Work Your Brain — 10/03/06

On Terror-steria

mass hysteria
n. A socially contagious frenzy of irrational behavior in a group of people as a reaction to an event.

• The Suntan Menace — The Cunning Realist writes about another incident in our friendly skies where an innocent man is assumed by other passengers to be a terrorist because of “suspicious activities” like going to the toilet when he got on the plane and having an iPod. The most damning piece of evidence was the color of his skin, which was tanned due to the vacation the Jewish father of three was returning from. Mr. Stein was physically attacked by another passenger “claiming” to be a NY police officer and put in a head lock an hour into the flight while he was minding his own business reading a book and sipping his ginger ale. He sounds terribly dangerous. He’s suing the airline for failing to protect him since the cabin crew was aware of the passenger’s obsession with him. He should sue the passenger too.
  

  As someone who travels a lot, owns gadgets, is dark-complected, and even uses the restroom, I keep waiting — with anticipation, I must admit — for some overeager vigilante/Charles Bronson-wannabe to try this crap on me.

• Please step to the white courtesy phone [for a brain] — Mac @ peskyapostrophe reports that a man missed his flight after being detained in an airport in Seattle because he was speaking a foreign language into his cell phone. Hmmmmm… That does sound suspicious. Apparently he was discussing sports, which is really suspicious. The language was Tamil, which is a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and the person who called it in was an off-duty airline personnell. The passenger indicated that in the future, he wouldn’t be speaking Tamil into his cell phone in the airport. That’s just a shame.
• The TSA sucks - hey, better detain me — Mac @ peskyapostrophe also has a post about a Wisconsin man who wrote “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat. You know, because Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration. “A TSA spokeswoman acknowledged a man was stopped, but likened the incident to cases in which people inappropriately joke about bombs.” *snort* Talk about going overboard.

On Torture

• Is The U.S. A Rogue State? — Matthew Yglesias (op-ed writer for The American Prospect) @ CBS News wrote a brilliant opinion piece about how in 2003 President George Bush gave a speech indicating that the U.S. was committed to “world-wide elimination of torture” and leading the fight by example. He said it was an inalienable human right to be free of torture. He also said, “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control….Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.” Based on that statement from Bush’s own claims, Yglesias wants to know if the United States is now a rogue state since we now legally torture. Have we now become what we set out to eliminate?
  

  Other countries, of course, practice torture in violation of international law. As has now been clear for a while, we have been in their company for some years. The latest twist, however, is that we now won’t show any shame about it. Rather than simply violating the laws to which we have agreed to adhere, we’re repudiating them, simply denying that the standard by which civilized nations operate apply to us.

  The problems here will be widespread. One of the strengths of democracies on the international scene is precisely that it’s much harder for liberal states to violate agreements. Dictatorships can say one thing and do another with ease. Democracies feature free presses, free speech, the rule of law, independent judiciaries, legislative oversight, and other measures to ensure that laws and treaties are followed. This is, to the conservative mind, a weakness. In their view, cheating is a good thing, and America’s historical difficulty in cheating constitutes a problem. They’re dead wrong. Cooperation is a good thing — the best ticket to prosperity, security, and international peace. Democracies can cooperate with other countries — and especially with other democracies — more credibly and effectively, and that’s one of the reasons the world’s democratic block is so much stronger and more prosperous than the rest of the world.

  But the rule of law is now off the table as far as Bush is concerned. What’s more, insofar as national-security policy is at issue, the United States increasingly doesn’t look like much of a democracy. As the congressional Republicans march in lockstep behind the White House’s torture agenda, they don’t even know what that agenda’s composed of. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that 90 percent of members of Congress don’t know “which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.” Which is just to say that, in practice, absolutely everything would be permitted, since the only people capable of overseeing the interrogation program haven’t done it, won’t do it, and have no intention of doing it in the future.

  Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe’s largest and most powerful rogue state — a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.

  An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy, along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings, is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with.

  Hat tip: Sean Aqui.

• How long till they come and take your favorite blogger away? — Punkass Mac @ PunkAssBlog.com expresses concern that the inclusion of the term “leftist terrorist” in the NIE report may eventually lead to serious problems for leftist bloggers once the new torture/detainee legislation passes. Pain-in-the-ass lefty bloggers can be labeled as having “leftist terrorist agendas” and disappear into some CIA black prison or Gitmo.

On Iraq

• Batiste — Gregory @ The Belgravia Dispatch wrote an excellent piece, quoting former Major General John Batiste’s testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee which presented a rather scathing review of Rumsfeld’s competence as a wartime leader. Gregory’s analysis is dead on, suggesting that the Bush-Chenney Administration is all talk but no real muscle to back it up, meaning they haven’t or can’t put the resources in to match their own rhetoric.
  

  That is to say, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika are only pretending to have the sang-froid and will and staying power and Churchillian courage to prevail in Iraq. But they are being dishonest with us. They are empty suits, presiding over a failing strategy, none of them with the energy or intellectual courage to own up and demand either that the nation sacrifice and devote adequate resources to the effort, or failing that pursue a convincing alternative strategy. Of course, it’s not all their fault, as they are bowing to some realities, one suspects. If Bush gave a speech calling for re-institution of the draft, or implemention of a war tax, or even less dramatic moves but nevertheless ones that demanded more sacrifice (sending another 50,000 troops in, with casualty rates inevitably increasing, especially if we adopted less conservative force postures in keeping with best counter-insurgency practice) one presumes the nation would turn on the war all the faster (though if such moves changed the tenor of the war for the better perhaps support would not drop as much as one might suspect, although one would need real leaders at the helm explicating the need persuasively, which we don’t). Worth noting too, Rove would allow none of it, with midterms looming in November.

  Regardless, what we have now is not quite ’stay the course’, or the comically desperate sounding ‘adapting to win’, or some such soundbite. What we are doing, really, is half-assing along as best we can without truly summoning all the national reservoirs of power (military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian) to really have a real go at prevailing, assuming one believes there is still a shot at eking out a victory, an issue where intelligent people (as the previous thread indicated) can disagree. At some point, we either step up, talk to the Iranians and Syrians so as to get more intelligent about pursuing a regional strategy, make clear and signal to Iraqis we’re there to truly prevail by sending in more forces, and otherwise get more serious (more robust force posture to truly “clear”, not via endless rounds of whack-a-mole, but with a convincing footprint and level of sustained effort through entire areas of concern simultaneously, more funds for reconstruction and infrastructure to effectively “build”, increasing American embeds operating with both Iraqi Army and even Police units so as to help develop more of an indigenuous “hold” function, and so on)–or we need to think much more about pursuing an intelligent withdrawal strategy–if perhaps we don’t think the additional effort is worth it (perhaps presiding over a confederation, but holding out the prospects of a unitary state in the future, a la Dayton, is worthy of more thought). Either way, the rough status quo, with a couple soldiers dying a day, dishonors their sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice made in vain. And our leaders are not honest enough to come clean with us about this, or if they think they are being honest with us, it is only because they are living in a deluded fantasy land where fundamentalist-style verities reign, rather than the grim realities presented by the empirical evidence around them.

  Hat tip: John Cole.

Have an opinion on these topics to share or found a post you want to add? Add your opinion or the post link to the comments section. My inquiring mind wants to know!

Tags: John Batiste, Senate Democratic Policy Committee, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Iraq, War, stay the course, adapting to win, propaganda, American soldiers, Middle East, Seth Stein, American Airlines, mass hysteria, terrorism, rogue state, The American Prospect, CBS News, torture, War Crimes Act, Geneva Convention, Congress, Seattle, Tamil, TSA, Kip Hawley, leftist terrorist agenda, NIE report, Guantanamo Bay

Recommended Reading - 08/28/06

• Moral relativity and the “war on terrorism” — Kevin @ Preemptive Karma wrote an excellent post about the double standard of the this administration and the expectations of the Right that expect Rep. Cynthia McKinney to apologize to the police officer she had an altercation with earlier this year but accepts the fact that the U.S. has imprisoned and tortured innocent people in Gitmo and elsewhere without apology or explanation and that is just fine.
  

  Apparently in the twisted world of rightwing freaks slapping someone requires an apology but busting out the teeth of a perfectly innocent Lebanese or torturing an innocent Turk, not to mention their imprisonment, is something that those particular victims ought to just suck it up over, be glad that they eventually regained their freedom and to hell with apologizing to them.

• Republicans: Making the world safe for bigots and racists — Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast writes about recent incidents in the South where black children have been segregated to the back of the school bus and a church has voted not to accept black members and she wonders what has made this sort of thing acceptable as we approach the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, “leaving tens of thousands of black New Orleans residents stranded or dying, while the President of the United States was yukking it up with 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain over birthday cake.”
  

  You can trot Condoleeza Rice out there till the cows come home, it doesn’t change the fact that when it comes to black Americans who do not serve the Republican party, as far as that party is concerned, they might as well drown.

• Have Some Foil — chicago dyke @ CorrenteWire has a nice piece up about two whistleblowers, who uncovered secret wiretapping in cell phones around the world. They’ve been murdered, of course. More

  Tags: terrorism, Cynthia McKinney, Guantanamo Bay, torture, detainees, rightwingers, Republicans, racism, George W. Bush, Condi Rice, John McCain, Hurricane Katrina, whistleblowers, wiretapping, American Society of Civil Engineers, JonBenet Ramsey, pedophiles, relationships

  1 comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, Conspiracy Theories, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights

Recommended Reading - 08/25/06

• ‘Liquid Bombers’ - The Impossible Bomb — A lot of websites have been linking to this explanation as to why the most recent terror plot from the UK could not have worked and why all of the fearmongering and passenger harrassment by the UK and American governments in the airports is unnecessary. I say, read it for yourself and decide for yourself.
• Homeland insecurity 2.0 — Pam @ Pam’s House Blend wrote one of the best reports of what travelling immediately after the latest terrorist plot scare was like that I’ve read.
  

  Again, the PA came on, this time it was for another flight — on Continental — that was boarding. This announcer, I’m not kidding you, went on for about 2-3 minutes warning people about taking on liquids and gels (”liquid” chapstick is a no-no, solid is OK), no coffee or soda will make it on board. Random checks at the gate would be performed. If they find contraband on you, you will be asked to give it up. If you don’t give it up, you’ll not be able to board, he boomed, and you would have to go on a later flight. “Not later today,” he warned, “maybe not even this week…maybe not for a couple of weeks.” OK, at this point, people are laughing, including the two of us. This is ludicrous.

  Our flight is finally called and we board. The plane is about to close up and a couple of late arrivals get on. This time we have a woman taking her sweet time, coming down the aisle with a steaming hot cup of Cinnabon coffee, which she proceeds to balance on an armrest as she casually loads her bag in the overhead bin, blocking the aisle as a couple of people wait behind her.

  Clearly, my friends, US Airways has let on the Cinnabomber.

More

Tags: liquid bombers, airport security, Continental, U.S. Airways, crime rate, terrorism, morning-after pill, women soldiers, American soldiers, pharmacists, JonBenet Ramsey, Abeer al-Janabi, Jessica Lynch, Jim Bensman, Army Corps of Engineers, FBI, Duarris Perez, Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, Cuba, Homeland Security, Bosnia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hurricane Katrina, pink food coloring, food industry

1 comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Natural Disasters, The Middle East

Quote of the Day: On Guantanamo Bay

If I were in Guantanamo Bay, and I couldn’t get out and these guys will never get out, believe me…I might commit suicide too.
– Bill O’Reilly

Tags: Quote of the Day, Bill O'Reilly, Guantanamo Bay, suicide

Red Cross Says Gitmo Conditions Have Improved

Well, I don’t ever want anyone to complain that I never report good news.  I’m always on the look-out for good news and changes for the better.  I hate to hear about conditions worsening all over and despite many a right-winger’s misguided belief, liberals do not take joy in pain and suffering.

Anyway, here goes…

GENEVA (Reuters) - Detainees are enjoying better treatment at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and the Red Cross is satisfied with its access to them, the humanitarian agency’s chief said on Tuesday.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said detention conditions at Guantanamo had “improved considerably” over the past four years.

“There have also been improvements in the treatment of prisoners, but that does not mean that there are no longer any problems at all,” he told the daily Tribune de Geneve in an interview. [“Guantanamo Bay conditions have improved: Red Cross” (Reuters.com)]

Tags: Guantanamo Bay, Red Cross, detainees

30% Of Gitmo Detainees Are Innocent

And so it continues. If it were innocent Americans being held indefinitely we’d be yelling and screaming and sending in troops. I guess we really are the bullies who don’t care what we do to anyone else.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 30 percent of the Guantanamo detainees have been cleared to leave the prison but remain jailed because the U.S. government has been unable to arrange for their return to their home countries, the Pentagon said on Friday. [“Nearly 30 percent at Guantanamo jail cleared to go” (Yahoo!News)]

Tags: Guantanamo Bay, detainees, innocent, Pentagon

Free Abu Bakker Qassim and A’del Abdu al-Hakim

Abu Bakker Qassim and A’del Abdu al-Hakim have been held in Guantanamo Bay since June 2002 after they were captured by bounty hunters in Pakistan in 2001. At the time they were fleeing China in search of religious and political sanctuary and in the chaos involving the “enemy combatant” round-up that led to anyone and everyone being handed over for American dollars, bounty hunters sold them to America and they were locked up.

Last year, the U.S. military determined that they were not in fact “enemy combatants.” You’d think then that everything would then be find and dandy for Abu Bakker Wassim and A’del Abdu al-Hakim.

However, both are still residents of Guantanamo Bay and their address doesn’t look likely to change any time soon.

The Bush Administration wisely says it cannot return them to China as they are Uighurs and would face persecution there. “Beijing has frequently cracked down on Uighur dissidents, who are seeking autonomy in the country’s north-western Xinjiang province. The Chinese government accuses Uighur militants of waging a bombing and assassination campaign, and receiving training at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.” [“Guantamao Uighur Appeal Rejected” (BBC News)]

The problem is that these men are innocent. They’re still in prison.

The Bush Administration doesn’t want them in the U.S. for some reason — you’d think after such a screw up, we might want to make it up to them, make nice.

I just don’t get why someone isn’t making a bigger deal about this. If these were Americans being held in a prison somewhere, we’d be all up in arms. These are innocent men. They’ve been proven to be innocent. We are violating their rights, holding them indefinitely for no reason. That’s it’s own kind of torture, in my opinion. These men have lives we’re stealing from them. This is that Freedom we’re bringing to the Middle East.

Tags: Abu Bakker Qassim, A'del Abdu al-Hakim, Guantanamo Bay, detainees, innocent, Freedoms

Bush Is Losing His Iron Grip

Well, well, well…it appears that Bush is losing his hold over Congress. At the very least it appears that some Republicans in Congress are starting to think for themselves or are maybe listening to the increasingly disenchanted majority.

There’s a growing alarm in both parties over the mistreatment of prisoners in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay and yesterday, in defiance of the White House, 46 Senate Republicans joined forces with 43 Senate Democrats and 1 Independent Senator in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, suspected insurgents, and the like. (And in case you’re wondering, 9 Senators voted against this anti-torture addition to a military funding bill…that’s 9 Senators voting “for” torture if you use the Republican’s own understanding of how these votes work, if last year’s campaign is any indication.)

Meanwhile, President Bush is threatening to veto the larger bill this language is now attached to — a $440 billion military spending measure. If he does veto it, doesn’t that mean he doesn’t support our military? I mean, doesn’t he want the military to be properly funded and armed?

McCain said military officers have implored Congress for guidelines, adding that he mourns “what we lose when by official policy or by official negligence we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget . . . that which is our greatest strength: that we are different and better than our enemies.”

…

In his closing speech, McCain said terrorists “hold in contempt” international conventions “such as the Geneva Conventions and the treaty on torture.”

“I know that,” he said. “But we’re better than them, and we are the stronger for our faith.” [“Senate Supports Interrogation Limits (WashingtonPost.com)”]

I just puffy heart McCain.

Tags: George W. Bush, Congress, Republicans, Middle East, Guantanamo Bay, torture, John McCain

Pat Robertson Doesn’t Know When To Shut Up

Despite nation-wide and world-wide criticism of his remarks regarding assassinating Chavez earlier this week, Robertson is not backing down.

The 700 Club comes on at 11pm locally on The Family Channel of all places. I know this because usually reruns of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? run from 10pm to 11pm and sometimes I don’t find the channel clicker in time. Last night was one of those times and by the time I got it, I was unable to change the channel because I was standing there with my jaw on the floor. Last night’s The 700 Club started with a five minute Hard Copy-like “news” story about what an evil person Chavez is.

I’m starting to think that if we are going to have a place like Guantanamo Bay where we ship off the religious fanatic terrorist-types, we should ship Robertson there. Obviously he’s no better than the people the Bush administration are calling the enemy.

Anyway, I was finally able to come to my senses and change to Nick At Nite. Whew!

Tags: Pat Robertson, Christian Zealots, 700 Club, Guantanamo Bay, Hugo Chavez

Innocent Until The Bounty’s High Enough

In 1620, a group of English separatists left Europe in search of a place to settle and practice their Puritan lifestyle without persecution. You remember? The Mayflower? Plymouth Rock? If my memory of School House Rocks! and all those years of American History classes serves me right, then this country started with a colony of people who just wanted to be able to worship freely and live a peaceful life.

Oh, I know there’s more to the story than that and I know they weren’t the only ones setting up shop, but every Novemeber for some reason we’re forced to celebrate it and while it’s not any where near Thanksgiving, I do actually have a point. (In case you were wondering.)

So here’s a scenario for you, imagine if you will two men trying to escape religious persecution and seeking assylum where they can live and worship in peace. They have harmed no one. They are pilgrims in search of freedom. Now imagine, these two innocent men have been mistaken for criminals — worse, they’ve been mistaken for possible terrorists and they’ve been captured and hauled off to prison. Now imagine that it’s not just any prison, but the one prison that supposedly houses the worst of the worst of the suspected terrorists. Now believing whatever you want about Guantanamo, imagine being two innocent men, arrested mistakingly, and left to rot in a prison of suspected terrorists.

O.K. But then suddenly they’re cleared not that they were ever really accused. So they can just be shipped off back home like all of the other freed suspected terrorists.

Oh, but wait, in a sudden unusual feeling of guilt, the government realizes that they can’t ship the poor guys home because they were escaping home due to religious persecution. In fact, the country they were running from is well known for it’s persesecution of this particular religion and now all of a sudden since the government has a heart, they want to protect them…

…the detainees before Robertson — Abu Bakker Qassim, 36, and A’del Abdu Al-Hakim, 31, both Muslims and ethnic Uighurs from China — are different from the other 500 Guantanamo prisoners. A military tribunal has found the men were in the wrong place at the wrong time and ordered them released. But the men are languishing at the prison because the United States cannot send them back to China, which has a history of persecuting Muslims, and no other country will take them.
US judge eyes moving 2 Guantanamo detainees - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Washington - News

District Judge James Robertson is the judge considering this case.

So, the catch is that we don’t want to send them back to China because it’s a bad place for them and we don’t want them to stay in the U.S. for whatever undisclosed reason (after all, we aren’t going to offer assylum to any religiously persecuted folks…that’s not we’re about…we’re about freedom…in other countries…um…yeah, that’s it…freedom and democracy…)

”They are not soldiers. They are not criminals. They are just Uighur people,” Willett said. ”There might not be a more pro-US Muslim group in the world because the Uighurs have traditionally suffered under the oppression of the Communist Chinese. I can remember a time when we liked people like that.”

The military, however, insists it must keep them in custody for ‘’safety and security” reasons.

(Willett is the lawyer who volunteered to help the two men.)

By the way, these innocent men who are still being kept in jail (a bit like Cyrus Karr) have still been denied access to telephones to contact their families. Don’t convicted fellons get treated better or is that just the movies?

Oh, and who identified them as terrorists in the first place? Pakastani police arrested them and handed them over to the U.S. for $5,000 bounties. Next thing you know, every greedy bastard in your neighborhood will be eyeing you up wondering what he might get for turning you in — innocent or not.

Makes me feel good about this fair and free country I’m living in right now. What about you?

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“The New Collossus” by Emma Lazarus

Tags: Guantanamo Bay, innocent, Terrorists, detainees

Sending Gitmo Detainees Home?

I’ve read or heard several articles about the U.S. negotiating with 34 countries to send 80% of the Gitmo detainees back to where they came from. I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m apprehensive and a little distrustful of the whole thing.

According to CNN.com the conditions that the other countries have to agree to are:

• treat detainees “humanely and in a manner consistent with applicable international obligations”
• refrain from torture
• allow the United States or a third party such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to the detainees to “verify the assurances”
• “investigate, detain and prosecute” the detainee to the fullest extent possible; and
• provide the United States with “advance notice” and place the detainee on “watch lists” should a country decide to release a detainee.

I admit to suspicions that despite the “refrain from torture” clause, we are sending them to countries were torture is more acceptable or their definition of torture is more lenient or their media is less likely to report any infractions.

Most of these people have never been charged with anything by the U.S. but we’re going to send them back where they came from (reminiscent of the Sedition Act) and expect their own people to investigate and try them for supposed crimes against the U.S. America is one of the few countries where you are innocent until proven guilty, which is why there’s been such an outcry about holding these people without charging them without allowing them contact with their families or lawyers, so since we can’t keep holding them here without losing face, we’ll send them somewhere else and let them handle it.

For those of you who are true believers in George Bush and his administration and believe that they like the Knights of the Round Table can do no wrong, please excuse my little feeling of unease and suspicions that this is more of a shell game than anything else. Now you see the detainee; now you don’t!

Oh, just one more thing…

Detainees whom the United States considers “really bad guys” will remain in Guantanamo, the officials said, but in coming months the facility population could drop to about 100.

Now I had to giggle at this quote and wonder who exactly CNN was quoting. Really, I can guess, but doesn’t that sound so intelligent and prestigious. Right up there with “evildoers”.

Tags: Guantanamo Bay, detainees, Red Cross, torture, Conspiracy Theories, politics, Terrorists

The Tide Is Changing

According to The Washington Post’s new poll, “for the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer.”

Other interesting statistics:

• 75% of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable.
• Nearly 6 in 10 say the war isn’t worth fighting.
• More than 4 in 10 are finding the Iraq Experience similar to that of Vietnam.
• 52% said the war in Iraq has not contributed to the long-term security of the United States.
• 52% disapprove of how Bush is handling his job, the highest of his presidency.
• 56% disapproved of Republicans in Congress, and an identical proportion disapproved of Democrats.
• “Six in 10 respondents said Bush and GOP leaders are not making good progress on the nation’s problems; of those, 67 percent blamed the president and Republicans while 13 percent blamed congressional Democrats.”
• 55% said Bush has done more to divide the country than to unite it.
• “By 50 percent to 49 percent, Americans approved of the way Bush is handling the campaign against terrorism, down from 56 percent approval in April, equaling the lowest rating he has earned on the issue that has consistently been his core strength with the public.”
• “Three in four Republicans said the Iraq invasion has boosted domestic security, while three in four Democrats said it has not. Political independents lean negative on the issue: About six in 10 said the war has not made Americans safer.”
• 44% believe the economy is doing well.
• “For the first time since April 2001, Democrats (46 percent) were trusted more than Republicans (41 percent) to cope with the nation’s problems.”
• “While six in 10 were confident that the United States was not violating the rights of detainees at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Americans were more skeptical that the government is protecting the rights of U.S. citizens at home. Only half said Americans’ rights were being adequately protected, down from 69 percent in September 2003.”

Tags: poll, Iraq, George W. Bush, Republicans, Democrats, terrorism, detainees, Guantanamo Bay