THIS MODERN WORLD

August has a modestly brilliant proposal: conservatives and libertarians who write fire-breathing, liberal-bashing defenses of Wal Mart should be willing to show their own Wal Mart receipts.

The truth leaks out in bits and pieces. It’s all so depressingly predictable.

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

The report, which was not released publicly and was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could “technically” be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by “making gratuitous enemies” as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.

The investigation, by retired Col. Stuart A. Herrington, also found that members of Task Force 121 — a joint Special Operations and CIA mission searching for weapons of mass destruction and high-value targets including Saddam Hussein — had been abusing detainees throughout Iraq and had been using a secret interrogation facility to hide their activities.

Herrington’s findings are the latest in a series of confidential reports to come to light about detainee abuse in Iraq. Until now, U.S. military officials have characterized the problem as one largely confined to the military prison at Abu Ghraib — a situation they first learned about in January 2004. But Herrington’s report shows that U.S. military leaders in Iraq were told of such allegations even before then, and that problems were not restricted to Abu Ghraib. Herrington, a veteran of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam, warned that such harsh tactics could imperil U.S. efforts to quell the Iraqi insurgency — a prediction echoed months later by a military report and other reviews of the war effort.

But they were all very bad terrorists, right? They deserved anything that happened to them, right?

Well, not exactly:

Herrington’s report also noted that sweeps pulled in hundreds and even thousands of detainees who had no connection to the war. Abu Ghraib, for example, swelled to several thousand more detainees than it could handle. Herrington wrote that aggressive and indiscriminate tactics by the 4th Infantry Division, rounding up random scores of detainees and “dumping them at the door,” was a glaring example.

None of this should be a surprise to anyone smart enough to understand that White House Press Secretaries often do not tell the truth. None of this should be a surprise to anyone who reads the news trying to understand the world, rather than trying to spot imaginary examples of liberal bias. In short, none of this should be a surprise to anyone whose head is not lodged firmly up their own rectum.

If you voted for Bush, this is what you voted for.

Three cautionary tales, via Just a Bump in the Beltway…

One:

In 1992, Tonya Stewart left the Army after serving 13 years in uniform, believing her service to her country was over.

Now, 12 years later, she’s been recalled to active duty.

“I leave for an 18-month tour of duty in two weeks,” the 43-year-old Hellam Township resident said. “And that’s about all I really know.”

Stewart, visiting her sister’s family for Thanksgiving dinner along with her boyfriend and 9-year-old daughter, said she had received letters and phone calls from the military since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 warning her that she may be recalled.

“But to be honest, I never really thought they’d do it,” Stewart, who works for Susquehanna Communications, said with a laugh. “I’m a little too old to be running around diving in the sand.”

She was recalled from the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve, composed of men and women who, even though they have completed their tours of duty, are still obligated to return to service if the government calls for them.

Two:

Chief Warrant Officer Margaret Murray, who describes herself as “over 50,” says her small frame and some old back pain made it difficult to fire her M-16 in a marksmanship refresher course.

“With my stature, it was a challenge,” said the 4-foot-10, 95-pound, gray-haired personnel specialist from Schenectady, N.Y. “But I can hit the target now.”

Murray is one of about 4,400 Army soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve who completed their active-duty service but have been notified they must get back in uniform. Most likely, they are headed for Iraq or Afghanistan.

Ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, the returning soldiers bring valuable experience to the Army. But their advanced ages, weakened eyes and expanded waistlines mean doing things a bit differently.

“Old is the operative word. I joke my contingent just came from Fort Living Room,” said Lt. Col. Douglas Snyder, commander of the training unit here. “They haven’t run in two, four, six, maybe 10 years or more. And that goes for push-ups, too.”

One lieutenant colonel with bifocals had to switch from an M-16 rifle to a 9 mm pistol to qualify. The petite Murray learned to adjust her stance to fire her weapon.

“We don’t give up on them. We haven’t failed to qualify a single person,” said Staff Sgt. Kenneth Calloway, a 29-year-old Army Reserve instructor. “We just give each individual a lot of time — and lots of ammunition.”

Three:

They basically told me that my Marine Corps time doesn’t count as military service,” Pistorius said. Faced with a threat of AWOL charges, and worried that a spotless military record was about to be stained, Pistorius headed last month to Camp McGrady in South Carolina.

“The first thing they did was thank us for showing up,” Pistorius said. “They had 150 that were supposed to show up and about 75 did. Of those 75 maybe only 40 or 50 are medically fit.”

— snip —

Equally implausible were the men who turned up at Camp McGrady last month.

When I first spoke to Pistorius, by telephone from the camp, he said nobody had been given a physical. He told his Army commanders that he had a permanent back injury from a car crash. They were unimpressed by a letter from his chiropractor. His pre-deployment health assessment lists him in this word: “Deployable.”Pistorius spoke with his captain.

“He said everybody here’s going to Iraq,” Pistorius said. “It’s unbelievable some of the guys they’re bringing down there.”

One man arrived with a hospital identification band still on his wrist. He’d just had knee surgery. One 48-year-old from Alabama had a hip replacement and fused vertebrae in his back.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion “tantamount to torture” on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

Here’s the story. If you voted for Bush, this is what you voted for. Of course, if you voted for Bush, you probably don’t care.

So David Broooks read a book by a guy who seems much more reasonable (to him) than Jerry Falwell, and concludes that everyone is completely misinformed about fundamentalists.

Speaking as one with considerably more experience in these matters than David Brooks (I spent a significant chunk of my adolescence in the heart of the Bible Belt attending Southern Baptist churches), I would politely suggest to Mr. Brooks that wanting a thing to be true does not actually make it true.