NYFF: Waltz with Bashir (2008)

[This is the thirteenth part in an open series of reports from the New York Film Festival.]

About a week ago, fearing that all of the films were turning my mass into flabby mush, I walked two brisk miles in twenty minutes to take in Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, my fourth film of the day. The movie had been described to me by one critic, who purportedly writes for a newspaper, as “a little fiesta” — a qualification that I certainly quibbled with at the time. I’m not sure that a movie depicting the trauma of war and memory can be accurately identified as a “little fiesta.” Certainly, the real-life figures drawn from the Israeli Army do interpret a break between battles as a “little fiesta,” even if they do not precisely use these two specific words. It is true that these soldiers toil in homemade banana leaf huts on the beach and frolic about just before their comrades get shot in their head. But to suggest that these activities represent a “little fiesta” is, I suspect, missing the point just a mite. I’d like to think that the critic in question was having me on, but when I questioned him about specific points in Israel’s history, he had no knowledge of events that went down in 1967.

A professional animator informed me that he had disliked the film because of its gimmick and what he characterized as “amateurish” animation, but this same gentleman had gone bananas over Shuga, a film that I did not care for very much. But it should be observed that the device of a journalist-like protagonist (here, Folman) who questions various people about the meaning of some hazy memory has its roots in Citizen Kane and numerous personal documentaries. I don’t think that Waltz with Bashir is a documentary exactly. It’s more of a recreated narrative with the appearance of an objective pursuit. Something akin to a memoir played out for the camera. Certainly the animation technique, of which more anon, lives up to this notion of reconstruction. If it is not technically successful, then it is certainly viscerally successful.

But I was determined to make up my own mind. My initial reaction after the screening was somewhat ecstatic. But now that it has been a week since I’ve seen Waltz with Bashir, I see the film with slightly different eyes. This is a film that stacks its deck just a bit too heavily. War is bad, and it doesn’t matter what side you’re on. But this predictable rush to condemn war leaves little for the audience to make up their own minds. Paths of Glory is one of the best antiwar films in cinema, but it was Kubrick’s visual genius and his insistence on wiggle room for the audience that made the film work. Waltz with Bashir offers no comparative anthill. It offers more of a sideways glance for a topic that requires thinking in twenty dimensions and more time than you have for rumination. (As Tom Bissell noted in his underrated memoir, The Father of All Things, Vietnam is a subject that one can easily devote a lifetime to.) Waltz is, however, very good about clarifying something just as troubling: more than two decades later, it cannot be stated with any certainty that war memories match up to the reality. (Come to think of it, this is likewise a subject broached by Bissell, and Waltz with Bashir and The Father of All Things might make an intriguing book/movie double bill, or perhaps “two little fiestas” for critics who cloak their ignorance in uninformed mirth.)

The reality itself is the 1982 Lebanon War, and Folman was directly involved. He fought in the Isreali Army and, now in middle age, he retains a memory of naked young men emerging out of the water before a ruined city. Some key friends figure into this fugue: the long-haired Carmi Cna’an, the teenager who everybody figured would succeed in any science, now living in Amsterdam and fiercely protective of his privacy; Shmuel Frenkel, who has taken up vigorous physical exercise and maintains a bald pate; and Israeli war correspondent Ron Ben-Yeshai, who telephoned then-Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon about the massacres at Sabra and Shatila and was given a peremptory answer to back off.

What is quite interesting about Waltz with Bashir is its production method. Folman tracked down the people who haunted his memories, interviewed them, and then styled an animated narrative around these efforts. He even managed to persuade these people to reproduce their voices for the film. (Only a handful of Folman’s subjects declined.)

Each figure appears flat, representing a clear demarcation along a particular focal point. At times, it’s akin to watching a Flash animation or something involving cardboard cutouts from a pre-digital time. Folman’s team has added layers of smoke and reflections atop this basic approach.

Folman also has respect for his subjects’ wishes. When Carmi Cna’an declares that Folman can draw him as he is talking about war, he requests that Folman not include his son. Sure enough, the camera drifts away from the house as Carmi Cna’an engages in this paternal pastime.

But while the testimony that Folman unravels from his subjects certainly inhabits a feel of a bygone time — an atmosphere enhanced by a decent soundtrack and dutiful pop cultural juxtaposition — Folman fumbles a bit on memory’s false starts. Folman’s best friend and shrink, Ori Sivan, brings up a psychological experiment. When subjects were given photographs containing one false element, they believed that the false element was part of the memory. While Folman has exonerated himself somewhat by presenting this caveat to those seeking truth, he nevertheless remains very determined to align his memories to the film’s final moment: a live-action video clip depicting Sabra and Shatila’s aftermath. And while this footage is heartbreaking, with injustices that made me quite angry, I’m not sure if it is entirely fair to corral the film’s theme of ever-shifting memory to this harder reality. If anything, this piecemeal clip presents additional questions about the relationship between documentation and memory that were better pursued in Standard Operating Procedure. This conclusive curveball not only undermines Folman’s thesis and stubs out the strengths of his early emphases, but I suspect that this eleventh-hour departure was why the critic offered me a diabolical conclusion about war being “a little fiesta.”

An End to War?

Reuters: “Iraqi Prime Minister Prime Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that an agreement had been reached in negotiations on a security pact with the United States to end any foreign military presence in Iraq by the end of 2011.”

While the Rest of You Dwell on the Olympics and John Edwards…

Times: “More than a thousand civilians were reported to have been killed and large parts of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, were reduced to ruins as a conflict with potentially global repercussions erupted after months of rising tension. Georgia announced last night that it was withdrawing half of its 2,000 troops from Iraq as it ordered an all-out military mobilisation.”

Covering War

Bush Vows to Keep Human Costs Out of Gaze

Here’s the full set of photos.

1.2 Million Dead — You Are Responsible for This

Intellience Daily: “When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.”

1.2 million.

Think about that. That’s the entire population of Dallas. Or San Diego. Or San Antonio. Imagine. All wiped out.

If this isn’t genocide, I don’t know what is.

The only newspapers to report this figure were the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe. Nothing whatsoever from The New York Times or the Washington Post.

I am sickened to be part of a country that doesn’t act to stop this carnage. That looks the other way. That doesn’t move to stop these barbarians. That doesn’t contemplate its own actions.

Report this figure. Tell others about this figure. Be reminded every day of this figure.

History will not judge Bush well. But I suspect it will judge us more harshly. 1.2 million? If this is even half-true, then we deserve everything we get because of our representative apathy. So what are we going to do? What are you going to do?

Christ

Sunday Times: “The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert. Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for ‘pinprick strikes’ against Iran’s nuclear facilities. ‘They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,’ he said.”

…and now, the end is near…

…and so we face the final curtain, ha ha ha…

Thanks, Ed, for having us over. Send my people the clean-up bill.

Everyone else: Have a nice Memorial Day weekend, take a moment to remember the military dead, and why and how they got that way, and for what.

“In these bones you see what war is like. I know war now. I’ll tell you what it is. War is young men killing other young men they do not know on the orders of old men who know one another too well.”

Antoine Wilson out.

Today in Killer Robot Warfare

The Register: “‘Team Warrior’, a killer robot manufacturing alliance led by General Atomics of San Diego, CA, announced yesterday that its Warrior Extended Range/Multi Purpose Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System (ERMP UAS) would enter production for the US Army, another step in the US forces’ ongoing effort to automate most military activities….The Warrior will carry a relatively limited weapons payload, typically a quartet of Hellfire II missiles. It will be able to destroy no more than four tanks or buildings before reloading. However, its new General Atomics stablemate, the evocatively-named MQ-9 ‘Reaper’ can manage up to a tonne and a half of varied ordnance, or as many as 14 Hellfires.”

An Important Segue

655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war. 655,000. That’s more than the 400,000 who died at the Battle of Changping. That’s more than twelve times the number of casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg. And it’s getting extremely close to Great Purge levels. And we are responsible. (via Sans Serif)

Other NIE Conclusions: The White House is Located at 1600 Penn

Washington Post: “The conclusion of U.S. intelligence analysts that the Iraq war has increased the threat from terrorism is only ‘a fraction of judgments’ in a newly disclosed National Intelligence Estimate, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said yesterday.”

Y’think?

More on the Waziristan Deal

Washington Post: “Under the pact, foreign fighters would have to leave North Waziristan or live peaceable lives if they remained. The militias would not set up a ‘parallel’ government administration.”

ABC News: “If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden ‘would not be taken into custody,’ Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, ‘as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen.’”

India eNews: “Under the agreement, which is likely to be unveiled by the government next week, militant will halt all attacks on government officials and security forces, and the army ‘will not carry out operations against them,’ said an area intelligence official on condition of anonymity, the newspaper reported.”

Associated Press: “Under the deal, the militants are to halt attacks on Pakistani forces in the semiautonomous North Waziristan region and stop crossing into nearby eastern Afghanistan to attack U.S. and Afghan forces, who are hunting al-Qaida and Taliban forces there.”

Rolling Stone: “How’s the War on Terror going? Five years after 9/11, the mastermind of the attacks is still at large, the Talbian army that gave him a surrogate nation state from which to launch his attacks is now the law of the land in Northwest Pakistan, and as far as our erstwhile ally is concerned, bin Laden is welcome to make himself at home there?”

BBC: “Under the accord, the Pakistani military promises to end major operations in the area. It will pull most of its soldiers back to military camps, but will still operate border check-points. Over the summer the military met other conditions, releasing a number of tribesmen in an apparent goodwill gesture to the militants and withdrawing soldiers from new check-posts.”

Guardian: “In 2004, the Pakistan army killed 70 people in south Waziristan, claiming they were foreign militants with links to al-Qaida. Within weeks it emerged that those killed were all local tribesman. Each time Musharraf has visited the US, or a senior US official has visited Pakistan, security forces always capture or kill some “high-value” al-Qaida target. When George Bush visited Pakistan he was given a special gift: in the name of the war on terror, the security forces killed 140 tribesmen.”

New York Times: “Meanwhile, one of the Taliban’s savviest military commanders, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his sons operate out of Miramshah, the capital of the North Waziristan Province. From there, they run operations in Kabul and the eastern Afghan regions of Khost, Logar, Paktia and Paktika.”

Who Holds Bush Guilty?

George Bush, September 26, 2001: “…it’s also a war that declares a new declaration, that says if you harbor a terrorist you’re just as guilty as the terrorist; if you provide safe haven to a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the terrorist; if you fund a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as a terrorist.”

Bush, August 31, 2006: “…we have made it clear to all nations, if you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists; you’re an enemy of the United States, and you will be held to account.”

Mercury News, September 1, 2006: “The United States reportedly has spent more than $1 billion underwriting the border fight, but when the military failed to crush the separatists, the Bush administration agreed to support Pakistan’s truce-making efforts and pledged millions of dollars in additional aid. The truces between Pakistan’s military and the separatists have coincided with rising violence against civilians and increased attacks by the Taliban in four Afghan provinces along the Pakistani border, according to a United Nations-run security-monitoring program that Western diplomats consider highly reliable…..Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top aides have charged repeatedly that Musharraf’s regime is supporting the Taliban, harboring their leaders and allowing them to maintain training camps and supply bases in Pakistan.”

RELATED CLIP: ABC News.

By the way, the last time Pakistan cut a deal in Waziristan with the Taliban in 2004, violence broke out in Azam Warsak. Pakistan, as we all know, is a nuclear power.

Get ready for Cold War II! Woo hoo! At the very least, we’ll get a whole bunch of creepy nuclear holocaust movies like we did in the ’80’s.

Well, There is a Popular Band Named Franz Ferdinand

Number of Google News articles currently using the phrase “World War III”: 1,810

I Guess It’s Time for Monorail Diplomacy Then

Slate: “One problem right now is that the United States—the would-be shuttle diplomat—has long cut off relations with Syria and Iran, both of Hezbollah’s enablers (and thus potential disablers). If Bush doesn’t reopen the lines, there’s no point in sending Rice on the plane; it would be a shuttle to nowhere—and, short of sensational luck, a region sliding to war.”

“Hatred. It’s the Only Thing That Lasts.” — Charles Bukowski

Lovely. (via Chekhov’s Mistress and This Space)

Mission Accomplished

Iraqi Death Count Rises Above 100 Per Day, Says U.N.

Journalistic Kids These Days

David Halberstam on Iraq: “Halberstam, who has written about other presidential administrations and war decisions, isn’t sure he will write about Iraq. ‘Part of me wants younger people to write it,’ yet there is the challenge of figuring out ‘how we have gotten it so wrong and why the Democrats behaved so poorly,’ he said.”

This is a good point. Where are today’s David Halberstams? Why is Seymour Hersh digging up all the dirt (again) while the Believer staffers devote their precious resources to Modest Mouse? For that matter, while this is a start, if Ben Kunkel is hot shit and n+1 represents a new world order, why isn’t he in Tehran right now digging up dirt?

Well, That Didn’t Go Very Well, Did It?

From this morning’s press conference with President Bush:

THE PRESIDENT: Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq — hold on for a second —

Q They didn’t do anything to you, or to our country.

THE PRESIDENT: Look — excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where al Qaeda trained —

Q I’m talking about Iraq —

THE PRESIDENT: Helen, excuse me. That’s where — Afghanistan provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That’s where they trained. That’s where they plotted. That’s where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That’s why I went to the Security Council; that’s why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences —

Q — go to war —

THE PRESIDENT: — and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

Q Thank you, sir. Secretary Rumsfeld — (laughter.)

Other mysteries: 1. Did the hand gestures confuse Bush? 2. Who is “the new guy?” 3. The next time anyone asks me a tough question, can I say “I’ve got lunch with the President of Liberia right now” to get out of it?

Even More Abu Ghraib Photos

Carrie and others have alerted me to this Salon article (specifically, this archive) of additional cruelties being meted out on Iraqi prisoners, captured by photographs.

Richard Nash writes in to let me know about David Griffith’s A Good War is Hard to Find, a book of essays written in the spirit of Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others. Sontag’s original New York Times Magazine piece can be found here. Near the end of her life, Sontag wrote:

The pictures will not go away. That is the nature of the digital world in which we live. Indeed, it seems they were necessary to get our leaders to acknowledge that they had a problem on their hands. After all, the conclusions of reports compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other reports by journalists and protests by humanitarian organizations about the atrocious punishments inflicted on ”detainees” and ‘’suspected terrorists” in prisons run by the American military, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, have been circulating for more than a year. It seems doubtful that such reports were read by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice or Rumsfeld. Apparently it took the photographs to get their attention, when it became clear they could not be suppressed; it was the photographs that made all this ”real” to Bush and his associates. Up to then, there had been only words, which are easier to cover up in our age of infinite digital self-reproduction and self-dissemination, and so much easier to forget.

The pictures will not go away. But don’t tell that to the major U.S. media outlets. As I write this, no mention of these photos can be found anywhere on the main websites of The Washington Post, the New York Times (save this Associated Press article about Iraqi officials urging calm, as if one is supposed to react to this savagery as if one has just perused a mildly scandalous article), the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and MSNBC. At a time in which journalists should be asking questions about how extant these cruelties are and how frequently they run, at a time in which they should be speculating on how this will irrevocably alter our perception among Muslims, they remain stone-deaf, when it is clear with these new images that what we saw before was a watered down run of the real horrors. Much as the Danish cartoons were kept from the public in order to “protect,” this wholesale blackout and the encouragement here not to discuss or vent or begin any sort of discourse coming to terms with the divisiveness that suspends invisible in the air is supposed to “protect” us from what’s really going on. We are supposed to keep our heads in the sand and keep our four ventricles beating at a healthy, low-carb pace. But don’t worry. There’s Häagen-Dazs in the freezer for desert!

I’m amazed at the audacity of anyone having the temerity to tell us how to think and feel, as if the Iraqi population, seeing their peers treated like animals, and the American public, seeing their soldiers commit ineffable barbarities, are inchoate herds of sheep. The whole point of being a functioning adult member of American society is to question everything, especially one’s own viewpoints and especially the entreaties that come from the top tiers, Republican and Democrat.

More Abu Ghraib Photos

Here. These were, of course, kept secret from the public. Disgusting. Definitely NSFW. I’m ashamed to be American. And I think I’m going to roll into a ball. Because if these photos don’t get America horrified, I don’t know what will.

NPR, of course, is silent about these images this morning.

I’m looking at CNN’s website and there’s a tiny link to the right when this should be the top story.

Nothing at the Washington Post or the New York Times. Or even my hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle.

In short, the American media is thoroughly bought and paid for at a time when Americans absolutely need to bear witness to the inhumane and cruel actions that Americans — yes, that would be us — have inflicted upon the Iraqi people. They need to understand that these images were kept from them by a government all too determined to “protect” them from the knowledge that war is well beyond hell.

I can’t imagine what kind of atavistic asshole you have to be to turn away and ignore these images and walk into work with that bullshit skip in your stride, that Starbucks cup in your hand, and say to yourself just how great it is to be an American.

[UPDATE: Transcript from Australian news program containing more details on the video and link to video itself. Utterly atavistic. (Thanks for the lead, Tayari!)]

[UPDATE 2: Brian Sawyer writes in to note that the images are now the front-page story on CNN and Google News. The San Francisco Chronicle? A Valentine's Day pillow fight at the Ferry Building is apparently more important than these new photos. See screenshot below.]

American Beauty

Photos of the first few microseconds of an atomic blast. (via Warren Ellis)

Conversation from Deep Within the Pentagon — Last Night

HANK: All these millions of dollars they’re giving us.
HAL: Billions, Hank. Billions.
HANK: Alright, billions.
HAL: I understand, Hank. It’s hard to maintain a little humility around here. But don’t forget. We’re living in a golden age. I hope you’re taking advantage of the masseuse.
HANK: Well, you take any chance you get. Hey, speaking of which, you want to see the new toy that just came in?
HAL: You mean, that $3 million weapon that will allow us to kill those Iraqis ten times faster?
HANK: Even better. Stuff for the Homeland. Special ordered, since they’re not buying our orange alerts anymore. This little baby will throw funny lights into the air. In fact, let’s fuck with California right now.
HAL: New Age exercise freaks. Fifth largest economy.
HANK: I know, but here’s the thing. Many of these Californians, particularly those in the southern region, are stupid enough to believe in lights. Watch this. I guarantee we’ll get a small cult and a Chronicle article out of it. You know Mt. Davidson?
HAL: That mountain with the big cross. From Dirty Harry?
HANK: Yeah, that’s the one. Well, since those San Franciscans have stopped believing in God, let’s put the General’s lessons to the test.
HAL: You got video on this?
HANK: Yup. See that kid with the frightened expression on his face? Well, he’s got a camera and he’ll be sending this into the newspapers. Maybe the kid’s an agnostic. But he’ll be believing something in the morning.
HAL: Is this ethical?
HANK: Who cares about ethics? We’re at war here.
HAL: Tell a lie often enough, flash a light frequent enough, and they’ll believe anything.
HANK: Hell, they can believe anything they want to. Just so long as they’re shitting their pants on a regular basis. Anything to keep our citizens under control. We need these safeguards right now because they’re starting to doubt Our Leader. So why not host a banquet of fear?
HAL: Serves 300 million, eh, Hank?
HANK: Intelligent Design. Accept no substitute.
HAL: You know what the best part about this is, Hank?
HANK: What?
HAL: We don’t have to confirm anything.

Let’s Hope the Snorks Are Next

And all this time I thought UNICEF was intended to avoid profiling the advantages of war.

No, Ari, It’s What Called Thinking Outside a Unilateral Political Paradigm

Ari Fleischer: “If you allow those who are the most vocal and most antagonistic to get a meeting with the president for fear that publicity will hurt you if you don’t, you’re creating incentives for your critics to become even more antagonistic and more vocal.”

This is the uncivilized and inflexible approach to diplomacy that these goons specialize in. The truth is that they won’t meet with Cindy Sheehan because they’re scared and they know of no other way to communicate other than silently nodding their heads with all the humanity of a gunmetal grade school bookshelf.

[UPDATE: And while we're on the subject, only a real president would actually visit my beautiful city. Certainly not this bozo.]

Esquire — Blowing the Same Old War Trumpet

The July 2005 issue of Esquire celebrated “10 Men” — presumably, ideal men that other men (read: that pivotal 18-34 male demographic) can look up to. What was perhaps most shocking about this dubious fete was Thomas P.M. Barnett’s masturbatory article, “Old Man in a Hurry,” a profile that set aside any and all criticisms of the Secretary of Defense for such passages as:

RUMSFELD POPS OUT of his chair with the speed of the weekly squash player he still is at age seventy-three and strides over to shake my hand with a big, welcoming smile on his face, employing the enthusiastic, familiar tone one associates with longtime acquaintances. “Hey, how are ya? Nice to see ya!” I’m surprised by how short he is, as I can look right over his head.

and

This is a room you smoke cigars in and decide the fate of the free world.

and, in describing a conversation with a general

Then the general clinches the deal. “So I’ve finally figured out why we get along so well,” he says. “We’ve both run with the bulls at Pamplona!” Rumsfeld shrieks in delight and then launches into a fifteen-minute reverie about the time he ran with the bulls. And for fifteen glorious minutes, he put away the goddamn wire brush.

This cuddly avuncular approach, which makes no reference to Abu Grhaib or Guantanmo Bay, is rather astonishing for a magazine that cut its teeth in the 1960s on hard-hitting journalism that dared to expose and penetrate. And I, for one, will soon be writing a letter canceling my subscription for such a disgraceful piece of journalism.

What’s particularly interesting is that the writer of this article, Thomas P.M. Barnett, has a blog. What’s interesting is that rather than atoning for his inability to throw a baseball faster than a amicable lob, Barnett (who, no surprise, has kids to feed, making dealing with the devil more justifiable) has written a post expressing surprise that his efforts would be greeted with such outrage. He concludes, “I wanted to write up Rumsfeld in the way I saw him in history for the transformation process he has unleashed, not simply replicate the hundreds of articles that blame him for Iraq. My choice? Yes. Don’t like it? Fine. But criticize the choice without implying that the only way the man can get a profile that doesn’t crucify him is for the journalist to be fooled.”

Fair enough. But as Norman Solomon has argued, the overall questions to Rumsfeld haven’t exactly been hardball. In fact, as FAIR reports, during a September 18, 2002 interview with Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Lehrer failed to call Rumsfeld on factually inaccurate statements. And as Salon reported last December, it took ordinary soldiers to ask the tough questions that journalists typically shied away from.

It would seem to me that Barnett, far from taking the hard alternative route, settled for the same old song. And if Barnett, with his continued fatherly references to “the old man,” genuinely believes that he wasn’t fooled, why the deliberate efforts to portray this seventy-three year old man as some virile squash player? Why the continued masculine assertions? Why nothing in the way of tough questions?

There’s an old Chinese proverb: “He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”

“Death by Asphyxia” is the New “Shot While Trying to Escape”

Washington Post: “Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents. The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel. Senior officers in charge of the facility near the Syrian border believed that such ‘claustrophobic techniques’ were approved ways to gain information from detainees, part of what military regulations refer to as a ‘fear up’ tactic, according to military court documents.”

Ain’t No Room for Culture in the New I-Rack

The United States is now rivaling those who burned the Great Library of Alexandria as cultural destroyers. Having deliberately built a base upon Babylon, a new report from the British Museum notes:

damage to the dragons decorating the Ishtar Gate, one of the world’s most famous monuments, from attempts to prise out the relief-moulded bricks
broken bricks inscribed with the name of Nebuchadnezzar lying in spoil heaps
the original brick surface of the great processional route through the gate crushed by military vehicles
fuel seeping from tanks into archaeological layers
acres of the site levelled, covered with imported gravel – which Dr Curtis said would be impossible to remove without causing further damage – and sprayed with chemicals which are also seeping into the unexcavated buried deposits
thousands of tonnes of archaeological material used to fill sandbags and mesh crates, and equally damaging, when that practice stopped, thousands more tonnes of material imported from outside the site, contaminating the site for archaeologists forever.

Dr. John Curtis, the writer of the report, noted that his charges “should not be seen as exhaustive, but is indicative of the types of damage caused.”

Talk in a Time of War

With escamotage that seems outside Tanenhaus’s grasp, Sunday’s Washington Post features a retrospective on David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest — pointing out that the book is not only a masterful study of foreign policy but elucidating a few potential comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. Warren Bass and David Halberstam will discuss The Best and the Brightest online on Thursday, January 27 at 3:00 p.m.

Guantanamo Bay — An Internment Camp in the Making

It’s bad enough that FBI agents willfully witnessed prisoners being abused at Guantanamo Bay. Because we all know that when you see a human being getting a lit cigarette stuck into his ear, the immediate thing to do is to stand and do nothing while the vultures continue to beat the guy down further. Horrible enough that the suspected “terrorists” held at Guantanamo Bay have little to no evidence and that these people are being denied due process. But even Richard Lugar is against the latest scam to leave suspects there for life, even when there’s nothing to back up the government’s claims. Funny how it comes down to chump changehelping out Sri Lanka while the Defense Department sees no problem blowing $25 million for Camp 6, a prison designed for “more comfort and freedom than they have now.” Spokesman Bryan Whitman said, “This has been evolutionary.” On the contrary. It’s downright recidivist, if you ask me.

Here are some of the highlights:

A British detainee was tortured using “strappado.” Strappado was commonly used in Latin American dictatorships and involves hanging a prisoner from the bars by his handcuffs until they cut deeply into his wrists. What was his offense? He was caught reciting the Koran while talking was banned.
David Hicks, an Australian citizen was beaten before, during and after interrogations, threatened with firearms and other weapons, and was hit in the face, head, feet, and torso with hands, fists, various objects and rifle butts. Over one eight-hour session, the man was handcuffed and blindfolded and hit randomly with a group of other detainees. Hicks was also offered the services of a prostitute if he agreed to spy on other detainees.
Another detainee is on the verge of madness. His physical condition is deteriorating and his father is concerned that he will turn into a cabbage before his appeal goes before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Between October and December 2003, FBI reports document that detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation, and forced nudity.
The FBI memos have been provided by the ACLU.