George W. Bush is not the only American President to spread and exploit a pernicious myth: the moral superiority of the United States! Bollocks! Under Bush, our most publicized export has not been morality, freedom, or opportunity. It is, rather, torture, brutality, war crimes, perversion and moral –or, more precisely -immoral stench.Clearly –American politicians have espoused and exploited this myth just as George W. Bush has capitalized on the idea that individual Americans are targeted by international terrorists who “…jest hate freedom”, terrorists willing to blow themselves up because we are more free and possess more material goods. I’m sorry –but having a three car garage and lots of cheap gasoline are not among my values. If that's what it means to be American, then I've been living in the wrong country since birth! I have nothing but contempt for anyone who's willing to turn a blind eye to torture in return for cheap gas which has, obviously, not been forthcoming despite Bush's many outrages to human decency.
And if George Bush were correct in believing that being free in America means having enough material wealth to waste resources in a Hummer, then I say we deserve our fate, a fate which has always been in our own hands –not the so-called “terrorists”. As Sartre said: "Man is nothing but what he makes of himself". That means that when you screw up, you've got no one to blame but yourself. Clearly, then, Bush is no existentialist! He continues to blame everyone but himself for the consequences of his evil intentions.
I submit to you that Bush’s war on terrorism is not merely a failure; it's as fraudulent as his wars against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of Bush’s war on terrorism, America, a net debtor nation thanks to Ronald Reagan and the GOP, has –at last –found some exports: brutality, perversity and torture.
If there is any good news to be found in the slimy residue of Bush’s sorry mal-administration it is this: a revolt against Bush seems to be brewing at the CIA where many are said to live in fear of indictments and subpoenas that may be coming down any day now. What’s called “Wehrmacht group” inside the CIA are leaking the sordid details about how the Bush administration conducted a program of torture and perversion at Abu Ghraib and how the Bush administration is deliberately trying to skirt U.S. and international laws with a program of ongoing “rendition”, that is, flying victims to other countries for the purpose of torture and other crimes.
Racking someone is bad enough but torture American-style seems especially abhorrent and always colored by more than a soupcon of sexual perversity, Satanism, and psycho-sexual morbidness that defies description in any language. Semour Hersh says that the U.S. has video tapes of children being raped, sodomized, tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."Reprehensible images to be found among unreleased photographs include images of rape, torture, mutilated animals, circles of candles, swastikas, and sexual activity among the torturers themselves, often in front of the detainees. [See: Sex Rituals of Abu Ghraib]
There’s much, much more. From Salon's exclusive:
"A review of all the computer media submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."It’s hard to believe that the entire torture program is anything other than an excuse by perverts to indulge in psycho-sexual and/or satanic rituals that might be more at home inside the walls of the Skull and Bones or the Nazi SS than in a legitimate program to elicit useful information in a “war on terrorism”. In fact, the “war on terrorism” itself, premised as it is upon lies and propaganda, seems to be but an excuse to indulge satanic perversity not seen since the Holocaust. As one blogger put it: “…it's right out of a dark occultist's playbook.” Indeed, it is. And who but a Bonesman could be its chief architect? Who but the man who set records for executions in Texas could create its policies? Who but the man who ridiculed death row inmates would defend the perverted rationale of torture? Who but someone who got his jollies blowing up horned toads in West Texas could defend it, encourage it, and, at the same time, deny it and cover it up?
This program of torture seems sure to create terrorists where none had been before. Yet, the Bush administration’s defense and active cover up of these atrocities bespeaks its complicity in heinous crimes against humanity. The only rational explanation is this: Bush needs new enemies to justify a permanent occupation.
Meanwhile, a report on U.S. interrogation tactics entitled “Human Rights Standards Applicable to the United States' Interrogation of Detainees,” challenges the various rationalizations cited inexplicably in defense of an act that had been denied by Bushies. Why defend an act that had not occurred? Scott Horton, a human rights activist has since cited various “torture memoranda” to disprove Rumsfeld's position that Abu Ghraib was but the work of a few “bad apples”. The reports by Seymour Hersh are consistent with Horton’s work; they tend to support the conclusion that Abu Ghraib is but one “island” in the American gulag archipelago. Torture is Bush’s policy and it will be his sorry legacy, a cancer on the American body politic, an indictment of the national morality, a final chapter in what Theodore Dreiser called "Tragic America".
There is cause for concern throughout the CIA. Despite fawning rationalizations by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, at least one FBI attorney had written that “rendition” is illegal. Indeed, international law speaks to the commission of the acts themselves, not the location. The Bush administration’s defense of a program that it contradictorily denies is irrelevant, a shallow, transparent dodge. Clearly — “rendition” is designed to circumvent American laws. It's consistent with Bush’s delusional mindset: he is above the laws and the rule of law does not apply to him. This is clearly psychotic and the doctrine of the "unitary executive" is just symptom of a very, very sick mind.
For more on the subject, see the Sex, Drugs, Mind Control and Torture index.U.N. Exec Decries Illegal Iraq Detainees
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS,
Associated Press Writer
GENEVA (AP) - Some 15,000 detainees are being held in Iraq by government ministries in violation of Iraqi law, and nearly as many are being held by U.S.-led multinational forces, a senior U.N. official said Friday.
Only the country's justice ministry is permitted to hold detainees for longer than 72 hours, but Gianni Magazzeni, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in Baghdad, said most Iraqi-held detainees are under the control of other government officials, naming Iraq's interior and defense ministries in particular.
``Those are still in the thousands and would be not in a situation which is in line with Iraqi law,'' he said at the U.N.'s European headquarters in Geneva. Magazzeni, who took over the post in mid-February, was visiting Geneva and said he was on his way back to Baghdad. It was unclear where Magazzeni obtained his figures for detainees held by the Iraqi government. ...
More about how Bush's Iraq debacle is laced with stories of sadism and sexual perversion:
The Missing Girls of Iraq
Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam Hussein, has resurfaced in Iraq. TIME reports on a seldom-discussed epidemic: girls being kidnapped and sold to brothels....
Safah is part of a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. ...
Why we're publishing the new Abu Ghraib photos
America -- and the world -- has the right to know what was done in our name.
By Walter Shapiro ...
More than a "few rotten apples"A U.S. soldier who tortured an Iraqi general to death got his wrist slapped. Yet his appalling sentence made a certain sense.
America can't take it anymore
By Brig. Gen. David Irvine and David DanzigThe Bush administration has embraced torture as a key part of the "war on terror." Finally, members of Congress, the military and the CIA are speaking out against the abuse.
Contract to torture
By Mark FollmanA rare look at the entire Abu Ghraib report reveals that inexperienced, under-supervised private-sector employees actively took part in horrifying prisoner abuse.
By Osha Gray Davidson
'Toons by Dante Lee; use only with permission
11 comments:
So much for the "Family Values" promised by the Republican party along with "Spreading Freedom". If Orwell were alive, he would have to get to work on a sequel. Although, seems most didn't get it the first time around...so don't anyone hold their breath.
And on the other hand who needs a moral compass when you always have "God on your side" Clear judgement appears to be even at moderate levels, something of the past. It will only be economic despair that will drive the balance of America to warrant change, and that in it's self is a shameful display of poor character.
Indeed, benmerc. I confess —I "flirted" with conservatism when I didn't know better. "Family values" was the wake up call. I do not boast when I say that the term "family values" was utterly transparent to me. It was then that I recognized that Ronald Reagan was a demagogue and "family values" was just a Nazi-like, empty platitude. Albert Speer is quoted as having said that the Third Reich was built upon "empty platitudes".
As you ask: "Who needs a moral compass....?" Indeed! So called Christians don't need morality. They are SAVED! But saved from what? What joys await in heaven for someone who is morally dead —now —on earth.
American Christianity is but a cult, a false religion and Bush is the Satanist who fooled them all.
Len, recently you discussed why the US went into Afghanistan and you pointed to the UNOCAL pipeline and the offer to the Taliban that they could either have a "carpet of bombs" or a "carpet of dollars". True, of course. You could also have cited all the other signs that the invasion had nothing to do with bin Laden including the fact that large numbers of US and UK troops just happened to be in the region prior to 9/11 and were then available for the invasion. And that the Bush failure to capture el Qaeda leaders at Tora Bora is positive proof that another agenda was in play (captures at Tora Bora would have included massive numbers of Pakistan operatives, supposed allies in the war on terror.)
The detail I find most intriguing (particularly in regard to the timing) was the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masoud. This from Pepe Escobar at the Asia Times:
On September 9, the legendary "Lion of the Panjshir", Ahmed Shah Masoud, the key Northern Alliance commander, was assassinated by two suicide bombers posing as journalists in his base in northern Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance tells Washington that the ISI may be involved. Masoud himself had told this correspondent, two weeks before he was killed, of the incestuous link between bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the ISI. A 2002 Asia Times Online investigation would later establish that Masoud was killed as a gift from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, with heavy involvement by Abdul Sayyaf, an Afghan mujahideen commander very close to the ISI and the Saudis. From Washington's perspective, this was also a gift. Masoud was the crucial Afghan nationalist leader, supported by Russia and Iran; after the Taliban being smashed he would never have accepted a feeble, US-sponsored, Hamid Karzai-style government.
Nice timing, huh? Just before you invade a popular national leader who is likely to oppose you gets assassinated. Oh well, at least the poppy fields are back in full production.
You have an eye for detail, damien. As always an excellent post. Important details in the growing case against Bush's phony wars.
I don't doubt mass media bias —but I often suspect that the speed and sheer mass of detail has overwhelmed even well-meaning journalists.
Asia Times has done an excellent job and if it weren't for the Times, the Guardian, BBC and a handful of other organizations, we might be limited to the FOX Weltanschauung!
The blogosphere, I think, has made a significant contribution. But a massive data base funder, perhaps, by someone like Goerge Soros could make a big difference if it were made available free of charge to bloggers and journalists.
Too much stuff just comes and goes. For example, I have often cited a study by the Brookings Institute based upon FBI terrorism stats compiled in the Reagan era —Total Acts of Terrorism in the U.S.1980-98, America's Response to Terrorism, The Brookings Institute. Brookings had prepared for that report a vivid, accurate bar chart based upon the FBI stats. Alas, the report is no longer linked to on the Brookings website, the chart doesn't come up on any image searches that I've done and my own citations to the work often come up on google searches.
This work is important; it proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Ronald Reagan's "war on terrorism" was every bit as fallacious as that of Bush. It could be chaulked up to ineptitude if it were not for the fact that when Reagan was seen to have moved on to other priorities the increase in terrorist attacks began to decline dramatically. Reagan made terrorism worse, either because he needed it to rally the faithful, because it is the nature of "wars" on terrorism that they feed terrorism, or because Reagan was utterly incompetent.
I can make sense of that, Len. The multiple GOP scandals bring on a mental overload at all levels. It's no wonder the journalists, much less the public, can keep up. The "disappearing" media references are a worry - and more sinister in some instances. I also give the US MSM a failing grade all round. These are the guys with the resources and experience. Social identity, that sense of belonging, is a powerful determinant in these matters, but the media generally has been disgraceful - they expend acres of broadsheet 24/7 about blue dresses and stolen moments, but refuse to even acknowledge Al Gore's detailed denunciation of the Bush admin. That's a media that has totally sold out on its social role, in my view.
There's an interesting bit of trivia that follows my last remarks on the Masoud assassination (derived from my long hours buried knee deep in 9/11 conspiracy doo-doo!) The night before 9/11 George Bush was staying at the Colony Beach Resort on Longboat Key in Sarasota. At 6am on the morning of 9/11 four Arab men in a white van attempted to gain entrance - to ostensibly interview President Bush. This was a ruse similar to that used just two days earlier to assassinate Massoud. The security guards referred them to the Public Relations Office in Washington. Later in the day a similar van was seen driving around Sarasota with Arabs yelling out of the windows "God is Great" etc. Although these incidents were reported in the press at the time I never heard anything further about it. Important, you would have thought? Who were these people?
I classify this incident as part of an in depth propaganda exercise on the part of the 9/11 instigators to be used if aspects of the official account became untenable at any stage (but that's just my conspiracy genes speaking, and yes, I'm taking medication for that.)
If you'll indulge me further, I'll follow up on that Daniel Hopsicker report about 5.5 tons of cocaine captured in Mexico in a plane owned by Brent C Kovar (appointed to the Business Advisory Council of the NRCC in 2003 by Tom Delay) which gets a more detailed treatment from Wayne Madsen.
The DC-9 was painted in the familiar blue and white colors of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration with an official-looking seal with an American eagle bearing the inscription: "Sky Way Aircraft - Protection of America's Skies."
Skyways International is a firm tied to the Bush family and the Saudis. GW. Bush's friend James Bath invested Saudi money in Arbusto '70 Ltd., Arbusto '80 Ltd., and Bush Exploration Co (Harken Energy).
Bath, who was a sole agent of Salem Bin Laden, was also the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Corp., one of the affiliates of Skyways International. Bath established four corporate entities with the name "Skyway" and the firm that incorporated the corporate contrivances in the Cayman Islands for Bath was the same one that established a Cayman-based money laundering front company for Oliver North in the Iran-contra scandal. In 1977, Bath bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of Salem Bin Laden. Skyway Aircraft Leasing Corporation was, according to the Chronicle, owned by Khalid Bin Mahfouz, a major shareholder in the defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a major money laundering activity for George H. W. Bush's Iran-contra caper. Bin Mahfouz was also the owner of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia.
As noted by Hopsicker, the plane's registered owner, “Royal Sons LLC”, was at one time based at Huffman Aviation, Venice Fl., home of Mohammed Atta and that other drug trafficker Wally Hilliard. For those who don't know, Florida has over 200 flight schools and Huffman was small and financially dodgy. Drugs is the linking theme here. That the Bush's and the Saudis appear to be linked to recent massive drug imports comes as no surprise.
I don't know why the plane didn't just have "Bush-Bath-bin Laden" emblazoned as the logo! But I know why it hasn't made it into the MSM - they weren't carrying any little blue dresses!!
Time to get back on my medication, Len....cheers.
Damien…
I agree we are over whelmed with this administration’s scandal and behavior, but it is more then not being able to keep up with the information...we have been desensitized over time and what once may have been ostracized is now the norm. I know Len has woven this thought into many of his pieces before, this mentality has been creeping into or society for some time. I think you have fully described the state of our media and the dysfunction it now represents, sinister and disgraceful, to a “T”. Also it appears some folks just want to pretend this behavior and these actions just do not exist, or are not as bad as it has been portrayed by the independent press. When, in fact the facts and detail has been routinely suppressed by the MSM and the corporate culture. There have been several scholars that believe this attitude has been systemic within our culture for some time (from the beginning to some degree?...read Zinn).
Len, the best points I have noticed within your blog and something what separates you from many others, is your historical perspective. It is important that you keep bringing up the fact that these within the Bush administration, PNAC those who started it and many of it’s followers were weaned during the Reagan era. And in some cases were leading players. Lately, we see many people that have pulled away from Bush, but think Reagan and all the atrocities committed by that administration were justified, or for some reason acceptable. Their type of conservative perspective is not only dangerous, but continually leads down a dead end road, no matter what fork you take ( but many of these folks don’t believe in evolution of any sort, will be hard for them to grasp). Until the blind follower’s of such bent rhetoric understand the error of it’s way, there will always be an appeal to several demographic groups and personality types within our society. We as a free society should not hamper free thought and belief, but must guard against the empowerment of reactionary radicalism and the immoral heart of it’s core.
So, keep reminding us of the modern conservative roots, least we make the same mistake of not cauterizing the wound far enough back. I have to say though, I could not picture you as a conservative per se…but I would guess you should know who flirted with whom, and I am sure there are some values and knowledge you may have garnished during that period . I mean, when it comes down to it, I have fiscal conservative traits, and ideas about respect and tradition also… but that is not possible according to “conservatives” It is just another talking point the conservatives have made up or framed to stereo type liberals. I never knew any hard nosed libs that promoted folks that could but did not chip in and help pull their weight. All I can add this Sunday morning is that it is an expanding universe (for the time being) and being a progressive fits right into that order of event.
Great posts, all! fuzzflash, benmerc, damien! I am honored that you've chosen the cowboy. All crucial issues as well as the level of debate. If anything good should come of this Bush ordeal, it will be that good folk found common ground and rose to meet a challenge with the most potent weapon extent: the human intellect. When I've had some breakfast, I'll try to make a more cogent response deserving of your posts. Right now...I am in bad need of coffee : )
All this talk about unparalleled torture just makes me sick. Worse yet, that it is done by soldiers and contract workers in the name of all US citizens.
One side of my mind hopes and prays that this is all this about sodomizing and torturing Iraqi's by US soldier and contract workers, is just a lie, if only to make me feel better being a US citizen.
The other side is just appalled. Maybe it's my feminine side that is sensitive to such evil committed, especially against children. What does Laura Bush think of all this torture done by her hubby's buddies? Maybe she's immune.
I thought that when Bush got Saddam that Iraq was going to be a better, safer place for the Iraqi people. Or was that a long forgotten dream sequence?
That wasn't even a dream sequence Jen. That was part of the sustained program of lies offered by Bush that included WMDs and the Osama-Sadam link.Everything was a lie, just a load of bullshit from the get-go so they could invade a foreign country. And the torture? That's not a lie sadly, that and the oil thefts were the only truths.(Gen.Garner told the Iraqis in Mar 2003 they could keep their oil; Rumsfeld sacked him immediately and then proceeded to loot the country). And we haven't even begun to register on the Iraq economic sanctions. The UN statistics estimate that between 1990 and 2003 about 500,000 children under five died in Iraq who would have otherwise have lived, and hundreds of thousands of adults. You won't read about it in the press unfortunately. Banished from our consciousness. That's why Len's public insistence on the moral and criminal, rather than just the political, nature of these activities simply doesn't register with many people. They've been listening to the spin and the bullshit for too long. Bush, Cheny and Rumsfeld are serious criminals who belong behind bars.
Jen, you hit the nail on the head. This torture was done in our name, under OUR flag. And unless we do something about it, we all share the guilt. Bush has crossed the line...putting Harding, Hoover, Nixon, and Buchanan in the shade. Bush is the new Caligula.
benmerc, re: conservatism. Thank God it was only a "flirtation" and I didn't lose my viginity. : ) On the other hand, I got inside some campaigns. I learned how GOPPERS think. It's a cult! A very, very dangerous and kooky cult. It is NOT a political party. More about that later.
Yep, fuzzflash. The GOP is not a political party, it's a kooky cult.
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