Re: [A-List] Iraq: "we seem to be able to live with it"

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Rush: MPs Just 'Blowing Off Steam'

WASHINGTON, May 6, 2004

(CBS) This Against the Grain commentary is written by CBSNews.com's Dick
Meyer.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/opinion/meyer/main616021.shtml

There is one proud and satisfied place where the pictures and accounts of
the abuse endured by some prisoners at Abu Ghraib cause no consternation and
no outrage: Rush Limbaugh's America, pop. 20 million.

Here's Rush's take, from his Website:

"I'm sorry, folks. I'm sorry. Somebody has to provide a little levity here.
This is not as serious as everybody is making it out to be. My gosh, we're
all wringing our hands here. We act like, 'Okay let's just die,' you know?
'Let's just give up. What can we do to make these people feel better? Let's
just pull out of there, and let's just go. Let's just become a neutral
country. Let's just do that.' I mean, it's ridiculous. It's outrageous
what's happening here, and it's not -- and it's not because I'm out of
touch; it's because I am in touch, folks, that I can understand. This is a
pure, media-generated story. I'm not saying it didn't happen; I'm [not]
saying the pictures aren't there, but this is being given more life than the
Waco invasion got. This is being given more life than almost -- it's almost
become an Oklahoma City-type thing. One more Bush sound bite, and the
president continued explaining how real democracy works here."

Here's Rush's sociological evaluation of what really happened at Abu Ghraib,
as quoted in a piece in The New Republic on Limbaughism:

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation,
and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper
our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because
they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day.
I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of
emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?"

Now, don't you feel like a dopey dittohead for letting a little outbreak of
prisoner sadism bug you? These were just boys and girls blowing off steam
during a stressful situation. Let's not make an international incident out
of it, for crying out loud.

In Rush's world, this is essentially geopolitical spilled milk:

"I don't understand what we're so worried about. These are the people that
are trying to kill us. What do we care what is the most humiliating thing in
the world for them? There's also this business of them all wearing hoods and
how that's also very humiliating. You can see more guys wearing hoods at a
[Sen.] Robert Byrd birthday party 40 years ago than we've seen in these
prisoner photos."

So what's the moral of the story, for Rush?

"There's only one thing to do here, folks, and that's achieve victory over
people who have targeted us for loooong, long time, well over 15, 20 years.
It's the only way to deal with this, and that's why obsessing about a single
incident or two of so-called abuse in a prison is nothing more than a giant
distraction and could up being something that will really ties [sic] our
hands and handcuffs us in what the real objective is here, which is the
preservation of our way of life and our country."

"And that's why I'm not going to sit here and obsess and join the rest of
the media with this and turn this into a campaign issue, try to convince as
many people that George Bush is incompetent and needs to be thrown out of
office -- because that's all this is. But in the process, what all that does
is weaken the resolve of the people of this country."

Now, don't you feel like a dopey dittohead for wasting time worrying about
how this incident was preventable fuel for anti-American hate? For worrying
that soldiers under our flag did something profoundly wrong by our own
measures? For feeling anything remotely like what Limbaugh diagnoses as
liberal sniveling?

President Bush, however, has not been comforted by the Limbaugh analysis.
"It's a stain on our country's honor and our country's reputation,"
President Bush said. "I am sickened by what I saw and sickened that people
got the wrong impression."

There has been a good deal of attention in the U.S. to how the Abu Ghraib
episode has been covered and perceived around the world. I present these
passages of America's most listened to political theorist, Rush Limbaugh, in
that spirit. Many, many Americans seem to share the views Limbaugh expresses
in these quotes -- a fact that people who don't share those views had better
understand loud and clear.

I admit to finding several points of agreement in Rush's rush of
pronouncements about this saga. (For the record, I'll get more hate mail for
that admission than I'll get from Rush's backers, though that too will be
voluminous.)

"There are probably some good people in the bad guys and some rotten apples
in the good guys, and these people that did this so-called torture may in
fact be the rotten apples of the good guy group. But it's like I said: it
doesn't taint the whole military effort and it doesn't taint us, but the
world is joining in now trying to taint us as a nation, as a people, and as
a culture by virtue of these pictures on the basis that we have humiliated
these people. What is hijacking our own airplanes and flying them into the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon? How humiliating is it to blow up
American civilians in a convoy and have their charred bodies dragged from
the car and dragged through it streets? There seems to be no sensitivity,
concern or outrage for any of this anywhere in the world. So pardon me if my
patience is a little short."

I think Rush is right: the world was not properly outraged when jubilant
Iraqis desecrated the mutilated corpses of Americans.

And Rush is right: this is not who "we" are. Some of "us," like some of all
peoples, are capable of great cruelty and great evil, in some circumstances.
"We" are probably no more or no less susceptible than other groups. What is
different about "us" from so many others is the institutions, the laws, the
habits, the openness and the idealism that we have developed. All that broke
down at Abu Ghraib and in the bureaucracy that managed it.

It is precisely the rebellion and repugnance at such failures that makes us
vigilant against them in the future. An it is precisely the skilled
sophistry, the chauvinism and the fear mongering of Limbaughism that
corrodes the vigilance we should be proud of and that we need to ever
cultivate.

Dick Meyer, the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, has covered politics and
government in Washington for 20 years and has won the Investigative
Reporters and Editors, Alfred I. Dupont, and Society of Professional
Journalists awards for investigative journalism.

------

Torture Party
Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
By KURT NIMMO
Counterpunch, May 8/9 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo05082004.html

Torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? It's no different than fraternity
hazing. Or so declares the king of reactionary radio, Rush Limbaugh.

Beating and killing Iraqi detainees, according to Limbaugh, is good fun.
"I'm talking about people having a good time, these people [CIA agents and
MPs at Abu Ghraib], you ever heard of emotional release? You heard of need
to blow some steam off?" Limbaugh asked a caller. "This is no different than
what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin
people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and
then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time."

Limbaugh is attracted to people who torture. On his May 3 show, the
loudmouth drug addict said "have you people noticed who the torturers are?
Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture."

Limbaugh is talking about Spec. Sabrina D. Harman, a military police officer
who has been charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib. Harman is now
probably the world's most infamous dominatrix of sadomasochism. She took her
orders from Army military intelligence officers, CIA operatives, and
civilian contractors who conducted brutal, Israeli-styled interrogations.
She is accused of photographing dead Iraqis, posing with corpses, striking
several prisoners by jumping on them as they lay in a pile, writing
"rapeist" on a prisoner's leg, and attaching wires to a prisoner's hands and
penis while he stood on a box with head covered.

Most of us would likely find Harman seriously deranged and in need of years
of psychological treatment. But Limbaugh finds her and Pfc. Lynndie England
attractive. England is featured in many of the torture photos. In one, she
smiles happily with a cigarette clenched between in her teeth as she points
at a hooded Iraqi man's private parts. England's boyfriend, Sgt. Charles
Graner, is a former prison guard with a history of domestic violence. None
of this bothers Rush. On the contrary, Harman and England are patriotic
Americans innocently engaged in "good old American pornography," as Limbaugh
said on May 6.

More like "good old American" snuff films.

In fact, for Limbaugh, torture is a good thing. It builds character.
Americans are too squeamish, too wimpy, unable to face up to the neocon plan
of total war against Muslims and Arabs, a war Bush has promised will last
for generations. "I think a lot of the American culture is being feminized.
I think the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization
of this country," he told his audience. In other words, if torturing people
makes you sick you're effeminate, or maybe French. Get used to it, Rush
seems to be saying, there's more where that came from.

For Rush and the neocons, it's all about humiliating and torturing as many
Arabs as possible. "It could well be that the whole purpose here, which has
been said, was to humiliate these prisoners. And there's no better way of
doing it than what was done. These are Arab males -- what better way to
humiliate them than to have a woman have authority over them? What's the
purpose here? What's the objective of this? The objective is to soften them
up for interrogation later, later on. As I said, there was no horror, there
was no terror there was no death, there was no injuries, nothing." Never
mind that people were killed -- and photographed by Limbaugh's centerfold,
Spec. Sabrina D. Harman. The point Rush is making is that Arabs are
untermenschen, sub-humans, and they do not experience horror and injury the
same way Americans do. It's okay to saddle up a 70 year old Iraqi woman with
a harness and ride her around like a donkey because Arabs are immune to
terror and abuse.

Finally, you'd think Bush, given the chance, would distance himself from
Limbaugh's obvious sadism and racism. But no, instead White House press
secretary Scott McClellan refused to go on the record and condemn Limbaugh.
Here's how McClellan responded during a news conference:

Q: Scott, there's a segment of society that differs with the White House as
it relates to these pictures and the investigation of the U.S. soldiers'
conduct to include Rush Limbaugh who, Tuesday, agreed with the caller,
equating the pictures to a college fraternity prank, and said the U.S.
soldiers should not be punished because it was an emotional release as they
were letting off steam. What's the White House say about that?

MR. McCLELLAN: April, I think the White House says what we said yesterday
and what the President has said over the last few days.

Q: No, but Scott -- no, seriously. This man is a conservative --

MR. McCLELLAN: And I actually got asked a question earlier today about that
matter.

Q: But none --

MR. McCLELLAN: And I addressed it then.

Q: But if you stand out strongly trying to let the Arab world know that this
is wrong and then you have the proverbial spokesperson for the conservative
party saying this, doesn't that send a mixed message?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President's views have been very -- have been made very
clear.

Indeed, Bush's views are clear -- and they are the views of the neocon
rabble in the Pentagon and ensconced deep within conspiratorial neocon
foundations: this is a war against Islam and the Arabs, at the behest of
Likudite whack jobs and Christian Zionists. Bush has "apologized" for the
depravity of Abu Ghraib -- an apology not accepted by Arabs who understand
his sincere motivations and those of the neocons -- but only because there
is an election right around the corner. It can be stated without much doubt
that Bush supports whatever plan the CIA and the Pentagon come up with to
defeat the Iraqi resistance -- including torture. For a man who mocked the
anguished plea of a death row inmate in Texas and killed more than 10,000
innocent Iraqis under false pretenses, the humiliation and beating death of
a few Iraqis cannot be of much concern.

Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, is free to say what Bush most certainly
thinks but cannot say if he wants another four years in the White House.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at
www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html . Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St.
Clair's, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for
CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion
Books.