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Thu 27 Jan, 2005 07:50 pm
I love this woman.
Love for Sale
By MAUREEN DOWD
January 27, 2005
I'm herewith resigning as a member of the liberal media elite.
I'm joining up with the conservative media elite. They get paid better.
First comes news that Armstrong Williams got $240,000 from the Education Department to plug the No Child Left Behind Act.
The families of soldiers killed in Iraq get a paltry $12,000. But good publicity? Priceless.
Mr. Williams helped out the first President Bush and Clarence Thomas during the Anita Hill scandal. Mr. Williams, who served as Mr. Thomas's personal assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when the future Supreme Court justice was gutting policies that would help blacks, gleefully attacked Professor Hill, saying, "Sister has emotional problems," and telling The Wall Street Journal "there is a thin line between her sanity and insanity."
Now we learn from the media reporter Howard Kurtz that the syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher had a $21,500 contract from the Health and Human Services Department to work on material promoting the agency's $300 million initiative to encourage marriage. Ms. Gallagher earned her money, even praising Mr. Bush in print as a "genius" at playing "daddy" to the nation. "Mommies feel your pain," she wrote in 2002. "Daddies give you confidence that you can ignore the pain and get on with life."
Genius? Not so much. Spendthrift? Definitely. W.'s administration was running up his astounding deficit paying "journalists" to do what they would be happy to do for free - just to be friends with benefits, getting access that tougher scribes are denied. Consider Charles Krauthammer, who went to the White House on Jan. 10 for what The Washington Post termed a "consultation" on the inaugural speech and then praised the Jan. 20th address on Fox News as "revolutionary," says Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group.
I still have many Christmas bills to pay. So I'd like to send a message to the administration: THIS SPACE AVAILABLE.
I could write about the strong dollar and the shrinking deficit. Or defend Torture Boy, I mean, the esteemed and sage Alberto Gonzales. Or remind readers of the terrific job Condi Rice did coordinating national security before 9/11 - who could have interpreted a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" as a credible threat? - not to mention her indefatigable energy obscuring information that undercut the vice president's dementia on Iraq.
My preference is to get a contract with Rummy. It would be cost effective, compared with the $80 billion he needs to train more Iraqi security forces to be blown up. For half a mil, I could write a doozy of a column promoting Rummy's phantasmagoric policies.
What is all this hand-wringing about the 31 marines who died in a helicopter crash in Iraq yesterday? It's only slightly more than the number of people who died in traffic accidents in California last Memorial Day. The president set the right tone, avoiding pathos when asked about the crash. "Obviously," he said, "any time we lose life it is a sad moment."
Who can blame Rummy for carrying out torture policies? We're in an information age. Information is power. If people are not giving you the intelligence you want, you must customize to get the intelligence you want to hear.
That's why Rummy also had to twist U.S. laws to secretly form his own C.I.A. A Pentagon memo said Rummy's recruited agents could include "notorious figures," whose ties to the U.S. would be embarrassing if revealed, according to The Washington Post. Why shouldn't a notorious figure like Rummy recruit notorious figures?
I could write a column denouncing John McCain for trying to call hearings into Rummy's new spy unit, suggesting the senator is just jealous because Rummy's sexy enough to play James Bond.
The president might need my help as well. He looked out of it yesterday when asked why his foreign policy is so drastically different from the one laid out in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 by Ms. Rice - a preview that did not emphasize promoting democracy and liberty around the world. "I didn't read the article," Mr. Bush said.
And why should he? Robert McNamara never read the Pentagon Papers. Why should W. have to bone up on his own foreign policy?
Freedom means the freedom to be free from reading what you promise voters and other stuff. I could make that case, if the price were right.
I e-mailed MoDo a proposal of marriage a couple of years ago, but withdrew it once I saw her on television.
A bit too much Botox and carrot-red dye for my taste.
Besides, she doesn't just hate conservatives; she hates everybody.
She's cynical and witty.
She hates everybody?
Torture Chicks Gone Wild
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 30, 2005
By the time House Republicans were finished with him, Bill Clinton must have thought of a thong as a torture device.
For the Bush administration, it actually is.
A former American Army sergeant who worked as an Arabic interpreter at Gitmo has written a book pulling back the veil on the astounding ways female interrogators used a toxic combination of sex and religion to try to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba. It's not merely disgusting. It's beyond belief.
The Bush administration never worries about anything. But these missionaries and zealous protectors of values should be worried about the American soul. The president never mentions Osama, but he continues to use 9/11 as an excuse for American policies that bend the rules and play to our worst instincts.
"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the former sergeant, Erik R. Saar, 29, told The Associated Press. The A.P. got a manuscript of his book, deemed classified pending a Pentagon review.
What good is it for President Bush to speak respectfully of Islam and claim Iraq is not a religious war if the Pentagon denigrates Islamic law - allowing its female interrogators to try to make Muslim men talk in late-night sessions featuring sexual touching, displays of fake menstrual blood, and parading in miniskirt, tight T-shirt, bra and thong underwear?
It's like a bad porn movie, "The Geneva Monologues." All S and no M.
The A.P. noted that "some Guantánamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by 'prostitutes.' "
Mr. Saar writes about what he calls "disturbing" practices during his time in Gitmo from December 2002 to June 2003, including this anecdote related by Paisley Dodds, an A.P. reporter:
A female military interrogator who wanted to turn up the heat on a 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before 9/11 removed her uniform top to expose a snug T-shirt. She began belittling the prisoner - who was praying with his eyes closed - as she touched her breasts, rubbed them against the Saudi's back and commented on his apparent erection.
After the prisoner spat in her face, she left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist suggested she tell the prisoner that she was menstruating, touch him, and then shut off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.
"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," Mr. Saar recounted, adding: "She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee. As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward," breaking out of an ankle shackle.
"He began to cry like a baby," the author wrote, adding that the interrogator's parting shot was: "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."
A female civilian contractor kept her "uniform" - a thong and miniskirt - on the back of the door of an interrogation room, the author says.
Who are these women? Who allows this to happen? Why don't the officers who allow it get into trouble? Why do Rummy and Paul Wolfowitz still have their jobs?
The military did not deny the specifics, but said the prisoners were treated "humanely" and in a way consistent "with legal obligations prohibiting torture." However the Bush White House is redefining torture these days, the point is this: Such behavior degrades the women who are doing it, the men they are doing it to, and the country they are doing it for.
There's nothing wrong with trying to squeeze information out of detainees. But isn't it simply more effective to throw them in isolation and try to build some sort of relationship?
I doubt that the thong tease works as well on inmates at Gitmo as it did on Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.
Seriously. If the definition of torture has become "rubbing ink on a prisoner" then we have no hope of ever interrogating any terrorist again.
It's a far cry from "being strapped to the floor while a prostitute menstruated on him." which is nonsense to begin with.
So, instead of trying to be quick witted, answer my question. In the explanation above, where is the torture?
I guess you missed cross-cultural sensitivity training day again this month, McG.
<shrug>
Cultural insensitivity is now defined as "torture"?
McGentrix wrote:Seriously. If the definition of torture has become "rubbing ink on a prisoner" then we have no hope of ever interrogating any terrorist again.
It's a far cry from "being strapped to the floor while a prostitute menstruated on him." which is nonsense to begin with.
So, instead of trying to be quick witted, answer my question. In the explanation above, where is the torture?
Some might consider it torture to make someone believe they have angered or disobeyed their god; so much so that they won't go to heaven. Imagine if a Christian prisoner was convinced by his interrogators that he had sold his soul to Satan on a technicality.
No. That can never be classified as torture. Sorry.
McG, I think you're going to discover that more than a few Christians would indeed define that as torture. Particularly those of the born-again persuasion. It's an interesting crowd.
Better that than having your head cut off. I am sure that if Nick Berg had the choice, he'd go for the red ink.
Well, why is Chinese water torture considered torture? It doesn't hurt.
Psychological torture is considered to be just as extreme as physical torture when done correctly.
Cycloptichorn
Breaking a prisoners will is a far cry from torture. Discomfort, stress positions, mental anguish, all have a use when used properly. It's been proven effective without lasting harm.
I am sure that if you tried hard enough, someone here could use the fact the prisoners are not given 200 thread count bedsheets to be torture. The word has no meaning when used like it has been in this thread.
Funny how you seem to be channelling Phoenix when the news started to come out about Abu Ghraib, McG. She didn't get that either.
So you're saying that mental torture is not torture. Convincing a soldier that he's a war criminal who killed children? Not torture?
We are talking about Mr. Habib and his claims of "torture" while confined in Guantanamo.
I'm just throwing out other examples of 'mental anguish' to see if any meet your standard of torture. So far I've put Chinese water torture and the above example out. What do you think? Torture or not?
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