The Rag Blog

Coupla nights ago, I sat down and, anticipating big changes in Iraq verbiage coming out of the White House — and I swear this was before the newest developments and stories of today (Saturday) — I fantasized a news conference in the Baghdad Green Zone press room in which Tony Snow (what a great name, huh? — if you’re a Repugnican, ya wanna live in a tony neighborhood, and if you’re the White House news flak, ya wanna snow people, and this guy has managed — for a while — to do both) — but anyway, in which Tony Snow, newly arrived from DC, and accompanied by the Bush deputy flunky for whatever at the State Department or the Defense Department or whatever, flanked by Condi Rice and Dick Cheney’s least-liked deputy, announces that it is time for fresh blood, a new face, “to lead the Iraqi people, to repair the damage that has been done by terrorists, and to give the Iraqi people hope again, to rebuild back to greatness the greatness that at one time was Iraq…” and so on. In my imagined news conference, Tony goes on and on about the newness of this new great leader who is needed, and it’s clear that he has someone literally waiting in the wings as he speaks, and he’s gonna bring him out as the new US puppet when he finishes talking about how bold and brave and mainly how fresh a face this new man will be. Rick Redfern is there, as is the resurrected Duke, and the remnants of the once-embedded US news media in bed with the invasion forces, and they’re all wondering, “Who can these poor bastards have FOUND who would take the mantle of US lackey, who would willingly subject himself to the ridicule, not to mention the risk, of being seen as a shill and a water boy for the tattered and shredded remnants of The American Dream in Iraq? There is rustling behind the curtain as Snow begins to work towards his crescendo of introductory praise: “…..and this man, whom a year ago, two years ago no one would have dreamed could lead a nation such as Iraq….to the glory….that once was this great nation’s destiny…..a man who, though virtually unimaginable as a world-class leader just a few short months ago brings FRESH VISION, FRESH EXPERIENCE, FRESH BLOOD — er, uh, I mean, FRESH PERSPECTIVE…..to his own beleagured homeland….ladies and gentlemen, I give you a man who stands ready to bring FRESH IDEAS, FRESH SOLUTIONS, NEW AWARENESS, BOLD AIMS to the WORLD STAGE …. ladies and gentlemen, I give you, none other than……(the curtain parts and a tall, erect figure in the olive drab uniform of the old Iraqi armed forces, red felt epaulets glowing, shoes spit-shined, trousers freshly creased, steps out…..for a brief moment there is a collective gasp….as the whisper goes around that he resembles ….perhaps too much….an unbeloved figure in Iraq….but there are shadows from the TV camera lights and his face, for an instant cannot be clearly seen, then he steps fully into the light, and there is a collective and deafening roar of stunned silence: shoe-polish black hair, a salt-and-pepper beard….if he had huge bags under his eyes he would be the spitting image of ….but wait….it IS….the bags are gone, there is just the faintest hint of a smile behind the stolid endurance….it is ….OH………… MY……….. GOD………. NO………. but yes: IT IS: it is Saddam Hussein.

“Yes,” says Tony Snow. “It is the man formerly known as the President of Iraq, who has agreed, in an act of stunning generosity….

He is interrupted. “Tony — I mean where did you get a name like that, anyway? — Tony, I am not the former President of Iraq. I am simply the President of Iraq. I have been telling you that for years now. And you, sir, are simply a fool. Now get the fuck out of my country.”

Snow sputters; things have again gone off script. Saddam shuts him up with a wave of the hand. “I have arranged for an escort for you and your colleagues as far as precisely half the distance between the last reinforced gates of the Green Zone, and the pitted runway of the Baghdad airport. Good luck to you, Tony, and may the vultures — who are six steps above you in the moral heirarchy because they do not kill the innocent, only clean their flesh from the roadways — not die from eating your lie-poisoned flesh.”

“But you told us….”

“I told you many things, Tony. Now get out. Maybe you will make it. After all, the good news is, there are people in Iraq who love you.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. The bad news, they all are in this room now, and none of them are Iraqis. Go now.”

Chaos erupts. All the Americans realize the jig is way up, and rush for the doors. But in their shock, they move like ants in mollasses. And it is too late, anyway. Always was. The entire rear wall of the press room gently falls flat like the stage set it always has been, to reveal a six-deep cordon of the Republican Guard, with AK-47s leveled at the stunned, panic-stricken, would-be escapees. Just as they all expect to die, and as the unmistakable odor of ca-ca running down Tony Snow’s well-dressed legs begins to permeate the room, alternate rows of the soldiers bend to the right at the waist, while the ones behind them bend to the left, all in highly-choreographed unison worthy of a Vegas chorus production, while huge speakers blast mega-decibel, well-chosen tunes from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

“Youuuuuuuuuuuuu….. were such foooooooooooools….. Youuuuuuuuuuuuuu…… were such
fo-oooooooooooooooooools…..”

Well, more upon request, but I really am ready for the final surprise now because now I truly have seen it all. The degree to which and the scale upon which George W Bush has been chumped by his handler-in-chief Cheney pales anything seen before in history, I believe. The Bushes do not take this kind of thing lightly, or passively. I believe Dick Cheney has seen his last Easter, if not his last Christmas. In fact, I believe that in the next few weeks, we will see the Slipperiest Dick being given a Hobson’s choice of exquisite design and uniqueness: he can fly to Iraq to participate in that news conference, and be free to go anywhere in the world and live for a year, if he makes it out of Baghdad, or he can take his chances at Bellevue, going the Lee Atwater route, in what will soon be dedicated and built as the Karl Rove Memorial Wing of Bellevue for the Criminally Insane.

Well, it’s late and I’m no longer a night owl.

BAGHDAD, Oct 19 (IPS) – Death squads from the Ministry of Interior posing as Iraqi police are killing more people than ever in the capital, emerging evidence shows.

The death toll is high – in all 1,536 bodies were brought to the Baghdad morgue in September. The health ministry announced last month that it will build two new morgues in Baghdad to take their capacity to 250 bodies a day.

A UN human rights report released September last year held interior ministry forces responsible for an organised campaign of detentions, torture and killings. It reported that special police commando units accused of carrying out the killings were recruited from Shia Badr and Mehdi militias, and trained by U.S. forces.

Retired Col. James Steele, who served as advisor on Iraqi security forces to then U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte supervised the training of these forces.

Steele was commander of the U.S. military advisor group in El Salvador 1984-86, while Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to nearby Honduras 1981-85. Negroponte was accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights in 1994. The Commission reported the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political workers.

The violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA, according to a CIA working group set up in 1996 to look into the U.S. role in Honduras.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Oct. 21) – A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown “arrogance” and “stupidity” in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except Al-Qaida in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America’s war in Iraq.

“We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq,” he said.

On October 17th U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (TX), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, released a report on border violence in the Southwest. The bulk of the report – 38 pages out of 39 – deals with the increasing violence and influence of Mexican drug cartels operating on the US southern flank and is obviously of great concern for US security and the health of its population from the increasing “drug menace” which is being pushed by more narcotics consumption at home. (See page 32 of the report, and footnote 117)

On October 17th Fox News interviewed McCaul and the next day CNN followed suit. Both interviews allowed McCaul to bring Venezuela into the mix alleging that the Venezuelan government has been issuing ID documents to potential terrorists from Colombia, Cuba and the Middle East, countries which host foreign terrorist organizations.

The source for these revelations is an article written by one Linda Robinson in US News and World Report on October 6th 2003 and can hardly be classified as ” “intelligence information.” This article is a mix of hearsay and innuendo and when it was published three years ago was part of the campaign to discredit the democratically elected and constitutional government of President Hugo Chávez, who called the article “sewage and disgusting” when questioned about it in 2003.

Robinson provides no hard evidence for her claims in the article which was long since discredited in 2003. The US taxpayer should be asking the question why millions of dollars are spent producing House Subcommittee Reports based on spurious allegations from a paid hack?

At this time in 2003 Venezuelan authorities were issuing ID documents to millions of Venezuelans and foreign residents who did not possess such documents, since it is a constitutional right for everyone to have a legal identity in Venezuela and hence the right to vote in elections. In this context, unidentified US officials stated at that time: “The list easily totaled several thousand,” the official says. “Colombians were the largest group; there were more than a thousand of them. It also included many from Middle Eastern `countries of interest’ like Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon.” The official adds: “It was shocking to see how extensive the list was.”

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. (Oct. 21) – State investigators on Friday searched an office of a Republican congressional candidate whose campaign mailed thousands of intimidating letters to Hispanic immigrant voters.

About 10 uniformed California Department of Justice agents arrived with a search warrant and could be seen opening cabinets, scouring desks and packing up a computer inside the storefront campaign office of Tan D. Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant trying to unseat a popular Democratic incumbent.

Nguyen has acknowledged that his campaign sent the letter, which wrongly said immigrants could be jailed if they voted. He blamed a campaign worker he said he has fired.

Nguyen has resisted calls from leaders in his own party to quit the race, saying he did not approve the letter and did not know about it.

State and federal officials have been investigating the mailing for possible violations of election or civil rights law. “We’re aggressively pursuing our investigation to determine exactly who is responsible for the letter,” Nathan Barankin, spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, said Friday.

Nguyen was not in the Garden Grove office when agents arrived. A volunteer had said he planned to return for a mid-afternoon news conference, but instead his attorney, David Wiechert, arrived and cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

WASHINGTON (Oct. 21) – Republicans unveiled an advertisement on Friday featuring the image and words of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a warning to voters that “these are the stakes” in the November 7 election.

The Republican National Committee ad, first shown on its Web site and scheduled for airing on cable television early next week, also includes images of al Qaeda fighters in training and other al Qaeda leaders.

“What is yet to come will be even greater,” the ad quotes bin Laden as saying, before concluding with the words: “These are the stakes. Vote November 7.”

The bin Laden ad recalls one of the most famous American political ads, the 1964 “Daisy” ad used by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in his race against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.

Six nations have been most frequently mentioned in discussions of nuclear non-proliferation in recent years. Four are known to have nuclear weapons and do not allow U.N. inspections of active nuclear weapon sites. Israel’s nuclear stockpile is an open secret. India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons; they conducted highly publicized nuclear tests in 1998, creating a very tense moment between the rivals. This month, North Korea tested a nuclear device.

Another frequently mentioned country, Iran, does not now have nuclear weapons. It actually signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the international legal foundation of nonproliferation. Iran allows U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities, which it claims will be used solely for civilian power plants – legal under the NPT – and never to create a weapon. No proof has ever been offered that Iran is taking steps to produce a nuclear weapon.

The sixth country, Iraq, was invaded on the pretext of having a serious program to produce nuclear weapons, as well as other weapons of mass destruction, which are now known not to have existed since soon after U.N. inspections began there in 1991.

Yet, leaving out occupied Iraq, the only one of these countries the U.S. is threatening to attack is Iran — despite the lack of proof that Iran is even seeking a nuclear weapon. In fact, of those five countries, Iran is the only one currently playing by the rules.

The use of nuclear nonproliferation as justification for threats to attack Iran looks like a sham, just as it was shown to be a sham in Iraq.

… diplomacy has been shown to work with North Korea. From 1994 to 2002, North Korea actually shut down its nuclear weapons program under an agreement with the United States. However, the United States failed to meet its side of the agreement – shipments of fuel oil to replace nuclear energy until completion of construction of two light-water reactors that could not produce material for a weapon. Yet the North Koreans kept their program shut down until early 2003. They kicked out U.N. inspectors, withdrew from the NPT and began enriching plutonium again. Diplomacy is the only way to defuse the current crisis.

SAN DIEGO (Oct. 20) – Thousands of U.S. troops are being barred from overseas duty because they are so deep in debt they are considered security risks, according to an Associated Press review of military records.

The number of clearances revoked for financial reasons rose every year between 2002 and 2005, climbing ninefold from 284 at the start of the period to 2,654 last year. Partial numbers from this year suggest the trend continues.

The number of troops held back has climbed dramatically in the past few years. And while they appear to represent a very small percentage of all U.S. military personnel, the increase is occurring at a time when the armed forces are stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are seeing an alarming trend in degrading financial health,” said Navy Capt. Mark D. Patton, commanding officer at San Diego’s Naval Base Point Loma.

The Pentagon contends financial problems can distract personnel from their duties or make them vulnerable to bribery and treason. As a result, those who fall heavily into debt can be stripped of the security clearances they need to go overseas.