Like the Outer Banks but Better

And congrats to Matty—you all know him better as the inestimable Mr. Wright—who, finding himself unemployed now that he's matriculated from university, is doing what all the jet-setting jobless are doing: vacaying in Hawaii. Everyone knows Honolulu is the new foodstamps!

Like Jesus's Birthday But Better

All the holiday without the religious strife. Merry Norbiznessmas!

. . . maybe a little bit of religious strife. He's for the wrong Texas ballaz but it's not like my gods did much better in the playoffs. But you're not supposed to talk shit about a man's basketball team on his blog's birthday, so stop by and gently remind him that the Mavs would trample the Rockets were there not those dozen other better teams in the West preventing that showdown. And tell him happy birthday. And fuck the Lakers!

Ayatollah Chalabi and Our Enemies' Friends

So from what I'm reading, it appears that after all this time Ahmed Chalabi has been working not just for the White House, but also Richard Perle, Iran, Judith Miller, Senator Palpatine, George Steinbrenner, Mother Brain, Yoko Ono, NASCAR dads, Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living, Washingtonienne, Shredder, and Langston Hughes. Not only that, but the responsible, liberal CNN seems to believe that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for every non-Republican constituency listed above—and al Qaeda. I can't even remember what a vote for Ralph Nader does. Shit—it looks like Bush came through on that uniter-not-a-divider promise after all.

UPDATE: And Michael Ledeen. And the cicadas. And Sebastian Bach, and the other Bach, for that matter. Really I'm beginning to think that, I don't know, maybe Congress should investigate this guy to whose organization they contributed a third of a billion US tax dollars, because right now we're only getting information from the press, and principally from Laura Rozen at that, and you have to go through all these registration pages and pop-up ads to read the LAT, and frankly that's a lot of work just to sort through this tangled web that Iran or Skeletor or the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come or the Poor Man or whoever else is weaving.

UPDATE SOME MORE: Ayatollah Chalabi and Our Enemies' Friends © Grammar.police, 2004. The band name is mine.

North Carolina: Raise Up

In light of recent threats of imminent attacks/electioneering by al Qaeda, some good friends and I are heading for the lower ground of the Outer Banks this Memorial Day weekend. Lust after our ocean-front cabana! Party whistles will be blown and shirts will be spun like helicopters in the finest North Carolinian tradition.

I'd say that you can expect a holiday lull in the G.p media empire, but seeing as how Zunta Tom and Matt Yglesias will be along for the ride—and the place is Internet-wired—I don't see what's to prevent us from setting up a network for the sole purpose of drunken seashore bloggage. The ladies will laugh at us, but as if that isn't already in the cards.

So I'm told I'm responsible for mixing some soundtracks for our terrorist-appeasing exodus. If you've got a must-have beach jam in mind, hit me up. Clearly I've got Petey Pablo under control, and I'm also thinking Prince Buster, Television, the Ramones, Reagan Youth (for the handful of Republicans coming along), Desmond Decker, Dire Straits, and of course Jimmy Buffet for some lazy-day mixes. The night set I think I have under control.

More importantly: Beach reads. I'm pretty terrible about this category. Nearly every vacation I take I tell myself that the idea is to take advantage of the free time to crack some tougher nuts (Gravity's Rainbow, St. Petersburg) and this invariably ends with my getting drunk and irritated with myself for bringing along homework. I could really use some breezy but stimulating suggestions that are neither pulp nor The Da Vinci Code.

The First Amendment: Eh, Whatevs

Instapundit:

And here’s a question: Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn’t exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority — or even a large and angry minority — of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. How far are we from that point?

I don't know—pretty fucking far?

This guy is for real?

Dehabilitated

James Taranto, editor of the WSJ editorial page, OpinionJournal:

Langston Hughes, the poet who inspired John Kerry's new campaign slogan, "Let America be America again," turns out to be a favorite of communists.

And then he goes on to snip lines from poems that prove that Langston Hughes was a Red menace and "celebrated violence," and that (obviously) John Kerry intends to subvert American capitalism with black poetry. I don't want to draw too deeply from this fountain of undiluted foolishness, but it should be noted that 1) Taranto is not some undergrad blogger, but the editor of one of the most prominent opinion forums in America, and 2) prominent editor Taranto writes "turns out to be a favorite of communists," not, "turns out to have been a favorite of communists" or "turns out to be a favorite of all reading Americans."

I'll grant Taranto a point he's not making: that when John Kerry (or, for that matter, Laura Bush) is reciting Langston Hughes's poetry, the work probably has been jarred loose from its proper radical context. Recontextualized or not, Langston Hughes was an ardent patriot—though not of the boot-up-your-ass sort that Taranto would recognize.

I mean, Jesus Christ, Hughes wrote "I, Too, Sing America"—he beats out everyone but Charles Schultz, Bruce Willis, and Sam Eagle as far as American bona fides go. The man doesn't need my defense, but anyway, below the cut I've posted three of his poems. There's no missiles in the sky by-God but more than enough patriotism to prove a Bush shill wrong. And it turns out that Kerry's call wasn't a bad one.

(OpinionJournal link courtesy of Media Matters.)

I, Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you--
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

If the Shoe Fits, Tragen Es

Hermann Goering, on how to be a Nazi:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

Tom DeLay (R-TX), on, well, how to be a Nazi:

Nancy Pelosi should apologize for her irresponsible, dangerous rhetoric. . . She apparently is so caught up in partisan hatred for President Bush that her words are putting American lives at risk. . . . [She] has a responsibility to the troops and to this nation to show unity in this time of war.

Should we throw Mama from the train? You can read it for yourself, but you know the answer's no.

I know, I know: I invoked the Nazis and thus the argument's ended, browser window's closed, link's deleted and porn spam is sent. Still you have to deal with Tom DeLay, who either finds it politically expedient to debate like a Nazi or actually believes that Pelosi's speech was treasonous. At some point we became desensitized to this sort of rhetoric—maybe when the Bush administration made a name for themselves by lying about everything from WMD to Bush's recent bicycle accident, which White House spokesman Trent Duffy blamed on topsoil loosened by rain, yes, rain, the rain in late May Crawford, Texas, that does not and did not fall. Minor incidents, Bush's fall and DeLay's dismissal, yet both important insomuch as they reveal the extent to which the Bush administration mistrusts and dislikes the American public. Which is, like, a ton.

Rightfully Sacked

Troy is only the second movie that made me want to walk out halfway through the viewing. The first was Gosford Park; though I was on an airplane at the time, I gave exit strategies thorough consideration. I have no excuse for suffering the conclusion of Troy. Achilles was portrayed as Allen Iverson to Agamemnon's Larry Brown—awful. Helen was a trainwreck between Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton—garbage. Trojans and Greeks spoke with a British "m'lord"—horrifying. Arguably the most devastating feature of the film was the abject absence of the gods: No mealy-mouthed metaphor, no special-effects distasters (of which there were plenty in other regards)—no moral or metaphysical architecture to the narrative to differentiate this war from any other ill-advised desert adventure. (Certainly Agamemnon bore Rumsfeldian undertones.)

OK. Fine, so this director decides that the foundation of Western literature warrants his creative license. All this I can bear for the sake of a decent battle between Hector and Achilles, were such offered. (Plus Peter O'Toole drops in to blemish his career for no good reason, a mistake the audience appreciates.) This I will suffer, Hollywood, in the name of tawdry entertainment. But for the love of the gods, there were no ancient Greek ruins at the time. No broken columns. No broken statues. You're killing me here, people.

"Scare Quotes"

NRO has more or less stylistically insisted on gay "marriage" as opposed to gay marriage (or just marriage). The laws of punctuation bend for no man's politics, Stanley Kurtz, and there is simply no justification for those quotation marks. I expect this much from the Washington Times, which has stained the good grammatical honor of our city by featuring scare quotes in front-page headlines, but NRO ought to aim higher.

I'd like to blame an errant copyeditor, but then again, they employ John Derbyshire—who is proving himself daily to be the most psychotic writer in punditry. Professional standards at that office are falling on many fronts.

No Comment

Do you find it odd that the US sent Chalabi up the river and the administration has no word on the subject?

. . . Chalabi's standing has gradually eroded, until yesterday, when a U.S.-backed raid on his compound marked a new nadir. Although Chalabi has always been a divisive figure, even quarters that once strongly supported him were distancing themselves yesterday. Many administration officials would not speak on the record yesterday because of the contentious relations some had with him.

"The vast majority of reports of his proximity to and influence on administration policy have been greatly exaggerated," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy who knows Chalabi. "The reality is that he was among a wide variety of Iraqi figures who made the case to an array of American officials over a period of time for the liberation of the Iraqi people." [emphasis added]

I doubt that's exactly why administration officials aren't speaking, and I find it similarly fanciful to say that a man who received a tenth of a billion dollars from Congress wasn't important to the government. In fact it seems to me that if the administration planned to abandon its wonder boy, it would come up with some sort of soundbyte to toss off on the press. Especially if they believe he sold American intelligence to Iran—if that's true, why not sing that song? What's with the silence?

UPDATE: Yglesias wants to know who in the US government gave Chalabi information—and then who in the US government decided to sic the FBI on Chalabi. Nothing like the government going after the government in the middle of a war to win the hearts and minds of the liberated!

Preaching to/at the Choir

Granting himself a break from his academic Iraq coverage, Juan Cole vacations on the breezy topic of gay marriage:

A law against gay marriage seems to me to fail the "secular purpose" test, and insofar as the political base for passing it is conservative churches, it would seem pretty entangled with religion, too. And that is my reply to Senator Rick Santorum and others who argue that gay marriage is equivalent to many deviant practices frowned on by society. There is a secular purpose for forbidding marriage of close relatives, since it exposes the offspring to heightened genetic danger. There is a secular purpose for forbidding pedophilia and pederasty, indeed there are many secular purposes fulfilled by such a ban (forbidding the manipulation through intimacy of the young by persons much their senior, which is unfair, and keeping the young from developing all sorts of neuroses and personality problems as a result of an inappropriate relationship for which they are unready). It is said that gay unions offend against the sanctity of marriage. Actually the secular state has no business marrying anyone if it is thereby affirming the "sanctity" of anything.

Sharp and succinct. I think that the Pledge of Allegiance ought to be amended: The United States of Jesus America. (However you vocalize strike-out HTML, that's what we need to hear.)

So where's our end of the world? Creeping it's way out of The People's Republic of Saudi Taxa-Mordorchussettsodomstan, I guess? Only a few religious radicals out there are expositing on the next step—a constitutional amendment, or, say, as John Derbyshire suggests, the eugenic extinction of homosexuality. (That smattering of compassionate conservatism courtesy of Pandagon.) But I kind of feel like nothing's happening—frankly, I don't really care that these people in Massachusetts are getting married. Except inasmuch as the State has proven itself above the fanatical clamor of religious radicalism.

Call It Madame Bovary Syndrome

Maybe you thought Van Helsing would be the blockbuster to kick off the summer. Wolverine/Simon Belmont vs. The Wolfman, Count Dracula, and Frankenstein—sounded like a safe bet to me. All wrong, unf. Nope, the summer kicks off with an explosive Washington sex scandal, courtesy of Wonkette. Just in case one of you hasn't read this already, we're quoting from a young blogger, staffer, and Capitol Hill libertine du jour:

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

I just took a long lunch with X and made a quick $400. When I returned to the office, I heard that my boss was asking about my whereabouts. Loser.

posted by The Washingtonienne at 2:10 PM

Yes, that's yesterday, and yes, she's talking about the world's oldest profession:

Most of my living expenses are thankfully subsidized by a few generous older gentlemen. I'm sure I am not the only one who makes money on the side this way: how can anybody live on $25K/year??

If you investigated every Staff Ass on the Hill, I am sure you would find out some freaky shit. No way can anybody live on such a low salary. I am convinced that the Congressional offices are full of dealers and hos.

Head to Wonkette for the whole saga. The best thing about DC is that when shit like this goes down, 1) it confirms every awful Hill stereotype, time after time, 2) all work in the District ceases as everyone calls/texts/IMs/e-mails his Democratic staffer friend to get the on-the-ground report, and 3) I get a report back within an hour narrowing the list down to two names.

Hint: She's a self-described "professional girlfriend" on Friendster.

Newspapers: Brush Your Shoulders Off

It's hardly a partisan complaint to note that the Bush administration has brought Pentagon/Intelligence/State tensions to an absolute boil, and the leaks, rumors, and accusations are raging along at shock-and-awe levels. So it goes without saying that these very angry career civil servants will probably go to extraordinary lengths to save their hides/screw the other guys. We should note that as people are in fact saying quite extraordinary things to America's premier journalist, Sy Hersh, the New Yorker isn't exactly America's premier news source—you know, they're a weekly. They publish fiction and artsy photography. A serious claim, even from a respectible journalist (or terrorist) like Sy Hersh, needs falsification, and this story is going to need corroboration from every front page in America. Fred Kaplan explains exactly what's at stake:

Read together, the magazine articles spell out an elaborate, all-inclusive chain of command in this scandal. Bush knew about it. Rumsfeld ordered it. His undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Steven Cambone, administered it. Cambone's deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, instructed Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had been executing the program involving al-Qaida suspects at Guantanamo, to go do the same at Abu Ghraib. Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800th Military Brigade, that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering intelligence. Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, also seems to have had a hand in this sequence, as did William Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, learned about the improper interrogations—from the International Committee of the Red Cross, if not from anyone else—but said or did nothing about it for two months, until it was clear that photographs were coming out. Meanwhile, those involved in the interrogations included officers from military intelligence, the CIA, and private contractors, as well as the mysterious figures from the Pentagon's secret operation.

That's a lot more people than the seven low-grade soldiers and reservists currently facing courts-martial.

So as much as I appreciate that the Washington Post is irritated enough about visitors abusing Metro-escalator courtesy to run a front-page feature, I'm hoping that behind the scenes they're furiously investigating the possibility that the United States government no longer feels it ought to act like the government of the United States. There's a name to be made for some aspiring young journalist. . . .

The Road to Baghdad: Paved with Good Intentions!

David Brooks is on hand to glorify America's past when America's present isn't looking so golden:

American history sometimes seems to be the same story repeated over and over again. Some group of big-dreaming but foolhardy adventurers head out to eradicate some evil and to realize some golden future. They get halfway along their journey and find they are unprepared for the harsh reality they suddenly face. It's too late to turn back, so they reinvent their mission. They toss out illusions and adopt an almost desperate pragmatism. They never do realize the utopia they initially dreamed about, but they do build something better than what came before.

This basic pattern has marked our national style from the moment British colonists landed on North American shores. Overly optimistic about the conditions they would find, the colonists were woefully undercapitalized, underequipped and underskilled. At Jamestown, there were three gentlemen and gentlemen's servants for every skilled laborer. They didn't bother to plant enough grain to see them through the winter.

[...]

And it is that way today. . . . Hope begets disappointment, and we are now in a moment of disappointment when it comes to Iraq. During these shakeout moments, the naysayers get to gloat while the rest of us despair, lacerate ourselves, second-guess those in charge and look at things anew. But this very process of self-criticism is the precondition for the second wind, the grubbier, less illusioned effort that often enough leads to some acceptable outcome.

To extend his metaphor, the next move Americans make in Iraq either involves 1) enslaving Iraqis or 2) exterminating them. And frankly if Brooks insists on big ideas gone bad, there are better recent examples, but we'll put aside the Vietnam analogies, because—despite himself—Brooks is right. Iraq is urgently in need of some pragmatic direction from the administration. It doesn't look forthcoming. June 30 is, what, a month from now, more or less? Not only is there no identifiable government on deck or in the rough to whom we will likely transfer authority, there's no identifiable intersection of Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish interests that has a real stake in taking over the reigns. How do we hand a unified Iraq to three parties that don't have an interest in it being unified?

UPDATE: Chalabi is finally out. I guess they realized that tack wasn't going to work.

Six Degrees of Excommunication

You just can't beat the Catholic Church:

In his letter, Bishop Sheridan wrote: "Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem-cell research or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics, whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance."

The Catholic Church is so freakin' wonderful, I just hope they don't lose their tax-exempt status because that might put an end to all the naked partisanship-qua-moral authority fun.

Lots of metaphysical questions left unanswered, though. Are we setting up some sort of poll test at the altar, or is this a warning to those Catholics whose guilt compels them to advertise their shame with Democratic paraphernalia at Mass? Does this only count for Masses that fall on election days? OK, is it a sin to consider voting for a Democrat, or is that sort of like political lust versus doing the deed is the same thing or whatever? If I own a restaurant, should I serve to liberals? Can I root for the Sox if there are known liberals in the outfield? What if I covet my neighbor's representative? What happens if your leg gets chopped off, does it grow back in heaven? What about my dog and his leg? You guys sure about that transubstantiation bit?

Lynch and Lynndie

There's always a room for a little pop theory:

"I do think there’s some truth to the feminist thinking that we in the media tend to portray women as either wonderful things or terrible sinners — as angels or whores. It could be that what we’re seeing is the military portrayal of that," says Geneva Overholser, Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting at the Missouri School of Journalism. "I’m sure Lynndie England has been oversimplified in that it makes her out to be the epitome of this awful chapter. If we are using these young women to symbolize something, they certainly can’t be said to symbolize those who lead the troops."

In defense of obviousness, it's not much of an analytical leap to describe a woman torturing a man on a leash as having a certain dominant quality about her. Still, fascinating that the dominant female narratives from this war so aptly reflect (or anticipate) public sentiment/Bush's approval ratings. Jane Fonda and Joan Baez played similarly dualistic hermeneutical roles for Vietnam, Rosie the Riveter stood in opposition to those sluts whose loose lips sank our WWII ships, etc.

(Link courtesy of Washington Monthly.)

Copper Green, Fear Up Harsh, the Allah Factor

You've probably read or heard about Sy Hersh's latest bombshell:

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

The Pentagon denied Hersh's report—calling it so much bullshit, more or less—but the WaPo has a similar and document-based account:

According to the plan [to interrogate a Syrian jihadist who refused to talk], interrogators needed the assistance of military police supervising his detention at the prison, who ordinarily play no role in interrogations under Army regulations. First, the interrogators were to throw chairs and tables in the man's presence at the prison and "invade his personal space."

Then the police were to put a hood on his head and take him to an isolated cell through a gantlet of barking guard dogs; there, the police were to strip-search him and interrupt his sleep for three days with interrogations, barking and loud music, according to Army documents. The plan was sent to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

But the fact that a plan for such intense and highly organized pressure was proposed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas -- a senior military intelligence officer in Iraq who took his job at the insistence of a general dispatched from the Pentagon -- suggests a wider circle of involvement in aggressive and potentially abusive interrogations of Iraqi detainees, encompassing officers higher up the chain of command, than the Army has previously detailed.

Remarkably awful stuff, and at this point, the war between intelligence and Defence has reached a pretty fevered pitch—they're both putting statements out there that contradict each other so thoroughly that one or both of them must be lying. I'd say that thus far Donald Rumsfeld's been far more successful in waging the war against US intelligence than he has against terror.

Before I've said that I thought Donald Rumsfeld ought to be fired—that I've believed for some time, of course—but I really didn't think that the altar called for blood until today. Bush is not in an easy position to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Were he the strong central executive that he paints himself to be, he'd sit everyone down and say, "Look, the people who read my newspapers for me are saying that Iraq is taking me down with it. Hate to do this, but I have to let one of you go—you're going to take some blame for Iraq, I'm going to tell America that I'm cleaning house, I've got a bold new plan, I'm going to really clean up over the next 4 years. Because if I don't do something, I'm out of a job. Now Condi, fire up the SNES. I get the blue controller, damnit, I'm President." Etc. But how can Bush fire Rumsfeld, who has more knowledge of/authority over the war in Iraq than Bush? How can Bush fire Rumsfeld without admitting a drastic mistake, his apparent first since took office? Then again, how can Bush not fire Rumsfeld? Etc.

Whatever—it's all sort of academic since the nation's going to hell. The nation's "finest Secretary of Defense" authorizing sexual humiliation? Does no one realize that the Geneva Conventions exist as much to protect our soldiers as they do are enemies?

Mobilize!

Work is treating me to a shock-and-awe campaign this week, so I only have a sec to check in today, but I have a question for you. See, I decided last night after getting dreadfully lost in awful rush-hour traffic, and finally missing the event I couldn't find, that it would behoove me to embrace the traditions of Western civilization and buy a cell phone. My Luddite resistance has come to an end; IKEA, tennis, Friends, and a non-mongrel dog can't be far behind, but that's neither here nor there. Any of you have any advice on how I should best fulfill my duty as a member of the target demographic for about a bazillion different phone companies? (What should I get?)

PS: Are we all shutting down our landlines, too? I don't have to drink wheat-grass or anything, do I?

There is No Yoanna, Only Zuul

America's Next Top Model or Gozer (Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Traveler, Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia)?

  

Courtesy of my friend Steve-O, who has told me before that my weblog is ample evidence that I have abandoned "a critical approach to the issues." (This from a man whose name ends in a hyphenated o.)

Meanwhile...

A somewhat less irrational Sue and Not U:

[Senator James Inhofe] further said, "I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons, looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying." Sen. McCain, a former POW himself who probably wouldn't have minded a few "do-gooders" crawling around his cells, walked out of the room at this point.

Good for McCain. Tight-walking the Geneva Conventions should be a war-time priority for the United States. This is so abundantly obvious to me that I am somewhat overwhelmed by the senators and journalists who find this truth to be not self-evident.

McCain ought to teach a class on integrity. I can't imagine how painful these proceedings must be for him, especially with douchebags like Inhofe around.

Whereistheoutragewhereistheoutrage

Where is the outrage where is the outrage where is the outrage John Derbyshire:

My mental state these past few days:

1. The Abu Ghraib "scandal": Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let's have a couple of courts martial for appearance's sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB.

2. The US press blowing up the Abu Ghraib business: Fury at these lefty jounalists doing down America. They just want to re-live the glory days of Vietnam, when they brought down a president they hated. (PS: They hated him because he was an anticommunist, while they themselves tought communism was just fine.)

3. GWB apologizing to some barbarian chieftain for Abu Ghraib: Disgust. Correct approach: "Mind if we film some footage in YOUR jails?"

4. Revelations about sexual hanky panky in US armed forces: Outrage. I want to see someone cashiered -- a general, at least. This is no way for soldiers to behave when on active service. Gross, unpardonable violation of military ethics. Whose damn fool idea was it to mix men and women in the same units?

Where is the outrage where is the outrage where. is. the. outrage. Don't forget that x killed y millions and never apologized—so-called pinko media. Attack with dog slash rape an Arab for me too, yessir, USA!

¿egartuo eht si erehW | Where is the outrage?

Sodomize one for me, Derbyshire—you can tape footage in MY jail any time, roight? Jolly! But sirrah, decorum—no bloody pictures! Wot-wot? If we fetch any more demerits this semester Headmaster Rumsfeld will have our be-hinds; then we couldn't make the Male Military/Female Military ball. How sexually humiliating would that be?

Stadium anthem time!

Where Iiiiis
[clap]
The Out-Rage!
[clap-clap]

Where Iiiiis
[clap]
The Out-Rage!
[clap-clap]

Fetch me a Mai Lai Mai Tai Pol Pot old boy! Nuke those fuckers! Outrageous!

New at GPDN

In an effort to boost real estate values on the sidebar to your left, I've updated the books and music lists and added two new featurettes—discussion boards regarding, believe it or not, books (the|stacks) and music (sound|check). Once this post disappears, of course, my intentions for them won't be clear—intent being that they'll evolve into self-sufficient whatevers, even independent of the media linked. So you can do me a huge favor and post whatever it is you have to say about music and literature and kick-start this experiment.

Photography

Micky Kaus believes that the pictures of Abu Ghraib torture should have been suppressed:

Just because you don't publish something doesn't mean you don't publish anything. . . Editors draw lines all the time. (Did we see, for example, all the grisly photos of Nicole Simpson's near-decapitated corpse? I think I'd remember it, and it would have gotten big ratings.) Given that the purposes of publishing the photos could have been largely accomplished without publishing them, I'm not sure this case was even close to any line.

Skipping over the remarkably flaccid attempt at analogizing Nicole Brown's murder to systematic torture perpetrated by the United States against prisoners of war: If Kaus isn't intentionally obtuse here, he's at least ignorant of the way that photography works. The Abu Ghraib photos (and videos) were emphatically not evidentiary—were they documentarian or journalistic in nature he might have some argument. The act of photography was in fact a participatory element of the torture, incorporating an element of voyeurism that enhanced the sexual humiliation, and at another level linking these acts to the history of torture. Seeing as Kaus brought up decapitation, it's fitting to liken the photography element to the pike: The cruelty of decapitation already inflicted, the Ottoman Turks (to single out one of many; to analogize appropriately to another empire) would advertise their torture by collecting the heads and splaying them on pikes. Thus the conquest is broadcast (and why else take pictures?) and the message of superiority is made clear: This is what you get when you mess with us.

Beyond all that, I'll echo Susan and Zunta Tom: For Christ's sake, newspaper editors are not responsible for violence that ensues after Abu Ghraib. The blame falls on the US military. US editors are indeed performing a patriotic duty by publishing these pictures, to ensure that (come November) the electorate has the information it needs to decide whether or not it might be better for our soldiers to elect a civilian leadership that is capable of responsible war-time leadership.

The Plague

I've been reading about it now for weeks, and finally saw evidence today of the imminent infestation headed our direction. Beady-eyed and pale-to-translucent, a plague of pests will descend upon the area for a short time, devour the region's resources, and disappear. This morning I believe I saw the first of these creatures, a harbinger of the swarm to come.

I'm writing, of course, about interns. The notorious intern season can be a difficult time for DC residents who have not carefully prepared themselves for the arrival of the interns. We all know what interns look like, but for those of you about to experience your first intern season, did you know?:

• Interns have a short lifespan ("internships"), generally lasting through the summer only. They may spend more than 20 years as larvae and pupae ("prep-school kids"; "undergrads") before emerging as interns!
  
• Interns are exceedingly social, and will devote the entirety of their short internships in the pursuit of two instinctual drives: "networking" and "fucking." Female interns will occasionally seek out prominent members of the indigenous population ("Senators") but generally speaking, breeding is closed and regulated by male intern behavior ("frat-boy mentality")!
  
• Though spread throughout the DC metroplex, interns prefer a warm, financially elite climate, and will over the course of the infestation invariably cluster in Georgetown!
  
• Female interns can be identified by their Burberry exoskeletons. Male interns produce an unpleasant, musky odor. Though different in appearance, both male and female interns share distinctive features ("AmEx cards")!
  
• The evening chorus of the summer interns can be quite loud, reaching levels of up to 120 decibels. The intern chorus sounds something like "mo-ji-to"!

There's no way to avoid interns entirely, but fortunately the nuissance is temporary. An informed resident is on the path toward intern-preparedness!

It's the Sex, Stupid

Look, plenty of us have had that 'where are my panties?' moment Andre 3000 describes on The Love Below. Wake up, no underwear, strange bed, the sun shining brightly for all the world to see your shame. I imagine there's nothing quite like that early Saturday morning stroll down 18th St. in a miniskirt and high heels—it's bad enough having to forego finding your belt so you can minimize awkward exchanges and jet. Hell of a walk of shame home, and for the ladies, that route ought to involve a swing by the pharmacy for the safe and responsible procurement of emergency contraception. Physicians understand this, and they obligingly developed Plan B. The FDA should understand this, since its advisory board is made up of physicians who approved the drug. Conservatives should emphatically applaud this, since their ostensible goal is to end abortion.

You'd think so, and you'd be wrong—conservatives are absolutely outraged that women might have nonprocreative sex. And somehow that hysteria overruled the loud recommendations of a board of physicians last week, as the FDA rejected the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception. The stonewalling starts with the widespread belief that responsible sex leads to greater promiscuity, and, I assume, that that would put us on the path to ruin. As the Houston Chronicle puts it, "Easy access to the morning-after pill as an inducement to promiscuity would be bringing coals to Newcastle." The ostensible reason for banning it is that minors might potentially not know how to use it; have to assume it's a temporary stall and that, eventually, the regulatory body that brought you cigarettes and alcohol will concede that this perfectly safe contraceptive has clearly earned whatever legitimacy the FDA's stamp grants.

I understand conservatives: They don't want you looking for your panties. They don't want you going home with Andre, they don't want Beyonces or Lucy Lius on the floor, they don't want you to be ice-cold. If the right could remake females in its own image, then all young women would "kinda" have a boyfriend, and his name would be Jesus Christ, and dating in America would be one long, national nightmare of a cocktease. So them I get, but how did they get to the FDA?

More GI Than Jane

The lede from Debra Dickerson's awful post on Abu Ghraib and women:

As surprised as I was to learn that GIs were abusing prisoners, nothing floored me as much as seeing the grinning faces of women gleefully celebrating torture of the helpless (however complicit in terrorism they might be). I take pride in being an unapologetic feminist (why not? The world is unapologetically sexist.) but maybe I shouldn’t. Without those photos, not only would I have been difficult to convince that the abuse happened, I would never have believed that women participated. So perhaps the problem isn’t the military’s feminization but its lack of it.

Sometimes when presented with contrary evidence it's wise to revise your hypothesis, but Dickerson furrows her brow and strives that much further toward essentialism. And from the other side of the camp, Linda Chavez says that the presence of women alone at Abu Ghraib encouraged "misbehavior," the ridiculousnessosity of which Matthew Yglesias notes:

Now here I was thinking that when you combine an understaffed, undertrained guard force with an official national policy that detainees have no rights under the Geneva Convention and throw some overzealous military intelligence guys and private contractors into the mix, this is the sort of thing you get. Clearly, I was way off the wrong track here. Letting women into the Army did it!

What the hell? How are both of these women so naive? The only gender to the US military is soldier. You come to the state at which you can follow an order to kill through a rewiring, more or less, by which you abandon your pre-military beliefs and ways of doing things. The instrument the military employs to restrain this effect is not femininity, but order, and in the absence of order you get your Abu Ghraibs. (For more on this, see the first 45 minutes of Full Metal Jacket, or today's WaPo on the reprehensible conditions at AG. No way to run a railroad.)

Let's cut back to that essentialist argument: Don't we want to shy away from that? Isn't it easy to follow x is naturally inclined toward y with x is naturally disinclined toward z—didn't they keep women out of the military/work force/voting booths that way in the first place? All due respect to women in the military, who face challenges that their male counterparts do not—but I wouldn't list paralyzing sensitivity among them.

One more thing: It is not a naturally masculine thing to want to sexually humiliate someone, as the converse of Dickerson's argument implies. Men and women are both capable of abusing power, but it follows that the gender more often in power (men) does so more often.

The thing both of these arguments (blame men; blame women) have in common is that they're still ultimately focused on the individuals in question. This is the wrong way to investigate the military. If individuals fucked up, it's because someone in charge wasn't doing her job. If an entire prison system worth of individuals fucked up, it's because nearly everyone in charge wasn't doing their job—a systemic meltdown—or everyone was doing their job and we have a truly diseased system. But the role which femininity played there is just not consequential either way.

You're Fired

  

Of course he has to go. Even the recent string of human rights abuses aside, there's still the Fallujah disaster, and given that, there's still Najaf, and given that, he unwisely rejected the Powell doctrine. Were he loyal as he ought to be, he'd take a bullet for his president and demand to be fired. You mess up this much, you lose your job—and if you look to the other war presidents of American history, you'll see that SecDefs always lose their jobs. I know, small sample size, election year, blah blah—Donald ought to find his resume....

STUPID: Mary Matalin is on Meet the Press saying it would be "irresponsible" to fire Donald Rumsfeld during a time of war. When exactly are you supposed to revise your war plan? Afterward? I think that Bush's supporters would acknowledge that after a certain point of badness in Iraq, something has to give, so we must just be disagreeing about how bad things are in Iraq. Ask most Americans to raise their hands if they think the war's going well and see where people stand on the issue.

MORE: Abraham Lincoln set a good precedent here. After accepting the resignation of his Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, in 1862, he immediately appointed him the Ambassador to Russia. If the Mother Country seems far away now....

Let Them Eat Cake (Online)

Back in March, which was like 45 years ago in blog time, Matthew Yglesias pooh-poohed Bush's broadband initiative. I agree with him that Bush's particular proposal—cutting taxes and eliminating regulation, obviously, to create universal broadband access in just two years—are laughable, but unlike MY I think the underlying idea is fantastic.

I remember reading some time ago in the New York Times Magazine that almost no corporate headquarters/offices from the manufacturing industry are seated in NYC. Pushed out by spectacular real estate prices, firms that aren't high tech have decided to forego the status of the NYC office for plain-jane locations like Dubuque. To the extent that we can exacerbate this trend across other industries by introducing fast Internet to Cornhole, Kansas, we ought to. It's infrastructure spending and fly-over country diversification wrapped up in one. You may want to call that wealth redistribution ("one more in a long series of wealth transfers directed at rural America," says Yglesias), but shoring up Red America's ability to create its own industry only stands to relieve the enormous degree to which Blue American/Texan tax dollars subsidize their economic shortfalls.

My dad works in the telecom industry, and he's always whining about regulatory measures aimed at the corporations who built telephone/fiberoptic/whatever infrastructure—company X laid the lines and now has to share them with companies Y and Z. Has my sympathy, really. One effect of this trend is that the industry has become hesitant to build new infrastructure through Armpit, Arkansas (or Arlington, Virginia—I'm told by the Zunta folk that in much of wealthy, suburban Arlington you won't find broadband) or anywhere else, knowing well the profit margin for the investment is a distinct unknown. There's bushels of cash to be made after the groundwork's been laid; but much like with the development of the information superhighway itself—or those non-virtual highways, come to think of it—this is where the fed steps in. Doing the unsexy business that makes the economy perky.

Unspeakable Evil

Sy Hersh last night on The O'Reilly Factor, regarding Abu Ghraib:

HERSH: First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.

There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.

This is devastating.

Results

10:35—G.p predicts a non-violent end to Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze's threats of revolution.

10:55—first reports emerge that Abashidze has stepped down.

I'm just sayin', folks. Check in with Sue and Not U, who gave Americans a good name by dancing, drinking, and cavorting with various mountain folk throughout post-Soviet Georgia, for continuous updates.

Rose Revolution II: Rose Harder

Details about another revolution evolving in Georgia from Sue and Not U can be found here and here. Georgia's requisite troubled province, Adjara, is overseen by a paper dictator, Aslan Abashidze, whose authority is more ingrained by years of neglect from the capitol than by any fundamental tie to the people—who turned out in droves to vote for Saakashvili in the elections after the Rose Revolution. But because this Abashidze fellow is the bouffant-sporting sort, he's promising violence and chaos and non-televised revolutions and even blowing up some bridges. From what I'm reading, Abashidze doesn't have the mandate to command his defection-prone militia to fire on other Georgians, so we're crossing our fingers for another peaceful resolution.

Exciting times for Georgians, for whom the "new alphabet" is the one installed several years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

Men and Monsters

The other night I was talking with someone about the stories pouring out of Abu Ghraib, and maybe for the first time I heard someone express that this war—this pre-emptive war for our protection, or this humanitarian war for the hearts and minds or Iraq—is war as every other war has ever been waged. Earlier in the evening I was talking with someone else, and we talked about prison culture, chains of authority, and policies to define our enemies in terms of international conventions (well, in contradistinction to international conventions, as the case may be).

I'm inclined to agree with the notion that, given the worst circumstances, we humans will behave as poorly as possible. The Geneva Conventions exist because that's turned out to be the case throughout history. Clearly sexual humiliation is outside the bounds of any acceptable standards of interrogation—these people acted like monsters. ...And, yet, monsters are what war produces.

But I expect the US military to hold itself to such a high standard and to operate with such decorum that 1) the potential for these sorts of abuses, given what the dynamic always has been with discipline/punish prison relationships, should have been anticipated; and 2) the only way such horrible abuses could have thrived would be under conditions so grossly negligent as to be permissable. There are reasons we don't ask young, untrained reservists/soldiers, under pressures of a bloody war and long deployment, to make spot calls regarding the ethical treatment of their captured enemies.

If you've read Sy Hersh's authoritative account, based on a 53-page military investigation into the matter that's been several months in the making, you might be thinking that we're doing exactly that. Hersh points to a greater systematic problem—really, a disease—in the chain of command:

In letters and e-mails to family members, [senior enlisted man, Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II] repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:

"I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.” . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days."

The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information,” Frederick wrote. “CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. “His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

One of two types of military failures here: either the US military/security groups were explicitly endorsing hazy boundaries on interrogation, which some soldiers took advantage of to the point of sadism; or the chain of command was so non-apparent that these abusive soldiers were more or less under no authority. I don't know which is more comforting to you, but I know I'd more easily scoff at the former option if President Bush weren't so eager to send detainees to Egypt or Lybia for interrogation. Or were he not so insistent on defining all of America's domestic and foreign enemies as "enemy combatants"—you do that when you want to dodge international conventions on their treatment, pure and simple.

So, definitely, throw these soldiers in the slammer, but you're not root out the rotten links in the command.

MORE: Leslie (on May 1) puts it in about a 1000 fewer words:

What I don't get, though, is the surprise. Haven't we learned that war is ugly? In a situation in which two groups of people must kill each other, they will necessarily dehumanize the other side in order to make killing morally acceptable. And when the other side is dehumanized, abuses and cruelties are almost inevitable. Have we not seen this in every modern conflict? I'd list examples, but it seems so painfully obvious. Come on! War is hell! How short is our historical memory?

Yeah. I mean, duh. So who allowed, or endorsed, this state of affairs?

Aint That America

Scott strikes out with this post:

Sudan to U.S.: "It's the polaroids, stupid!"
Thankfully, Sudan has been allowed to retain its seat at the U.N. Human Rights Commission. They could teach us a lesson or two. Apparently our guys only know how to strip people down and point at their private parts for some embarrassing polaroids. In Sudan, you don't even have to go to the trouble of imprisoning enemy soldiers to get your human rights abuse on...you just go to the nearest village and rape, dismember and murder the locals at will, women and children even! When will the United States learn that it's the nudity and silly gestures that earn us scorn around the world, not decapitations, burnings, dragging through the streets and hanging from bridges that matter. Thank goodness for Sudan, the Baathist remnants and heck, how 'bout them North Koreans? Got any room for them on that U.N. Commission?

Because acknowledging that someone else was more wrong means that we weren't that wrong! And if we fail to acknowledge someone else as wrong, we weren't wrong at all!

Scott's acting as if there were some first-past-the-post aspect to measuring human cruelty, but what he's really talking about is double standards. You're goddamned right we have double standards—we do not hold the United States to the standards set by ruthless mobs (Fallujah), destabilized and war-racked states (Sudan), or Communist regimes (China). We set the bar to the golden standards enshrined by the Constitution, outlined by the major tenants of Western civilization, which is why we are, er, engaging in a war of dubious propriety and molesting the Geneva Conventions.

And who knows? US horrors might not be limited to "embarrassing" the Iraqis:

Two Iraqi prisoners were killed by U.S. soldiers last year, and 20 other detainee deaths and assaults remain under criminal investigation in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of a total of 35 cases probed since December 2002 for possible misconduct by U.S. troops in those two countries, Army officials reported yesterday.

The tally emerged on a day U.S. military officials, struggling to contain growing outrage over the handling of detainees, insisted they had been quick to respond to allegations of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. But Gen. George Casey, the Army's vice chief of staff, acknowledged that the actions there of military guards and interrogators had amounted to "a complete breakdown in discipline."

So don't count us out yet. More, a bit later, on "discipline."

G Unit

Before I disappear into a company meeting for the next 4 hours, I thought I'd mention this new ridiculousness: A quick look over at that singular market indicator, eBay, shows Gmail accounts selling for upwards of $100 a pop. Won't these be going for free any day now? While I understand that nerds can be zealous about username fidelity, won't the most obvious/desirable screen names be the immediate targets in the first spam salvo against Google?

Anyhow—I initiated my Gmail account, which was offered to Blogger users, but it's nearly worthless to me since Gmail doesn't (currently) work with any of the browsers I use on my Mac. Looks pretty from work, though....