The scandal grows

Here's another "cannonade" of facts and factoids to congeal around the growing Abu Ghraib scandal.


* If the mainstream media is "liberal," why did CBS allow themselves to be censored?


* Two detainees in Iraq were arrested for the "crime" of being Palestinian.


* U.S. soldiers reportedly beat a 12-year-old girl in Abu Ghraib. Remember, Rush Limbaugh calls this tactic "brilliant." What a sicko!


* The same report holds that the MPs competed to see who could take the most gruesome picture of detainee abuse. The Washington Post has reported that one of the charged soldiers, Charles Graner Jr., insists that this photo-party was ordered by higher-ups.


* I got some flack for pointing out that the abuses in Iraq reveal much about the repressed sexuality of America's good-ol-boy "Christian" soldiers. Washington Post editorialist Philip Kennicott has also noted the "fetish porn" connection to this scandal. So has Justin Raimondo, who titles his piece "The S&M war." And so has Newsday writer Patrick Moore, who titles his piece "Gay sexuality shouldn't become a torture device."


* The new right-wing slogan will be "Blame Lynndie." (Private Lynndie England is the ciggie-chomping trailer-trash bitch seen in many of the abuse photos.) A flurry of female opinion-spouters -- Linda Chavez, Ann Coulter, Deborah Simmons and Diana West -- have tried to blame the scandal on the "feminization" of our armed forces. Yep, that's the argument: When the army hired a few female MPs, reports of anal rapes and murders and whatnot were bound to follow. So it's all Lynndie's fault. Logical, no?


* Apparently Lynndie and her partner-in-crime (the father of her unborn child) are fundamentalist Christians. It figures!


* Photos are coming out showing abuse by British soldiers at other locations. Also see the story here, about British interrogators murdering one detainee and torturing another for three days. Just yesterday, the cable TV talking heads were saying that only Americans were involved.


* Weapons inspector David Kay now says he tried to warn the administration about the prison abuses, but was ignored.


* The Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch were trying to draw attention to this story for more than a year, but the world reacted only when photos showed up on 60 Minutes. (Amnesty has been denied access to the prison facilities.) Question: How could Amnesty International know what was going on before W knew?

* The Red Cross has been trying to tell the world for some time that the problem exists not only in Abu Ghraib, but in a host of other American-run prisons in Iraq.


* The National Review decries "Members of Congress elbowing their way into camera range to question, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, whether abuses were widespread and senior commanders were implicated..." In other words, Democratic congressmen are castigated for not sharing in the Bushies' preferred hallucination.

The Taguba report counts as "evidence," I should think. The report uses the term "systemic." As mentioned in an earlier post, I'd like to know the distinction between the terms "systemic" and "widespread."

Although National Review prefers the delusion that no higher-ups were involved, plenty of evidence indicates that the ground-level MPs were ordered to do what they did in order to soften up detainees for interrogation -- in other words, the commanders are implicated in this rotten business. This AP report reveals that a General (as yet unnamed) gave orders to abuse the prisoners.


* The real scandal may be the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan. From Amnesty International's website:

Former Guantanamo prisoner, Walid al-Qadasi, was held in a secret detention facility in Kabul. He said prisoners termed the first night of interrogation by US agents "the black night". He said that: 'They cut our clothes with scissors, left us naked and took photos of us ...

Indeed, the more paranoid among us may suggest that the Abu Ghraib offenses were revealed to "soften up" the public for later revelation of Afghan atrocities.


* The Abu Ghraib scandal has directed attention to the related scandal of "private" security firms given free reign in Iraq. One of these firms, Vance International, has been used domestically to break strikes and destroy unions. And they used some extremely ugly tactics. The notorious concentration camp at Guantanamo is reportedly employing the equally notorious Wackenhut corporation.


* Nationals of India, seduced by promises of high-paying jobs, have found "employment" in various U.S. Army camps in Iraq and Kuwait. There, they have been held against their will, treated as near-slaves, paid only a fraction of the amount promised. But hey -- what the hell. They're only towel-heads, right?


* The excellent British journalist David Leigh reveals that sexual humiliation of prisoners fall under the heading of "R21" techniques, which British recruits are taught to withstand:

Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes.

"Most people just laugh that off during mock training exercises, but the whole experience is horrible. Two of my colleagues couldn't cope with the training at the time. One walked out saying 'I've had enough', and the other had a breakdown. It's exceedingly disturbing," said the former Special Boat Squadron officer, who asked that his identity be withheld for security reasons.

Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons.

A number of commercial firms which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals.

Leigh also reveals that the MPs seemed to be under the impression that they were punishing people directly responsible for the 9/11 atrocity.

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: A week after the attack on the World Trade Center, a CBS poll revealed that only three percent of the populace blamed Saddam Hussein. That number grew wildly over the course of the next year, thanks to a right-wing agit-prop campaign. Broadcast lies have real-world consequences. How could our troops hope to "liberate" a people they had been carefully taught to loathe?


* "It is still not entirely clear who leaked the photos and how they got into the hands of a "60 Minutes II" producer." So saith the New York Times. I think this may prove to be the parapolitical issue surrounding this scandal. There is some effort to make the case that a reservist named Joseph Darby blew the case wide open, but he's not the one who leaked the Taguba report, and I doubt very much that he is the one who leaked photos to the Washington Post. There's a subterranean power struggle going on here, folks.


* And then there's the issue of "outsourcing" torture, as we did in the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who, detained by American authorities, was sent to Syria, the land of his birth, where he was treated abominably. Arar is now planning to sue the U.S. for $40 million. There are 9000 detainees in Iraq, and lord-knows-how-many others in Afghanistan and Gitmo. Do the math. Can we afford to become torturers? Isn't our blithe dismissal of the Geneva conventions injurious to our wallets?


* How many days (or hours) will pass before some right-wing hack tries to draw some sort of ersatzs moral equivalence between revelation of the classified Taguba report and Novak's bean-spilling in the Valerie Plame affair? The difference, of course, lies in the fact that Plame worked as an undercover officer, while the Taguba report had no business being classified in the first place.

Iraqi prison scandal

Just a quick run-through of some stuff you probably know already, along with one or two items you may not have heard yet:

Bush finally apologized. As a gentleman from Charleston once put it, W seems like the thief who is not at all sorry he stole but is very sorry he got caught. The Bush administration was aware of the Taguba report, but was more concerned with preventing exposure than with punishing the wrongdoers.

Josh Marshall made a brilliant catch: Since military intelligence seems to be the instigator of much of the abuse, we should take a look at the head of military intelligence -- and the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence is that infamous religious zealot Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin. Here we have more proof that born-again militarists tend toward repressed homosexuality. Boykin, you will recall, once told a crowd "My God is bigger than your god" -- a statement which echoes the thinking pattern of a 12-year-old boy bragging about the size of something other than his deity.

Prisoner abuse has led to at least 27 deaths. Private contractors -- unaccountable under military law, American law, or Iraqi law (such as it is) -- are responsible for much of this.

Delta Force and the Navy Seals may well have been involved in the abuse. Robert Baer, the former CIA man turned author, has averred that the MPs themselves would not have known enough about Iraqi culture to understand the best way to humiliate their charges.

Rush, in a particularly insane tirade, called the prisoner abuse "brilliant," and compared it to good-old American homoerotic pornography! He can't understand why porn-loving liberals would complain. (I dunno, Rush -- maybe because everyone who appears in adult films asks for the work and gets paid?)

Limbaugh and Chris Matthews both seem under the impression that everyone abused at Abu Ghraib must have been guilty of participation in the insurgency. The Los Angeles Times yesterday carried a story of one pro-American Iraqi who was imprisoned on a charge equivalent to driving without registration; he was beaten, stripped naked and forced to simulate masturbation in front of a woman. He was later acquitted of the car-theft rap. I'm sure Rush would say: "See? The system works!"

"Many of the prisoners abused at the Abu Ghraib prison were innocent Iraqis picked up at random by US troops," according to the Guardian. Torin Nelson, a military intelligence officer who served both at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, has told The Guardian that "30-40 percent" of the prisoners in Guantanamo have no connection to terrorism.

In Iraq, says Nelson, a unit in search of a target would settle for an Iraqi picked at random; back at the prison, that person would come in for particularly harsh abuse -- after all, he had done nothing to which he could confess. (Nelson is a witness, not a suspect, in the investigation -- but now that he has turned talker, I expect the infamously vengeful Bush administration to target him.)

A Reuters story, which indicates that the scandal is actually much larger than we now believe, includes this detail which gets more interesting the more I mull it over: "When military investigators were looking into abuses several months ago, they gave U.S. guards a week's notice before inspecting their possessions, several soldiers said." In other words, get rid of the contraband before the inspectors come.

Contraband would include the incriminating photos. Which brings us to the question: How did this material, how did this entire scandal, get out into the public eye?

Few commentators have addressed the issue. One blogger who is talking about it, Xymphora, does so in a fashion even I consider paranoid. That fact doesn't stop me from putting on my own pair of paranoiac sunglasses; when I do, I tend to see most Iraq-related events in terms of the "war" between CIA and the neocons in the administration. Granted, neither party to that fight comes out of this current business looking good. Even so, if you see Fox News commentators or the Moonie Times attempt to blame the Abu Ghraib scandal entirely on CIA interrogators, you'll know which side of the White House/Langley "war" engineered the release of the photos in the first place.

GOP for dummies

My ladyfriend is taking Political Science 101. Skimming her textbook, I was reminded that college-educated voters used to lean Republican. That changed with Clinton, who carried the college vote. Now we have this remarkable analysis which breaks down the average IQ of voters in the blue states and the red states.

The folks who live in Gore states are brighter than the folks who live in Bush states. Or so claims the afore-linked web site.

Frankly, I'm having a hard time accepting these data at face value. What startles me is the wide state-by-state fluctuation in IQ averages: The average Connecticut dweller scores a 113, while the average inhabitant of Mississippi scores a grisly 85. 85 is pretty damn dumb, and half the people in that state must be even dumber. A score of 70 translates to "borderline retarded." Good lord, how can an entire state filled with so many mental defectives function? How can people like that keep the electricity on and the post office operational?

The chart also lists the average New Yorker at 109, well above the average Californian at 101. If those New Yorkers are so smart, why don't they get out of a state where it snows?

I don't trust these data. On the other hand, they go a long ways toward explaining why so many Americans believe Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and engineered 9/11.

(Thanks to W:VLWC site for this link...)

ARROGANCE!

Bush went on television in Arab countries -- remember, these are the folks whose hearts and minds we hope to win -- to discuss the Iraq prison scandal. If ever there was an occasion for an apology by a sitting president, this was it.

And yet the smug little twerp could not bring himself to say "I'm sorry." A spokesperson did utter those words afterwards. But Bush could not say them.

Previously, he could not name a single instance in which his administration had made an error. Not one mistake of any kind!

This man calls himself a Christian. Every time he does so, he lies both to himself and to his co-religionists. Jesus assailed the sin of pride. Pride is to Bush as smack is to a junkie.

The ultimate military secret

My previous post about Mel Gibson naturally turned my thoughts to the current Iraqi prison scandal.

Many of those who gravitate toward our nation's military are southern, Christian, and conservative. Most of them would vote against the legalization of gay marriage. Most would oppose any effort to end anti-gay discrimination in the military.

What do the photos and reports coming out of Iraq say about these good Christian folk?

Prisoners have been paraded naked in front of cameras. They've been forced to pile up on top of each other while naked. They've been sodomized with broomsticks. They've been led around on leashes like dogs. (A common theme in fetish pornography, that.) Male detainees have been forced to engaged in simulated and non-simulated sex acts.

And that's not the worst of it. According to Seymour Hersh (as seen on Bill O'Reilly), "There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done... There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse."

One American MP even flounced around the prison showing off his muscles to detainees!

Next time I meet a good ol' boy from Kentucky or Texas who sees fit to lecture me about Jayzuss Crass and love of the flag and upholding the military virtues, I'll just smirk -- because I now know his true motivations.

Bush shouldn't send these lads overseas. Obviously, they belong in West Hollywood.

"Onward Christian soldier
Marching as to war
He wears chains and leather
He'll make you his whore..."

Mel and the mouse?

The rumor going around town holds that Mel Gibson may replace Michael Eisner as the new head of Disney studios.

An interesting idea. In recent times, Disney has achieved a gay-friendly reputation, while Gibson is known for making frequent anti-homosexual jokes in private. We all know what obsessive "joking" of that sort reveals. More than one wag has scried bizarre sexual overtones in The Passion of the Christ. A Gibson regime would thus represent a significant change in corporate culture.

Or would it? Maybe Mel will gravitate toward the mouse house for the same reason a gourmand might seek employment in a bakery...

Iraq: Spooked up

Perhaps the hippest piece out right now on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was printed in today's Los Angeles Times. Titled CIA May Have Had a Role in Hiding Iraqi Prisoners, the article underlines a fact that should have been obvious from the beginning: The "ghost prisoners" in that notorious hell-hole were kept at behest of the CIA. (Whenever you see the words "Other governmental agency" in a mainstream news story or an official report, presume a reference to the intel community. OGA = CIA.)

Forgive me for being the guy who counts the deck chairs on the Titanic, but I could not help noticing that the piece says 500 CIA personnel are in Iraq right now. A previous news story had put the figure closer to 3000. I imagine the real number is somewhere in between. We can fairly presume that the place is -- as Jim Hougan once put it -- well and truly "spooked up."

They really have no shame

Earlier today, I sat through the new Bush ad in which he damns Kerry for not supporting our troops to a sufficient degree. The Bushies have been pushing this theme for a while, but this is the first time I got through the whole commercial without flipping channels. (Although I did flip the bird.) The worst charge: Kerry supposedly voted against providing our brave soldiers with body armor!

The Republicans no shame whatsoever. As we noted in a previous post (on March 26), it was the Bush administration that delayed the provision of individual body armor vests.

Kerry voted against an $87 million supplemental bill for the Iraq campaign. He made his reasoning clear during the primary debates: Instead of asking for still more funds from the tapped-out working and middle classes, Bush should have rescinded the tax cut on the wealthy to the tune of $87 million. Kerry wanted "our boys" to have the armor -- he just wanted W's wealthy brethren to pay their fair share.

In my March 26 piece, I made a public plea to Kerry's forces: Get out in front on the body armor issue. Now they will have to play defense precisely on the grounds that should have allowed for a punishing offense. Note to the new JFK: To paraphrase the previous JFK, you're the only thing standing between W and four more years. For God's sake, stop dropping the ball!

David Brock, the red-baiters, and more

Check out the newest site devoted to exposing media bias: Media Matters for America. The founding father of this enterprise is David Brock, author of one of the most important and courageous books of the past decade -- Blinded by the Right, a Seutonian insider expose of the conservative propaganda machine.

The book made a huge impression on me, not least because I could easily have fallen into the same trap that captured Brock. As many can attest, the people who claimed to represent the campus "left" circa 1980 (at least in California) were so obnoxious that one cannot blame those who, like Brock, gravitated to the opposite side. Fortunately, he did not stay there.

Anyone opposing the Murdochian hordes will face scurrilous personal attacks; Brock got hit hard after he confessed all in Blinded. His story parallels that of Harvey Matusow, a now-obscure figure of the 1950s whose cautionary tale deserves the occasional retelling.

A troubled young man who had once flirted with the Communist Party, Matusow found himself involved with McCarthyite forces. The witch-hunters paid him to provide fake testimony against alleged "communists" -- usually labor leaders with no connection to the CP. Matusow seems to have viewed his perjuries as exercises in theatre. After conscience forced him to confront the real-world consequences of his actions, Matusow confessed all in a book titled False Witness. The result: Everybody hated him. Liberals scorned him because he had lied on behalf of McCarthy and Cohn, while rightists spread the story that the dreaded Russkies paid him to write his book.

Harvey Matusow died in 2002, having ferreted out a post-HUAC life on the fringes of bohemia as a self-described "hustler" for peace and charity. Despite his work on behalf of the homeless and other worthy causes, the left treated him badly, never forgiving or forgetting his foray among the red-baiters.

As Michael Moore once noted, progressives have a bad habit of snubbing anyone on the opposing team who wants to make a switch.

Matusow's unhappy history foreshadowed the case of David Brock, who, even after his repentance (perhaps because of his repentance?) also became the target of much leftish derision. But not from me, and not from anyone with any sense. Media Matters has done scads of top-notch work in a short time. Brock will soon have a new book out, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. I look forward to it.

The CIA, the DIA, blackouts and butterflies

When former DCI and prominent neocon James Woolsey writes, we should read. Between the lines.

He has a piece in the Los Angeles Times today, in which he discusses international interdependence in terms of terrorism, natural disaster, and "the butterfly effect" -- the idea that a small event in one place can have massive consequences in quite another. With co-author Rachel Belton, Woolsey writes that "we don't get to choose" between malignant threats and malevolent threats -- that is, between accidents, such as last year's massive power outage, and terrorism. We must try to prevent both. I cannot disagree.

He goes on to discuss a massive restructuring of the nation's energy system, so that an attack in one place will have fewer consequences elsewhere. And here's where his wording gets interesting:


Encouraging "distributed energy production" -- lots of small generating plants linked to portions of our critical infrastructure, rather than a few large plants -- is one way to reduce spillover effects and keep terrorists from knocking out large sections of our grid.


Hm. We've made a rather quick leap from the assertion that the last blackout was "malignant" to the prediction that the next blackout will be "malevolent." Does Woolsey know something we don't know about the true cause of last year's disaster?

In previous posts, I've laughed at the conspiratorialist idea that the 2003 outage occurred by design. Yes, it is true that one alleged Al Qaeda affiliate group (the Abu Hafs al-Masri brigades) took credit for staging the blackout. Many believe that this group is more-or-less fictional; nearly everyone dismissed their claim of resonsibility.

Now I am having second thoughts.

The "terrorists-did-it" theory received sympathetic treatment in -- of all places -- Popular Mechanics. In a piece titled "Blackout: The Conspiracy Theory," science writer Jim Wilson discusses the work of the DIA's Bradley K. Ashley, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, who has identified a "trapdoor" which may have allowed Al Qaeda to wreak havoc on our energy system.

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices allow remote control of unmanned energy facilities. The article quotes Ashley thus: "Information about SCADA devices and hacking them was found on Al Qaeda computers seized in raids in Afghanistan... Al Qaeda prisoners have informed interrogators about their intent to use these methods to attack the U.S."

More than that:


The files of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), an industry group created after the infamous 1964 Northeast blackout, suggest that a cyberattack dry run took place in January 2003.

According to Charles E. Noble, head of Information Security for ISO New England, a NERC member that operates transmission lines, some sort of probing attack may have occurred during the appearance of the so-called "SQL Slammer Worm" that disrupted many Internet services. It also affected two unnamed utilities. "Both entities lost their ability to execute bulk electric system control from their primary control centers for several hours," Noble says.


The terrorism thesis remains unproven, but the men speculating along these lines clearly have impressive resumes. This isn't just any old conspiracy theory.

And so I ask once again: Does Woolsey know something we don't about that event? His article can be read as a call for prevention of another terrorist attack on our power system -- even though he never actually confesses that such an attack took place last year. Any such admission would scupper the administration's boast that its policies have prevented another 9/11.

Woolsey has discussed terror, the energy grid, and "the butterfly effect" at least once before, at a speech for a conservative function, delivered in November of 2003. He was introduced by David Horowitz, who made the absurd claim that Democrats oppose the war in Iraq because they "hate America." In the course of his speech, Woolsey identifies both Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak and the rulers of Saudi Arabia as enemies of America who should be targeted for removal. In my view, this sort of talk exemplifies the neoconservative penchant for belligerencece, arrogance and imperialist over-reach. Of course, I'm one of those allegedly America-hating Democrats.

Even so, Woolsey's reference to Egypt prompts us to make note of two perhaps-relevant points:

1. The Popular Mechanics piece referenced above mentions that American utility companies have shared detailed information about SCADA devices with the Egyptian utility services.

2. The Abu Hafs group -- which may or may not be a scarecrow -- was named after an Egyptian, whose birth name was Mohammed Atef. Atef, a key Al Qaeda leader killed in 2001, was a policeman in his native land, related by marriage to Osama Bin Laden. It is not unreasonable to surmise that an Egyptian cop spoke to someone working for Egypt's power utility. And perhaps the subject was SCADA...?

Dunne wrong

I applaud former congressman Gary Condit (remember him?) for bringing a libel suit against Dominick Dunne. On the air, Dunne proffered baseless theories about the Chandra Levy murder, and now Condit wants him to pay. Right-wing sensationalists like Dunne must learn that allegations of murder -- especially when leveled against a man never charged by police or identified as a suspect -- are serious business.

We all recall the propagandists who spread dark and conspiratorial stories of this sort during the Clinton era; never pretend that right-wing whoppers like the "Clinton death list" and the "murder of Rob Brown" do not persuade the gullible. The only way to force conscience-free scurrilous scribes to stop lying is to bring libel suit after libel suit after libel suit. Drown 'em in legal fees.

Yes, such a campaign would cost money; it would be money well spent. Trial lawyers tend to favor Democrats; perhaps some of them can donate their services pro bono to this cause. I know that public figures have fewer legal protections from libel than do private figures. I doubt that jurors will agree, however, that partisan broadcasters should have absolute license to bring evidence-free allegations of murder and other serious crimes against Democratic politicians.

Conservative media shills are psychologically incapable of sticking to the truth. If they have to get out their checkbooks every time they utter a libel, they will switch from rabble-rousing to honest debate.

FindLaw argues that Condit should drop his suit, because Dunne is (allegedly) sympathetic and Condit is not. I disagree; even the most puritanical members of the public must comprehend that infidelity does not justify false allegations of murder. Libel laws exist to protect everyone, not just the saints among us.

The best account of this lawsuit comes via the New York Times. Note that Dunne was invited to repeat his false story on Laura Ingraham's airwaves. Why is she not a defendant? Did she offer even one word of equivocation when Dunne spun his lies on her radio show? Did she invite Condit to respond?

Dunne per se is not the main problem. We have to target the entire culture of reactionary mendacity. The only way to accomplish that goal is to hit hard, over and over, each time an outrage occurs. That crusade will take truckloads of money and involve many a setback. But is there any other way to stop the lies?

Judgment of Rush

I don't make a habit of listening to our sky-high Chief Bloviator of the Airwaves. But I caught a whiff of Rush in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal. He assured listeners that the problem was "not widespread," and that there were fewer abusive guards in Iraq than there are "plagiarists" and liars in the mainstream U.S. media.

Yow! Where to start? I suppose we should begin by noting that our tax dollars pay for the military, not for the media. The recent scandals involving the New York Times and USA Today (the two publications mentioned by Limbaugh) did not involve "plagiarism" -- to the best of my recollection, the only major plagiarism scandal of recent years involved historian Steven Ambrose, who is not a journalist. It is true that two reporters at the NYT and USA Today were guilty of fabrication. It is also beyond question that the scandal in Iraq involves more than two guards. So Rush's numbers seem just a tad off.

On the other hand, maybe Rush has a point, if you broaden the terms of the debate a bit. Let's include Fox News, Newsmax, the Moonie Times, the New York Post, Regnery publishing, and the Radio Right (including Rush himself). After a survey of this gruesome field, I will agree that the liars skulking within the American media probably do outnumber the torturers in Iraq's prisons.

Among those liars is, of course, the Painkiller Kid himself. Rush said over and over that the problem in Iraq is "not widespread." That same day, a Los Angeles Times front page article on the results of Major General Taguba's investigations appeared under a headline affirming that the problem was "systemic."

Maybe Rush can find an important distinction between the words "widespread" and "systemic." To my way of thinking, any such attempt at parsing would be like finding the difference between "naked" and "nude."

Whenever I heard the Bloviator broadcast this sort of horse manure in days past, I would wonder aloud: "Is he on something?" Now I ask "Is he still on something?"

Treason in Doonesbury?

I was taken aback by letters in the L.A. Times accusing the Doonesbury comic strip of "treason," or something parlously close to it, simply because a long-running character lost a leg during fighting in Iraq. This sort of disheartening injection of reality would not have been allowed during World War II -- or so one protestor claimed.

Nonsense. Popular culture in W.W.II could be very realistic, even grim. To cite but one example, "The Sullivans" (a.k.a., "The Fighting Sullivans") made the recent Doonesbury episode look tame.

Maybe what Bush supporters really want is for popular depictions of the Iraq campaign to take their cue from W.W.II-era propaganda produced in Germany.

Liars, damned liars, and Ed Gillespie

A couple of days ago, I caught Ed Gillespie, the Republican National Committee chairman, on a cable news show talking about Iraq. He assured viewers that the "vast majority" of Iraqis supported the United States and wanted our troops to remain in that nation. His Democratic counterpart, also on the program, did not challenge his facts.

According to a CNN/Gallup poll (you can also click here) -- a poll conducted before the recent heightening of violence in Fallujah and elsewhere -- 55 percent of the Iraqi population dislikes the United States. The same number of Iraqis believe that our military will not leave their country unless forced out. About half preferred Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. 57 percent want American forces to leave completely after the official handover of power in June. 54 percent said the United States is not serious about improving the Iraqi economy. (They noticed the scandalous sell-off of national assets to foreign corporations, a fact most Americans prefer not to face.) 57 percent said the United States won't let Iraq determine its political future.

I predict that Americans will continue to prefer the fantasyland version of Iraqi attitudes, just as they continue to think Osama and Saddam were partners. There's only one way to fight the misperceptions: From now on, whenever someone like Gillespie spews falsehood, we must eschew politeness. Every Democrat and independent in the room should shout "LIAR!" with as much vehemence as the vocal cords allow.

A small note on paranoia...

A few days ago, I quoted Lili Tomlin on the subject of paranoia. Let us continue to mine that vein.

This morning, I opened up the email box listed above (an address found nowhere else on the net and used for no other purpose) and found the entire box filled with spam messages. These messages all related to...er, the size of my, er...well. Let's just say, "my size."

The headers made reference to this topic in very rude terms, implying that I had much reason for despair and insecurity. The spam came from many different addresses. The fake senders tended to bear names like "Goldie Goldstein."

Now, we've all had to deal with spam before, and we all know that these unwanted advertisements can take a pornographic turn. But I've never before laid eyes on a mailbox filled to overflowing with messages concentrating on one subject.

Maybe someone didn't like what I wrote? Maybe someone intended an insult?

Nah. Only small people think that way. At any rate, I'm not going to shrivel up or shrink away from discussing any topic. I'm a straight shooter determined to address the big issues, at whatever length I find suitable.