We're Still the Good Guys, Right?

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The Washington Post recently did a story alleging that the CIA was running secret prisons for “high value” Al-Qaeda detainees in Eastern Europe. The prisons, known as “black sites,” raised concerns that alleged terrorist subjects might be subjected to torture at the hands of the United States or agents working on their behalf.

I can’t imagine why. I mean, how can someone assume that a prisoner being taken to a place described as a “black site” isn’t going to be treated anything but humanely?

The revelation came at a particularly inopportune time, all things considered. Republican Sen. John McCain, who knows a little bit about torture, had vowed to enact a congressional ban on “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of prisoners. Incredibly, the Bush administration, led by Darth Cheney, opposed any such language. Cheney appeared before a group of Republican senators and insisted on an exemption from the torture ban for the CIA.

So, even while insisting that “the United States does not torture,” according to George Dubbya Bush, the administration is still, shall we say, keeping its options open when it comes to subjecting suspects to “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” treatment. After all, you never know when you might want to have the CIA wire someone’s tender parts to a car battery because we think they might have something to do with terrorism.

Refresh my memory. When did we give up any aspiration to being the Good Guys? Wasn’t “Saddam tortures people” one of the multiple and ever-changing rationales for Dubbya’s Wacky Iraqi Adventure?

Anyway, the revelation that we might be reviving the old-style Soviet chambers of horror incited a furor. The Republican leadership, specifically Dennis Hastert and Bill Frist, demanded an immediate investigation.

Not into the prisons themselves, mind you. They wanted to know who spilled the beans.

In a letter sent to the heads of the House and Senate intelligence committees, Frist and Hastert demanded to know: “Who leaked this information and under what authority? And what is the actual and potential damage done to the national security of the United States and our partners in the global war on terror? We will consider other changes to this mandate based on your recommendations. Any information that you obtain on this matter that may implicate possible violations of law should be referred to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.”

Yeah, fellows, why don’t you do that? Especially since, according to former Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott, the leakers were probably Republicans.

CNN’s Ed Henry reported on Tuesday that Lott “stunned reporters” by declaring that this subject was actually discussed at a ‘Republican senators only’ luncheon on the day before the Washington Post story ran. Vice President Cheney, according to Lott, was also in the room for that discussion. Lott said ruefully that senators “can’t keep our mouths shut,” and that “every word that was said in the meeting room went right to the newspaper.”

(One truly interesting thing about this is the question of why Lott would drop this dime on his own people. One theory I’ve read is that Lott is getting some payback on Frist because Lott blames Frist for his ouster as majority leader. Frankly, I’m torn between the impulse to weep for my country and the impulse to make popcorn, sit down and watch the fighting as the Republicans implode. I’m not proud of it, but I have to say that the prospect of watching this gang turn on one another promises more fun than an entire season of “The Sopranos.” But I digress.)

So. Back to torture. If there’s one encouraging thing here, it’s that there are some decent Americans left who’ll blow the whistle.

There are professionals in the CIA who don’t want to see that organization turned into the American Gestapo. There are people like McCain in the Senate, who still have a vision of the United States of America as the guys in the white hats. There are still people who are willing to blow the whistle when they see that vision tarnished by the prospect that we may turn into the very thing we hate, all in the name of — well, I don’t know.

Once we abandon our ideal of ourselves as an example for how a free country needs to behave, what exactly are we fighting for? When the issue is not “how could we be torturing people?” but instead, “how did you find out about it?”… are we still America?

My Veteran's Day Post

To All Those Who Pay the Cost.

Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915, my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.

And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As the ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.

And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water;
And of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was waitin', he primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.

But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
When we stopped to bury our slain,
Well, we buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.

And those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
Never knew there was worse things than dying.

For I'll go no more "Waltzing Matilda,"
All around the green bush far and free --
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more "Waltzing Matilda" for me.

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship sailed into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve, to mourn and to pity.

But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

And so now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory,
And the old men march slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question.

But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all.

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others, One of These Things Just Doesn't Belong...

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These days, I don’t usually see the Sunday morning news analysis shows, like “Meet the Press,” “This Week” and the like.

Oh, there was once a time when, news junkie that I am, I never missed “This Week.” But then Brinkley left the show, and let’s face it, George Snuffleupagus just doesn’t have the same gravitas. Plus, I had kids who got up first and commandeered the set to watch “Spongebob Squarepants” or some other such abomination. So I got out of the habit.

But this past week, I found myself out of town in a hotel room on Sunday morning, getting ready for a brunch/book signing, and I flipped on the TV. The topic under discussion was, of course, Friday’s indictment of vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators.

The show (and I confess, I honestly can’t remember which one it was) segued into a little retrospective of previous White House scandals. Among the ones they covered were, of course, Watergate, Reagan’s Iran-Contra mess (and Bush the Elder’s controversial pardon of several of those involved) and, of course, Monicagate. Suddenly, I flashed back to the old song that they used to sing on “Sesame Street”: “One of these things is not like the others…”

Let’s review. Watergate was the president of the United States using the resources of the office to bug, burglarize, and otherwise harass political enemies. Iran-Contra was a conspiracy to sell weapons illegally to a sworn enemy of the United States, then illegally divert the profits to an organization Congress had forbidden the government to support. Clinton’s “biggest scandal” was an attempt to cover up an embarrassing and stupid sexual lapse, one that the judge hearing his civil case explicitly ruled wasn’t material to the underlying case.

I’m not trying to say Clinton was perfect; I’m just saying he didn’t sell anti-aircraft missiles to people who’d cheerfully use them against us.

Abuse of presidential power. Arms to enemies. Lying about an affair. These things are not the same. Trust me.

But that’s the “liberal media,” a phrase which I can no longer say without snickering. They’ve gotten so buffaloed by years of right-wingers yammering about supposed “bias” that they try to create “balance” where none exists.

Another aspect of the recent Plamegate scandal has shown up this “liberal media” idea as the farce that it is.

Among the people involved was New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who actually spent time in jail rather than reveal the “inside source” from whom she got information about Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Miller and her supporters claimed that reporters needed to be able to keep sources confidential. Otherwise, they argued, whistleblowers might be afraid to come forward with exposes, for fear of losing their jobs or worse.

But once Miller finally revealed what she’d been hiding, it turns out that she wasn’t protecting some endangered insider like “Deep Throat” in the movie “All the President’s Men.”

Instead, Miller and other so-called journalists, such as Robert Novak, were nothing more than mouthpieces, conduits for whatever information or disinformation the administration wanted to get out, willing accomplices in selling the American people on the war the Bushistas had already decided to wage.

In an extraordinary editorial published in The Times, Miller’s boss, Bill Keller, admitted that, had he known more about Miller’s “entanglement” with Scooter Libby, he might have been a little less vigorous in resisting the prosecutor’s subpoena. Miller got indignant over the word “entanglement,” apparently thinking it implied something more than a professional relationship.

To her, I’d like to say: There’s more than one kind of harlotry, Judy. You don’t have to literally be in bed with the administration to sell yourself to them. And it doesn’t even have to be for money, although as the Armstrong Williams case shows, there are some so-called journalists willing to sell out their integrity for that as well.

But some sell out for the access. They sell out because they get the inside dope nobody else gets, so long as they don’t examine that information too closely. As always, the biggest problem with modern journalism is not liberalism or conservatism — it’s careerism. At best, it leads to reporting the wrong information because a reporter wanted to be first so bad he or she failed to do any fact-checking. At worst, it leads to reporters being used as shills by a corrupt and cynical administration.

I’d like to believe that the kid-gloves way that the press has handled this administration (up until very recently) would once and for all dispel this malarkey about the “liberal media.”

Of course, I held out the same hope after the way the press savaged Bill Clinton on a daily basis and eagerly, almost gleefully, repeated Republican smears against Al Gore and John Kerry. Sadly, however, some myths just refuse to die.

As for me, I get all my news from “The Daily Show.” At least they know they’re ridiculous.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes and practices law in Carthage. He says he’s also become quite fond of the “Colbert Report.”

Thank You, Canada!

Canada says suspected terror cell broken

By BETH DUFF-BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

TORONTO -- Canadian agents this summer busted a suspected terrorist cell in Toronto that included an Algerian explosives expert they say was trained by al-Qaida, intelligence officials said Thursday.

The cell was made up of four Algerian men who had applied for refugee status in Canada and were alleged members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an Islamic group with ties to al-Qaida, which is banned in Canada and Algeria, the officials said.

The group was dismantled by CSIS counterterrorism and Canada Border Services Agency agents, working with police, Barbara Campion, a spokeswoman for Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said Thursday.

Canada has struck a major blow against terror...

And they didn't even have to invade Iraq to do it.

Thanks for fighting them over here, Canada, because we're kind of tied up over there.

The Rest of the Story

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As I’ve written before, one of my favorite radio shows used to be Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story.” In just a few minutes, Harvey would tell a short tale with a surprise or twist ending, often involving a famous person.

In a tribute to those shows, I’d like to offer my own episode of “The Rest of the Story.”

Fall 1990 was a bad time to be an American diplomat in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein had overrun Kuwait, and international tension was mounting toward what would soon explode into the First Gulf War. The American ambassador was out of the country, leaving an acting ambassador in her place.

Saddam Hussein began ratcheting up the pressure on the international community. He held a “photo op” with a number of British “guests,” as he blithely put it, including several women and a clearly terrified young boy. The message to the world was clear: These people are hostages. Attack Iraq and they’ll die.

The acting ambassador, after consulting with the CIA, decided that the best way to deal with Saddam’s mind games was to confront him head on. He began making snide public references to Saddam “hiding behind women’s skirts.” British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher picked up the phrase. Saddam backed down, and the British citizens were released.

The acting ambassador and his staff helped get hundreds of American citizens out of the country. Almost 200, however, were not allowed to leave and were holed up in the U.S. embassy compound. Then Saddam issued a decree: All foreign citizens had to “register” with the Iraqi government — which they only could do by leaving the protection of the embassy and going to the designated government office. They would almost certainly be taken prisoner there and used further as human shields. The penalty for failing to register, or for aiding others in violating the edict, was death. There was no exemption for diplomats.

So on Sept. 20, 1990, the acting ambassador appeared at the morning press conference with a noose around his own neck instead of a necktie.

“If Saddam wants to hang me,” he said defiantly, “I’ll bring my own [bad word] rope.” The Iraqis withdrew their demand the next day.

As fall turned to winter, the pressure continued to mount. The acting ambassador and his staff continued to provide intelligence and analysis to Washington. When Admiral William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that economic sanctions would drive Saddam out of Kuwait in a year and a half, the acting ambassador fired off a cable to Washington, saying it would be at least a decade before that would work, a decade in which Saddam would have looted the Kuwaiti treasury.

Finally, after other Arab nations and Yasser Arafat put pressure on Saddam, he finally agreed to release the remaining people held hostage. The acting ambassador and a small staff stayed behind, “delighted,” as he put it, “that the number of Americans in danger had dropped from close to 200 to fewer than 10.”

Finally, war with Saddam became inevitable. On Jan. 12, 1991, on orders from Washington, the acting ambassador finally took down the American flag. He and his remaining few staffers were the last American diplomats out of the country.

Fourteen years later, the Bushistas and their willing mouthpieces in the press are vilifying this man. They’re calling him a liar, and an appeaser of terrorists. Some are even asserting that it is he whom Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald should be indicting.

What did he do wrong? Well, George W. Bush, the son of the man whom the ambassador served so well, decided he wanted his own war with Iraq. He decided that the way to get the American people to back that war was to convince the American people that Saddam was seeking nuclear weapons material, including uranium from the African country of Niger.

When the former diplomat went to Niger to find out, he found out that the documents upon which the claim was based were a clumsy forgery. And when the president repeated the claim in his State of the Union address, the former ambassador wrote an article debunking it. For that, the president’s men decided, he had to pay, despite his prior record of service. They smeared him in the press. They lied about what he had said, then called him the liar. And, finally, they destroyed his wife’s career and the cover of all of the people she had worked with by claiming the whole trip was cooked up by her in her job as a covert CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction.

The hero who stood with a noose around his own neck and defied Saddam Hussein to hang him, the man who warned the first Bush administration that sanctions against Saddam were not going to work, the man who’s now being smeared by the Republicans as a liberal and liar, is the man at the center of the Valerie Plame controversy: Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

And now you know … the rest of the story.

Good day.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, practices law, and still listens to the radio in Carthage.

HAPPY HALLOWE'EN Y'ALL!