bookofdays

notes from their front line

I know I said I’d blog from California, but the trip proved unexpectedly tiring: physical challenges to  my vertigo presented by hills and wobbly public transit, the usual business-trip logistics, and intermittent Internet access in the various homestays. But most of all, my brain was full to bursting with stories -- from experts like Judy Ehrlich (link to TGW) and the directors of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers’  Guild, but more important, from veterans of America’s three most recent wars.

I talked to Vietnam veterans like Paul Cox, who “turned off the war,” he says, when his unit slaughtered mamas and babies in their huts; Mike Wong, who left after advanced training rather than go to Vietnam;  and Steve Morse, a born Quaker who went back in after  his court martial for insubordination, and followed the invasion of Cambodia. I talked to Gulf War veteran Daniel Fahey, who went on to become a leading voice for those exposed to depleted uranium. I talked to Stephen Funk, the first public conscientious objector of the Iraq war, whose unusual and lefty background and sweet, fey presence make him an unusual military voice – but who still says “it’s easier to talk to people who’ve been through the training.”

And to two funding members of Iraq Veterans Against the War – one of whom’s still in the National Guard, and another who was a member of the First Marine Expeditionary Force – yes, that one.

r.i.p. - the first hero of my lai

“Didn't you take your life in your hands, Hugh, when you got out and told the American soldiers who had been killing that they'd better quit and let these people get out of the bunker,” Wallace asked Thompson, who wouldn’t answer.

“Yes sir, he did,” says Colburn. “And he didn’t even take a weapon with him. He had a side arm. He didn’t even have it drawn. He just placed himself … And I was thinking that, at that point, anything could have happened. And we watched Mr. Thompson go to the bunker and bring the people out.”

I learned at about 3 a.m. that Hugh Thompson had died: My first thought, after great sadness, was an additional sadness that I couldn't now speak to him, when giving him his honoured place in my history of dissenting soldiers.   I'll let Richard Goldstein's smart obit remind those who don't know or remember:

Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at the inquiries and received a commendation from the Army three decades later, died yesterday in Alexandria, La. He was 62.

john mccain figleafs a national emergency

Those of you who faithfully read this blog only need to know this: the Graham Amendment, the one all set to undo Rasul and kiss habeas corpus goodbye, just got worse. Forget all the press about John McCain's heroic stand on torture (where were you when Gonzales was confirmed, sir?) - in the dead of night, that gnarly little amendment says, basically, that all such declarations are moot: evidence from torture can still be used as evidence in military tribunals. Contact your Senators now, especially if (as for New Yorkers) they're on one of the relevant committees: tell them to refuse, if necessary, to sign the conference committee report.

How do we know all this? Because they love it. Thanks as always, Hilzoy, for pointing out that

According to an amended draft of the measure being circulated Thursday among the sponsors, Graham has agreed to language that loosens the restrictions on terror evidence that’s obtained through “coercive” interrogations that may occur in other countries. Whereas Graham’s previous draft had forbidden the use of such evidence—in accordance with standard rules of military justice—the new draft says that it should be barred only “to the extent practicable.” The latest bill language also now says that the “probative value” of evidence should be considered—in other words, whether the information is persuasive.

when PR falls on us like snow

Journalists say it over and over:  journalism is the opposite of public relations. We're supposed to be afflicting the comfortable, comforting the afflicted, puncturing holes in the smooth stories played out by politicians, corporations, churches. I came to journalism by way on nonprofit, good-cause PR, and try to remember that the hallmarks of good PR – super-clear stories with exact endings, data that all point the same way – and suggesting that they don't make good journalism.

But we're in an era where PR masking as journalism has defined our politics, with sometimes tragic results. So how do we interact with power, when they've learned how to do what we do?

on a magic carpet (bomb) ride

I know, it's been forever: I'm reporting simultaneously for two different pieces, one about domestic violence in New York's immigrant communities and one, called informally "The Things They Carry," about a prototypical new veteran I've been following around. And I write this about to head into a meeitng of the Veterans Advisory Board of the NY City Council.

But knowing Seymour Hersh's new piece was hitting today, I had to read it right away, and deliver some of the most disturbing bits to you. And of course, in the time I took to put this together, Jehanne was already giving a more plangent frame to it all.

Everyone who, unlike TV-resistant me,  watched Wolf Blitzer last night already knows Hersh's harshest: that when the inevitable troop withdrawals happen, they'll be replaced by an escalated air war, right on Vietnam-Not-So-Lite Schedule: The Return of Carpet Bombing.

In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war.

The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be “painted,” or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. “The pilot doesn’t identify the target as seen in the pre-brief”—the instructions provided before takeoff—a former high-level intelligence official told me. “The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a ‘hot-read’ ”—from a military unit on the ground—“and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You don’t want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can’t verify.” He added, “And we’re going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?

Or maybe we should all hang ourselves.

Just an update on the Graham Amendment, that assault on our constitution that I posted about some time ago. Hilary and Katherine, the two heroines of Obsidian Wings, have stayed on the job, while the rest of us wrung our hands and chirped "Call your Senators."

Specifically, they're going after Senator Graham's completely bizarre statement that "Two medical malpractice claims have come out of this…. Never in the history of the rule of law of armed conflict has an enemy combatant, POW, person who is trying to kill U.S. troops, been given the right to sue those same troops for their medical care." 

First of all, you can just hear the balls rattling off old Mr. Graham's brain: he sees fake whiplash neck braces, people holding their heads, and a darn good talking point. I can't think he really means this:

"[redacted] is from Yemen. He had an injury to his shin and the US amputated more than necessary. However, because he has refused to cooperate with his interrogators, the US military refused for two years to give him a prosthetic limb. The clinic showed him such a prosthetic several times and said that he could only have it if he talked to his interrogators.

Other prisoners who have been denied prosthetic devices unless they cooperate with the interrogators include (...) [redacted] from Saudi Arabia who was denied a prosthetic limb for more than eight months, [redacted] from Yemen who was denied a prosthetic limb for more than two and a half years, and [redacted] from Tukistan (sic) who is without a prosthetic foot to this date, after three years."

* p. 16: One detainee reports the following:

"One mental health professional actually described to Mr. Begg how he could hang himself. She said that he could take his underwear, thread a blanket or trousers through this, and use it to hang himself. Mr. Begg has since been unable to get this image out of his mind, and it haunts him constantly. For a mental health professional to say this to a patient is the height of stupidity, irresponsibility, or sadism."

Moazzam Begg is also among one of the leading plaintiffs in Rasul v. Rumsfeld ( the suit that prompted Graham's legislation.),  and had his story dramatized in last year's Broadway play, Guantanamo. What he carries inside him I cant't imagine.

I just chose a piece of this section, from an extremely complex and important series of posts. PLEASE go  check out the whole series. Please go read.  Be aware. Write and talk about this whenever you can. (And for lobbying marching orders, check here.)

I'll  be back, to talk a bit about my newest pair of projects - my little contribution to the story of the things they carry.

sometimes the flashbacks burn your retina.

Italian journalists are taking revenge for Nicola Calipari in the best way they can:  they kept working, bringing us news we don't want but  need.  About Fallujah  - news that we could have guessed if we thought we could stand it.

In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

    -- The Independent, US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

I had just turned ten when photos of the napalmed Kim Phuc streamed across the AP wire.  I was probably still wearing that  Nixon button I got from my father; you can likely count me as one of the millions driven by that image to ask more questions about the war in Vietnam.

As much as they twist my stomach, I hope these images get out even more broadly.  Though I wonder - are people so saturated with fictional violent imagery that they won't have the same impact as 30 years ago?

(Via Hunter at kos.)

glimpses from fog

Well, last Friday was George Freeman, doing his gangstalawyah imitation on us all. This week, it was Richard Holbrooke, who at the State Department and the U.N. had the closest thing to a real conscience of any of them.

But I have my usual change-of-seasons cold, and even looking at my cursory notes doesn't make me think any more clearly.  I'll therefore perhaps write about him  later. Tonight I'll punt to my  betters on all things, and end with a quote from one of my avatars, Frederic Tuten.

The links first:

• Laura Rozen's trip down memory lane, in which she reminds us of a young, passionate Republican congressman named Richard Cheney, determined to  get to the bottom of Iran-contra.
• Firedoglake: as always, your source for intelligent analysis of today's indictments and what they mean for future investigation of WHIG-gate.
• Body and Soul, even while she writes her book about torture, is keepin' one eye on how NOLA is the new neocon playpen. After all, their hit  Baghdad Year Zero. was such a raging success.

And now for something completely different: a celebration of fiction - the hardest, most experimental fiction out there, too. Frederic wrote this for Fence Magazine, so if you want to read the whole thing, pick one up. (And while you're picking up magazines, if you're interested in seeing a story of mine called "Snow Angels," consider buying a copy of the new, struggling Me Three.)

Think of yourself as making art -- however bombastic or vague that may sound even to you--and not as a producer of products or units:  You will thus relieve yourself of worrying about your work's social or political function, since zll art is redemptive, salvational, ennobling and is a protest against ignorance, crime, lies and Death....One beautiful novel shames all broad enterprises and sends brightness through the prison walls of prisons, parliaments, and publishing houses.

(And if  you're worried about the implications of the word "salvational," click on the Fence link and giggle.)

2000

Uh-huh.

As we observe that number, remember also the tenfold more dead civilians.

Some links that fit these reflections:

• I'm late on this, but Maureen Dowd rules in her Miller piece.  Anyone who starts referencing Thackeray, on her  way to slicing Judith Miller to ribbons, demonstrates true class. Read it via Steve Gilliard, if only for the photo.
• It's not enough that they're stressed and getting shot at: now they get to lose it all at the table.
• Eric Schmitt gives the most concise expression to what we're all thinking when Bush/Rice start talking new war: With who?
• Via the Rage Diaries: Data bad! Data confuse government!
• Debra Dickerson's review in Salon of Kayla Williams' book contains this concise, extraordinary passage:

The military is full of diamond-in-the-rough kids like her who might have made a few mistakes but still know that there are uncharted worlds inside them. They know they were destined for a polyester uniform; making a break for the GI's outfit, rather than the burger flipper's -- or, God forbid, the inmate's -- is a daring demand to be taken seriously, to be invested in, to be challenged. To be seen. For poor or lost kids, joining up is an escape attempt, a prison break. Our all-volunteer military remains tenable only because these strivers somehow know that hot marches in the sun and nights spent sleeping in a foxhole will open the door to whatever's buried inside their dreams.

Now that it's Tuesday, I'll wrap up with what's frosted me since Friday  morning -- when I saw George Freeman, a lawyer for the New York Times, on Friday, try  to make Judith Miller's case an integral part of  a lecture on the legal concept of reporter's privilege.the pixie dust Freeman tried to toss in our eyes.

He allowed that Miller's work did not present the best argument for a shield law. "Would I have wanted a different set of facts in this case?" he said, spreading his arms wide. " Of course."

As part of the wider discussion, about how the concept of reporter's privilege involved, we of course discussed the issue of the inclusion of bloggers; having just written the post that appears below, I quoted it to him and suggested blogs were also a "weapon in the defense of liberty." He responded like  lawyer/politician: you'd never get the Senate to support that, he said.

Then Freeman proceeded to give a perfect, party-line defense of Miller. He said that Lewis Libby's original waiver, whose signing was mandatory as a condition of the White House, couldn't  be believed as sincere until the two of them talked -- and that recent events, including the negotiations that led to her release. were a sign that Fitzgerald was becoming "pretty desperate."

He stuck by Miller's story that she had "discovered" her June 2003 notebook just recently; a friend said later that she'd not been able to ask him about reports (by Murray Waas,  and now others) others that Miller only admitted that meeting existed after seeing Secret Service logs that proved she was there.

His politics came clear, and predictable enough, from his opinion of the leak case itself, which mimicked Richard Cohen's = not much of a crime, so he's going to create a conspiracy about a non-crime.  I so wanted to ask him about the Daily News' confirmation of Miller's  "charter membership" in the White House Iraq Group, but I'd used up my question time talking about free speech for blogs.

Now I join the rest of you in waiting to hear how many of the  powerful men, the suns to which Miller's flower turned, are placed under indictment - or whether the administration will decide to raise the flag of secrecy over the whole thing.

and they see only their own shadows

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest. The press in its connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.
        -- Justice Charles Evans Hayes, Lovell v. Griffin, 1934

In the height of the Great Depression, someone had an idea about whether  bloggers should be considered journalists. Not that Justice Hayes, born in 1882, would ever have conceived of the Web, let alone a Web log, as he considered whether the First Amendment applied to broadsheets put out in the city of Lovell, California.

I've been watching elite journalists muse soulfully on the question, "Are bloggers journalists?" for what feels like a sickeningly long time, but is probably only since this past February, when the National Press Club convened its first panel on the question in the aftermath of the Jeff Gannon scandal.

John Aravosis, had investigated a fellow named James Guckert, who had been allowed into the White House press corps under the name Jeff Gannon. Aravosis found out, among other things, that Gannon had advertised his services as a male prostitute online and that his news service, Talon News, was funded directly by the Republican Party (rather like those 18th-century news broadsheets Andie Tucher spoke of in that August lecture).

So with worried faces, a panel that included Gannon,  Congress Daily's John Stanton, former Philadelphia Inquirer staffer Ana-Marie Cox, now running an online column, mused soulfully on whether people like Gannon, or even like Cox, should be taken seriously, or seriously marginalized. (Aravosis, whose work exposing Gannon was the kind of digging Sree likes to talk about, wasn't invited onto the panel, though he spoke from the audience.)

The well-paid journalists in the room were worried, perhaps justly, about this blending of fact and opinion, which depending on who you read (just as with print magazines) can be crude or well crafted, thoughtful or not, original or lazy. These conversations seemed, at that point, kind of theoretical.

Not any more, in the wake of a journalism scandal far more explosive than Jeff Gannon and the resulting talk of a federal shield law, including testimony before Congress on the part of the very journalist who's at the center of the scandal. And the Press Club was at it again, on the same day as some of its  members were asking: do bloggers deserve this shield?  And the panel, this time including  Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics at the University of Minnesota, and two TV journalists, agreed "probably not." All of it part of "National Free Speech Week, which may define irony, as noted by Roxanne .

Suddenly we're wondering what sort of writer gets First Amendment protection, and of what kind. And that brings me - briefly, I promise - back to the Supreme Court.