In Memoriam
posted by Rick at 1:42 PM

It is the day when we pause to remember those who have died in service to our nation, from the Revolutionary War to the present day - those who, it's said, died to keep America free.

We question, and rightfully so, whether this war or that war is worthwhile enough to justify putting our teenagers and young adults in harm's way. We question the wisdom of a war that has no clear aim and no definable end, yet in which some of those uniformed young Americans as well as a number of innocent civilians are sure to lose their lives.

That does not mean we don't support our troops. Rather, it means we cherish their lives and we don't want them squandered. They are our children and friends and husbands and wives. We owe it to them to ask these questions, because as members of the armed forces, they are not permitted that luxury. They go because they are sent. Whether you believe the war in Iraq or any other war is just or unjust, right or wrong, wisdom or folly, you must recognize the fact that our troops are there because their commander-in-chief, the President of the United States, decided that they would go.

They go, knowing that they may be called upon to take human lives, or to sacrifice their own, or both. They go, and they do their duty as they understand it. They go where they are ordered to go; they do what they are ordered to do. And we are left at home to question the wisdom of their orders.

There is time the rest of the year to debate such matters - as we surely will over the next few months. This day we set aside to honor the memory of those who went and did not return.

The man generally acknowledged as the greatest American President in history - a Republican, as it happens - had a few words to say on ths subject nearly 141 years ago. His simple words ring as true today as when he first wrote them on the back of an envelope:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Bad Apples
posted by Rick at 1:16 PM

The Bush League says the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were the work of "a few bad apples," and for a change I agree with them. Here's why. (CAUTION: This page contains graphic images of the Abu Ghraib atrocities.)

Mission Accomplished
posted by Rick at 11:49 AM

Way to go, George. You're really winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people now.

Reuters, by the way, reports that the occupational forces are working with Iraqi police to eliminate anti-coalition graffiti. That's freedom of expression, Bush League style - rather like the way they restrict protest to out-of-the-way "free speech zones" in George W. Bush's America.

Gore Scores
posted by Rick at 9:36 PM

How about that speech by President-Elect Al Gore?

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists.

If he had shown the public more of this side of himself four years ago, the Bush League might not have managed to usurp the Presidency even with all their cheating....

US puts known abusers in charge of Iraqi prisons
posted by Rick at 5:42 PM

According to a story in the New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has written a letter to Attorney General John Asshcroft asking the Justice Department to look into the part played by US civilians in the prison system in Iraq.

At least two high-ranking civilians in the US-run Iraqi prison system have spotted records at best when it comes to prisoner abuse.

John J. Armstrong resigned last year as Commissioner of Corrections in Connecticut after he sent two inmates to their deaths in a "supermaximum security" facility in Virginia, where one of them was apparently treated for diabetic shock by being zapped with a stun gun and restrained, and another hanged himself by jumping from his bunk while a guard stood by and did nothing.

Armstrong had also been criticized repeatedly over his eight years in charge of Connecticut's prisons for failing to deal with complaints of sexual harassment of female guards by their male coworkers.

Armstrong is Assistant Director of Operations of the US prisons in Iraq. He is said to be working under contract for the State Department, although State declined to confirm or deny it.

Lane McCotter was forced out as Director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after guards killed a mentally ill inmate by leaving him "shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours."

McCotter's next stop was as an executive with a private corrections company. That company was roundly criticized by a Justice Department report that said an inmate in one of their jails hanged himself in part because the jail "lacked adequate medical and mental health care and had no suicide prevention plan," according to the story.

Just a month later, Asshcroft sent McCotter to Iraq and put him in charge of reopening Iraq's prisons.

Schumer reportedly asked, "Of all the people who have experience running prisons in this country and haven't run into trouble, how did they pick these guys?"

When the attorney general is a right-wing religious fundamentalist who thinks pain and suffering is what non-Christians deserve, the answer is pretty easy to guess.

Update: Here is the source of the picture linked below. It is titled "War President."

Thanks to Vynce for providing the link.

I don't know where this picture came from, but it needs no caption.

No Middle Ground
posted by Rick at 10:29 PM

Sometimes you get discouraged.

You write the same things as everybody else. You point out the same lies and the same corruption and the same cynical exploitaion of the hopes and fears of the masses for the profit of the few, and you see others pointing it out so much more eloquently than yourself...and still you see the corporate media ignoring the rising hue and cry...and you get discouraged. If they don't see it by now, you think, they're not going to see it by reading my drivel.

I've been on a long break from the Bush League blog because I was discouraged. I didn't feel like I was really making any significant difference. Anybody who can read my musings can get hard news from Greg Palast, and erudite opinion from Noam Chomsky, and press releases from the Sierra Club and CommonDreams and TruthOut and Buzzflash and the Smirking Chimp and a bizillion other web sites. What's one more voice in the crowd, after all?

Then I went to see my daughter's high school drama troupe and their Spring presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sitting there waiting for the opening curtain, I thought back to their Fall presentation. The Crucible, it was, Arthur Miller's tale of the Salem witch hunts. Written in the '50s as a parable about McCarthyism, the play finds new relevance in these times.

One theme that recurs through the play is "If you are not with us, you are against us." It was used by the judges in The Crucible, as it was used by the McCarthyites--and as it is used today by the latest bevy of self-righteous persecutors--to divide, to polarize, to coerce people into taking sides.

And you know what? They're right. There is no middle ground. You can't be neutral on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld. You can't have no opinion on the suspension of the Bill of Rights at home, or the holding of political prisoners at Guantanamo without trial; or on the slaughter of ten thousand Iraqi civilians, or the atrocities committed in your name in the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib and al-Assad and who knows where else...or the thousands of Muslims driven into the arms of Al Qaida by the abominations of the Bush League; you can't have no reaction to the hundreds of American lives lost, and the uncounted thousands of non-fatal American casualties of the Bush League's recklessness and folly. There's no room for indifference. You're either with the Bush League or against them.

The mathematician in me says that if you are not with us, you are against us is logically equivalent to if you are not against us, you are with us. As it turns out, it's also morally equivalent. Arundhati Roy says it so much better than I ever could: "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

And I know which side I want to be counted on.

What's one more voice in the crowd? About the same as one more vote in Florida. One more straw piled on the camel's back. The probability that my little-known and less-read blog will somehow be the difference between four more years of George W. Bush, on the one hand, and the dawning of sanity in America on the other, is very small; but it's not zero. If my ramblings and rants get just one more person pissed off enough about the corporate plunder of America to do something about it, or help one other blogger to find his voice, or persuade one fence-sitter to come down on the side of reason--or what would be best of all, if I should convince one disheartened voter that it's worth her while to go to the polls in November and vote to send George W. Bush and his pack of vermin back into the holes they crawled out of--then I will have succeeded.

So...once more, with feeling. I'm back.