The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.
[. . .]
The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.
Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.
In a written response to the inspector general’s findings, the American military largely conceded the shortcomings.
Greeaaat. But it gets even better:
Because the inspector general is charged only with looking at weaponry financed directly by the American taxpayer, the total of lost weapons could end up being higher.
Bush’s tone during this press conference has been well-limned by Ezra (who deems him “furious”), Digby (who calls him “angry and petulant”), and Barbara (who writes that he is “wound a little too tight”).
But what strikes me even more than Bush’s typical peevishness is his complete inability to grasp even the basic substance of David Gregory’s simple question, which boiled down to this: Do you agree to allow other countries to treat American soldiers in the way that you have treated, and propose to treat, enemy combatants?
It was a question that asked Bush to step outside himself, to view himself and his country from another perspective. And we all know that this is something that he is almost constitutionally incapable of doing. That rigidity has been, indeed, the only thing that has allowed him to maintain his belief in himself and in his self-appointed mission, despite the objections of much of the world. Like a horse wearing blinders at a racetrack, he can look neither to the side nor behind him, but only straight ahead, to the path directly in front of him. He has come to believe that that path is the only path; and why wouldn’t he, when he can see no other?
It seems to me that the only possible retort to Gregory’s question would have been an assertion of American exceptionalism, based on a claim of its inherent moral superiority: we should be allowed to treat others worse than we wish to be treated ourselves because our values are superior to those of other countries.
But that moral superiority was shredded when the Bush Administration did away with the Geneva conventions. We can no longer condemn other countries for torturing people because we now torture people. We can no longer condemn the unfair treatment of prisoners by brutal dictatorships because we have proved ourselves worthy of comparison to the worst despots.
And so Bush is left to stammer and steam and evade, and to practice, in spectacularly half-assed fashion, every known debate trick in the book as he tries to avoid the question before him.
But none of those tricks worked, and the fact is that if you look at what he actually said, rather than what The New York Times wants to interpret him as having said, it was, as Barbara noted, that “the world would be a better place if enemies who capture U.S. soldiers could torture them, try them on secret evidence, and execute them.” [that quote is Barbara’s, not GWB’s]
I’m sure that will bring great comfort to our soldiers serving overseas.
Update:More from Billmon (via Susie), who hits on the loss of moral superiority I was trying to get at above:
We are, in a sense, at the moment of truth. The sadistic and/or bizarre acts committed in Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s secret prisons can be written off as the crimes of a few bad apples with names like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld — or, more charitably, as the consequences of a string of bad and brutal decisions made under emergency conditions by men who were terrified by all the things they didn’t know about Al Qaeda. Either way, they were not acts of national policy, endorsed and approved by Congress after open, public debate. But, thanks to the Hamdan decision, the question is now formally on the table.
[. . .]
So now we’ll find out, I guess, what we’re really made of as a nation — down deep, in our core. Would the Geneva Conventions themselves start to unravel if the global superpower disavowed its obligations under them? Balkin seems to think this is possible. At best, the United States would add another big asterisk to its place on the list of civilized nations, and forfeit forever its ability to chastise the human rights abuses of others without triggering a global laughing fit.
[. . .]
What will be on the table then is the question of whether a nation as powerful and potentially dangerous to others as America (the proverbial bull in the china shop) can survive on brute force alone — without moral legitimacy or political prestige, without true allies (save for the world’s other leper regimes) and without “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”
But, no, this really is CNN, and that really is U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne saying that the military should test its nonlethal weapons out on U.S. citizens before using them in war.
Why would we want to do that? For better PR, of course!
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.
The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.
“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”
The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.
Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.
Yes, “avoiding questions about possible safety considerations” is the issue foremost on the minds of our nation’s military planners. That’s just swell.
It’s not hard to imagine what those “testy mobs” will look like; most likely, they’ll be corralled in a “free speech zone,” which should make for easy pickings.
Awash as we are in mass-media memorializations of 9/11, all tied in propagandistic fashion to the never-ending War on Terror, it’s surprising to find a mass-market sports magazine, Sports Illustrated, providing one of the most incisive and subversive takes on the construction of national identity, myth, and memory.
In an extraordinary article titled Remember His Name, which appeared in the September 11, 2006 issue of SI, Gary Smith recounts the life of death of Pat Tillman, the iconoclastic football player, Army Ranger, and thrill-seeker who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.
Smith sets out to breathe life and personality back into the myth of Pat Tillman. He also provides a story about a story, a cautionary tale about the ways in which the political need to make Pat Tillman’s death fit the imperial narrative of martial sacrifice demeaned the ideals for which the man himself strived.
Thanks to the members of his family, who have refused to be silenced by military brass, most of us have known the truth behind Tillman’s death for some time. But what makes this piece remarkable is its ability to convey that truth — and Tillman’s fiercely independent personality — to a wider audience. As Smith points out in the last paragraphs of the story, facing Tillman’s death, and his life, honestly is about the least we can do to honor his service.
Although the piece is in some ways apolitical, its implications are obvious. The piece casts deserved blame on the Bush Administration and the U.S. military for their repeated cover-ups of the real cause of Tillman’s death, but also points toward larger problems with our political speech that have been very much on view in recent days during our nation’s remembrances of 9/11.
If Pat Tillman’s story teaches us anything, it’s that the symbols being used so callously by politicians of all stripes — but most often and most callously by the current administration — to promote war and extend political power represent a contemptible misuse of human lives that borders, in the end, on fascist propaganda. Whether the subjects at hand are Pat Tillman, Private Lynch, or the victims of the 9/11 attacks, we need to find a way to deconstruct the political mythology driving our country deeper into this endless, losing war.
This article, in a mass-market sports magazine, is a start. But there is a long way to go.
This is the paradox of waging an unpopular, morally ambiguous war.
What happened to 19-year-old Lance Cpl. Matt Solowynsky at the beginning of this year shows another aspect of the strain. The process of dehumanizing the enemy — the sine qua non of every war in human history, and crushingly obvious when a war grinds on without a clear strategic objective — sooner or later backs up on itself.
Part of the toxic waste of war embeds itself in the emotions and the soul of the combatants. That Guantanamo energy, that gusto to terrorize helpless detainees, to humiliate unarmed civilians, isn’t so easily contained, and begins corrupting the whole system. When a designated enemy isn’t available, anyone — a new recruit, say — will do.
“He didn’t do anything but be a gung-ho Marine,” said Tod Ensign of Citizen Soldier (citizen-soldier.org), the organization that eventually came to Solowynsky’s aid. Indeed, he was the highest ranked recruit in his class when he graduated from Marine Corps Basic Training last September. How odd that, a few months later, he was AWOL, fleeing Camp Pendleton, Calif., as though he were a POW.
It’s an unbelievable story, and Koehler is exactly right that it is the inevitable blowback of the Bush administration’s championing of torture. Read that Wikipedia definition and try to tell me that that is not what is going on here.
You may have heard that Bob Dylan has been hosting a show on satellite radio. But you may not have heard it, because you don’t have satellite radio. Redemption is now at hand: visit White Man Stew to download archived versions of the show, which is organized around themes such as “Weather,” “Drinking,” “Baseball,” “Coffee,” “Jail,” and “Divorce” (via Philebrity Reader).
Once you’ve heard Bob Dylan introduce music by Lonnie the Cat, Blur, and L.L. Cool J, you won’t look back.
I’ve said my piece about the war here and here, and I’ll say more about it when I have more to say. Plenty of liberal bloggers on my blogroll have been writing about the war; I think that the assertation that the left has been silent about it is a bit of a canard.
Speaking of war in the Middle East, Terry Gross hosted an excellent program about the subject today on Fresh Air. She interviewed Georgetown Professor Daniel Byman, who provided a remarkably even-handed, and wonderfully edifying, view of the situation. It’s well worth a listen — Byman presents Middle Eastern history and politics in all of their multi-faceted complexity. He affirms certain points currently being trumpeted by American conservatives (such as the deep connections between Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah) who are calling for more war, but he also says that Israel’s response to the kidnapping of its soldiers was disproportionate (that was the point, he argues), and that an American or Israeli attack on Iran is likely to end badly.
If you listen, please let me know whether you agree that Byman’s views were non-partisan.
Two of my daily reads, Lance Mannion and Dan Rubin, wrote about MyHeritage.com, a site that uses facial recognition software to analyze your photos and tell you which celebrities you most resemble.
I thought the whole thing was a crock until I learned that I resemble Heath Ledger (62%), Johnny Depp (59%), River Phoenix (50%), and Michael Vartan (50%). I am now MyHeritage.com’s biggest fan, even if it also pulled up Alan Alda (58%), Dan Rather (57%), and (gasp) Steven Seagal (48%). Hey — any programmer worth her salt will tell you that every piece of software has its glitches. . .
Update: If you like the Dylan shows above, also check out Down in the Flood, a podcast series by Jason Chervokas. Chervokas also writes a very fine blog called Trickster.
The New York Timesreports this morning that President Bush used an expletive while talking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair:
He went on to say the U.N. should directly enlist the Syrians to intervene. “I feel like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen,” he said to Mr. Blair, referring to Syria’s president, Bashir Assad.
“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” Mr. Bush said.
The web edition of the Times initially reported Bush’s word as “[expletive]”; it has since put the word “shit” onto its web page, figuring, I guess, that you can’t write an entire article about a curse word without revealing what that curse actually was.
The Times also tells us that Bush made the remark while he “thoughtfully chewed on a roll.” I ask you to watch the video for yourself, and decide whether you would describe his mastication in the same way. To me, he looks like a cow chomping on a piece of cud. Don’t they teach table manners at Andover?
The incident is perhaps a minor one, but it nevertheless reveals something about Bush’s “diplomacy.” Recent Time cover stories notwithstanding, it appears that “cowboy diplomacy” remains the lay of the land.
James Wolcott argued recently that the real problem on the world stage has to do with the overproduction of testosterone — or, as he put it, “male arrogance and insanity sheathed in metal.”
In light of today’s diplomatic incident, I find it hard to disagree — the current warmongering and posturing does seem emblematic of “brute expressions of patriarchal force.” And, though Wolcott’s post does reify traditional gender stereotypes, it’s hard to complain about that at a time when many world leaders are living up to them.
But Bush has always been a taker, not a giver. He wasn’t giving Merkel a massage, he was taking possession of her, letting everybody know, “This little lady’s mine.” I wonder what Merkel’s husband thought of Bush’s handy familiarity. I can’t imagine Laura Bush was too thrilled.
No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach — swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger.
[. . . ]
He treated Tony “As It Were” Blair like the servant in “The Remains of the Day,’’ blowing off his offer to help with the Israel-Lebanon crisis, and changing the subject from substance to fluff at one point, noting about his 60th-birthday Burberry gift: “Thanks for the sweater. Awfully thoughtful of you.’’ Then he razzed the British prime minister, who was hovering and wheedling like an abused wife: “I know you picked it out yourself.”
After doing his best to undermine the U.N. and Kofi Annan, W. talked about the secretary general like a fraternity pledge he wanted to send out for more beer or a keg of Diet Coke: “I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen.’’
There has been some disagreement about the Bush administration’s response to the developing war in the Middle East. Hilzoy sees an administration in disarray; Steve Clemons sees an administration whose options have been constrained by Israeli actions; and conservatives, not surprisingly, see an administration reaction that they would describe as “so far, so good.”
What are our ultimate intentions in the current war? This comment by Dan Kervick on the Steve Clemons post sums up what I suspect (and fear) is going to happen (via a comment on Obsidan Wings):
The US and Israel seek to provoke Syrian and Iranian intervention in the Israel-Hizbollah conflict, to provide a causus belli for expanding the Middle East war from Iraq to at least those two countries. Israel is helping Bush with his political problems, and his Iran problem, and is executing the first stages of a coordinated political-military strategy that will lead ultimately to major US military operations against Iran and Syria, a rather large-scale war in the region, and a geopolitical realignment and settling of scores that will be in the end to the advantage Israel and the US - or so they hope - after much loss of life of course.
There is no reason to suspect that this is all an attempt to drag the US into a war it doesn’t want. If that were the case, we would be able to detect that fact from the statements and diplomatic maneuverings of the administration. But we see nothing of the sort. Instead, the administration has gone out of its way to link the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah to Syria and Iran, and to escalate diplomatic tensions rather than defuse them.
I believe Dick Cheney is still in charge of this administration’s foreign policy - not Rice. So to understand what is going on, you need to think like a Cheneyite or neoconservative hawk, and look at events from a broad geostrategic perspective that reflects their values and priorities. From their point of view, the US has a rapidly closing window of opportunity to consummate the war whose opening battles were Afghanistan and Iraq, a war that (they hope) is going to remake the Middle East to the advantage of Israel and the US - and a war which they think is in some sense unavoidable, and so is better fought sooner rather than later. Iran’s power is growing; China’s power is growing; Russia’s power is growing and Europe’s political culture is changing. Before long the balance of power will have shifted so as to drastically curtail US options, and place Israel on the wrong side of unstoppable regional trends. It’s now or never for the hawks.
The administration has decided to go for it, and throw the Hail Mary pass now. Israel in Lebanon is the first back out of the backfield. That this is an election year gives them all the more reason to strike.
Posted by: Dan Kervick at July 15, 2006 06:23 PM
This is only one possible scenario of many, but it sounds right to me. I’m not sure I agree that there will be “major US military operations against Iran and Syria” — I think we’re much more likely to tacitly condone Israeli strikes than to commit our own overstretched forces — but, given the history of the Bush Administration, the low approval ratings of the president, the administration’s obvious desire to attack Iran, and the current rhetoric (Kervick notes in a later comment that U.S. and Israeli leaders are striking similar notes, which he summarizes as “Hizbollah ‹— Syria ‹— Iran”), all signs point to a larger conflict.
The one word that sticks in my craw is “coordinated” — and only partially because the close ties between the U.S. and Israelis are often used in the context of anti-semitism (I want to make it clear that I am not, in any way, accusing Dan Kervick of that). I just don’t think that the Bush Administration necessarily has a plan, or that it was involved in Israel’s decision to begin bombing Lebanon. Now that it’s happening, though, and given the current bloodthirsty mood among neoconservatives, I think that the administration will make up a plan on the fly, just as it did in the aftermath of the attack on Iraq. And it’s quite possible that that plan will include an attack on Iran by the U.S. or Israel.
I’m also reminded, now more than ever, of Seymour Hersh’s The Iran Plans. In case you missed it, consider this passage, about secret meetings on Iran between White House officials and members of Congress:
The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”
So Gingrich wants to roll out World War III as a bugle call to give Republicans a Viagra injection and force Democrats to slink behind the cavalry in mealy-mouthed agreement, for fear of being called appeasers and peaceniks by useful fools like Michael Goodwin.
But I don’t know about this. It might have worked as a portentous sales device in the immediate aftershock of 9/11, but we’re nearly five years on and the US stature has shrunk. If a majority of Americans want us to withdraw from Iraq, how eager are they going to be to sign on to a declaration of world war against a stateless enemy?
They’ll only do it notionally, as long as nothing is actually required of them.
I don’t know what is more frightening: the fact that there is an escalating war in the Middle East, or the fact that this group of “Rapture-Ready” evangelicals views that violence as cause for celebration. Here is a sample post from the message board:
I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what’s going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!
Who knew that the Second Coming would be heralded by animated emoticons?
Big tip of the Jesus-fish hat to Richard Cranium of The All-Spin Zone. As far as I can tell, the message-board link was originally posted on Cursor (and later on TP and C&L).
The Talent Show has posted some excerpts, which will prove useful should moderators delete the discussion thread.
Wow.
Update: (3:30 PM) Looks like the thread has been taken down. For what it’s worth, here is a link to the message board home page. I know I’ll be keeping my eye on The Rapture Index.
Update 2: (7PM) Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff sounds almost as thrilled as the Rapture-Ready faithful about the prospect of more war.
I hope that everyone remembered to bring their pom-poms.
Turner took a step back. Then he ran. As he floundered across the furrows the attack was coming in. The rich soil was clinging to his boots. Only in nightmares were feet so heavy. A bomb fell on the road, way over in the center of the village, where the lorries were. But one screech hid another, and it hit the field before he could go down. The blasted lifted him forward several feet and drove him face-first into the soil. When he came to, his mouth and nose and ears were filled with dirt. He was trying to clear his mouth, but he had no saliva. He used a finger, but that was worse. He was gagging on the dirt, then he was gagging on his filthy finger. He blew the dirt from his nose. His snot was mud and it covered his mouth. But the woods were near, there would be streams and waterfalls and lakes in there. He imagined a paradise. When the rising howl of a diving Stuka sounded again, he struggled to place the sound. Was it the all-clear? His thoughts too were clogged. He could not spit or swallow, he could not easily breathe, and he could not think. Then, at the sight of the farmer with his dog still waiting patiently under the tree, it came back to him, he remembered everything and he turned to look back. Where the woman and her son had been was a crater. Even as he saw it, he thought he had always known. That was why he had to leave them. His business was to survive, though he had forgotten why. He kept on towards the woods.
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