US tortures Afghan, presumed innocent, to death

Sadly, you're right, Revel ...

I think it will take something big and ugly (or lots of little ugly things) such that enough US citizens, media folk, and politicians reconceive this administration and the broader movement around it - see it as the extremist and totalitarian-leaning threat that I think it is.

Had Kerry won, his government would be reaping this horrid harvest, he'd be unable to move with the Senate and House under republican control, and the rightwing media machine would still be in full voice, blaming the rot on Kerry and dems.

So it's likely a good thing Kerry didn't win. Better the whole movement falls into serious disfavor.

We supported Marcos, and Somosa, and Noriega, and a host of others. Although sometimes embarrassing to an administration, it had never spelled the doom of one party or the other.

I'm sure you know, Mr. Mountie, that you and I, while not always in agreement, usually see things the same way. In this case, however, i think you are letting "wishful thinking" get the better of you. It seems quite likely that a behind-the-scenes "night of the long knives" is eliminating the neocon element in the Republican party. The party will survive, and probably continue to remain dominant, taking advantage of the Bush popularity which gave them such a dominance in the Congress, while chucking the neocon agenda.

You and I and Habibi and everyone else here know the significance and horror of what is happening in central Asia. Most Americans (and i'd warrant, Canadians, for that matter) don't give a rat's ass for central Asia. I rather suspect that the current wisdom in the Republican party is "this, too, shall pass."

I hope i am wrong, but i don't think so.

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set

I don't mean to suggest the demise of the Republican Party is to be hoped for. I can conceive of no circumstance which would produce that effect.

David Gergen believes that the Republican Party is working towards a thirty year dominance of Amerian politics. I think he's got it exactly right.

I do not consider that the neoconservative contingent represented by Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle and others hold a great deal of power in the party. I don't think they ever did. Their significance seems to me to be three-fold:
1) provided the theoretical framework for mid-east realignment and the war on Iraq of course
2) ties with AIPAC and the powerful pro-Israel lobby
3) ties with the existing new right structures and organizations including media (Black, Aspers, Kristols, etc leading back to AIPEC but not only there)

They have been shifted out of the limelight over the last two years due, certainly, to the disaster of Iraq. Likely their influence is now far less too. Considering Wolfowitz's assignment to the World Bank, Steiglitz suggests we'll soon know, by Wolfowitz's actions, whether he has allegiance to the World Bank or whether it is too the Bush crowd. I suspect the latter primarily. That matches the Bush administration (really the Cheney administration I think) in its moves towards disempowering all points of opposition (congress, senate, courts, UN, media, unions, international bodies and treaties, etc.)

Another power group represented in this administration is the religious right. This political body has been purposefully structured and put into motion, very effectively, over the last twenty years particularly. Ralph Reed has been probably the fellow most responsible. His ties and background are very interesting (see Gang of Five by Sheena Easton, a really remarkable book). He's been working with Norquist for thirty years since their College Republican years (they took it over, removing all moderates).

This is a far more powerful group, in terms of danger to the Republican Party than are the neoconservatives because of the vast populist support the movement has engendered. Many of the figures in it are using the RNC for their own purposes as much as the RNC is using them. If you and I are lucky, the RNC and the religious right will find their interests and strategies incompatible finally, and the **** will hit the fan, perhaps in a third party. If you and I aren't lucky, the two groups will continue to work cooperatively.

I mentioned Norquist. He's an ideologue, if a more practical and old fashioned anti-commy, anti-government sort. He's been a key player in organizing the various groups I've just mentioned, holding weekly strategy meetings for many years now where objectives are set and personnel assigned to meet those objectives. Attendees come from every important corner of the Republican Party. Horowitz fits in here too, but he is not nearly as bright as Norquist nor as powerful. They both spent a lot of time in the Reagan administration doing naughty things with guns in Central America. Intersections with the CIA seem a bit too obvious to even mention.

Then there is the media crowd. Not just Murdoch (in an interview I saw a few months ago with Ted Turner, he recounted a conversation with Tony Blair, a friend, and he told Blair to put the leash on Murdoch because Murdoch was becoming too powerful...Blair repsonded, "I can't touch him. If it weren't for Rupert, I wouldn't be PM.") it is also the right wing media machine that Brock describes better than anyone which has been put into place over the last thirty years through funding from Scaife, Coors, Bradley and some others (one strategic move involved getting rid of the "Fairness Doctrine") and finally the monopolization of mainstream outlets within the hands of five main corporations.

As to who holds those 'long knives' you mention, it is those big money boys. Chomsky has this right.

Sorry, quick and a bit scattered, but an outline of what I've come to see as the gears.

Yeppers.

Same here - when it got out that the current conservatives seemingly won their second election by putting out a story that illegal immigrants had thrown their children overboard - risking their lives - in order to get to land on Oz soil, which later events and testimony very strongly suggest they knew was a lie - nobody much got tooo bothered.

Thing is, we seem to expect lies and such from those in power.

Also - I suspect many people - including a number of the "usual suspects" really see nothing untoward in treating these prisoners so badly. Some of them state as much.

You will, for instance, often see them referring to all prisoners as 'terrorists" - though there is no proof that large numbers of them are - and lots of evidence that many are not.

I wonder how many Americans - those who will even see it, since there seems to be a tendency to keep such stories very quiet in many media outlets (is this part of the "support the troops" thing???) - who really give much of a damn what their military is doing to these people? Really!

This is not to condemn Americans particularly - we ALL live with, and do nothing about, and largely forget, the terrible sufferings of our fellow humans all over the globe.

And - these people are "the enemy".

And, there seems to me to be a campaign from the right to depict Muslims as sub-human anyway. We love to do that to our enemies du jour. It is what the islamist fanatics do, too.

Edit: I have a kind of theory that all these evils done by governments kind of start to bite when they have passed their apogee, and are moving towards the part of the democratic two party system version of the sacrifice of the king, or the casting out of the scape goat.

Then, all their sins stand out starkly to the jaded public - who want a fresh new government, to be wearied and jaded by in its turn, and to dispatch the sin-laden, stumbling, all too human beast that is the old government....

Set - do you really have evidence of this "long knives" thing?

Interestingly, from this perspective, we are able to see so little difference between your normal Repubs and Dems - sans the neo-con nuts - that a return to normal Republicanism looks like a very good thing!

Wolfowitz was kicked upstairs to the World Bank post. There is now a contention that Coleman (Chair, permanent subcommittee on investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs), was lured into his idiocy with promises of rewards to come, but, having had the Galloway affair blow up in his face, is to be left hanging. Just rumors of war as opposed to war itself.

Hmmm - but Cheney, Rice still very much there.

Rumsfeld? Damaged goods?

Cheney is still there for obvious reasons. Rumsfeld is old, old, old. Rice is a relict of the Shrub's gubenatorial administration in Tejas, and not necessarily to be seen as a neocon. Even were one to consider her a neocon (which i would doubt to be true), her tenure will not outlast the Shrub's.

Hmmm - she worships fully at the neocon shrine - only topped by her worship at the shrine of Bush.

I don't necessarily know that that is so. For example, she brushed aside Wolfowitz's contention on September 12 that Iraq was complicit in and should be attacked for the September 11 tragedy. Of course, i recognize that she is sufficiently subtle to have deeper laid plans than others in the administration (i've never noticed anyone else's lips moving when she speaks), but i'm not entirely convinced. I think it likely that her unquestioning loyalty to the Shrub, her greatest political asset over the last decade, is a better explanation for her current postion.

At any event, as i noted, her tenure will not outlast that of the Shrub. The litmus test will be her fortunes in the Republican party after the stint at State. As i also noted, rumors of war, rather than war itself.

Interesting, though.

set

It's not at all clear to me that Wolfowitz's bump ought to be considered as 'up'. All the individuals who previously, before the war became a PR deficit, were pushed into the media spotlight on an almost daily basis - Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz etc have pretty much disappeared. They 'brand' or 'position' the administration with negatives and failure, and THAT is the big no no. The tenacity in denying ANY sense or aspect of failure or responsibility, the constant refrain of (focus group tested) adjectives like 'resolute', 'courageous', 'steadfast', 'war president' are designed to foward the conception/perception of Bush and the administration as winners.

Earlier, I mentioned the long-term relationship between Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. Abramoff too has been in that mix. More recently, DeLay becomes connected...great piece here

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/politics/23norquist.html?hp&ex=1116907200&en=0ff1bd508cb49a7b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Well, Mr. Mountie, i was using that in the classic American sense of being "kicked upstairs," a phrase originally used to describe someone who was promoted from management to the board of directors, where his incompetence could no longer endanger the health of the corporation.

We are as one. But do look at that piece on Norquist.

So, while people don't give a damn about Koran desecrations and making fun of Saddam in his underpants, they successfully fail to notice the death of innocent Afghans at the hands of US soldiers...

6 pages on this thread, and not one post by one of the 'righties'...

Yeah, that's gotta be a first. Nobody coming to the defense of the perps this time. Strange indeed.

Lol - but they are condemning people as terrorist supporters on other threads for suggesting there is a reasonable basis to believe the koran was mucked about with.

oh, I didn't notice that was on my to-do list for today:

condemn US Soldiers that disobey orders and beat prisoners to death.