Ernest Goes to Death Camp

We haven't heard much about the planned "death chamber" at Guantanamo Bay since it was first mentioned in late May -- at least not in the U.S. So thank God the British press, as usual, keeps picking away at this combination kangaroo-court/execution-room.

 

Oh, right, I forgot -- we're not supposed to worry that the U.S. is going to subject any or all of the 680 detainees to secret military tribunals without benefit of free legal counsel, or start exterminating them, Nazi-style, like so many rats in a cage; reports the BBC: "...defence officials stress that everything remains on the drawing board until orders are issued by the president."

 

Right. And how much sleep do you think Dubya is going to lose over issuing a death sentence?  This is the guy who led Texas to the number-one spot in state executions; i.e.:

 

Under then-Governor George W. Bush, Texas ranked first in executions and dead last in social services. Bush opposed legislation banning the execution of people with IQs under 65 and legislation providing funding for the basic legal defense of indigent people. Instead Bush signed off on 152 executions, in what has been described as an "assembly-line" death penalty process. In a 1998 report, Amnesty International stated that "at every step in the death penalty process in Texas, a litany of grossly inadequate legal procedures fail to meet recognized minimum international standards for the protection of human rights."

 

Many of these inmates had attorneys that were clearly incompetent, even falling asleep during the trial. According to the Washington Post, "With few public defender offices in Texas, most indigent defendants must rely on court-appointed lawyers. Interviews with lawyers and other experts, as well as a review of 16 Texas death penalty cases, revealed instances in which lawyers in capital trials slept though key testimony, failed to file crucial legal papers correctly or on time, or had been cited for professional misconduct repeatedly in their careers."

 

Even when presented with evidence of possible innocence, George W. Bush refused to show mercy to any of the 152 dead. In fact, Bush has said that he doesn't need to study the evidence, that he trusts the mechanizations of the system, a system that has proven to be seriously flawed.

 

Texas Justice

Bush Body Count

 

"Refused to show mercy"? That's a very generous phrase. This is the "compassionate conservative" who, when asked during an interview with Talk Magazine when condemned inmate Karla Faye Tucker might say to him, "showed his true evil stripes when he pursed his lips and in a high-pitched voice mocked Tucker, saying, "'Oh, please don't kill me.'"

 

This is the ex-Texas governor whose "own people said he never spent more than 15 minutes deliberating over whether to sign the order to kill."

 

This is The Texecutioner who refused to review the appeals of prisoners who were mentally ill, retarded, battered wives, convicted as minors, and represented by incompetent legal counsel -- as well as Canadian and Mexican nationals executed without their home countries' knowledge.

 

This is the leader of the free world who, in his 2003 State of the Union address, stated -- with the biggest smirk on his self-satisfied mug you have ever seen: "All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."  (Gee, you think maybe he was alluding coyly to the Afghan prisoners beaten to death during the course of "generally accepted as interrogation techniques" at the U.S. military base in Bagram?)

 

This is the born-again Christian who's failed to convince even other born-again Christians that he has any clue about emulating his "favorite political philosopher," Jesus. Good God (and I mean that literally), 120 members of his own church (including a couple of bishops) took out "a magazine ad asking President George W. Bush to repent.... of his policies that were 'incompatible' with Christian teaching. ... 'It is our judgment that some policies advanced by your administration give evidence of the spiritual forces of wickedness that exist in our society today,' the ad read."

 

This is the Texas teenager who used to blow up frogs with firecrackers and "round up [his] younger brothers and say, 'O.K., you little wieners, line up,'" and then "shoot them in the back with his air gun."

 

You think Georgie's going to waste any time green-lighting a death camp for "evildoers"?

 

Give me a break.  Those Afghans -- and every other prisoner representing 41 other countries being held in Gitmo-limbo -- are as good as dead, if George wants them to be.

 

And there's never been a shred of evidence to suggest he doesn't.

 

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Comments

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Posted Wed, 11 Jun 2003 08:37:10 GMT

Christopher Key:

 

OK, the good news is that if criminals with IQs of less than 65 can be executed, Bush better update his last will and testament.

 

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Posted Wed, 11 Jun 2003 08:43:19 GMT

LGBTBinat:

 

I think when he proceeded to portray the condemned inmate, Karla Faye Tucker with these words "Oh, please don't kill me" that the word "kill" is the operative word.  That man knows he is a murderer, and any state governor, or country official that supports the death penalty is no better.

 

No, the boy wonder* certainly won't be losing any sleep.  DT in all honesty I think if that bastard had the chance to condem the homosexual community to death, he would do that as well.

 

I feel so sorry for the prisoners (not of war) stuck in gitmo, they lost their life the moment they were caught.

 

Bush* is a sick man, and the sooner he is out of the top job, the better off the world will be.

 

Excellent post as always, DT.

 

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Posted 9:59:02 PM   Send comment

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Comments?

I love getting comments from you -- but as you read this, you may find the Comments link at the bottom of each post missing.  Because the comments feature of Radio Userland lacks the most basic function of simply deleting unwanted comments (ugh, how did they forget something so basic?!), I've been using Squawkbox so you can leave comments -- which is fine, except that Squawkbox has been experiencing a lot more downtime than I find tolerable.

 

If anybody's got a better solution to third-party comments-hosting (for free, mind you -- thanks to this tanked economy, I'm among the great mass of lay-off casulaties, and poor as the proverbial churchmouse), please let me know.  (I wanted very much to use YACCS, but they're no longer accepting new accounts.  Bloody, buggery...  grrr.)

 

In the meantime, if you'd like to leave a comment, just send it to me via Radio's mail function (you can also click on the little yellow envelope on the righthand side of this page).

 

In fact, I may dump conventional commenting altogether, and ask you to simply e-mail all your comments from now on (which, actually, is a lot quicker for you than waiting for the usual comment pop-up box to appear), and just publish them inline, beneath the corresponding blog entry.

 

Thanks for bearing with me as I try to force this bloody blog to do what I want -- and for any suggestions for a free, painless third-party comments host.

 

Posted 4:23:24 PM   Send comment

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Little Pox on the Prairie

Wisconsin Family May Have Monkeypox: Hope you're not eating when you read the third paragraph.

 

Posted 4:20:26 PM   Send comment

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Israel Tries to Assassinate Hamas Leader

The non-news is that our very best-best-bestest friend in the Middle East (that is, Israel) tried to assassinate Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a head honcho (and the most public member) of the Palestinian militant group Hamas today in a helicopter-to-ground attack, but only succeeded in wounding him -- and killing three teenagers in the street, and injuring 30 onlookers.

 

Reports The Guardian: "Israeli helicopter gunships swooped low over Gaza City this morning, firing up to seven rockets at a jeep carrying Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, the second most senior figure in Hamas. Mr Rantissi leapt out of the vehicle and survived the attack, suffering wounds to his legs. A female passer-by and a bodyguard were killed, doctors said. Hours later, Israeli helicopters launched a second attack on suspected militants in Gaza, killing three members of one family and wounding another 32 people. Hospital officials described the one woman and two men who were killed as civilians. The Israeli army said that it launched the second attack, on Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp, after Palestinian militants fired five rockets into Israel, injuring at least one person in the nearby town of Sderot."

 

The reason this is non-news is that it's pretty much business-as-usual over there -- although a helicopter attack is a tad more Hollywood-spectacular than the usual covert operations.

 

The real news, IMNSHO, is that Israel is actually copping to the crime! Of course, I expect that's just because it was such a big deal (watch the TV news tonight for some pretty dramatic footage), there was no way to squirm out of it.  And I also suspect that somebody at our very own White House, seeing that there was no way for Israel to shirk responsibility, placed a call to Scary Ariel Sharon and ordered him to 'fess up.

 

Am I getting ahead of anybody here?  Okay, let me back up...

 

First, I'm going to assume that anyone with the patience, determination, and open-mindedness to be as interested as I am in the macchinations of world affairs (that means you, dear reader) is not the reactionary sort who automatically screams, "anti-Semitism!" at the first sign of any criticism of the government of Israel (nor "anti-Americanism!" at the first sign of any crititicism of the government of the United States).

 

That means you understand that there is a difference between a government and its people.  I'm going to repeat that, and re-clarify it, until you are sick to death of hearing it, as I always do when discussing the unbelievably sensitive topic of Israel, because it has been positively hammered into the American psyche to brand any critic of Israel an anti-Semite; i.e., anti-Jewish.

 

In my case -- and in the case of anyone smart enough to see the difference between a people and the state in which they live -- that is plainly wrong.  You can detest the policies of a government without detesting its people.

 

For comparison: Right-wingers refuse to understand this simple concept; that is obvious in their cries of "anti-Americanism!" at anyone who dares to criticize George W. Bush or his policies. (What the right-wingers fail to see, as always, is their own glaring hypocrisy:  Somehow, it wasn't -- and still isn't -- un- or anti-American at all for them to criticize Bill Clinton -- which they continue to do, at every opportunity.)

 

So I expect that the differentiation between the Sharon government and Jews in general will be lost on brainwashed reactionaries.  But I will persist in reiterating that I am not an anti-Semite (I'll spare you my "Some of my best friends are Jewish" speech -- even though it's a true statement), but I am appalled by the free pass the United States gives -- and has always given -- to Israel in its actions against the people of Palestine (can you say Qibya?), and worse, the complicity of the American press.

 

No, nothing excuses Palestinians who blow themselves up in the streets of Jerusalem with the intention of taking as many Israelis with them as possible -- and I am fully aware that this latest attack by Israel is seen as retaliation for the shooting deaths of four Israeli soldiers by Palestinian gunmen two days ago -- but, as your mamma taught you, two wrongs don't make a right, either.

 

That said...

 

I suspect the White House gave Israel the order to 'fess up and come clean about the attempted assassination of Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi because the incident was just too big a spectacle to cover up.

 

Now, why in the world would I think that the U.S. might have anything at all to do with this admitted act of terrorism?  I'll let Noam Chomsky explain it, as he can do it faster, more succinctly, and with greater authority than I'll ever have:

 

When I refer to Israel, I mean the United States and Israel, because everything that Israel does is done up to the limits that the United States supports and authorizes. (May 25, 2002)

 

Israel is like an offshore U.S. military base at this point. And the actions that it takes are actions that the U.S. authorizes or encourages. If they go one millimeter beyond what the United States wants, a quiet voice from Washington says, "That's it," and they quit. We just saw it again, a couple of days ago, when that soft voice came from Washington and said, Pull out the tanks and armed forces from the Palestinian cities, because it is screwing up Dick Cheney's mission. Instantly they withdrew. Because that is the way it works...

 

It has happened over and over. So when people talk about Israeli atrocities or Turkish atrocities, they should be saying U.S. atrocties, because that is where it is coming from. The same in Colombia.

 

So the shift on Palestine has been that the United States asked Israel to terminate the worst atrocities during the period of Cheney's visit because it was messing up his mission. (March 19, 2002)

 

And Israel has done just that again -- screwed up the BushCo plan (a.k.a., the catchily-named "Roadmap to Peace") -- forcing Dubya to scold Israel, again, albeit gently.

 

Israel, in fact, has been pissing off our dear Dubya mightily for a while now, and Dubs has been doing a lot of scolding lately.

 

Yeah, well, big freakin' deal; has Dubs actually succeeded in reining in "Sharon Rotzeach"?  What good do strong words do if they're not backed by action?

 

Am I suggesting (gasp!) that we take action against Israel?  Yes, I am -- but not of the military variety; we've participated in more than enough bloodletting in the Middle East, thank you very much (and besides, I'm a nonviolent peacenik, remember?).

 

What I am suggesting -- strongly -- is that we're long overdue for a frank, open discussion of economic sanctions, on both Israel and Palestine.  After all, the United States is obliged to impose sanctions on countries that violate international law -- and if the U.S. ever complied with what it was supposed to do, we would have sanctioned Israel a long time ago for its nuclear weaponry (which we ignore, because we're not supposed to know about it, or talk about it).

 

But that's never going to happen. I can almost promise you that.

 

I hope I'll be forced to eat my words someday.

 

 

Related articles to chew on:

 

Sharon or Arafat: Which Is the Sponsor of Terror?

Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch

 

Sharon's Irony

Humanity on Hold

 

Bush's optimism over Middle East peace

Scotsman, June 5, 2003

 

Jewish settlers vow to defend outposts

Toronto Star, June 10, 2003

 

Israelis mocked as empty settlements destroyed

Scotsman, June 10, 2003

 

 

Other takes on today's dual attacks:

 

Annan voices 'serious concern' over attempted extra-judicial killing by Israel

U.N. News Service, June 10, 2003

 

Israeli Forces Strike in Gaza

New York Times, June 10, 2003

 

Israel launches fresh Gaza strike

BBC News, June 10, 2003

 

Posted 3:57:31 PM   Send comment

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Confirmed: Ignorance = War Support

This just says it all.

 

Juxtaposed side-by-side on the June 4th page of the PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes) site are these two headlines:

 

Strong Majority Continues to Approve of War With Iraq

But Only About Half Support Policy, Not Just President;

Only Half Confident Administration Was Not Being Misleading

 

Many Americans Unaware WMD Have Not Been Found

Four in Ten Overall

Majority of Those Who Favored the War and

Republicans Who Follow International Affairs Very Closely

 

Does that just sum it all up, or what?

 

Gee, I suddenly feel the need to swallow about half a bottle of Maalox.

 

Posted 11:57:06 AM   Send comment

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Another Dead Soldier

Where I come from, after draining a bottle of beer, or finishing a bottle of wine, it's common to plunk the empty bottle on the table and announce to one's drinking partner(s), "Another dead soldier!"

 

I think I now have a much better understanding of the meaning of that phrase: The bottle, now empty, is worthless -- and needs to be replaced immediately by a fresh one, if one expects to stay drunk:

 

U.S. Soldier Shot and Killed in Iraq, 8th to Die in 14 Days. Unknown gunmen shot and killed an American soldier at a checkpoint in Western Iraq today, continuing a series of attacks that have killed eight American soldiers in 14 days. Military officials acknowledged that the casualty rate in Iraq of one soldier killed every other day on average -- has risen sharply. But they said they believed that the recent deployment of additional American soldiers to central Iraq will curb the threat. "We are not going to allow it," said Capt. John Edwards, a military spokesman in Baghdad. "We are going to decisively engage." [New York Times]

 

You've been "decisively engaging" since long before the "war" was officially launched, and what has it gotten you? An average of one dead U.S. soldier per day -- not to mention somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians and God knows how many Iraqi soldiers -- but then, "we don't do body counts," do we?

 

Oh, well, what's another dead soldier, right?

 

I'm surprised the warmongers don't choke on the sheer bitterness of whatever they're drinking.

 

Posted 11:53:48 AM   Send comment

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Donald Regan Dead

Donald Regan, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Dies. Donald Regan, a former U.S. Treasury secretary and chief of staff under former President Ronald Reagan and chief executive of Merrill Lynch & Co., died today. He was 84. Regan died of cancer at Williamsburg Community Hospital in Virginia. He became the 66th Treasury secretary in 1981 and chief of staff for Reagan in 1984. He was forced to resign from the White House in 1987 following the Iran-Contra scandal. [Bloomberg, June 10, 2003]

 

Posted 11:50:39 AM   Send comment

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How to Make an American Killing Machine

The drill instructors are proud to see that we are growing beyond their control. The Marine Corps does not want robots. The Marine Corps wants killers. The Marine Corps wants to build indestructible men, men without fear.

 

Joker, Full Metal Jacket

 

 

Why I Oppose the US 'War on Terror":

An Ex-Marine Speaks Out

 

Chris White

 

Asheville Global Report, Nov. 14-20, 2002

Copyright 2002 Asheville Global Report. Reprinted with permission.

 

The more I juxtapose logical world opinion with the Bush administration’s actions in the war on terror, I realize one overwhelming theme: hypocrisy. No one in any of the branches of government runs a physical risk to themselves by entering a war with Iraq, and we can bet that none of their family members are at risk, either. That is, until the next "terrorist" attack. I put "terrorist" in quotes because its definition is subjective, and I myself used to be in the Marine Corps, part of the most powerful "terrorist" organization on the planet: the US government. Of course, we never call our operations "terrorism" because every operation is considered legitimate to us. When found guilty by the World Court for violence in Nicaragua, we ignore the decision. Too bad the nations we hurt can’t just ignore what we do to them. When the planet condemns us for killing between 2,500-4,000 people in Panama, we’re too busy planning the next invasion of a country that can’t fight back.

 

I oppose this war as a US citizen, a veteran, and a doctoral student in history. While my military experience is what first made me skeptical about our government’s motives in the developing world, it wasn’t until I went to college and began reading hundreds of books and thousands of articles that I was able to truly grasp the profundity of our leadership’s contempt for the freedoms they claim to protect. As a rule, we have worked hard to prevent the rise of democracy in the developing world, all the while claiming legitimacy as "the world’s police force" because of our so-called "democratic" values. The hypocrisy is astounding. When one investigates our complicity in death squads, torture, massacres, rape, and mass destruction, one realizes that freedom often threatens the current power structure in this country.

 

I used to consider those incidents as anomalistic in comparison to the "protection" we offered the planet at seemingly no charge. But then I joined the Marines, and I realized why I had believed in the government -- they were experts in manipulation. Barely out of high school, the Corps broke us down and built us up in order to shape us into machines, willing to defend the ideals of the power elites in Washington and corporate America. Just look at the companies, which are funding political campaigns, and benefiting from war: weapons producers, technologies, food, clothing, munitions, oil, pharmaceuticals, etc…

 

US interventions since WWII have not been done in the name of the world’s people (although that is always the claim), but for the preservation of concentrated power. The fact that they have been carried out against the tenets of international law (i.e. the rights of non-intervention and self-determination), in itself deflates their validity. If the US government were held to the FBI’s official definition of terrorism ("the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives"), their list of victims since WWII alone would include:

 

Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Granada, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Zaire, Namibia, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Iran, South Africa, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Cambodia, Libya, Israel, Palestine, China, Afghanistan, Sudan, Indonesia, East Timor, Turkey, Angola, Mozambique, and Somalia.

 

In boot camp, deceit and manipulation accompany the necessity to motivate troops to murder on command. You can’t take civilians from the street, give them machine guns, and expect them to kill without question in a democratic society; therefore people must be indoctrinated to do so. This fact alone should sound off alarms in our collective American brain. If the cause of war is justified, then why do we have to be put through boot camp? If you answer that we have to be trained in killing skills, well, then why is most of boot camp not focused on combat training? Why are privates shown videos of US military massacres while playing Metallica in the background, thus causing us to scream with the joy of the killer instinct as brown bodies are obliterated? Why do privates answer every command with an enthusiastic, "kill!!" instead of, "yes, sir!!" like it is in the movies?

 

Military indoctrination could be said to prepare men to use disrespect for all living things as a means of destroying the enemy’s morale. Boot camp itself is mostly a series of chaos-surrounded tests of will and strength, meant to eliminate a human being’s ability to feel weakness, in order for military leaders to harness obedience to their orders when it’s time to kill. The topics covered in motivational songs are tools for desensitizing men who would be predisposed to respect women, so as to create an animal within him that can be activated when necessary to carry out any barbaric assignment. An example of these lyrics follows:

 

"Throw some candy in the school yard, watch the children gather round. Load a belt in your M-60, mow them little bastards down!!" and "We’re gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn, gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn!!" Could the bar be set any higher on the level of atrocities that the military wants its men to be capable of? I say "men" because these kinds of songs are generally not repeated in the presence of women. These chants are meant to motivate the troops; they enjoy it, salivate from it, and get off on it. If one repeats these hundreds of times, one eventually begins to accept them as paradigmatically valid.

 

The violation of women in war is a weapon, just as are conventional arms. The movie "Casualties of War" illustrates this clearly when actor Sean Penn holds up his rifle and says, "The army calls this a weapon, but it ain’t," then, grabbing his crotch with the other he says, "This is a weapon." The movie, based on a true story, involves a small US combat unit that kidnapped, raped, and murdered a Vietnamese woman during the war. I assert that times have not changed with respect to the mentality of sexual assault in the military. Although soldiers are given sensitivity classes that tell the men to respect civilians and especially women, another message pervades everything else one learns and trains for, which effectively obliterates all notions of respect during war. This is generally speaking, of course, but sensitivity inherently conflicts with the identity of a killer, which is what infantrymen are conditioned to be. They are trained to thrive on the blood of humans, and this is used to create a lustful sensation when conditioning for combat.

 

Wartime rape may be used by men who have convinced themselves that they must be able to do anything to a person in order to be comfortable with participating in the horrific acts that surround them. The extreme nature of war itself seems to breed the mentality that makes people surpass the limits of desired reality. War makes criminals of ordinary men, who can not easily switch off the killer within them when off the battlefield, as the training manuals espouse. This certainly does not excuse the atrocities they commit.

 

The environment of the military is pervaded by sex. When out in the Fleet Marine Force, sadistic initiation rituals are surrounded by sex and physical pain, often together. Although I never experienced this myself, initiation rituals often force men to fondle other men’s genitals, and devices such as broomsticks are used for rectal insertion. This often happens in the presence of, and with the participation of the higher ranks. The Tail hook scandal of 1991 exposed a ritual dating at least back to 1986, where women naval officers were made to walk a gauntlet of male officers that grabbed their buttocks and breasts. It certainly does not end there. In the case of Okinawa, three men planned every detail of the kidnapping, beating, and rape of a twelve-year-old girl in advance.

 

The military’s desensitization against a person’s natural inhibitions to hurt people is a way of toughening them up, or making them "hard core." Thus, it makes sense that because this is encouraged by superiors, then it should translate into destructive behavior in combat, and to a lesser extent, in peacetime. This is definitely not to say that the soldier is innocent; far from it. But if we subscribe to the concept that one is shaped largely by their environment, then we can largely blame the institutions which have created this particular proclivity within the men who commit these horrible crimes against women, while supposedly serving to defend the freedom of the world.

 

The demonization of the enemy is crucial to wartime planners, and the above examples of indoctrination are relevant to the present. Before carrying out a security exercise in Qatar, my unit went through "Muslim indoctrination" classes. The level of racism was unbelievable. Muslims were referred to as "Ahmed," "towlheads," "ragheads," and "terrorists." We were told that most Muslim males were homosexual, and that their hygiene was so primitive that we shouldn’t even shake their hands. The object was demonization through feminization and dehumanization, so as to make it easier for us to pull the trigger when ordered to. But Qatar is our ally, so imagine the language being used today in these indoctrination courses about Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

The question is, how can we claim to be intervening out of a desire to protect people that we train troops to feel contempt for?

 

The Iraqi population has suffered countless US supported atrocities over the past eleven years. Not only were between 100 and 200 thousand people killed in 1991, but the bombing has continued ever since then, and sanctions have led to the deaths of possibly 1 million people, in a nation of 17 million. Former UNSCOM execs assert that they destroyed 95-98 percent of Saddam’s weapons by 1998, and that a nuclear weapons capability is extremely unlikely due to their devastated economy. According to this morning’s New York Times, the US reasons that Saddam’s gassing of his own people and his hatred of the US are what warrant our harder stance toward Iraq in comparison to North Korea. While we pursue diplomacy with North Korea (who has admitted to having nukes), we prefer to invade Iraq, who we claim is only looking for nukes. Have we forgotten the 1994 Congressional report revealing that we supplied Saddam with biological and chemical weapons during the 1980s?

 

Although US casualties will be lower than that of Iraq, let’s not forget the danger we are placing squarely on the shoulders of US troops, who have been indoctrinated as I was.

 

Funny how the people who are least likely to go to war are the ones working the hardest to convince others to fight it for them.

 

Posted 11:30:56 AM   Send comment

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