And this is the piling swivel

Americans call it the stacking swivel.

you would have noticed the role that al Qaeda has been playing in the past months, and you would have seen the distinctions between Sunni-Shiite paramilitant attacks and those perpetrated by al Qaeda. Clearly, al Qaeda is public enemy #1 in Iraq right now, as Gen. Petraeus stated well over a month ago, and that the terrorist group has chosen Iraq as its main front in this War Against Militant Islamism. Operation Phantom Thunder is designed to degrade al Qaeda, which happens to be the most unreconcilable group out there. To get a picture of al Qaeda's involvement, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bombings_in_Iraq_since_2003.

I ask myself every day, every single day, "What has happened to us? Where are our poets? Our artists? Our writers? Where has our soul gone to? Why has reason abandoned us?"

But at least we have Glenn and Digby and a few others.

And Bebop-o!

The principal objection to pulling out has long been 'but there'll be a genocidal bloodbath." But this latest spin is designed to grant us leeway to provide exactly that: a killing field of our own.

No more concerns about the deaths of Sunnis or Shias. All the deaths will now be Al Qaeda and the collateral damage will remain unfortunate but necessary.

It thus becomes vitally important that the few journalists and NGOs operating there keep methodical track of who's really dying in the current and coming offensives.

It's all tied to the September progress reports. Claiming we killed a few thousand Al Qaida, Bush will stand up on September 11 and insist that we must not surrender to the terrorists who attacked us.

The question is, will anyone but the 26 Percenters hanging with Bush still play a gullible Charlie Brown when Lucy holds that ball again?

Maybe. But only if they're Al Qaida.

And the despicable bloodbath will stain their hands, too.

http://voanews.com/english/2007-06-23-voa10.cfm

US Army Officer Raises Doubts About Guantanamo Tribunals
By VOA News

23 June 2007

Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Abraham took part in the hearings at the U.S. military base for six months starting in late 2004. In papers filed with a federal appeals court in Washington, the Army reservist and lawyer says officers conducting the hearings relied on incomplete intelligence sources to determine if detainees were enemy combatants. He says the arbitrary process failed to review evidence about the detainees that could have proved their innocence.

The lawyer says he decided to come forward after learning that the officer who oversaw the program, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral James McGarrah, asserted in a sworn statement the military carefully considered the status of each detainee.

« Il suffit d'ajouter « militaire » à un mot pour lui faire perdre sa signification. Ainsi la justice militaire n'est pas la justice, la musique militaire n'est pas la musique. »
- - attributed to Clemenceau and/or (in slightly different form) to Groucho Marx, who may have said, "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music."

(A funny line but not really fair because, unlike military justice, military music has some fine moments. And what would football be without military music, and without 14 year old boys and girls dressed for the Napoleonic wars?)

Anyway, as Andrew Cohen reports, this morning, at his blog at washingtonpost.com,
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/06/gitmo_hearing_long_outed_as_fa.html

We have long known, therefore, that military officials, to use the words of William Glaberson in this morning's Times, "relied on incomplete and outdated information" and that they were "under intense pressure from their commanders to conclude that the detainees should be held." The only bit of news here is that one of the officials who participated in these kangaroo courts finally had the courage and the integrity to step forward and speak out about a "haphazard and arbitrary" practice that surely is beneath us as a nation.

[ . . . ] The presiding tribunal officer accuses Idr of associating 'with a known Al Qaeda operative.' The detainee says, reasonably enough: 'Give me his name.' The tribunal president says: 'I do not know.' Idr understandably asks: 'How can I respond to this?

Abracadabra! In a puff of smoke, Mister Idr becomes "al Qaeda" because he didn't prove that he hadn't associated with an unidentified person.

Gee, I'd been thinking that it was just that al Qaeda had hired a new PR firm, who made a deal with someone in the Pentagon.

Nothing boosts the stock of al Qaeda more than being identified as the force opposing us everywhere in Iraq. Talk about building brand loyalty!

It astonishes me that the administration is so quick to criticize others for 'sending the wrong signal', yet they hand such a huge propaganda tool to the enemy on a silver platter.

If we were serious about the Global War on Terror, we'd be downplaying the importance of al Qaeda, not building it up.

I ask myself every day, every single day, "What has happened to us? Where are our poets? Our artists? Our writers? Where has our soul gone to? Why has reason abandoned us?"

But at least we have Glenn and Digby and a few others.

And Bebop-o!

`

Michael, I'm glad you corrected yourself. Don't despair, our poets, artists, and writers are still around. As long as Bebop-O is here we likely won't see any mushroom clouds overhead, unless of course, the shitake really hits the fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2OXQh3duI

Remember what it's all about.

The Duh-bya administration started this campaign a few months back - it takes a little time for these language shifts to take place, i.e. "faith-based" programs. They decided early on to set the terms of the debate on anything by couching it in the terms they want used.

General Petraeus was interviewed on All Things Considered two or three months ago and I noticed then that he talked only of "Al Quaeda" as the people we're plowing down, blowing up, maiming and torturing in Iraq. I knew then that the strategy was set to instill this concept in the American public. It's SOP.

So when are the rest of us going to rename the "surge" - which is a preposterous misnomer for our escalation of the war?

Why not start a fund to take out ads in papers across America to decry this propaganda war at home? Every time they start down this road with another concept, 20 people should write letters to their local papers and point it out. 50 more should phone their local editors and demand that they get fairer news coverage. And 100 more from every metropolitan area should write, phone, email the television news networks - language counts, as Karl Rove clearly knows.

And, of course, it's time to take up a regular chant for impeachment of Cheney and Gonzales, for starters. It's time for progressive thinkers to get as relentless and repetitious as the war criminals and religious fanatics in the White House.

P.S. I was pleasantly surprised to see a NYT article on 6/22 that repeatedly referred to "religion-based" programs. The tide can be turned.