It’s just never enough for those people, is it?

Actual AP headline: “Guantanamo Strike Still on Despite New Obama Vow.”

That would be the “vow” (a word Obama did not use) to “re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people.” I don’t know what more they could ask for.

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Barack Obama and the Permission Structure of Doom

Obama held one of his increasingly rare press conferences today.

A SLOWLY UNFOLDING DISASTER: “on Syria, I think it’s important to understand that for several years now what we’ve been seeing is a slowly unfolding disaster for the Syrian people, and this is not a situation in which we’ve been simply bystanders to what’s been happening.” True: we’ve been supplying one side with exactly enough assistance to keep the situation at a bloody stalemate.

See if you can find the very Washington D.C. word in this sentence: “My policy from the beginning has been President Assad had lost credibility; that he attacked his own people, has killed his own people, unleashed a military against innocent civilians; and that the only way to bring stability and peace to Syria is going to be for Assad to step down and -- and to move forward on a political transition.” Only politicians would say that a value judgement like “Assad has lost credibility” or a statement of fact like “Assad has killed his own people” is his “policy.”

If Syria used chemical weapons it would be “a game changer” because “when you use these kinds of weapons, you have the potential of killing massive numbers of people in the most inhumane way possible”. Because if the United States stands for one thing above all others, it is killing massive numbers of people in the most humane way possible.

If it’s any help in establishing the official US definition of “humane,” yesterday a Gitmo spokesmodel said, “we will continue to treat each person humanely,” by which he meant forcibly feeding hunger-striking prisoners.

THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT IS KILLING ITS PEOPLE WITH WHAT NOW? “and the proliferation risks are so significant that we don’t want that genie out of the bottle.”

AS OPPOSED TO ALL THE GOVERNMENTS THAT CARE MORE ABOUT THE WELL-BEING OF THEIR PEOPLE THAN ABOUT STAYING IN POWER. THE MANY, MANY GOVERNMENTS THAT CARE MORE ABOUT THE WELL-BEING OF THEIR PEOPLE THAN ABOUT STAYING IN POWER. “But even if chemical weapons were not being used in Syria, we’d still be thinking about tens of thousands of people, innocent civilians, women, children, who’ve been killed by a regime that’s more concerned about staying in power than it is about the well-being of its people.”

IF WE DON’T JOG, THE TERRORISTS WIN: “There are joggers right now, I guarantee you, all throughout Boston and Cambridge and Watertown.”



THEN WHY DID YOU FUCKING AGREE TO IT? “Congress responded to the short-term problems of flight delays by giving us the option of shifting money that’s designed to repair and improve airports over the long term to fix the short-term problem, well, that’s not a solution. So essentially, what we’ve done is we’ve said, in order to avoid delays this summer, we’re going to ensure delays for the next two or three decades.”

On whether he has “juice” in Congress: “But, you know, Jonathan, you seem to suggest that somehow, these folks over there have no responsibilities and that my job is to somehow get them to behave. That’s their job. They are elected, members of Congress are elected in order to do what’s right for their constituencies and for the American people.” So THAT’s why members of Congress are elected. I’ve been wondering that for years.

WHO SAYS WE DON’T BUILD ANYTHING ANYMORE? “And we’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country.” He thinks Republican congresscritters would do what’s going to be best for the country if only they had a permission structure, isn’t that just adorable?



GREAT MOMENTS IN MORAL OUTRAGE: “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe.” And what is he going to do about it? “I’m going to re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people.”

NOT SUSTAINABLE: “And it’s not sustainable. I mean, the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no man’s land in perpetuity, even at a time when we’ve wound down the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, we’re having success defeating al-Qaida core, we’ve kept the pressure up on all these transnational terrorist networks, when we’ve transferred detention authority in Afghanistan – the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried -- that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.” Context is fucking irrelevant to this argument. Guantanamo was wrong and unconstitutional even when we hadn’t “wound down” the war in Iraq, whether or not we are defeating “Al Qaida core.”

That said, while he’s busily re-engaging with Congress, the force-feeding of prisoners will continue: “Well, I don’t -- I don’t want these individuals to die. Obviously, the Pentagon is trying to manage the situation as best as they can.” Manage the situation, yeah, that’s one term for it. Torture would be another. Violation of human rights would be yet another.

He crows about getting the application form for the medical exchanges from 21 pages down to 3. “We’re using a really tiny font size,” he said.

Asked about Jason Collins, because of course he is, Obama says that even though Collins is gay, he can “bang with Shaq” and “deliver a hard foul.” I’ll bet he can, I’ll bet he can.

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Just a reminder

that Adnan Latif died in Guantanamo 12 days ago, and the government won’t tell us the cause of death.

We know he was a hunger-striker and was presumably forcibly fed, although the government claims that he wasn’t hunger striking at the time of his death. Of course, the Pentagon no longer tells us how many hunger strikers there are at Guantanamo.

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Butter pecan burping during Ramadan

Another way in which Obama administration policies go further than Bush’s did: officials at Guantanamo no longer tell us how many hunger strikers they are force feeding.

But they do inform us that they are doing it in a culturally sensitive way, force feeding them only between dusk and dawn during Ramadan.

So that’s okay then.

“By last summer, staff were pointing to Butter Pecan flavored Ensure as popular with the chair-shackled captives. Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later.”

Sucker

Remember how the Honduran coup was “resolved” by an agreement that Zelaya would be restored to power – if and when the Honduran congress voted to do so? They seem to be having some trouble working that vote into their busy, busy schedule. But US assistant secretary of state Thomas Shannon helpfully informed them that the US will now recognize the Nov. 29 election even if Zelaya is not returned to office.

There are still 30 Guantanamo prisoners hunger-striking, if anyone cares.

A real sign of desperation and inappropriate criminal behavior

The Toronto Star confirms that under Obama there has been no review of the policy of force-feeding prisoners at Guantanamo. They also quote various military types about how that policy is neither cruel nor inhumane.

Elsewhere, other military types are complaining about the cruelty and inhumanity of the Taliban showing video of Priv. Bowe Bergdahl, the American soldier they took prisoner. And Hillary Clinton calls the capture “a real sign of desperation and inappropriate criminal behavior”. I’m sure the Taliban will be just mortified to have their actions called inappropriate.

By the way, how is it inappropriate for combatants in a war to take prisoners?

The discretion of those who possess such expertise

Prince Harry, after being caught on video calling a fellow officer a “Paki,” is to be sent on an equality and diversity course. It must be some course, if it can teach an inbred twit who is third in line to inherit the throne because he happened to be born into a long line of inbed twits the importance of equality and diversity. I’m guessing hand puppets are involved.

Federal judge Gladys Kessler decides not to decide a case about the forcible feeding of hunger strikers (and the use of “restraint chairs” to facilitate such feeding) because the only people really qualified to decide whether it amounts to torture are, you guessed it, the torturers: “Petitioners insist that the use of the chair on a compliant detainee amounts to such unnecessary and painful restriction that it is tantamount to torture. Resolution of this issue requires the exercise of penal and medical discretion by staff with the appropriate expertise and is precisely the type of question that federal courts, lacking that expertise, leave to the discretion of those who possess such expertise.” Discretion – is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Nurse! Nurse!

Coinciding with the release of a Senate Armed Services Committee report which says that the torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere was not the actions of a few bad apples but the result of decisions made by Rumsfeld and other administration officials (no fucking kidding), the USA Today has an article about the “progress” of Guantanamo, in other words a transcription of whatever Gitmo public relations officers tell them. Basketballs, DVDs, cultural sensitivity (tiptoing during prayers, cutting images of Western sluts out of their complimentary copies of USA Today, etc), and of course nutritious torture: “And while 20 inmates remain on a hunger strike, they are fed through a tube that supplies at least 4,500 calories a day. ‘Several of them will complain if the nurses are late,’ [Cmdr. Pauline] Storum said.” No one likes an unpunctual force-feeding. Especially when they’re strapped down in restraint chairs.

I’m not sure I see the point of some of Bush’s last-minute shenanigans. Like the new rules letting decisions affecting endangered species to be made by bureaucrats without consulting scientists. We’re told it will take months for Obama to reverse the regs, but what stops him from issuing an order that no such decisions be made without consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service?

The Republican Party seems willing to destroy the entire American auto industry in order to take down the UAW, but honestly do you want to be out on the highway knowing that those several-ton steel vehicles barreling down the road next to you were made by workers who were screwed as badly as the GOP wants them to be screwed?

I’ve been in the Bible every day since I’ve been the President

Remember those hunger strikes by prisoners in Guantanamo Bay? Some of them are still on it, still being forcibly fed, one of them with a substance to which he is allergic.

---

The White House has released excerpts of an oral history project in which George and Laura Bush were interviewed by his sister. It’s legacy time. Which is just like Miller Time, but with more beer belches.

TECHNICALLY, HE DIDN’T SELL IT, JUST TRADED IT FOR SOME “MAGIC BEANS”: “I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process.”

JUST LIKE NEW, NEVER BEEN USED: “I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.”

SURROUNDED: “I surrounded myself with good people”.

IS HIS SELF-DELUSION LAUGHABLE? OR JUST PLAIN SAD? “I’d like to be a president [known] as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor; that led an effort to help relieve HIV/AIDS and malaria on places like the continent of Africa; that helped elderly people get prescription drugs and Medicare as a part of the basic package; that came to Washington, D.C., with a set of political statements and worked as hard as I possibly could to do what I told the American people I would do.” Alternately, he’d settle for just being known as the second worst president ever.

Laura Bush showed that the secret of marriage is a shared inability to see reality: “Well, it’s certainly been very rewarding to look at Afghanistan and both know that the President and the United States military liberated women there; that women and girls can be in school now; that women can walk outside their doors without a male escort.”

George talked about his father: “I think that the gift our dad gave to all of us is unconditional love. It is the greatest gift a father can give a child. And it has made life so much easier in many ways, because if you have the ultimate gift of love, then the difficulties of life can be easier handled.” Difficulties of life like, say, grammar.

IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, he [Bush the Elder] was a great father before politics, a great father during politics and a great father after politics.”

HE’S A BIBLE CHARACTER, JUST LIKE DAVID AND GOLIATH, OR SPIDERMAN: “I’ve been in the Bible every day since I’ve been the President”.

WHAT HE’S BEEN AFFECTED BY: “and I have been affected by people’s prayers a lot.” Prayers, you say... and I’ve just been using that voodoo doll.

A DOUBLE “IN OTHER WORDS,” JESUSY VERSION: “I would advise politicians, however, to be careful about faith in the public arena. ...In other words, politicians should not be judgmental people based upon their faith. They should recognize -- at least I have recognized I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption, and therefore have been very careful about saying [accept] my faith or you’re bad. In other words, if you don’t accept what I believe, you’re a bad person.”

A manipulator and a propagandist

The Pentagon is pissed at Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman released from Guantanamo after 6½ years, including 500 days on hunger strike, for having the temerity to appear weak and unwell on his arrival in Sudan. Said an anonymous Pentagonite to ABC, “He’s a manipulator and a propagandist.”

A manipulator and a propagandist – and friends
Another Pentagonanian said al-Hajj has no credibility because there is “no information to substantiate his allegations that he was mistreated at Guantanamo”. Unless you count being forcibly feed 1,500 or so times. “It’s the advantage they have in this fight. It’s a war of ideas, and they can claim any wild number of things happened to them and they’ll capitalize on it.” Yes, that is the advantage they have when you lock them away from the sight of the world. They describe his last interrogation as being “very cordial.” So, no hard feelings then?

An inseparable part of the war

The Israeli military absolves itself of blowing up a Palestinian woman and her four children in an air strike on Gaza, saying they were actually killed by explosives carried by a gunman, which detonated when he was hit by the air strike. So that’s okay, then. PM Olmert says it’s the fault of Hamas that civilians have been turned “into an inseparable part of the war.” However, that woman and her children can now be separated from the war – with a shovel and a mop.

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has been released to his native Sudan after 6½ years in Guantanamo, the last 16 months hunger striking and undergoing forcible feeding by tube. Had he agreed to spy on Al Jazeera, he would have been released years ago. The Pentagon claimed, without giving any evidence, that he was a courier for a charity with links to Al Qaida. Oo, a courier, so very scary. Since the news stories mostly don’t report this, I want to point out the conditions the US imposed on Sudan: al-Hajj is not to be allowed to work as a journalist or to leave Sudan.

Simon Hoggart in the Guardian: “Last weekend I met a librarian, who told me that it was obviously common for the more explicit sort of novel to fall open at the well-thumbed dirty bits. What she hadn’t realised is that where there are braille equivalents, the dots tend to be worn down. I think that’s rather affecting.”

Tactical suicide

Guantanamo update: there are still 9 hunger strikers being forcibly fed, the longest of whom has been subjected to this torture for 816 days. And there was a previously unreported suicide attempt one month ago, a prisoner slashing his throat with a sharpened finger nail. The deputy commander of the guards at Gitmo, Cmdr. Andrew Haynes, said such suicide attempts were just a move to discredit the US military, adding, “Suicide is clearly a tactic that the detainees employ in the continued struggle.” Haynes said the unnamed prisoner produced an “impressive effusion of blood,” but, the Miami Herald paraphrased, “nothing compared to what the Navy commander said he had witnessed on the battlefield in other military assignments.” Guy tries to kill himself, and Haynes is playing “well if you think that was bad” games. Classy.

The London Times reproduces a current and a 2005 UN map which show the parts of Afghanistan safe for its workers to operate in. They’re shrinking.



Finally, one last picture of George Bush from today’s press conference:

Mass disturbances and New Zealand porn

Your commercial of the day, for a New Zealand porn channel. I’m told it contains one or two metaphors for things sexual, but darned if I can spot them.



(h/t Away With Words)

Another Haditha hearing, this one for Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich. Evidently, just a week before the massacre, he was just sittin’ around with his buds, smokin’, and told them that the next time an IED went off, they should kill absolutely everyone in the vicinity.

And they did.

Guantanamo continues to be a black box. For example, Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, who is on hunger strike in his 6th year of detention without trial, is said by his lawyer to have lost 40 pounds and to be in serious physical shape, and by Gitmo officials to have gained 20 pounds and to be getting downright chubby. Today we hear that there were 385 “mass disturbances” at Guantanamo in the first 6 months of 2007. The military won’t say what that actually means.

We are living in a dying situation

Yesterday I heard what sounded like fireworks around here. Is this some sort of Easter thing I don’t know about? Are people booby-trapping Easter eggs? Because that would be awesome, I mean terrible.

Anyway, happy Sopranos Easter! Woke up from the dead this morning, got yourself a gun. Mama always said you’d be the Chosen One...

Bush and family went to church for Easter services at Fort Hood, where “I had a chance to reflect on the great sacrifice that our military and their families are making.” Yes, the soldiers died for your sins, George.



The father, son and holy spirit

The NYT reports “Hunger Strike Breaks Out at Guantánamo.” What they actually mean is that 1) a new outbreak of hunger striking began in December that they’re just finding out about now, 2) hunger striking has been continuous for several years now, but they haven’t reported on it in a while. Since prisoners now cannot communicate with each other, hunger striking seems (from the glimpses that make it past military censorship) to be less an organized resistance tactic than the product of despair and isolation-produced insanity. Said one hunger striker to his lawyer, “My wish is to die... We are living in a dying situation.”

Non-follow-up: there is still no news out of Iraq about those policemen arrested, released and possibly re-arrested for participating in massacres in Tal Afar. Or about the policemen who allegedly gang-raped that woman back in February.

Sea change

Guantanamo hunger strike update: 11 hunger strikers, 5 being forcibly fed. And the military is still using the line that hunger striking is “consistent with Al Qaeda practice” and claiming that no demands have been made by the prisoners.

Olympia Snowe reports that Bush told her Monday (at a meeting with 30 Republican senators and zero Democratic senators; he didn’t even try to make it a bipartisan event by inviting a senator from the Connecticut for Lieberman party) that what would be different about the New Way Forward (TM) is that Maliki has experienced a “sea change” in his attitude. I don’t know about you, but all this talk about surges and sea changes just makes me have to pee. I’d also like more details about what Bush said: the sea change thing suggests that he admitted that up until now Maliki has been acting in a sectarian manner and failing to confront the Shiite death squads and militias. Even if Bush’s assessment of Maliki changing his sea (or whatever that nautical term means) were true, which it isn’t, it would hardly matter. Bush, with his authoritarian inclinations, likes to assume that if the Man At The Top has sufficient “will,” he can accomplish anything, but Maliki’s powers are severely circumscribed, his influence limited, and his reputation among non-Shiites bad.

New video and stills of the dead body of the last guy who could turn his will into results, Saddam Hussein, are available, and yick.

Oh, and here’s something I haven’t seen outside of the, of all places, Daily Telegraph: something like 100 Shiites held hostage in order to prevent Saddam’s execution have been hanged from lampposts in Baghdad.

The article also says that the number of copy-cat hangings by children around the world is up to 7.

Since he’s dead, the charges against Saddam for ordering the extermination of Kurds have been dropped, but the trial of his co-defendants continues. Yesterday they played tapes of Saddam. Can it be a fair trial if they can’t call Saddam as a defense witness?

If they want to do that, hook it up

The NYT has an article on how “Newt Gingrich has set his sights not on the presidency, but on the restoration of God to a central place in American government and culture.” And when he says God, he of course means Newt Gingrich. Newton is forming a committee called American Solutions for Winning the Future (or ass-woof for short).

As I write, Newtie is supposed to have a program on God and politics on Fox, but is being preempted by some sort of rescue operation on Mt Hood. Maybe there is a God.

Harry Reid says he’ll “go along with” a “surge” increase in troops in Iraq and “give the military anything they want.” Leadership, ladies and gentlemen, leadership.

From News of the Weird, quoting the Washington Blade, the feds have been going after assets that Enron executives put in the names of their spouses, all except for one guy, who plead guilty to illegally obtaining $16.5m but put assets in the name of his same-sex partner.

Guantanamo hunger-strike update: 3 hunger strikers still being force-fed. Guard commander Col. Wade Dennis says of them, “If they want to do that, hook it up.”

Today’s must-read: the NYT on the Iraqi legal system, which is not legal or a system or wholly Iraqi, and it’s worse than you think.

Force has kind of a negative connotation

Two of the Guantanamo prisoners are still on hunger strike, and still being forcibly fed. Although, because their torturers are nothing if not culturally sensitive, during Ramadan they were not force-fed during daylight hours.

The torturers are also sensitive about the term force-feeding, preferring “involuntary feeding,” because, as one nurse explained to Reuters, “Force has kind of a negative connotation.”

Prisoners not on hunger strike were fed the traditional Eid al Fitr feast at the end of Ramadan, although a second feast had to provided for prisoners who chose to fast an additional day, believing that the military lied about the date in order to trick them into breaking their fast early.

Compliance and colonoscopies in Guantanamo

Long article in next Sunday’s NYT Magazine on Guantanamo, a narrative history of relations between the detainees and the prison authorities – well, the guards rather than the interrogators, the interrogations aren’t really covered. It gives the longest account I’ve seen of the abortive attempt last summer to establish a prisoners’ council. The author, Tim Golden, is as reasonable and even-handed as he can be under the circumstances, which is also the impression the article gives of the military authorities, who were obviously (and unavoidably) his main sources. But in a place like Guantanamo, doing the job that Guantanamo does, reasonable and even-handed are traits that are irrelevant, even obscene. The authorities were willing, indeed eager, to negotiate about details like bottled versus tap water or not blasting the Star-Spangled Banner during the call to prayer (or, as Gen. Craddock once said, the color of the feeding tubes inserted into the noses of hunger-strikers), in an effort to achieve “compliance,” so long as larger issues like the prisoners being held indefinitely were not broached.

Indeed today Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist commented that the Guantanamo detainees are getting “24/7 medical care - better than many Americans”. Why, 16 colonoscopies have been performed there, he marveled.

Frist’s other priority in The War Against Terror this week is tacking onto the bill authorizing military operations a provision against paying off internet gambling debts with credit cards.

You’re still waiting for me to say something about the colonoscopies, aren’t you? I have way too much class for that.

Dwarf-planet tossing: In your tiny, icy face, Pluto!

What is the possessive for Harper’s? Harper’s’s Luke Mitchell has a fascinating discussion with Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr. about the ethics and morality of force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo. The man is a master of logic origami. Winkenwerder claims (wrongly) that the World Medical Association’s 1991 Malta Declaration allows doctors to substitute their own judgment for the prisoner’s when he or she reaches the final stages of delirium or coma, but, he says, why wait that long, let’s strap them into restraint chairs and shove NG tubes into their nose while they’re still healthy and mentally competent.

Pluto has been sent down to the minors, and is now a “dwarf planet.” I think they prefer “little planet.” According to the BBC it was because of its oblong orbit. For me, it was always that its orbit left the plane of the ecliptic that did it.

Now, about Xena...

More words to add to the 999,850 George Bush doesn’t know

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Senile Dementia) explains how the internet works (evidently it’s a series of tubes) and why he won’t vote for Net Neutrality (because someone sent him an internet and it took several days to reach him).

Time magazine has an article about prisoners and hunger-strikes in Guantanamo, which explains why I’ve been getting all those hits from people googling “padded cell on wheels” today (this February post, which has pictures of the contraption). Readers of this blog will find nothing new in the article, and a certain amount of laziness (it says that in the “1980s,” “several” IRA prisoners hunger struck and a “handful” died). So why am I mentioning it? Er, good question. Moving on...

I’ve been thinking about the word “arrest.” A couple of days ago, Eli at LeftI made a point that I’ve made before, in relation to the actions of both Israelis in Palestine and Americans in Iraq, that they aren’t “arresting” people but capturing or seizing or kidnapping them, because arrests are done under some system of law. Suskind’s book mentioned parenthetically that when thousands of Arabs & Muslims were rounded up in the US after 9/11, “it was clear that the ratio of arrest to prosecution would be more out of sync than at any time in [FBI] history.” It occurred to me that the purpose of arrest had changed to such an extent that it did violence to the English language and to the concept of a rule of law to continue to use the word. If an arrest is no longer a preliminary to prosecution, it becomes an end in itself. The end is not the law, and the “law enforcement” agencies are no longer about enforcing laws. Police without law is the definition of a police state. Maybe the FBI needs breaking up if it is to be both a law-enforcement agency and a secret police.

Also, someone should revive “Arrested Development.” That was a good show.

A good WaPo Style Invitational, suggestions for the one millionth word in the English language. Some of the entries:

• Percycution: Giving your child a name he will hate for the rest of his life.

• Martyration: A request for only 36 virgins in paradise.

• Achoodication: Trying to determine whether you have to say "bless you" after someone’s second sneeze.

• Banglion: The primitive neural structure constituting 90 percent of the male brain.

• Codgertation: A man’s realization that with a certain saying, thought or action, he has turned into his father.

• Immigaytion: The GOP’s two-pronged fear strategy: "It’s two, two, two horrors in one!"

• Racquisition: Implant surgery.

• Regattacotillion: A vocabulary word designed solely to discriminate against minorities on standardized tests.

• Regeorgitation: When the vending machine spits back your dollar bill.