Expats Against Bush

Torture

Torture is a word that doesn't seem to be getting much exposure in the US press at the moment. I noticed it this morning, when I woke up and checked the BBC, The Guardian, CNN, and a couple of other news outlets, and saw something incredible: The Incredible Vanishing Story of a few US Army bad apples documenting their humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, cameras rolling all the time. After one news cycle, this is developing into the story of an outraged international community. Here we go again.

You see, it's all over the press everywhere in the world except the US, which is ironic as it was a US station (CBS) which originally broadcast the story. Aside from CBS, though, this story has fallen into a virtual black hole in the US. The Guardian comments on this shameful phenomenon here.

I don't profess to know what was going on in the minds of these soldiers as they were going about this work, perhaps the frustration of constant warzone exposure was getting to them, I don't know. But there's no excuse whatsoever for these actions. They're idiotic and immoral, and they have bumped us down a peg in the Arab world, if that's possible. We have now swung all the way from the Liberators end of the scale and fully into Occupiers territory.

I have to wonder how much of this attitude of disrespect for the Iraqis stems from the general notion pushed by the Bush administration that invading Iraq was vengeance for 9/11. I remember watching some BBC documentaries last year that followed different units as the invasion of Iraq was underway and I was shocked (though I suppose I shouldn't have been) at the number of enlisted men and women that hinted or openly said that this was "payback time" for 9/11. It was sad and misinformed, and if this attitude continues it could cost us dearly for years to come. Though I know these 17 soldiers do not represent the armed forces and are paying the price for their bad judgment, the damage to our reputation is now complete and the other brave men and women in Iraq are going to face a tougher time of it out there now.

"Uncovered" Screening May 16th

I'd like to urge all you London expats to join me in coming along to the screening of Uncovered on May 16th. I'll pass along the official Dems Abroad announcement:

“'Uncovered' is a devastating analysis of the abuses and distortions of intelligence used by the Bush administration in making its case for the war in Iraq."
Senator Edward Kennedy

This widely heralded film features interviews with highly credible authorities, including Ambassador Joe Wilson, weapons inspectors Scott Ritter and David Albright, anti-terrorism expert Rand Beers, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and former CIA operative Robert Baer as well as others with critical knowledge of the decisions that took our country to war.

Some supported the war itself but are deeply concerned about the way information was misused. .

This is your opportunity to see Uncovered before its world premiere at Cannes next month and its release in the U.S. in September.

Following the film, Ben Fortna a professor of Modern Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS will answer your questions about the effect of the war on the region

Attendance: 15 pounds per ticket/ 5 pounds students/low wage Admission price will support Democrats Abroad UK's ongoing Get out the Vote efforts.
RSVP: events@democratsabroad.org.uk
___________________________________________________________

Date: May 16
Time: 11am
Place Screen on the Hill
203 Haverstock Hill
London, NW3 4QG
020 7435 3366
Nearest Tube: Belsize Park
The cinema is directly opposite the Tube station

I see Red Part II (America, that is)

From a Washington Post series on the election comes this interesting-yet-oddly-condescending piece about Red America, more specifically Sugar Land, Texas, which voted 72% in favor of Bush last time round, and looks set to do so again. On the one hand, it's a fascinating look into the heart of "middle America" and another exposé of the "parallel universe" or "1% election" theory about everyone being so polarized now. On the other hand, you can just about see the grimace on the author's face as they type this, which is rather self defeating, as what is intended to be a "see how the other side lives" piece ends up looking like another liberal elitist condemnation of the right wing voter.

Then again, this almost could have been an Onion article.

Update

Their exposé of "blue" voters has been published today. Check it out.

I see Red

Not quite Bush-related, but Bloggerheads have got an excellent new Flash animation up, turning a very cheeky request from the Tories (asking bloggers to attack the Labour government) on its head - nobody is safe, least of all the Tories! Of course, as expected, our dear leader Bush does make a cameo appearance...

Imminent attack?

Although it seems to be cooling off at the moment, signs have been pointing to a massive Coalition assault on Fallujah for a while, an assault which may succeed in rooting out some of the insurgents there, but not without almost certainly causing immense civilian casualties and further exacerbating the delicate situation in the rest of Iraq, not to mention the rest of the world.

Actually, we really should be mentioning the rest of the world. One of the reasons always given for taking the War on Terror into Iraq was that it would take the battle to the enemy on their own ground and make the rest of the world a safer place. It is undeniable now that there are more terrorists operating in Iraq today than there ever were before, and as for the rest of the world.... well, I live in London and articles like this do not exactly fill one with confidence about the world being a safer place:

On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."

The fact that there are 200 guys less than 10 miles from my house having a get together to discuss the joys of martyrdom kind of gets your attention. This Hamza guy has been going for years, and there's an ongoing (hopefully successful in the end) effort to evict him from the UK, but the size of his audience has been increasing, not decreasing, as a result of our efforts in Iraq and in other places.

In a related note I've just finished Richard Clarke's already-infamous expose of America's long fight against terrorism from his point of view, Against All Enemies, which is a real page-turner and is bookended by two outstanding chapters. The first chapter is a fascinating blow-by-blow account of what happened inside the White House as the events of September 11th unfolded. The last chapter is a chilling summary of where exactly we stand now, two plus years - and two countries invaded - on from that day. I hate to say that that chapter pretty much exactly echoes my thoughts on the matter of Bush's handling of the War on Terrorism, as I told Newsweek last year:

Why are you opposed to Bush?
For any number of reasons. I think he’s totally unfit to hold the office. I think he’s doing us far more harm than good in terms of national security. He’s waged this pre-emptive war in the name of national security, but the way he’s gone about it has actually ensured that our national security will be in a much worse state 10 or 20 years from now because of the way he’s inflamed tension in the Muslim world. I think he’s done more to generate more terrorists than to eradicate them.

As a footnote, I really enjoyed reading Clarke's book, though I think it was oversold in terms of his critique of the Bush administration's failings. In reality, over 80% of the book dealt with pre-Bush counterterrorism efforts, with the Bush section seeming almost to be an afterthought - Clarke was so marginalized by the new administration that the kind of intimate day-to-day accounts we got of the Clinton years are missing from the Bush years. But the last chapter is unflinching in its criticism of Bush's missteps, and I find it personally validating that a high ranking national security official has pretty much word for word echoed the same sentiments that I and so many of you have expressed over the last few years: Bush is a disastrous president and is doing immense damage to the security and standing of the United States.

He must go.

CPA Memo: Iraq in shambles

Some pretty scary stuff from the Village Voice, who've obtained a confidential internal memo from an official inside Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority:

[A]ccording to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author—a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director—have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.

Run Against Bush

The founder of Run Against Bush has asked me to pass along details of their organization:

"Run Against Bush" is a grassroots campaign dedicated to removing George W. Bush from the White House by providing concerned citizens a way to collectively and comfortably express their disapproval of the Bush Administration.

Our eight co-founders are a diverse group of teachers, civil servants, and nonprofit and private sector professionals. Like you, we are all driven by a deep concern over the direction in which our country is heading.

Join us for runs, jogs and just plain old walks as we collectively voice our displeasure with the Bush administration and work for positive change.

Looks like a good start for them - nearly $50K raised and nearly 1500 members across 39 states!

Bush 41 in London

Apparently George H.W. Bush is going to be in London for a $1K-a-plate fundraiser for his son's reelection campaign on May 18th at the Landmark on Marylebone Road. There are sure to be some protesters so if you fancy joining up I'm sure you could organize yourselves, maybe even take advantage of the EAB Activism Forums in the process?

Down with jingoism!

(irony intended)

For an excellent look at one of the reasons you and I get so worked up about having to listen to Bush & co witter on about the "war on turrism" and other inanities, see this excellent piece over at TPM, which you should read if you haven't already.

Holiday cut short

Poor Mr Bush. Even though he's spent a scant 40% of his presidency on vacation, Dubya has very kindly agreed to come back to Washington for a rare press conference on Monday. It looks like the events of the last week have got Bush's people slightly worried. During the worst week in Iraq since "Mission Accomplished", Bush was visibly absent from the White House, and with his job approval numbers slipping to new lows last week they rightly thought that maybe it was time to get him back in the driver's seat, so to speak.

What will we see in Monday's press conference? Admission of any misgivings about how things have gone in Iraq? Admission of any possibility they could have done more pre-9/11? Admission of any fallability whatsoever? Nah.

You can tell by today's remarks in Crawford (which fly in the face of the recently-declassified PDB) that we're going to get more of the usual bluster and a cheeky grin with the usual oversimplification of the situation at hand... I am already hovering on the channel button in case I feel the urge to throw something at the TV. One of these days, someone in that administration is going to have to say that everything has not unfolded according to plan, and accept some responsibility.

I fear for the longterm effects of this administration's gross mismanagement of our country. It will have such repercussions as we can barely imagine today.

Doesn't this just speak volumes?

Expat voting sites

Over the weekend I attended one of Democrats Abroad's voter registration training sessions, so if you live in London you may see me manning a desk at some point trying to corral hapless yanks into filling out pink forms.

While there I was pointed the way towards a couple of sites specifically aimed at getting Americans overseas registered to vote (and vote Democrat!):

TellAnAmericanToVote.Com is set up by some Dutch folks and is slick, and aimed not only at Americans but at their non-American friends - who are encouraged to spur their Yank mates into action

OverseasVote.Com is of a similar ilk, with slightly more handy state-by-state guides to registering to vote.

By the way, if anyone has experience of the intricacies of voting in Guam, could you give this guy a hand in the Forums? Much appreciated.

Economist: Bush's credibility issue

The Economist has a nice piece up about Bush's mounting credibility issue and the often apoplexy-inducing fact that a lot of American voters are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt despite it:

[The] administration's reaction to accusations by Richard Clarke, its former counter-terrorism co-ordinator, raises doubts not only over its judgments but, still more, over whether and how the administration accounts for its decisions. When set in the context of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the ballooning budget deficit, this reaction raises profound questions about the administration's credibility, honesty and competence.

I raised this subject in an EAB Forums topic here, though it seems to be playing up a little bit with the order of the posts - I am still not quite up to speed with it - but I appreciate all of you who signed up and contributed over the weekend.

EAB Forums are Live!

Just in time for your Friday afternoon browsing session, it's my pleasure to announce that the Expats Against Bush Forums are now in full operation and ready to be filled with reasoned, intelligent debate on the topics of the day.

The Forums can be found here: http://forums.expatsagainstbush.org/eve.

This is a standard UBB forum application which I'm sure you've all seen before. Just like normal, you'll need to set up a user profile for yourself, and then you can start posting away. There are some pretty advanced features of these forums so I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun as we go along.

I've set up some initial forums and forum areas, but I'm sure more will be added as we go along and things settle out. I've also seeded a couple of the forums with "starter" topics to get the ball rolling.

So what are you waiting for? Go chat!

March on Washington - April 25, 2004

Bush sure is uniting people, though maybe not in the way he'd hoped. As I can't afford to cross the pond these days, I hope someone reading this will go to Washington and hold up a sign for me!

Rather than post my own reasons for believing in this march, I'll let those that can go tell you themselves.

Announcement re: Expats Against Bush

This has been a tough decision for me, but I have had several offers made to me because of my work on Expats Against Bush, and some very persuasive people have talked me round to their side of things.

Therefore, from now on I will be working for the Bush / Cheney 2004 campaign, and will be reorienting this website to reflect that. The careful words of reasonable folk such as Del and Jim have convinced me that all along I have been on the wrong side, and that the future lies with the simple folk wisdom of our dear President, and not with hand-wringing softie types. I have also been promised by the deputy directory of the Bush campaign, Lir Paisloof, that a job awaits me in the new Administration should my efforts bear fruit.

I hope you will all join me on this new phase of my personal journey.

-Luke Robinson
April 1, 2004

Just kidding.