The Little Brown Reader

A celebratory breakfast was held at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, where William Kristol, Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen held forth in a spirit of joyous anticipation of wars and victories to come. At a dinner party at the vice president's mansion, Kenneth ("Cakewalk") Adelman, Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Paul Wolfowitz toasted one another and the president. As the '60s song went, "Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end."

Now, enmeshed in a guerrilla war, Americans are demanding to know who told us we would be welcomed with garlands of flowers. Who said our troops would come home in a year? Who said democracy would flourish across the Arab world? Who misled us about the weapons of mass destruction? Who lied us into war?

The village leader received $15,000 on behalf of residents in compensation for dead livestock, uprooted trees, damaged fields and other losses. The Marines tried to bargain him down to $10,000, but he stood firm.

The son of a man killed by gunfire while driving in a battle zone received $2,500. And a man who said his 7-year-old daughter was killed as she tended the family's sheep also received $2,500.

Now that the fighting between Marines and insurgents has tapered off in the area, the U.S. military is attempting to make amends with noncombatants who suffered. The Americans hope cash will win friends and help bring peace in this part of the volatile Sunni Triangle.

Under Marine rules, a payment for a death goes directly to the family. Payments for community losses can be funneled through an elder, sheik or village leader.

"I know we cannot replace your loss, but we would like to offer a small apology in the form of $2,500 so we can move on in friendship," Capt. Kevin Coughlin, judge advocate general for the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division, told the man who said his daughter had been killed.

"I accept your apology," said Saady Mohamed Abdala.

Whether his daughter was killed by fire from Marines or insurgents — or whether the man even had a daughter — was not entirely clear.

"There's really no way to verify these accounts," Coughlin said. "It's really irrelevant. In making these payments, the U.S. is not taking responsibility for the loss, only offering an apology for a loss that occurred as a result of combat operations."

With a Marine disburser carrying a satchel with more than $80,000, Coughlin and a civil affairs team spent the afternoon combing rural villages just north of Fallouja, where Marines battled insurgents for weeks until handing over security in the city to an Iraq army unit early this month. Hundreds of civilians are believed to have been killed.

Under Marine Corps rules, the top payment a battalion can make for the loss of a family member is $2,500. There is no limit to the amount that can be paid for loss of possessions and livelihood, but the $15,000 paid to village leader Almas Tirkeq was considered on the high side.

That's a lot of cash to average Iraqis, in a land where unemployment is high, a private in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps makes about $60 a month and a colonel less than $200.

Tirkeq, a large, ebullient man with a wide grin and ingratiating manner, had come prepared with an itemized list of losses, including two cows, five sheep, two donkeys, seven trees, several buildings and acres of farmland in this village of several thousand person.

"I hope this will better the lives of him and his people and we will be able to continue to work together," Coughlin told an interpreter, who passed on the words to Tirkeq.

"This area was neglected by the old regime, and we consider what you are doing a sign of friendship," Tirkeq replied. "Thank you, thank you."

Tirkeq received the money on behalf of the village with the understanding that he would make sure residents who suffered losses are compensated. By making the payment in public, Marines hoped to ensure that he does.

Proof needed for payment Thursday was minimal: the word of village leaders, a story that seemed plausible, some face-to-face contact for reassurance.

"We're giving them the benefit of the doubt," said Marine Capt. Steve Coast, head of a civil affairs team.

The benefit of the doubt was needed most in the case of the man who said his daughter had been killed. Early in the discussions, villagers sought compensation for the man, who wasn't present. A resident was sent to fetch him, but returned alone. The Marines refused to pay.

Then, as the Marines were preparing to leave, a man approached Coughlin and, through the village leader, announced he was the father of the dead child. "Weren't you here the entire time?" Coughlin asked, in a slightly incredulous tone.

"No, no, no," Tirkeq said. "He is my friend. He just walked up here. He is the father."

Coughlin quickly polled other Marines and Westerners standing in the dusty courtyard near the chickens, cows, donkeys and sheep. "Did anybody see him before this?" he asked.

When the village leader had first discussed the dead child, there was a reference to a 6-year-old boy; the man identified as the father said the child was a 7-year-old girl. No account was made of the discrepancy.

In the end, the Marines took Tirkeq and the man at their word.

The outreach method for payments being practiced in the village is unusual. Most of those who say they lost relatives or property will be required to work through the Fallouja mayor's office; their claims will be vetted by an Iraqi judge before being presented to the Marines.

But the Marines have lavished extra attention on the villages around Fallouja. Although U.S. combat units have largely withdrawn from the city, Marines are still searching for insurgents and weapons smugglers in the outlying areas. Friendship with residents out here has a strategic value.

Marines believe the villages to have been neutral territory during the fight, with few of the area's young men joining the insurgency. Although the brunt of the fighting took place inside the city limits, there were skirmishes in the countryside, including nightly ambushes, which the Marines blame in part on "foreign fighters" from outside Iraq.

The village leader reminded Coughlin that residents had helped Marines when one of their tanks became bogged in the mud. "We are a peaceful village," he insisted.

The 1st Marine Regiment recently received $2.7 million to pay for structural damage done by the fighting. Commanders also can take money from their own budgets. Payments for deaths come from the Marine Corps' operations and maintenance budget.

Bahjat Ali Abed, a sad-eyed man in his 30s, said his father, Ali Abed Farham, was killed while driving near the Fallouja train station, a site of numerous skirmishes. He said the Marines later searched the slain man's car for weapons but found none.

On the hood of a mud-colored Humvee, as a curious crowd of men from the village pressed forward, Coughlin asked Abed to sign a document and offered an apology. And he offered a personal word, apparently trying to reach out to the Iraqi.

"I too lost my father not long ago," Coughlin said.

Influential neoconservatives, including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, have been arguing for years in favor of an assertive U.S. strategy in the post-Cold War world. In 1997, they and other like-minded intellectuals organized the Project for the New American Century, which urged then-President Clinton to confront Iraq. "America was being too timid, too weak, and too unassertive in the post-Cold War world," Kristol argues. "American leadership was key to, not only world stability, but any hope for spreading democracy and freedom around the world."

Hartcher says, "This [war] is about the neoconservative view, the idealistic view, the Wilsonian view, that the world would be a better place if only America can make it that way." The neoconservatives advocate a paradigm shift in which the United States spreads American values by asserting American power-by force, if necessary.

The neoconservative champion is Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., now an ardent supporter of war with Iraq. "We must keep our nerve," McCain said last month, "have the courage to understand what our experiences have taught us, have faith in the necessity and rightness of our cause, and do what must be done to make this a safer, freer, better world."

Has Bush adopted their cause? Apparently. In his February 26 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, he said, "By the resolve and purpose of America and our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty. Free people will set the course of history. And free people will keep the peace of the world."

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.”

The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration’s search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness. One officer described him to me that fall as “kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors.” In November, the Washington Post reported that, as many as ten times since early October, Air Force pilots believed they’d had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles. There were similar problems throughout the world, as American Special Forces units seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval from local American ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of command.

Of course, if he needs a little help, I'm happy to share a few of the greatest hits from his bloopers reel. Mistakes? Howsabout them weapons of mass destruction? Howsabout the persistent links to nuclear weapons? Howsabout the connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Howsabout the "Mission Accomplished" speech or the idea that Iraqis would see us as liberators not occupiers? Anyone hear an "oops"?

In the aftermath, many called the president's refusal to admit mistakes a savvy political strategy: Strong men never say they're sorry. But I think there's something much more chilling going on. He truly doesn't believe he made any mistakes.

Last year, we launched a preemptive, unilateral war (OK, there are 60 New Zealanders, 230 Nicaraguans, and 27 soldiers from Kazakhstan, etc.) on the explicit grounds that Saddam was an imminent threat to our nation. Now the moral justification for this war has simply, seamlessly and without explanation morphed from defending ourselves to "changing the world."

The president said that even if he'd known then what he knows today, he would still have invaded Iraq. In an honest, passionate moment he proclaimed, "Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. . . . That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned."

But is that what the Senate felt called to do when it gave him the chit for war? Or the country?

It's not just that "weapons of mass destruction" have become "weapons of mass destruction program-related activities." The commander in chief has become the evangelist.

Remember when we disparaged George the Father for his breezy dismissal of "the vision thing"? What was he? A mere pragmatist. Well, George the Son has the vision thing in its pure tunnel form: The facts don't blur the fixed view.

In Texas, they talk about a man who is all hat and no cattle. But in Washington, we have a Texan who is all vision and no reality.

CBS, which two weeks ago broadcast the first pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, said on Tuesday its ``60 Minutes II'' program would show video footage depicting conditions there and at another U.S.-run prison in southern Iraq called Camp Bucca.

...

CBS said the home video did not show scenes of abuse but included comments by the soldier, whose name was not revealed to protect her identity, that make clear her dislike for the camp and the prisoners under her control.

``I hate it here,'' she said on the tape. ``I want to come home. I want to be a civilian again. We actually shot two prisoners today. One got shot in the chest for swinging a pole against our people on the feed team. One got shot in the arm. We don't know if the one we shot in the chest is dead yet.''

One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command.

What is left? The one reason left has been unfailingly flapped around by defenders of this administration and supporters of this war: Saddam Hussein was a terrible, terrible man. He killed his own people. He tortured his own people. The Iraqis are better off without him, and so the war is justified.

And here, now, is the final excuse destroyed. We have killed more than 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in this invasion, and maimed countless others. The photos from Abu Ghraib prison show that we, like Saddam Hussein, torture and humiliate the Iraqi people. Worst of all, we do this in the same prison Hussein used to do his torturing. The "rape rooms," often touted by Bush as justification for the invasion, are back. We are the killers now. We are the torturers now. We have achieved a moral equivalence with the Butcher of Baghdad.

This war is lost. I mean not just the Iraq war, but George W. Bush's ridiculous "War on Terror" as a whole.

The Ministry of Defence launched an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the photographs, in which a prisoner appears to be battered with rifle butts, threatened with execution and urinated on by his captors.
...
The photographs were given to the Mirror newspaper by serving soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, who told the paper that such acts of brutality against prisoners in Iraq were widespread.

"It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area. "I saw beatings all the time.

"A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression."

...

A sergeant in their group was admonished last year after holding down a prisoner for other men to beat, both Leal and Sindar said. They said they saw hooded prisoners with racial taunts written on the hoods such as "camel jockey' or slogans such as "I tried to kill an American but now I'm in jail."

Photos obtained by Reuters show U.S. soldiers looking into body bags of three Iraqi prisoners killed by 870th MP guards during a prison riot in the fall of 2003. One photograph shows a bearded man with much of his bloodied forehead removed by the force of a bullet.

"We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support ... also being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved ones suffering from depression," said MP Dave Bischell. "It all contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get stressed."

When military investigators were looking into abuses several months ago, they gave U.S. guards a week's notice before inspecting their possessions, several soldiers said.

"That is Joiner," he said, pointing to one male soldier in glasses, a black hat and blue rubber gloves. His arms were crossed over a stack of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners.

"That is Miss Maya," he said, pointing to a young woman's fresh face poking up over the same pile.

He gazed down at another picture. In it, a second female soldier flashed a "thumbs up" and pointed with her other hand at the genitals of a man wearing nothing but a black hood, his fingers laced on top of his head. He did not know her name. But the small scars on the torso left little doubt about the identity of the naked prisoner.

Lt Col Brennan Byrne said this would allow a newly created all-Iraqi force to take control of the city.

Here's one Presidential campaign issue Republicans and Democrats can agree on (the only exception: failed Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich of Ohio). Stay the course, they say. As the motivations and wisdom of the invasion are still hotly debated, leaving Iraq early, the argument goes, would be a dangerous sign of weakness that would embolden terrorists, abort the drive for political reform in the Arab world, and undermine U.S. credibility around the globe.

Yet at least one veteran geopolitical thinker, Century Foundation Senior Fellow Morris Abramowitz, wonders if all of this is just taken on faith, without adequate examination. He questions whether an early exit would be the disaster so widely assumed. It's one man's opinion, but it's worth pondering.

In the nineteenth century, for example, during the period of reckless State expansion politely termed the era of Manifest Destiny, many American dreamers of empire found their plans being inconvenienced by the residents of New Spain living in the west. These Americans quickly found reasons to explain why the Southwest must be taken by force of arms as was eventually done in 1848. New England attorney Thomas Jefferson Farnham reasoned:

Thus much for the Spanish population of the Californias; in every way a poor apology of European extraction; as a general thing, incapable of reading or writing, and knowing nothing of science or literature, nothing of government but its brutal force, nothing of virtue but the sanction of the Church, nothing of religion but ceremonies of the national ritual…In a word, the Californians are an imbecile, pusillanimous race of men, and unfit to control the destinies of the beautiful country.

The Texan Noah Smithwick was more blunt when he declared that "I looked on the Mexicans as scarce more than apes." Yet, no one could have made the point better than one Santa Fe trader who remarked that Mexicans shouldn’t even be considered as part of "humanity" but as a separate race to be known as "Mexicanity."

While the roots of Anglo hatred of Spanish culture stretch back to Reformation England, it would be difficult to believe that Americans would have wasted their time even thinking about the question of subhuman Mexicans had their alleged inferiority not served the political purpose of convincing other Americans that the unconstitutional territorial expansion of the United States was essential in "liberating" a land enslaved by tyranny, primitivism, and superstition.

The American State and its servants have always been quite happy to endorse such sentiments, and today we are forced to endure the same rationalizing, lying, and stereotyping about Iraqis in order to save yet another race of men from themselves and to grant them the blessing of American "liberty" at the point of a bayonet. The Mexicans, the Filipinos, the Vietnamese, the Haitians, the Panamanians, and numerous others have all been saved in a similar fashion by the kind hand of American military might

Sadly, the modern conservative movement has been quite susceptible to this sort of wishful thinking about ready-made classifications for human beings that always seem – magically – to buttress government claims for increased power. The bogeyman these days of course is "Islamo-Fascism." Yet, if we were to take some old books about "the international Communist conspiracy" and replace "Communist" with "Islamo-Fascist" while updating some names and dates here and there, we would fine ourselves with a fine variety of timely new books on current events.