“We’re functioning … in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.”
Not just ‘running around’, but emailing them, sending CD�s, posting them on the internet. What is more, soldiers are using emails to stay in touch with families, beg for care packages, tell the truth to their friends, send their own unit atrocity snaps, and just plain blog.
The war in Iraq is leaking like the proverbial sieve, and digital communications has created a whole new nightmare for the spindoctors.
This email, for instance, (via Soul Pacific) came from an unnamed official in Iraq to inspire stories in the alternative media:
Despite the progress evident in the streets of Baghdad, much of which happens despite us rather than because of us, Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading toward civil war. Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds professionals have say that they themselves, friends, and associates are buying weapons fearing for the future. CPA is ironically driving the weapons market: Iraqi police sell their ‘lost’ U.S.-supplied weapons on the black market; they are promptly re-supplied. Interior ministry weapons buy-backs keep the price of arms high.
Now, according to Kathryn Cramer, it seems as if the US Department of Defence has ordered private supplier Kellogg, Brown, & Root to cut the email service to ordinary soldiers.
Hence, the frontline blogger Ginmar is left to say:
I might be getting transferred within the next week to another post. At the very least, KBR is not allowing any private computers on their system for the next ninety days.
Meanwhile the Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker which first blew the story of Abu Ghraib in detail is available around the world � it’s currently top of its page on Google.
The Bush administration is losing the propaganda war in a breathtaking tangle of disgusting images, shot on and transmitted by digital technology.
The American blogosphere has gone berserk about Abu Ghraib. Cursor, in one sustained passage across the first half of May nails the whole story from left to right, dignified to sleazy.
Kevin Drum adds a lucid analysis of the Right’s response – they are busy deciding that the War is still good and noble but the Bushites are too stupid to run it – and points to The New Republic’sOnline Campaign Journal which looks at Bush’s popularity figures at this stage of the campaign. 46% and sinking.
Josh Marshall adds a wonderful detail � the father of Major-General Antonio Taguba who wrote the damning Army report on Abu Ghraib was the son of a WW2 prisoner of war � who survived the Bataan Death March. I can imagine the values he got from his kitchen table. Colonel David Hackworth, who has spent a lifetime fighting for front line soldiers against an incompetent army,helped the story to go public. In a democracy, sooner or later evil collides with righteousness, which has been waiting in the wings for decades. Mind you, the result is never really justice.
An Australian perspective comes from Gary Sauer-Thompson. The Howard government is running exactly the same line as the Americans � it�s a few bad apples, it’s being dealt with, it’s abuse not torture, nothing to see here move along move along you’re obstructing the pavement.
Cursor sums up so much in a single bitter remark:
Pat Tillman’s younger brother delivers an anti-eulogy at a memorial service for the former NFL player-turned-soldier. “Pat isn’t with God,” he said. “He’s f — ing dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s f — ing dead.
Road to Surfdom shares a job application for a private enterprise torturer (sorry, ‘Interrogator/Intel Analyst Team Lead Asst’) and continues the Dunlop analyses of adminstration meltdown accounts, this time concentrating on Joseph Wilson’s book which is not called ‘Suckered In Niger by a Certain Adminstration’ but could be.
Blogger on a Cast Iron Balcony is inspired to celebrate the approaching Danish Royal wedding, particularly by the Prime Minister�s gift of a stand of trees. How can she avoid a small segue into environmental politics, and some ironic remarks about the law of the sea and a certain ship from a neighhbouring country?
The much respected Virulent Memes has spiffed up the site so it is much more readable, and posted a nationally fascinating item on the nightlife in Albury. Fortunately, he also finds an accountof British charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s fabulous (or stupid) outbreak of moral integrity. They turned down a one million pound donation from Nestle, makers of infant baby formula in the developing world.
Back Pages muses over Costello’s rattling of his leadership cage, Catallaxy reflects on our undergraduates’ desire to stay at Uni in their home towns, The Daily Slander wants New Zealand PM Helen Clark to go, Bargarz is tracking the questions about the possibly faked Daily Mirrortorture photos, while Boynton brings peace to the blogosphere with a gracious study of ping pong and Laputan Logic meditates on Francis Galton’s camp in Ovamboland.
On more political matters, Kim Weatherall is covering the submissions to the Senate Select Committee to the Free Trade Agreement, while Hot Buttered Death pokes fun at Fred Nile (such a sweet old man), Southerly Buster shows us that the Timor Gap dispute is an issue that Will Not Die, and Kick and Scream runs amok with a new digital camera.
Ken Parish brings his experience as a lawyer for Aboriginal communities to the problem of indigenous social structures in the deployment of government resources. He calls it ‘gross inefficiency and corruption’:
These problems are too seldom discussed. Few people “down south” even know about them, and many of those who do are reluctant to highlight them for fear that they’ll be seized on by latter-day Hansonites for short-term political advantage.
Most wonderful bent post award of the week goes to Soul Pacific, for an exhaustive but concise study of ways of dealing with your data if you die. Safety deposit boxes? Cryogenics? How about software which automatically sends death notice emails and contacts your bank, employer and personal blog if you don�t use the system for a set period. It’s a nightmare if you get stuck away from your computer for too long.
Lest we feel too grim, the Anglo-American-Australian group blog Crooked Timber resurrects a statement from English television writer in an interview three weeks before his death from cancer:
I can celebrate life. Below my window there�s an apple tree in blossom. It’s white. And looking at it, instead of saying, “Oh, that’s a nice blossom’, now, looking at it through the window, I see the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be. The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous. If you see the present tense, boy, do you see it. And boy, do you celebrate it.
Custody of Blogjam now passes from my wearied hands to Sedgwick. He will bring the dignity of a true Governor-General while I shall go back to polishing the silver.
Margo: Thanks David. Great work!