corrente

Love a mystery? Think that maybe, just maybe, the question of our treatment of Iraqi prisoners and its implications for our position internationally isn't yet a closed book? Check out Roger Ailes, heroic and always witty independent leftist blogger, and John Gorenfeld, actual, heroic, independent journalist on an obscure, Moonie connection to Abu Ghraib.

Another Roger don't miss; under the glorious title of Putzapalooza, Roger makes hash of Howie Kurtz's pretensions to the status of journalist. (While there, also don't miss his professorial guidance to conservatoit wonderkind, Ben Shapiro. Also, check John's just posted questions about Rev Moon's possible ties to North Korea.

Julia has two fine posts up at American Street, a brand new one on Republicans playing catchup to the mighty 527 Democratic cash machine, and this beauty that will bring you up to date on the "Whole Frist/Thune/Daschle thing."

While there, don't miss Chuck Corrie's "Gay Marriage Is Just Like Terrorism"

Okay, on to the President's speech last night. My first response: Wow! What the hell was that? I'm still thinking on it. From our fine open thread comments section, two among the many gems: Xan's first response to Bush's choice of a five "step" plan was to wonder what happened to the other seven steps. And from Marine's Girl, this:

I hope that new state of the art prison has a "presidental suite". I'm looking forward to paying for that as I'm sure my 8 year old son will too.

And speaking of Marine's girl, you can find out more interesting stuff from the perspective of someone who has a loved one "over there" by clicking here. If you're feeling strong, you might want to look at any of the conversations with her marine that she has generously chosen to share with the rest of us, like this one, or this one

The President's speech had a dramatic impact on at least one well-known blogger/political activist: Stirling Newberry of both The Agonist and Blogging of the President, 2004. Mr. Bush drove Mr. Newberry right round the bend, and out the other end. It is such an arresting piece, I'm going to quote a larger piece than I might ordinarily:

It is time for someone, someone with something to lose, come forward and state the obvious: we have, installed in our oval office, a man who is so unfit for the duties - by reason of a pathological dishonesty and complete disregard for the welfare of the citizens of this country - as to demand that we remove him, and his party, from power - and then use every law and organ of government to investigate the nakedly criminal underpinnings of that party. And exact precisely the punishments that they have so gleefully inflicted upon others.

There is no other alternative - any individual who can, backed by media and political system - state that Iraq is part of the war on Terror - is beyond hope. Any journalist, politician, general, writer, political operative or other so called public intellectual who can cling to such a statement is, equally, beneath contempt.

If I am fired from the campaign, so be it, if I am ostracized, so be it. No money or social position or talisman of status - of any kind - from such a society is worth my soul, and what scraps of honour any American maintains.

We must face the facts, the cold, hard facts. We illegally invaded another nation, engaging in war crimes to do so, in that we lied to the UN as to the causes for war. We did so without pressing necessity to invade - or to lie at all, since our target was an individual who could have been legally indicted for war crimes by merely stretching forth our hand. We invaded solely because of the electoral time table of George W Bush Jr, and for no other reason. This is worse that a crime, it is worse than a mistake, it is a blot against that most precious object of a free people - our willingness to comply with our own laws.

We did not invade because Saddam was a threat, but because he was not. We did not invade because we knew he had WMD, but because we knew he did not. The high officials of the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council were perfectly aware of this, and their war plans reflect this knowledge, since we took scant precautions that any reasonable military would take against a foe with such capabilities in a fight for its own survival.

Our leaders, if we were a defeated nation, would be sent to the Hague or some other tribunal for War Crimes prosecution. That we will not do this insures that our enemies, fortified by the clear bankruptcy of our laws, and our clear willingness to flagrantly break them when it is to our own advantage, and the complete and utter lack of accountability for those that break them, and those who enable breaking them - will strike, with devastating force, at the centers of our commerce and population. The will, rightly, point to the devastation of Baghdad as their reason for attack.

The United States, in the wake of 30 years of devastating conflict, laid the foundation for international institutions that endured until this conflict took place. While imperfect, often abused, and frequently engaged in their own follies, there was a progressive adherence to the idea of international law, and global leadership. This has been broken. Merely removing Bush will not restore it, because legitimacy rests not on there not being a criminal in power, but it being impossible for a criminal to come to power.

There's more here, along with an excellent thread of comments.

I should say that we've had an internal conversation here at Corrente, provoked by a similarly angry response by Lambert to the ever astonishing depredations by this administration of everything we as Americans think we hold sacred, about whether or not mere ejection from office by means of an election is a sufficient rejection of the Bush presidency, or if some additional smoting is required, like say, impeachment. Conclusions were not reached. My position, I'm still thinking on it.

Here's another perpsective on just how seriously this administration is undermining the Geneva conventions.

Mark LeVine, an asst. prof of history at UC,Irvine, an Arabic-speaker, among other languages, with much accumulated experience in the Middle East, wrote an essay published in the AsiaTimes which caught my eye some months ago that presented the issues of occupation in the context of corporate globalization. He's also the co-editor of the book "Twilight Of Empire: Responses To Occupation," ** an anthology of essays which I highly recommend; the book, published by a small publishing house, Percival Press, is beautifully produced in paper with some extraordinary photographs; something about the quality of the book, not only the contents, the feel of it in one's hands, is heartening; at least here, in opposition to the occupation of Iraq, we're attempting to treat the Iraqi people with the respect they deserve.

Not so on the ground, says LeVine, in this essay you can find here.
LeVine has taken the time to actually read the Geneva Conventions, and the UN Resolution that pertain to our occupation, and by which we ought to be judging our own behavior. We don't come off terribly well. A sample:

Though the issue of war crimes is almost inescapable in Iraq itself and has been a subject of much discussion abroad, the American media has largely avoided the issue. I searched the archives of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post to no avail for any article dealing with this issue substantively; CNN and the Christian Science Monitor have occasionally discussed it, but only on progressive webzines or at blogs can one find the issue considered in any detail.

Given the lack of coverage of such an important issue, perhaps Americans should take a minute next time they're online to actually read the 4th Geneva Convention. Or they could simply read the US Army Field Manual 27-10. If we assume that, among the thousands of people in coalition prisons, significant numbers aren't simply civilians arbitrarily detained in sweeps of supposed insurgent neighborhoods (which is probably not a good assumption), then this manual clearly defines prisoners like the ones in the infamous Abu Ghraib photos as "prisoners of war," since the Army considers "members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements" (art. 61(2)) as falling under this category.

And so "softening them up" for interrogation, as several of the soldiers now charged with their abuse have said they were ordered (or was it merely asked?) to do, is expressly prohibited both according to U.S. military law and the 4th Geneva Convention. Yet both the U.S and British armed forces have special training camps to teach their military intelligence personnel techniques -- code named "R2I" (Resistance to Interrogation)--to do just what was done at Abu Ghraib. In other words, they are literally training their soldiers to commit war crimes as part of the normal practice of war.

This is not an issue of soldiers exceeding their authority. It's an issue of the commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, along with his top commanders and civilian officials, being responsible for a military system that, once unleashed, cannot but commit systematic violations of humanitarian law. Without making ludicrous comparisons between President Bush and Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein, the same logic and international laws that led the U.S. to support their captures and trials could leave both President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair open to prosecution for the systematic commission of war crimes by the military forces and civilian personnel under their command.

You can see how LeVine and Newberry start to intersect.

**The book is carried at Amazon; buy it from one of the private sellers; they'll get it to you faster.