...a place sometimes called Hell

"We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your life times that and twice it's double
That God knew exactly where He wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it
You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into truths and then change that truth into love
And maybe our children's grandchildren and their great-great grandchildren will tell"

'As' (by Stevie Wonder)

Federal immorality stains us all

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

In a week (only 2 days in) there have been many shocking revelations:

1. Bush's record number of 'signing statements' have led to noncompliance in perhaps a full third of passed legislation
   
2. The RNC has destroyed thousands of emails that should have been saved under the Presidential Records Act.
   
3. Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are demanding that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales investigate allegations that the RNC and former research director Tim Griffin may have been involved in voter suppression tactics.
   
4. The Forth Circuit Court passed a decision not to “alter the constitutional foundations” of the United States by upholding the government’s indefinite detention of a civilian in military custody in this country.
5. Tony Blair claiming that he only sided with George Bush when Bush decided to invade Afghanistan, because "Blair's real concern was that there would be quote unquote 'a knee-jerk reaction' by the Americans ... they would go thundering off and nuke the shit out of the place without thinking straight"
   

With this barrage of news, the one article that refuses to leave my thoughts is Seymour Hersh's story about General Antonio Taguba, who was responsible for investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal.

This story haunts me, the way torture haunts me, because it truly speaks to the moral stain we all now bear as American citizens. We are now as the Germans in WWII; stained by a common, moral guilt that can only be cleansed by an overhaul of our government. Torture makes of us lesser beings on the same par as Nazis.

I cannot bear that. Of all the reasons I write, the greatest of these is that I cannot live under the weight of this evil, this guilt, this horror. I cannot just sit here with this stain on my country and not speak, no SHOUT out my feelings of anguish and betrayal.

The facts that come out in Hersh's story are truly shocking. The White House knew, very early on, the extent of the torture going on in Abu Ghraib, but only worried about their own culpability:

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

The article went on to describe Taguba; his family history, his strong moral character and ethical center... I really like the man. I am grateful that we have men of his character serving in our military. And I find it a disgrace the way he was treated for doing his job, and doing it well.

At the time, Taguba was working for Major General Mike Myatt, a marine who was the officer in charge of strategic talks with the South Koreans, on behalf of the American military. “I needed an executive assistant with brains and integrity,” Myatt, who is now retired and living in San Francisco, told me. After interviewing a number of young officers, he chose Taguba. “He was ethical and he knew his stuff,” Myatt said. “We really became close, and I’d trust him with my life. We talked about military strategy and policy, and the moral aspect of war—the importance of not losing the moral high ground.” Myatt followed Taguba’s involvement in the Abu Ghraib inquiry, and said, “I was so proud of him. I told him, ‘Tony, you’ve maintained yourself, and your integrity.’ ”

Taguba got a different message, however, from other officers, among them General John Abizaid, then the head of Central Command. A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

Its beginning to feel a lot like 'the Mafia' lately.

It gets worse:

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”—in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, “Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?’ ” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’ ”

A recently retired C.I.A. officer, who served more than fifteen years in the clandestine service, told me that the task-force teams “had full authority to whack—to go in and conduct ‘executive action,’ ” the phrase for political assassination. “It was surrealistic what these guys were doing,” the retired operative added. “They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the chief of station.”

The photos weren't that bad?

Maybe not to those in the White House. At this point, this really comes as no surprise. To see a shark acting like a shark... is not a shock. The real horror is that the American people allowed sharks to take over our country and pervert our beliefs and the democracy that was left to us in trust.

To those of us out here who aren't sociopaths, these photos and the torture they portray... are horrible. They are the things of nightmares. They conjure up images of Nazi storm troopers and Gestapo torture chambers. Our grandfathers' generation fought the Nazis and liberated the concentration camps. Our generation has fallen into a lawless, moral abyss, and comes closer to resembling Nazis every day.

Not in our name.

This behavior is a shame to Americans living and dead; and this stain, this abuse of power and torture will be a scar on our history that will take generations to heal.

Taguba was forced to retire for his work on our behalf. And yes - this investigation was for us. I for one would love to thank him for his work, for his dedicated service, and for his adherence to honor:

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.” (A spokesperson for Cody said, “Conversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.”)

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

The question of torture

Torture hurts everyone.

Torture obviously hurts the victim, but it also damages the psyche of the torturer. It hurts the morale of the army forced to listen to the screams of the suffering - not to mention the personal safety of any American soldier that might be captured by insurgents.

Torture hurts our credibility and democratic principles, and deeply undercuts our leadership throughout the world. We’ve lost the respect of even our closest allies since we lowered ourselves to this level of thug behavior. We are behaving no better than a banana republic.

That we overthrew Saddam - partly on the argument that he tortured Iraqis and used chemical weapons against his own people - and we later used his very prison of Abu Ghraib to torture Iraqi citizens (most of them completely innocent of any wrongdoing,) is unconscionable. It is also incredibly, unbelievably STUPID.

Lastly, advocating torture hurts all Americans - it destroys our credibility as a democratic and 'just' nation, and has done immeasurable damage to our reputation around the world.

Our grandparents’ generation stormed the beaches in Normandy to overthrow fascism, and many saw first hand the results of Nazi torture when they liberated the concentration camps. They were liberators and heroes, and many people came to see America as a force for good in the world. We have betrayed our parents and grandparents with this abominable behavior. It is completely unworthy of their example and their sacrifices.

During the second GOP debate, John McCain said simply “it’s not about the terrorists, it’s about us. It’s about what kind of country we are.” That anyone on that stage had the temerity to promote torture in front of a former Vietnam POW... defies reason. But then, as Al Gore will tell you, 'reason' is hard to come by these days.

And as for these strange, pro-torture, ‘Christian’ presidential candidates like Romney... I challenge you to find any positive mention of torture - anywhere - in the New Testament. Christ taught his followers to ‘turn the other cheek.’ Christ said ‘blessed are the peace makers.’

The only mention of torture in the entire New Testament is the torture inflicted on Jesus himself: and if you want to line up on THAT side, please refrain from using the word ‘Christian’ when describing yourselves.

UPDATE: 5/23/2007 - terrific article about the disastrous fallout from the use of torture techniques in Iraq, "Torture Betrays Us," by by Charles C. Krulak & Joseph P. Hoar
(Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.)

Loss

My hard drive died last night. In all the years I've worked on PCs - somehow this has never happened to me before. Perhaps because I always - always - made backups of backups, stashed absolutely everywhere a backed up file would stash.

I always acted on the subconscious fear that you could never really have enough backups. I was a consistent perpetrator of redundancy. I backed files onto disks, onto CDs, and stashed them into folders on our business server. I stashed our files on other PCs throughout our office; on my husband's PC, on zip disks, and on Macs.

You can never be too sure... right? I mean, who hasn't had the excruciating experience (anyone who has ever worked with these heartless, fickle machines,) of working on a project all day long, only to lose everything you've done - everything - in one earth shattering, electrical blip.

Sometimes it takes days to get 'it' back - or perhaps you never get it back. Sometimes it gets lost forever to the binary graveyard, or perhaps evaporates into the digital ether.

In recent months I finally let the backup vigilance slide. I don't know why, exactly. Maybe it was just time to ease up - or perhaps I was simply distracted, and too busy. Or perhaps I still shy away from anything that pertains to our old business.

Actually - the strangest part is that I never even noticed our increasing vulnerability, as we gradually lightened our load of aging electronic equipment from a bygone business life. We recently moved, and I guess I was just tired of lugging old, unused computers around from place to place. They are gone... and now, apparently, so are all the files.

Poof. Blood curdling scream.

I was pretty sure the world had ended. Years of data, graphics, code and templates from a former life. Snatches of writing - paragraphs I'd written and then stuck away for another day. Poetry - even a manuscript. All of it gone in a heartbeat.

Oh, I suppose its not a total loss just yet. Somewhere out there, a PC guru is working hard to retrieve the sum total of our computer lives, now buried in some digital graveyard on my frozen hard drive. I keep hoping he can work a modern data miracle.

But it wasn't long before I realized that if he doesn't - if he can't... I will live. My life will continue moving forward, somehow, without those files.

Perhaps in recent months, I've gained a bit of perspective.

Or perhaps the true lesson in loss came after I fled our home office in disgust, and settled down to watch Rory Kennedy's HBO documentary 'The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib."

I am still reeling... still recovering. Not from the computer crash. From what I saw last night.

The horror is still fresh today. What I have learned about my country, and the policies of those who run the show... inexpressible. The word 'evil' does apply here. By their works you will know them. And their works are now everywhere.

How many scandals - how much horror will it take, America?

Who are these people into whose hands we commended our national soul? They are a rot in the heart of our democracy.

I'm not talking about the soldiers - kids, really - caught up in the war machine and following the orders of superiors. They are trained to follow orders without out judging, without feeling. This is one of the virtues of boot camp, or so I've been sold.

No, I'm talking about those at the top; the masterminds who called the shots, designed the torture and abuse - then pointed judging fingers at the hapless foot soldiers below. Yes - the sociopathic cowards who shrugged off Geneva conventions on a whim; blinked off all responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians by shameful, brutal, and truly un-American means. And in a heartbeat... our integrity, our honor - gone, never to be regained.

Didn't we hang Saddam for just such abuse of power? Abuses that took place in that very complex? And whose idea was it that we surpass Saddam's hideous standards of torture, and carve out our very own dark reputation of cruelty and infamy?

Such hypocrisy is truly staggering.

The loss of mere data pales in comparison, in magnitude with the scenes I saw last night. I am ashamed, I am horrified, and I am deeply angered.

And I wonder.... when will come the justice, folks? When will come the justice.