I don't think it's accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It's polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president's brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood- soaked flag. The most lavishly funded, most cynical, most sophisticated political campaign in human history will be out trolling for fools. I pray to God it doesn't catch you.

Hal Crowther, "With trembling fingers", Independent Online.

Posted 6:18 AM by Martin Wisse

Rightwing morality: part 6 in a never ending series

This is the liberal credo: If it happens in Abu Ghraib prison, it's a war crime. If it happens at a rest stop on I-495, it's true love.

Howie Carr, Boston Herald columnist/syndicated talk show host.

Posted 3:06 AM by Martin Wisse

Nathan Newman turns conventional opinion on Brown v. Board of Education on its head:

On the 50th anniversary, the conventional wisdom is that Brown v. Board of Education represented the moment when our nation realized that the majority could not be trusted with individual rights, that democracy had failed for the black minority and we needed unelected judges to save us.

Which is just bad history.

What the Supreme Court did was save us from unelected Senators, who had been put there by unelected judges on the Supreme Court back in the 1870s-- when those judged killed the Reconstruction laws that protected minority rights in the South.

Posted 1:05 PM by Martin Wisse

Ampersand is furious:

There's no way a white person would have been shot the way James Perez (or Kendra James before him, or Jose Poot before her) was shot. And if by some miracle a white person was shot on a pretext pull-over, there's no way the Portland DA's office would cheat the grand jury system to make sure that the cops were spared the discomfort of a trial. And if that did happen, the mainstream papers would at least report it.

Mike Schrunk and his boss John Bradley looked at the color of the victim's skin and said, "screw it! Blacks aren't human; the shooting of an unarmed black person doesn't require a trial, because black lives aren't worth that much." A hundred years ago Schrunk and Bradley would have gotten their rocks off participating in lynch mobs, but since they can't have that pleasure nowadays, they have to settle for gaming the justice system to make it legal for cops to shoot blacks.

It drives me up a wall that Schrunk and Bradley are still being treated with respect. Why aren't they spit on by every decent person, everywhere they go? Why aren't they turned away from restaurants and stores? Why aren't their houses and cars vandalized every day? Why isn't the mayor - or any of the folks running for mayor - calling for them to resign or be thrown out of office?

Posted 4:13 PM by Martin Wisse

Anna Feruglio Dal Dan has a good point:

Because let's face it. It's not torture that shook the public opinion in the USA and elsewhere. It was known that the US Army used torture. Its own coroners were returning a verdict of murder - not manslaughter, murder - for dead inmates in Baghram jail. What shook up people was not torture. It was pictures in prime time.

Posted 11:06 AM by Martin Wisse

Rightwing morality

NORTH: Alan -- Alan, for 13 or 14 days now, all we have seen on the front pages of America's newspapers is a group of obviously twisted young people with leashes and weird sex acts, the kind of thing that you might find on any college campus nowadays, being perpetrated by people in uniform.

Rightwing commentator and notorious traitor, Ollie North

The Abu Ghraib "scandal": Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let's have a couple of courts martial for appearance's sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB.

John Derbyshire, "news commentator"

Posted 10:33 AM by Martin Wisse

Mrhappy is not happy about the way the US is running Iraq:

So, the US has been running the apparatus of state terror in Iraq. The whole works: disappearances, torture, rape, murder. Add to these the mass graves at Fallujah, and there is no crime Saddam Hussein commited that the occupying forces have not. The victims are less numerous, but then Saddam had more time to build up his score.

I'd always expected that the result of overthrowing Saddam would be either an Islamic theocracy or a Saddam-like dictatorship - most likely the latter, to be succeeded by the former in a revolution. My surprise in all this is that the Americans didn't keep the state terrorism at arm's length, they way they've historically done in places like Central America. I'd expected a quick installation of someone like Chalabi, with plenty of US advisors and military instructors to facilitate the dirty work. Maybe if they'd managed the immediate post-Saddam period with a bit more competence, they might have been better placed to make such a move.

Posted 9:36 AM by Martin Wisse

Quick picks

• The farmer over at Corrente takes a long hard look at the Nick Berg killing and the claims that Al Quiada is responsible.
• Edward at A Fistful of Euros explains how the disappearance of manhole covers off the streets of Gloucester, the price of soyubeans and the emergence of China as a major economic power are related.
• Human Rights Watch has published aTimeline of Detainee Abuse Allegations and Responses

Posted 9:17 AM by Martin Wisse

Posted 7:27 AM by Martin Wisse

Rightwing morality: it's the feminists' fault

The torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere? All the fault of feminism:

I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation.

I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious.

Ann Coulter, FOX News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, May 5

But one factor that may have contributed -- but which I doubt investigators will want to even consider -- is whether the presence of women in the unit actually encouraged more misbehavior, especially of the sexual nature that the pictures reveal.

Linda Chavez, syndicated columnist and FOX News 'political analyst'

Posted 3:23 AM by Martin Wisse

Michael Bérubé on Joe Lieberman's wacky sense of morality:

But now here comes a profound moral crisis that goes to the heart of American legitimacy, and Senator Palpatine here takes time out to tell us-- he "cannot help but say"-- that the atrocities at Abu Ghraib are offset by terrible things they've done since September 11 (where "they" means "A-rabs in general").

That's it for Joe, folks. I propose that the man doesn't have a shred of "moral" credibility left.

Now, some of you will doubtless say, "Michael, you're being a bit hasty on this one-- surely there will be more moral crises over the next twenty or thirty years, and we should wait to see how Lieberman responds to them, and maybe he'll do better, and then we should take the average over his entire life." But some of you would be wrong. Joe doesn't get any more chances. He's done. He's used up his last vial of Joe-mentum. You need never take him seriously again, on any question whatsoever. The next time he gets up and drones on about the soul-corroding aspects of Grand Theft Auto III, you can say, yes, Joe, tell it to the prisoners of Abu Ghraib. Or if you want to get meta-ironic with him, you can say in a lugubrious baritone, with deeply furrowed brow, "Grand Theft Auto III contains deeply disturbing images of violence, yes, but I cannot help but say that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, have never apologized for bringing their disturbing images of violence to our television screens."

Posted 3:05 PM by Martin Wisse

Posted 1:32 PM by Martin Wisse

Right wing morality

No. 1, this is one prison out of 26. No. 2, this is the same prison where Saddam Hussein was torturing people in an indescribable way, far worse than any abuses that took place in these pictures.

We‘re talking about drilling holes in their hands. We‘re talking about electrocuting people. We‘re talking about just dropping their bodies, half their bodies into acid. You know, things that are really serious.

Now if were an Iraqi and I went through what they said they went through, I would say to myself, That‘s not nearly as bad as if we had been here when Saddam was in charge.

Republican senator James Inhofe

Posted 1:26 PM by Martin Wisse

Charlie Stross puts forth one possible explenation for why the bush administration does what it does:

Rumsfeld is a corporate manager. Bush is, too. So is Cheney. It all seems to be of a piece with the willingness to use any means to get results, however evil, the obsession with meeting goals regardless of colateral damage, the determination to spin criticism as subversion or treason, and so on. They think they're running America, Inc., may the devil take the hind-most, and society can look after itself. In this kind of climate, is it any surprise that low-level employees try to shape up to the perceived expectations of their masters and deliver results by any means necessary, however dehumanizing or monstrous? And is it any surprise that they refuse to be held to account by anyone except their shareholders? (And I'm not talking about Congress here.)

Posted 1:14 PM by Martin Wisse

Kevin Drum makes an excellent point about the way Bush and co manage the war on terror:

This is actually pretty common for practically everything associated with the war on terror. Gitmo? It's not U.S., it's not foreign, it's not really anything. So the courts can't touch it. The Iraq "war"? Not really a war. And we didn't declare victory, either. That would have touched off Geneva Convention issues regarding prisoners of war major combat operations.

Everyone agrees that the conduct of war is primarily the responsibility of the executive, but shouldn't Congress at least know what the rules are and how the game is being played? The Abu Ghraib scandal might be a good excuse for Congress to start insisting on a little more accountability and a little more transparency in how this war is being fought — like insisting that the CPA be subject to normal audit and disclosure rules, for example. That $25 billion spending bill that's headed their way might be a good place to start.

Posted 5:41 AM by Martin Wisse

More rightwing morality

My point: There's not much difference between what those soldiers enacted in Abu Ghraib for digital cameras and 15 seconds of instafame back home and what America's increasingly debased culture embraces as good harmless fun.

Kathleen Parker at townhall.com

Posted 5:29 AM by Martin Wisse

Riverbend:

I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We?ll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.

Posted 2:45 PM by Martin Wisse

Right wing morality

Various leading conservative and other right wing commentators on the torture done by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib:

Frankly, it all sounded only slightly worse than the inititiation ceremony my classmates and I had to endure when we tried to join a secret club at my snooty all-girls’ high school.

Charlotte Allen of the Independent Women's Forum

And why is the behavior depicted in the photos so appalling to liberals? If the behavior had been voluntary, liberals would call it free speech.

George Neumayr, editor of the American Spectator

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?

Rush Limbaugh

THE VALUE OF AN EXAMPLE:

North Korea, probably the world's most secretive and isolated nation, has offered an olive branch to the US by promising never to sell nuclear materials to terrorists, calling for Washington's friendship and saying it does not want to suffer the fate of Iraq.

Hmm.

UPDATE: Tim Blair: "Maybe it was those prison photographs that scared 'em."

Instapundit

Posted 1:41 PM by Martin Wisse

Riverbend on those torture photos:

Seeing those naked, helpless, hooded men was like being slapped in the face with an ice cold hand. I felt ashamed looking at them- like I was seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing and all I could think was, “I might know one of those faceless men...” I might have passed him in the street or worked with him. I might have bought groceries from one of them or sat through a lecture they gave in college... any of them might be a teacher, gas station attendant or engineer... any one of them might be a father or grandfather... each and every one of them is a son and possibly a brother. And people wonder at what happened in Falloojeh a few weeks ago when those Americans were killed and dragged through the streets...

Posted 1:33 PM by Martin Wisse

New to me Fafblog on why the torture at Abu Ghuraib is not that bad:

- The activities that occurred at Abu Ghuraib prison are not to be compared to those of Saddam Hussein's rape rooms and torture chambers. After all, those were rape rooms and torture chambers. These were merely rooms in which rape occurred, and chambers in which individuals were tortured.

- In war, atrocities will happen, as dew on the grass in the morning, or flower blossoms in the spring. The dew gathers. The buds open. The atrocities bloom. It is all according to the mysterious, ever-unfolding cycle of life - a cycle too vast and complex for mere mortals to comprehend.

- These were isolated incidents, and the behavior of these prison guards should in no way reflect upon the military superiors who endorsed and promoted such behavior. This is because atrocities are supervenient on subordinates, but not on command structures. Those with greater learning will understand.

Posted 1:25 PM by Martin Wisse

Billmon on new, kinder torture palace Abu Ghraib:

The summary execution of prisoners, the "disappearing" of prisoners, the perversion of the tools of medicine into instruments of death and repression -- these were all among the foulest crimes of Saddam's regime. So it would seem that the only differences between the old Abu Ghraib and the new Abu Ghraib are ones of scale, not kind, and that's not enough to draw a fundamental distinction between them.

Congratulations, George. Mission accomplished.

Posted 1:22 PM by Martin Wisse

Nathan Newman on judicial free zones:

Connect the dots from the detention cases currently before the Supreme Court and the torture that happened to Iraqi prisoners.

The Bush administration wants not only the prisoners at Guantanamo but even American citizens they deem "enemy combatants" to be exempt from all judicial review of the conditions under which they are contained.

So who would then decide what conditions are acceptable? Military intelligence officers doing their interrogations.

Posted 1:14 PM by Martin Wisse

Jeff at Notes on the Atrocities on the strange reactions to the reports of torture coming out of Iraq:

But thinking a bit more, I started to see how it makes sense. Americans, and certainly our current leadership, see themselves as innately good. It's an old bit of the Calvinist logic--God rewards those who are righteous, so you can tell who are righteous by looking at who has been rewarded. The US is morally superior--we know this a priori, without reference, just by virtue of looking at the abundance of McDonald's and Gap stores.

Believing in our innate goodness is an essential fault of the neocon agenda, and it cuts two ways. Of course, there's nothing morally superior about Americans. Put them in a situation of extreme distress of an extended period of time and a certain percentage will lose it and commit atrocities. Behaving thusly does not reveal a hidden fault in righteousness of America--unless, I guess, you actually believed we were superior. That's the first cut, and I believe it's responsible for the "doesn't represent us" reaction.

Posted 1:01 PM by Martin Wisse