TIME.com: The Paper Trail -- Jun. 07, 2004

TIME.com: The Paper Trail -- Jun. 07, 2004: "Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says 'action' on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was 'coordinated' with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the 'authority to execute RIO,' or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract 'contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office.' Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog grou"

Remember, we're the good guys.

New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge (washingtonpost.com): "Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-colored panties with flowers on them. 'Most of the days I was wearing nothing else,' he said in his statement.

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures."

Oy vay.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US fire 'kills 40 Iraqi wedding guests': "A US helicopter fired on a wedding party in western Iraq today, killing more than 40 people according to Iraqi officials.

Lt Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramad, west of Baghdad, said between 42 and 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place in the early hours in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said the dead included 15 children and 10 women.

Dr Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramad, put the death toll at 45. The US military said it had no reports of such an incident."

Who is serious about the War on Terra?

The Buck Stops … Where? - Stop blaming your henchmen, Mr. President. By Fred Kaplan: "The second news story that heaves more burdens on the president comes from an NBC News broadcast by Jim Miklaszewski on March 2. Apparently, Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the story puts it:

[T]he administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.

The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred. In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi"

I guess it really is limited sovereignity.

Empire Notes: "In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. The CPA also established an important new security-adviser position, which will be in charge of training and organizing Iraq's new army and paramilitary forces, and put in place a pair of watchdog institutions that will serve as checks on individual ministries and allow for continued U.S. oversight. Meanwhile, the CPA reiterated that coalition advisers will remain in virtually all remaining ministries after the handover.
In many cases, these U.S. and Iraqi proxies will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens. The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan."

Maureen Dowd on an Administration where only lies are valued.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: World of Hurt: "But who knows what the effect will be of the additional 'blatantly sadistic and inhuman' photos that Mr. Rumsfeld warned of? Or the videos he said he still had not screened?

Dick Cheney will not cut loose his old mentor from the Nixon and Ford years unless things get more dire.

After all, George Tenet is still running the C.I.A. after the biggest intelligence failures since some Trojan ignored Cassandra's chatter and said, 'Roll the horse in.' Colin Powell is still around after trash-talking to Bob Woodward about his catfights with the Bushworld 'Mean Girls' — Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie and Doug Feith. The vice president still rules after promoting a smashmouth foreign policy that is more Jack Palance than Shane. And the president still edges out John Kerry in polls, even though Mr. Bush observed with no irony to Al Arabiya TV: 'Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country, and we will help them rid Iraq of these killers.'

The only people who have been pushed aside in this administration are the truth tellers who warned about policies on taxes (Paul O'Neill); war costs (Larry Lindsey); occupation troop levels (Gen. Eric Shinseki); and how Iraq would divert from catching the ubiquitous Osama (Richard Clarke).

Even if the secretary survives, the Rummy Doctrine — using underwhelming force to achieve overwhelming goals — is discredited. Jack Murtha, a Democratic hawk and Vietnam vet, says 'the direction's got to be changed or it's unwinnable,' and Lt. Gen. William Odom, retired, told Ted Koppel that Iraq was headed toward becoming an Al Qaeda haven and Iranian ally.

By the end, Rummy was channeling Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup, who lashed out at the snotty weenies questioning him while they sleep 'under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it.'"

Photos are just the tip of the iceberg.

The New York Times > Washington > Photos of Dead May Indicate Graver Abuse: "Grisly photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison of two dead men may indicate that the violence at the prison went far beyond degrading treatment of detainees. The Bush administration has provided only limited information about one of the men; the other remains a mystery.


The photographs come from the same collection of pictures that show military guards humiliating other detainees. All of the photographs, including those of the dead men, were taken at Abu Ghraib, according to people who provided them to The New York Times.


One photograph shows the body of a man with a huge head wound. Next to him is a piece of paper with a detainee identification number: 153399.


Pentagon officials have not answered any questions about the identity of that prisoner or the circumstances of his death. However, an internal military report completed in March by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba described the death of prisoner No. 153399 during a riot on Nov. 24, 2003. The Taguba report said that the guards were authorized to use deadly force, but it harshly criticized the handling of the incident.


Among the problems cited were overcrowding, lack of training for guards, poor communication between commanders and soldiers and 'the mix of less than lethal rounds with lethal rounds in weapons.'


The other unidentified photo shows the body of a man with facial wounds and a bandage under his swollen right eye. He is in an unzipped body bag covered with bags of ice. There is no other information."

It's all about branding.

The right-wing defense of the Abu Ghraib torturers -- that they're not as bad as Saddam -- has led me to come up with some slogans for the new Iraq.

-- Iraq 2.0. Now with 60% less torture!
-- The CPA -- Most of our prisoners live!
-- Abu Ghraib -- Some rapes only simulated!

Robert Fisk: An Illegal and Immoral War

Robert Fisk: An Illegal and Immoral War: "We are not just talking 'sick' here. We're talking professionals. President Bush at last apologised yesterday to the Arab world for this filth--only, no doubt, because of the latest picture on the front of The Washington Post--but the constant, insistent refrain from US officers that these were a tiny group of unrepresentative Americans makes me very suspicious.
Lynndie and her boyfriend were not part of a 'rogue' unit. They were told to do these despicable things. They were encouraged. This was an order from someone. Who? When can we see their pictures, their identity, their passports, their orders?
Yes, it's part of a culture, a long tradition that goes back to the Crusades; that the Muslim is dirty, lascivious, unChristian, unworthy of humanity--which is pretty much what Osama bin Laden (now forgotten by Mr Bush, I notice) believes about us Westerners. And our illegal, immoral, meretricious war has now brought forth the images that betray our racism."

Democracy is about more than elections.

Juan Cole * Informed Comment *: "Democracy is about more than elections. Most Middle Eastern countries already have elections. Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, all of them hold regular elections. They have parliaments, parties, campaigns. Two things make them nevertheless not democracies. The first is that their presidents manipulate the elections so that there is never any doubt that they will win the election and that their party will dominate parliament (even if space is made for minority parties to win a few seats). Second, their regimes have no accountability to the public. No one in Hosni Mubarak's government has ever had to resign because he performed his duties poorly. He might have to resign because he fell out with the president. But if he is buddy buddy with the head of state, then he can do no wrong."

Shahin Cole on Abu Ghraib

Shahin Cole is a Pakistanti-born attorne who has lived in tis country since the 1980s. Among her observations: Juan Cole * Informed Comment *: "Nobody in the Middle East is going to accept that these episodes were the mistake of a handful of soldiers. They will think that the abuse derived from racism, religious bigotry, and loss of control in Iraq. From Saudi Arabia to Turkey, no one in the region will admire America’s violation of the Geneva Conventions. In their minds, the US had over-ruled the United Nations and had gone into Iraq unilaterally. America already had two strikes against it in public opinion in the region. The prison abuse was strike three.

When Muslim males look at these pictures, they will feel dishonored and humiliated, and some may well decide that it is henceforth a religious duty to expel the immoral Americans. The photos of prisoner torture have the potential to unite Iraqis behind a new nationalist fervor, and to bring Shiites and Sunnis together. Some will wonder whether their daughters can possibly be safe from the American infidels if male POWs are treated this way.

Arabs are angered that President Bush has expressed only regrets, but offered no formal apology in his interviews on Arabic-language satellite television. His attempt to place the blame on a small handful of perpetrators reminds Muslim viewers of their own fruitless attempts to convince the American public that September 11 itself was the work of a small handful of terrorists. Many Americans never accepted the latter argument. Can we really expect Middle Easterners to be mollified so easily?"

Rush Limbaugh -- Apologist for War Crimes

Media Matters for America: "From the May 4 Rush Limbaugh Show, titled 'It's Not About Us; This Is War!':
CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?
The day before, on his May 3 show, Limbaugh observed that the American troops who mistreated Iraqi prisoners of war were 'babes' and that the pictures of the alleged abuse were no worse than 'anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage.'
LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war -- have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.
LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me. "

Salon.com | "Abuse"? How about torture

Salon.com | "Abuse"? How about torture: "Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It stretches from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guant?namo to secret CIA prisons around the world. There are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq, 1,000 in Afghanistan, almost 700 in Guant?namo -- no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies to them is whatever the executive deems necessary. The administration has argued before the Supreme Court in the case of Jose Padilla, the so-called al-Qaida dirty bomber, that anyone who is considered a threat to national security, even a U.S. citizen, can disappear forever, never be charged with any crime, and never receive any legal representation.
There has been nothing like this system since the adoption of the Geneva Conventions after World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union. The U.S. military embraced the conventions because applying them to prisoners of war protects American soldiers. But the Bush administration, in an internal fight, trumped the military's argument by designating those at Guant?namo 'enemy combatants.' Rumsfeld extended this system -- 'a legal black hole,' according to Human Rights Watch -- to Afghanistan and then Iraq, openly rejecting the conventions. "

American exceptionalism

Willing Torturers (washingtonpost.com): "There is a long way down the chain of command from Rumsfeld to the six soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company who have been now been charged with abuse of Iraqi prisoners. But the defense secretary's feeling that America's war is an exception to the old rules certainly helped create the atmosphere that made abuse possible. The soldiers were, it seems, told that 'this is how military intelligence wants it done.' Why didn't more of them conclude earlier that 'military intelligence,' even American military intelligence, might be wrong? "