K Marx The Spot

Who Knew and What Did They Do

The New York Times reports that Ivan Frederick, the father of an Army reservist turned prison guard in Iraq, worried that his son would not get a fair hearing in an investigation for mistreating prisoners, put in motion the events that led to last week's public disclosure of the graphic photographs and a crisis for the Bush administration. Frederick contacted his brother-in-law, William Lawson, who believed reservists like his nephew would end up taking the fall for what he considered command lapses. Lawson contacted David Hackworth, a retired colonel known for publicly taking on the military establishment. Lawson sent an e-mail message in March to Hackworth's Web site and got a call back within minutes. The response put Mr. Lawson in touch with the CBS News program "60 Minutes II," which would later go public with the story.

The Times rendition of the facts raises an interesting question that I have not seen discussed. In Lawson's March 23 e-mail message to Hackworth's Web site, he stated: "We have contacted the Red Cross, Congress, both parties, Bill O'Reilly and many others. Nobody wants to touch this." Has anyone followed up to identify who received the same information Hackworth's site received? What did they do when they received the information? Why did they not take action to confirm and disclose the information? And, if all of these groups and individuals knew, how could it be that Rumsfeld and Bush did not learn about it prior to the dates they have confirmed receiving the information?

Shock and Awe

Bush and Rumsfeld have given a whole new meaning to their marketing slogan for the Iraq War, "Shock and Awe." It now describes a campaign of terror and dread that left people across the world with a sense of moral outrage.

The Right Stuff

I wish that I had the time and the guts to pull this kind of stunt. Why just spoof the right wing with a ludicrous web site? Instead, go a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and play the roles of Randoids in person. And nominating Edwin Meese (who was there in person) for president adds that special touch of creepiness. Yes, the Yes Men certainly do have the right stuff.

Acting Like Adults

The Bush administration came into Washington in 2001 with the message that the adults were finally running the government.

Adults are supposed to be responsible for their actions. Indeed, when the situation in Iraq looked rosy, the Bush administration was eager to take credit for everything that was going well—recall that "mission accomplished" banner on the U.S.S. Lincoln. But when things go badly, no one nominally in charge seems to be responsible.

Compared to the adults in the Bush administration, the moguls of the adult film industry are moral giants. After a performer was diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS, much of the industry shut down:

At least 45 men and women were under voluntary quarantine because they had sex with the HIV-positive performers or their sex partners, said Sharon Mitchell of the nonprofit Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation.

The first performer to test positive, whom Mitchell declined to name, was "conscientious" about having HIV tests every three weeks, she said. On Friday he tested positive for HIV and a follow-up test on Monday confirmed it, Mitchell said....

A list of quarantined performers was placed on the Web site of the foundation, which screens about 1,200 adult movie performers a month for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

As of Thursday about a dozen adult movie companies had agreed to follow a voluntary moratorium on production until June 8, said Tim Connelly, publisher of the industry news magazine AVN.

The Bush administration could learn a couple of things from smut peddlers. Acknowledging truth, even when it's painful, is good. Acting quickly to protect other people is a good thing. And just covering your own butts doesn't do an iota for you in the long haul.

Gutless Wonders

By now, the graphic and sadistic depictions of the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib complex in Baghdad should have raised the hackles of someone at the highest levels of government.

It seems clear that systems within the armed forces that were supposed to alert leaders to wrongdoing produced the sorts of reports, notably one from General Antonio Taguba that should have alerted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the top military leaders in the Pentagon that something was dreadfully wrong inside Iraq's prisons. But the president of the United States—supposedly the commander in chief of the armed forces—and the Secretary of Defense claim ignorance of prior knowledge:

The White House said the president learned from media accounts that there were pictures of the prisoner abuse and a classified Pentagon report on the problem.

Senior officials said Rumsfeld also admitted he was unaware of certain information about the investigations —an issue certain to come up in his congressional appearances.

Perhaps Bush and Rumsfeld truly did not know of the Taguba report, or of complaints filed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, or know about the infamous photographs seen to date, or hear about the other photograhs and videos that Rumsfeld admits exist. One would think, however, that two men so proud of their actions to rid Iraq of a sadistic dictator would have taken pains to learn as soon as possible of American forces doing the sorts of things, in Hussein's old prisons, no less, that would undermine what they claimed was their reason for going to war.

Or perhaps Rumsfeld and Bush knew full well what had happened, and hoped that somehow the truth would never get out. is there no point at which these gutless wonders will take some real responsibility for what has happened in Iraq?

One of the more bizarre attributes of the old Soviet Union in the early 1980s was its propensity for truly outlandish caricatures of the United States and its leaders. Pravda, Izvestiya, and the satirical and even occasionally funny magazine Krokodil were sure to have some nutty portrayal of Uncle Sam or Ronald Reagan as a truly devilish figure, full of duplicity, guile, and nuclear weaponry. Learning that the United States had put into place a prison system that trumped Saddam Hussein's system of torture—by having its guards photograph their worst deeds—defies rational explanation.

Undisputed Facts

As the horror unfolds in Iraq, it may be helpful to look back at the chronology of what President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld told the American public leading up to the public disclosure of the Iraq prison scandal. An excellent chronology was published in Slate last week. Given the undisputed facts outlined in this chronology, how do Bush and Rumsfeld explain their repeated misrepresentation of these facts to the American people? They now tell us they hid the truth to protect the troops. That's telling us whopper. The same troops they sent to Iraq undermanned and under-trained. The same troops that they pay a pittance in comparison to what they pay "private contractors." The same troops from which the now draw scapegoats for a foreign policy not only run amok but exposed for barbarism. Not only does Bush not have the decency to leave the troops out of his lame excuse, he hides behind them.

In order to better position the president for the November elections, Bush and Rumsfeld did more than hide the truth. They repeatedly mouthed the spin about having ended the murder, rape and torture that existed under Saddam. They knew, or should have known, they had done no such thing. Worse, they had put in place a system of rounding up Iraq civilians in mass raids and subjecting them to torture in hopes of breaking the will of the opposition to the United States occupation. Exposed for being incompetent at best and more likely complicit, Rumsfeld then had the gall to tell the US Senate he would not step down due to political pressure. No past administration tied its political fortunes to war more than the Bush administration has done this election year. Bush and Rumsfeld should not only take responsibility for these acts, they should suffer the consequences.

Now It All Makes Sense

Why was Dick Cheney so adamant for so long about the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein using his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction? We many now know.

The Washington Post noted that Vice President Cheney gave resounding endorsement of Fox News during a conference call with thousands of Republican supporters last week:

"It's easy to complain about the press—I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

Our readers surely remember , though, that viewers of Fox news are more likely to hold to misperceptions about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, about locating weapons of mass destruction, and about world opinion of the invasion of Iraq. And the more one watched Fox, the worse one's knowledge was:

While it would seem that misperceptions are derived from a failure to pay attention to the news, overall, those who pay greater attention to the news are no less likely to have misperceptions. Among those who primarily watch Fox, those who pay more attentin are more likely to have misperceptions. Only those who mostly get their news from print media, and to some extent those who porimarily watch CNN, have fewer misperceptions as they pay more attention.

Indeed, it is very, very telling that Dick Cheney spends "a lot of time watching Fox News."

A Small, Satisfying Victory

There are legions, or at least phalanxes, of souls who will claim that some brokerage or some auction house or some store for books and the like is the ne plus ultra. As much as the internet has inspired some truly interesting web sites, I think that a web site to prevent needless user registrations is the best idea for a web site that I have seen in a long time. But don't take my word for it; go check it out and screw up the marketing for a few newspapers.