POSSIBILITY SHINES THROUGH IRAQIS' LONG-OPPRESSED SMILES

UPI ^ | 2-1-2005 | Georgie Ann Geyer

[bilhosty]

WASHINGTON -- In my seven visits to Iraq between 1973 and 1988, I never saw anyone smile. No, I am not exaggerating -- not ANYONE! The Iraqi faces seemed set in stone, without expression and without words: Stalin's dehumanized creatures on the deserts of the far Near East. Oh, a tiny, tight, treacherous smile slightly lighted the face of Saddam's top man, Tarik Aziz, once when I met with him in his ministry office in 1980. Speaking of the Iranians they had captured in the war with Iran, he said, "We had to hang most of them -- we're a very well-organized society."

So when I saw the smiling, celebratory faces of the throngs of Iraqis on the old streets of Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk on Sunday, when I saw those formerly "soulless" Iraqis dancing in the streets (without being forced to do so at the hanging of some poor unfortunate), when I saw their in-Saddam's-face joy at waving purple-inked fingers at the world to say, "I exist," I too was overjoyed.

[bilhosty]

This writer is an extremely knowledgable centrist. She is an opponet of the Iraq action which makes her column very credibile. Maybe she is starting to see the light.

[NorCalRepub]

courtesy of George W. Bush......thank you very much!

[anniegetyourgun]

I don't think so. Georgie Ann has completely gone over the edge in the last several years. Some of her writings/rantings are just as hateful as one might find on lib/dem blogs. No, she's not getting it.....just having to admit the obvious so as not to be COMPLETELY associated with the nutbags in the D party these days.

[mammer]

Does anyone know who Hannity talked to today "some congressman" that claims the election in Iraq was not real and we have no proof they were. He's on now Central Time, SOMEONE !!!

[anniegetyourgun]

NO, but I hear that UBL's second in command has said the same thing.

[mammer]

Just heard it was Dennis KaSinAss, I can't believe this guy said we didn't have cameras at every voting poll so we don't know if all these people really voted. WHAT A NUT, I love this stuff, democrats self destruct every time they open their thinned little lips.

[Max Combined]

"This writer is an extremely knowledgable centrist."

Read what she writes about the administration and torture and tell me she is not a leftist, lying, spinmiester.

Georgie Ann Geyer: 'Chasing down the truth about torture'
Posted on Sunday, January 09 @ 09:36:51 EST

---

By Georgie Anne Geyer, Yahoo

WASHINGTON -- Anyone who has ever had a cat knows of a curious ambivalence about the purpose of "the chase" around the house. Neither of you ever wins, and there is no finish line; when your beloved feline racer gets tired of chasing here and there and everywhere, he just plops down, closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. Not only is it all over, but neither of you quite understands its actual purpose.

It's a fitting metaphor, it seems to me, for Americans' quest for truth about torture. For nearly the last two years, we've been chasing around the subject, going through trajectories of rage at the administration for permitting torture under American auspices and then periods of withdrawal and depression. The Senate hearings last week made it clear that, as with our cats, it is all going to end with everybody going back to sleep.

First, let's look at what has been happening in the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales.



The Texas-born Gonzales, whose impoverished early life at times seemed to be of more interest to the senators than the torments his rulings clearly permitted at Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, repeatedly refused to repudiate his legal judgment that the president is empowered to order torture in violation of U.S. law. The immunization of torturers from punishment? What's the problem?

He would not reject a 2002 ruling, made under his direction, that the infliction of pain short of serious physical injury, organ failure or death did not constitute torture: "I don't have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached," he said.

What about the Geneva Conventions, drafted by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1949 to gradually provide the civilized world with "the greater protection in International Law of the individual against the hardships of war"? The pleasant-looking, mild-mannered Texan-on-his-way-up showed no regret about his advice to the president that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to guerrilla insurgents or to terrorists all over the world today.

Regarding the revelations of depraved American behavior from Guantanamo to Afghanistan to the prisons of Baghdad, Gonzales told the senators that the error was not one of administration policy, but one of "failure of training and oversight." In short, a Gonzales attorney generalship would be a morbid continuation of the last four years.

But at least equally as interesting as Gonzales' forthright innocence about his actions was the behavior of the senators. The hearings were almost a love-in at times, with the senators fondly calling him "Al" and agreeing that, despite all, they will confirm him. Gonzales explained everything away by saying that the American soldiers who grotesquely humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib were "simply people who were morally bankrupt trying to have fun." And of course, except for a couple of handfuls of lowest-level GIs, nobody is being punished -- or ever will be punished -- for this watershed change in one of the most fundamental moral approaches of this country toward warfare.

Perhaps worst of all was the fact that Gonzales' explanation for his actions didn't make the dimmest sense. "What I can say," he said at one point, "is that after this war began against this new kind of threat, this new kind of enemy, we realized that there was a premium on receiving information. In many ways, this war on terror is a war about information. If we have information, we can defeat the enemy."

Oh, poor Mr. Gonzales, there is nothing remotely new about this kind of threat, about this kind of enemy. The kind of guerrilla warfare we see all over the world today goes back to the earliest dawn of history, and it would take scholars years of their lives to even begin to read all the literature on it.

As to the question of information, we do not get information through means of torture. First of all, according to American military intelligence and others, 70 percent to 90 percent of those detained by Americans in Iraq were arrested by mistake or for anti-American comments. Second, historically, torture never works. Instead, it forces men who don't know anything to make up useless stories, and it forces men who do know something to live to fight the torturer even more ferociously, or to serve usefully as the martyred dead. Ask the French in Algeria -- or, for that matter, the British in Iraq in the 1920s.

And if these wars were really about information, I would like to tell him, with all due respect: "Mr. Gonzales, first, read a book!"

All this brings home to me what I believed from the beginning. The Bush war party, and particularly his neocon courtiers, cynically knew that in today's political world in Washington, all you really have to do is get outrageous and wholly anti-American policies such as these on torture in place. Then the chase is really over.

Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc.

Reprinted from Yahoo:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&
cid=2205&ncid=742&e=14&u=/ucgg/20050108/cm_ucgg/
chasingdownthetruthabouttorture

[bilhosty]

She has indeed gone "over the edge" on Bush and the war as you put it. I just tune those rants out and listen to her substantive comments which are many. I have learned much from her as she is very insightful on everything (except for Bush). She is the only Bush attacker I respect.

[appalachian_dweller]

It's Bush's fault!!!

LOL!!!

Let Freedom Ring!

[MEG33]

http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/collapseiniraq.html
Georgie Ann Geyer: Collapse of US Regime in Iraq

June 12 2003

Success has many fathers..failure is an orphan.

[anniegetyourgun]

I used to feel that way about her too. Those days are over.....

[Jarhead1957]

Freepers this is worth a look:

http://adamkeiper.blogs.com/comparevideo/files/Iraq_Election.wmv

The pictures speak louder than words.

[bilhosty]

"I used to feel that way about her too. Those days are over....."

I understand and I to was very disappointed in her rants. Before this War started heating up I never heard her engage in partisan polemics and become so emotional. But, I still see past that and enjoy most of her columns. I thought this one was very fair and enlightening. It is possible that she is starting to come around and be the old GG Geyer. I certainly hope so.

[backhoe]

Clickable:

http://adamkeiper.blogs.com/comparevideo/files/Iraq_Election.wmv

[SusaninOhio]

At least Kuchinich is from the Cleveland area and doesn't represent the sane Ohio majority - Cleveland folks are a little different (something about the lake water, I believe).

Still it is embarrassing when he opens his mouth - it always helps me to picture him in a little tinfoil hat -

[Jarhead1957]

Thanks Backhoe

[LadyPilgrim]

That clip is powerful!
Thank you.

[Jarhead1957]

backhoe, it's kinda buried in this post. If I knew how, I would post it, and give it a posting of it's own. Want to do it for an old man who does not know how to link web pages to a post.

[backhoe]

"backhoe, it's kinda buried in this post. If I knew how, I would post it, and give it a posting of it's own. Want to do it for an old man who does not know how to link web pages to a post."

I *think* that's do-able... stand by.

Here:Pictures from the Iraqi Election ( or is it "revolution? )
http://adamkeiper.blogs.com/comparevideo/files/Iraq_Election.wmv ^ | 02-02-05 | N/A
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1334653/posts

[Max Combined]

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus - False in one thing, false in all