Author: jameswagner

hoping to make the world safe for our war crimes

CORRECTION (October 2, 2003): My friend James W reminds me, “Costa Rica has not had an Army since 1948. (That reason alone puts Costa Rica high on my Good List.)”

Meanwhile, in other news [there’s always other news], “US CUTS AID TO ALLIES WHO WON’T EXEMPT US FROM WAR CRIMES…” has been the headline story all day long on Common Dreams.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration today cut over $89 million in military aid to 32 friendly countries because they refused to exempt U.S. citizens and soldiers from the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court (ICC)–the world’s first permanent tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Among the countries whose aid was cut were a number of new democracies in Central and East Europe–some of which have contributed troops to bolster the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq–as well as Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, South Africa, and several other Latin American and African countries.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t quite news, since I’m sure we had already heard some time ago that they were going to do this.
Nevertheless, it now provides evidence that it’s not only bribery and blackmail but clearly also payback schemes which steer what passes for U.S. foreign policy these days. They must love us out there by now!
But of course we should know that’s not the point, right?

once again, this is very serious

And finally the country is beginning to understand why.
The essential story to this day, of one very-developing White House scandal, from today’s editorial of the Minneapolis Star Tribune via atrios.

Call it Wilson-Plame-gate. It’s not about cigars and blue dresses; it’s about the security of this nation and the danger of revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. In a word, it is serious.

And getting even more serious:

The Justice Department has responded affirmatively to Tenet’s request for an investigation. But get this: When Justice informed the White House of the investigation Monday evening, it said it would be all right if the staff was notified Tuesday morning to safeguard all material that related to the case. The staff had all night to get rid of anything incriminating.
That incredible tidbit supports calls by Democrats and a slew of others for Attorney General John Ashcroft to appoint a special counsel to investigate this case. They’re right: Ashcroft has no credibility in this, and neither does the White House, given its habitual effort to spin information, mislead the American people and smear anyone who disagrees with it. This developing scandal ultimately goes to the even more serious question of administration manipulation of intelligence on Iraq, where American soldiers continue to die almost every day in a campaign that looks increasingly like a bad mistake.

Read the entire editorial.
Oh yes, there’s a welcome tribute to bloggers, specifically in a generous acknowledgement that it was they and their audiences that kept the Wilson/Plame story from going away.
One more thing. Can’t we drop the “-gate”, especially since this thing’s bigger than an apartment building, and call just call it what it is, “treason”? Ok, maybe “the Plame affair” would do.

reality – absent the TV

We New Yorkers have been saying, “not in our name,” for over two years. After completing a study begun only a week after the 9/11 attacks, psychoanalyst and historian Charles B. Strozier, the Director of the Center on Terrorism and Public Safety at the city’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, suggests an explanation.

But what he found in his study [including repeated interviews with people in and outside of New York] surprised him. “You cannot underestimate the difference between the experience and the image of the experience,” Dr. Strozier said.
“Those who lived in Lower Manhattan breathed in the smell of the dead for weeks, like those at Auschwitz. We all knew what the smell was even if we did not speak about it. The dust settled over huge sections of the city, from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side.
“The chaos and fear were real to New Yorkers. This made the experience authentic. New Yorkers were much closer to the suffering. It was harder to become numb to it. And while they may have been angry, they were less filled with rage,” the professor said. “It was much harder to get those of us who were there to believe in the notion that killing others would somehow make us safer.”

this is the America everbody loves

Boubacar Diallo came to New York three years ago, speaking only french and Fulani. Today he appears on Newsday‘s Profile page.

Second-year student in LaGuardia Community College’s computer science program; an officer in the college’s Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, he has been on the dean’s list every semester and tutors fellow students as part of the Academic Peer Instruction Program.

Diallo was awarded a scholarship for academic achievement from CUNY in June. After graduating from LaGuardia next year he plans to go on to Stony Brook or City College to study computer information systems. The handsome Guinean hopes to stay in this country, which makes us very fortunate indeed.

“My philosophy is that whatever goes around comes around. Whatever you do to help others will come back to you. So it’s better to be good than bad to others. That’s why I enjoy tutoring. When you see other students happy it makes me happy, too. I have seen people struggling through some difficult classes and because I know the class, have done the work, I know that I can help them.”

[story alert thanks to Barry]

the silence of the media

Some of our friends seem to think that the story about the White House betrayal of a CIA operative just broke in the media. There must be many more so mistaken, so take a look at this post in early July and this one, two weeks later. Both link to early reports in the press.
Knowing this to be the case, another appropriate question has to be asked, and I do. Why was the significance of this crime ignored until now? Well, the Republicans have been working very hard since Watergate and that subsequent little speed bump, Iran-Contra, and everyone else has been asleep, as we now know to our shame.
Besides, it’s not about sex.

treason as capitol [sic, maybe] offense

Off with their heads!
Yeah, sure, Ashcroft’s going to get right on it.
But actually, is this Bush’s Watergate burglary?
Are the highest members of the adminstration involved in betraying a C.I.A. agent, endangering her and her colleagues and consequently discouraging others from coming forward with information on terrorist threats? Did they do this not just for revenge, but because they hoped to to intimidate others both within and outside government – to shut them up? And is there now a coverup in process?
What did the president know?
We might actually never find out, since every branch of the federal government is controlled by Bush’s Republicans, and an opposition party effectively doesn’t exist.
Our only hope seems to rest on the most primitive impulse of the media, the part that reacts to the smell of blood with enough lust to overcome its corporate dependency and give up the rewards of access available to those who don’t question the status quo.
The signals we’ve been seeing lately in national and international news coverage are certainly propitious.
Is anything going well for the administration these days?