The Furious Spinner

Responding to a suit by the ACLU, the government has released further details of the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. This information should be spread across the front pages of every major newspaper in the United States—along with photos of what is really happening in Iraq right this moment. The mistreatment and torture of the prisoners in Iraq are war crimes. U.S. citizens should not tolerate this, to say the very least. The story says thirty-six prisoners may have died in U.S. custody: thirty-six human beings who probably didn't do anything except happen to live in Iraq when the United States invaded.

All this uproar over Kerik (and how they didn't vet him enough and geez, he hired an undocumented alien) is ridiculous. I don't think the guy should have been nominated in the first place, and yes, the White House should do a better job of looking into the lives of the people they nominate; however, that ain't the story. What are these news agencies doing? Where are the investigative reporters? Why wasn't there this kind of uproar over the fact that the U.S. invaded a country who was not a threat to us! Why isn't there this kind of uproar over Rumsfeld and the lack of armor and medical benefits for National Guard soldiers? Why isn't there this kind of uproar over what Bush is doing to our environment? Why isn't there this kind of uproar over U.S. soldiers torturing people? It is absolutely absurd.

Gary Webb was a real investigative journalist. He broke the story about the "Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s." Do you remember that? It sounded like something out of a movie. Essentially the government was responsible for the escalation of drug use in South Central. Soon after the story broke, the government and everyone else denied there was any truth to it. Webb and the story were discredited. He ended up without a job and in debt. As time went on, of course, it was discovered that his reporting had been accurate. Last Friday, Gary Webb apparently killed himself.

Michael Moore has an interesting take on what's happening with the Democrats via Mel Giles, who works as an advocate for victims of domestic violence. She says the responses from the Democrats are very similar to responses by abuse victims. The Democrats keep trying to figure out what they did wrong; how can they fix themselves so it doesn't happen again? She writes, "They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence. As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating." Her analogy is fascinating.

Here's another good piece. about Wangari Muta Maathai's Nobel Peace Prize, "Environmentalism as Peaceful Endeavor."

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.