Robert Fisk is great...


Thursday, November 27, 2003

Telling the truth won't set you free

By ROBERT FISK
BRITISH COLUMNIST

In Iraq, they are just numbers, bloodstains on a road. But in the little town of Madison, Wis., last week, they were all too real on the front page of the local paper, the Capital Times. Sgt. Warren Hansen, Spc. Eugene Uhl and 2nd Lt. Jeremy Wolfe of the 101st Airborne Division were all on their way home for the last time.

Hansen's father had died in the military. Uhl would have been 22 at Thanksgiving but had written home to say he had a "bad feeling." His father had fought in Vietnam, his grandfather in World War II and Korea. Two of the three men were killed in the Black Hawk helicopter crash over Tikrit.

But of course, President Bush, our hero in the "war on terror," won't be attending their funerals. The man who declined to serve his nation in Vietnam but has sent 146,000 young Americans into the biggest rat's nest in the Middle East doesn't do funerals.

Nor do journalists, of course. The U.S. television networks have feebly accepted the new Pentagon ruling that they can't show the coffins of America's young men returning from Iraq. The dead may come home, but they do so in virtual secrecy.

Things are changing. At a lecture I gave in Madison last week, there was a roar of applause from the more than 1,000-strong audience when I suggested that the Iraq war could yet doom George W. Bush's election chances next year. A young man in the audience stood up to say that his brother was in the military in Iraq, that he had written home to say that the war was a mess, that Americans shouldn't be dying in Iraq.

After the lecture, he showed me his brother's picture -- a tall 82nd Airborne officer in shades and holding an M-16 -- and passed on a message that the soldier wanted to meet me in Baghdad next month.

But I'd better make sure I don't reveal his name because those in the United States who want to keep the people in the dark are still at work.

Take the case of Drew Plummer from North Carolina who enlisted during his last year in high school, just three months before 9/11.

Home on leave, he joined his father, Lou, at a "bring our troops home" vigil. Lou Plummer is a former member of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division whose father, unlike Bush, served his country in Vietnam. Asked for his opinion on Iraq by an Associated Press reporter, Drew Plummer replied, "I just don't agree with what we're doing right now. I don't think our guys should be dying in Iraq. But I'm not a pacifist. I'll do my part."

But free speech has a price for the military in the United States these days. The U.S. Navy charged Drew Plummer with violating Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: disloyal statements. At his official hearing, he was asked if he "sympathizes" with the enemy or was considering "acts of sabotage." He was convicted and demoted.

Yet still the U.S. media turn their backs on this. How revealing, for example, to find that the number of seriously wounded U.S. soldiers brought home from Iraq is approaching 2,200, many of whom have lost limbs or suffered facial wounds. In all, there have been nearly 7,000 medical evacuations of soldiers from Iraq, many with psychological problems.

All this was disclosed by the Pentagon to a group of French diplomats in Washington. The French press carried the story. Not so the papers of small-town America, where anyone trying to tell the truth about Iraq will be attacked.

And while the Pentagon is now planning to have 100,000 GIs in Iraq until 2006, the journalistic heavyweights are stoking the fires of patriotism with a new and even more chilling propaganda line. One of the most vicious has just been published in The New York Times. Claiming that Saddam's torturers are attacking U.S. troops -- some of his intelligence men are working for the occupying army, but that's another matter -- columnist David Brooks writes that "history shows that Americans are willing to make sacrifices. The real doubts come when we see ourselves inflicting them. What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt?

"Inevitably there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause ... somehow ... the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror ..."

What is one to make of this vile nonsense? Why is The New York Times providing space for the advocacy of war crimes by U.S. soldiers? I doubt the U.S. channels will broadcast any images of "brutal measures" -- they've already had the chance to do so and have declined. But atrocities?

Are we now to support atrocities against the "scum of the Earth" -- Brooks' word for the insurgents -- in our moral campaign against evil?

Amid such filth, we should perhaps remember the simple courage of Drew Plummer. And remember, too, the following names: Army Prv. First Class Rachel Bosveld, 19; Army Spc. Paul Sturino, 21; Army Reservist Dan Gabrielson, 40; Army Maj. Mathew Shram, 36; Marine Sgt. Kirk Strasekie, 23. They, too, came from Wisconsin. And they, too, died in Iraq.

Robert Fisk writes for The Independent in Great Britain.
  ¶ 12:15 AM

  Ah, Walter...

Too bad Bush doesn't read newspapers. He has the "newsmakers" at the White House fill him in on what he needs to know. Which is obviously very little.

He may the most uncurious autocrat since Czar Nicholas II, and he is weaker for it for the same reason as the last Czar was weakened, the narrow focus of his vision and experience.


The Unilateral President
By Walter Cronkite
Special to the Denver Post


Thank you Mr. Cronkite...Good night David...Good night Chet and goodnight from the Free Media, it was nice while it lasted, stay tuned for the Faux News Channel.

And will somebody get the lights on the way out...

  ¶ 9:46 PM

  Weird World

Thanksgiving 2003. One more year to go, till liberation or...Dictatorship

Ran across this list of "beliefs you must hold to be a Republican",,,,

o Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you are a conservative radio host. Then it is an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

o The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

o Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

o "Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

o A woman cannot be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

o Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

o The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans benefits and combat pay.

o Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

o If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

o A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

o HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

o Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

o Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

o Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush?’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

o A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

o Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

o The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

o You support states rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.

o What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the 1980s is irrelevant.

o Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Hmmm......  ¶ 8:57 PM