Tag Archives ⇒ bush

The long life of 1950s sci-fi

July 2, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Part of the play­book for Amer­i­can tor­ture in Iraq and Guan­tá­namo comes from Chi­nese inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods used against cap­tured Amer­i­cans dur­ing the Cold War.

What the train­ers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied ver­ba­tim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chi­nese Com­mu­nist tech­niques used dur­ing the Kore­an War to obtain con­fes­sions, many of them false, from Amer­i­can prisoners.
The recy­cled chart is the lat­est and most vivid evi­dence of the way Com­mu­nist inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods that the Unit­ed States long described as tor­ture became the basis for inter­ro­ga­tions both by the mil­i­tary at the base at Guan­tá­namo Bay, Cuba, and by the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. 

It sounds like some­thing out of the 1962 thriller film The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. And in a way it is: the idea that Chi­nese Com­mu­nists had used inhu­man ruth­less­ness to unlock the secrets of the brain to cre­ate the per­fect truth tech­nique would be a charm­ing arti­fact of 1950s Amer­i­can cul­ture, some­thing to show along­side the hula hoop and the Jetson-like hov­er cars we’re all sup­posed to be dri­ving in the year 2000. Instead it’s yet anoth­er exhib­it in Pen­ta­gon amnesia.

Does­n’t any­one do any fact check­ing at the Pen­ta­gon? “Offi­cials who drew on the SERE pro­gram [in 2002 to design Amer­i­can intel­li­gence adap­ta­tion] appear to have been unaware that it had been cre­at­ed as a result of con­cern about false con­fes­sions by Amer­i­can pris­on­ers.” And yet… it’s clear that Pres­i­dents Bush and Cheney want­ed false infor­ma­tion in 2002 to launch the war against Iraq. What­ev­er “con­fes­sions” can be wrung from the Bagh­dad taxi dri­vers who got caught up in the arrest sweeps can cer­tain­ly be used to bul­ly the grow­ing num­ber who oppose the war.

But what do we want, jus­ti­fi­ca­tions or the truth? Peace in the region or pro­tec­tion from sins of the past? For­get that tor­ture is inhu­man: it’s also just an unre­li­able way of get­ting accu­rate infor­ma­tion. It’s hard to imag­ine a real­is­tic sce­nario where the hor­ri­ble events of 9/11 could have been stopped by acts of tor­ture by U.S. intel­li­gence or mil­i­tary per­son­nel but it’s could have been stopped if thought­ful ana­lysts had been allowed to share infor­ma­tion across agency lines and been focused on true knowl­edge and understanding.

Webb on SOTU: We owe them loyalty, we owe them sound judgment

January 24, 2007
· Martin Kelley

I must be hon­est and admit that I’ve always found Pres­i­dent Bush’s State of the Union speech­es unbear­able. The dis­tor­tions and half-truths are infu­ri­at­ing and the unearned con­fi­dence of a draft-dodging rich kid turned failed mil­i­tary adven­tur­er just sends my blood pres­sure through the roof. I wish I could be detached enough to lis­ten at least to the art of fine speech-writing but the mes­sage gets in the way.

Bet­ter then to lis­ten to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic response, giv­en by Sen­a­tor James Web. The tran­script is over on the NYTimes and the video is over on YouTube. Here’s a taste.

Like so many oth­er Amer­i­cans, today and through­out our his­to­ry, we serve and have served, not for polit­i­cal rea­sons, but because we love our coun­try. On the polit­i­cal issues ­ those mat­ters of war and peace, and in some cas­es of life and death ­ we trust­ed the judg­ment of our nation­al lead­ers. We hoped that they would be right, that they would mea­sure with accu­ra­cy the val­ue of our lives against the enor­mi­ty of the nation­al inter­est that might call upon us to go into har­m’s way. We owed them our loy­al­ty, as Amer­i­cans, and we gave it. But they owed us ­ sound judg­ment, clear think­ing, con­cern for our wel­fare, a guar­an­tee that the threat to our coun­try was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defend­ing it.

Worth a look: Josh Mar­shall over at Talk​ing​PointsMemo​.com had the neat idea to set up a YouTube group for peo­ple to give their own video respons­es to the State of the Union. 

Warriors against the War

January 16, 2007
· Martin Kelley

In the news:  more than 1,000 ser­vice mem­bers sign peti­tion to end Iraq War (Stars and Stripes), orga­nized by the Appeal for Redress cam­paign spon­sored by a hand­ful of mil­i­tary anti­war groups includ­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org alums Vet­er­ans for Peace. The sim­ple peti­tion reads:

As a patri­ot­ic Amer­i­can proud to serve the nation in uni­form, I respect­ful­ly urge my polit­i­cal lead­ers in Con­gress to sup­port the prompt with­draw­al of all Amer­i­can mil­i­tary forces and bases from Iraq. Stay­ing in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

Sup­port­ing the troops means mak­ing sure Amer­i­can lives aren’t being wast­ed in dead-end wars. Their ser­vice and their sac­ri­fice has been too great to con­tin­ue the lies that have fueled this con­flict since the very begin­ning, start­ing with the myth­i­cal Saddam/Al Qae­da con­nec­tion and the phan­tas­mic weapons of mass destruc­tion. The cur­rent esca­la­tion (euphemised as a “surge”) of troop lev­els is sim­ply an esca­la­tion of a badly-run war plan. When will this all end?
*Update*: Pres­i­dent Bush has admit­ted that the Iraq gov­ern­ment “fum­bled the executions.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17prexy.html. Mean­while, the UN puts the “2006 Iraqi death toll at 34,000”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html. When will Bush admit he’s fum­bled this whole war?

Spying in times of terror

December 29, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A new poll out there shows that only 64% of Amer­i­cans believe that “the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency (NSA) should be allowed to inter­cept tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions between ter­ror­ism sus­pects in oth­er coun­tries and peo­ple liv­ing in the Unit­ed States”:http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2005/NSA.htm. One won­ders what the num­bers would have been if “peo­ple liv­ing in the Unit­ed States” were replaced by “Amer­i­cans.” Even so, 64% approval is pret­ty low in these fear of ter­ror­ism times. 

Some ran­dom chat­ter on the blogs: Amer­i­ca­blog’s “New domes­tic spy­ing poll num­bers are very bad for Bush”:http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/12/new-domestic-spying-poll-numbers-are.html, Ezra Klein’s “Trust, But Verify”:http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/trust_but_verif.html & Stephen Kaus at Huff­in­g­ton’s “Pop­ping the Wrong Question”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-kaus/popping-the-wrong-questio_b_12982.html, Instapun­dit’s cryp­tic “I guess Kaus was right”:http://instapundit.com/archives/027738.php and Michelle Malk­in’s “Sor­ry NYTimes: Amer­i­ca is OK with the NSA”:http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004176.htm.

Pass the hummus, please, and by the way: are you a fed?

December 22, 2005
· Martin Kelley

It seems that every day brings new rev­e­la­tions from main­stream media about gov­ern­men­tal spy­ing on Americans. 

MS-NBC start­ed the ball rolling on the 14th when they informed us that the Pen­ta­gon had a data­base of “pro­test­ers includ­ing the Rag­ing Grannies and a dozen or so Quak­ers in Florida”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316. This must have prompt­ed the New York Times to pub­lish a sto­ry they had been sit­ting on for a year: the scoop that Bush had ordered the super-secret “Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency to start eves­drop­ping on Americans”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15cnd-program.html fol­low­ing the 9/11 ter­ror attacks. It’s rev­e­la­tion was an FBI agen­t’s email com­plain­ing about “rad­i­cal mil­i­tant librar­i­ans [who] kick us around”:http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm?Section=alonline&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=111469. Two days lat­er we received the almost-humorous news that the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty was hard at work mon­i­tor­ing the “Mass­a­chu­set­t’s inter-library loan sys­tem “:http://​www​.south​coast​to​day​.com/​d​a​i​l​y​/12 [UPDATE: this has been “revealed to be a hoax”:http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12 – 05/12 – 24-05/a01lo719.htm by the stu­dent]. Try­ing to out­do the DHS in ridicu­lous, we learned on the 20th that “the FBI has been infil­trat­ing veg­an potlucks”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html. Today it turns out the “New York City Police Department”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html has been doing its own exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tions into pro­test­ers. They even appar­ent­ly staged mock arrests in an attempt to incite vio­lence (their con­tri­bu­tion to the self-parody has been to send offi­cers under­cov­er on bicy­cle protests).

Are we sur­prised by all this? Well, not real­ly. The fears unleashed after 9/11 ignit­ed a firestorm of para­noia in the ranks of spy­dom. Non​vi​o​lence​.org got a call from the U.S. Secret Ser­vice when Osama bin Laden post­ed to the board that he want­ed to kill Pres­i­dent Bush (well, actu­al­ly we’re pret­ty cer­tain it was a acne-faced four­teen year old pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on his geom­e­try home­work). When I shot “shot pho­tos of a scuf­fle at a Biodemoc­ra­cy protest a few months ago”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/2005/06/biodemocracy_pr.php a Philadel­phia police detec­tive was in my office an hour lat­er want­i­ng to see it (the “melee” was harm­less except for a police­man with heart con­di­tions who took that moment to have a heart attack).

While some mon­i­tor­ing and pru­dence is indeed nec­es­sary, what ties togeth­er the string of sto­ries this week is the ran­dom­ness of the tar­gets. It’s as if the agen­cies had lost all sense of judge­ment. Any­one crit­i­cal of the war (or even main­stream cul­ture: wit­ness the veg­ans) was con­sid­ered a threat. All leads were inves­ti­gat­ed, no mat­ter how silly. 

While invad­ing Amer­i­can’s pri­va­cy is upset­ting and unwar­rant­ed, the great­est dan­ger is the sheer mass of irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion that’s been col­lect­ed. What’s an agency to do with reams of data on bicy­cle rid­ers and Quak­ers? Who’s watch­ing the flight schools and fer­til­iz­er depots while Agent Nin­com­poop is trad­ing hum­mus recipes with the cute veg­an with the nosering?

Of Floods and Prophets

October 11, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The tragedies were reflec­tions not on the pow­er of nature but on the pow­er of our human dis­re­gard for one another. 
When the ram­parts of New Orleans burst and flood­ed its streets and homes, I was at a hos­pi­tal prepar­ing to wel­come a child. As my part­ner and I cel­e­brat­ed new life we saw images of peo­ple trapped in attics, heard tales of loved ones swept away as they sought to pro­tect their chil­dren. We watched oth­er new par­ents and their vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren caught with­out food, water or ser­vices in a city sud­den­ly unable to operate.
The tragedies show our human dis­re­gard. The trapped were almost all African Amer­i­can. They were almost all poor. Sto­ries on the news – shot-at heli­copters, mass vio­lence in the Con­ven­tion cen­ter – reflect­ed Amer­i­ca’s racist imag­i­na­tion more than real­i­ty. The lev­ees failed because our polit­i­cal lead­ers ignored the rec­om­men­da­tions of gov­ern­ment engi­neers and sci­en­tists and slashed spend­ing on storm pro­tec­tion. Even the hur­ri­cane itself was super­charged by a cen­tu­ry of burn­ing fos­sil fuels, our dis­re­gard for nature and our stonewalling over the real­i­ty of glob­al warming.
A favorite image of paci­fists comes from a line in the Book of Isa­iah, that part in that talks about beat­ing the swords into plow­shares. But sur­round­ing pas­sages have been echo­ing in my ears late­ly. Like this one:
bq. Bring no more vain obla­tions; incense is an abom­i­na­tion unto me; the new moons and sab­baths, the call­ing of assem­blies, I can­not away with; it is iniq­ui­ty, even the solemn meet­ing. Your new moons and your appoint­ed feasts my soul hat­est; they are a trou­ble unto me; I am weary to bear them.… Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings before mine eyes; cease to do evil. Learn to do well; seek judge­ment, relieve the oppressed, judge the father­less, please for the wid­ow. Isa­iah 1:13 – 17.
The right­eous indi­ga­tion that fol­lowed the images from New Orleans is fad­ing. Life is return­ing to nor­mal in Wash­ing­ton DC and the high costs of recov­ery (and the con­tin­u­ing costs of Bush’s wars) will be shift­ed to the poor. We can­not stay silent to the vain obla­tions of our gov­ern­ment. It is time to do well and pro­tect the poor. It is time to relieve the oppressed and demand jus­tice for the human deci­sions that led to bro­ken levees.
This isn’t all finger-pointing: we each need to seek a self-judgement about our Amer­i­can lifestyles that have fuelled glob­al warm­ing with its con­sumeris­tic dis­re­gard for con­se­quences. We need to depend upon each oth­er more, seek a com­mu­ni­ty deep­er and more inter­laced than that offered by Wal­mart and McDon­alds. We are all part of one anoth­er, part of the earth and brethren to our human fam­i­ly. We need to gath­er togeth­er as a peo­ple who know that gov­ern­ment and con­sumerism alone can nev­er address our soci­ety’s deep­est needs and that vain obla­tions alone will do noth­ing to put away the evil of our doings. We need to get angry and sing a song of change. We need more Isaiahs.

Danny: Looking for a Real Religion

March 21, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Here’s an email from Dan­ny, a new friend who I met at last week’s FGC-sponsored “Youth Min­istries Con­sul­ta­tion.” I liked his obser­va­tions and asked if I could share this on the blog. I’m glad he said yes, since it’s a good per­spec­tive on where one con­vinced 19 year old Friend is at.
Update: “Here’s Dan­ny’s new blog, Rid­ing the Whale”:http://Quakernow.blogspot.com/

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Bulldozing the U.N.

March 8, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Bush has nom­i­nat­ed a “foe of the Unit­ed Nations to be its U.S. ambassador”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. Ten years ago he declared: “There’s no such thing as the Unit­ed Nations,” and went on to say “If the U.N. sec­re­tary build­ing in New York lost 10 sto­ries, it would­n’t make a bit of dif­fer­ence.” This is a fel­low who called his role in with­drawl­ing the U.S. sig­na­ture on the treaty rat­i­fy­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court “the hap­pi­est moment of my gov­ern­ment service”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. The Guardian reports that “fought arms con­trol agree­ments, a strength­en­ing of the bio­log­i­cal weapons con­ven­tion and the com­pre­hen­sive test ban treaty”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1432701,00.html?gusrc=rss. With his nom­i­na­tion, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues its course of uni­la­te­ri­al­ism and open con­tempt for the world com­mu­ni­ty. Not a good way to build a last peace.