Outside the Perimeter

The Abu Ghraib Panty March?

The Hyperbole Award of the Month (which I just made up), goes to Bob Dart of the Atlanta Journal Constitution for this lead in a front page article in today's (May 29th) edition of the AJC:

"Washington - They are infamous memorials to the inhumanity of war: The Bataan Death March. Stalags. The Hanoi Hilton. And now, Abu Ghraib."

My response is best summed up to an email I send to the writer of the article this morning:

I read your article today on U.S. POWs and was incredulous at your lead paragraph. Do you seriously think that history will rank Abu Ghraib to be equivalent to The Bataan Death March? Either you are seriously ignorant of history or you expect your readers to be. The Bataan Death March involved 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, of which 20,000 died during the 55 mile march. Prisoners were executed for having Japanese souvenirs, if they fell out because of exhaustion, or even if they asked for water. Leon Beck, a Death March Survivor, had this to say about what happened to him when asked what the Death March was like:

“It depends on the guards you had over you. Some of the guards were not too abusive and some were very abusive. They would harass you, they would make you line up at daylight, get in a column of fours, usually 100 to 125 men, in a column of fours and keep you standing at attention until the sun came up and got real hot.... They would start you double-timing until the line got stretched out. The sick, lame and lazy, we called them, fell back. Then, they'd close you up again and they might keep you standing another hour in that hot sun.... There are ways you can rest one leg and shift your weight, it's not too noticeable and you can slough off and rest a bit. But, if they caught you at it, it meant a butt stroke with a rifle or a beating over the head, and the people that fell down and didn't get up, you'd hear a shot fired and you'd look back and there lays a body behind you. But they wouldn't let you go back and take care of him, even at the artesian wells, when the prisoners would break and run for the water. They'd shoot indiscriminately into the crowd and some got shot and laid there. You couldn't go take care of them ...At night, they put us in barbed wire enclosures, just a single string of barbed wire around the trees and they'd herd you in there. There was no latrine facilities, you defecated right where you were and it got pretty bad and stinky come morning and you couldn't walk around. You had to stay there. Because of the mess, everybody was sick with malaria and dysentery....”

Now, surely what the guards at Abu Ghraib did was beyond the pale. However, it is very unlikely a reasonable person would compare Abu Gharaib with the Bataan Death March. Why did you not track down one of the survivors, and ask him if he though what he experienced compared with being forced to wear a pair of panties?
In my opinion, you do an injustice to the all of those, living or dead, who were in The Bataan Death March.

I don't know if I will get a response from Mr. Dart, but if I do I'll be sure to share it.

Update: If you want to hear about the Bataan Death march from the people who survived it, I recommend this web page, at, believe it or not, the PBS web site.

Update: I did receive an email from the writer of the article:

let's see: will history remember abu ghraib like more valley forge or more like my lai? will abu ghraib not be remembered for "inhumanity and
infamy?" come up with your own adjectives. i think any objective reading
of the story shows that the abuses of american pows endured were worse than what the iraqi prisoners suffered. i don't think the abuses are equated in the story. the comments are from former american pows -- not me -- and they've certainly earned the right to give them.

bob dart

Actually, the only part of the story I had a problem with was the lead, where Mr. Dart compared Abu Ghraib with the Bataan Death March. And nothing in the body of the article supports that statement.

Watching .................... John Kerry on .................... Fox News...... He ................... is giving ........................... a speech about national security .......................... It's like watching satellite TV .................... in a thunderstorm ................... which keeps interrupting ....................... the video feed.

I think I am going to have to take a nap now.

Whalers wanted. Experience a must.

It seems like Michael Moore has been getting some death threats. True, he is a liar and a demagogue, but that goes a bit too far. Still, it's a free country, and I don't think that wishing for some kind of Mr. Creosote type accident would be out of the question.

At least before he stomps through any more flimsy airports.

Also, I noticed this section on the email page of his web site, which has links to get "real" news:

I don't get why the site lists "The Onion" as a place to get "real" news.

Oh, never mind. I forgot "The Onion" is probably as reliable as a Michael Moore documentary.

For the love of God, get him off me

Michael Moore travels to France and days later the Paris terminal that where passengers from the U.S. must transit collapses. Coincidence?
I guess the French should be glad that Moore made "Fahrenheit 9/11" instead of "Supersize Me" (where the director ate McDonald's for every meal for a month). Moore's ever-expanding ass could have accidentally taken out a whole village.

Let Fox News Entertain You

Some of the most entertaining stuff on television is seeing one of the Fox News reporters going after Bevon Savan about the Oil-For-Food scandal. Some samples of the "interview" that Jonathan Hunt of Fox News had with Savan as he was leaving what looked like a restaurant in New York City.

Johnathan Hunt: Mr. Savan, good afternoon, Jonathan Hunt from Fox News. I understand you have spoken to Paul Volker (who is heading the UN investigation of Oil-for-Food), what have the two of you talked about?
Bevon Savan: I don't report to Fox News, you know.
Hunt: What did Mr. Volker ask you? Did he ask you about the oil vouchers you have allegedly received and could have profited by up to three and a half million dollars?
Savan: What was your name, you said?
Hunt: My name is Jonathan Hunt, sir.
Savan: Mr. Hunt, if you don't mind, I don't wish to discuss it.
Hunt: Mr. Volker is obviously concerned about these allegations of the oil vouchers. What have you said to him about those?
Savan: Mr. Hunt, I said I will not talk to you or anybody. You ask Mr. Volker.
Hunt:: Did you personally profit from the Oil-For-Food scheme, sir?
Savan: Read my statement of Ten February, please.
Hunt: You wife is alleged to have said she doesn't know why people are giving you such a hard time because it was not anywhere near three and a half million dollars. Did she say that and if so, what did she mean by that?
Savan: I don't know who told my wife anything I got.
Hunt: So your wife has not said anything about you getting less than three and a half million dollars.
Savan: (crosstalk) Please, leave me alone. If you don't mind, right.
Hunt: What about this internal memo that was leaked yesterday?
Savan: You asked (unintelligible)
Hunt: The internal audit that was leaked yesterday, did Kofi Annon see that, sir?
(They accidentally bump into each other)
Hunt: Did Kofi Annon see that internal audit, sir?
(No answer)
Hunt: Do you believe that the UN should release all of these internal audits now so that the public can see what is in all of them?
Savan: Ask Mr. Volker, please. He made that statement on documents.
Hunt: Do you deny that you made any profit from of the Oil-For-Food scheme, sir?
Savan: Are you the investigator?
Hunt: I am asking you a question.
Savan: Are you the investigator?
Hunt: As a member of the press we have a right to ask questions, sir.
Savan: You have the right? Then I have the right to remain silent, if you don't mind.
Hunt: So you are saying that you did not personally profit from the Oil-For-Food scheme?
Savan: I would appreciate if you would stop asking me the same question. Do you speak English?
Hunt: (Nodding his head) Yes I do, sir. (Note: Hunt accent sounds like he is from jolly old England)
Savan: Okay. Then stick by your rules.

It goes on from there, as Savan gets more and more annoyed at Hunt. Of course he refuses to answer any of the questions, even to issue a denial that he received payoffs. After Hunt thanks Savan for his time, Savan goes off on Hunt and tells him to stop calling his friends.

From the fast walking and the look on Savan's face, you start to get the idea after a while that he wishes one of the powers of the UN were to be able to summarily execute any television reporter they find annoying.

How Spin Works

On the back page (of course) of Section A of the Atlanta Journal Constitution is an article headlined "Nerve gas believed discovered in Iraq". The second paragraph of the article has this (emphasis mine):

The incident, which happened in Baghdad in the past few days, could be the first discovery of a "weapon of mass destruction," a broad range of munitions that the Bush administration cited as a main reason for the invasion of Iraq last year.

I know it was only a year ago, but I seem to remember that Saddam Hussein's refusal to fully comply with U.N. resolution 1441 as THE main reason for the invasion of Iraq. One supposes that the ethos of the main stream media would not allow them to blame anyone other than President Bush for the invasion of Iraq.

You think he would be knitting cozies?

While the story of Nick Berg's death has been underplayed in the mainstream media (and many turning to the Internet and bloggers to get a fuller story), there has also been something else lacking in the news coverage. That is a fuller explanation and history of exactly who Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man identified by U.S. Intelligence as the one who held the knife and slaughtered Nick Berg, is and what he has done and is suspected of doing.
For example, on the back page of the Sunday Opinion section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, my local paper, (that's right, the back page), there was a reprint of an article titled Unspeakable brutality may restore U.S. resolve in Iraq, by Charles Paul Freund for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Freund does do a good job of explaining the outrage of what happened to Nick Berg:

What al-Zarqawi's friends do is butcher Berg --- there's no other word for it. They don't use a sword or an ax; they use a knife. You can hear Berg screaming as al-Zarqawi's gang hacks at his neck and then pulls at his head until it comes off his body. They then hold his bleeding head in front of the camera. The tape is appalling not only for its utter bloodthirstiness but also for the total absence of simple human empathy.

However, in my opinion where the mainstream media, as demonstrated by the AJC, fails to explain the history of al-Zaqawi, as if he were just recently spewed forth by the Dark Lord.
To recap, al-Zaqawi was cited as the al-Queda leader behind the recently attempted chemical weapons attack in Jordon, which, if successful, could have resulted in the deaths of eighty thousand people.
al-Zaqawi was the al-Queda leader whose letter to Usama Bin Lauden was intercepted, where he wrote of the need for al-Queda to take action to stop the U.S. by fomenting a civil between the Sunnis and Shiites before the turnover of power at the end of June.
And what was al-Zaqawi up to before the start of the Iraqi war? Well, he was not herding camels. According to the now much maligned information that Colin Powell provided to the U.N. back before the war:

The nexus with al Queda, Powell said, originates with a branch headed by Abu Massab al-Zaqawi, a senior associate of Usama bin Laden. He said Zaqawi has a camp in the northeastern corner of Kurdish Iraq teaching terrorist operatives how to produce ricin and other extremely lethal chemicals. He said Zaqawi has received medical treatment in Baghdad and that there are also other Zaqawi brigades operating in Baghdad.

My question is this: Say President Bush was not resolute enough to have called Saddam Hussein to account. Whose head would al-Zaqawi be hacking off now and where would his chemical attacks be targeting?

What the?

I am out of town on a business trip, and the hotel I am staying at left a copy of USA Today in front of my door this morning. I was reading this story about the beheading of Nick Berg, and ran across this quote from Gregory Gause, director of Middle East studies at the University of Vermont:

"My fear is that this awful act will lend credence to people in this country who say that whatever we do, others do worse."

In other words, Gause hopes that Americans will continue to see making Iraqi military prisoners stand around naked and wear women’s underwear as the equivalent of an American getting his head cut off. Tell you what Gause, I'll feel really, really bad about the Iraqis and their previously sore rectums as soon as Nick Berg grows a new head.

I'd rather be blogging

But unfortunately, blogging does not pay the bills. So I am off for a couple of days for a business trip. One thought though. You remember in late March when Israel arranged for Ahmed Yassin to personally meet up with Allah? Well, what ever happened to with the Arabic outrage and the thousands of new martyrs that were going to be created?
Kind of puts this whole Arabic outrage over the prisoner humiliation into perspective.

Update: Maybe Al-Sadr does not want to end up in a dog collar. It's just possible that the release of the photos of the naked Iraqi prisoners may have some sort of calming effect, as evidenced by the story above and the one where Marines went into the middle of Fallujah without being attacked.

Bring me the head of Donald Rumsfeld

If it's Monday, then it must be time for Newsweek to darken my mailbox. The front cover has the rhetorical question "Is He to Blame?" over a picture of Donald Rumsfeld. At least over part of a picture of Donald Rumsfeld, as from about the bottom half of chin is cut off. (Maybe to make him look short and/or powerless?)
In it, Fareed Zakaria and others make a big deal that the Defense Department is not following the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners captured in the War on Terror. My take on this is "So what?"
The Geneva Convention sets up rules for nations to follow to make the conduct of war more "humane", if there is such a thing. And that is a fine thing, as long as we are at war with other nations who are bound by the Convention also. What I don't get is that Fakaria and other think that this binds the U.S. in our conduct with nations or organizations who did not sign onto Geneva Convention or particularly follow any of it's tenets.
In other words, Al Queda and other terrorists don't have to follow the rules and we do. Sorry, but I don't think it works that way. The Geneva Convention covers the rules of war between nations are signatories. If a nation or organization does not want to play by those rules, then there is nothing legal or moral that says we have to either.