MediaBloodhound

From the Archives: The War on Grandpa

(This Story of the Day was originally posted on August 28, 2006. Since our Torturer-in-Chief just signed the Military Commissions Act into law this week, it seemed apropos to revisit this unbelievable story.)

It's bad enough the Bush administration has yet to shut down the Guantanamo prison camp and continues to operate undisclosed gulags around the globe. Ongoing acts (along with prior atrocities at Abu Ghraib) that manage to outdo what a murky, totalitarian bureaucracy perpetrated on Joseph K. in Kafka's novel The Trial. In the story, K. is woken one morning and arrested for a crime without being informed of the charges; he then embarks on a futile journey that sends him from one false hope of exoneration to the next, until finally, summarily, even mercifully - as he's come to recognize his futile state - he is stabbed to death by executioners. He meets his end never knowing what he was charged with, his last words: "Like a dog!"

Now, there's this off the AP newswire:

The oldest detainee at Guantanamo Bay — an Afghan man who is at least 71 and hobbled around the U.S. prison in Cuba using a walker — has been sent home, his lawyer said Monday.

This isn't satire. I wish it were. His name is Haji Nasrat Khan.

Khan was not charged with a crime and Ryan [his lawyer] said the government never said why he was detained.

"We couldn't figure out why he was there," Ryan said. "He could barely walk and he could barely hear."

It only gets worse.

Khan told his lawyers he believes he's around 78, but doesn't know his exact age. He is at least 71, according to military records obtained by The Associated Press.

So, for close to five years, the military has been holding a man in Guantanamo who is now somewhere between the age of 71 and 78 years old, limited to creeping along on a walker and is nearly deaf. 

U.S. forces captured the elderly detainee's son, Hiztullah Nasrat Yar, in a compound with some 700 weapons, including small arms and rockets, according to military records.

Khan and his son told the military panel that the younger man was guarding the weapons for the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The father had said he was arrested while complaining about his son's capture several days later.

The military said both father and son had links to the Taliban — a notion Khan once ridiculed at a military hearing.

"How could I be an enemy combatant if I was not able to stand up?" he asked, according to transcripts released to the AP.

Who knows? Maybe Guantanamo commander Rear Adm. Harry Harris declared Khan's method of ambulation an act of asymmetrical warfare. Those walkers, when raised, could be quite effective in momentarily warding off one's torturers.

Now let's see if this story garners any attention in the mainstream media, or if this geriatric jihadist shuffles gently into the night. 

71-Year-Old Gitmo Detainee Released, by Ben Fox
The Associated Press

The Wounded-Courier: Gen. Pace Says Rumsfeld Praise Will Crush Insurgency

WASHINGTON, DC - With Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at his side, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, introduced a new strategy today to retake Baghdad and put an end to the insurgency in Iraq.

“In unleashing flattery on a scale no military force in human history has lavished upon its civilian commander, we’re now stepping up our efforts to bring the fight directly to the insurgents,” Gen. Pace began, addressing the press at the Pentagon. “Yesterday was just the opening salvo. Today, I’m here to announce our new plan, Operation Lick and Sprawl, which we believe will finally close the book on the insurgency in Iraq. Bringing to bear the full might of the U.S. Military, we will not let up our praise of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld until every terrorist in Iraq has been destroyed. Until democracy flowers there like a garden in mulch.”

Gen. Pace continued, “Certain things, of course, we cannot divulge because it would put our troops in harm’s way. But I can tell you this: The plan is to completely take over Secretary Rumsfeld’s rectum by the first week in November. From there, our assault on enemy forces will emanate from a superior strategic vantage point. This should reduce troop casualties and bring the insurgency to its knees.” Pausing a moment to glance at Mr. Rumsfeld before turning back to the sea of press, Gen. Pace then said, “I wish I could go back in time and convince my mother to engage in intercourse with Secretary Rumsfeld in the hopes of bringing to term a better me. But since the extremist forces of genetics and the space-time continuum negate this course of action, I offer instead my undying allegiance as worthiness to serve in his exulted presence.

Appearing on Hardball, Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey was somewhat skeptical of Gen. Pace’s bold initiative, but told host Chris Matthews, “It’s difficult to discount a strategy before it's executed. Will positioning forces up Secretary Rumsfeld’s wind channel be more successful? I’m not so sure. But we’re just gonna have to wait and see. Look, Chris, history is replete with examples of ridiculed war plans that turn out to be effective. If this has a chance, it will probably derive from the fact that the enemy will be ill prepared - unable to adapt to the new strategy, to engage our military adequately from this new vantage point. Unfortunately, more than we’d like to admit, much in war is a 'wait-and-see' kind of thing.”

Though some have been harsher in their judgment of this plan. On The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) said, “This idea is simply untenable for our troops. It is one thing to appease the Bush administration, to give tacit approval to an illegal war and deny, even in the face of cold hard facts, that our presence there is not helping. All of which I’ve done while positioning myself as a staunch opponent of this White House. But to force our troops, some of whom are on their fourth or fifth rotations, to fight this battle from the farthest reaches of Secretary Rumsfeld’s hindquarters…well, it’s just un-American.”

Boarding Air Force One tonight, President Bush was asked if he agreed with Gen. Pace’s new Iraq strategy. Mr. Bush replied, “Pete Pace is a soldier’s soldier. And he’s got that name – Peter Pace. Sounds like a comic book hero. You know, the civilian name before he puts on his, uh, cape or whatever and uses his superpowers to fight the bad guys. It don’t get any more American than that.” Chuckling, Bush added, “Besides, it sounds like I may have influenced General Pace’s initiative somewhat. But don’t tell him I said that.”

Op-Ed Column: Gen. Peter Pace Fails Troops, Hails Rumsfeld

On the same day the U.S. military admitted its failure to quell violence in Baghdad, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was busy praising his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The timing of this administration (think terror alerts) is impeccable. But even more curious was the language Gen. Pace employed in extolling Rumsfeld's virtues, particularly the statement: "He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country."

Is this part of Rumsfeld's "adapting to change"? He's never accepted responsibility for his actions; he's certainly not about to start now. And though religiosity never seemed to be at the forefront of his nature, the guy has simply run out of people and things to pin his record on. He's living off the fumes of "unknown knowns," "goodness gracious" hand wringing and a president's mulish inability to admit error.

Maybe the only thing left for him to do, the only one left for him to blame, is God. Which is ironic considering that's who Rumsfeld seems to think he is. Maybe he's positioning himself to claim it was God that led him to insufficiently supply our troops with body armor, that forced his hand not to plan an exit strategy, or for the insurgency or roadside bombs or sectarian violence or the genocidal loss of life or the billions of dollars in spending or the failure to create anything remotely close to a democracy in Iraq. (Just as during Saddam’s reign, new reports confirm that the current Iraqi government has outlawed any criticism of its leaders; it has, in fact, written this into its new constitution. Journalists are summarily being jailed, beaten, tortured and murdered for reporting the truth or expressing an opinion that runs counter to the puppet government set up by this White House...[cough, cough]...er, uh, I mean elected by the Iraqi people.)

Do we need any further proof that Gen. Peter Pace's pack of pickled opinions on the war’s progress cannot be trusted? His creepily fascistic praise of his boss is reminiscent of the kind of idolatry lavished on Hitler by his generals, who, similarly, were motivated by two overarching factors: their will to promote a unified vision and their individual desires to do whatever necessary to remain in good graces with their superiors.

Gen. Pace further gushed about Mr. Rumsfeld as if he were some ideal man (an Uberman, if you will) to which we should all aspire - a leader for whom statues should be sculpted, triumphant histories penned, songs sung.

Rumsfeld is "a man whose patriotism focus, energy, drive, is exceeded by no one else I know ... quite simply, he works harder than anybody else in our building," Pace said at a ceremony at the Southern Command (Southcom) in Miami.

Compare Gen. Pace's blind faith in Rumsfeld with these words from Hitler's most steadfast henchman, Heinrich Himmler:

"Unconditional and highest freedom of will," Himmler instructed his SS, "comes from obedience, from service to our Weltanschauung (world view), obedience which is prepared to render each and every sacrifice to pride, to external honor and to all which is dear to us personally, obedience which never falters but unconditionally follows every order which comes from the Führer or legally from superiors..."

I'm not saying Pace and Rumsfeld are Nazis. Though I don't doubt their will to inflict mass death and destruction without the least bit of remorse or self-reflection. And that includes the death, disfigurement and derangement of our own forces as well.

When our top military commander will say anything to protect his boss, all those people so quick to scream, "Support our troops!" - including those in the mainstream media - should put their money where their mouth is and demand a swift change in power. A military commander wholly beholden to his civilian leadership in the Pentagon, and not to his troops on the ground, puts the lives of our enlisted men and women in ever more jeopardy.

Just ask Vietnam vets who served under General Westmoreland.

Story of the Day: O'Donnell Does Karl Rove's Dirty Work

MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell should get it over with and join Fox News.

Speaking with Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) today, the steely-eyed anchor championed not one, but two Karl Rove talking points. O'Donnell's questions sound identical to those of White House bobbleheads Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.

O'DONNELL: We now have Karl Rove indicating that he is confident of a Republican victory in November, and let me show you what he told The Washington Times and what the theme is. They say that "it is useful to remind Democrats of what they said and what they do." We have this in a full screen, quote, "You have 90 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist surveillance program. Nearly three-quarters of Senate Democrats and 80 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist interrogation. Something is fundamentally flawed," says Karl Rove. Let me ask you about that, congresswoman: This White House makes the point that Democrats are weak when it comes on defense. When he cites those statistics, it helps them make a compelling argument, does it not?

...

O'DONNELL: Let me put you on record here, because we see Bill Clinton talking about the politics of common good and the need for that to take place. You say the Democrats have a positive agenda. Can you promise, then, that when Democrats, if they re-take the House of Representatives and the Senate, will not issue tens or hundreds of subpoenas to the White House when it comes to Katrina, Iraq, and a number of issues and essentially make the president's final two years in office a living hell, if you will, and mean that nothing gets done in Washington?

First of all, when is someone in the mainstream media going to mention, with all the polls showing a Democratic landslide, the most likely reason why Karl Rove is "indicating that he is confident of a Republican victory in November"? It's as if the mountain of evidence on the ease of manipulating electronic voting machines and the multitude of recorded incidents of "malfunction" have yet to reach their ears.

In reference to Rove citing that the majority of Democrats voted against the terrorist surveillance program and the terrorist interrogation bill, O'Donnell seems oblivious to the irony of her question: "This White House makes the point that Democrats are weak when it comes on defense. When he cites those statistics, it helps them make a compelling argument, does it not?" In reality, it only "makes a compelling argument" when hacks like O'Donnell take a Rove talking point, ignore its obfuscating underpinnings and hurl it at Democrats like well-trained lapdogs.

Maybe O'Donnell should tune in to her MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann to find out why so many Democrats were in opposition. Spying on Americans without a warrant. Suspending habeas corpus. The right to torture and disappear foreign detainees and U.S. citizens alike. All under the sole discretion of the executive branch. The majority of Democrats didn't vote for these two items because they are patently unconstitutional and anti-American. They are, simply put, what our founding fathers feared most.

But, if not this, what would O'Donnell ask Congresswoman Sanchez? She might have to come up with an unbiased, substantive question that informs her viewers rather than pushing Republican Party pap.

As to her second Rove talking point, in which she furthers the received notion that Americans are more concerned about potential investigations slowing down Washington than they are about finding out what exactly their leaders have done in their name, O'Donnell once more does the bidding for this White House. To frame a possible Democratic-led investigation into wrongdoings of this undeniably criminal administration as evidence of the opposition party's lack of a "positive agenda" is an obscenity. It's expected of Karl Rove. That's what he does and who he is. But Nora O'Donnell lending credence to this kind of Orwellian "freedom=slavery" logic is journalism at its worst. Compounding the irresponsibility of this question is that polls have revealed just the opposite; the majority of Americans do, in fact, yearn for these investigations.

And is it possible for her wording to be any more insensitive than when she describes the consequences of such investigations as to "essentially make the president's final two years in office a living hell"? Maybe O'Donnell should ask the Iraqi people if they're concerned about that. Or our soldiers. Or detainees held without charges and subjected to torture. Or our fellow citizens left to fend for themselves when Katrina hit.

Surely, they know as well as anyone about "a living hell."

O'Donnell Asked Congresswoman to Go "On the Record"
By Ryan Chiachiere
Media Matters

Op-Ed Column: Americans Are Getting Polled

It is often not the questions and responses that shed the most light on poll results, but what information the mainstream media decides to disseminate and what it chooses to downplay or ignore.

According to Monday’s CNN poll, 61% of Americans now disapprove of George W. Bush’s overall performance as president, with just 36% in support. Other findings in the poll include: 64% disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq, 70% of women and 58% of men oppose the war, and 60% of Americans think the North Korea situation can be resolved solely through economic and diplomatic means.

All three major networks, however, failed to make this poll the focus of a news story Monday night. Oddly, CBS Evening News ran a report on a recent Gallup/USA Today poll in which 42% of Americans believe the Bush administration “has deliberately” manipulated gas prices to influence the upcoming elections. While this certainly seems plausible and worthy of investigation, its scale pales in comparison to the majority of Americans overwhelmingly rejecting Bush’s handling of his job, his war and his foreign policy agenda. Additionally, as far as newsworthiness goes, the Gallup/USA Today findings come from a “recent” poll; the CNN poll broke during the day’s news cycle.

Moreover, even though the CBS story brought up a valid question, the reporter’s execution reduced it to a puff piece. And a sloppy one at that. Just one expert directly addresses whether or not the administration is behind the falling gas prices. Not surprisingly, he (Andy LaPerriere, an analyst from a company called the ISI Group) thinks, “It’s preposterous,” adding, “There’s virtually nothing the president can do to impact oil prices and gas prices.” LaPerriere’s opinion, especially given the arc of the story - in which, first, the question is framed as a “conspiracy theory” and then regular Joes give their two unprofessional cents – is no doubt intended to carry the most weight with viewers. (Never mind that a member of the financial community is less likely to admit a Republican president is involved in price fixing.)

If anything, the result of this report probably convinced more Americans to disbelieve these “conspiracy theories.” Consequently, coverage of this damning poll turns out to be a defense against, and a discrediting of, such beliefs.

That’s the recent poll CBS opted to tell us about. 

Even more telling, though, was a Raw Story piece from the same day citing another recent poll, one which found that the majority of Americans believe the Bush administration is hiding something about 9/11. Initially, I wondered why no one had heard of this poll. Then I realized we had. Sort of.

This New York Times/CBS News poll (yes, you really can’t make this up) was a top story on all the networks and widely reported in the press. Ah, but which part? Findings pertinent to how the Mark Foley sex scandal was impacting the Republican Party’s image. The number of Americans who believe Bush is hiding something about 9/11, however, never made it to the air and was buried by the national press.

The Times piece on the October 9th poll reveals the depths to which this story was smothered. Serial journalism offender Adam Nagourney banished American opinions on Bush’s honesty regarding 9/11 to the end of the article, buried in paragraph thirteen. Worse still, while Nagourney drew conclusions about the rest of the poll’s results and added related quotes from average Americans, the Bush/9-11 numbers were inconspicuously dropped in like a radioactive non-sequitur; no specific correlating explanation or public comments preceded or followed their insertion. Nothing was mentioned to substantiate the undeniable importance of this finding.

Consider this astounding number from the poll: Only 16% of Americans believe the Bush administration is telling the truth about what it knew before 9/11.

Yes, a mere 16% of U.S. citizens still buy this administration’s 9/11 story. A dramatically low percentage, especially when you factor in that roughly half of Bush’s own base – the ones who are apparently willing to follow him off any cliff with our democracy in tow – even thinks he's not telling the truth about that day in September.

That’s the finding of a recent poll CBS opted not tell us about.

The fact of the matter is, Bush now holds the official title as the most unpopular president in our nation’s history, a man who is willfully dismantling our Constitution, prosecuting a war based on false pretenses that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, flagrantly transgressing domestic and international law, burning our diplomatic bridges the world-over, driving an unprecedented new arms race and contributing to global warming on an alarmingly irreversible scale that may very well change the world as we know it before any madman’s finger ever sets off a nuclear weapon.

The number of Americans who still believe the story that was used to justify this reckless agenda has now dwindled to an ever slim minority. Ironically, our mainstream media often refers to such a small group of citizens as "the fringe."

In a country hanging on to its democracy by a thread, what on earth could be more newsworthy?

Story of the Day: California Lets Voters Opt for Paper Ballots

How irresponsible is our mainstream media's virtual non-coverage of our broken election system?

Consider this: Brad Friedman, a nationally recognized voting reform advocate, reported on his blog today that California's Secretary of State has officially given all state citizens the option of voting on paper ballots instead of electronic machines during the upcoming elections. Such emergency legislation certainly underscores the dire state of our electronic voting machines, which have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be easily hackable and vulnerable to widespread manipulation.

Yet this story was invisible in the day's national news. The most widely populated state in our country, in essence, declares that electronic voting machines are unreliable, but most Americans won't be privy to this information. Once again, the integrity of your vote, your most elemental right in a democracy, is of little importance to our mainstream media. While sporadic stories occasionally pop up, national news outlets have long addressed the issue in a similar manner to how members of the White House press corps might ask a pointed question but fail to counter with a follow-up. The debate over the legitimacy of electronic voting machines is usually raised in a lone story, before dropping right back down the memory hole, until, as is always the case, another election cycle draws near. Thus, past the point of correcting the situation.

The effect of such news so late in the game, of course, dims the hope of a populace already skeptical its vote will count, which, in turn, tends to curb the turnout rate.

Unfortunately, this sensible legislation out of California is an anomaly nationwide. Karl Rove's October surprise? My money's still on the voting machines. It's what would happen after another stolen election that scares me. Some heavy lifting may then be required of this government to further their fascistic vision.

But why would they break a sweat before the election, when they can steal it again with a few strokes of a keyboard?

California Sec. of State Declares All States Voters May Opt to Vote on a Paper Ballot in Mid-Term Election!
By Brad Friedman
The Brad Blog

Armies of Compassion: Highlights of Future PDB

Story of the Day: DHS Admits Another Innocent Man Still in Custody

Upon the transfer back to Canada this summer of Algerian-born Benemar "Ben" Benatta, an innocent man who'd been swept up in the post-9/11 U.S. dragnet, the Department of Homeland Security said he was the last of such detainees being held.

Cue the buzzer.

From today's AP article:

In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.

But he has been in custody for five years.

His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Excuse me if I don't take DHS at its word. Why is there reason to believe that Mr. Partovi isn't the last man? Because we have no evidence to believe otherwise.

There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.

Human rights groups tried to track the detainees; members of Congress denounced the arrests. They all believed that all of those who had been arrested had been deported, released or processed through the criminal justice system.

But this is comforting.

"Certainly it's not our goal as an agency to keep anyone detained indefinitely," said DHS spokesman Dean Boyd. Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran.

Key words: "goal" and "indefinitely." It may not be Mr. Boyd's goal, but it "certainly" is the result. Does anyone in this despicable administration ever account for their actions?

Just what did go down during the post 9/11 sweeps?

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks — before it was even clear if they were over — the FBI was ordered to identify the terrorists who had managed to slip so smoothly into American society and to catch anyone who might have been working with them. The FBI operation was called PENTTBOM; it was swift and fierce, and the stakes couldn't have been higher.

When in doubt, the orders came, arrest now and ask questions later. To make this easier, law enforcement officials were authorized to use immigration charges as needed. The risk of allowing terrorists to slip away just because there wasn't ample evidence to hold them on terror charges could not be tolerated. And thus hundreds of individuals who were not terrorists, nor associated with terrorists, were temporarily taken into city, county and federal custody.

They were caught in their bedrooms while they slept, pulled from the restaurant kitchens where they worked, stopped at the border, even federal offices where they had gone to seek help. In the end, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's call for "aggressive detentions" in the unprecedented sweeps netted more than 1,200 individuals in less than two months.

Welcome to America in the aftermath of the attacks. Here's what happens when the Constitution is disregarded:

The initial reaction to the sweeps was confusion. Members of Congress, leading civil rights organizations, Arab and Muslim activists, even the Justice Department's internal watchdogs, didn't know how to react.

"After 9/11, everyone was caught off guard. There was so much secrecy surrounding the government's policies that it took a number of months before the public and civil-liberties groups began unraveling what the government was doing," said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.

Then came demands, from Congress, from the Justice Department's Inspector General, from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch and from Arab and Muslim activists, that these individuals must be accounted for.

To date that hasn't occurred.

Five years later. Were editors, as in other cases (such as The New York Times and the NSA spying scandal), suppressing this story under pretenses of national security concerns? And, if so, why wait so long to both expose this fascist practice and pursue it until the facts were exposed? How could they be so lax?

As the years passed, said the ACLU's Gelernt, public concern faded.

"Initially there was a lot of attention on the 1,200 people, but we're still not sure exactly what happened to all of them," said the ACLU's [Lee] Gelernt.

Undoubtedly, the mainstream media's amnesia on this issue more than enabled the amnesia of the American public, making it possible that we still don't have the answers half a decade later.

This is what we do know (if we're to believe what little we're being told):

762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism. Partovi was one of these 762. Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law.

Unlike Partovi, almost everyone was either deported or released within a few months.

Yet, here's the most chilling part:

There were still at least 438 other individuals who were not accounted for. Most of those individuals, said Justice Department officials, were released within days. But at least 93 were charged with federal crimes and processed through the courts, and an unknown number were deemed material witnesses.

Meanwhile, Partovi also says he's been abused. Sadly, par for the course for Bush's War on Terror. At this point, most people would be surprised if a detainee made his way through this system without such treatment.

The staff at the jail where he was first held "poured hot coffee on my body, they also poured cold ice water on my body," he wrote in one, claiming that staffers also cuffed his hands and feet, which caused "my ankle and lower extremities to swell abnormally."

"It is my firm belief that I am constantly subjected to physical abuse (because) of my ethnicity, I am Iranian of Persian birth," he wrote in another, filed this summer. In that lawsuit he claimed that immigration officers forced him to kneel while handcuffed, and then kicked and punched his stomach and kidneys.

So what, if anything, has been done to prevent a similar unlawful sweep following another terrorist attack on U.S. soil?

In June 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general, an in-house auditor, found widespread abuses in the way immigration laws were used to hold people suspected of terrorism in the months following 9/11. The inspector general made 21 recommendations aimed at protecting individuals' civil rights. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.

The last recommendation calls for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to formalize policies, responsibilities, and procedures for managing a national emergency that involves alien detainees. After the inspector general's report, the Justice and Homeland Security departments agreed with the recommendation and began negotiating over language. Officials at both departments say those negotiations are still going on.

Yet formalized "policies, responsibilities, and procedures" are not laws. Not something for which government officials can be held to account in the aftermath of such an incident. Again, the machinations at work would circumvent the necessary checks and balances of a democracy.

Tim Lynch, a lawyer with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said guidelines are not enough.

"I don't think the guidelines will mean very much in an emergency if they don't have the binding force of law," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised if those guidelines aren't followed if there's another massive attack."

Brace yourself.

1 Man Still Locked Up From 9/11 Sweeps
By Martha Mendoza
The Associated Press

The Wounded-Courier: Our Latest Poll on What Americans Are Thinking

The majority of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. A new Wounded-Courier poll uncovered other surprising beliefs held by U.S. citizens.

Here are the results:

• If an insurgency lasts for more than four hours, you should call your doctor: 61%

• Abraham Lincoln designed the Lincoln Town Car, the first modern automobile: 52%

• God does not like France: 48%

• ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock created the Bill of Rights in 1973: 34%

• Grande Mocha is located between Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe: 54%

• Pat Buchanan was our 15th president: 76%

• Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fought in the Revolutionary War during the Summer of Love: 37%

• Peanut brittle is made by elves: 84%

• Al Gore invented global warming and bears the mark of the devil between his shoulder blades: 29%

• “Congress” comes from the words “con” and “regress”: 57%

• As a child, Benjamin Franklin lied about chopping down a cherry tree to his mother, Margaret Thatcher, the first queen of England: 36%

• President Bush’s proposed Missile Defense System is also known as “The Cone of Silence”: 41%

• A caucus is like a circus of caulk, but more somber: 49%

• The line “Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s kick ass light” appears in our national anthem: 39%

• Massachusetts is in New Jersey: 28%

(This Wounded-Courier poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.)

Op-Ed Column: Wake Up and Smell the Genocide, America

One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.
- Joseph Stalin

Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the Iraq invasion, famously said at the beginning of the war, "We don't do body counts." Fortunately, others do.

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

By the time you read this, you may have already heard of the number. No matter. I ask you to take another moment to let this sink in: 655,000 human lives. That's 2.5% of the Iraqi population. In broader context, 2.5% of the U.S. population would equal 7.5 million people. Since the war started, this breaks down to 500 violent deaths every day. The loss of life is simply staggering. The additional number of wounded and grieving family and friends unimaginable.

All for a lie. Is this not the very definition of a war crime?

Yet these horrific numbers compelled just one member of the White House press corps on Wednesday to pose a question about this news. One question for a president who now has blood on his hands that rivals genocidal proportions. One question met with nothing but a curt denial, further mendacity and Rumsfeldian logic.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN: Thank you, Mr. President. Back on Iraq. A group of American and Iraqi health officials today released a report saying that 665,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war. That figure is 20 times the figure that you cited in December, at 30,000. Do you care to amend or update your figure, and do you consider this a credible report?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I don't consider it a credible report. Neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me and it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am amazed that this society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- that there's a level of violence that they tolerate.

This must go down as one of his most asinine and insensitive statements to date. Yes, they "tolerate" the violence. Over half a million dead. How nice of them to tolerate their own slaughter. Though, of course, like any human beings would, they're just trying to stay alive.

In reality, 890,000 Iraqis have moved to Jordan, Iran and Syria since Hussein's fall and more than 300,000 have fled to other parts of Iraq to escape the violence. Additionally, 71 percent of Iraqis want U.S. forces to leave Iraq within a year, saying "they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq."

Moreover, the methodology was not "pretty well discredited" by any reputable source. His own inner circle of lapdogs may deny these figures. General Casey. Puppet government officials in Iraq. White House lackeys and wingnut minions. But we shouldn't fool ourselves. All joking aside about Bush's I.Q., his ignorance of these facts is willful. They don't aid his agenda, so he labels them false, and damn those who suffer the repercussions of his disinformation - Iraqi civilians, our troops, doesn't matter to him. He believes he is the sole arbiter of truth. And, in some respects, after Congress gave him a blank check to interpret our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions as he chooses, he does own truth.

That's what happens in a fascist society. And that's what we are quickly becoming.

In her follow-up, Malveaux weakly attempts to corner Bush on his previous estimate, before the matter vanishes from the press conference:

MALVEAUX: -- the 30,000, Mr. President? Do you stand by your figure, 30,000?

BUSH: You know, I stand by the figure. A lot of innocent people have lost their life -- 600,000, or whatever they guessed at, is just -- it's not credible. Thank you.

It is unconscionable that Bush would "stand by" his estimate in light of these new numbers. Even if they were off by half (for which there's no reason to believe), that's still more than ten times the number of dead than what Bush is claiming. And "600,000, or whatever they guessed at" is a gross mischaracterization. No one "guessed" at anything. They followed a proven scientific method regularly used to calculate the dead during genocide and natural disasters. They collected death certificates in the majority of cases. They were thorough and honest. But they arrived at answers untenable to his despotic liking.

So while these ghastly numbers are sure to fade from the mainstream media's radar as suddenly as they appeared - incidentally, should we care any less about 30,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 civilians who died for a lie - remember these forgotten words our president uttered on that aircraft carrier, standing before a triumphant "Mission Accomplished" banner:

In the images of fallen statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, Allied Forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today, we have the great power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

If our president is a religious man, if, in his case, he does actually believe in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior (though, as we all know, there's nothing remotely Christlike in Bush's nature), the difficulty of his attempt to make amends with his maker should parallel few in human history.