As noted here (and elsewhere), the Washington Post isn't really
like Pravda (except when Hiatt gets all trembly while gazing at the
portrait of the Generalissimo in his office). Pravda never would have
published any story that reflected badly on the government, even one
buried certain fathoms deep inside the paper. The Post has always
provided stories in which crumbs of truth and reality – and sometimes
whole chunks – could be unearthed from beneath the mounds of fawning
spin and bogus "objectivity" of the "
Matt Drudge rules our world!"
school. And as the cesspool of Bush crime rises to such stenchful,
overflowing levels that even a few of the Beltway barons have been
forced to scratch their heads and say, "Hmm, looks like there might
possibly be something slightly amiss here, if I may say so without
appearing shrill or unserious," the Post is getting more and more bold
in its placement of critical pieces. Why, they even put a story about
the horrible neglect of wounded soldiers – a widespread scandal that
had been going on for years, even as the Administration and their
pom-pom boy Hiatt were excoriating war opponents for "not supporting
the troops" – on the front page. And as the Scarlet Pimpernel used to
say, Odd's fish, that's something, isn't it?
And to be fair,
the Post has had several courageous and resolute reporters bringing
home the reality of the vast war crime that Bush has instigated in
Iraq. Often these stories have made it to the front page – although
it's still a sad commentary on the state of our modern media when the
Post must be praised for occasionally speaking the plain truth about a
wretched misdeed whose monstrousness no sentient being could deny. But
here too, these stories can still – just – be slotted into an
acceptable Establishment narrative, a line of conventional wisdom that
has slowly emerged over these years of mass murder and ruin: the charge
that the Bush Administration has "mismanaged" the war, they "didn't do
it right," they've made so many "blunders." The "Iraq Study Group" of
heavily jowled worthies led by James Baker provided the final seal of
Establishment approval for this line, which has been adopted by all the
leading Democratic presidential candidates and most of the Party's
power players. (It was also the basic theme of John Kerry's
presidential campaign: "Hey, I can do this war better than Bush!"
Wonder what a young Kerry would have thought of any Democrat who ran
for president in 1972 on the theme: "I can fight this Vietnam War
better than Nixon!")
And although this new narrative can
encompass a good deal of genuinely harsh criticism against the
government, the basic premise of the Establishment's long-running,
bipartisan foreign policy remains unchallenged: "We have the right to
intervene in any country in the world – covertly, overtly, with
military force if need be – in order to advance the interests (and the
ignorant prejudices) of our ruling cliques." The most any critic within
the Establishment – especially one who aspires to high political office
– is allowed to say is that a particular intervention has been
"mismanaged," or ill-timed, or unproductive, or too expensive. To go
beyond that, to say that a war launched by the United States is
criminal and immoral, is to be cast into outer darkness, labeled
"unserious," banished to the back benches with the cranks and the
losers. (The current political situation gives proof to this: where are
the Democratic leaders with institutional power or large national
followings who will plainly say that the invasion and occupation of
Iraq was an immoral act, a work of evil?)
But the underlying
assumption of "unilateral action" is never seriously questioned. And it
is this bipartisan assumption that drives the entire "War on Terror,"
which is simply a vast machine for perpetuating and expanding the
military-industrialist complex. It obviously has nothing to do with
combating terrorism – which it has demonstrably exacerbated – or with
bringing peace and democracy to benighted lands.
And thus
Somalia, a much-ravaged country that had at last won some measure of
stability under its homegrown "Islamic Court" system has been plunged
into murder and ruin again. (And to anticipate the tired and tiresome
troll objections at this point: No, I wouldn't want to live under
Somalia's Islamic Court system, any more than I would want to live
under the rule of the hardline religious parties that Bush has
installed in power through mass murder in Iraq. Or under the brutal
religious tyranny of Bush's family friends and business partners, the
Saudis. Hell, I might not even want to live in a dry county. But my
lifestyle preferences don't give me the right to invade other countries
(or counties!) and slaughter their people and arrange their way of life
for them. One can criticize the war crime of military aggression
against a country without endorsing that country's way of life in all
particulars, or any of them. But I realize this is a logic beyond the
dwindling band of Hiatt-like bootlickers who still keep their slavish
faith in the Leader.)
Now Somalia's brief moment of stability is
gone. Now the nation is occupied by a foreign power, helped in their
invasion not only by American training and money but also by extensive
U.S. air raids on fleeing refugees who supposedly had "al Qaeda
terrorist leaders" among their ranks. (And even turning fleeing
Americans, uncharged with any crime, over to the tender mercies of the
Ethiopian regime. More on this story after the jump.) But goldang it,
wouldn't you know the bombs missed them Qaeders and just killed a bunch
of unimportant innocent black nobodies instead. Oh well, as Stalin
always said: "When wood is chopped, chips fly." That's pretty much the
motto of Bush's "War on Terror."
***
From McClatchy Newspapers
(Knight-Ridder as was), which has probably been the best, most
forthright mainstream service covering the Bush Imperium's wars, comes
the story of a U.S. citizen who fled the violence spread by the
Bush-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, only to find himself thrust
back into captivity in Ethiopia by American agents.
Of course,
he wasn't a "real" American, in the Bushist sense. He was one of "them"
-- Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24. And he committed three cardinal sins in the
eyes of the Imperium: he happened to be in a "regime change" target
country when the Bushists pulled the trigger; he was a Muslim; and he
refused to confess to being a member of al Qaeda -- even though FBI
agents in Kenya strongarmed him with the threat of turning him over to
torture chambers in Ethiopia. And true to the spirit of that great
American cross-dresser, J. Edgar Hoover, they were men of their word --
they gave him, a fellow American, to Ethiopia, despite admitting that
there were "no outstanding charges" against him and no plans to arrest
him. There is another term for that condition: "innocent," as we used
to say in the old days, before the Unitary Executive descended from the
Holy Crawford Cowpat and delivered us from the rule of law. Here's how
McClatchy tells it:
American's jailing in Ethiopia raises questions about U.S. role
Excerpts:
A U.S. citizen who was caught fleeing the recent fighting in Somalia
was questioned about links to al Qaida by the FBI in Kenya, then
secretly sent back to the war-ravaged country, where he was turned over
to Ethiopian forces.
Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, is now imprisoned
in Ethiopia, where the State Department's 2006 human rights report says
"conditions in prisons and pre-trial detention centers remain very
poor" and "there were numerous credible reports that security officials
often beat or mistreated detainees."
The fact that Meshal has
landed in an Ethiopian prison without any semblance of due process
raises new questions about what role the rule of law plays in the Bush
administration's war on terrorism. Other suspected terrorists or "enemy
combatants" have been exposed to extreme interrogation methods,
secretly sent to countries that practice torture, held for extended
periods without charges or lawyers, or put under surveillance without
court warrants.
[This is the kind of context, the kind of
reality that you might find -- sometimes -- in the 27th paragraph of a
typical Washington Post story, yet here it is in the third paragraph.
This kind of thing too had a name in the old days: we called it
"journalism."]
An American official who met Meshal in Kenya
but wasn't authorized to discuss his case publicly told McClatchy
Newspapers that the U.S. Embassy asked Kenya to release Meshal so he
could return to the United States. There are no outstanding charges
against Meshal, and U.S. law enforcement officials weren't planning to
take him into custody, the official said. “The Kenyan authorities
decided otherwise. It’s not something we have control over,†the
official said. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. has
protested Meshal's deportation.
Human rights groups in Kenya
and the United States, however, disputed the contention that the U.S.
was powerless to win Meshal’s release from Kenyan custody before he was
deported. “Anyone who tells you that the United States doesn’t have the
clout to convince the Kenyans to return an American citizen is either
misinformed or lying,†said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, in New
York.
Kenya and Ethiopia are key allies in the Bush
administration's battle against Islamic extremism in Africa, and
President Bush has requested a total of more than $1 billion in aid for
the two countries in fiscal 2008, making them among the largest
recipients of U.S. aid in Africa....
Meshal's saga appears to
have begun began late last year, when Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia
to help crush the Islamic Courts Council, an alliance of militias that
the Bush administration alleges is an al Qaida front. The
administration backed the Ethiopian operation with training,
intelligence, special forces, and aerial surveillance, and worked
closely with Kenya, Ethiopia and the interim Somali government to
capture suspected al Qaida members and other potential terrorists....
While
Meshal was jailed in Kenya [for immigration violations after crossing
the border in flight from the war], he told other detainees and Muslim
human rights activists who visited the group that FBI agents had
threatened to send him back to Somalia if he didn’t admit he was an al
Qaida member. Meshal said he was an American citizen from New Jersey,
that he’d recently been in Dubai, and that he'd gone to Somalia to
practice Islam under the Courts regime, which had imposed Islamic law
on much of the country.
Meshal told the human rights activists
that FBI agents drove him to a hotel in a U.S. Embassy car for an
interview on Feb. 5. He said the agents told him to confess to being a
member of al Qaida or they'd send him to Mogadishu, the Somali capital,
according to Omar Mohammed of the Nairobi-based Muslim Human Rights
Forum, who spoke regularly with Meshal in prison. “He was informed that
he was in a lawless country and had no right to legal representation,â€
Mohammed said. “He was being treated as a terrorist.â€
Mohammed
said that Meshal had told him that the FBI agents had showed him photos
of several people and told him they'd been taken at terrorist training
camps in Somalia. Meshal said that when he denied knowing the people,
the agents threatened him with torture and said they’d come back the
next day, according to Mohammed...Two U.S. officials in Washington,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said Meshal was turned over to
Ethiopian forces in Somalia and is being held in the Ethiopian capital,
Addis Ababa.
Maybe the Ethiopians will be able to persuade
him into confessing. If not -- well, he'll just be one more wood chip
on Bush's growing pile. But who's counting? And who cares?
The Washington Post has certainly noticed. They put 
