challenge several of our venal Senators (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4556113.stm). When will our own elected representatives and members of the press show that kind of spine? Perchance most of them have simply sold out and become party to the "Dark Side" of our national identity.
The Bush administration has demonstrated its commitment to making the Twenty First Century the "American Century". However, the reality is that the invasion of a small country like Iraq has stretched our military to its limits. After two years of US military occupation, Iraq is still in a state of chaos, and many Iraqis want our military to withdraw. The sun is setting on the "American Empire" as Bush and his people desperately struggle to fan the dying embers and rekindle the flames. There are multiple countries with nuclear capabilities. China wields a great deal of economic power over the United States as it continues to parlay its colossal trade surplus into an opportunity to finance a large portion of the US debt. Terrorist acts, over-dependence on credit, and weaker nations with nuclear capabilities are proving to be the David to our Goliath. Redefining the term "debtor nation" with a $7.5 trillion national debt, America is bleeding red ink. The failing effort in Iraq is costing billions of dollars that this country does not have. America's dominance is rapidly diminishing.
Bush has launched a war with no end in sight against the "evil terrorists", an elusive, shadow target which cannot be definitively beaten. Perpetual fear and hatred of the "terrorists" motivate many Americans to support a seemingly endless war, and enable Karl Rove to manipulate the masses. The Neocons are free to pursue their policy of military proliferation of American interests to their hearts' content. However, the waning strength of this nation, coupled with the rising strength of nations like China, make this model unsustainable. Americans have been duped into following a ruinous course.
Hypocrisy and hubris....when do they end?
In 1997, with the advent of The Project for the New American Century, America laid out a publicly available plan for global domination. Historically, Americans have pursued a policy of aggressive global expansionism under the guise of altruism, the "right of manifest destiny", or under the pretext of protecting its regional interests. The United States flaunts its lofty Constitution and Bill of Rights, yet with each passing day continues to deny basic civil rights to homosexuals (5% of the US population). It defies the UN and Geneva Convention with alarming regularity. Americans earn an annual per capita income of $34,000.00 compared to the world per capita of $7,000.00. We consume 25% of the world's fossil fuels while 2 billion people in the world have no access to electricity. In 2000, the Bush regime installed itself to rule our Executive branch by manipulating the voting process. Had Jeb Bush not been the governor of Florida, Al Gore would be our president. Grossly abusing their ill-gotten power, Bush and his Neocons have engaged in a consistent pattern of false propaganda to manipulate public opinion. Their unilateral decision-making almost never shows regard for relationships with allies or the United Nations. Bush has consistently rewarded incompetents, war criminals, and deceitful individuals with promotions in his regime. America has some serious house-cleaning to do before we forcefully export our value systems to our neighbors.
In the spirit of advancing the cause of Protestant superiority, our Senate is now considering a bill heavily promoted by America's own religious radicals, the Religious Right. The Constitution Restoration Act would, for the purposes of judicial review, recognize "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." And Bush really expects critical thinking people to swallow his Newspeak about "spreading freedom and liberty" around the world? With the virtually silent consent of the Democratic minority in Congress, Bush and the Neocons continue to pursue an evolved version of Manifest Destiny as they attempt to brutally force America's "Christian" and "Democratic" ways upon the American people, and upon the rest of the world.
Sweet little lies.... and crimes against humanity
Why were Americans surprised at the attack of 9/11? The Neocons have convinced many Americans that our nation was an innocent victim of attacks of "evil terrorists". How naive can a person be? America, in its supreme arrogance and imperialistic endeavors, has been enraging people in foreign nations for years. If the terrorists did actually carry out these attacks autonomously, America was far from innocent. Was it tragic? Yes. Do the perpetrators deserve to be punished severely? Yes. However, America has been provoking people and nations for many years. Those who died in the World Trade Center that day were certainly innocent victims, but America as a nation was not.
In saying "if the terrorists did actually carry out" 9/11, I intentionally left the culpability ambiguous. While there is little doubt that Bush, the Neocons, and other members of the obscenely wealthy Oligarchy (see http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Miller0517.htm) knew that the strikes were going to occur and chose to allow them to happen, there is also compelling evidence that they actually orchestrated and perpetrated 9/11. David Ray Griffin advances that theory with clarity in 9/11 and the American Empire at http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/47. The deaths of 3,000 American civilians in an attack that appeared to be carried out by terrorist representatives of the Middle East (with its coveted oil reserves) provided the Neocons and Oligarchs with a golden opportunity to mobilize the American people to engage in the invasion of Iraq, yet another scapegoat in this sick scenario. Given much of the world's justifiable hatred of America, it is unlikely that the terrorists needed much prompting by our leadership to carry out the attacks. Careful scrutiny of the evidence presented by Griffin, including the actions of our government before and after the strike, the nature of the strike on the Pentagon, and the collapse of the WTC towers, lends significant credibility to the idea that the Neocons and the Oligarchs were directly involved in the perpetration of the WTC tragedy.
Whether one believes the terrorists acted autonomously, or that the Neocons and Oligarchs sponsored the attacks, Bush, the Neocons and our other Oligarch leaders bear the responsibility for the deaths of the 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center. Foreknowledge of the attacks and subsequent failure to defend our nation are crimes against the American people. Direct responsibility for the attacks represents an even more substantial crime. Both are grounds for impeachment, removal from office, and criminal prosecution.
Hope on the horizon
I still believe in the inherent decency of many of the people in the United States. Our Constitution is an unparalleled contract between citizens and government upon which to build a republic that fosters individual rights and freedom. A capitalistic economic system which includes government restraints and social welfare programs for the poor has proven to be beneficial to a majority of the American population in the past. Despite the ugly stains on our history, Americans made great evolutionary strides in the 20th Century toward realizing our tremendous potential for economic and social justice. However, under the Neocons, the Religious Right, and the Oligarchs, much of that progress is eroding. America is a nation comprised of millions of people and dynamics, and to expect it to live up to the idealized notions of truth, justice, and the American way would be unrealistic. Yet, the fact that the ideal is unattainable does not give us license to abandon the principles of our Constitution to the extent that we have. Americans have a choice. If enough people are willing to take an introspective look into the soul of our nation, and into our own souls, it is not too late to peaceably end the reign of the corrupt and restore America to a place of sanity, and dignity. People of conscience and critical thought need to stand up and say "enough" to the Oligarchs and Neocons. Together we can reclaim our nation and make it a true beacon of liberty!
Jason Miller blogs at Thomas Paine's Corner.
Mom, apple pie and malevolent leaders
Somebody tell Karl Rove to drop the applause sign. The minions he manipulates are cheering for an America that does not exist. That abstract concept of America, and its embodiment of liberties and human rights, is a fiction. Norman Rockwell's portrayal of America was an idealistic perversion of a landscape, which for many, has been littered with oppression, bigotry, greed, torture and even murder. Goya's brutal painting "Duel with Cudgels" comes closer to capturing the essence of the underlying mean-spiritedness of that is very much a component of this nation. Bush, his Neocons, and the obscenely wealthy Oligarchs, who finance Republicans and Democrats alike, embody the face of America which is seldom portrayed by our flag-waving mainstream media. Yes, there is a dark, brutish aspect to this self-proclaimed beacon of freedom and liberty, and I am going to delve into it. Read on if you dare to take an introspective look at the darker aspects of our national identity.
Evil heritage
As early as 1661, American colonists began engaging in the slave trade. With the advent of the birth of our nation in the late 18th Century, even our hallowed Constitution legally endorsed the evil institution of slavery. Abolitionists who rose to oppose slavery, like John Brown, were executed as terrorists. Even an incredibly bloody Civil War and three Amendments to the Constitution were not enough to end American oppression of the black race. The specter of Jim Crow arose in the south in the 1890's. Its power did not dwindle until courageous leaders like Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr. arose in the mid Twentieth Century. Their tireless efforts forced the federal government to enforce human rights for the black race. Fear of the growing power of a minority led to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., a peaceful proponent of civil rights. One can make a strong case that the US government facilitated the assassination to stem the spread of King's "radical ideas". In today's America, racism hides behind a veil of "political correctness", and those who practice bigotry do so covertly, in a cowardly attempt to avoid legal consequences.
The Native Americans have not fared so well in America either, at least not since the Western Europeans invaded their continent. In 1830, the US Congress passed the "Indian Removal Act". This measure eventually enabled the federal government to resolve the problem of a growing population in the state of Georgia by moving the Cherokee Nation to the state of Oklahoma. In 1838, on the forced 1,000 mile march, 4,000 Cherokee men, women and children died in what is now known as "The Trail of Tears".
Tecumseh, a Shawnee leader who organized opposition to forced Native American colonization, showed his insight into the ugly aspect of America when he spoke to the Osage tribe in 1812. In his speech, he said, "Brothers, the white people are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and harmless; but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death."
Thanks to Howard Zinn in Voices of a People's History of the United States for uncovering a telling quote from the Saturday Pioneer, a newspaper in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Ironically, L. Frank Baum, who also wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (an "American literary classic"), was the paper's editor in 1890, when the quote appeared. Shortly after the massacre at Wounded Knee, and the subsequent murder of Sitting Bull, Baum's paper wrote, "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent....and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians." The Saturday Pioneer had just defined the concept of "Manifest Destiny", the belief that America had the divine right and destiny to expand its borders across the North American continent and beyond.
We take what we want
Driven by a psychotic hubris, our leaders were convinced that America had the right and the duty to "civilize" the rest of our continent with our "superior" Democratic and Protestant ideals. Sound familiar? America began unleashing its imperialistic impulses on sovereign nations in 1846. President James Polk annexed Texas, and sent American troops to help this future state gain its independence from Mexico. Two years and 38,000 dead combatants later, America brought Mexico to its knees, and proudly included Texas, New Mexico, and California in its borders. Robbing the Native Americans of their land was not enough to satiate the appetites of our imperialist leaders for "White" conquest.
William McKinley came to office in 1896 to preside over a country that still had a ravenous appetite for expansion. Under McKinley, the US waged war against Spain in Cuba. America drove the Spaniards out, leaving a power vacuum that was quickly filled by greedy US corporations. 500,000 Filipinos were killed as America wrested the Philippine Islands away from Spain. Our government justified their deaths by proclaiming that the American victory would enable the US to civilize the savages in the Philippines. McKinley also arranged for the annexation of Hawaii and Puerto Rico during his unprecedented advance of the cause of Manifest Destiny.
The price of avarice
In the early Twentieth Century, Upton Sinclair and his fellow muckrakers cast bright lights into the shadowy corners of corporate America. There they exposed ruthless, avarice-driven exploitation and victimization of American workers and consumers. Sinclair's expose' of the corrupt and dangerous practices of the meat-packing industry, The Jungle, led to the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Prior to the efforts of Populists and Socialists like Sinclair, America's system of unbridled capitalism, enabled by laisez-faire economic policy by the federal government, allowed ruthless corporations to treat their workers like cattle. Greedy profiteers were also able to market their products to consumers with virtual disregard for quality and safety. Millions of Americans sustained injuries, worked in perilous, inhuman conditions, received grossly inadequate wages, or died as a result of corporate lust for profits. During the so-called Gilded Age, corporations reigned with an appalling disregard for humanity. However, pressure from muckrakers, Socialists, unions, and Populists eventually curtailed the power of the Oligarchs.
All is fair in love and war.....
Woodrow Wilson continued to justify American imperialism under his foreign policy of Wilsonian Democracy. Refining the notion of Manifest Destiny, Wilson asserted the necessity of America to employ any means necessary, including force, to install democracies in nations around the world. In large part, his doctrine rested on Kant's notion that democracies are less likely to be war-like than dictatorships or monarchies. Wilsonian Democracy propelled the US into World War I. How ironic that America, the self-proclaimed model for democracy, engaged in yet another war. Is this an indication that Kant's notion was inaccurate, or can one conclude that the US is not truly as democratic as the state-sponsored propaganda would have the masses believe? During the war, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and other war protestors who violated the Sedition Act sacrificed their freedom for exercising their First Amendment rights. As they sat in prison for standing up to our imperialist leaders, over 100,000 Americans died in the "war to end all wars". Our government employed flag-waving propaganda and mandatory conscription to thrust millions of young men into the horror of war, yet those who protested in the "land of the free" were imprisoned.
Ask the Japanese citizens during World War II for their perspective on the "American Dream". After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the federal government employed curfews as a means to marshal control of the "enemy within". Bowing to pressure from business interests who wanted to eliminate Japanese-American competitors, the US government eventually made the decision to move 110,000 people of Japanese descent into ten relocation centers throughout the United States. Stripped of their homes, businesses, and possessions, they were interned behind barbed wire for over two years. Their alleged crime was disloyalty to America. Over 2/3 of them were American citizens born on American soil. Disgracefully, our government imprisoned them without a trial and without charging them with a crime. Guantanamo Bay is not without precedent. It is frightening that in a "free nation" like the United States that such a history could repeat itself without widespread public outcry.
Appetite for destruction
American leadership is still drunk with power, arrogance, and an insatiable appetite for the accumulation of wealth. Based on a statement of principles drafted in 1997, and a think-tank created to formulate ways to implement the principles, The Project for the New American Century paved the way for George Bush and his pack of Neocons to launch the unprovoked and unsubstantiated invasion of Iraq. Several of the war hungry Neocons, like Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, signed the statement of principles. The events of 9/11 gave them the rationale they needed to initiate their aggression. Their imperial intentions are clearly outlined at http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm. Their concluding paragraph states:
"Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next."
What is perhaps equally disturbing is that a vast majority of the Democrats have made little tangible effort to challenge the illegal actions of Bush and the Neocons, making them complicit partners. Short of a few exceptions, like Bill Moyers, the mainstream media has forsaken their duty as the Fourth Estate. Rather than informing the American people of the truth about our corrupt and malevolent government, they bow to the pressure of their corporate masters and feed us versions of the truth that withhold details and present criminal act by our government in a benign manner. A British Member of Parliament recently showed the guts to openly challenge several of our venal Senators (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4556113.stm). When will our own elected representatives and members of the press show that kind of spine? Perchance most of them have simply sold out and become party to the "Dark Side" of our national identity.
The Bush administration has demonstrated its commitment to making the Twenty First Century the "American Century". However, the reality is that the invasion of a small country like Iraq has stretched our military to its limits. After two years of US military occupation, Iraq is still in a state of chaos, and many Iraqis want our military to withdraw. The sun is setting on the "American Empire" as Bush and his people desperately struggle to fan the dying embers and rekindle the flames. There are multiple countries with nuclear capabilities. China wields a great deal of economic power over the United States as it continues to parlay its colossal trade surplus into an opportunity to finance a large portion of the US debt. Terrorist acts, over-dependence on credit, and weaker nations with nuclear capabilities are proving to be the David to our Goliath. Redefining the term "debtor nation" with a $7.5 trillion national debt, America is bleeding red ink. The failing effort in Iraq is costing billions of dollars that this country does not have. America's dominance is rapidly diminishing.
Bush has launched a war with no end in sight against the "evil terrorists", an elusive, shadow target which cannot be definitively beaten. Perpetual fear and hatred of the "terrorists" motivate many Americans to support a seemingly endless war, and enable Karl Rove to manipulate the masses. The Neocons are free to pursue their policy of military proliferation of American interests to their hearts' content. However, the waning strength of this nation, coupled with the rising strength of nations like China, make this model unsustainable. Americans have been duped into following a ruinous course.
Hypocrisy and hubris....when do they end?
In 1997, with the advent of The Project for the New American Century, America laid out a publicly available plan for global domination. Historically, Americans have pursued a policy of aggressive global expansionism under the guise of altruism, the "right of manifest destiny", or under the pretext of protecting its regional interests. The United States flaunts its lofty Constitution and Bill of Rights, yet with each passing day continues to deny basic civil rights to homosexuals (5% of the US population). It defies the UN and Geneva Convention with alarming regularity. Americans earn an annual per capita income of $34,000.00 compared to the world per capita of $7,000.00. We consume 25% of the world's fossil fuels while 2 billion people in the world have no access to electricity. In 2000, the Bush regime installed itself to rule our Executive branch by manipulating the voting process. Had Jeb Bush not been the governor of Florida, Al Gore would be our president. Grossly abusing their ill-gotten power, Bush and his Neocons have engaged in a consistent pattern of false propaganda to manipulate public opinion. Their unilateral decision-making almost never shows regard for relationships with allies or the United Nations. Bush has consistently rewarded incompetents, war criminals, and deceitful individuals with promotions in his regime. America has some serious house-cleaning to do before we forcefully export our value systems to our neighbors.
In the spirit of advancing the cause of Protestant superiority, our Senate is now considering a bill heavily promoted by America's own religious radicals, the Religious Right. The Constitution Restoration Act would, for the purposes of judicial review, recognize "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." And Bush really expects critical thinking people to swallow his Newspeak about "spreading freedom and liberty" around the world? With the virtually silent consent of the Democratic minority in Congress, Bush and the Neocons continue to pursue an evolved version of Manifest Destiny as they attempt to brutally force America's "Christian" and "Democratic" ways upon the American people, and upon the rest of the world.
Sweet little lies.... and crimes against humanity
Why were Americans surprised at the attack of 9/11? The Neocons have convinced many Americans that our nation was an innocent victim of attacks of "evil terrorists". How naive can a person be? America, in its supreme arrogance and imperialistic endeavors, has been enraging people in foreign nations for years. If the terrorists did actually carry out these attacks autonomously, America was far from innocent. Was it tragic? Yes. Do the perpetrators deserve to be punished severely? Yes. However, America has been provoking people and nations for many years. Those who died in the World Trade Center that day were certainly innocent victims, but America as a nation was not.
In saying "if the terrorists did actually carry out" 9/11, I intentionally left the culpability ambiguous. While there is little doubt that Bush, the Neocons, and other members of the obscenely wealthy Oligarchy (see http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Miller0517.htm) knew that the strikes were going to occur and chose to allow them to happen, there is also compelling evidence that they actually orchestrated and perpetrated 9/11. David Ray Griffin advances that theory with clarity in 9/11 and the American Empire at http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/47. The deaths of 3,000 American civilians in an attack that appeared to be carried out by terrorist representatives of the Middle East (with its coveted oil reserves) provided the Neocons and Oligarchs with a golden opportunity to mobilize the American people to engage in the invasion of Iraq, yet another scapegoat in this sick scenario. Given much of the world's justifiable hatred of America, it is unlikely that the terrorists needed much prompting by our leadership to carry out the attacks. Careful scrutiny of the evidence presented by Griffin, including the actions of our government before and after the strike, the nature of the strike on the Pentagon, and the collapse of the WTC towers, lends significant credibility to the idea that the Neocons and the Oligarchs were directly involved in the perpetration of the WTC tragedy.
Whether one believes the terrorists acted autonomously, or that the Neocons and Oligarchs sponsored the attacks, Bush, the Neocons and our other Oligarch leaders bear the responsibility for the deaths of the 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center. Foreknowledge of the attacks and subsequent failure to defend our nation are crimes against the American people. Direct responsibility for the attacks represents an even more substantial crime. Both are grounds for impeachment, removal from office, and criminal prosecution.
Hope on the horizon
I still believe in the inherent decency of many of the people in the United States. Our Constitution is an unparalleled contract between citizens and government upon which to build a republic that fosters individual rights and freedom. A capitalistic economic system which includes government restraints and social welfare programs for the poor has proven to be beneficial to a majority of the American population in the past. Despite the ugly stains on our history, Americans made great evolutionary strides in the 20th Century toward realizing our tremendous potential for economic and social justice. However, under the Neocons, the Religious Right, and the Oligarchs, much of that progress is eroding. America is a nation comprised of millions of people and dynamics, and to expect it to live up to the idealized notions of truth, justice, and the American way would be unrealistic. Yet, the fact that the ideal is unattainable does not give us license to abandon the principles of our Constitution to the extent that we have. Americans have a choice. If enough people are willing to take an introspective look into the soul of our nation, and into our own souls, it is not too late to peaceably end the reign of the corrupt and restore America to a place of sanity, and dignity. People of conscience and critical thought need to stand up and say "enough" to the Oligarchs and Neocons. Together we can reclaim our nation and make it a true beacon of liberty!
Jason Miller blogs at Thomas Paine's Corner.
WHY RUMSFELD SHOULD GO
By William Fisher
Let’s give Donald Rumsfeld the benefit of the doubt. He’s not a war criminal. He never wrote any memo authorizing specific techniques for abusing prisoners. He doesn’t believe in abusing people. He’s an amusing guy. He used to be a media superstar in the Bush family firmament. The President called him the best Secretary of Defense in our country’s history.
But it’s time for him to go. And here’s why.
One of the principal reasons the United States has a Secretary of Defense is to maintain civilian control over the uniformed military. By that criterion alone, he has been a cataclysmic failure. And by that criterion alone, he might well be judged by history as the worst, not the best, SecDef in the nation’s history.
If the reason for having a SecDef is to control our armed forces, how did they ever get so out of control?
What’s happened on his watch is simply too egregious for Mr. Rumsfeld to get a pass.
The U.S. invaded a country about which it knew nothing, with too few troops and no awareness that there would even be an occupation, much less a plan for one.
In so doing, America created the world’s biggest job fair for terrorists.
We know that Rumsfeld believes you go to war “with the army you have, not the army you want.” Well, the army we had didn’t have the right kinds of troops in the right places at the right times. American soldiers didn’t have the protection they needed. Nor did they have the intelligence they needed. So people died and were maimed.
Then there was Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, and Lord only knows how many other hidden military prisons. People were tortured. People became ghost detainees. People died. Even assuming they were the worst of the worst, prisoners in U.S. custody are not supposed to die. They are supposed to be protected. But die they did.
And it would be a major error to overlook the superb work of his non-uniformed Viceroy, L. Paul Bremer, who turned enemy soldiers into criminals by disbanding the Iraqi army. Who instituted the so-called De-Baathification program that fired all the teachers and street cleaners and electricians – people who were compelled to join Saddam’s party just to get a job. Who supervised the ‘training’ of Iraqi police and soldiers – America’s exit strategy – no doubt immeasurably helped by wannabe Homeland Defense Department boss Bernard Kerik. And who, as a modest token of appreciation for his many contributions, got the Medal of Honor from his president.
Then there were the omnipresent profiteers – the Halliburtons, the Blackhawks, and the dozens of other Defense Department contractors who did little and made millions.
And through it all, there was the Rumsfeld Review -- Donald’s Good News Bears performing their Daily Show at the Pentagon rostrum. Reporters could barely wait for the spin machine to start. It was a wonder to behold the questions evaded, ignored, left answered, the deftness at changing the subject, the assurances that there were now 140,000 (or was it 180,000?) Iraqi police and national guardsmen trained and that things were getting better all the time. The Donald’s quips disarmed even veteran journalists and turned the Pentagon press corps into a small army of un-uniformed stenographers, dutifully writing their embedded reassuring pieces in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary supplied by their colleagues on the ground.
So how does all this add up to civilian control of the uniformed military? It doesn’t.
If one of Rumsfeld’s major mandates was to make sure that a suit, not a uniform, would be accountable for all our shock and awe, it didn’t happen. No one is accountable.
The Donald told a congressional committee last year he would resign when he felt he could no longer serve effectively. That time has passed.
Time to think again, Mr. Secretary.
Let’s give Donald Rumsfeld the benefit of the doubt. He’s not a war criminal. He never wrote any memo authorizing specific techniques for abusing prisoners. He doesn’t believe in abusing people. He’s an amusing guy. He used to be a media superstar in the Bush family firmament. The President called him the best Secretary of Defense in our country’s history.
But it’s time for him to go. And here’s why.
One of the principal reasons the United States has a Secretary of Defense is to maintain civilian control over the uniformed military. By that criterion alone, he has been a cataclysmic failure. And by that criterion alone, he might well be judged by history as the worst, not the best, SecDef in the nation’s history.
If the reason for having a SecDef is to control our armed forces, how did they ever get so out of control?
What’s happened on his watch is simply too egregious for Mr. Rumsfeld to get a pass.
The U.S. invaded a country about which it knew nothing, with too few troops and no awareness that there would even be an occupation, much less a plan for one.
In so doing, America created the world’s biggest job fair for terrorists.
We know that Rumsfeld believes you go to war “with the army you have, not the army you want.” Well, the army we had didn’t have the right kinds of troops in the right places at the right times. American soldiers didn’t have the protection they needed. Nor did they have the intelligence they needed. So people died and were maimed.
Then there was Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, and Lord only knows how many other hidden military prisons. People were tortured. People became ghost detainees. People died. Even assuming they were the worst of the worst, prisoners in U.S. custody are not supposed to die. They are supposed to be protected. But die they did.
And it would be a major error to overlook the superb work of his non-uniformed Viceroy, L. Paul Bremer, who turned enemy soldiers into criminals by disbanding the Iraqi army. Who instituted the so-called De-Baathification program that fired all the teachers and street cleaners and electricians – people who were compelled to join Saddam’s party just to get a job. Who supervised the ‘training’ of Iraqi police and soldiers – America’s exit strategy – no doubt immeasurably helped by wannabe Homeland Defense Department boss Bernard Kerik. And who, as a modest token of appreciation for his many contributions, got the Medal of Honor from his president.
Then there were the omnipresent profiteers – the Halliburtons, the Blackhawks, and the dozens of other Defense Department contractors who did little and made millions.
And through it all, there was the Rumsfeld Review -- Donald’s Good News Bears performing their Daily Show at the Pentagon rostrum. Reporters could barely wait for the spin machine to start. It was a wonder to behold the questions evaded, ignored, left answered, the deftness at changing the subject, the assurances that there were now 140,000 (or was it 180,000?) Iraqi police and national guardsmen trained and that things were getting better all the time. The Donald’s quips disarmed even veteran journalists and turned the Pentagon press corps into a small army of un-uniformed stenographers, dutifully writing their embedded reassuring pieces in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary supplied by their colleagues on the ground.
So how does all this add up to civilian control of the uniformed military? It doesn’t.
If one of Rumsfeld’s major mandates was to make sure that a suit, not a uniform, would be accountable for all our shock and awe, it didn’t happen. No one is accountable.
The Donald told a congressional committee last year he would resign when he felt he could no longer serve effectively. That time has passed.
Time to think again, Mr. Secretary.
Friday, May 27, 2005
A Grim Foreshadowing?
The article below appeared in the American Journalism Review. It describes the experiences of four Iraqis working for Western news organizations who say they were abused by American troops in January 2004, and sound hauntingly familiar to the horrors of Abu Ghraib that emerged four months later. But the episode has received little media attention. The government denies that the soldiers acted improperly.
By Jill Carroll
Jill Carroll, a former Wall Street Journal and Jordan Times reporter, is a freelance journalist living in Baghdad. Her stories are published by the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle and the Italian newswire Ansa.
NBC cameraman Ali Mohammed Hussein was simply following his news instincts when he set off to track down the crash site of a U.S. military helicopter on January 2, 2004. His brother, a cousin and a friend, all of whom work for Reuters, joined him.
They didn't return for three days. When the Iraqis finally turned up, it was with an outlandish tale of abuses suffered in U.S. military detention facilities. Their story foreshadowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison that came to light four months later. But unlike Abu Ghraib, their ordeal has been largely ignored by the media, and the military does not admit any wrongdoing.
This account of what happened to them is based on interviews in Iraq with three of the men, using a translator, and transcripts of lengthy interviews conducted by Reuters. A U.S. military investigation said soldiers did not abuse or torture the men, but Reuters continues to push for a more thorough inquiry. The Pentagon said it had no further comment on the allegations for this story.
The four Iraqis were accused not of shooting film, but a OH-58 Kiowa observation helicopter that crashed near Fallujah, killing one U.S. soldier and injuring another. Eventually, they were released and were not prosecuted.
On that Friday afternoon Ali, now 33, was praying at a mosque in Fallujah with his cousin Sittar Jabbar Hussein al-Badrani, 29, a driver for Reuters. When they left the mosque, word had already hit the street that an American helicopter had crashed nearby.
Ali's brother, Ahmed Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani, 29, who works as a cameraman for Reuters, was near the mosque helping a friend fix a broken-down car. Ali and Sittar spotted him and rushed over.
The three, who had been working for Reuters and NBC for less than a year, knew their bosses would need footage of what was likely to be the biggest news of the day. As cameramen, they have to get to the site of an attack before the area is sealed off and the scene cleared. It's no use shooting pictures from hundreds of yards away behind a military cordon. They all hopped in Sittar's car and sped off to find the crash.
As is usual when violence erupts, the U.S. military had closed off the roads leading to the site. So the three men drove up and down roads in the lush farmland surrounding the Euphrates River, which cuts through Fallujah, looking for a way to the crash site. While crossing a bridge, they came across Reuters cameraman and reporter Salem Ureibi, who was also looking for the site, along with his driver. Salem had been working for Reuters in Iraq for more than a decade.
They decided to team up and soon found a spot behind a military checkpoint where they could see the site. They got out several hundred yards from the checkpoint and donned their flak jackets with "PRESS" emblazoned across them. Salem started filming the soldiers at the checkpoint down the road while the others were setting up their equipment.
But then they noticed that one of the military vehicles had started to move toward them. One of the most dangerous places in Iraq is anywhere shortly after an attack. There are angry crowds, jittery soldiers and sometimes another attacker waiting for civilians and security forces to gather before launching a second strike.
Unsure of what the approaching military vehicle was going to do, the men decided it was time to go. They packed up their cameras and got back into their cars. As they sped away, gunfire followed them. It appeared to be coming from the Americans.
They stopped a few kilometers away. Salem gave his driver the film he had shot and sent him to Baghdad to deliver it to the Reuters office. He climbed into Sittar's car next to Ali and Ahmed, and the four set off to find a closer spot to film the wreckage.
They ended up at a school where several other reporters and cameramen had gathered, but American military vehicles weren't far behind. Everyone scattered as the soldiers rumbled up. Sittar drove down a dead-end road.
One of the military vehicles swung into view at the other end of the street and moved in behind them. Cornered, Salem, Ali, Ahmed and Sittar got out of the car, raised their arms above their heads and shouted that they were journalists. Soldiers were moving toward them with guns raised, firing warning shots and shouting instructions that the men couldn't understand.
"We got out of the car, and the soldiers started shouting and shouting and putting us on the ground. But we don't speak English that well, and we couldn't understand what the soldiers were saying, and we shouted, 'Cameraman,' " says Ali, a tall, barrel-chested man with light, yellow-gold eyes.
With the men lying on the ground, the soldiers searched them, pulling satellite phones, identification cards and money out of their pockets and slipping them into plastic bags. The men's hands were put behind their backs and secured with plastic handcuffs called "flex-cuffs." The thin plastic strips bit into their skin, tightening if they struggled and leaving marks that would remain for weeks.
Hoods were slipped over their heads. The soldiers grabbed the Iraqis by their belt buckles and their shirts and tossed them into a Humvee like sacks of potatoes.
"Even until this moment I wasn't afraid. I thought they would release us. This is my job, and I have an ID showing I work for an international company," says Ali in a steady voice. "I didn't expect the coming things would happen."
After a short trip the Humvee stopped. Blinded by the hoods, the men struggled to gain their bearings and decipher what was happening from the shouts in English and the noises of an armored vehicle nearby.
They soon knew the armored vehicle all too intimately. Ali, Ahmed and Sittar were grabbed by the soldiers and shoved face-down on the floor under the seats of what they came to call "the tank." Salem was tossed across a row of seats.
The seats were pushed down on top of Ali, Ahmed and Sittar and locked into place. Ali bulged out of the space. The lock securing the seat to the floor cut into his leg, he recalls, reaching to his thigh and rubbing the area.
Soldiers sat on top of the three men and squeezed their boots around Ali's, Ahmed's and Sittar's heads, which were poking out the ends of the rows.
"I couldn't breathe because of the bag on my head, and I was squashed into a small space," Ali says. "I was only thinking they would search us and release us. When they put the handcuffs and bags on our heads, I thought they were just trying to scare us into not [filming a crash site] again. When they put us in the tank, I began to feel something was wrong."
Talking was forbidden in the tank. But Ali, Ahmed and Sittar say the pain of the bouncing ride and pressure from the seats squeezing them made it impossible to keep quiet. "I was shouting 'I can't breathe,' " Ali says. The soldier sitting on him hit him with the butt of his gun in response. The soldier said, " 'Shut up, shut up,' and I asked Salem [who speaks some English] to translate that I couldn't breathe, and the soldier told Salem to tell me if I didn't shut up, he'd put a bullet in my head."
Ali recalls it all calmly now, looking down at his feet, gaining steadiness by striking a monotone. He asked to recount his experience alone, and the others volunteered to leave the room while he spoke. Being older than his relatives, and particularly as Ahmed's big brother, it's shameful for him to discuss his humiliation in front of them. (Salem declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the difficulty of discussing the experience and the fact that little had come of his telling his story in the past.)
"It was winter, but I was sweating all over," Ali says. "I tried to gather all the strength I had to relieve the stress on my chest to breathe better, but I couldn't." He puffs up his shoulders and chest to show how he tried to relieve some of the pressure of the seat crushing him by pushing against it.
"I felt like I was dying, and I wanted an explosion [to come] and finish this torture," says Ali. "This was the worst part of my life, these few hours in the tank. I told my brother Ahmed to take care of my daughter."
The bouncing metal floor of the tank beat bruises across Ali's, Ahmed's and Sittar's faces. Sweat was pouring over their bodies, and slowly they lost feeling in their limbs as the flow of blood was pinched off by the seats pressing them into the floor. The ride seemed to last for hours.
Then the rumbling stopped. The back hatch of the vehicle opened, and suddenly the seats popped up and air came rushing into their lungs.
"I felt like life was coming back to me again when the soldier stood up. I could breathe," Ali says. But when they pulled him out of the vehicle he couldn't stand on his own. All four were laid on the ground. They inhaled deeply, relishing the fresh air, and they began to get feeling back in their limbs. The plastic handcuffs were cut off and their hoods removed, revealing a night sky.
The men sat upright on the ground, distracted by the cold wind whipping through their sweat-soaked clothes.
English started flying at them: "Name," "address," "hometown," asked a new group of soldiers. The four stammered out answers, which were recorded on a badge that included one more piece of information about their arrest: a "C" or "G" label. They are unsure which letter it was but soon learned not to forget it. They realized it entitled them to punches, insults and harsh treatment not meted out to other prisoners. Neither the men nor Reuters knows what the letter stood for.
"When [soldiers] would look at our ID, they would say, 'Ooooh,' " Ali says of the label.
They still didn't know why they were being held, but that first night the seriousness of their situation finally hit home. They spent it on a cement floor, shivering two to a blanket in a long hall with dozens of other detainees from Fallujah. Soldiers walked the length of the breezy hall, forcing the prisoners to stay awake.
"It was cold. We were just sitting on the ground," says Ali. "If [a soldier] sees someone sleeping, he will kick him or make him do push-ups or heavy exercise. You have to keep your eyes open."
"The guys in the [hall] were not soldiers, they were monsters," says Ahmed, slouching in a chair, his deep, rumbling voice belying his matchstick-like frame.
From then on, everything became a confusing, terrifying swirl. Each individual incident is clear in their minds, but time stretched and bent in their exhausted, fearful state. The men say it's hard to remember the exact order in which everything happened.
When morning broke, food arrived for the prisoners. But the smell repulsed them, and fear had left them without an appetite.
That day they discovered why they were being detained. One at a time they were hooded, handcuffed and led to a trailer that served as an interrogation room. There, the hoods were removed. Two soldiers and a translator sat behind a desk. Each man was questioned separately but their experiences were similar. Each was instructed to kneel on the floor and raise his arms in the air for the entire interrogation.
"'Why did you attack the helicopter?'" the interrogators demanded. "'We found machine guns and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] in your car,'" Ali recalls them charging.
He was dumbstruck at the accusation.
"The only equipment we had was a camera. I am a journalist; it is my duty to take pictures," Ali told them, his arms still in the air, small rocks on the floor digging into his knees.
The questions continued for hours. Where was he when the helicopter crashed? How long had he been working for NBC? Did he have children? Where did he live?
Sometimes the soldiers had orders, not questions.
In the Arab world, sitting so someone can see the soles of your shoes is considered rude. Playing on that social more, Sittar was told to lick the bottoms of the slippers he was wearing, a humiliating gesture. He started to lick the width of the slipper but was corrected by the soldiers and the bearded translator, who spoke Lebanese Arabic.
"Like this," he says, holding an imaginary shoe and demonstrating how they made him lick the sole lengthwise. "If I was one of the attackers, I would admit it. But I didn't do anything. I am a journalist, and look what they did to me," Sittar says.
Then the soldiers said " 'Put your finger in your ass,' " Sittar recalls, leaning forward and putting his hand behind him with an embarrassed laugh.
When it was Ahmed's turn, he also knelt and had to raise his long, thin arms in the air and wave them back and forth. He was ordered not to say "wullah," a common phrase in Iraqi Arabic that means "swear to God."
"When I said 'wullah,' the translator told the Americans, and they hit me," Ahmed says. "When I would say it, [the soldier] would say, 'Hit yourself' or he will hit me."
Other times "they made me suck my middle finger. They told me to stick my middle finger in my anus and then lick it," he said in a transcript of an interview about his experience with Andrew Marshall, chief correspondent in Iraq for Reuters.
The interrogations were finished by that night but, as the men were to find out, the hard part was just beginning.
One by one as their interrogations were finished, the tired, frightened men were brought to a small room adjoining the main hall and told to stand in a corner and face the wall.
"Then they started the torture," Ali says.
It lasted all night. They were ordered to perform strenuous exercise until they were exhausted and to assume humiliating sexual poses. Soldiers would come by the door of the room and watch, the men recall. Some took pictures. All laughed.
"They made us lie on each other like a cross. One of the soldiers forced me to move like I was having sex, and they had personal cameras taking pictures of us," Ali says.
The whole time he kept his eyes on the small, open windows in the room, watching for a streak of sunlight that would bring dawn and, hopefully, an end to the suffering. It seemed to never come.
Every few hours a new group of soldiers would take over. Each time the men hoped the new guards would be kinder, but they just brought a new form of punishment.
Some played deafeningly loud music and forced the men to dance to it. Others would whisper things in their ears--most of which they didn't understand except a few choice swear words--while forcing them to do push-ups or other exercise. "Each time a soldier would pass, they would hit me in the head and shine a flashlight in my eyes," says Ahmed.
Salem understood some of what the soldiers said. "They would whisper, 'Please bring your wife here,' " Salem said in a transcript of his recounting of the incident to Marshall. "I thought they were going to rape us. They were standing at our backs."
The only respite came when a soldier named Jerry arrived and allowed Salem to rest, he said, according to the transcript.
As morning approached, the men were told to put their hands on each other's shoulders in a circle. Soldiers placed tape over their mouths and pulled hoods over their heads. Then they were ordered to walk quickly in unending circles.
They kept going until Ahmed, so thin he barely fills out his clothes, collapsed. Sittar asked for water, but he was forced to drink an entire bottle, which he quickly threw up from the strain of physical exertion.
"Because of the bags I could see nothing, but I heard Ahmed coughing and fall and heard Sittar and [Salem] fall," Ali says. "I was the last one standing, and a soldier was saying, 'Oh, you're strong?' and he started hitting me in the mouth and head and groin."
After Ahmed and Sittar collapsed, the soldiers decided the night was over. The men were brought back to the drafty hall and given food and water. It was the first time in hours they had been allowed to sit down. Sick from fear and exhaustion, they could barely choke down the food, even though they had hardly eaten in more than a day.
"I was pretending this food is delicious. It smelled like dead flesh [but] I wanted to encourage them to eat because Ahmed was white and looking weak," Ali says.
But soon they were on the move. The men found themselves in a Humvee, desert wind whipping past them as they jolted and bumped their way to an unknown destination.
"I heard a soldier saying 'Cuba, Cuba' and I was really afraid," Sittar says. The large prison at Camp Buca in southern Iraq is often called "Cuba" by U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
When they stopped, they weren't in southern Iraq, however, but at a base near a town that used to be called "Saddam near Fallujah." It appeared to be run by military police.
"There was no way out. When we got to the military police prison I was thinking of escaping, even if they kill me, because I couldn't bear it anymore," Sittar says.
They were taken in for more interrogation individually, but this time in a warm room where a woman asked them again about their activities the day they were arrested and details about their work and lives. They were even given a chair to sit in.
"The second place was like a tourist trip compared to the first place. There was a bench to sit on" while they waited to be interrogated, Ali says.
This time, at least, no one hit them during the questioning--that was reserved for trips to the bathroom.
Sittar never saw the path to the bathroom – once again a hood was over his head. But he found out the path was lined with barbed wire when the soldiers escorting him pushed him into it. They pulled him by the hood, punching and shoving him.
"On the way back [from the bathroom] I asked for a cigarette," he says. "They said 'No' and hit me."
Sittar, frazzled and beleaguered after days without sleep and unable to eat, says the other prisoners took care of him. They showed him where to get a mattress, two warm blankets and bottles of water, more comfort than he and the others had seen in days.
"The other detainees saw that I was miserable," says Sittar.
They also told him that this was the camp where their fate would be decided. From here it was either freedom or Abu Ghraib prison, notorious for torture under Saddam Hussein.
The next morning, January 5, they were briefly interrogated again. At the end of the questioning the interrogator said, " 'You're going home,' " Sittar recalls. "I said, 'I love you.' "
It would still be several hours, but as dusk fell that night Ali, Ahmed, Sittar and Salem were finally sent home.
"2978, 2978," called out a soldier, Ali says. "The other detainees said, 'It's you.' I grabbed my stuff and went out. I saw the soldiers cutting off the [prisoner identification] bracelets. Even the way of the soldiers was different. They apologized."
The men were driven to the gate of the base, and Sittar's car was returned to them. They got into the familiar vehicle and pulled out past the gates, confused, in shock and guided by two tanks until they got to the main road.
"We were terrified. At that moment they released us, we saw two tanks coming, and we felt it was a joke and these two tanks would capture us and take us back," Ahmed says.
More than a year later they still haven't been able to leave behind the experiences of those three days.
"It's an unforgettable thing. For a week I stayed home in my bed. I couldn't move," Sittar says. "It used to be a normal thing to talk to Americans. Now I don't do that, and when I see a tank, it really terrifies me."
Sittar, Ali, Ahmed and Salem all returned to work shortly after their detention, though Ali considered whether he should do so for a number of weeks. Their jobs demand that they go to dangerous places, risking their lives to bring home the images of Iraq's violent, tumultuous experience. The U.S. military also made clear in public and private statements that they could arrest these Iraqis again at any time, a threat whose significance is not lost on the men.
"I'm very careful what I take a picture of... Each time I hear the sound of a tank or helicopter, I feel like I am the target because of the savage treatment I faced. I have fear inside," Ali says. "I was hesitating to decide to return [to work] for a month. [But] I am a journalist, and I accept the consequences."
By Jill Carroll
Jill Carroll, a former Wall Street Journal and Jordan Times reporter, is a freelance journalist living in Baghdad. Her stories are published by the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle and the Italian newswire Ansa.
NBC cameraman Ali Mohammed Hussein was simply following his news instincts when he set off to track down the crash site of a U.S. military helicopter on January 2, 2004. His brother, a cousin and a friend, all of whom work for Reuters, joined him.
They didn't return for three days. When the Iraqis finally turned up, it was with an outlandish tale of abuses suffered in U.S. military detention facilities. Their story foreshadowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison that came to light four months later. But unlike Abu Ghraib, their ordeal has been largely ignored by the media, and the military does not admit any wrongdoing.
This account of what happened to them is based on interviews in Iraq with three of the men, using a translator, and transcripts of lengthy interviews conducted by Reuters. A U.S. military investigation said soldiers did not abuse or torture the men, but Reuters continues to push for a more thorough inquiry. The Pentagon said it had no further comment on the allegations for this story.
The four Iraqis were accused not of shooting film, but a OH-58 Kiowa observation helicopter that crashed near Fallujah, killing one U.S. soldier and injuring another. Eventually, they were released and were not prosecuted.
On that Friday afternoon Ali, now 33, was praying at a mosque in Fallujah with his cousin Sittar Jabbar Hussein al-Badrani, 29, a driver for Reuters. When they left the mosque, word had already hit the street that an American helicopter had crashed nearby.
Ali's brother, Ahmed Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani, 29, who works as a cameraman for Reuters, was near the mosque helping a friend fix a broken-down car. Ali and Sittar spotted him and rushed over.
The three, who had been working for Reuters and NBC for less than a year, knew their bosses would need footage of what was likely to be the biggest news of the day. As cameramen, they have to get to the site of an attack before the area is sealed off and the scene cleared. It's no use shooting pictures from hundreds of yards away behind a military cordon. They all hopped in Sittar's car and sped off to find the crash.
As is usual when violence erupts, the U.S. military had closed off the roads leading to the site. So the three men drove up and down roads in the lush farmland surrounding the Euphrates River, which cuts through Fallujah, looking for a way to the crash site. While crossing a bridge, they came across Reuters cameraman and reporter Salem Ureibi, who was also looking for the site, along with his driver. Salem had been working for Reuters in Iraq for more than a decade.
They decided to team up and soon found a spot behind a military checkpoint where they could see the site. They got out several hundred yards from the checkpoint and donned their flak jackets with "PRESS" emblazoned across them. Salem started filming the soldiers at the checkpoint down the road while the others were setting up their equipment.
But then they noticed that one of the military vehicles had started to move toward them. One of the most dangerous places in Iraq is anywhere shortly after an attack. There are angry crowds, jittery soldiers and sometimes another attacker waiting for civilians and security forces to gather before launching a second strike.
Unsure of what the approaching military vehicle was going to do, the men decided it was time to go. They packed up their cameras and got back into their cars. As they sped away, gunfire followed them. It appeared to be coming from the Americans.
They stopped a few kilometers away. Salem gave his driver the film he had shot and sent him to Baghdad to deliver it to the Reuters office. He climbed into Sittar's car next to Ali and Ahmed, and the four set off to find a closer spot to film the wreckage.
They ended up at a school where several other reporters and cameramen had gathered, but American military vehicles weren't far behind. Everyone scattered as the soldiers rumbled up. Sittar drove down a dead-end road.
One of the military vehicles swung into view at the other end of the street and moved in behind them. Cornered, Salem, Ali, Ahmed and Sittar got out of the car, raised their arms above their heads and shouted that they were journalists. Soldiers were moving toward them with guns raised, firing warning shots and shouting instructions that the men couldn't understand.
"We got out of the car, and the soldiers started shouting and shouting and putting us on the ground. But we don't speak English that well, and we couldn't understand what the soldiers were saying, and we shouted, 'Cameraman,' " says Ali, a tall, barrel-chested man with light, yellow-gold eyes.
With the men lying on the ground, the soldiers searched them, pulling satellite phones, identification cards and money out of their pockets and slipping them into plastic bags. The men's hands were put behind their backs and secured with plastic handcuffs called "flex-cuffs." The thin plastic strips bit into their skin, tightening if they struggled and leaving marks that would remain for weeks.
Hoods were slipped over their heads. The soldiers grabbed the Iraqis by their belt buckles and their shirts and tossed them into a Humvee like sacks of potatoes.
"Even until this moment I wasn't afraid. I thought they would release us. This is my job, and I have an ID showing I work for an international company," says Ali in a steady voice. "I didn't expect the coming things would happen."
After a short trip the Humvee stopped. Blinded by the hoods, the men struggled to gain their bearings and decipher what was happening from the shouts in English and the noises of an armored vehicle nearby.
They soon knew the armored vehicle all too intimately. Ali, Ahmed and Sittar were grabbed by the soldiers and shoved face-down on the floor under the seats of what they came to call "the tank." Salem was tossed across a row of seats.
The seats were pushed down on top of Ali, Ahmed and Sittar and locked into place. Ali bulged out of the space. The lock securing the seat to the floor cut into his leg, he recalls, reaching to his thigh and rubbing the area.
Soldiers sat on top of the three men and squeezed their boots around Ali's, Ahmed's and Sittar's heads, which were poking out the ends of the rows.
"I couldn't breathe because of the bag on my head, and I was squashed into a small space," Ali says. "I was only thinking they would search us and release us. When they put the handcuffs and bags on our heads, I thought they were just trying to scare us into not [filming a crash site] again. When they put us in the tank, I began to feel something was wrong."
Talking was forbidden in the tank. But Ali, Ahmed and Sittar say the pain of the bouncing ride and pressure from the seats squeezing them made it impossible to keep quiet. "I was shouting 'I can't breathe,' " Ali says. The soldier sitting on him hit him with the butt of his gun in response. The soldier said, " 'Shut up, shut up,' and I asked Salem [who speaks some English] to translate that I couldn't breathe, and the soldier told Salem to tell me if I didn't shut up, he'd put a bullet in my head."
Ali recalls it all calmly now, looking down at his feet, gaining steadiness by striking a monotone. He asked to recount his experience alone, and the others volunteered to leave the room while he spoke. Being older than his relatives, and particularly as Ahmed's big brother, it's shameful for him to discuss his humiliation in front of them. (Salem declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the difficulty of discussing the experience and the fact that little had come of his telling his story in the past.)
"It was winter, but I was sweating all over," Ali says. "I tried to gather all the strength I had to relieve the stress on my chest to breathe better, but I couldn't." He puffs up his shoulders and chest to show how he tried to relieve some of the pressure of the seat crushing him by pushing against it.
"I felt like I was dying, and I wanted an explosion [to come] and finish this torture," says Ali. "This was the worst part of my life, these few hours in the tank. I told my brother Ahmed to take care of my daughter."
The bouncing metal floor of the tank beat bruises across Ali's, Ahmed's and Sittar's faces. Sweat was pouring over their bodies, and slowly they lost feeling in their limbs as the flow of blood was pinched off by the seats pressing them into the floor. The ride seemed to last for hours.
Then the rumbling stopped. The back hatch of the vehicle opened, and suddenly the seats popped up and air came rushing into their lungs.
"I felt like life was coming back to me again when the soldier stood up. I could breathe," Ali says. But when they pulled him out of the vehicle he couldn't stand on his own. All four were laid on the ground. They inhaled deeply, relishing the fresh air, and they began to get feeling back in their limbs. The plastic handcuffs were cut off and their hoods removed, revealing a night sky.
The men sat upright on the ground, distracted by the cold wind whipping through their sweat-soaked clothes.
English started flying at them: "Name," "address," "hometown," asked a new group of soldiers. The four stammered out answers, which were recorded on a badge that included one more piece of information about their arrest: a "C" or "G" label. They are unsure which letter it was but soon learned not to forget it. They realized it entitled them to punches, insults and harsh treatment not meted out to other prisoners. Neither the men nor Reuters knows what the letter stood for.
"When [soldiers] would look at our ID, they would say, 'Ooooh,' " Ali says of the label.
They still didn't know why they were being held, but that first night the seriousness of their situation finally hit home. They spent it on a cement floor, shivering two to a blanket in a long hall with dozens of other detainees from Fallujah. Soldiers walked the length of the breezy hall, forcing the prisoners to stay awake.
"It was cold. We were just sitting on the ground," says Ali. "If [a soldier] sees someone sleeping, he will kick him or make him do push-ups or heavy exercise. You have to keep your eyes open."
"The guys in the [hall] were not soldiers, they were monsters," says Ahmed, slouching in a chair, his deep, rumbling voice belying his matchstick-like frame.
From then on, everything became a confusing, terrifying swirl. Each individual incident is clear in their minds, but time stretched and bent in their exhausted, fearful state. The men say it's hard to remember the exact order in which everything happened.
When morning broke, food arrived for the prisoners. But the smell repulsed them, and fear had left them without an appetite.
That day they discovered why they were being detained. One at a time they were hooded, handcuffed and led to a trailer that served as an interrogation room. There, the hoods were removed. Two soldiers and a translator sat behind a desk. Each man was questioned separately but their experiences were similar. Each was instructed to kneel on the floor and raise his arms in the air for the entire interrogation.
"'Why did you attack the helicopter?'" the interrogators demanded. "'We found machine guns and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] in your car,'" Ali recalls them charging.
He was dumbstruck at the accusation.
"The only equipment we had was a camera. I am a journalist; it is my duty to take pictures," Ali told them, his arms still in the air, small rocks on the floor digging into his knees.
The questions continued for hours. Where was he when the helicopter crashed? How long had he been working for NBC? Did he have children? Where did he live?
Sometimes the soldiers had orders, not questions.
In the Arab world, sitting so someone can see the soles of your shoes is considered rude. Playing on that social more, Sittar was told to lick the bottoms of the slippers he was wearing, a humiliating gesture. He started to lick the width of the slipper but was corrected by the soldiers and the bearded translator, who spoke Lebanese Arabic.
"Like this," he says, holding an imaginary shoe and demonstrating how they made him lick the sole lengthwise. "If I was one of the attackers, I would admit it. But I didn't do anything. I am a journalist, and look what they did to me," Sittar says.
Then the soldiers said " 'Put your finger in your ass,' " Sittar recalls, leaning forward and putting his hand behind him with an embarrassed laugh.
When it was Ahmed's turn, he also knelt and had to raise his long, thin arms in the air and wave them back and forth. He was ordered not to say "wullah," a common phrase in Iraqi Arabic that means "swear to God."
"When I said 'wullah,' the translator told the Americans, and they hit me," Ahmed says. "When I would say it, [the soldier] would say, 'Hit yourself' or he will hit me."
Other times "they made me suck my middle finger. They told me to stick my middle finger in my anus and then lick it," he said in a transcript of an interview about his experience with Andrew Marshall, chief correspondent in Iraq for Reuters.
The interrogations were finished by that night but, as the men were to find out, the hard part was just beginning.
One by one as their interrogations were finished, the tired, frightened men were brought to a small room adjoining the main hall and told to stand in a corner and face the wall.
"Then they started the torture," Ali says.
It lasted all night. They were ordered to perform strenuous exercise until they were exhausted and to assume humiliating sexual poses. Soldiers would come by the door of the room and watch, the men recall. Some took pictures. All laughed.
"They made us lie on each other like a cross. One of the soldiers forced me to move like I was having sex, and they had personal cameras taking pictures of us," Ali says.
The whole time he kept his eyes on the small, open windows in the room, watching for a streak of sunlight that would bring dawn and, hopefully, an end to the suffering. It seemed to never come.
Every few hours a new group of soldiers would take over. Each time the men hoped the new guards would be kinder, but they just brought a new form of punishment.
Some played deafeningly loud music and forced the men to dance to it. Others would whisper things in their ears--most of which they didn't understand except a few choice swear words--while forcing them to do push-ups or other exercise. "Each time a soldier would pass, they would hit me in the head and shine a flashlight in my eyes," says Ahmed.
Salem understood some of what the soldiers said. "They would whisper, 'Please bring your wife here,' " Salem said in a transcript of his recounting of the incident to Marshall. "I thought they were going to rape us. They were standing at our backs."
The only respite came when a soldier named Jerry arrived and allowed Salem to rest, he said, according to the transcript.
As morning approached, the men were told to put their hands on each other's shoulders in a circle. Soldiers placed tape over their mouths and pulled hoods over their heads. Then they were ordered to walk quickly in unending circles.
They kept going until Ahmed, so thin he barely fills out his clothes, collapsed. Sittar asked for water, but he was forced to drink an entire bottle, which he quickly threw up from the strain of physical exertion.
"Because of the bags I could see nothing, but I heard Ahmed coughing and fall and heard Sittar and [Salem] fall," Ali says. "I was the last one standing, and a soldier was saying, 'Oh, you're strong?' and he started hitting me in the mouth and head and groin."
After Ahmed and Sittar collapsed, the soldiers decided the night was over. The men were brought back to the drafty hall and given food and water. It was the first time in hours they had been allowed to sit down. Sick from fear and exhaustion, they could barely choke down the food, even though they had hardly eaten in more than a day.
"I was pretending this food is delicious. It smelled like dead flesh [but] I wanted to encourage them to eat because Ahmed was white and looking weak," Ali says.
But soon they were on the move. The men found themselves in a Humvee, desert wind whipping past them as they jolted and bumped their way to an unknown destination.
"I heard a soldier saying 'Cuba, Cuba' and I was really afraid," Sittar says. The large prison at Camp Buca in southern Iraq is often called "Cuba" by U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
When they stopped, they weren't in southern Iraq, however, but at a base near a town that used to be called "Saddam near Fallujah." It appeared to be run by military police.
"There was no way out. When we got to the military police prison I was thinking of escaping, even if they kill me, because I couldn't bear it anymore," Sittar says.
They were taken in for more interrogation individually, but this time in a warm room where a woman asked them again about their activities the day they were arrested and details about their work and lives. They were even given a chair to sit in.
"The second place was like a tourist trip compared to the first place. There was a bench to sit on" while they waited to be interrogated, Ali says.
This time, at least, no one hit them during the questioning--that was reserved for trips to the bathroom.
Sittar never saw the path to the bathroom – once again a hood was over his head. But he found out the path was lined with barbed wire when the soldiers escorting him pushed him into it. They pulled him by the hood, punching and shoving him.
"On the way back [from the bathroom] I asked for a cigarette," he says. "They said 'No' and hit me."
Sittar, frazzled and beleaguered after days without sleep and unable to eat, says the other prisoners took care of him. They showed him where to get a mattress, two warm blankets and bottles of water, more comfort than he and the others had seen in days.
"The other detainees saw that I was miserable," says Sittar.
They also told him that this was the camp where their fate would be decided. From here it was either freedom or Abu Ghraib prison, notorious for torture under Saddam Hussein.
The next morning, January 5, they were briefly interrogated again. At the end of the questioning the interrogator said, " 'You're going home,' " Sittar recalls. "I said, 'I love you.' "
It would still be several hours, but as dusk fell that night Ali, Ahmed, Sittar and Salem were finally sent home.
"2978, 2978," called out a soldier, Ali says. "The other detainees said, 'It's you.' I grabbed my stuff and went out. I saw the soldiers cutting off the [prisoner identification] bracelets. Even the way of the soldiers was different. They apologized."
The men were driven to the gate of the base, and Sittar's car was returned to them. They got into the familiar vehicle and pulled out past the gates, confused, in shock and guided by two tanks until they got to the main road.
"We were terrified. At that moment they released us, we saw two tanks coming, and we felt it was a joke and these two tanks would capture us and take us back," Ahmed says.
More than a year later they still haven't been able to leave behind the experiences of those three days.
"It's an unforgettable thing. For a week I stayed home in my bed. I couldn't move," Sittar says. "It used to be a normal thing to talk to Americans. Now I don't do that, and when I see a tank, it really terrifies me."
Sittar, Ali, Ahmed and Salem all returned to work shortly after their detention, though Ali considered whether he should do so for a number of weeks. Their jobs demand that they go to dangerous places, risking their lives to bring home the images of Iraq's violent, tumultuous experience. The U.S. military also made clear in public and private statements that they could arrest these Iraqis again at any time, a threat whose significance is not lost on the men.
"I'm very careful what I take a picture of... Each time I hear the sound of a tank or helicopter, I feel like I am the target because of the savage treatment I faced. I have fear inside," Ali says. "I was hesitating to decide to return [to work] for a month. [But] I am a journalist, and I accept the consequences."
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