What You Should Be Reading — 12/20/06

• Detained In Iraq by Brendan Skwire @ All Spin Zone; another American abused for doing “the right thing” by a system that has become dangerous for Americans and nonAmericans alike. I bet he thinks twice before he acts so heroically in the future.
  

  Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

  “Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

• Detainee Abuse by Tim F. @ Balloon Juice; more on Donald Vance
  

  American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

  The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

• Our path to ‘victory’ ends in defeat by Mark Morford @ SFGate.com
  

  It’s not like we were overpowered. We weren’t outmanned or outgunned or outstrategized, hence we weren’t defeated in any “traditional,” kick-ass, take-names, sign-the-peace-accord way.

  It wasn’t because our can’t-lose military didn’t have the latest and greatest killing tools of all time, the biggest budget, the most heroic of baffled and misled young soldiers sort of but not really willing to go off and fight and die for a cause no one could adequately explain or justify to them.

  We still have the coolest, fastest planes. We still have the meanest billion-dollar technology. We still have the most imposing tanks and the most incredible weaponry and the badass night-vision goggles with the laser sights and the thermal heat-seeking readouts and the ability to track targets from 2 miles away in a dust storm. It doesn’t matter.

  What we don’t have is any idea what we’re doing, not anymore, not on the global stage. We lost this “war” and we lost it before we even began because we went in for all the wrong reasons and with all the wrong planning and with all the wrong leadership who had all the wrong motives based on all the wrong greedy self-serving insular faux cowboy BS that your kids and your grandkids will be paying for until about the year 2056.

  Maybe you don’t agree. Maybe you say, “Wait, wait, wait, it’s not over at all, and we haven’t lost yet. Isn’t the fighting still raging? Can’t we still ‘win’ even though we’re still losing soldiers by the truckload and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being brutally slaughtered every month and isn’t Dubya still standing there, brow scrunched and confounded as a monkey clinging onto a shiny razor blade, refusing to let go and free us from the deadly trap, ignoring the Iraq Study Group and trying to figure out a way to stay the course and never give in and “mission accomplished” even as every single human around him, from the top generals to crusty old James Baker to the new and shockingly honest secretary of defense, says we are royally screwed and Iraq is now a vicious and chaotic civil war and it’s officially one of the worst disasters in American history?” Oh wait, you just answered your own question.

  Yes, technically, the war is still on. The fighting is not over. And, yes, you can even say we (brutally, tactlessly) installed ourselves with sufficient ego to give us a modicum of violent, volatile control over the gulf region’s remaining petroleum reserves — which was, of course, much of the point in the first place.

  But the nasty us-versus-them, good-versus-evil ideology is over. Ditto the numb sense of Bush’s brutally simpleminded American “justice.” Any lingering hint of anything resembling a truly valid and lucid and deeply patriotic reason for wasting a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and roughly an entire generation’s worth of international respect? Gone.

  What’s left is one lingering, looming question: How do we accept defeat? How do we deal with the awkward, identity-mauling, ego-stomping idea that, once again, America didn’t “win” a war it really had no right to launch in the first place? After all, isn’t this the American slogan: “We may not always be right, but we are never wrong”?

  It’s still our most favorite idea, the thing our own childlike president loves to talk most about, burned into our national consciousness like a bad tattoo: We always win. We’re the good guys. We’re the chosen ones. We’re the goddamn cavalry, flying the flag of truth, wrapped in strip malls and Ford pickups and McDonald’s franchises. Right?

  More

  Tags: detainees, Donald Vance, Iraq, terrorism, violence, soldiers of fortune, private military, torture

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, The Middle East

Work Your Brain — 11/1/06

Tales of the Detainee Kind

• The Case Of Bilal Hussein — Justin Gardner @ Donklephant reports on Bilal Hussein, an AP war photographer, accused by the U.S. military of helping some insurgents kidnap a couple journalists. Only those journalists have been rescued and they say Hussein is a hero. The AP wants to know why he’s been detained since April with no charges having been filed against him while right-wing bloggers call for his head.
  

  Six months is more than enough time to get some facts together and make a case against Hussein. The military hasn’t done that, and they should…or else they should release Hussein without charge.

  As Gardner points out, Hussein isn’t the first journalist to be treated as such.

  More

  Tags: detainees, Bilal Hussein, Abdul Rahim Al Ginco, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, al-Qaeda, Insurrection Act, FEMA, Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, liberals, rightwingers, patriotism, pragmatism, American soldiers, Republicans, Democrats, GOP, Georgia, Genital Cutting, abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, TSA, airport security, bomb-making materials, Christopher Soghoian, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University, fake boarding passes, Ed Markey, FBI, Police State

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

Work Your Brain — 09/20/06

• Thank a Democrat for Lower Gas Prices — Richard Cranium @ The All Spin Zone reminds us that it was Democratic Party Congressional candidate Larry Kissell who held a campaign rally at a gas station in Biscoe, NC on August 3rd to remind voters that the price of gasoline was $1.22/gallon when the GOP incumbent in his district took office. Ever since then, the price of gas has been dropping nationwide.
  

  With third quarter oil industry profit statements due out just before the upcoming elections, it’s pretty easy to assume that the Gouging Oil Party boys in the backroom figured that something had to be done, even if (for the oil companies) it meant taking a bit of a hit on the bottom line for a few months. Ergo, gasoline prices have dropped by nearly 30% in the space of a couple of weeks, even as BP’s shutdown of their Alaskan pipeline continues, and middle east tensions continue apace, and (strangely) the cost of a barrel of crude has dropped by maybe 10%. The good news is that, based on my own water cooler conversation, even the most hard core neocons in our midst understand the play.

  So, the next time you fill up your tank and you don’t have to sign over a second mortgage on house to do it, remember that Democratic Party congressional candidate Larry Kissell from NC-8, is more responsible for the drop in prices than anyone else on the planet. Here’s an idea on how to thank Larry: take $10 of that gas savings, and drop it in Larry’s campaign bucket.

• Gas Prices a Republican Dirty Trick — Becky @ Preemptive Karma takes a different look at how the Republicans are using their Big Oil friends to lower gas prices before the 2006 election.

More

Tags: gas prices, oil industry, privacy, CIA, CIA Interrogation Program, George W. Bush, Article 3, Geneva Convention, Congress, John Warner, Colin Powell, Jack Vessey, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, POW, torture, detainees, terrorism, White House, politics, anthrax, 9/11, phobic nation, J. Edgar Hoover, FBI, Martin Luther King Jr., Iraq, International Red Cross, Maher Arar, Canada, Syria, JFK Airport

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

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

Innocent Man Detained For 5 Years Without Apology From U.S.

There are some Americans who would have you believe that everyone picked up on suspicion of terrorism should forfeit their rights as a human being. Some Americans will tell you that the fact that we are “at war” means that we have the right “to do what we have to do” in order to protect ourselves without apology and without conscience. There are Americans who don’t understand that when we deny other human beings the simple rights that we expect from each other, we stop being human beings ourselves.

The veiled accusations and vehement denials would continue for nearly five years - despite official findings in 2001 that he had no terrorist links and in 2003 that authorities had violated his rights by colluding to keep him in custody.

Of the estimated 1,200 mostly Arab and Muslim men detained nationwide as potential suspects or witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigation, Benatta would earn a dubious distinction: Human rights groups say the former Algerian air force lieutenant was locked up the longest.

His Kafkaesque journey through the American justice system concluded July 20 when a deal was finalized for his return to Canada. In the words of his lawyer, the idea was to “turn back the clock” to when he first crossed the border.

But time did not stand still for Benatta: The clock ran for 1,780 days. The man detained at 27 was now 32.

“I say to myself from time to time, maybe what happened … it was some kind of dream,” he said. “I never believed things like that could happen in the United States.”

Benemar “Ben” Benatta, a former Algerian air force lieutenant, arrived in Canada on September 5, 2001 seeking political assylum. A week later, he was escorted back across to the U.S. and turned over to U.S. immigration. Benemar Benatta didn’t learn about the the 9-11 terrorist attacks until September 12th when FBI agents paid him a visit. He was sent to a federal prison in Brooklyn and when he insisted he wasn’t involved in the attacks, they threatened to send him back to Algeria — a certain torture and death sentence for his desertion. The interrogations continued.

Prison guards, he said, dispensed humiliation in steady doses - rapping on his cell door every half hour to interrupt his sleep, stepping on his leg shackles hard enough to scar his ankles, locking him in an outdoor exercise cage despite freezing temperatures, conducting arbitrary strip searches.

Benemar Benatta was never charged of any crime during this time and in November 2001, the FBI prepared a report clearing him of any involvement in the 9/11 attacks. However, no one bothered to tell Benatta and in fact they didn’t bother to set him free or allow him access to the outside world.

Finally, in April, he was transfered to Buffalo to face federal charges of carrying a phony ID when he was first detained. Benatta was denied bail while he fought the case. However, at least he was allowed into the general population of federal defendants housed at an immigration detention center. It was also the first time he was allowed access to the news and the first time he was allowed access to scenes of what had happened at the World Trade Center and he was shocked.

It wasn’t until the second anniversary of the attacks that U.S. Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr., in a bluntly worded ruling, found that Benatta’s detainment for a deportation hearing was “a charade.”

Though terrible, the Sept. 11 attacks “do not constitute an acceptable basis for abandoning our constitutional principles and rule of law by adopting an ‘end justifies the means’ philosophy,” Schroeder wrote. Based on that decision, another judge tossed out the case on Oct. 3, 2003.

“That gave me so much hope,” Benatta said. “For me, it’s like (the judge) had so much nerves. He gave me some kind of hope in the judicial system all over again.”

However, Benatta demanded asylum but the U.S. Immigration authorities wanted him deported for overstaying his visa. (Brilliant, isn’t it? We lock him up for no reason and then want to deport him because we locked im up? Punish the victim! The United States Way!)

An immigration court first set bail at $25,000, then ruled he should stay behind bars indefinitely - a situation a United Nations human rights group decried as a “de facto prison sentence.” Most asylum seekers are released pending the outcome of their cases.

It took another two years before a Manhattan attorney, Catherine M. Amirfar, found a solution: She convinced Canadian authorities to let her client apply for asylum there without jailing him.

“Canada was willing to take him back and turn back the clock five years,” she said. “Of course, Benemar will never get those five years back.”

The last detainee was deported in his prison smock without an apology. He remembers cold stares when he ate his first meal at Wendy’s and went to a mall to buy clothes.

Today, there’s no more soul-numbing confinement. But he’s still caught in waiting game, this time to see whether Canada will grant him asylum - a decision at least six months away. He also wonders if he can regain enough spirit to start a new life.

“Now I’m not the same person,” he said. “When I came to the United States, I was optimistic. I had so much energy. That’s not the case now.”

Source: 9/11 Detainee Released After Nearly Five Years

Imagine five years of your life gone because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Imagine that you had been seeking help from countries that were supposed to be the good guys and instead you ended up tortured and imprisoned for 5 years.

And Benatta isn’t the only one. The U.S. has a history of playing games with detainees since 9/11. How many of the Guantanamo Bay detainees were cleared and weren’t told?

Tags: 9/11, Benemar Benatta, Algeria, detainees, FBI, political assylum, U.S. Immigration

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

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

A Day In The Life of A Detained Innocent Iraqi

Please read the tale of Khalid Jarrar. He was arrested in Iraq for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time — that being present day Iraq.

I really can’t even begin to explain my anger and empathy. Just read.

Tags: blogs, Iraq, innocent, detainees

Why isn’t America talking about Cyrus Kar?

I first heard about Cyrus Kar last week while listening to NPR. Since then, I’ve kept an eye open for stories on such media sites as CNN.com. Most of the information I’ve found about the strange case has been from foreign media and blogs.

Any American media references appear to be mostly after this past weekend and I’m amazed to note that while CNN.com has no searchable references, the right-wing biased Fox News does. This North Carolina paper’s site only had a sentence on the subject.

And yet, this is the tale of an ex-Navy Seal who was arrested in Iraq simply for being in the wrong cab at the wrong time. This is a right-winger American film-maker on a personal journey to research a former Persian king who supported civil rights who was arrested simply because the trunk of the taxi he was in had washer timers, commonly used for bomb-making in the Middle East. He was held in a 5′x7′ cell without due process even after the FBI informed his family that he had been cleared of suspicion after passing a polygraph test.

“Saddam Hussein has had more due process than Cyrus Kar. This is a detention policy that was drafted by Kafka.”

I just don’t understand why a bigger deal isn’t being made of this. I thought we were supposed to be fighting for freedom and liberty and all of that. I thought we were supposed to be bringing freedom to these other countries. Not only are we out of control in treating the citizens of other countries like non-entities, we have begun stripping the rights of Americans.

What kills me is the argument so many people give that if you haven’t done anything, the FBI or the CIA or whoever is enforcing the Patriot Act, won’t be knocking down your door to haul you away to some prison where they’ll be able to hold you without telling you why and without letting you talk to lawyers, family, or friends indefinitely. Cyrus Kar didn’t do anything wrong. He was just taking a taxi, the wrong taxi…

Who’s next? Your neighbor? You? Me?

Why aren’t we talking about this? Why are we letting it slip into the back pages of the paper to be forgotten by the time we read the comic pages?

Tags: Cyrus Kar, NPR, Fox News, detainees, Iraq, FBI, innocent, Civil Rights

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

On Politics and Arm-chair Politicians

Talking politics is a quick way to make friends and enemies these days. Personally, I have tried not to discuss politics or religion in my journals or with my friends “back home”. For the most part I discovered that some people tend to take both subjects way too personally and feel the fanatical need to convert everyone they know to the “right” way of thinking which is of course always their way. Some of my friends “back home” had a penchant for getting into loud, angry, pissing matches over politics, religion, and sometimes even books and movies and while I enjoy a good debate, I don’t like shouting matches or banging my head against a wall.

For the most part, many people either make up their minds and cling to those opinions no matter what the facts or opinions of others or they do as their parents or spouses do and believe what their parents or spouses believe. Sometimes both options play a part. Unfortunately many people never let exeriences or newly learned facts to change their opinions; they cling to the belief that they are right despite everything.

Some of my friends “back home” are like that which is why I don’t allow such topics on the mailing list we all use to keep track of each other. People become too easily offended, emails fly back and forth because people are offended or they want to force others to see things their way. It’s all very unpleasant and sad.

I like to keep an open-mind. I won’t say that I don’t think I’m right. I just admit that I could be wrong. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, my opinions on many things have changed over the last 33 years. Things I believed in with all my heart when I was a teenager have proven themselves not true or have become questionable as my experiences and new facts have reared their ugly heads. I may still be a bit naive. I may still not understand every facet of everything going on in the world, but at the very least I have an open-mind and I accept when I’m wrong and I find talking, debating with others either strengthens my beliefs or changes them.

I think it’s a sign of a mature individual…though I don’t know that I’m all that mature or that I’m even mentally healthy at times.

So, I’ve come to enjoy in my new life the ability to have mature, adult conversations about politics with people here and people I’ve met online — people who don’t just shout rhetoric back and forth and people who have a clue not only about what is going on in the world but don’t believe everything they hear or read.

So, here is my political stance for those of you who are interested:

• I have voted for every President who has been in office since I started voting at 18 years old — I’m 33 now.
• I have been registered as a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent at various times in my life. Currently, I am registered as a Democrat though 3 months ago I was an Independent.
• I have never believed that we should invade Iraq. I never thought they had weapons of mass destruction last year. I can’t believe the Bush Administration keeps insisting that is why were are there. I don’t know why other countries who do indeed have weapons of mass destruction have been left to their own devices. I believe we were lied to and if we weren’t lied to then the Bush Administration can’t admit they made an error in judgement and I don’t know which is worse.
• I was for invading Afghanistan but very disappointed that Bush didn’t finish the job.
• I am offended that Bush doesn’t think the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries is an issue. The companies might be saving money but they aren’t passing along that savings to the unemployed masses.
• I am offended that Bush’s administration thinks that the 1.25 million jobs they “created” in the last few months should quell the rising voices when the jobs that have been created are not equivallent in skill or money to the ones that millions of Americans have lost over the last 4 years.
• I am horrified that Bush wants to change the law to keep Americans who love each other from any kind of union, whether you call it a marriage or not, and the rights and benefits such a union should have.
• I am against abortion but believe it’s not my place to tell anyone they can’t have one for whatever reason.
• I am against the draft.
• I am against any merge of church and state and yet Bush’s administration is constantly dragging religion into their politics.
• Bush’s administration scares the hell out of me. I really believe they are out of control and believe that they are too powerful to be ruled by the laws, standards, and beliefs they hold everyone else to.
• It scares me to talk to people who still believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It scares me to listen to people who swear by every word that comes out of Bush’s mouth.
• It scares me that people still think there was a connection between Sadaam and 9/11. I never thought there was and it makes me sick to think that propaganda was used and so widely believed.
• It scares me that people don’t realize that some of those prisoners in those Iraqi prisons were innocent bystanders who were arrested by accident, tortured and humiliated, and even killed. People were killed in inhumane and compassionless ways and yet we are justified because other people that look like them caused 9/11 and other people who look like them have been killing hostages in the Middle East — ironically, the terrorists weren’t in Iraq before we arrived and opened the door but their presence now is used as a reason why we invaded…
• I am afraid of the Homeland Security and the Big Brother concept that it is.
• I am afraid that the terrorists have won by causing us to step closer to losing the freedoms they hate us for.

Tags: politics, dysfunctional drama, George W. Bush, outsourcing, Afghanistan, Gay Rights, abortion, pro-choice, WMD, innocent, detainees, Homeland Security, Terrorists

Here There Be Monsters

This whole thing with the Iraqi prisoners who were abused, humilated, and/or killed really disturbs me. Somewhere deep inside, I’ve always suspected this sort of behavior was being perpetuated by American Intelligence and Military, but like most Americans, I really wanted to believe that “we” were above that. After all, as a nation, we are supposed to be role models. We are protectors of the persecuted, liberators of the unfree. We are supposed to be all politically correct. We are supposed to be “better” than everyone else.

But, honestly, I see how much persecution goes on in our own country. We have homeless and hungry. We still have racism running amuck — heck, we even say that those who historically have acted on their racism, who have burned, lynched, and harmed people in the past, have rights. Heck, it is still legal for a person to be denied admitance into some organizations due to color of skin, religion, or gender — as outrageous as it sounds, how open do you think the KKK would be to members that aren’t “of the right” whatever? Yet,this organization is allowed to exist, is allowed to have meetings and marches and protests…

Every few months, we hear about grevious and outrageous wrongs done to innocent people — recently I saw in the news about a man who was burning the corpse of an infant in his backyard. There are rapes, murders, kidnappings, and a variety of crimes done against Americans by Americans every day. There are wife-beaters and chid abusers.

And these are things we are doing to ourselves.

Imagine what one might do to someone he or she thinks is a lesser person just for not being an American. Americans are dying in Iraq. I’m sure that the tension is pretty thick over there. It’s no excuse.

And I’ve heard that several of the accused are taking the stand that they were following orders from higher up in the military or from CIA operatives. Still not an excuse. Isn’t that what a lot of the Nazi war criminals claimed? They can’t be blamed for just following orders? If they are the heroes that their stunned and confused friends and families are arguing they were when they left home, they would have stood up for those inalienable rights of those people (some of whom have turned out to be innocent bystanders accidently arrested) that they were sent to Iraq to free from an inhumane and intollerable regime run by a sick and twisted dictator.

And to think, all the good we were supposed to be doing over there (and I still don’t agree that we should have gone over there in the first place and certainly we were lied to about the reasons) is now tainted as they have proven to all of those anti-American types that we are exactly the monsters they believe us to be and there is nothing that our President or anyone else can say now that will take any of those outrageous autrocities back. There’s nothing to be done to fix it. Oh, yes, we can appologize, and we can punish the offenders, and we can promise with bright eyes that we will never do it again, but we can’t prove it and certainly, I’m not sure I’d believe it. The taint is there and I’ll never be able to forget that we are not the high-and-mighty coutry we claimed to be. In fact, we aren’t much better than they are — we just have more money and better toys.

In the end, we’re all human, a little rough around the edges — part angel, part monster. It’s just that some of us, let the monster win a little bit more often in the struggle for our humanity than they do the angel. In fact, more often than not, it does seem like the monsters are winning.

Tags: Iraq, detainees, Conspiracy Theories, CIA