May 15, 2004
Making Our Heads Turn
By Mathew Maavak
[Mr. Maavak can be reached at qannai@hotmail.com or mathew@maavak.net. Or visit his site Panoptic World]
“It's going to get a good deal more terrible, I'm afraid.” - Donald Rumsfeld (AP, May 7)
It just did. He knew it all along.
“Fresh photos showing American soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners with snarling dogs or forced sex left members of Congress…angry and disgusted”…They saw, “Iraqi corpses, military dogs menacing cowering Iraqi prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose themselves and other sexual abuses.”
“The 1,600-plus photos…included scenes of abuse mixed…with travelogue-type snapshots.” (AP, May 13)
Think of it. At least 1,600 different photos were taken by US soldiers to amuse their children and grandchildren, if they are ever asked, “Daddy, what did you do during the Iraq war?” Both mom and dad can boast of campaign medals, and a pictorially certified ability to mix war with pleasure, in case corporate Jones next door gets too cocky.
The other terrible thing was the beheading of Nicholas Berg.
President George W. Bush said that "there's no justification" for the execution of Berg. Those who beheaded him wanted to “ ‘shake’ America's resolve in bringing democracy to Iraq.” (AP, May 12).
Reality check. I don’t think the United States ever brought, encouraged or maintained democracy anywhere except Western Europe after WWII. Read it here.
"Their intention is to shake our will," Bush said. "Their intention is to shake our confidence…Yet by their actions they remind us of how desperately parts of the world need free societies. ... We will complete our mission, we will complete our mission." (AP, May 12).
There goes our kinderfuhrer again.
We have two very disturbing sets of images here, enough to make heads turn, distracting our gaze from some very creeping issues. The pictures are real, and gruesome, and that’s what makes them potent. Rowan Wolf recently did an excellent job of analyzing this attempt at perception management.
Bush is in trouble, but don’t ever think for a moment it’s over the recent bestial acts. Don’t ever think it’s over democracy or a moral dilemma. This was the man who holds the American gubernatorial record for the highest number of state executions. He sure enjoyed Karla Fay Tucker’s execution when he mimicked her plea for mercy. That mockery was mirrored in the faces of those army perverts recently.
Fact is the oil issue is just not going away.
“Rapid global economic expansion is fueling the biggest increase in world oil demand growth for 16 years,” according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In its monthly Oil Market Report the Paris-based agency raised its forecast for incremental oil demand in 2004 by 270,000 barrels a day to 1.95 million bpd on the 80.6 million bpd world market.”
US oil prices set “13-year high of $40.38 a barrel” on May 12, and OPEC is vacillating at present. “The price spike has come during the second quarter, when world oil demand is at its lowest seasonal ebb, raising concerns about prices later in the year, as demand rises again.” (Reuters, May 12).
The IEA says “further investment in oil exploration and refining” is “needed to sustain higher consumption. The high oil price was a significant factor behind the record US monthly trade deficit for March…US petrol inventories” on May 12 “fell unexpectedly in the latest weekly report.” (FT, May 12).
The US has a large inventory, a huge buffer stock for contingencies like war, or a 70s-style oil blackmail. The situation now is more complex. Supply lines can be secured but what can you do when demand outpaces supply? You may control a war. Controlling demand for oil from countries like China, or even within the US is next to impossible.
“An increase in drilling and investments in refining capacity is required if the demand projections are to be sustainable," the IEA report said.” (FT, May 12).
Here is a chance for Bush to ramrod his drilling plans over environmental objections, and other social concerns. The US people are “softened up” now. When they need oil, the war can take on a different perspective, if managed well. The world economy is on the rebound, and US consumerism is still upbeat, but only barely so. Huge oil prices can burn a good summer vacation to ashes when demand is at the yearly peak.
Jim Placke from the Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Washington claims we have reached a “critical point…If you don't start going out to explore for and produce new resources, (then) three to five years from now when you need them they're not going to be there.” (FT, May 12).
A real problem indeed! Imagine the looming chaos in a “most optimistic scenario.” It won’t be quite like the following.
"People enjoy bigger cars and SUVs and then scream bloody murder when there are higher gas prices," said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. (Detroit Free Press, May 11)
Murder? Whose? Oil refineries cannot cope and for the time being, neither can OPEC. Was this predicted a long time back and a war planned over it? US dependence on oil seems suspiciously deliberate but its short-term needs are real.
Still, the war president took time off to discuss the prison-abuse scandal and other aspects of the Iraq war on May 12 with Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Bush makes no difference between a poor Angola and those browbeating international bigwigs. Forget the fact that Angola was ravaged during the Cold War with the connivance of the US and Apartheid South Africa
It is incidental too that “Angola is one of the largest exporters of oil in sub-Saharan Africa,” (AP, May 12) and is pumping oil below par along with “Brazil and Oman.” (Reuters, May 12).
That Venezuelan enfant terrible Hugo Chavez and other recalcitrant leaders of oil producing nations better beef up their personal protection squads.
“Higher energy costs fueled the biggest producer price gains in over a year in April. Wal-Mart the world's biggest retailer raised the prospect that higher fuel costs could hurt its sales.” (Reuters, May 13).
This is BIG news. Wal-Mart was named the top Fortune 500 Company only a few weeks back. Throughout the United States, “retail sales slowed in April as consumers cut back on car and clothing purchases, and “first-time jobless claims… came in higher than expected.” The first gulf war occurred 13 years back. The trickle down effect on the US economy is going to be enormous. The super rich will have a tough time passing the buck. When the rest of the world starts feeling the pinch, you can guess one of the outcomes…
Here is another thing that is worrying the war president.
“Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost more than $50 billion next year… “ The war bill will be close “to $75 billion in the budget year that starts Oct. 1.” (AP, May 13).
Coupled with those unnerving photos, war outrageous, terrorism and the threat of an impending economic disaster, the American public can be “softened up” for anything. Violence will escalate assuredly, and Rumsfeld has vouched for that yet again in Iraq.
Bush badly wants “unfettered control” of the extra $25 billion. With that beheading, making Americans feeling unsafe everywhere, why not? This request came at the right time.
“The White House's $25 billion request has scant detail but says the president could transfer funds to any defense or classified accounts just by telling lawmakers five days in advance.” (AP, May 13)
Such unrestrained executive powers and the timing didn’t bother Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who supports the $25 billion request at a time when Republicans are getting cantankerous. Don’t blame it on the Skull and Bones old boys network alone. Yale is one of those Ivy League institutions that crank out more duffers than scholars. The worst, it seems, is Harvard, where many selections border on the fraudulent, quite like the US presidency, I should say.
The latest developments raise a lot of questions even if one loathes calling it a “softening up” process.
Berg’s videotaped decapitation was posted on May 11 by an al-Qaeda-linked Web site. How many times have we heard of Al Qaeda linked websites, right in the face of the US Patriot Acts? US authorities have the tools to intrude into every home and machine, and can set a trace, through various means, that could lead all the way to Osama Bin Laden’s lair. The RIAA demonstrated such tools so expertly when they tracked down grandmas and kids with pirated shareware music. Read it (here)
Is there a genuine moral outrage?
The Denver Post, disclosed recently that “three Army soldiers from a military-intelligence battalion were accused of assaulting a female Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib. After an administrative review, the three were fined ‘at least five hundred dollars and demoted in rank’.”(The New Yorker, Chain of Command, By Seymour M. Hersh (May 9).
The punishment must have been unbearable. Five hundreds bucks can’t get you anywhere in Kuala Lumpur for too long.
On January 16th, three days after the Army received the pictures, its Central Command issued “a blandly worded, five-sentence press release about an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was informed, and he informed the president as well. “Images” of the tortures…“were being swapped from computer to computer throughout the 320th Battalion,” prompting General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to persuade 60 Minutes II to “delay its story.” (New Yorker, May 9)
Marine General Peter Pace, the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the delay was caused by the structured chain of command that works “in a very systematic way.” It takes time “to read all of the documentation, get legal advice [and] make the decisions that are appropriate.” (New Yorker, May 9)
Was this same chain of command that informed Bush about Iraq’s WMD, 9/11 complicity, Uranium purchases, Al Qaeda links etc? They sure acted fast, even before 9/11 with all their quack intelligence, documentation and legal advice.
Watch out for “rumblings within the top brass” and recriminations among elected officials. They were not informed, and they are angry. While this drama is played out, watch the oil situation and that stupid economy. Our head are being turned in the wrong direction.
Here is another thing that doesn’t add up unless you think the whole charade was meticulously planned, right after that Texan lassoed the presidency even when he fell off his horse.
“Right from the outset, Pentagon planners opted for the most optimistic scenarios in Iraq, with only ‘handful of combat brigades’ needed in Iraq in mid 2004.” There are 130,000-odd US troops there now. (New Yorker, May 9).
Only military fools would opt for “most optimistic scenarios” in Iraq. Is this devious planning or a criminal miscalculation? Whatever the case, the soldiers there are close to becoming sitting ducks, while believing their superiors, serving a mediated hysteria, and in death, boosting righteous political proclamations back home.
No-nonsense Rumsfeld will not be distracted by the “isolated pockets of international hyperventilation.” He is the one who urged the top brass to “break the ‘belt-and-suspenders’ mindset in the “military, ” some time back. (New Yorker, May 9)
He wanted more Iraqi bones and souls broken. For Sept 11? “Bin Laden” has been substituted with “Al Qaeda” these days with strange irregularity in the Press. One brilliant plan would be to drop Bin Laden’s body in the center of Baghdad just before the November elections. That’s your WMD! Then, everything will fall into place. The US army would have captured 9/11’s mastermind - dead - and prove prior Iraqi collusion. Something “more terrible” is going to happen in September or October.
Here is something curious: Months earlier, “Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the task force in charge of the prison at Guantánamo,” brought in “a team of experts to Iraq to review the Army program. His recommendation was radical: that Army prisons be geared, first and foremost, to interrogations and the gathering of information needed for the war effort.” (New Yorker, May 9)
What in the world were they doing all the while? Everything other than “gathering information needed for the war effort”? Serving the US porn industry? This was not a POW camp. There is hardly any other task in a war in such situations.
“We have changed this (culture of abuse)—trust us,” Miller told reporters in early May.
Tony Blair’s envoy Ann Clwyd, doesn’t seem to agree. “The Labour MP said she had visited Abu Ghraib prison and raised concerns with the general in charge - although this was not the officer now being investigated. ‘I was particularly concerned that so many prisoners are being held there over a long period of time, that their families quite often don't know they are even there,’ she said.” (BBC online, April 30).
Who exactly was that general in charge?
A properly trained team of army interrogators can extract information without force. They just need a good psychiatrist to teach them some proven methods that are probably illegal, yet non-violent nor damaging to the internee. Army boys can do it cheaper too.
Instead, “private companies like CACI and Titan Corp that “pay salaries of well over a hundred thousand dollars for the dangerous work in Iraq, far more than the Army pays, and were permitted, as never before in U.S. military history, to handle sensitive jobs.” (New Yorker, May 9) CACI’s interrogator-extraordinaire Steven Stefanowicz has been “reassigned to administrative duties.” That’s not really his realm of expertise.
These had nothing to do with extracting information I guess and we can expect a repeat of the Lt William Calley show trial. Remember he was a lieutenant. That was no trial as the Geneva convention are meant for others, not the US, especially since it was drafted in 1864 by Henry Dunant, a Swiss whose name sounds suspiciously French. What was happening in the United States around that time? Freeloading slaves who were running riot with joy? No other democracy has consistently produced war criminals befitting a trial at The Hague. Their self-denials contort the mind.
“In March 2003, when several U.S. soldiers had been captured, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz reminded the Iraqis “that there are very clear obligations under the Geneva Convention to treat prisoners humanely. We treat our own prisoners, and there are hundreds of Iraqi prisoners, extremely well. We feed them, we take care of them, they're very safe with us." (Chicago Tribune, Abuses in Iraq highlight standards for treatment May 12)
That’s great. Lets hear it for Wolfie. He should have added that there are pretty white nurses at Abu Ghraib as well, who are into kinky stuff, decked in army uniforms. They are intellectual too, erecting physical contortions to check whether the Giza pyramids could hold BDSM chambers.
Now, amidst all this sordid drama, you need to laugh a little more for your own sanity, and who else but John Kerry can provide that?
The mysteries of Giza cannot be unraveled at Abu Ghraib, it seems. His solution? Why Republican Sen. John McCain will be his Defense Secretary, should he win the election. McCain must have been a trifle embarrassed, issuing a "No thanks, no thanks,” for the magnanimous offer. Kerry wants Rumsfeld to resign. McCain was the one who asked us to take a “deep breath and get all the facts,” when Rumsfeld was getting pounded. McCain also wants Bush re-elected. (Reuters, May 12).
Ask yourselves again. Does Kerry want to get elected?
The fun stops when Kerry does nothing over the Nicholas Berg case.
The unfortunate man was jailed for almost two weeks in Iraq and “US officials repeatedly questioned him in custody”. Notice that he was wearing that orange jumpsuit – a standard issue at US prisons - when he was murdered. “Also unknown is where and under what circumstances Berg disappeared. He was last in contact with US officials in Baghdad on April 10, and his body was found recently in Baghdad. Iraqi police” supposedly “arrested Berg in Mosul on March 24 because local authorities believed he may have been involved in ‘suspicious activities’.”
It stretches one’s imagination that the Iraqi police can arrest an American citizen for “suspicious activities”. His father, Michael Berg rightfully asks, “Who do they think they're kidding?”
According to his father, Berg said “U.S. officials took custody of him soon after his arrest and he was not allowed to make phone calls or contact a lawyer.”
That’s the kind of freedom Bush is promising the Iraqis. “Yet by their actions they remind us of how desperately parts of the world need free societies.”
“Political psychologist Stanley Renshon of City University of New York said it was ‘a matter of strategic stupidity’ for the terrorists to release the Berg video now.” It is giving Bush an invaluable hedge. “Brookings Institution presidential specialist Thomas Mann,” concurred, more or less, saying, “Americans will be outraged at Berg's killing” and might “demand retribution.” (AP, May 12).
Berg was working “at night on a (communications) tower” in where else but the Abu Ghraib area. (AP, May 12).
Yes, it was Olympian stupidity for the terrorist to kill a man detained by US authorities, and whose family filed a suit against the US government for detaining him illegally, soon after they were questioned by the FBI at their home in West Chester, Pennsylvania. This man’s late sister was married to an Iraqi. He met his Iraqi relatives and was popular with employees at Baghdad’s Al Fanar Hotel, where he stayed.
“Berg was a ‘nice guy’ who ‘always smiled and said hello,’ unlike other foreign guests. ‘Once he told me, 'I'd like to learn Arabic.'”(AP, May 12). This was said on condition of anonymity.
This contradicts official the official version.
"The people we talked to at the hotel didn't remember him being there,” according to State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon.
The Iraqi police don’t remember detaining Berg either.
Bizarre indeed and a monumental stupidity for “Jihadists” not to have used his Jewish faith as a pretext for murder. When it comes to geographical and cultural stupidity, one nation towers way above others.
“In a writ filed April 5 in US District Court in Philadelphia, the Bergs said the State Department told them their son ‘is currently detained in Mosul, Iraq, by the United States military’ and that American diplomats ‘no longer’ had ‘any authority or power to intervene’ on his behalf. Berg was released the day after the suit was filed.” (AP, May 12).
No longer had any power to intervene? The occupying power’s writ is the only one that officially runs in Iraq.
The big questions: Why was he detained? What were the “suspicious circumstances” in his case? Did he stumble upon something very damaging to the US military and needed to be silenced? How can an American citizen be treated this way and be released right after a suit is filed? How in the world, can one even convince the world that the Iraqis arrested him?
With tools available under the Patriot Act, his emails can be intercepted and stored. Let’s see them. As his family suggested, they could have just packed him off to a waiting military plane and sent him back to the US. Officials claim there was just such an offer.
A popular guy, he was teaching Iraqis how to email. Did he do that from his favorite Room no 602? That could be significant as tapping would be easy; he would predictably use that room.
Let’s see. You have brutalized Iraqis, GI fall guys, and a decapitated American whose cold-blooded killing can be viewed on the net. Imagine our outrage.
The macabre video was titled "Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American.” A real terrorist masks his identity, not just his face. I haven’t seen Zarqawi’s picture before but the figure in that video was beefy and muscular. The CIA claims it’s him. He came in at the right time to remind Americans of the enemy’s greater barbarity. In moments like this, Al Qaeda, makes a predictable appearance that does propaganda wonders for Bush.
Berg also looked a little calm. He didn’t appear as the frightened lamb for slaughter. The man in the orange US prison suit didn’t know he was about to die? If he knew or even suspected, he will not allow himself to die that way. He will scream expletives and flail right till the end. Or say a prayer. He was doing neither. Berg was learning Arabic, and would have learnt enough to sense his death sentence. Among the first words he would have learnt in Iraq would be “die”, “kill”, “body”, “shoot”, “revenge”, “run” etc.
"More bad things will come out, unquestionably… I've stopped reading newspapers,” Rumsfeld told his troops in Iraq. "You've got to keep your sanity somehow. I'm a survivor." (AP, May 13).
Yeah, Herr Rumsfeld is a survivor all right, while others die! Wherever he goes “bad things” happen.
Is something bad happening to Saddam? The Iraqis will celebrate that but we want to hear his whole story first, ok? Feed him regularly with memory-enhancing medication and make sure he remains sane. It would be odd if his defense lawyers remember a good deal more than the man himself or for that matter, pesky journalists.
There are other bad things in store.
There is a high premium now for captured female soldiers. I had alluded this earlier at the Fall Guys Syndrome Pt II piece. The carnal mind in a battlefield picks its victims well. The torture inflicted is going to be barbaric; the social trauma back home will be great. The US army will have no choice but to expend enormous resources to rescue a woman soldier. There will be many Jessica Lynch hunts from now on, only this time they will be real. This leaves the army little room for maneuver, exposing vulnerable flanks for the enemy to exploit. Those sadistic wenches in US uniform still don’t realize what they have unleashed…
May 15, Kuala Lumpur
Copyright@ 2004 Mathew Maavak
Founder, Panoptic World
Tracking Trends in Our Evolving Society
www.maavak.net