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December 31, 2006

You know Your Country is in Trouble When

A deadly death toll near 100 from mass violence is reported as a sign that things are not out of the ordinary:

Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope. ...

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average 92 from bombings and death squads.

Posted by zeynep at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2006

Decency

I think I saw about a few dozen headlines / op-ed pieces about how "decent" Gerald Ford was.

I won't comment on the Watergate era. But how is it decent to know that a war is wrong, to know that innocents will die by the thousands, to know that, as an ex-president, you would wield some inluence by joining the dissent before the war and yet "embargo" your remarks until after your death?

President George W. Bush and his top advisers made a "big mistake" in their justification for invading Iraq, Gerald Ford told journalist Bob Woodward in an interview embargoed until after the former president's death

...

In a four-hour tape-recorded interview in July 2004, Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq advocated and carried out by key Bush advisers and veterans of his own administration -- Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- reported Woodward.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said.

"And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."
..

The interview and a subsequent conversation in 2005 were done for a future book project, although Ford, who became president in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, said his comments could be published any time after his death, Woodward wrote.

Maybe this does go back to the Watergate pardon: don't rock the power structure regardless of the costs borne by others. Get along (with the powerful). Keep quiet (if the powers-that-be would like you to). Duck and turn your back.

If this is decent, what do they call cowardly?

Posted by zeynep at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)

December 21, 2006

Haditha Charges are to be Announced

The marines who killed 24 unarmed civilians, many of them women and children, after breaking into their houses in a fit of fury following an IED explosion that killed one of their comrades are about to be charged. You might remember that the Marines had lied about it, claiming that the dead Iraqis were either insurgents or civilians caught in crossfire between the marines and the insurgents, only to be exposed because someone had gone to the morgue and filmed the bodies of children shot at close range.

So, what is Iraqi life worth? What would be the criminal penalty for people who burst into random people's home in a moment of anger and grief and slaughtered families wholesale if the victims were us? What will be the penalty sought for these men? We will see.

UPDATE: Four marines charged with murder and perhaps more importantly, four officers charged with dereliction of duty. "This is standard Nuremberg stuff", says a Marine corps court-martial prosecutor about the charging of officers who were not present during the incident:


"Under the law of armed conflict, if a superior knew, or should have known, of a subordinate's misconduct, and he took no action to stop it or to punish it, then he is himself personally criminally liable for the crime committed," said Gary Solis, a 26-year Marine Corps veteran who served as a courts-martial prosecutor and judge.

The soldiers claim that what has happened is simply part of combat.

Posted by zeynep at 01:28 PM | Comments (1)

December 19, 2006

It's not hidden anymore

As Bush makes it clear that we will send even more troops to Iraq, there is very little out there that is not known. I don't think there is anyone outside of Bush's inner circle that is entertaining fantasies of some kind of "victory," whatever that may mean. I cannot really know what's in the head's of the Cheney's and W.'s of the world, whatever it may be. Still, there is little illusion, little cover, little propaganda left to hide what's going on.

Yet, we will likely send even more troops, making a bad situation worse. (Withdrawal will also make a bad situation worse, of course.) There are no good options left, and the people of Iraq will pay a heavy price for it.

Quite possibly, most of the establishment want to find a way to get out -- possibly like the scenario outlined here. Pretend to be doing something, send ultimatums to the Iraqi leadership, however that ends up being defined, and withdraw blaming Iraqis for not wanting democracy badly enough.

Just shameful.

Posted by zeynep at 09:12 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2006

Pinochet Escapes the Trial We Deserved

... but he did not escape disgrace and shame. (I did like the AP story's headline: "Pinochet dies after decade evading trial.)

Milton Friedman (whose ideas Pinochet's coup mercilessly imposed), Jeane Kirkpatrick, PW Botha... Based on the emerging pattern, I'd have my pacemaker checked if I were Henry Kissinger. (I wish Kissinger a long, healthy life. It's always sad to see criminals of the highest order die without a trial).

Posted by zeynep at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2006

Spot the Error

So, this is how CNN was describing Pinochet's reign:

Leftists have accused him of ordering the torture and death of thousands of leftists during his regime. But he had also been praised for having attracted foreign investment to the country.

For one thing, the allegations against Pinochet are far more than accusations from one part of the political spectrum. But what got me was this ... In what universe does torturing and murdering thousands is "on the one hand" to "on the other hand" of attracting foreign investment. How about this, then::

"Jews have accused Hitler of killing millions during his regime. But he had also been praised for ramping up German industrialists' profit."

Posted by zeynep at 04:22 PM | Comments (1)