Frankenstein's strawman

Reading David Brooks' column about Michael Moore and his new movie this morning, I realised what an invention of the right Michael Moore actually is.

Many people on the "left" are completely indifferent to Moore and more than a little aware of his various shortcomings. For many, I suspect, he was just a bit of fringe fun. But the insane amount of time devoted to this comedic polemicist by the rightwing hit squads, and their attempt, as per Brooks this morning, to elevate him into the intellectual colossus and chief spokesperson for the non-conservative forces in the US, as well as the endless humourless attacks on his opinions (for god's sake) and his patriotism has been more than enough to confer on Moore a status he would not have otherwise achieved. Unable to handle criticism at the best of times, critics like Brooks have projected all their self-doubts and guilty rationalisations about Bush and his various adventures onto the nearest, biggest projection screen they could find, a gigantic strawman from their own dark side. Moore baited them, and they bit bigtime. Pretty funny, really.

UPDATE: Incidentally, I was trying to think of an Australian equivalent of Michael Moore and it finally struck me that although there is a difference of genre, scale and political leaning, the ozblogosphere's own Tim Blair fits the bill pretty much exactly.

Axis of trade

Remember that joke that went around about Iraq? We know they have weapons of mass destruction because we have the receipts. Ditto Iran, apparently.

UPDATE: And I love this line from the news story: Tehran says it only wants nuclear power for electricity. Yeah, and men only read Playboy for the articles.

Faith-based occupation

It was ideology that got us into the mess we are in in Iraq at the moment and it is ideology that continues to hamper progress. Nathan Newman makes an excellent point:

Why has Iraq been reduced to a politics of ethnic and religious rivalry? This is a country with a rich history of secular politics, yet all we hear about are religious factions.

At least one reason is that classic non-religious institutions, specifically Iraqi labor unions, have been deliberately sidelined by the Bush administration. And the lack of jobs for Iraqis mean that classic economic interests are not undergirding politics. Instead, the mass of unemployed workers are organizing under the only banner likely to help them survive-- namely the primal support groups of tribe and religion.

This is precisely why certain clever people have insisted over the last couple of centuries that it is wise to separate church and state and thus encourage political association based on other shared interests. The fact that Bush administration would rather read the Bible than their own constitution and that they are ideologically disposed to view unions as the devil incarnate is at least part of the reason for the lack of progress in encouraging democracy to take root in Iraq.

Nathan points us at this report by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) and it is worth taking the time to read it's eight pages. They point out that the Coaltion Provisional Authority, instead of adopting new labor laws simply adopted the labor laws that were in force under Saddam Hussein, arguing that:

Carr wreck

How are we to understand NSW premier, Bob Carr's recent "advice" to federal Labor leader, Mark Latham? Well meaning good advice? Maybe:

LABOR'S longest-serving leader, NSW Premier Bob Carr, has warned Mark Latham to exercise the "utmost diplomacy" on withdrawing troops from Iraq and urged him to accept the US free trade deal "the sooner the better".

Mr Carr, who has just returned from a two-week visit to the US, warned his federal counterparts Washington feels "wounded" and is sensitive "to any ally, any friend, turning their back on America".

The NSW Premier said he had been told in Washington that Canberra should think "carefully about a premature withdrawal from Iraq" because helping the US in a "tough time" meant Australia could have an influence on US policies.

Mr Carr's comments, made in Canberra yesterday and to be broadcast on ABC radio this weekend, increase the pressure on federal Labor's policy on two fronts - troop withdrawal by Christmas and opposition to the US trade agreement.

And maybe not. It is well-known within the inner circles of the Labor Party that Bob Carr had decided to move from state to federal politics at around the time of the last federal Labor leadership challenge that brought Mark Latham to power. Had Kim Beazley won that contest, as most people expected, Carr would've made the move, and he would've been shoe-horned into the leadership. Such plans were put on ice when Mark latham scraped in by one vote and was suddenly the golden-haired boy. What Carr's latest comments show (apart from the fact that he doesn't really have much to offer) is that his federal leadership ambitions are not entirely forgotten. If Labor loses the next election, don't be surprised if Bob Carr is suddenly heading to Canberra.

Anyway, there are obviously great leadership tensions within both parties and there is no doubt that the election is currently too close to call. Almost anything could tip the balance one way or the other. Which all suggests that no-one--neither Labor nor Coalition--will win the next federal election: it will be a case of the other side losing it. A pretty miserable state of affairs.

All of which suggests we should have a Surfdom poll or two:

Lucky country

As prime minister John Howard continues his relentless and dishonest campaign to undermine Australia's universal health care scheme, we can at least be grateful that Australia hasn't reached the level of open callousness being instigated by the Bush administration to America's far-from-universal healthcare scheme:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Medicare is planning a lottery later this year for people with cancer, multiple sclerosis and several other diseases. For the 50,000 winners, the government will start helping pay for their medicine, but more than 450,000 others must wait until 2006.

Way to be a civilised country, guys. (Via Corrente)

Somebody should blog about this

The breathtaking stupidity of the mainstream media. Argghh. Just watched an entire segment on the Today show discussing why John Kerry wasn't currently getting much media coverage. Yes, folks. Apparently serious journalists spent an entire segment talking about why apparently serious journalists aren't talking about John Kerry. The idea that they might do a story on, say, John Kerry's health policy instead of spending their time talking about how no-one is talking about John Kerry's health policy (or whatever) doesn't seem to have occured to them. And of course, they knew who to blame for this peculiar state of affairs. Why, it was the media, who are too busy covering Reagan's death and Clinton's book. Well, at least they cleared that up. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Start your engines

It's on?

Get a room

From a front page party political advertisement story in this morning's edition of Penthouse Forum The New York Times about Arnold Schwarzenegger the governor of California:

The governor, his skin and hair the color of a tarnished brass bed, his pectoral muscles testing the strength of his shirt buttons, is clearly a man enjoying himself and at ease with power. He said he had not encountered any major surprises in his latest career and found himself fully engaged in public policy. The biggest adjustment, he said, is learning to live with a schedule drawn up for him by others.

...Flashing a jade ring as he talked, he ruminated on his introduction to government, in the 15-by-15-foot courtyard tent where he does much of his private business. It is decorated with rattan chairs, orchids, a humidor, a mirror, floor fan and books written by Mr. Schwarzenegger.

There was an expensive, half-burned cigar in a Baccarat crystal ashtray. The tent itself was placed precisely 20 feet from the doors leading to the governor's offices to comply with state smoking regulations.

Good to see that liberal media coming to terms with the nitty-gritty of government policy and practice.

(Matt Stoller has more.)

Please release me

John Ashcroft
Attorney General
Senate Judiciary Committee testimony
June 8, 2004

KENNEDY: I'm asking you whether this is -- these are -- there are three memoranda, January 9, 2002, signed by John Yo (ph), the August 2002 Justice Department, the (inaudible) amendment memo and the March 2000 -- the interagency working group. Those are three memoranda. Will you provide those to the committee?

ASHCROFT: No, I will not.

KENNEDY: On what basis? Under what basis?

ASHCROFT: On the basis that the long-standing established reasons for providing opinions provided to the executive branch... We believe that to provide this kind of information would impair the ability of advice-giving in the executive branch to be candid, forthright, thorough and accurate at all times, and so that the disclosure of such advice and the threatened disclosure that all memos would be in some way provided would impair our ability to conduct ourselves in the executive branch.

And let me just, if I may, this is not something new.

... Second, let me -- we are at war. And for us to begin to discuss all the legal ramifications of the war is not in our best interest and it has never been in times of war.

This is a long understood and long-established practice. Frank Murphy, for example, who during the World War II time in the Roosevelt administration -- let me just read to you what he said about the way these things.

He explained in part refusing to give his opinion to the Senate, citing what was already long-established practice of attorneys general in 1939. He put it this way. And I'm quoting.

While the constitutional powers of the president in time of war, now the quote starts, "have never been specifically defined and, in fact, cannot be, since their extent and limitations are largely dependent on conditions and circumstances. The right to take specific action might not exist under one state of facts, while under another it might be the absolute duty of the executive to take such action."

I'm not doing anything other than to say that there is a long- established policy reason grounded in national security that indicates that the development and the debate of hypotheses and practice of what can and can't be done by a president in time of war is not good government.

And this isn't something that comes from this administration. It comes from another administration that faced a very serious threat, and it comes from an attorney general whose respect for and familiarity with the law was so profoundly understood that he became a member of the United States Supreme Court.

And it's with that in mind that this Justice Department seeks to preserve the capacity of the department to serve the executive branch and to serve it well, and to not respond to hypotheticals about what the powers of the president may or may not be.

Ashcroft has now released the key memo (.pdf).

Disneyland on the Euphrates

If you ever want evidence of the fact that some on the right, or in the pro-war camp can't handle the truth, that they'd rather blame their fantasy enemy of the leftist media than face the fact that the administration they (figuratively) followed into an ill-conceived war is a bunch of incompetent, flip-flopping amateurs, then consider this piece that purports to list all the good news that is being neglected by the biased media. The series, linked, apparently, by the likes of Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan, includes this in its list of wonderous achivements in Iraq:

The democratic bug is definitely spreading around Iraq, with the news that even the Shia upriser-in-chief, Muqtada al-Sadr, will be forming a political party to contest the elections next year.

Yeah, that's some achievement. Instead of arresting the murderous thug as they promised they would, they conceded defeat and are giving him legitimacy. As Juan Cole put it, "Bush said he wanted Muqtada al-Sadr dead or alive, and now Muqtada is set to be a prominent parliamentarian." Conservative, pro-war blogger, Tacitus was even more damning:

But as with Fallujah, so with Sadr: it appears we are choosing an illusory political solution and abandoning our original stated goals. The BBC reports that the CPA has agreed to suspend offensive operations and drop the arrest warrant against Sadr in exchange for....well, it's unclear what we get in return. BBC says the Mehdi Army will leave Najaf. NYT says that only some of the Mehdi Army will depart. WaPo states only that the Mehdi Army is "pulling back." But where will they go?

Sadr City, of course.

Expect CPA rhetoric shortly on how Najaf, et al., are "secure," and how the "fighting has ended," or something very similar. These things will be presented as victories, as if they were our aims all along. But they weren't: Najaf was never a wholesale city in arms the way Fallujah was, and we had no interest in holding it for its own sake; and our stated aims in this campaign were the death or capture of Moqtada Sadr, and the destruction of the Mehdi Army. Neither of these aims were achieved. This is not victory.

The Mehdi Army remains a force in being. Moqtada al-Sadr walks free. And, as in Anbar province, home of Fallujah, we can expect that the killing will simply shift elsewhere. Another American failure to secure victory begins its slow transformation into a perceived American defeat. Question: are we at all capable of articulating and sticking with a coherent strategic or operational goal? Why not?

By all means show the positive along with the negative, but keep some perspective. Some sense of reality. If you have to spin dubious outcomes like Sadr's elevation as part of your "neglected good news from Iraq" scenario then you aren't doing your side any favours. You aren't doing anyone any favours. All you're doing is turning a blind eye to serious problems in the name of partisan political expediency. It might make you feel good, and get you a few cheers in the echo chamber, but it just makes us all less safe.

Meanwhile on planet earth.....

Luntz

George Orwell
Writer
'Politics and the English Language'
1946

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

...Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Joseph Goebbels
Nazi Minister of Propaganda
Speech to party members in Berlin
1928

Propaganda is absolutely necessary, even if it is only a means to an end. Otherwise, the idea could never take over the state. I must be able to get what I think important across to many people. The task of a gifted propagandist is to take that which many have thought and put it in a way that reaches everyone from the educated to the common man. You will all grant me this, and as further evidence I can recall a Hitler speech in Jena. Half the audience were Marxists, half students and university professors. I had a burning desire to speak with both elements afterwards. I could see that the university professor and the average man had understood what Hitler said. That is the greatness of our movement, that it can use language to reach the broad masses.

Frank Luntz
Republican pollster and "communications adviser"
COMMUNICATING THE PRINCIPLES OF PREVENTION & PROTECTION
IN THE WAR ON TERROR (.pdf)
2004

The overwhelming amount of language in this document is intended to create a lexicon for explaining the policy of "preemption" and the "War in Iraq."

However, you will not find any instance in which we suggest that you use the actual word "preemption," or the phrase "The War in Iraq" to communicate your policies to the American public. To do so is to undermine your message from the start. Preemption may be the right
policy, and Iraq the right place to start. But those are not the right words to use.

Your efforts are about "the principles of prevention and protection" in the greater "War on Terror."

Please do not underestimate the importance of these rhetorical nuances. Let us understand the stark reality of public opinion which provides the context for this language research. Like it or not, the situation in Iraq is the poster-child for the War on Terror. It is today's ground zero. You must develop a better way to talk about Iraq in the greater context of the War on Terror. Here are the five essential message points:

WHAT MATTERS MOST

1) "9/11 changed everything" is the context by which everything follows.
No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a
reference to 9/11.

2) The principles of "prevention and protection" still have universal
support and should be addressed prior to talking about Iraq.

3) "Prevention at home can require aggressive action abroad" is the best
way to link a principle the public supports with the policies of the
Administration. "It is better to fight the War on Terror on the streets of
Baghdad than on the streets of New York or Washington."

4) "Terrorism has no boundaries, and neither should efforts to prevent it."
Talk about how terrorism has taken the lives of the British, the
Spanish, Italians, Germans, Israelis, innocents from all across the
globe. Remind listeners that this is truly an international challenge.
"Americans are not the only target."

5) "The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein." Enough said.

....MAKING THE CASE: THE LANGUAGE OF THE WAR ON TERROR

1) Set the Context: 9/11 changed everything. On this issue more than any, context is everything. The American people have notoriously short attention spans – and they do not always see the big picture unless it is unveiled to them. Start with what we all hold in common – the shared experience of the tragedy on September 11th, but then explain what it has done to the present and what it means for the future. Before Americans will accept where you want to go, you need to emphasize where we all have been.

================================
Thanks to the plain-speaking Sisyphus Shrugged.

I did not have torture with that person

Interesting comments from the President yesterday about torture, or rather, not torture:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country. We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.

Q: I've been told General Dinsdale Piranha nailed someone's head to the floor.

PRESIDENT: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.

Q: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing someone's head to the floor.

PRESIDENT: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.

Q: Why?

PRESIDENT: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. He had transgressed the unwritten law. Besides, 9/11 changed everything.

Q: What had you done?

PRESIDENT: Er... well he didn't tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn't *want* to nail his head to the floor. They had to insist. He wanted to let him off. He'd do anything for you, Dinsdale would.

Q: And you don't think people will bear him a grudge?

PRESIDENT: A grudge! Old Dinsy. He was a real darling.

Q: I understand he also nailed your wife's head to a coffee table. Isn't that true?

PRESIDENT: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. (PAUSE) Well he did do that, yeah. He was a hard man. Vicious but fair.

In other words, the President's position here is laughable. His reassurance is a joke. He is parsing words in an attempt to deflect responsibility for what happened, being very careful to deny "torture" after having sought and received copious legal opinion on how certain abuses don't technically qualify as torture. He is also ignoring the fact that prisoners were sent to other countries--and in some cases are still being held in other countries--where we know full well torture is used. Hey, it wasn't us.....

It seems a little odd that a person, or an administration, that doesn't have torture as "part of its soul" would even feel the need to seek legal opinion on this question. You would think that if you weren't abusing people the issue of whether it crosses the line and legally becomes torture would not arise. In other words, we are once again being asked to accept that despite all the high level inquiries for legal opinion on these questions, despite orders being given that certain prisoners be sent to torture-friendly countries, and that some prisoners should be kept "off the books", that those in charge knew nothing, countenanced nothing. As Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, Mark Dayton, said:

We've now had fifteen of the highest-level officials involved in this entire operation, from the secretary of defense to the generals in command, and nobody knew that anything was amiss, no one approved anything amiss, nobody did anything amiss. We have a general acceptance of responsibility, but there's no one to blame, except for the people at the very bottom of one prison.

Yeah, pretty amazing. And Mark Danner outlines the context in which the president's recent denial needs to be read:

Though the events and disclosures of the last weeks have taken on the familiar clothing of a Washington scandal—complete with full-dress congressional hearings, daily leaks to reporters from victim and accused alike, and of course the garish, spectacular photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib—beyond that bright glare of revelation lies a dark area of unacknowledged clarity. Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners. They did this, in the felicitous phrasing of General Taguba's report, in order to "exploit [them] for actionable intelligence" and they did it, insofar as this is possible, with the institutional approval of the United States government, complete with memoranda from the President's counsel and officially promulgated decisions, in the case of Afghanistan and Guantanamo, about the nonapplicability of the Geneva Conventions and, in the case of Iraq, about at least three different sets of interrogation policies, two of them modeled on earlier practice in Afghanistan and Cuba.[1]

They did it under the gaze of Red Cross investigators, whose confidential reports—which, after noting that "methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information," then set out these "methods" in stark and sickening detail[2] —were handed over to American military and government authorities and then mysteriously "became lost in the Army's bureaucracy and weren't adequately addressed."[3] Or so three of the highest-ranking military officers in the land blandly explained to senators on the Armed Services Committee on May 19. On that same day, as it happened, an unnamed "senior Army officer who served in Iraq" told reporters for The New York Times that in fact the Army had addressed the Red Cross report—"by trying to curtail the international organization's spot inspections of the prison":

After the International Committee of the Red Cross observed abuses in one cellblock on two unannounced inspections in October and complained in writing on Nov. 6, the military responded that inspectors should make appointments before visiting the cellblock. That area was the site of the worst abuses. . . . Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, whose soldiers guarded the prisoners, said that despite the serious allegations in the Red Cross report, senior officers in Baghdad had treated it in "a light-hearted manner."[4]

Why had these "senior officers" treated the grave allegations of the Red Cross, now the subject of so much high-level attention, in "a lighthearted manner"? The most plausible answer is that they did so not because they were irresponsible or incompetent or evil but because they were well aware that this report—like the others that had been issued by the Red Cross, and by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and other wellknown organizations—would have no bearing whatever on what the American military did or did not do in Iraq.

We should refused to be bluffed by this administrations careful use of words and its hand-on-the-heart, aw-shucks denials. The president's case is now something like:

Well yeah, we did ask for all this legal opinion on torturing people

and we do believe that 9/11 changed everything, and yes, certain senior officials have said things like now, the gloves are off

and there were various requests for more leeway in how we interrogated prisoners

and some of our generals did give the nod to the use of various "techniques"

and Donald Rumsfeld did order that certain prisoners be kept away from the Red Cross

and we have sent prisoners to other countries who just happen to employ torture (this is such an uncommon practice that we even have a special word it: "renditions")

and prisoners have been killed and raped in our prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq

and we did round up hundreds of people who were innocent of anything and kept them in prison and abused them

and we have used the mistreatment of people's family members as a way of extracting information from certain individuals

and I did "accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan"

But you know what? Despite all that, I didn't actually specifically tell anyone to suspend the Geneva conventions and never told anyone to torture anyone, and that word isn't even part of our soul or being.

How stupid do they think people are?

And yes, all the usual caveats apply: it wasn't as bad as Saddam; it isn't as bad as the animals who have lately taken to beheading innocents in the name of their sick cause; and yes, at least we are now investigating some of what went on. But all these things are only relevant if you want to impute a sliding scale of morality on which we can sneak ourselves higher up than certain dictators and terrorists, as opposed to a universal standard of acceptable behaviour. It's not really good enough, is it?

ELSEWHERE: Corrente picks up on GWB's casual acceptance of his ability to be able to rule by decree.

AND: Intel Dump comments and a series of relevant links.

Show me the blogging

Simon of Simon World has started a new blog showcase site aimed at giving exposure to new blogs. Always happy to see this sort of thing.

Maybe this new blog will consider placing an entry.

Speaking of blogs and stuff, this gives me a chance to mention that figures for this site have gone nutty over the last few weeks, so welcome to the many new readers. We've also added some good new regular commenters to fill out the ranks of the esteemed band who already take the time to keep me honest, which I'm also really pleased about. It's just fantastic to see people discussing things here, and it makes me really glad I got involved in this little adventure. Honestly, I'm stunned Surfdom has attracted the readership it has and want to thank everyone who drops by, commenters and lurkers alike. Hopefully the planned 'new look' will meet with people's approval too (still some time away, but it is in train).

Speaking of which, I've been thinking about a tag line to use with the revamped sight; you know, some sort of pithy, apposite quote or expression to use on the title banner. So if you've got any (serious!) suggestions, drop 'em in the comments box. If I get enough, maybe I'll put up some sort of poll and we'll have a vote. Anyway, thanks again for all the support.

Let Dick be

Sometimes you just have to admit when you're wrong. Here's Dick Cheney on Meet the Press in September 2003 reaffirming that there were absolutely no ties between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 terrorist attacks and making absolutely, irrefutably clear that such links had absolutely nothing to do with their reasons for invading Iraq:

"If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

I hope you'll all just get off his case now and let him get back to not overseeing the grant of no-bid contracts to Halliburton.

The Gulf War did not happen

If you close your eyes, maybe they're not really dead:

The Senate refused on Monday to change a Pentagon policy banning media coverage of America's war dead as their remains arrive in flag-draped caskets.

Dear Leader decrees

Having sold out our independence on foreign policy, and having white-anted attempts to allow us to elect our own head of state, the prime minister tackles the really big issue: flags in schools. No flag, no new funding is the thrust of this latest bit of nanny-state patriotism. Australians are sensibly patriotic and don't need this sort of government interference (it applies to private schools as well) in order to assert it.

ELSEWHERE: Coupla good points.

Last chance Texaco

John Howard can't tell the difference between "good for Australia" and "good for John Howard". But the Australian people can.

Down

The site has been down most of the day, but is up and running again (I couldn't post and people couldn't leave comments). Apologies for the inconvenience.

While I've got you here, just read a good line in a review of the new Dianna Krall album: "Hugely successful but painfully average, Krall has regularly supplied incontrovertible evidence that contemporary jazz singing is in a bad way." Sums up my opinion of Krall very nicely.

This comes from a magazine I read pretty regularly these days, a pommy release that covers music films and books called Uncut. I generally like their feature stories, the reviews are normally good, and they keep a foot nicely in the past (where most of my musical taste lurks) while managing to review lots of new stuff. They also give away a free CD each month, a compilation of stuff and normally very good. Worth checking out.

Bowling for al Qaeda

Anybody who is genuinely interested in the idea of winning a "war on terror" (a shorthand I'll accept for the time being) really needs to get past the sort of chest-thumping response offered by the Bush administration and allies like the Blair and Howard governments. There's a bunch of stuff that has happened that has made matters worse rather than better in this war, not least of which was the invasion of Iraq.

I want to say more about this over the next few weeks, but here is a small but classic example of how knee-jerk responses extend our vulnerability rather than minimise it.

The NYTimes has an article today talking about prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. The thrust of the article is this:

For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists -- ''the worst of a very bad lot,'' Vice President Dick Cheney has called them.

The officials say information gleaned from the detainees has exposed terrorist cells, thwarted planned attacks and revealed vital intelligence about Al Qaeda. The secrets they hold and the threats they pose justify holding them indefinitely without charge, Bush administration officials have said.

But as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legal status of the 595 men imprisoned here, an examination by The New York Times has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided.

In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful -- some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen -- were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization's inner workings.

In other words, Gitmo is basically an excercise in window-dressing, a way for the administration to look like they are doing something when what they are doing isn't very much at all.

What's worse, as Digby points out, is that this window-dressing may in itself be contributing to the overall problem, and he points to this passage from the article:

American and foreign officials have also grown increasingly concerned about the prospect that detainees who arrived at Guantánamo representing little threat to the United States may have since been radicalized by the conditions of their imprisonment and others held with them.

''Guantánamo is a huge problem for Americans,'' a senior Arab intelligence official familiar with its operations said. ''Even those who were not hard-core extremists have now been indoctrinated by the true believers. Like any other prison, they have been taught to hate. If they let these people go, these people will make trouble.''

As I say, a small but classic example, perhaps emblematic, of how the Bush administration has mishandled the fight against jihadist terrorism. But it all matters.

I'd guess that the war in Iraq has added ten years to the war on terror. But even relatively small matters like this at Guantanamo--and things like this are completely avoidable if we just applied the legal framework that is apparently the basis of our society--add months or years to the fight. That's extra months and years we've guaranteed ourselves in which bombs can be planted, people can be kidnapped and planes can be hijacked.

It's the sort of incompetence we just shouldn't put up with.

Yep, the theme here is that those currently running our response to jihadist terrorism are extending the duration of the war through muddled goals and inept execution, and I'll more to say on the topic over the next few weeks.

Injury list

Lindsay Beyerstein unearths an awful story (from an April WaPo story) about some of the injuries arising from the war in Iraq. Apparently an increasing number of soldiers are suffering from eye and head injuries "that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair."

What catches Lindsay attention and makes her put on her philosopher's hat is this:

The remaining 40 percent to 50 percent of [brain injured] patients include those whom the surgeons send to Europe, and on to the United States, with no prospect of regaining consciousness. The practice, subject to review after gathering feedback from families, assumes that loved ones will find value in holding the soldier's hand before confronting the decision to remove life support.

She wonders at the ethics of sending brain-dead soldiers home, merely to allow their families to switch off the life support, suggesting that the "psychological benefits sound dubious." It certainly an awful situation, but I think on balance I'd say it's a good idea to send these injured soldiers home to their families. If it was my child or my spouse or whatever, as heartbreaking as it would be, I would rather have this last moment with him or her than simply to have the body come home in a sealed coffin. I mean, nothing would make up for the loss, but there would be something vaguley comforting, I suspect, in that last goodbye.

The story in general, though, underlines again the sheer recklessness with which this war was launched and has been conducted, and raises again the fact the president has yet to attend a solitary funeral for a soldier. It reminds us of the extent to which the war has been sanitised by the Bush administration, with the rule that flag-draped coffins are not to be shown in the media. And it highlights the utter callousness of the likes of Paul Wolfwitz who, when asked at a committee hearing how many soldiers had died in Iraq couldn't answer within a margin of error of 200.

Scratch and sniff media (Kill Bill Vol. 2)

Watching the Sunday talk shows yesterday made me very glad I wasn't living in America during President Clinton's final term. Listening to the "elite" media snickering and salivating at a resurrection of the Monica Lewisnsky saga as Clinton begins his book tour was one of the least edifying experience of my time in this country. What a pack of children. They just stood exposed as the unserious, small-minded hacks that they really are, drooling over a story that was ultimately unimportant at the time and that now deserves nothing more than passing mention given we are in the middle of an election year, Iraq is in meltdown and there are serious questions about the conduct of the war, the handover of faux soverreignty, and the general conduct of the Bush administration. Matt Yglesias's assessment is about right. (Incidentally, the biggest Pee Wee Herman of the lot was Chris Matthews.)

UPDATE: Nice little typo on the Today show this morning: They had a graphic up announcing an upcoming story on Clinton except they spelt his name, Clitnon.

Dolly the sheep

A timely blast from the past. The interesting thing is how smoothly they've moved from the position they presented then to the one they present now. Seamless. Unless your memory works.

Rock of ages

We were away over the weekend on an overnighter a few hours out of Washington DC, checking out the house 'Falling Water' designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Definitely worth the trip. We also took Noah for a tour through the Laurel Caverns, which are in the same neck of the woods. During the tour, our guide, a guy of about 27 I'd guess, was explaining that most of the rock in the cave was limestone. During his spiel he said, "And if you believe what scientists say, these rocks are millions of years old."

The temperature at which jokes burn

I would just like to alert readers to the fact that I have been contacted by the estate of Friedrich von Hayek who have suggested that the name of this blog was stolen from the title of a book by von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Yes, this is a reference to author Ray Bradbury's ridiculous accusations against Michael Moore for "stealing" his book title, Fahrenheit 451, for the movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. Pretty funny that a guy who wrote a dystopic novel about book burning is now trying to outlaw puns.

Ol' Jellyback Tampa-ing with the alliance

It is tempting to portray prime minister John Howard's foreign policy speech last night as a desperate election ploy. In fact, it is that, but it much more than that.

What he outlines is a genuine foreign policy difference between the two major parties and I think we can pleased that, at least in this area, we might have election conducted around an actual policy issue. Yes, he is finessing it as a scare-tactic-with-election-bite, but that is precisely where the distinction between the two parties lies. The fear factor. Are we so scared of offending the Americans--so lacing inconfidence inour own abilities--that we won't even bring home a measley 250 troops from Iraq for fear of upsetting them, or do we actually want to practice what Howard preaches, that the alliance is a "two-way street," and therefore accept as perfectly legitimate the idea that our government might decide to bring the troops home. Consider this:

[The United States] would deal with any government, [Mr. Howard] said, but given the significance of Iraq to US national security at present, it would see a unilateral withdrawal of an original coalition partner as "an unfriendly act".

Honestly, if the US sees the withdrawal of 250 Australian troops as an unfriendly act then the alliance is worth nothing. The strong implication of Howard's comment is that the consequences of such an "unfriendly act" would be that we could no longer expect US support in the event of an emergency. Is that what he is honestly saying? Again, if the US was unwilling to help Australia--say in the event of terrorist attack--just because we'd brought those 250 troops home--then the alliance is built on a lie. And it is one being reinforced by John Howard everytime he characterises any Australian independence of action as a serious threat to the continued good working of the alliance.

So Howard is right. There is a serious policy difference between the two parties. And if you belieive a US allince requires us to never act independently--and surely the withdrawal of a mere 250 troops, a year after we sent advance forces to help the in war in Iraq, is a litmus test of what constitutes independent action--then Howard is probably your guy. If you beleive that the alliance is important but should be able to withstand such an act, then I suspect you might want to look elsewhere.

As usual, a vote for Howard is a vote for a fearful, compliant, vassal Australia, whether you're talking about the head of state or the major political alliance. If you've got a bit of national pride, a committment to genuine independence within the alliance, then Latham is at least holding out the prospect of something other than total submission.

Trust fund depleted

Dick Cheney went on morning television this morning and lied to the world. "Was Saddam Hussein involved in the 9/11 attacks?" he was asked, and he replied, "We don't know." He then said there was "no evidence" that he was. Asked if George Bush dressed up in Laura's clothes and ran around the White House late at night singing the French national anthem, the Vice President said, "We don't know," and added there was "no evidence" that he had. (I'll put the transcript up if and when they provide it.)

UPDATE: The interview was actually on Capitol Report last night; I saw a replay this morning. There doesn't appear to be a transcript, but CNN have this story in which the big, bad VP completely bluffs the media by calling them names:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday the evidence is "overwhelming" that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and he said media reports suggesting that the 9/11 commission has reached a contradictory conclusion were "irresponsible."

"There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming," Cheney said in an interview with CNBC's "Capitol Report."

"It goes back to the early '90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials."

"The press, with all due respect, (is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework."

Well, actually, he's right in regard to that last bit, but of course, he is encouraging them to do exactly what he is chastising them for doing. The entire performance is steeped in disingenuousness from beginning to end. Here's the actual quotes relevant to the stuff I heard this morning:

In his CNBC interview, Cheney went a bit further. Asked if Iraq was involved in 9/11, he said, "We don't know."

"What the commission says is they can't find evidence of that," he said. "We had one report, which is a famous report on the Czech intelligence service, and we've never been able to confirm or to knock it down."

If there is no evidence of Saddam's involvement in something as big as 9/11, especially after you've occupied Iraq for more than a year and have therefore had access to any number of secret files, and you still can't say that he was involved, then the only honest answer to the question "was he involved" is no. To say "we don't know"--especially after the issue has been investigated at length by the CIA and everybody else involved--is nothing other than an attempt to blur and deceive.

The key trick they are pulling here is run together the idea of a "connection" between Iraq and al Qaeda and then elide that into providing reasonable doubt on whether, "therefore", Saddam might have been involved in 9/11. The evidence of a "connection" between Iraq and al Qaeda is substantially less than the evidence for a "connection" between Saddam and key members of the Bush administration (I mean, there is at least photographic evidence of Rumsfeld and Saddam meeting). If "connections" can be taken as evidence that we can't rule out Saddam's involvement in 9/11 then on Cheney's logic we also can't rule out that Donald Rumsfeld was involved in 9/11.

The fact is, if they had any proof of Saddam's involvement in 9/11 they'd present it. In it's absence, Cheney's interview is simply a bluff. And what is abundantly clear from what he said, and from what the President said yesterday, is that they intend to brazen this out.

UPDATE 2: After again listening to Cheney and reading Bush's comments about Zarqawi (see Kevin Drum for comment and information), I am just about speechless. This is a concerted, flagrant attempt by the President and Vice President of the United States to mislead the entire world as to the known facts in a serious case of national and international security. It almost beggars belief. Politicians often lie, and the relationship between truth and politics is fraught at the best of times. Most of us are pragmatic enough to accept that some lying is inevitable and maybe even necessary in the democratic relationship between citizens and elected leaders, especially where security is involved. What we can never accept is that the deception ever goes so far as to violate the trust on which democratic governance relies. The only reason we pragmatically accept an elastic link between truth and political practice is because we trust those in powers to ultimately have the good of the country at heart. These guys have moved well beyond that. Yes, all politicians lie and spin things to their advantage. But the politician who is willing to barefaced embrace a theory of truth that no reasonable person would use as a standard, and to do it over such a serious issue, has simply lost the plot and needs to be removed.

UPDATE 3: Here's Bush yesterday:

Bush reiterated that the administration never said that "the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," he said.

Here's the offical letter used justify the invasion of Iraq isuued on the day of the invasion:

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

Reconcile please.

A few bad apples

(Via these guys.)

One bad apple

The treatment of prisoners in Iraq is not just about abuse and torture. There are other aspects of the Geneva Convention and other US-ratified UN conventions that are arguably being violated, chief amongst them being the practice of holding prisoners "off the books", that is not acknowledging where they are being held or even if they are being held and denying the Red Cross access to them.

Today we learn that Donald Rumsfeld has been involved in this disreputable and, by most accounts, illegal practice. According to an MSNBC report:

An Iraqi prisoner was captured last July as deadly attacks on U.S. troops began to rise

He was identified as a member of the terrorist group Ansar al Islam, suspected in the attacks on coalition forces

Shortly after his capture, the CIA flew him to an undisclosed location outside Iraq for interrogation

Four months later the Justice Department suggested that holding him outside Iraq might be illegal, and the prisoner was returned to Iraq at the end of October

At this point, Rumsfeld passed the order on to Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, to keep the prisoner locked up, but off the books

Today, nearly one year after his capture, he�s still being held incommunicado

In fact, once the prisoner was returned to Iraq, the interrogations ceased because the prisoner was entirely lost in the system

And this is not the only case of such behaviour. In fact, Human Rights Watch, in their lengthy report, 'The Road to Abu Ghraib,' (which I've mentioned before), highlight a number of other instances of these "disappearances":

Among the most disturbing cases, perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history, are the detainees who have simply been �disappeared.�...Perhaps out of concern that Guant�namo will eventually be monitored by the U.S. courts, certainly to ensure even greater secrecy, the Bush dministration does not appear to hold its most sensitive and high-profile detainees there. Terrorism suspects like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused architect of the September 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a close aide of Osama bin Laden, are detained by the United States instead in �undisclosed locations,� presumably outside the United States, with no access to the ICRC, no notification to families, no oversight of any sort of their treatment, and in most cases no acknowledgement that they are even being held. Human Rights Watch has pieced together information on 13 such detainees, apprehended in places such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, who have �disappeared� in U.S. custody.

The key point of concern here is Rumsfeld's direct invovlement. As Mark Kleiman notes, the Secretary of Defense would have to be bonkers to engage in this sort of activity. But there it is.

Botoxing the blog

I'll soon be changing the look of things around here a little, a bit of a makeover, a nip and tuck and quite possibly a stomach stapling. The basic look will stay the same, including the basic colour scheme, but I want to add a few features, maybe spruce up the title header, fix up a few things that aren't working properly (like trackback) and anything else I can think of. I say I'm doing it, but really all the hard work will be done by Neale Talbot who is responsible for the site you see before you and which has served me so well. Anyway, I'm really keen to hear some suggestions for improvements and would also like recommendations for other sites to check out and steal stuff from be inspired by--either sites with nifty features or that simply look good. Feel free to mention the slightest little thing by way of improvement, though "changing your political views" doesn't count.

Spleen not heard

"Confected outrage" seems to be my phrase of the week, but I think this one takes the cake. In an article in The Australian, journalist James Morrow performs macrame with his knickers because the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the government funded national broadcaster, didn't spend "hours and hours" televising stuff about the death of Ronald Reagan. Go read how angry he is about this.

Fall guys

Sgt. Adam Wickersham is a reservist who "spent 13 months working as an Arabic translator and senior intelligence analyst in Iraq before returning home to his family in April." In Iraq, he was tapped to become an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. He is quite unequivocal in his condemnation of the abuse saying, "The actions of some of the people there are despicable and completely undefendable." Nonetheless, he goes out of his way to make excuses or offer mitigation:

During his time at the prison, Wickersham said, everything he saw was conducted in a professional manner. And as a military interrogator himself, he kept the rules of engagement taped inside his helmet and read them every day, knowing the importance of treating prisoners with dignity and respect.

"Some days it is difficult to treat people civilly, but you have to," he said. "Now, the (good) things the U.S. has done have been completely overshadowed by Abu Ghraib, and it's completely and totally unfortunate. I've been in the military intelligence community for 13 years, and I've never been so embarrassed."

Your embarrassment is touching I'm sure, but no, um, outrage or something a bit stronger maybe that those around you were beating the crap out of people, amongst other things? Some of your workmates obviously needed to try a bit harder to "treat people civilly," especially given the fact that 70-90% were completely innocent of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There also seems to be some careful wording in the attributed quote that "everything he saw was conducted in a professional manner." Well maybe, but obviously not everything was conducted in a professional manner.

The article is really a mess.

I don't buy the line that people at this level are as much victims as the victims themselves, forced merely to follow orders or to try and make the best of a bad situation, but I would definitely prefer that the higher-ups were also held responsible for these abuses, right up to those in the White House who sought and provided legal justification for inflicting pain that fell just short of the technical definition of torture. Nonetheless, you just stretch all sense of credibility with rationalisations like this one offered by Sgt. Wickersham:

"When you have 15 prisoners showing up and only five people to deal with them, the prisoners are handcuffed," he said. "And they put their handcuffed hands over the head of the person in front of them. Some are disoriented. So if one person trips, they are all going to fall down. In some cases, you see this picture of a pile of naked men on the ground, and that's what happened."

That's what happened? They just tripped? Maybe he could point out which ones are the ones where people tripped: this?; this?; this?; this?; this?; this?; this?; this?; this?; or maybe it was this?

The article, from the Catholic News Service, is full of praise, no doubt deserved, for what a great member of his hometown community the Sergeant is, but it is ultimately an inappropriate profile of person involved, however tangentially, in an event that deserves more serious treatment than it is given here. What a creepy piece it is:

For now, Wickersham is adjusting happily to his return to civilian life. The biggest challenges for him were the simple things, such as adjusting to the time-zone change, choosing his own clothes each day, putting names to faces he hadn't seen in a year and working a 9-to-5 job.

My heart bleeds.

It's time

The prime minister is either lying through his teeth or the party's internal polling is so bad that he doesn't dare call an election without the benefit of something like "another Tampa" and he's hanging out for that. Just listen to this garbage, as he shows once again the contempt in which he holds the Australian people:

"I don't know when the election's going to be held. I notice the speculation but I won't add to it. I honestly don't know, it has to be held some time in the next six months or so but exactly when I don't know, and I think I'm a long way from making up my mind on it but this is an important two-week (parliamentary) sitting."

He won't add to the speculation!!! He's the bloody prime minister, the only person in the universe who can decide when the election will be held. By refusing to tell us--the mere voters--when the thing will be held he is doing nothing but adding to the speculation. How dumb does he think we are?

Whether he is lying or simply waiting desperately for the internal polls to pick up, he is illustrating very clearly that he is well past his use-by date and that he knows (or at least senses) that the electorate thinks the same thing. It's just pathetic.

(Via Back Pages.)

UPDATE: Okay, I'll cop to some confected outrage in this post! Some of what I said applies to all prime ministers in this situation and my dissatisfaction is with the system as much as anything. Howard doesn't get off completely scott free, however. The line about "not adding to the speculation" is disingenuous at the very least and it does display a contempt for the intelligence of the people that he feels he can say something like that and not be called on it (though I note the media didn't call him). The idea that he doesn't know when the election is going to be held is also nonsense. Even if he hasn't a precise date in mind, I'm sure, like any PM, he has narrowed it down considerably and has a 'best chance' scenario in mind. To then come over all wide-eyed and say "I honestly don't know" is the sort of truth shaving he has become infamous for. The line that "I'm a long way from making up my mind" also beggars belief. So yeah, what he said is garbage, separate from the fact that most PM's play it this way (so they are speaking garbage too), but my comments are a definite overreaction.

Mirandized or fruit of the poison tree

The fine moral antennae of some conservatives is simply awe-inspiring.

Follow the bouncing ball:

Manuel Miranda organized the Republican Party strategy on judges when he was an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist

In that capacity, he illegally obtained Democratic Judiciary Committee documents from committee computers

The Senate sergeant at arms organised an investigation that was approved by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

The investigation resulted in the resignation of Manuel Miranda

The case, including Miranda's role in it, is still the subject of a federal criminal investigation

So far, so good. Meanwhile, in another part of town:

One of the leading conservative advocacy groups in the battle over judges, the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, has formed a new group called the Ethics in Nominations Project

Good plan. But who to head such an august body?:

They have just appointed....Manuel Miranda as the head of the new Ethics project

But wait there's more:

The Ethics in Nominations Project plans to assemble a group of ethicists to outline rules for how senators should deal with judicial nominees.

The project will seek to highlight what its organizers see as corruption in the confirmation process.

How do these fine conservatives know the confirmation process is "corrupt"?:

Because of the internal Democratic Judiciary Committee memos that the head of their new ethics project stole last year.

As Lead Balloons says, you can't make this stuff up.

Bye, bye, Miss American occupy

I can't imagine why the Bush administration kept the results of this poll, commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), from being released:

A poll of Iraqis commissioned by the U.S.-governing authority has provided the Bush administration a stark picture of anti-American sentiment — more than half of Iraqis believe they would be safer if U.S. troops simply left.

The poll, commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority last month but not released to the American public, also found radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is surging in popularity, 92 percent of Iraqis consider the United States an occupying force and more than half believe all Americans behave like those portrayed in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos.

Anyway, the Associated Press got hold of it and the key results are as follows:

92% feel the US are occupiers

55% feel they would be safer if the US left

54% feel all Americans act like the Abu Ghraib guards

41% want the US to leave immediately

45% said they preferred for U.S. forces to leave as soon as a permanent Iraqi govermnment is installed

64% expect the worst from Americans now

81% think better of Moqtada al Sadr than they did before

63% believed conditions will improve when an Iraqi interim government takes over June 30

62% believed it was "very likely" the Iraqi police and Army will maintain security without U.S. forces

Clearly some of the results are basically meaningless, such the first figure quoted - the US is an occupying force, under international law and by the the administration's own description.

Still, taken as whole, there is a pretty obvious message of discontent here. And most disturbing must be those figures of support for Moqtada al Sadr. Anyone else want to offer some interpretation? Remember: the poll was conducted by the CPA.

Both sides now

Many of the right and in the pro-war faction were happy to embrace Christopher Hitchens when he did a Peter Garrett maximus (Garrett only went from left to centre, Hitch went left to right) so I hope they--or at least, those amongst their number who are inclined to excuse the abuses of Abu Ghraib--take the time to read his opinion of the use of torture. The excuse being used by some is that there is only outrage about the US prisoner abuse because it serves as a proxy for bashing George W. Bush; that is to say, the only reason people are making a 'big deal' out the abuse scandal is because they politically oppose President Bush. Hitchens, on record as saying he will vote Bush over Kerry, is just one of the many on the pro-war or right side of politics who undermine thoroughly that lame rationalisation.

Sedimentary, my dear Watson

I'm not sure that in an election year that is at least partly predicated on the idea of "young challenger" vs "old, time-worn incumbent" that John Howard wants to be associated with the word "fossil" quite this much.

Red herring overboard

For the past week or more, various politicians and officals from the United States, including a spokesperson for Senator Kerry, have been piling the pressure on Mark Latham, the Australian Oppostion leader, trying to undermine his postion on bringing Australian troops home from Iraq by Christmas, something he has said he will do if he is elected later this year. Mark Latham has stared them all down:

The Bush Administration has completed a backflip from its threats against the future of the Australian alliance, describing the relationship as "sacred" and welcoming criticism of its judgement and performance in Iraq.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has told a meeting of American and Australian politicians and academics in Washington that "we welcome debate, argument, that ultimately makes our partnership stronger and better".

The comments followed a week of American criticism of Opposition Leader Mark Latham's plan to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas if Labor wins government.

The debate over participation in Iraq was not frivolous or superficial and "we don't have to agree with one another in all instances", Mr Armitage said. He had stated late last week that Australia could not "pick and choose" what it wanted from the US alliance, could lose intelligence privileges and needed to imagine life without it.

Even the Australian prime minister has been forced to admit that Latham's stand will have no bearing on the US-Australia alliance, thus relegating scare-tactics over a diminished relationship as an election-year wedge to the dustbin:

Prime Minister John Howard admitted the Australia-US alliance would not be harmed in the long-term by Labor's pledge to bring Australian troops home from Iraq by Christmas ... Mr Howard conceded that while the US would view an early Australian departure from Iraq as a less than friendly act, the two countries would remain friends under a Labor government. "Just as friendships between people are most valuable when there are some stresses and difficulties in relation to one of the partners to that friendship, so it is the case in relation to a friendship and an alliance between nations," Mr Howard told the National Press Club. "Of course the American government will deal with any future Australian government, and of course any future Australian prime minister - irrespective of his or her political complexion - will be welcome in the White House."

I applaud him for that, though he should have said it at the start of all this nonsense. Still, full marks for avoiding the equivalent pointless slur former PM, Paul Keating, directed at Howard himself in 1996, suggesting Asian leaders wouldn't deal with him. Howard was no doubt very aware of the parallels between the two events.

Meanwhile, Paul Kelly gets it right in his take on the spat between US leaders and the Australian opposition leader:

CONTRARY to some views, George W. Bush is not motivated by a personal squabble with Mark Latham. His comments are driven not by Australian politics but by Bush's need to save his Iraq policy.

This is exactly right and it also explains why the Democrat nominee joined the Latham bashing--he, too, needed to underline his position as fully committed to a post-Saddam Iraq. I made exactly the same point as Kelly back when all this nonsense started:

If anyone wants an example of how desperate the Bush administration is in regard to its current position in Iraq, you need look no further than how they are responding the prospect of a change of government in Australia.

So now it's on to the next in a no-doubt long line of policies-as-tactics, as John Howard moves to position the FTA with the United States as his next weapon of choice. On which, more later.

The Bush two-step: moral clarity vs legal niceties

President George W. Bush
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 26, 2003

Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel
Memorandum for Alberto R Gonzales (.pdf)
Counsel to the President
RE: Standards of Conduct for interrogation Under U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A
August 1, 2002

You have asked for our Office's views regarding the standards of conduct under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or punishment as implemented by Sections 2340-2340A of title 18 of The United States Code. As we understand it, this question has arisen in the context of the conduct of interrogations outside of the United States. We conclude below that Section 2340A proscribes acts inflicting, and that are specifically intended to inflict, severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental. Those acts must be of an extreme nature to rise to the level of torture within the meaning of Section 2340A and the Convention. We further find that certain acts may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within Section 2340A's proscription against torture. We conclude by examining the possible defenses that would negate any claim that certain interrogation methods violate the statute.

President George W. Bush
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 26, 2003

Until recently, Saddam Hussein used similar means to hide the crimes of his regime. With Iraq's liberation, the world is only now learning the enormity of the dictator's three decades of victimization of the Iraqi people. Across the country, evidence of Baathist atrocities is mounting, including scores of mass graves containing the remains of thousands of men, women, and children and torture chambers hidden inside palaces and ministries. The most compelling evidence of all lies in the stories told by torture survivors, who are recounting a vast array of sadistic acts perpetrated against the innocent. Their testimony reminds us of their great courage in outlasting one of history's most brutal regimes, and it reminds us that similar cruelties are taking place behind the closed doors of other prison states.

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel
Memorandum for Alberto R Gonzales (.pdf)
Counsel to the President
RE: Standards of Conduct for interrogation Under U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A
August 1, 2002

We conclude that for an act to constitute torture....it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death...We conclude that the statute, taken as a whole, makes plain that it prohibits only extreme acts.

President George W. Bush
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 26, 2003

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example.

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel
Memorandum for Alberto R Gonzales (.pdf)
Counsel to the President
RE: Standards of Conduct for interrogation Under U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A
August 1, 2002

In Part IV, we examine international decisions regarding the use of sensory deprivation techniques. These cases make clear that while many of these techniques may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, they do not produce pain or suffering of the necessary intensity to meet the definition of torture. From these decisions, we conclude that there is a wide range of such techniques that will not rise to the level of torture.

President George W. Bush
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 26, 2003

Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. August 1, 2002

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel
Memorandum for Alberto R Gonzales (.pdf)
Counsel to the President
RE: Standards of Conduct for interrogation Under U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A
August 1, 2002

In Part V, we discuss whether Section 2340A may be unconstitutional if to interrogations undertaken of enemy combatants pursuant to the President's Commander-in-Chief powers. We find that in the circumstances of the current war against al Qaeda and its allies, prosecution under Section 2340A may be barred because enforcement of the statute would represent an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority to conduct war....We conclude that, under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Section 2340A.

President George W. Bush
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 26, 2003

I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims' treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel
Memorandum for Alberto R Gonzales (.pdf)
Counsel to the President
RE: Standards of Conduct for interrogation Under U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A
August 1, 2002

Thus, to convict a defendant of torture, the prosecution must establish that: (1) the torture occurred outside the United States; (2) the defendant acted under the color of the law; (3) the victim was within the defendants custody or physical control; (4) the defendant specifically intended to cause severe physical or mental suffering; and (5) that the act inflicted severe physical or mental pain or suffering.

...Thus, even if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith. Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering within his custody or physical control.

President George W. Bush
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 26, 2003

No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM: ALBERTO R. GONZALES
SUBJECT: DECISION RE APPLICATION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION ON PRISONERS OF WAR TO THE CONFLICT WITH AL QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN
January 25, 2002

The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians...In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.

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ELSEWHERE: Michael Froomkin applies his legal mind to the August 1 memo.

Contract with America

In September 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney was pretty categorical abut his connection with Halliburton and the awarding of government contracts to that company:

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has denied helping his former oil services company get multibillion-dollar US Government contracts in Iraq.

...Democrats have questioned the role of Mr Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, in rebuilding Iraq. The company, headed by Mr Cheney before he became Vice-President, has contracts worth nearly $2 billion.

Mr Cheney bristled at the suggestion that his connection influenced the awarding of the no-bid contracts to Halliburton.

"Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's Vice-President, I've severed all my ties with the company," he said. "And as Vice-President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of . . . contracts let by the US Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government."

Asked why Halliburton did not have to compete with other firms for the contracts, Mr Cheney said: "I have no idea. Go ask the Corps of Engineers."

After this story today, he might just have to start bristling again:

The Pentagon has acknowledged that Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and other political appointees helped make the controversial decision on a $1.8 million contract for the postwar recovery of Iraq's oil sector.

The decision to award the contract to the energy giant Halliburton overruled recommendations of an army lawyer. Eventually it resulted in the awarding of a much larger $US7 billion ($A10 billion) no-bid contract to Halliburton. Mr Cheney ran Halliburton for five years before he was nominated for vice-president.

Democrat congressman Henry Waxman said the new details about Halliburton and Mr Cheney's office were disclosed last week in a Pentagon briefing to Democratic and Republican staff from the Government Reform Committee.

...In a letter to Mr Cheney on Sunday, Mr Waxman said the circumstances "appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts".

"They also seem to contradict the Administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton," he wrote.

I think it might be time for Cheney to invoke the I-think-I-mightn't-be-well-enough-to-continue-as-VP clause in his employment contract.

In fact, I hope he stays on. I can envisage a nice series of election ads built around these two news stories.

The sovereign nation of Iraq

It seems the Bush administration has never met an international agreement they didn't want to get around. First it was th Geneva conventions on torture and prisoner abuse and now it's the Vienna Convention, the international agreement that gives immunity from local laws to people like diplomats and certain specified staff at diplomatic missions:

In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq's new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources.

In Iraq, US troops are immune because of their status as occupiers. The sorts of contractors for whom the US is also seeking immunity do not fall within the provisions of the convention or the terms of the UN resolution that governs occupiers. So this attempt to get them immunity is actually a real test of Iraqi sovereignty. Certainly, the preamble of the Vienna Convention makes clear that it governs relations between sovereign states (as should be obvious):

The States Parties to the present Convention, Recalling that peoples of all nations from ancient times have recognized the status of diplomatic agents,

Having in mind the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations concerning the sovereign equality of States, the maintenance of international peace and security, and the promotion of friendly relations among nations,

Believing that an international convention on diplomatic intercourse, privileges and immunities would contribute to the development of friendly relations among nations, irrespective of their differing constitutional and social systems,

Realizing that the purpose of such privileges and immunities is not to benefit individuals but to ensure the efficient performance of the functions of diplomatic missions as representing States,

Affirming that the rules of customary international law should continue to govern questions not expressly regulated by the provisions of the present Convention...

But more specifically, in deference to national sovereignty, Clause 2 Article 4 states:

2. The receiving State is not obliged to give reasons to the sending State for a refusal of agrement.

Something tells me the Iraqi's are not going to get away with that.

The question is why does the US want the contractors exempt? One answer, unsurprisingly, centres on that other pesky international convention, the one named for Swiss city of Geneva:

The question of the contractors' status also has arisen because of two U.S. contract employees at Abu Ghraib prison who were accused in a Pentagon report of participating in illegal abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

What a shock.

At this stage, then, the Iraqi's are resisting the "request"--and a spokesman for Prime Minister Ayad Allawi called it a "demand"--but we can expect any number of these conflicts to arise after the "handover" occurs.

But remember, under the terms of the convention, after June 30, all the Iraqis have to say is "no dice" and their sovereign status obliges the US to comply, whether they are given a reason or not.

MEANWHILE: However this matter resolves, one thing no-one, including contractors, will be immune from, is the escalating violence. Another five contractors died in bomb blast in Baghdad today along with 8 other people. It seems civilian workers were specifically targetted by whatever group of murderers was responsible.

ELSEWHERE: Jeanne D'Arc.

51st state

This is just getting funny. Colin Powell joins the chorus. (I'm expecting clairvoyant contact with Ronald Reagan at any moment, also condemning Mark Latham's policy.)

ELSEWHERE: As John Quiggin notes: In view of the full court press being applied by the US Administration with respect to Mark Latham's promise to pull Australian troops out of Iraq by Christmas, it's interesting to note that the Dutch government is not subject to similar pressure to "stay the course", even though it has just announced a pullout date of March 15, 2005, less than 90 days after Latham's.

I might add, the Netherlands has 1400 troops in Iraq compared to Australia's 250.

So this is what we've got: an Australian opposition leader says he'll remove our troops if he's elected and the Bush administration starts insisting this will be a "disaster." The actual government of the Netherlands confirms they will withdraw more than five times as many troops, and barely a peep from the Bush administration. Perhaps we should be flattered.

UPDATE: A John Kerry spokesman joins the Lathamfest. No word on what they think about the Netherland's plans.

MEANWHILE in the LAND OF BROWNNOSE: John Howard gets down on his hands and knees and offers contrition to those who must be obeyed. Pathetic. Slitheringly pathetic. This ranks with Menzies' love poem to her Maj all those years ago. (In fact, is the linked article really by the prime minister?)

Nuanacing the stoning

Kev Gillet adds some clarification to his silly, dimissive post about torture that I mentioned below:

Expressing concern is fine - but for six months? How many ways can you express concern. Should you do it every day for a year at the expense of all other stories. Is there a benchmark or is it like the Tampa/Children Overboard/ SIEV saga - everyday until someone notices that the country has gone on to other problems.

...Whatever others think, The Abu Ghraib saga has grown out of all proportion to it's actuall (sic) importance. It's at risk of becoming a longer saga that the Nurembeg Trials.

The point to make is that new relevations are showing up nearly everyday. So commentary will continue. What's more, if people had merely tut-tutted when the first pictures had come out and then let it drop, it is unlikely that further information--such as the legal memos--would have made it's way into the public sphere. This has gone from being the story of a "few bad apples" to being the story of an administration in the grip of a systemic problem of abuse and one in search of, not only legal loopholes to allow themselves to abuse prisoners, but for legal loopholes that sought to argue that the President was not bound by international or US law. Seems like a pretty big story to me.

Once again, we have someone seemingly more outraged about the outrage than the actual abuse and legal finessing that has gone on. At least, that's how a lot of this rightwing dismissiveness reads. I accept that, for whatever reason, these revelations aren't a big deal to some people, but some of us would like to get to the bottom of it all. The only way to do that is keep inquiring.