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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (94004)	1/6/2005 4:12:02 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793561

Two True Pictures of the Terror War Max Boot January 6, 2005 During World War II, Frank Capra made a series of films called "Why We Fight" to rally Americans behind the war effort. Imagine a filmmaker doing that today. Actually, it's impossible to imagine. Hollywood either prefers to stay away from the war on terrorism altogether (the film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed the villains from Islamist extremists to neo-Nazis) or to use it, even in its pre-9/11 form, as a morality play to warn against lost civil liberties (see "The Siege," starring Denzel Washington). The film community — whose exquisite sensibilities are routinely outraged by the treatment of snail darters or swamps (a.k.a. wetlands) — can't even work up much excitement about a Dutch filmmaker getting slaughtered, allegedly by a Muslim fanatic. Where were the rallies and memorials to protest Theo van Gogh's murder? The lack of outrage should be no surprise because the most successful movie made about the war on terrorism might as well have been titled "Why We Shouldn't Fight." I refer, of course, to "Fahrenheit 9/11," which smarmily insinuated that the Bush administration posed a bigger threat to the world than Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein ever did. Some conservatives have produced their own documentaries in reply to Michael Moore's grotesque mendacity, but the best answer comes from two honest, nonpartisan films that depict different aspects of the current struggle. If you want to know why we fight, check out the movie "Osama" and the documentary "Voices of Iraq." "Osama," the first film made in liberated Afghanistan, opens with a scene of Taliban enforcers breaking up a demonstration by burka-clad women upset about their inability to work. The action then shifts to a hospital that is being closed, throwing a female doctor out of work. Without a male wage earner in the family — both her husband and brother have been killed — starvation looms. So she cuts her 12-year-old daughter's hair and sends her out to work disguised as a boy called Osama. Director and writer Siddiq Barmak's understated style convincingly conveys the horror of daily life under the Taliban. Marina Golbahari, a street urchin whose father was arrested by the Taliban in real life, invests the title role with an authenticity that no mere actress could hope to match. Ultimately, Osama's masquerade unravels, and she faces a gruesome punishment from an Islamic court. The ending, which I won't give away, is enough to make anyone shudder — and give thanks that U.S. troops have toppled the Taliban. Yet I don't recall a single Hollywood feminist expressing gratitude to the U.S. military or its commander in chief for the liberation of Afghan women. No doubt Streisand, Sarandon & Co. were too busy inveighing against the horrors perpetrated by John Ashcroft. "Voices of Iraq" is one of the most gripping documentaries I have ever seen. Most of the footage was created by distributing 150 digital camcorders to let ordinary Iraqis record their own lives and thoughts from April to September 2004. Early in the film, an American newspaper headline — "Fear of Militias Forces Ordinary Iraqis to Stay Home" — is ironically juxtaposed over a bustling street scene. As the movie moves along, we see proud university graduates in mortarboards, boys swimming in the river and clowning around, and everyone riveted by the exploits of the Iraqi soccer team at the Olympics. In other words, we see that the terrorists are failing to disrupt Iraq's slow, painful progression toward normality. While "Fahrenheit 9/11" presents antebellum Iraq as an idyllic place where children cavorted with kites, "Voices of Iraq" shows the grim reality: Hussein's henchmen throwing bound prisoners off buildings, raping girls, massacring Kurds. One horrifying video clip (shot by Hussein's own people) shows a man's hand being cut off for the crime of being caught with an American $5 bill. A survivor of Hussein's torture chambers makes light of the U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib: The Americans, he says, "do the nice kind of torture." A few Iraqis say that, given the current violence, they'd prefer to go back to the old days of Saddamite stability, but most are enthralled by their newfound freedom. "Now," one woman says, "there is opportunity for hope." Producers Eric Mannes, Archie Drury and Martin Kunert deserve an Oscar for this eye-opening documentary. But they're not likely to get it because that would require Hollywood to acknowledge there's more to the occupation of Iraq than the evil designs of Halliburton and the neocons.

To: LindyBill who wrote (94004)	1/6/2005 7:00:15 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793561

philly inquirer editorial this morning.. like several other newspapers.. Editorial \| The Gonzales Nomination A very hard case to make As White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales signed off on the secret detention and harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects - tactics that include what can only be described as torture. Rightly condemned around the world after revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, these policies tarnished America's standing as a great beacon of liberty and justice. The policies have been repudiated, in part, by the U.S. Supreme Court and, belatedly, even by lawyers at the Justice Department that Gonzales is now in line to run. For American servicemen and women, the Bush administration's rough handling of detainees, as excused by White House legal advice, is more than just a legal issue. The notion that a nation can exempt itself willy-nilly from the Geneva Conventions and other international laws about treatment of prisoners poses a direct and continuing threat to America's soldiers. If they are taken prisoner during a war, will the other nation feel any hesitation to do unto them as the United States did unto detainees at Abu Ghraib? With so controversial and troubling a track record, which also includes shoddy work reviewing death penalty cases for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, does Gonzales deserve to be confirmed as attorney general? It's a very hard case to make. His nomination today goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, newly chaired by Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter. Make no mistake, the President deserves great leeway to shape his cabinet team. Nor is there any question that the Gonzales resume is impressive: Air Force veteran, Harvard-trained lawyer, Texas state official under Bush, a Texas Supreme Court justice, then on to the White House. The achievements of this son of Mexican migrant workers are considerable. But the U.S. attorney general is not just another cabinet member, there to execute the bidding of the President. The person in this post also is the nation's top law-enforcement officer and chief advocate for citizens' rights under the Constitution. His first loyalty should be to justice and the law, not the president who hired him. No "Top 10" list of candidates for this post should include a lawyer who argued that the President had nearly untrammeled right to indefinitely detain terror suspects - U.S. citizen or no - without charge or judicial oversight. Nor a lawyer who viewed conventions on prisoner treatment as out of date because of 9/11. Such legal reasoning on detentions - rejected overwhelmingly in June by the nation's highest court - risks core American values. And there's precious little evidence that the tactics it spawned resulted in information that safeguarded the U.S. homeland more than other steps. They've been better at providing recruiting grist for Iraqi insurgents and Islamic terrorists. It's no surprise that civil libertarians blast Gonzales-approved policies that, they contend, "paved the way for the horrific torture at Abu Ghraib." But strong criticism of Gonzales has come from a less predictable source: longtime military lawyers who so objected to his office's legal views that they raised public alarms. As the Navy's former top lawyer said, "When we're captives, we sure don't want the Geneva Convention referred to as 'quaint' and 'obsolete.' " The White House counsel maintains that neither he nor President Bush approved torture, nor advised military or spy-agency interrogators that they would be immunized against U.S. and international law on torture. Senate scrutiny of many documents still kept from public view must test that claim. Senate Democrats will have to take the lead, this being no time to go along to get along. Administration supporters cling to the fiction that the abuse centered on one cellblock at Abu Ghraib, the product of unpredictable individual lapses. This stance ignores the mounting evidence (some of it provided by official Pentagon investigations) that abuse bordering on torture was part of the interrogation routine at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one high in the military or civilian chain of command is being held criminally accountable. Army reservists face courts-martial, while policymaker Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld keeps his job and Gonzales gets this nomination. What should citizens make of the Justice Department's revoking last week of the August 2002 Gonzales-approved torture memo? It repudiates the definition of torture only as physical pain "equivalent in intensity to... serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." This new policy raises an unavoidable issue: Shouldn't someone in power be held accountable for the no-holds-barred interrogations conducted over two years under the now-discredited police? As attorney general, Gonzales would have to demonstrate an unquestioned respect for the rule of law. After his tenure as White House counsel, how can anyone have confidence in his ability to do that?

To: LindyBill who wrote (94004)	1/6/2005 7:25:30 AM
From: unclewest	Respond to of 793561

This is what it is all about. The Taliban/Al Qaeda people are not entitled to POW treatment, they are not signatories to the Geneva convention. If we gave them POW status, we couldn't interrogate them. Clarifications. 1.Actually, we could still interrogate them. 2. Being a signatory to the Geneva Convention on war does not automatically confer POW status. Nor does failure to sign automatically preclude gaining POW status. Conducting warfare within the Convention guidelines is the real key to becoming a POW if captured.

To: LindyBill who wrote (94004)	1/6/2005 9:30:54 AM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793561

..<<The Dems are going to politicize this at the hearings tomorrow. Abu Graib has allowed them to get away with it, and the convenient "leak" of FBI accusations this week will make it even easier.>>> Well dang it Lindy, I must have lost consciousness for a moment and thought that human consideration or logic applied instead of just politics. How many times do we have to watch that prisoner in the Orange suit at Guantanamo being escorted to the bathroom, handcuffed and arms held by a guard on each side ? Those are Republican guards? Sig