"What's the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role?"...,
2004-05-04 13:48:31
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where's the anti-war movement...,
2004-05-05 14:37:56
abu ghraib:
ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADESECRET/NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION
Thanks to Christopher. Steve Aftergood notes in my mailbox:
By classifying an explosive report on the torture of Iraqi
prisoners as "Secret," the Pentagon may have violated official
secrecy policies, which prohibit the use of classification to
conceal illegal activities.
Donald Rumsfeld is debating whether or not what we see here could really be classified as "torture", per say. Concerned citizens should band together to purchase the motherfucker a dictionary, one that notes that the definition of torture is "to bring great physical or mental pain upon (another)" and "to wrest from the proper meaning; to distort". We here at FtR belive Mr. Rumsfeld is guilty of the latter by suggesting that the following does not classify as the former:
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
The partisan debate apparently, like most other debates over this war, is whether the failure is from incompetence or whether it's systematic. Defenders of the administration keep insisting that their folks are merely incompetent, not evil. Excepting, of course, vulgar intellects such as Irving Kristol and his fellow "American imperialists", some of whom allow a few gaffes of mock criticism of the administration for not being evil enough.
Did Bush lie about WMD or did he just get shucked and jived by Ahmed Chalabi? Did Bremer shut down the newspaper because he's an idiot or because he wanted to incite a Shi'ite revolt? Is the waste of reconstruction funds due to Washington's war profiteering or Washington's legacy of corruption? Was the torture instructed from on high or evolve out of mere officer frustration?
Such dichotomies are easily resolved: incompetent leadership is systematic.
