Justice for LaVena Johnson.

Private LaVena Johnson was killed in Iraq just eight weeks after she arrived. The Army ruled her death a suicide but evidence of physical trauma to her body led her family to call for further investigations of rape and murder.

In high school, LaVena Johnson was an honor student, a violinist, and a volunteer in her community. After graduating, she decided to put off college and enlist in the army, where she was assigned to be the weapons supply manager of the 129th Corps Support Battalion and deployed to Iraq. On July 19, 2005, just eight weeks after her arrival in Iraq, Private LaVena Johnson was killed. She was eight days away from her 20th birthday.

The Army initially told LaVena’s parents that she had “died of self-inflicted, non-combat injuries.” In other words, her death was accidental. However, after further investigation, the Army decided her death was a suicide. But her parents were not convinced. First off, her company commander described her as happy and emotionally and physically healthy. A phone conversation with LaVena the day before she was killed had given her mother, Linda Johnson, no inkling that she was unhappy, let alone suicidal. LaVena’s father, Dr. John Johnson, was even more troubled by the evidence of physical trauma to his daughter’s body, which he got from Army records and autopsy reports. LaVena’s face was battered; her nose was broken; she had two loose teeth; her lip was so badly cut it had to be sewn back together; her vagina had been burned with lye; and there was evidence that somebody had attempted to set her body on fire. None of this physical trauma was mentioned in the autopsy report.

LaVena’s parents cited other problems with the official version of their daughter’s death. For example, the bullet wound that was ruled as the cause of her death was on the left side of her head, even though LaVena was right-handed. The Army also reported that the wound was caused by a shot from her M-16 rifle, but her parents say it’s unlikely that Lavena, who was 5’1″ tall, could have shot herself with a 40-inch rifle. And, based on gunpowder residue tests conducted by a military laboratory, it is doubtful if LaVena even handled the weapon. Finally, according to photos obtained by Dr. Johnson of the crime scene, there was a trail of blood leading away from the contractor’s tent in which LaVena’s body was discovered, and there was a cot or stretcher between her body and the M-16 rifle that reportedly caused her death.

The Johnsons believe their daughter was raped and then murdered in an attempt to cover up the rape. Whoever broke LaVena’s nose, busted her lip, shot her in the head, poured lye into her vagina, and tried to set her body on fire is still on the loose. The Johnsons have been trying to reopen the investigation into their daughter’s death and, after some initial obstacles, there’s finally some movement in their case. They’ve received help from veterans, journalists, and even a former diplomat. KMOV, a local Missouri TV station was the first major media outlet to cover the story. Since then, the Johnsons have also spoken to and received support from some Congressional representatives.

What makes this already horrible case even worse is that LaVena’s story does not appear to be a unique or isolated incident. Moue Magazine quotes a New Zealand Herald article stating that women soldiers in Iraq are often the victims of sexual violence, and Anne Wright—who’s also supporting the Johnson family—reports that “one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military.”

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The Battle for Hearts and Minds Rages on.

Reuters reports that US soldiers shot and killed the 17-year-old son of Hamad al-Qaisi, the governor of Northern Iraq’s Salahuddin Province. The killing took place during a raid on a family home, where the governor’s son was staying. One other relative of the governor’s was also killed and three people were wounded.

A US military statement says that an al-Qaeda financier was wounded and captured during the raid. The statement also explained the killing of the governor’s son thus:

As they entered the target building, coalition forces encountered two armed men. Perceiving hostile intent … they shot and killed the men. It was subsequently determined that the two … were related to the governor.”

But it seems there’s some uncertainty around the circumstances that resulted in the killings. According to the Boston Globe, Hussam—the governor’s son—was shot in the head, stomach, and shoulder while he slept. Hussam’s cousin, Uday Khalaf, was killed as he tried to enter Hussam’s room.

This is precisely the sort of thing that makes the battle for hearts and minds in Iraq an unwinnable one. The deputy governor of Salahuddin province reported at least two other attacks that followed the same pattern, accusing US soldiers of using excessive force when conducting raids. The attack was also condemned by the Salahuddin provincial council as an indication of “how the American forces disregard the souls of Iraqi citizens.”

If Iraqis get the sense that US soldiers don’t value their lives, it’s going to be pretty tough to win their hearts and minds. After all, what happens when US soldiers storm a house in search of al-Qaeda operatives? Regardless of who the soldiers are looking for, when they enter an Iraqi home, they’re going to encounter Iraqis. Whether or not they’re armed or affiliated with al-Qaeda doesn’t change the fact that they have friends, neighbors, and relatives who are not going to be happy when they are captured, wounded, or killed. And the killing of any Iraqi has the potential to alienate and radicalize countless others, whose deaths will only anger and radicalize even more Iraqis. It’s worse than a vicious cycle: It’s more like an avalance that picks up greater mass and momentum as it moves down the mountain!

In the short term, brute force might carry the day in Iraq. In the long run, though, it’s a losing game unless the intent is to kill everyone in Iraq. The other option, of course, is to withdraw US troops and put an end to this war.

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Freedom is Free and Justice is Infinite. So Why is Politics a Zero Sum Game for So Many Americans?

Depending on whether you’re more into politics or drunken debauchery, you might remeber February 5 as Super Tuesday or Fat Tuesday. I remember it as Superfat Tuesday, because it combined our two national preoccupations: politics and consumption. On the political front, Super Tuesday saw presidential candidates vying for primary delegates in 22 key states. Elsewhere, Fat Tuesday revellers ate, drank beer, and tried to score beads. And other stuff. So with politics, food, and booze on my mind, it’s only fitting that I take some time to reflect on how consumerist thinking impacts American politics, specifically the notion that for some to win, others must lose.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, it seems you can’t listen to the radio for 10 minutes with hearing some politician going on about security and “freedom.” They always present these issues together too, as if to emphasize that in order to defend our freedom, we need to place more emphasis on security. Of course, greater security means more surveillance and wiretapping, and fewer privacy rights, no habeas corpus, etc. Strangely, lots of other people seem perfectly happy to trade individual freedoms for more security. Benjamin Franklin must be spinning in his grave.

But the zero-sum-game logic pops up in other places besides national security. In domestic politics, for example, the provision of public services is always balanced against the tax burden on American citizens. Time and time again, we’re reminded that we can’t have better schools or safer streets without enduring a tax increase. We’re told that Black people can’t have jobs if Latinos work. And heterosexuals are led to believe that their marriages will be jeopardized if gay men and women were allowed to get married.

Why is so much of American politics always presented as a zero sum game? Why should individual liberties be traded for security? Why should gay rights be weighed against heterosexual marriage? Why are Latinos blamed for Black unemployment? Part of the answer, I’m sure, is that our political system rests on the idea that there is not enough of anything good to go around. It’s the politics of disunity, of pitting one group against another. When it comes to jobs, it’s Black people versus Latinos. The equal rights debate pits straight Americans against their gay compatriots. The implicit assumption is that there is just not enough employment or justice to go around. If Latinos get more jobs, then Black people have to accept unemployment. If gay couples can get married, then straight couples are somehow being denied the full dignity inherent in their unions.

This thinking is so ingrained in Americans’ political thinking that we accept the zero sum game as the philosophical core of our understanding of politics. I can’t count how many times I’ve been talking to someone about economic inequaility, social injustice, or labour exploitation and heard some variant of, “Well, that’s just how things are. Some people will always be on top and others will always be on the bottom.” The thinking implicit in this response is that everyone can not be on top. And thus we accept the grossest inequalities because, well, some people have to be on the bottom.

Nowhere is the zero-sum-game mentality more evident than in our notions of freedom. The old saw that freedom isn’t free—ubiquitous on bumper stickers—epitomizes this point. In my opinion, though, what was meant to be a clever pun is nothing more than an oxymoronic—if not outright moronic—cliche. I mean, how can anyone attach a price to an abstract concept like freedom? After all, the “free” in “freedom is not free” does not refer to the philosophical or political notion of being at liberty, of being unrestrained, or of not being beholden to anyone. Rather, it comes from economics, i.e., the idea of having no cost. By extension then, the economic idea of “free” is tied to the idea of abundance. So, something is more likely to be free if it is abundantly available. Conversely, a scarce resource will seldom be free. The logic of the freedom-is-not-free argument thus rests on the idea that freedom is a scarce, or finite, resource. Freedom is understood as a commodity subject to the laws of scarcity (read supply) and demand, rather than a right to which all humans are entitled. In other words, our understanding of freedom is defined in economic, not philosophical terms. As with all commodities, the value of freedom is directly tied to its scaricty, its finiteness. The quest for freedom itself then becomes a zero sum game in which someone must lose if anyone is to win. 

This take on the idea of freedom has a parallel in our basic understanding of economics, summed up in another trope that goes along the lines of “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” At the heart of this idea is the understanding that everything comes at a price, a sort of karmic-materialistic understanding of the world. In other words, there is always a price to be paid. A free lunch, then, is not truly free since we must, either in the present or future, pay a price for it. Most people, though, understand “freedom is not free” in the context of another bumper-sticker mantra. I am referring, of course, to “Support the Troops,” a tried and true slogan warmly embraced by politicians all along the political spectrum. When taken in the context of US soldiers, ”freedom is not free” implies that American soldiers pay for Americans’ freedom, with their time, limbs, and lives.

In reality, there is another zero sum game being played out every day, but it’s not in our political/national security system. It’s in our economic system. Commodities, unlike abstract concepts like freedom, are not abundantly available and are therefore never free. Oil, for example, is an increasingly scarce commodity and therefore decidedly not free. In fact, as demand for oil increases, supplies are strained and prices increase. But because our ability—nay, our right—to consume commodities is never challenged or questioned, we accept the fact that someone must pay the price for our consumption. And so, in order for us to drive fuel-inefficient cars while paying a pittance at the pump, people in other countries must pay with their freedom and often their lives. At the end of the day, it is our demand for commodities that drives the zero sum game, not our desire for freedom.

After all, there’s more than enough freedom to go around. Commodities, on the other hand, are not so abundant. Sadly, it seems most of us are unable to tell the two apart.

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Turkey Hits Rock Bottom.

Dear Abdullah Gul,

Is it me or has October been a particularly bad month for you and your country? First, the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States House of Representatives voted to condemn as genocide the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during the First World War. This made you guys so enraged you recalled your ambassador to the US and threatened to stop supporting the US occupation of Iraq. As if all this weren’t enough bad press for your country, you have been threatening to send troops into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish insurgents. And, just when you didn’t think things could look any worse, President Bush had this to say in your defense:

Congress has more important work to do than antagonizing a democratic ally in the Muslim world, especially one that’s providing vital support for our military every day.”

President Gul, it saddens me to see that you have fallen so low as to have George Bush defending your democratic credentials! After all, this is the guy whose administration came to power after disenfranchising Black voters in Florida; he cut funding for social programs and vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, despite its popularity; his administration openly supported the illegal and short-lived overthrow of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; based on false and falsified evidence, he launched an illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign country in spite of his people’s opposition to it; and his government arrests and tortures people in contravention of the US Constitution and international law. Your government could not have found a worse defender of your “democratic” credentials even if you had resurrected Attila the Hun himself!

Clearly, Mr. Gul, you and your government are clueless when it comes to public relations. But fear not, all is not lost! As a longtime supporter of Turkey’s attempts to join the European Union—and simply out of common decency—I cannot let you continue to damage your country’s image and reputation. Instead, I will break my rule against giving free advice to governments and give you some tips on how not to make yourselves look like a callous, genocide-denying, bunch of thugs. You’ll thank me for it.

1. Stop denying the Armenian genocide. It makes you look worse than evil. It makes you look stupid! I don’t know which dictionary you’ve been reading but when a government deliberately and systematically kills 1.5 million people of the same ethnic or national group, it’s a genocide no matter how you slice or dice it. Whether it happened in times of peace or war, in Namibia, Cambodia, Poland, Rwanda, or the Middle East, it’s still a genocide. No country that committed a genocide can ever hope to claim international respectability by continuing to deny it—unless that country is the US, of course, which Turkey clearly isn’t. Admitting genocide is easy and it will do wonders for your international image. After you acknowledge that the mass exile and killing of Armenians was a genocide, apologize for it. Express your deepest regret for the atrocity, build a monument in Ankara and also in every place that is in any way tied to the exiles and killings. Declare a day of commemoration and atonement. Make it a national holiday. Open your government archives and invite scholars to research, write, and speak about the genocide.

2. You modern Turks have been obsessive about distancing yourselves from the Ottoman Empire. You banned the fez, declared Turkey a secular state, and founded your legal and educational systems on European models. These are all very good decisions. Now you have a golden opportunity to further distance yourselves—in a huge way—from the Ottoman Empire. Acknowledge the genocide but make it perfectly clear that it was an Ottoman genocide, not a Turkish one. Emphasize the fact that modern, secular, fez-less Turkey is incapable of committing such a heinous crime. It will pay off. For example, France has declared genocide denial a crime. This means that France alone can keep you from entering the EU as long as you continue to deny the Armenian genocide. Is that what you really want? Think about how badly you want to join the EU. Think about how much you have already done to get into the EU. Although it must have been very difficult, you abolished the death penalty and un-banned the Kurdish language. These are both big steps. It won’t be a much bigger step to acknowledge and apologize for the Armenian genocide, and it’ll bring you closer to fulfilling your dream of EU membership.

3. Whatever you do, DO NOT invade and occupy northern Iraq! In fact, keep your army where it belongs; in Turkey. Between you and me, you guys haven’t exactly been the most popular country in that part of the world. I mean, your Ottoman predecessors occupied your Arab neighbors so they don’t like you very much. Not to mention, you control Syria’s and Iraq’s water supply. You were also a constant thorn in the side of the Russian empire and it’s successor, the Soviet Union. And, let’s not forget you killed 1.5 million Armenians during WWI so they’re not too crazy about you either. Let’s see . . . what else? Oh yes, you’ve fought Greece and you continue to occupy part of Cyprus, and Iran’s not too happy about having you as a neighbor either. And it seems your NATO allies dislike you more than everyone else because they are the most opposed to letting you into the EU. You must have noticed too that even NATO’s erstwhile Eastern-Bloc enemies—Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania—are already in the EU. Come to think of it, it seems your strongest ally is all the way in North America. It doesn’t look too good, does it, that you don’t get along with a single country that shares a continent—or even a hemisphere—with you? So what will people think if you start flexing your military muscle against Kurds in Iraq? I’ll tell you what they’ll think. Greece is going to be reminded of the times they were at the receiving end of your military might. Iran’s going to think, “Hmmm . . . we have Kurds too. What if the Turks decide to go after our Kurds?” As for Russia . . . well, let’s just say Vladimir Putin is not going to need much of an excuse to do something crazy. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, he was just in Iran expressing his opposition to Washington’s threats against that country. So, if you’re really concerned about maintaing normal relations with your neighbors, you’d stay out of northern Iraq.

President Gul, you and your administration need to get with the program. Times have changed, the world has changed, and Turkey has demonstrated its interest in being part of that changed world. Civilized countries are no longer impressed by cross-border demonstrations of military power. Stay out of northern Iraq. Also, you need to stop denying the Armenian genocide because it won’t win you any friends. Just remember, there’s life after admitting genocide. Look at Germany. Most importantly, accepting the genocide will help you recover from your post-Ottoman Self-Image Disorder, something I know you are very interested in. After all, acceptance is the first step on the path to recovery.

I wish you all the best in the coming days and months. I trust you will make more and more of the wise decisions that have characterized your rule thus far.

 Sincerely,

 Abdul Kargbo

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That’s just sick! I thought this was a free country!!!

Today, a new torture video started making the rounds on the internet. No, it wasn’t shot at Guantanamo or Baghram or Abu Ghraib. It was shot at the University of Florida. The victim, a journalism student, asked Senator John Kerry a series of tough questions during a question and answer session. For exercising his First Amendment rights, the unfortunate student is hauled off by security while he screams for help and asks why he was being arrested. He ends up face-down with his hands cuffed behind his back, while one of the security guards repeatedly shoots him at point-blank range with a taser gun. Taser guns were designed for long-range use to incapacitate, from a safe distance, someone who poses a physical threat. But in this case, the student was already subdued and handcuffed so the taser was used merely to cause pain, not for self-defense. Using an instrument to cause pain merely for its own sake is nothing more than torture.

When did asking tough questions of political figures become a criminal act? What’s even more disturbing is that everyone else just sits  there and lets this kid get dragged off by a mob of armed guards simply because he took too long to ask his question. For his part, Sen. Kerry keeps on talking as if violations of a human being’s fundamental rights—not to mention the US Constitution—were not being committed in his presence.

I hope this guy sues the pants off those security guards and the University of Florida. And I hope this incident haunts John Kerry for the rest of his career.

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Iraq Pulls the Plug on Blackwater.

It looks like the Iraqi government has grown a pair of cojones and decided to take a firmer role in administering its territory by revoking the licence of the private contracting firm, Blackwater. The decision came after Blackwater soldiers killed Iraqi civilians in the aftermath of a car-bomb attack against a convoy they were escorting.

Unfortunately for the government of Iraq—and for anyone who believed the US was not running the show in Iraq—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other power players in the US government are already turning up the pressure on Iraq’s Prime Minister to reverse the revocation of Blackwater’s license.

Iraqis will soon learn who is really ruling their country.

Read more here.

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Where There is Fear, There is Also Hatred.

The Columbus Dispatch recently ran a cartoon depicting Iran as a sewer with cockroaches crawling out of it and infesting neighboring countries. Enough has been written about how racist this cartoon is—and how reminiscent it is of Nazi and Hutu genocidal propaganda—so I won’t spend any time on that. What is missing from the hoopla surrounding this cartoon is any talk of how national–security rhetoric generally and inevitably dehumanizes entire nations.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush repeatedly assured Americans and the world that his beef was not with the entire Muslim or Arab world, that his quarrel was not even with the people of Iraq. Rather, we were told Iraq would be a stage of the global War on Terror because its leader was a dictator who was collaborating with Al Qaeda and could potentially put his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons at the disposal of international terrorists. Of course, we now know that there were no WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein—brutal and murderous though he was—had no links to Al Qaeda. Today, all Iraqis have to show for our trouble is a destabilized and increasingly violent country in which people have to do without recently available basic services like round-the-clock electricity and sewage treatment. Iraqi women are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being raped or worse, men are routinely kidnapped and murdered simply for going about their lives, and sectarian violence yields ever-increasing death tolls.

Yet the majority of Americans continue to hem and haw about the best way out. Opinion is divided on whether to send more troops, withdraw some troops, pull out entirely, and when and in what manner to pursue or abandon any course of action. The arguments over what to do or not do mostly revolve around the number of American casualties, how much the war is costing, and whether Americans are now more or less likely to be the victims of a terrorist attack. In other words, very few Americans are basing their opinions about what should be done on what’s best for the Iraqi people. The rightness or wrongness of this war is almost always judged from Americans’ point of view and almost never from Iraqis’ vantage point. One exception is the argument that if US troops were to leave Iraq, their departure would be followed by a bloodbath. But although this argument is constantly put forward, we never see any Iraqis who support a continued US presence in their country.

Why is this? Because what Iraqis think doesn’t matter to us. In the process of convincing ourselves that Iraq posed an existential threat to the US, we forgot that Iraqis are people too. National–security discourse is concerned mainly with the protection of one state’s population against attack by another state, so it’s inevitable that the people of the other state will gradually become devalued and eventually dehumanized. Take two hypothetical states, A and B, locked in a war of words. As the people of State A are whipped into a frenzy of fear and paranoia by continuous official reminders that State B poses an imminent threat, they can’t help but begin to fear, and then loathe, the people of State B. Having been convinced that they have to choose between their own survival and that of their “enemy,” the people of State A will not only ignore, mitigate, or deny violence done to ”the other side,” they will eventually welcome and celebrate it.  It becomes a matter simply of kill or be killed because the people of State A now believe that in order for them to live, others must be killed. Hermann Goering, Reichsmarshall and head of the Luftwaffe summed it up:

. . . voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Once the people of State B have been defined as a threat, it’s a short rhetorical step for them to be equated with other threats like viruses, cockroaches, snakes, poisonous mushrooms, etc. State B is a threat so it’s people are dangerous. Viruses and snakes are dangerous too. Ergo, the people of State B are viruses and snakes. What do you do to snakes and viruses when you want to protect yourself? You kill them. But such analogies are seldom made by official spokespeople. Rather, that task is left to journalists and radio personalities.

Ultimately, the essential ingredient for war is fear. Without fear, there can be no hatred. Without hatred, there can be no dehumanization. And without dehumanization, there can be no war. To be sure, organized international terrorism is a legitimate threat but international politics—constructed as a system of states versus states—makes no room for nuance so states can only make war on states. The human tendency to generalize also gets some of the blame. Thus, a nation that produces a handful of terrorists is seen as a nation of terrorists, in the same way that a nation run by a brutal dictator is seen to be brutal. In the international sphere, states derive power and legitimacy from their people. In order to break the power of a state, its power base (i.e., people) must be broken, and there are few better means than war for accomplishing this. Hateful propaganda, like the cartoon in the Dispatch, plays a pivotal role by paving the way to war. Long before the first bomb is dropped or the first shot fired, the people are primed to fear, primed to hate, and primed to tolerate unspeakable violence against their enemies. In other words, they are primed for war.

The cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch clearly shows that some in the US have decided that Iran is enough of a threat to justify a dehumanizing comparison between its people and cockroaches. We can only hope that as a nation, we Americans do not fear Iran enough to allow our government to start yet another war in the Middle East.

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Ignorance Loves Company: Miss Teen South Carolina Knows Little but She’s Not Alone.

During last week’s Miss Teen USA pageant, eighteen-year-old Lauren Caitlin Upton—now better-known as Miss Teen South Carolina—fumbled her way into infamy with a rambling, disjointed, and generally appalling response to a simple question, demonstrating to me that she is neither well-informed nor well-educated. But Caitlin Upton is merely a symptom of a larger problem.

That larger problem, my friends, is that Caitlin lives in a country where knowledge—especially the kind that may be acquired through schooling—is not valued. That’s why the most popular kids in school are never the top students. That’s why the smart kids get picked on. That’s why millions of people who can’t name the capital of Burundi flock to their TVs to watch beauty pageants instead of the international news. And that’s why, as a nation, Americans are woefully deficient in their knowledge of the outside world. Only 21 percent of Americans follow international news closely, while 65 percent admit they lack the background to follow overseas news. Ignorance is part of the American way of life and people like Caitlin Upton merely serve to illustrate this.

Basically, Caitlin’s ignorant because she can get away with it. How else could she have reached the age of 18 without having acquired sufficient English or logic or rhetoric or whatever other foundational skills one needs to answer a question as simple as the one she was asked? Clearly, she’s never had to! She’s pretty, she’s blonde, and that’s enough to have gotten her this far. Her inability to think or articulate opinions is irrelevant to her day-to-day life. As the Young Turks point out, Caitlin took fourth place in the pageant, despite her moronic response!!! Obviously, the message is that nobody cares that this woman is an idiot, as long as she’s pretty. Millions of Americans are getting that message loud and clear.

Caitlin is not unique. She’s not a bad apple or an anomaly or a black sheep. On the contrary, she’s a typical American teenager. Even worse, she’s an archetypal American teenager. She is the American teenager that millions of other American teenagers aspire to be like. And our values do little to help. Beauty pageants are elegant, elaborate affairs that showcase beautiful people wearing exotic costumes. Geography bees, on the other hand, are far less glamorous and receive far less publicity. How many high schoolers would rather win a geography bee than be Miss Teen USA?

Popular culture provides even more prosaic examples. Take country music legend Alan Jackson, for example, who proudly proclaims in a hit song that:

I’m just a singer of simple songs.
I’m not a real political man.
I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran.

But country singers are by no means the only Americans who revel in knowing nothing about the outside world. The system is rotten from the top down, and even political figures go out of their way to prove how provincial they are. How many of our political figures can speak a language other than English? How many of them have lived or traveled abroad? In fact, to have done so is considered a political liability. Remember Sen. John Kerry, who challenged George Bush for the presidency in 2004? He caught flack for having lived in Europe, for being a Europhile, and for “looking French.”

Our ignorance of the outside world is not only a part of our way of life, it is an essential component of our very understanding of how we live. Ignorance allows Americans to believe that the US healthcare system is the best in the world, despite studies that rank it far behind those found in other countries. If the majority of Americans don’t even know the names of other countries or where on the map to find them, how can they be expected to know about social and economic systems in those countries? This same ignorance allows us to defend our petroleum-based economy while the rest of the industrialized world is exploring clean and renewable energy alternatives.

Most seriously, this ignorance enabled the Bush administration to successfully conflate Osama bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda network with all Muslims and all Arabs. Only ignorant people could have been led to believe that a secular Ba’athist like Saddam Hussein would ever collaborate with a theocratic zealot like Osama bin-Laden. Yet this is precisely the argument put forward by the Bush Administration as a pretext for invading Iraq, and the majority of Americans—knowing next to nothing about the Arab and Islamic worlds—swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Today, the people of Iraq are paying the price for our ignorance and gullibility.

In Caitlin’s case, the worst consequence of her ignorance was humiliation. For millions of other people the world over, the consequences of Americans’ ignorance may be far more dire.

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Um . . . anybody seen my guns?

About 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces cannot be accounted for by the US military.

Hmmm . . . and here’s the Bush Administration blaming Iran for supplying the weapons that are being used against US soldiers. Would it be too much of a leap of logic or imagination to say that some, if not many, of those weapons probably wound up in the hands of Iraqi militants?

Good thing the US government didn’t give any really good weapons to the Iraqi military.

Read the full story here.

And, let’s not forget that in the absence of the WMD that formed the basis of the argument for the invasion of Iraq, it’s now looking increasingly like the whole war was nothing more than an oil grab.

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He did it again.

So, the President used his executive power to commute ‘Scooter’ Libby’s sentence because, in his opinion, the 30-month sentence handed down by the jury in Libby’s purgery case was “excessive.”

Big surprise!

I mean, did anyone really think this administration was going to obey the spirit—if not the letter—of the law and let one of their own go to jail? I certainly didn’t. This administration doesn’t exactly have a very good track record of . . . how shall I put this . . . adhering to the rules of transparency and accountability.

The Bush administration came into office under the cloud of controversy surrounding the 2000 election and the Florida vote recount, after it came to light that scores of Black voters had had their eligibility to vote challenged or outright denied. Then the Vice President held secret meetings with big energy companies and refused to release the proceedings of these meetings to the public. Then there was the 9/11 Commission interviews during which the President and Vice President refused to testify under oath.

What else? Illegal wire taps, sneak and peak, extraordinary rendition, reading Americans’ mail, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, firing federal prosecutors . . . the list of this adminstration’s transgressions seems endless.

But perhaps worst of all was the case for invading Iraq, which we now know—and some of us were saying back then—is based on lies. UNMOVIC just wrapped up operations in Iraq, stating that there are no weapons of mass destruction in that country, contrary to what our government told us. In order to bolster their case, the administration relied on flimsy information from the Blair government claiming that Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger in order to build a nuclear weapon. It was all a pack of lies.

Former Ambassador Wilson thought he was doing the right thing by trying to keep the country from embarking on a foolish military adventure in the Middle East. He traveled to Niger and proved that the uranium claim was false. For his troubles, the Bush Administration—in a stunning display of uprightness and moral fortitude—revealed that his wife was a CIA operative, thereby destroying her career.

Scooter Libby was intimately implicated in this plot to defraud the country and go to war on a false pretext. For his role in this scam, Scooter Libby was prosecuted for purgery and obstruction of justice but, thanks to the President, he will not be serving any time.

Which is just as well because, with a name like Scooter, I don’t think he would have fared very well in the big house.

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