SAY IT WITH ME: 'WE WUZ CONNED' (BARF ALERT)

Dallas-Fort Worth.com ^ | 5/10/2004 | Molly Ivins

[JesseHousman]

Let's get real.

On Fox So-Called News, former Army Sgt. Tony Robinson was allowed to claim without contradiction that what happened at the prison at Abu Ghraib was no worse than "fraternity hazing." Rush Limbaugh concurs.

Let me speak up on behalf of the Kappa Sigs, KAs and even Dekes (where only "minor" branding incidents occurred when George W. Bush was the head Deke at Yale).

This is straight from the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba:

"Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility, numerous acts of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force. … The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence … including the following acts:

"-- Punching, slapping and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

"-- Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

"-- Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

"-- Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

"-- Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;

"-- Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

"-- Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

"-- A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

"-- Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

"-- Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees;

"-- Breaking chemical lights and pouring phosphoric liquid on detainees;

"-- Beating detainees with a broom handle and chair;

"-- Threatening male detainees with rape;

"-- Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps with a broomstick."

There it is. Just face up to it and quit making excuses. I have spared you much disgusting detail.

In our continuing quest to understand how we got where we are, let us turn our attention to Ahmed Chalabi.

He's a most plausible con man and comes with excellent credentials. Born to a prominent Iraqi family in 1944, exiled in 1958 with buckets of family money, went to MIT at age 16 and got his Ph.D. in math from the University of Chicago, where he first encountered one of the founders of the neoconservative movement, Albert Wohlstetter.

According to a profile on Salon.com, he there met future neocon leaders Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Salon reports that he is "charming, worldly and a skilled networker."

What follows is a complicated business-financial history, leading to the founding of the Petra Bank in Jordan in 1977.

Chalabi had ties both to the Shia theocracy in Iran and the Shia Amal militia in Lebanon. He also helped finance Saddam Hussein's trade with Jordan during the 1980s, according to Salon. By 1986, Petra had $1 billion in annual trade with Iraq. The bank collapsed, and Chalabi was convicted of embezzlement and fraud. He fled Jordan for London.

As head of the Iraqi National Congress, funded by the United States, Chalabi continued to push for the overthrow of Saddam. The United States is still paying him and his organization $350,000 a month. His association with neocon hawks continued, even though both the CIA and the State Department concluded he was untrustworthy. The "intelligence" he provided to the Bush administration before the war consistently proved wrong and fraudulent.

So why did the neocons trust him?

My theory is there is a terrible naiveté about neocons that often deludes them into believing what they want to be true. Remember the time they convinced themselves that Jonas Savimbi of Angola was a great freedom fighter? For anyone who knew Savimbi's record, it was "Gag Me With a Spoon" City, but they kept insisting that this disgusting human was a hero.

The neocons fell for Chalabi for one reason: He said he would help Israel. Once Saddam was overthrown, he said, he would reinstate the Iraq-Israel pipeline, recognize Israel, trade with Israel.

Chalabi, with our backing, became a member of the current Iraqi Governing Council. He has also made his nephews into power players in postwar Iraq. Gone are the promises about Israel.

Justifiably or not, most Iraqis believe Chalabi to be corrupt beyond counting. Even some of the neocons who have so long discounted the CIA and State Department reports about Chalabi's essential dishonesty are starting to doubt him.

Could this entire disaster in Iraq be as simple as "We wuz conned"?

Yep.

[JesseHousman]

According to a profile on Salon.com...

Mindless, prattling, socialist, Bush-hating Molly discloses one of her many sources.

[backhoe]

I take great pleasure in the fact that shrill shills like Ivins, Dowd, Clift, etc., have been left on the dust-heap of irrelevancy by 9-11 and other events. They are so last century...

[Living Free in NH]

No mention of shooting detainees or hanging their charred remains from a bridge.

[billorites]

[AQGeiger]

I've always wondered exactly how Molly Ivins has gained readership, except for the fact that rabid liberals like her don't care about the quality of the piece they are reading, they just care that it agrees with their opinions. Not only does Ivins use highly questionable sources, she has never had much of a style. Any conservative writer using the phrase "we wuz conned" would be accused of racism or insensitivity to the speaking styles of many groups of poor Americans.

[sauropod]

"-- Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps with a broomstick."

Newsmax reports this to be on the say-so of a prisoner. IOW, no factual information to back this up.

[capt. norm]

Molly is a star graduate of the "Helen Thomas School of Charm and Beauty".

[cake_crumb]

Molly Ivans = vile spew. In more ways than one!

[AQGeiger]

Newsmax reports this to be on the say-so of a prisoner. IOW, no factual information to back this up.

Lack of verifiable information has never been something to stop Ivins from spewing her idiocy.

[dwilli]

Molly is a bitter, partisan, Bush family hater who probably
drinks way too much.

That being said, what part of the column do you think
is false?

Hate to post and run but have to go to work.

[just me]

Good thing they didn't put them in a shredder.

What the soldiers did was stupid no doubt, but to destroy all that has been done in the media is worse.

[Maria S]

Whoa! Separated at birth!!

[No Blue States]

When will this tired old skank finally stop writing for DFW papers? Hardly anyone agrees with her liberal hate and spin.

Everytime the Star Telegram calls, I tell them no way will I buy their rag while they print Mollys idiotic BS.

[sheltonmac]

IOW, no factual information to back this up.

Well, to be fair, the same could be said of why we're over there in the first place.

[tkathy]

These fools could make the crucifying of Jesus look like it's all America's fault. They just don't get the fact that the West is in the biggest battle of our time.

[Fester Chugabrew]

This is the first Molly Ivins column I've ever read. A few acts on her list rise above the level of what we would call hazing. If they are true I don't think Rush would concur in their execution. Why she launches into this ditty about Ahmed Chalabi as if to explain how we got where we are is beyond me. Frankly, I've seen articles from young school children that read more coherently.

[jwpjr]

I have to wonder if the press et al isn't falling back on a tried and true form of propaganda. You take the info you have, all the photos of 'abuse' at the hands of the few guards and make sure everyone sees them time and again, so that there's not doubt in anyone's mind that the exist and are for real. Then, you start referring to other, much worse acts, with no accompanying verification, knowing full well people will confuse the two sets of facts and soon everyone will give the unverified, more serious charges the truthfulness of the lesser acts. Please don't think I am trying to excuse or condone ANY of the misadventures, but it bothers me when we see the same photos over and over, while the voice on the broadcast goes on and on about murder and mayhem.

[meenie]

I question if third party punishment is really the way to go. The killers of the four victims in Fallujah couldn't be more guilty and tortured enough to avenge their crimes. I do hope we aren't setting a standard where it is right to fail to find the killer and kill an innocent party as a sort of evening up the score.

Standards are being set here. I don't think we would want this system in our country where a murder is committed, the killer is not found so his distant cousin is executed to even the score. It seems to me that we are losing our system of justice and reverting to barbarity to justify our positions. I don't think we can continue our present society under these conditions.

[AQGeiger]

Welcome to FR!

You are exactly correct. Remember how there were rumblings a couple of days ago of rapes occuring inside Abu Ghraib? It turns out that those photos were staged. However, nobody's heard about that on the news. But I'm sure that there are people who don't pay that much attention to what comes and goes in the media that will say to themselves, "And wasn't there evidence of rape as well?" The media will have accomplished its objective, that of making our military look like a bunch of thugs and criminals.

[cake_crumb]

How do we know that all of the accusations are true...and that NONE of the photos and home movies are hoaxes?