Do not miss Glenn Greenwald’s post about the latest eruption of psychosis from America’s right. It turns out, according to an article by British hack Melanie Phillips in the Spectator, that IRAQ HAD WMD ALL ALONG! And this is being covered up by FORCES AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS!!1!
Read Greenwald’s post for the horrifying details, including how it’s been embraced by the biggest conservative blogs here. I’ll just mention my favorite part, which comes from something Philips posted on her website:
…at Russian insistence, Saddam agreed to sell or transfer his CW/BW stockpiles to other Arab states in the weeks and months before the war.
Yes…you can see how this would happen. When faced with attack by a far more powerful foe, countries always attempt to give away their weapons. This is a pattern that’s repeated itself throughout history.
And it’s not just the WMD! My sources have informed me that just before the war:
• At Brazil’s insistence, Saddam agreed to give away Iraq’s artillery
• At Malaysia’s insistence, Saddam agreed to give away Iraq’s rifles
• At Burkina Faso’s insistence, Saddam agreed to give away Iraq’s forks
But as always, this bombshell is being covered up by FORCES AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS!!1!
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who helped engineer the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, said Sunday the problems in Iraq are more complex than that conflict, and military victory is no longer possible. […]
I had a chance last night to see a small sneak preview of an unreleased documentary called “Taxi to the Dark Side” by filmmaker Alex Gibney (who was nominated for an Emmy Oscar for his last film, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), which examines, basically, how we got from there to here — how we became a nation whose government openly renounced the Geneva Conventions and officially sanctioned the use of torture.
I have to be honest, it’s not the easiest thing to sit through. The film, which primarily focuses on abuses at Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, contains footage of the Bagram base that’s never been seen anywhere else, as well as the shockingly familiar still images from Abu Ghraib, uncensored and high res. The filmmaker, who attended last night’s screening at Yale, described it beforehand as a sort of murder mystery, using as its springboard the story of Dilawar, the young taxi driver who was apprehended by Afghan militia and turned over to the U.S. military at Bagram, where he was, in fact, eventually murdered. And that’s not hyperbole — the official coroner’s report lists the cause of death as “homicide.” (The film notes that out of more than 100 deaths in U.S. custody, 37 have been officially declared homicides by the U.S. military itself. Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that only seven percent of Guantanamo detainees were were actually apprehend by the U.S. military — the rest have been turned over by Afghan warlords, Pakistanis, bounty hunters, etc., any of whom may have had agendas having nothing to do with the American war on terror. Dilawar’s captor, for instance, turns out have been the person actually responsible for the rocket attacks of which the taxi driver was wrongly accused).
If you’ve been following all these stories over the past few years, there’s not a lot here that you probably don’t already know — but it’s still overwhelming to see the entire case laid out in such a methodical manner. In addition to the footage mentioned above, the film presents its case through interviews with guards and interrogators from Bagram, as well as former JAGs and other military officials. I’m sure they’ll do it anyway, but it’ll be hard for the usual suspects to paint this as a partisan hit piece when probably 80% of the talking heads are military and/or Republicans. Interspersed with their descriptions of the abuses are shots from the State of the Union in which Bush assures the audience, with a steely Clint Eastwood look in his eye, that the United States has illegally hunted down and murdered foreign nationals (I’m paraphrasing slightly, of course) — and gets a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle. Or when Alberto Gonzales, testifying before Congress, is asked about confessions obtained under duress, and stares into the camera for a full thirty seconds, face twitching as he tries to think of a suitable lie. (At the moment, it seems a bit obscene to me that the thing that’s ultimately going to bring Gonzales down is not his advocacy of torture, but rather the partisan firings of U.S. Attorneys.) Not to mention the footage of Dick Cheney explaining to an approving Tim Russert that the United States, like the rogue cop in a buddy flick, was going to have to throw the book away and play by its own rules for awhile.
Watching this film, I had a strange sense of being “unstuck in time,” to quote the late, great Kurt Vonnegut — as though I were watching it twenty years from now, trying to understand the madness into which this country descended in the years immediately following 9/11. (The footage of Rumsfeld, in particular, was like watching contemperanous footage of MacNamara justifying Vietnam.) If there’s any justice in the world — and one doesn’t come away from this movie filled with overwhelming hope that there is — Gibney will have settled once and for all the question of whether or not these abuses were the official policy of the United States government, sanctioned at the highest level.
“Taxi to the Dark Side” premieres at the Tribeca film festival in New York City at the end of the month, and with any luck will pick up a distributor there. If you know anyone who thinks that Rush Limbaugh’s line of “Club Gitmo” t-shirts are the funniest damn thing they’ve ever seen, you’ll want to try to steer them to a showing.
(Edited for accuracy; I didn’t have a notebook with me last night. The 7% figure refers to Guantanamo detainees, not detainees in the entire overseas detention system, as previously stated.)
The oldest of three brothers raised on South L Street in Lake Worth, Florida, [Charles] Whitman attended St. Ann’s High School in Palm Beach, where he was a pitcher on the school’s baseball team. Charles and his brothers all served as altar boys at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, and he chose the Confirmation name “Joseph” for himself.
At the age of 6, he had scored 138 on an IQ test. Six years later, he was among the youngest to ever achieve Eagle Scout, to his father’s delight. He took five years of piano lessons.
When Whitman was 14, and still serving as an altar boy, his Scout leader Joseph Leduc completed seminary and served as the priest of Sacred Heart for a month. Leduc was a family friend, who had accompanied Whitman and his father on several hunting trips. This was also the year that he finally overcame his habit of nervously biting his nails. At the age of 16, Whitman underwent a routine appendectomy. The same year, he was hospitalized following a motorcycle accident.
At first Whitman did quite well in the Corps, earning a Good Conduct Medal and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal at Guantanomo Naval Base in Cuba. He also scored an eye opening 215 out of a possible 250 points on the shooting range, receiving a Sharpshooters Badge. Trying to prove his father wrong and be successful, Whitman applied for a Naval Enlisted Science Education Program scholarship, which would help him earn an engineering degree at a selected school. Whitman got the award, and was expected to enter Officer’s Candidate School upon the completion of his degree. In September of 1961 he enrolled at the University of Texas.
But despite all that promise, something awful happened five years later :
It’s a story that’s too familiar. Someone disturbed through emotional or physical trauma loses control and acts out a violent fantasy. It’s not because they play video games or listen to aggressive music or watch violent movies or don’t go to church. Oppressive security measures and an obsessive push to rid our culture of unpleasant imagery won’t make us safer. Despite what those desperate to finding an easy fix to a complicated (and probably unsolvable) problem would have you believe, sometimes people just snap.
CNN breaking: “At least 22 32 people were killed in two incidents when a lone gunman opened fire on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg on Monday, police said. Police said they believed the shooter also was dead. Tech President Charles Steger called the shootings ‘a tragedy of monumental proportions.’”
American Airlines has set up a special page for the ladies. It’s pink, and doesn’t trouble their pretty little heads with all those complicated data fields the men enjoy so much.
According to a 2003 report on the Census Bureau website, four of the eight wealthiest counties in America are Washington suburbs:
Median Household Income (In 2003 Inflation-adjusted Dollars)
1. Somerset County, NJ $89,289 2. Howard County, MD $88,555 3. Prince William County, VA $82,926
4. Morris County, NJ $82,025 5. Fairfax County, VA $80,753
6. Nassau County, NY $80,647
7. Santa Clara County, CA $76,544 8. Montgomery County, MD $76,439
The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.
Of course, you can understand how Richard Cohen could get this wrong, since he has neither internet access nor a subscription to the Washington Post.
PREVIOUSLY, IN SIMILIAR FANTASY WORLDS: Joseph Lieberman explains, “Being a Senator, I haven’t gone much beyond the middle class.”
If you’re feeling bereft at the Kurt Vonnegut-less eternity that stretches before us, Dennis Perrin has some great video of him. I also recommend this post by Poputonian at Digby’s, which links to prevous Vonnegut-themed posts here and here.
